A Nation Betrayed: Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on Our Children and Other Innocent People (10 page)

John Marks reports in
The Search for the Manchurian Candidate
, how Cameron wrote that his patients moved through three distinct stages: loss of memory, loss of space-time imaging, and in the third stage all anxiety disappeared and there was complete amnesia for all events in his life. Working with his assistant Leonard Rubenstein, Cameron experimented with sensory deprivation combined with drugs to break down the subjects will and leave them open to the taped messages. In an August 2, 1977 New York Times interview, Rubenstein admitted the their work was directly related to brainwashing. He said the CIA had investigated brainwashing among soldiers who had been in Korea and we in Montreal started brainwashing patients instead of using drugs.

Peter Schrag reports how Robert Dies, a clinical psychologist at the Institute for Living in Hartford, Connecticut viewed ECT. Dies wrote that ECT had been recommended for the patient because of his pathological behavior, and that his symptoms were unacceptable and must be eliminated. Conformity by the patient represented protective action to avert expected punishment. He also wrote that ECT could be characterized as having a decidedly negative reinforcement value. Dr. Richard Rubin of Trenton, New Jersey told the Canadian Psychiatric Association that the most effective use of ECT was to time the shock to coincide with the disturbing thought or behavior that the therapist was trying to eliminate.
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These were the methods Ewen Cameron used on me while my mother was institutionalized. I was about twelve years old and what Dr. Cameron did to me became burned into my mind. First I was given a shot of curare and placed in a box in a converted stable behind the hospital that housed a behavioral laboratory. Then snakes were put over my body and the lid was closed on the box. I was completely conscious but unable to move as a result of the curare. This trauma was to insure that I would never speak about what was to come later.
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How long I was encased in this box, I
will never know. I created another alter to handle this traumatizing event that almost precipitated my demise from fear alone. It became the hardest memory I was to ever relive in my quest for integration. It was triggered when I was weeding in my gardens and a worm crawled across my hand. I went into a full-blown abreaction (an actual reliving of the event, accompanied by all the sensory stimulation and original emotional responses). My husband was in a panic as to what to do to trigger me out of the abreaction. My blood pressure had risen to an alarming rate and I was barely breathing. Finally, using a cold cloth on the back of my neck and talking ever so gently to me, he was able to revive me.

In 1991 at the time I relived this, I had no knowledge of who Dr. Cameron was, let alone his inclusion in the MKULTRA CIA experiments.
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When I first saw a picture of this man, I became violently ill.

The sensory deprivation with curare that I experienced was similar to tests that neurologist Harold Wolff was performing for the CIA under MKULTRA Subproject 61. Like Cameron, Wolff believed that sensory deprivation made patients more receptive to the suggestions of the psychotherapist. In a CIA memo dated August 29, 1960 he compared the changes in behavior due to various kinds of stress (sensory deprivation, threatening life situations, mental disorders, peptic ulcers, etc.) to behavioral changes that were brought about by actual loss of cerebral tissue.

He also said, “It is well known that profound disturbances of the highest integrative functions, accompanied by pronounced disturbances of mood, thought, and behavior may be produced in people by exposing them to environments to which they can make no adequate adaptation, such as concentration camps, or prison procedures aimed at interrogation and indoctrination.”
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During these experiments he found that unusually high levels of neurokinin-forming enzymes were present in the cerebral spinal fluid of his patients. He also found that LSD-25 mimicked one apparent action of neurokinin, stimulation of respiration.

Harold Wolff
was not only working for the CIA through the Human Ecology Society, but also for the Army. His name is mentioned in a declassified document dated January 1957 from the Army’s Inspector Generals Report on use of Volunteers in Chemical Agent Testing. The citation reads, “Letter, Chief of Research and Development to Dr. Harold G. Wolff, New York Hospital, subject Human Volunteer Tests with K Agents.”

The text says, “In 1957 several additional field type tests were conducted in and around Edgewood Arsenal. The first of these tests involved the use of a NIKE missile unit’s radar van at Aberdeen Proving Ground.
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Available records indicated that 16 volunteers received LSD prior to attempting to perform the tracking and recording operations associated with the employment of radar equipment.”

There seems to be no shortage of public information on the nature of the research that was conducted under the MKULTRA umbrella, you just need to know where to look for it. The U. S. Air Force helped sponsored the publication of
The Manipulation of Human Behavior
, a compilation of works in which many of the MKULTRA doctors cite the results of their experiments. The Human Ecology Society is listed in this book as helping to fund some of Harold Wolff, Martin Orne and Lawrence Hinkle’s works which are published in this book. Other MKULTRA funded doctors such as Harold Abramson, George Estabrooks, and Seymour Kety are also cited. Many survivors consider it to be a scandal that the horror that we experienced could be embedded in the abstract detached language used in published books, papers, and reports.

I came to remember not only the experiment that Dr. Cameron was to perform on me, but also what Dr. Black (Dr. Mengele) was doing with the eggs he harvested after performing an abortion on me in Montreal. The day I read the headline “Genome Mapped, So What is Next?” was when I understood Dr. Black’s purpose for this bizarre procedure.
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I discovered that RNA reads DNA coding for a gene. Perhaps Mengele was one of the pioneers in genetic research, and I happened to be an available donor.

Dr. Cameron too had been experimenting with ribonuclease which is an enzyme that destroys RNA, and he found that senile patients had much more of the ribonuclease enzyme present in their blood streams than did non-senile older patients. He was trying to determine if RNA was involved in helping the brain to store away long-term memories. If that were the case, then too much ribonuclease would wipe out the engrams (memories) before they could become permanent. Perhaps the CIA was interested in using ribonuclease for destroying memories.

I was given an injection before the experiment started. After the procedure was finished fluid was removed from the back of my neck, near or in my spine. Someone even said, “Be careful or you’ll end up paralyzing the little kid.” I believe they could have been measuring the amount of RNA and other chemicals in my body after the programming session.

After the injection that I believe was a radioactive isotope, I had earphones placed on my head along with being hooked up to a machine that looked like a hair dryer. Commands were then used to call forth my alter “Guy,” who had been created when I was four years old. I was placed before a blackboard, where they taught me how to run energy thru the meridians of the body and back to the brain to kill a target with a brain aneurysm. In order to do this, I was taught to contain all the anger and hate I had accumulated during traumas, and to release the “Red Fire” when cued.
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I know that all of this sounds like science fiction. It would be so easy to believe that none of this ever happened. As Arthur Schopenhauer said, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third it is accepted as being self-evident.” Look at the following pictures with an open mind and you will see the truth.

I drew this after remembering the experiments performed on me by Dr. Cameron in Montreal.

I found the picture next to it over a year later displayed at the Department of Energy’s web site.
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It is a Positron Emitter Detector (circa 1962).

I believe my alters and CIA personas were being identified within a specific area of my brain while the programming session was in progress. Radioactive isotopes attach to glucose and oxygen, which are the fuels of the brain. They are then tagged and collected by a computer that processes the images or information. As each alter was being programmed, detectable energy flashes were being picked up and a
recording was made. This also assured the doctors that they indeed were working with different parts of my personality, separate and apart from the me that they would eventually awaken. This part returned to “normal” living with no knowledge of any of the events that had taken place during the programming session.

In a CIA declassified document dated January 1, 1950 interrogation techniques were discussed.
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“Potentially useful secret drugs (and various brain damaging procedures) will be similarly tested in order to ascertain their fundamental effect upon brain function and upon the subject’s mood, thought, behavior conditioning, memory and speech mechanisms...Where any of these studies involve potential harm to the subject, we expect the Agency to make available suitable subjects and a proper place for the performance of necessary experiments.”

It is evident from this memo that there was a total lack of concern for the damage that would be inflicted to accomplish the purpose of these experiments. Why then would there be any concern for the age of the subject?

At the end of my programming by Dr. Cameron, a voice gave me trigger codes for self-destruction. This was done to prevent me from telling about the nature of this experiment in the event I would ever begin to remember. Taking the fluid samples from my spine and applying electric shock ended the experiment. I remember Dr. Cameron saying,

“Experiment 24: Create mini seizures, not unlike Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. Purpose: To create amnesia of the new Persona created.”

When the electricity began going through me, I left my body and watched from above as it went into a short twitching, trembling, convulsing type of behavior. I especially remember the muscles in my right arm seemed to come alive and really jump. I kept seeing white lightening type flashes of light every time they gave me a jolt of electricity.

A declassified document describing a synopsis of experiments conducted after May 1, 1958 refers to new instrumentation being developed. “One further study which has been of considerable interest to us has been the investigation of the subjective pain experience associated with electric shock. A preliminary attempt has been made to scale this along the lines of Wolff, Hardy, and Goodell’s efforts. In conjunction with this, a new kind of shock electrode is being developed which may control spacing of contact points better than previously possible.”
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From January 1957 until September 1960, Dr. Cameron’s project received $64,242.44 in CIA funds.
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According to an October 31, 1978 memorandum by Assistant CIA General Counsel William Allard, which specifically assessed the Agency’s involvement in the Montreal experiment, substantial funds had been flowing from the CIA to McGill in support of the
project subsequent to 1956.
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When the CIA stopped funding him, Cameron received $57,750 from the Canadian Government to continue his research from 1961 to 1964.
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A truly ironic fact found in Dr. Cameron’s application for a grant for these experiments in 1957 is his listing that McGill University had Federal tax exemption for scientific apparatus for teaching and/or research, and that grants from the United States organizations could become tax deductible if the checks were made payable to Friends of McGill University, Inc.
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