CIA's secret brainwashing experiment: Former patients sue U.S. government (1984) - The Fifth Estate

[Music] the Fifth Estate good evening I'm Eric Malley nine Canadians who were the unwitting victims of CIA brainwashing experiments are suing the United States government but so far the Canadian government has done nothing to help them if I were in charge of the government to whom nine citizens that we are suing for have been brainwashed without their knowing have had their lives impaired and have it done by a foreign agency undercover without the Government of Canada knowing it I would find a way to help those people instead of hindering them four years ago there was some startling revelations about the activities of the CIA in Canada the American intelligence agency had paid for a series of brainwashing experiments under a project codenamed MK ULTRA the tests were conducted in secret in the United States and in Canada at a mental hospital attached to McGill University experimental drugs including LSD were administered to human guinea pigs the patients were never told that their treatment was part of a CIA experiment nine Canadians are now suing the US government for a million dollars apiece they charged that their lives were disrupted forever as a result of the brainwashing despite the fact that the CIA operated secretly in Canada to fund these medical experiments on Canadian citizens the federal government in Ottawa has joined hands with the government in Washington to hold back vital information which might at last reveal all the sordid details in Winnipeg Val Orlick au spends a lot of time tending her plants it's one of the few hobbies she has left she used to devour books and write long letters now she can't concentrate on a book for more than a single page and writing a letter is beyond her she's on medication 24 hours a day if she wasn't married to David Orlick Oh an NDP Member of Parliament she might never have learned the full story of what happened to her in 1956 suffering from depression after childbirth mrs. Orlick Co was referred by her Winnipeg doctor to a top psychiatrist in Montreal unknowingly she was about to become part of a cruel CIA experiment codenamed MK ULTRA in Langley Virginia outside of Washington stands the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency protected by walls of secrecy as high as the trees stored inside computers like this one is what's left of the CIA files on the MKULTRA project convinced the Soviets and Chinese had perfected brainwashing during the Korean War the agency sought to perfect its own techniques both to protect its agents and to use as a weapon who did you meet with in the safehouse the CIA man overseeing the project was John Gibbon jur there was continued pressure put upon anybody within the agency in connection with trying to explain or understand brainwashing so we were charged with rather elaborate attempt to try to find out chemical psychological any kind of means that people could use to influence the behavior of the people in Montreal on the side of the mountain overlooking the city stands an ancestral home bearing a name worthy of an Edgar Allan Poe horror tale Ravens cracked donated to McGill Ravens Craig became the Allen Memorial Institute for the treatment of mental illness here the CIA channeled money for MKULTRA sub-project 68 which became a real-life horror tale the project chief in Montreal was dr. Ewen Cameron world-renowned chairman of the department of psychiatry at McGill and director of the Allen memorial Institute the CIA secretly funded the medical experiments through a front in New York City called of all things the Society for the protection of human ecology documents show that the agency had been impressed with earlier work done at McGill in sensory deprivation work that was useful in designing sophisticated torture techniques later on but at the time brainwashing looked even more promising and dr.

Cameron was the perfect one to carry out the work an American citizen with a world-class reputation operating outside of the United States dr. Cameron certainly had the credentials at various times president of the Canadian the American and even the world psychiatric association in an address to colleagues from around the world Cameron showed that he certainly knew the potential of the human mind for good and bad though all echo came to the Allan for her postpartum depression everybody in the hospital was very much in awe of dr. Cameron and he strode the halls like a giant and people would say oh they're but for God goes God and to me I thought how could he possibly ever take me for a patient Who am I I'm being this great man who's done all these marvelous things and boy I better work hard and I better do everything that he tells me to do and you know I don't want to lose this opportunity to get well like mrs.

Orlick Oh mrs. Janine Huard of Montreal came to dr. Cameron depressed after childbirth the depression was made worse by a hearing problem that coincided with the birth of her child she too was in awe of dr.

Cameron it was a very very impressive man and I was told it was the best doctor in averag North America I saw him he would look at you a few minutes ask you a few questions and then proceed with the treatments but I never saw him once in all the times that I saw him that I wasn't afraid every time I went down to his office I would shake with fear and every time I'd see him coming down the hall I'd shake with fear but I adored him dr. Elliott Emmanuel knew Cameron he was an authoritarian ruthless power-hungry nervous tense angry man not really nice at Raven's Cregg dr. Cameron went further with drugs and electric shock treatments than any of the US researchers in the MKULTRA project dared his aim was to wipe the mind clean then he would implant new messages by forcing the patient to listen to a hypnotic repetition as many as a quarter of a million times this was called psychic driving most of the drugs used in the program were experimental and some dangerous there was the tranquilizer Arte a paralysis inducing and neck tee and curare which pygmies tip their arrows with to paralyze victims Alba captain another experimental tranquilizer and lysergic acid diethylamide the Hallucigenia a in her room at Raven's Craig misses Orlick Oh waited for her first treatment hypodermic with a needle syringe and the card on it had my name so I looked a little more closely and it was lysergic acid diethylamide and my husband was a druggist and I knew a lot of drugs but I'd never heard of that one and so I phoned a friend and who was a psychiatric nurse and I said do you know what it is and she said I never heard of it but she had a friend who was a psychiatrist so she phoned her friend and she called me back and she said he said that this stuff causes poisonous psychosis she said he just said not to take it well I thought you know he's a very Freudian psychiatrist and doesn't believe in any medication of any kind and after all here's dr.

Cameron I mean he's the big doctor and he's you know he's known all over the world and he wouldn't do anything that would harm me etc and so I took the injection and I didn't like it and it really did create a poisonous psychosis LSD with all its frightening mental images was scarcely known at the time but the CIA secretly brought some in from Switzerland where it had just been developed the room became very distorted and I thought my bones were all melting and I just wanted to scream that I wanted to get out of there and I saw the squirrels outside and I thought they're not the squirrels I'm the squirrel I'm in this cage and I can't get out and I started to throw myself from side to side in the room and I couldn't right they had given me a pen some paper and asked me to write down but I couldn't write I couldn't do anything I couldn't focus I couldn't I don't know it was like some kind of funny hail I'd fallen into and I couldn't get out and I don't know how long that went on it was just a terrible nightmare and I just felt that my life was threatened I could never go back to what I'd been Robert loggia Vancouver was 18 when he came to the Allen complaining of trembling and severe leg pains diagnosed as psychosomatic like mrs. Orlick oh and mrs. who are he had no inkling he was to be part of a CIA experiment LSD was very horrifying and they gave it to me for about 12 or 15 times one minute I would see the doctor there and explained I wouldn't see him there and they were asking me all kinds of questions and I remember them telling me that I was getting smaller and smaller and I really felt myself getting smaller and they were bringing me back in time way back and you know at one point I almost felt like it was just about to be born really that far back in memory and they're really really probing and asking all kinds of questions and I felt I didn't have any control I had to answer I didn't feel I had any control I was completely like they had complete control over me mrs.

Hugh art like the others was forced to pay for the so-called treatment massive electric shocks and all the drugs they would give me as much as 40 pills a day and I would ask the nurse what is that they would say it's a new drug and they only named it by a number almost drugs do to you how did they know I was I was very very strong well powered so these drugs kind of desensitize me they would put my my reactions they would lower my resistance as well as the experimental drugs and massive electric shock treatments missus who art was subjected to psychic driving hypnotic like messages were repeated over and over to a sleeping patient sometimes for as long as 16 hours in a row they were a key part of the mind-control experiment this is how missus who art remembers one of the messages I would try very strongly not to be not to let my mind be capting all the messages but they would lower my resistance so much with the average rugs but I could I couldn't do otherwise then listen did you ever ask them how any of this was making you better no I didn't ask question I was just saying I don't want to go through it again and I would cry I didn't want you know I knew you way down in my heart I knew it wasn't good but you know how could you fight you're in a hospital where it's supposed to be the best with the best doctors so what can you do I'd say I can't I can't take it anymore I can't stand it I don't think this is doing me any good I feel worse and he'd walked down the hall a little way with me and put his arm on my shoulder and come on now lassie you know you're going to do it and finally I'd say well okay and off we'd go to my room and he would give me another injection and then pat me on the shoulder and off he'd be again I had LSD I believe a total of 14 times and sometimes there would be four days between the injections and sometimes there would be one consecutive day after the other and some of them I managed to write down things in my notes to talk to Cameron a newly declassified CIA document shows there was at least one voice of protest at the agency as the experiments got underway one agent wrote does Project Officer approve these immoral and inhuman tests I suggest that all who are in favor of the above intended operation volunteered their heads for use in dr. so-and-so's noble project the names were deleted in her hospital room a terrified mrs. Allah Co tried to hide like a child at the sound of dr.

Cameron's approaching footsteps sit on the toilet and nobody will see me anyhow that didn't work because he knocked on the door and he said now come on Lassie you know you're in there and come on you come out and let me give your injection and I said no I'm not taking any more injections I can't do it I don't care if I die I can't I can't do it anymore because this is killing me and that's all there is to it I can't do it well he wasn't very happy about it and however after a little discussion he turned on his heel and left the room the electric shock treatments were administered on an unprecedented scale it was called deep patterning the mind was short-circuited so the psychic driving hypnotic messages could be planted on a clean slate there is now no known use of electric shocks on such a scale even in Soviet mental asylums where political crimes are punished psychiatrist and former colleague of dr. Cameron dr. Elliot Emmanuel as you probably know electroshock treatment has been given for depression for something like 40 years now it's a very successful and useful treatment for severe depression that doesn't respond to other things but deep patterning is a use of electroshock treatment in totally different way in which instead of giving the shocks say two or three times a week they're given two or three times a day for three or four weeks reducing the patient to a sort of animal vegetable state from which it's hoped that they would recover in a more healthy state of mind it didn't work I was there for a while I thought I don't want to stay here started to run away from the hospital and they grabbed me and then they put me on sleep treatment and now they kept you asleep for 23 days and while I was asleep they were shocking the heck out of me with electric shocks and playing tapes there was another lady who had same kind of psychic driving that I did and she was a very wiry slender lady and with lots of pep and zip you know and she'd go to the dances and this and that and one day she just wasn't there and when we asked where she went they said oh well you know she's gone to another hospital well sometime later I was in the day hospital and I happened to ask a nurse if she'd heard what had happened to this lady and she said oh that's her sitting over there and I looked and there was a fat lady that just looked like she was made out of dough she didn't know me she didn't know herself she didn't know anybody she was gone now that's a death did you ever try and get away from there did you ever say I'm just not going back I tried I was home for the weekend and I had a pass for the weekend that's how they call it so when I was there I said I'm not going back there so I telephoned or somebody else in the house telephone and they said if you're not coming back we're sending the police after you so I remember being so upset I was crying I didn't want to go in and it was really like a concentration camp [Music] there was a gentleman who jumped off the roof of the Allen I don't think he had LSD but he had sleep therapy with with psychic driving you know with the driving tapes under his pillow and they told him he was going to go home and he just come out of sleep therapy and he just jumped he said when around big smile on his face said goodbye to everybody and up on the roof and jumped off and landed at the back door of the atma which was the dreadful awful thing I don't think he was more than 30 and he was just gone just gone and there was this big wash to her yet the back door nobody would go in and out of that back door for a long time and everybody in the huh and the hospital spoke in hushed tones and everybody was affected they would not talk about it it was the silic did not happen in 1973 all MK ULTRA files under the control of the technical services division chief of the CIA were ordered destroyed by the director Richard Helms but in a bureaucracy as vast as the Central Intelligence Agency it's difficult to destroy everything and the damning evidence of the Cameron project surfaced after a Freedom of Information Act suit it revealed mrs.

Orly Co had reason for her nightmares and her doubts I've heard that it was the most brutal program under that under MKULTRA in the States and in Canada that this was the most brutal it was an awful feeling to realize when I found this out that the man whom I had thought cared about what happened to me didn't give a damn I was a fly just to fly her husband David Orlick Oh NDP Member of Parliament for 22 years remembers the cost we had Blue Cross coverage but we didn't have but Blue Cross did not cover treatment in a mental hospital so what we did that after the first year was to sell the house which was really the only money that we had and my daughter and I moved in with the house mother and we stayed there almost three years it was it was tough but the financial cost was really a small part of the cost to be talking about cost it really it really disrupted our lives mrs. Orlick Oh sued the our Memorial Institute and last year it quietly settled out of court for $50,000 but that's only the amount she estimates she had to pay for what she thought was treatment apart from giving mrs. Orlick Oh her money back the alum has done nothing to compensate Cameron's other victims but in the u.

s. a former CIA director Stansfield Turner promised the Congress the agency would try and track down victims of the MKULTRA project in both Canada and the US so they might get compensation the CIA wrote the Allan this recently Declassified letter addressed to Maurice Don J then director it said it has been our understanding that there are no remaining records of dr. Cameron's research that might reveal the identities of patients under his care during the time period in question however by way of leaving no stone unturned we now inquire whether this information might be reconstituted through patient records financial records or other hospital records Sincerely Yours Daniel B silver General Counsel CIA so even the CIA made some effort to find the victims but little help from Montreal there is no record of the Allen ever attempting a search of all its medical records although Cameron's successor admits it would be easy enough to do CIA documents show that 53 people in Montreal were subjected to the kay ultra experiments but only nine of those have been positively identified apart from Orlick ohyou art and Logie there were three Montreal housewives one of whom is now institutionalized there's a Montreal businessman who never really got his life together again after the experiments and another man who has been destitute for most of the time since ironically enough one of the victims is now a psychiatrist practicing in Eastern Ontario she obviously functions well enough but after the experiments ten years of her memory was wiped right out the McGill project was abruptly terminated in 1964 and so dr.

Cameron returned to the United States three years later he died suddenly of a heart attack subsequent evaluation of Cameron's work in Montreal by his successor showed that the intensive shock therapy was not only medically useless but potentially dangerous Cameron though never revealed how much he knew about the CIA sponsorship of his work Robert Logie was later given cortisone treatment for the pains in his leg that brought him to the Allen in the first place it worked but his mind is a different story he now has joined with mrs. Orlick Oh madam cured and six other Canadians in a massive lawsuit against the United States government they contend that they sought treatment and instead were made unwitting victims of CIA experiments the nine Canadians are seeking 1 million dollars apiece in damages from the US government the CIA intimidates many American law firms but this case is being fought by a lawyer who defended Lillian Hellman and Arthur Miller during the McCarthy witch hunts for communists in preparation the lawyers have interrogated every CIA agent involved in MKULTRA including former director Helms with the trial expected to start soon Joseph raw sums up the case with his junior partner James Turner John get injure is the former CIA staff agent who testified at his request the CIA contacted Cameron and informed him that up front and New York would support his work as a result of that Cameron received CIA funds to finance the LSD and brainwashing --tx but other ways camera on all he did was what the CIA was in effect asking him to do and what he said he was going to do and he did it and they I paid him money for it and then what about Godley now we got a lot of stuff out of a godly here's one of his depositions we got him I take it he said I'm gonna wash my hands of this I'm approved the project but I don't have to take care of the Canadian citizens are gonna be affected is that fair that's very admitted that they took no steps whatsoever to guarantee that people wouldn't be injured if it could be avoided or to make sure that people even knew that they were participating in an experiment well this guy Godley he's got quite a record of the on negligent action ahead of time I mean before this ever he was personally involved in an experiment that resulted in the death of a US Army is that the one where they put the LSD and the cuatro of a guy named Olsen yeah and then he jumped out of a window and committed suicide in New York City they managed to cover that up too I like a man who his general counsel CIA his name's Larry Huston and at that time he said this was culpable negligence he was a general counsel and they went on left a guy on the job who had been guilty according to their own lawyer of culpable night what about Helms we took his deposition bill is right here yeah it's an awful thick deposition he didn't remember a whole lot there's a major case of forget me it's the only thing that he we really got out of him was that he instructed Gottlieb the CIA's dr. Gottlieb to destroy the records when the story broke about the covert CIA activities on Canadian soil the United States sent a formal apology to the Trudeau government but External Affairs Minister Allen McKagan has refused to release that document to mrs.

Orlick oh and the others in the lawsuit this Declassified State Department letter shows why address to the Canadian embassy it reads this is with reference to your request for the views of the US intelligence community concerning possible release by the Canadian government of certain documents relating to the oil echo matter your request was given careful review on the basis of which it has been requested that the Canadian government withhold from disclosure the documents in question we've moved heaven and earth to get the correspondence and the documents of the discussions between the Canadian government and the United States the United States won't give it to us because they're covering up they're wrong the Canadian government won't give it to us because they're scared of the United States government both of them are holding back all of the information about this I think the case could be broken if the Canadian government would say to the CIA we're not gonna cover up for you any longer we're gonna allow then we're gonna give this material to mr. Arley Co for his case well if the Canadian government has this apology from the US why in the world do you think they wouldn't release it oh I just think the Canadian government's a little bit like international wimps in the case of the United States I don't know why they're so scared of us we're not gonna do anything I don't think the Seventh Army is gonna attack Montreal because you give us that material I understand though that the the American position is that this kind of CIA material can't be released for national security reasons maybe that's true well security my neck French the CIA the that everything they forget then when they have to stop forgetting because it's ludicrous then they say it's all national security what is national security about the apologies of the United States to Canada they get very belligerent Canadians with the Russians when I shoot down the double-oh-seven with some Canadian citizens but when the CIA covertly does something to all the citizen ruin the lives of many of these citizens while the Canadian governments do it nothing I don't know why Canada made forceful representations on behalf of the Toronto businessman who was kidnapped by bounty hunters taken back to Florida that wouldn't indicate that they're afraid to make a ruckus downtown that was a pretty easy situation I mean my god you kidnap a Canadian I'd take him to the United States heavens above and furthermore you who do you have to fight they're a couple of bounty hunters here you're fighting a CIA that scares the Canada I'm surprised that if your case is as strong as you say that the American government isn't trying to get an out-of-court settlement pay out a bunch of money and just hope it'll go away when the CIA went into this brainwashing stuff what they call the MKULTRA program when they went into that they injured lots more people than the nine we are suing for they injured a great many other here and here in the United Stated states they may feel that they've got so many skeletons in their closet that's settling with us even though we're clearly right and they would like it to go away would hurt them as a precedent I can't think of any other reason that they're being so really rough on us I think there is a duty on the government to to release in a matter such as this all of the information it has ala Lawrence is the conservative justice critic in the Commons it's been government complicity or government negligence so be it you know it's far better to make a full disclosure and and and a full confession of your sins in a matter such as this it's always a difficult thing for anybody to sue a government or sue an agency in the government and if you don't have the cooperation of your own government in doing that a few strikes against you right off the bat if the process was reversed it was some sort of a secretive Canadian operation taking place in the United States I'm sure all hell would break loose down there as far as beating of breasts and waving of flags and whatnot if the material came from the states perhaps they're bound by if not law good manners to not turn it over if the source of the information doesn't want it turned over I don't know about manners I don't know about international matters very much but I know this if I were in charge of a government to whom nine citizens that we are suing for have been brainwashed without their knowing have had their lives in pain and have it done by a foreign agency undercover without the Government of Canada knowing it I would find a way to help those people instead of hindering them we tried to ask External Affairs Minister McKellen why the Government of Canada is not helping these Canadian citizens who were victimized by agents of another country but for more than two months mr. McCracken has been unavailable to discuss the matters what do you want to tell mr.

McKevitt for example about what happened to you how you feel about it now I would tell him to try what we've been through and see what he would have to say after because only when you go through such an experience one can say how bad it can be and hope thankful I'd say come on get off your horse and help us we need some help from our government we are innocent victims of something that happened that should never have been and you can't make it you can't put us back where we were but at least do something to help us now do something to stand up and say this can't happen in Canada what can you possibly get for your clients out of this case you can't get their health back that's not possible and there are older people and some of them may die during this stonewalling by the CIA and some of them may get worse one of them at least is in an institution now I mean the thing is very much needed needing of speed by the to get regular you can get some money that's all you can get so you can get it when a doctor a miss operates on you know you don't get your health back there's no way we'd get our hell of their health back but what we can get them is some funds to help ameliorate their old age with the damage that's been done to them by this lousy performance and occurred through the CIA by camera on mistreating him and hurting them one thing which triggered mrs. who are initial depression was growing deafness in one year that was later corrected with minor surgery but no surgery can undo dr.