DECEPTION, BRAINWASHING AND A SUIT OVER SUFFERING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706930009-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 13, 2011
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: February 21, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ARTICLE APryj
ON PAGE _-]...
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
21 February 1986
Deception, brain wash ii
and a suit over suffering
By Gerald Volgenats
XX*M-Md&r I% Sam"
MON'PREAL - Eighteen-year-old
Robert Logie, on an October day in
1956, went to a prestigious institute.
at McGill University for psychiatric
help.
"I had an arthritic leg," he said. "I
guess the doctors thought it might be
psychosomatic."
But Logie did not get the psycho-
therapy he expected at the Allan
Memorial Institute.
Instead, he was given massive
Page-Russell electric shocks, 70 to
100 times stronger than the shocks
ordinarily used in psychotherapy,
medical records indicate. He also
was given combinations of powerful
drugs, including LSD and sodium
amobarbital - truth serum.
What happened to Logie. and ner-
bays 100 other unsu ectin Canadi-
ans, was that they were u e
doctors who used them as human
guinea for their research in
,us
secret, CIA-financed exRgriMents in
brainwashing and mind control.
As a result of the treatment, Logie
said, he has had amnesia and insom-
nia. Others have reported trouble
reading and concentrating, and
many cannot hold steady jobs.
Almost 30 years after the fact. Lo-
Fe and eight others are suing the
U.S. central inteienCe Agency-for
$1 ml on eac or their suffering,
The trial is scheduled to begin this
summer in U.S. District Court in
Washington.
The CIA has refused to comment
on
Canada's State Department of Exter-
nal A airs said officials were trying
to assist the plaintiffs, but had no
comment on t case.
Accordin to CIA documents that
came to light In the 1970s. the agency
began its mindcont;ol studies in the
late 1940s in an effort
crack a mental defenses of enemy
agents and to
both enemy and its ow
missions against their will in io
the CIA began a $10 million secret
program called Artichoke- Which
was later renamed Mkultra_
Mkultra used private foundations
as fronts to finance 149 research
projects on behavior control and
brainwashing at 86 universities and
other institutions. Such CIA-financed
pro~ams were conducted not only
in the United States and an,L~iR but
also in European countries.
Among the programs was one con-
ducted by Dr. Ewen Cameron, the
director of the Allan Memorial Insti-
tute and considered one of Canada's
most prominent psychiatrists at the
time. jnv_estigators have learned that
from 1957 to 1961, the CIA provided
Cameron $60,000 for his work.
During the same period, McGill
University itself received $35,000,
mostly in the form of grants to the
psychiatry department, which was
also headed by Cameron.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s,
Logie and the other eight involved
in the suit went to the institute for a
variety of reasons. Some felt de-
pressed after giving birth, and oth-
ers were alcoholics seeking detoxifi-
cation. Another was a doctor who
came to the institute hoping to get a
fellowship, but who was made a pa-
tient after she was judged to be "ner-
vous" during her, interview.
They paid hefty fees for their treat-
ment. One, Jeanine Huard of Montre.
al, had to mortgage her house to
make the payments.
But they did not get the help they
wanted.
Logie, like the others, only later
was able to piece together his experi-
ence, which involved two stays at the
institute totaling five months. He
said the doctors first tried to blot out
his memory.
Medical records also show that he
was put into a drug-induced sleep for
23 days. During that time, he was
played a tape recording that repeated
the same message for 16 hours a day.
"I think I remember what was on
the tape. . 'You killed your
mother,' " bogie recalled recently.
The research writings of Cameron,
who was killed in a mountaineering
accident in 1967, explained that the
drugs and shocks were used to wipe
out unwanted memories and behav-
iors. The repeated tape-recorded
messages, which he called "psychic
driving," were then supposed to in-
still new behaviors.
Some patients got up to half a mil-
lion of the psychic-driving messages,
followed by a period of prolonged,
drug-induced sleep to erase the mem-
ory of the experiments.
Some of the patients accepted those
experiments, perhaps thinking that
the doctor knew best. But Logie said
he tried, unsuccessfully, to escape
several times.
Today, Logie, who lives alone in
Vancouver, British Columbia, says
the experiments still torture him.
Logie has described bouts of amne-
sia, an inability to sleep without
drugs, anxiety, depression and a re-
curring nightmare about Cameron.
"I picture him coming at me with a
larger-than-life syringe of LSD. And
just before he jabs it in my arm, I
wake up," said Logie.
Others in the group that is suing
have talked of being unable to read
or concentrate. Some are inconti-
nent. One has been permanently in-
stitutionalized. None holds a steady
jdb.
"It ruined my life completely," said
Jean-Charles Page, 53, of St. Andre-
Est, Quebec. He once was a successful
salesman, but has been unable to
hold a job since the experiments.
Page, who sought treatment for al-
coholism, was given 36 days of psy-
chic driving with a message that said
in part, "You do not trust women ...
you feel small and inferior. You are
unable to compete with other men."
In her psychic driving, Jeanine
Huard was taunted! "You are run-
ning away from your responsibility.
You are no good to your children.
You are no good to your husband."
Harvey Weinstein, a psychiatrist at
Stanford University, told of his fa-
ther, Louis, a successful business-
man who went to the institute and
"came home the shell of a person."
"The transformation was not only
abrupt, but horrifying," Weinstein
said in an interview. "He never
worked again a day in his life. He lost
his friends. He lost his family.
"My father's life ended at the age
of 49."
~~T;fir!Pri
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706930009-1
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706930009-1 A
Dr. Ewen Cameron
Led CIA-financed experiments
by what happened.
"You read about this kind of thing
happening in Russia," he said. "But
you never think about it happening
in Canada and the United States."
Logie and the others did not learn
what had happened to them until the
late 1970s. In 1980, they filed their $9
million civil suit against the U.S.
government.
puring that time, the CIA released
documents on the experimental
after a request from author
John Marks under the U.S. Freedom-
of Information Act. Newspapers,
mataztnes and television picked up
the story. Marks wrote his book. The
Search for the Manchurian Candi-
date, about the CIA. and mind con-
trol.
We documents describe a $25 mil-
lion CIA program to stud mind con-
trol that had tone on for 25 Years.
They detail a project known as Mkul-
tra that funneled money through a
private foundation for Cameron's ex-
periments at the institute.
Suddenly, the victims understood
what had happened.
"For all nine of us, none were all
that ill," Logie said. "Christ, if any-
thing, it [the experiments) created
mental illness."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706930009-1