SUBPROJECT 68: THE CASE CONTINUES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706950019-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 21, 2011
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: October 27, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/21 :CIA-RDP90-009658000706950019-8
ART1ClF
ON PaGE
Jack Anderson and Dlale Yan Atta
WASHINGTON POST
27 October 1985
Subproject 68: The Case Continues
Secretary of State George Shultz is sched-
uled to meet tomorrow with his Canadian coun-
terpart, Joe Clark, for their regular quarterly
get-together. Ak~ag with acid rain, East-West
relations and trade, the two will be discussing a
matter that has become a sore point with the
Canadians but has received Gttk attention on
this side of the border: CIA misbehavior in
Canada 28 yearn ago.
Using the code name "Subproject 68," the
CIA funded gruesome psychobgical experi-
ments on Canadian citizens as part of its infa-
nwus MK-ULTRA program of brainwashing
and micd-bending. According to a lawsuit filed
in U.S. District Court here by veteran civil
rights attorney Joseph Rauh, at least nine, and
Possibly more than 50, Canadians were unwit-
ting CIA guinea Pif;s?
The suit has dragged on for five years, with
the CIA refusing to negotiate a reasonable
settlement with the victims. In a private letter
this month to the chief of Canada's Labor
.Party, Clark wrote: "I am not satisfied with
the slow pace of discussions in District
Court, but this, of course, is beyond our con-
trol."
Sean Brady, Clark's p;ess secretary, told our
associate Tony Capaccio: "We expect to be dis-
cussing this issue in some detail" with Shultz at
the Calgary, Alberta, meeting.
Subproject 68 started in January 1959, when
the CIA approved a X0,000 grant to Dr. Ewen
Cameron, a work(-renowned psychiatrist at the
Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal. The CIA
has insisted, in its defbnding against Rauh's
lawsuit. that it had not solicited Cameron's ap-
plication for the grant.
But that's not the way the agency's "project
monitor" remembered it. Tn a sworn deposition
two years ago; John W. Gittinger--said he had
asked a CIA undercover man to apptach
Cameron and encourage him to apply for a
grant. (There is no evidence that Cameron was
aware he was asking for or taking money fr+mn
the CIA, which used a front group.?
Gittinger testified that he was interested in
Camemn's work on voice-stress analysis,
which he figured would help the CIA in its
studies of the stress an individual undergoes
during interrogation. He admitted, however,
that Cameron's application for the grant con-
tained no plans for such work.
"I went along with the idea of giving him the
$60,000," Gittinger explained, "because that's
what he asked for. We wanted contact with him
ar-d to know what he was doing, Primarily in
the audio area...
What, in fact, was in Cameron's application
was a proposal to conduct the kind of experi-
ments that even a CIA general counsel charac-
terised years later as "repugnant "Cameron's
proposal called, among other things, for "the
breaking down of ongoing patterns ~ the pa-
tient's behavior by means et particularly inten-
sive dbctro-atwcla! (depatterning)."
His prq~oaal also called for "the intensive
repetition (16 hours a day for six to seven
days) of prearranged verbal signals" while the
patient was "kept in partial sensory isolation.'.
Even more aminaroly, Cameron's application
stated: "We propose to use,LSD-25 and other
similar agents as a means of breaking down the
ongoing patterns afbehavior."
This mention of the unpredictable hallucino-
genic drug should have bey a red flag to the
CIA officials. Three years earlier, then CIA di-
rector Allen Dulles had chastised Dr. Sidney
Gottlieb, head ~ the Technical Services Divi-
sion, for its role in the suicide of Dr. Frank
Olson, a civilian empbyee of the Army. Olson
was surreptitiously given a dose of LSD in a
glass of liqueur. He leaped through a 10th-floor
hotel room window a few days later. '
Gittinger testified in his 1983 deposition that
he hadn't noticed the LSD proposal in Camer-
on's application. In any case, the CIA project
monitor said it was not his job to raise ques-
tions about Cameron's testing methods. ff the
CIA officials were unconcerned about LSD ex-
periments three years after being admonished
for using them, what exactly were they con-
cerned with in the Canadian venture?
One reason for exporting MK-ULTRA, Git-
tinger testified, was that association with a psy-
chiatrist of Cameron's renown would be "good
cover" for the CIA front group that gave him
the $60,000 grant.
In retrospect, Gittinger acknowk~dged 26
years later, in his deposition: "That was a fooh
ish mistake. We shouldn't have done it.... I'm
sorry we did it because it turned out to be a
temble mistake."
The program, Gittinger explained, "turned
out to be something of no interest" to the CIA. .
Cameron, however, wrote athank-you note to
the CIA-Ii~a-t soaety in early 1960, saying the
grant had been "invaluable." .
ass, vnroa re.uur smakw, tnc.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/21 :CIA-RDP90-009658000706950019-8