Date: 01-29-94  22:53
From: Glenda Stocks
  To: All
Subj: CAN. GOVT. PAYS CIA

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*** Disclaimer ***   Read this at your OWN RISK. It has *not*
been verified, use your own discernment.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Article Cross-posted from 0079 - C:CNSPIRE3 @ XBN Posted by
ZODIAC, addressed to (CROSSPOST 1) ALL, on 01/21/94
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[Begin Message]

From: zodiac@ionews.io.org (Zodiac)
Organization: Internex Online (io.org) Data: 416-363-3783  Voice: 416-363-8676
Found this wedged into page A24 of the Jan. 19 _Toronto Star_:

                                  *

OTTAWA (Southam News Wire) -- The government has paid almost $7 million
in compensation to the unwitting guinea pigs of federally funded
brainwashing experiments in Montreal in the 1960s.

That figure may increase as justice department officials sort through
about another 50 applications from people who say they were patients of
the late Dr. Ewen Cameron at McGill University's Allain Memorial
Institute.

Jan. 1 was the deadline for applications for the $100,000 payments
announced in 1992 by then-justice minister Kim Campbell.

Although there are believed to be only 80 patients who received
Cameron's full "depatterning treatment" -- weeks of drug-induced sleep
followed by massive electroshock treatments, reducing the patient's mind
to a childhood state -- 329 applications for compensation were received,
justice department lawyer Lou David said.

So far, 69 people have received the lump-sum payments, while 214 were
rejected, Davis said.  Another 46 are still being reviewed by a
four-member justice committee and Ontario Blue Cross which first screens
applications.

                                   *

The article doesn't scratch the surface of this story -- though I'm glad
they at least ran the settlement notice.

What is missing? The _why_.  Why did Cameron do these horrid experiments
on unsuspecting patients?

A: As part of CIA research into "brainwashing".

In the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA was powerfully interested in psychiatric
reports suggesting that LSD could break down behavior patterns, for this
raised the possibility of "reprogramming", or, colloquially,
brainwashing.

Let me quote you a few paragraphs from Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain's
1985 book, _Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion_ that
deal directly with Cameron and the Montreal experiments:

     If LSD temporarily altered a person's view of the world and
     suspended his belief system, CIA doctors surmised, then perhaps
     Russian spies could be cajoled into switching loyalties while they
     were tripping.  The brainwashing strategy was relatively simple:
     find the subject's weakest point (his "squeaky board") and bear
     down on it.  Use any combination or synthesis which might "open the
     mind to the power of suggestion to a degree never hitherto dreamed
     possible".  LSD would be employed to provoke a reality shift, to
     break someone down and tame him, to find a locus of anonymity and
     leave a mark there forever.

     To explore the feasibility of this approach, the Agency turned to
     Dr Ewen Cameron, a respected psychiatrist who served as president
     of the Canadian, the American, and the World Psychiatric
     Association before his death in 1967.  Cameron also directed the
     Allain Memorial Institute at Montreal's McGill University, where he
     developed a bizarre and unorthodox method for treating
     schizophrenia.  With financial backing from the CIA he tested his
     method on 53 patients at Allain.

     The so-called treatment started with "sleep therapy", in which
     subjects were knocked out for months at a time.  The next phase,
     "depatterning", entailed massive electroshock and frequent doses of
     LSD designed to wipe out past behavior patterns.  Then Cameron
     tried to recondition the mind through a technique known as "psychic
     driving".  The patients, once again heavily sedated, were confined
     to "sleep rooms" where tape-recorded messages played over and over
     from speakers under their pillows.  Some heard the message a
     quarter of a million times.

     Cameron's methods were later discredited, and the CIA grudgingly
     gave up on the notion of LSD as a brainwashing technique.  But that
     was little consolation to those who served as guinea pigs for the
     CIA's secret mind control projects.  Nine of Cameron's former
     patients have sued the American government for $1,000,000 each,
     claiming that they are still suffering from the trauma they went
     through at Allain.  These people never agreed to participate in a
     scientific experiment -- a fact which reflects little credit on the
     CIA, even if the Agency officials feared that the Soviets were
     spurting ahead in the mind control race.  The CIA violated the
     Nuremberg Code for medical ethics by sponsoring experiments on
     unwitting subjects.

     Ironically, Dr Cameron was a member of the Nuremberg tribunal that
     heard the case against Nazi war criminals who committed atrocities
     during World War II.

                                    *

Faith in psychiatry.

(For those interested in the fuller story of the CIA's interest in LSD,
I will follow-up this post with the ascii-transcribed chapter this
snippet was taken from.)

--
"Don't HATE the media...             |                         K.K.Campbell
beCOME the media!"                 --*--                    
            - J. Biafra              |              . . . . cum grano salis


-!-
  RM 1.2 00257  Obi One at dinner: use the FORKS, Luke! The FORKS!