Page 38 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - October 2015
P. 38
38 MKULTRA Violence & The C.I.A.
1957-1961, Canada:
MKULTRA Experiments
in Montreal
Continued from Page 37 INSERT CBC FIFTH
This steady counterattack left the ESTATE VIDEO HERE
Canadian government completely cowed,
apparently a fairly easy thing for the U.S. to MK Ultra discover how to work with it.
accomplish. To turn off the public heat for The CIA set up a number of fronts that
supporting our case, the Mulroney government CBC - Fifth Estate
commissioned an "independent study" by a were run by its brainwashing experts. In
former Tory M.P., John Cooper. The result was During the Cold War, the CIA funded a series of Canada, that included the Human Ecology
neither independent nor a study, but a several secret brainwashing experiments at a Fund, which paid for the research conducted at
hundred page brief concluding Canada was prestigious psychiatric clinic at McGill McGill University.
blameless, and CIA involvement was "a red University.
herring." Between 1957 and 1961, the CIA
No method was too bizarre, including funneled about $62 thousand dollars for its
The "Cooper Report" was compiled and using LSD, hypnosis, prolonged periods of brainwashing experiments to Dr. Ewen
written by Canadian Justice Department induced sleep, and electrical shocks to the brain. Cameron, the director of the Allen Memorial
lawyers, whose job was to defend Canada Patients were given the treatment without hospital. It’s possible that Cameron didn’t know
against claims of liability based on its explanation or consent, and even decades later where the funding for his research came from.
involvement with Cameron. A more clear complained that they had never completely
conflict of interest is difficult to imagine. No recovered. Many years passed before there was any
Canadian Bar disciplinary committee has public or official acknowledgment of what
investigated the lawyers who did it. In 1980, the fifth estate exposed the patients at Allen Memorial had been through.
magnitude of the human tragedy with this the fifth estate followed the story for until 1998,
The "Cooper Report" asserted that Cameron episode in which two Canadians told their when the CIA agreed to pay some of the patients
had done nothing wrong. Without interviewing stories publicly for the first time. an out of court settlement of $750 thousand. The
any of our clients or reviewing their medical case had been in court for several years.
records, the report announced there was Bob Logie was admitted to Allen
probably little if any lasting harm to the victims. Memorial hospital at age 18 to treat It emerged that during that time Ottawa
The report reproduced the CIA's principal psychosomatic leg pain. He was repeatedly helped suppress evidence that CIA officials had
defenses, now as the "independent" conclusions given LSD as a test subject without his consent. apologized to the Canadian government when
of an official Canadian government the CIA experiments were first revealed –
investigation. The "Cooper Report" was a Logie also received an experimental evidence that legal experts said would have
complete whitewash. therapy called depatterning. He was exposed to gone a long way toward settling the case
massive doses of electroshock therapy and kept quickly.
What once had appeared to be our strongest asleep for up to a month at a time. Tape
potential ally, threatening even to take the U.S. messages were played repeatedly while he slept. In 1992, the Canadian government
to the International Court of Justice at the agreed to compensate some of Cameron’s
Hague, now sought to exonerate the CIA in “I feel like I’ve been completely used. I victims $100 thousand each. In exchange, the
every conceivable way possible. The Canadian feel like my mind has been completely invaded. victims signed away the right to sue the
government did such a good job for the CIA that I suppose if guinea pigs have feelings they’d government or the hospital. []
the "Cooper Report" became the first exhibit in feel like I do,” Logie told the fifth estate host
the CIA's final effort to defeat our case through Adrienne Clarkson.
a motion for summary judgment. In addition,
the same psychiatrists who the Canadian Logie said the effect of the treatments
government had retained to ratify the Cooper stayed with him and that as a result anxiety built
whitewash were the CIA's expert witnesses. up and he couldn’t hold down a job for long.
Canada completed the legwork that an associate
in a good law firm usually does for a senior No one knows how many patients were
partner. exposed to the program of chemical and electro-
shock treatments at Allen Memorial. But
Source: Rauh and Turner, "Anatomy of a Public Interest documents and testimony have revealed that the
Case against the CIA," Hamline Journal of Public Law Montreal experiments were part of a series of
and Policy, Fall 1990. [] psychological projects given code names such
as MK Ultra and run by the CIA in a quest to
understand how to brainwash people.
The American spy agency launched the
experiments after the Korean War, when
soldiers came home criticizing the American
way of life. The CIA was convinced that the
Communists had found the key to brainwashing
and set out on an elaborate but secret attempt to
use any chemical or psychological means to
