Ewen Cameron and The Allan Memorial Psychiatric Institute: A Study in Research and Treatment Ethics
Michael Charron
Simon Fraser University
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"Psychic driving is a potent procedure - it invariably produces responses in the patient,
and often intense responses" (Cameron, 1956, p. 508)
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With these words, Dr. Ewen Cameron began the summary to Psychic Driving, the paper that introduced his treatment of the same name to the world. Cameron’s remark was a drastic understatement; for the psychiatric patients at the Allan Memorial Psychiatric Institute, whom he treated with psychic driving and its adjuncts, had their lives were changed forever. This paper will provide background about went on at the Allan Memorial Institute in the 1950s and 1960s, as Dr. Cameron performed brainwashing experiments that were funded by the American CIA. I will examine Cameron’s use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) along with psychic driving, in a historical context, in an attempt to understand why he went to the extremes that he did. Finally, I will look at attitudes toward mental patients - lest they be forgotten among all this - and how these attitudes have changed in the last 30 to 40 years. In doing so, I will examine the thin line between research and experimentation.
As an aside, on the surface it may not appear that this topic relates to the history of psychology in Canada. Dr. Cameron was a psychiatrist, and the Allan Memorial was a psychiatric institution. Cameron, himself, was not even a Canadian; he was born in Scotland and later immigrated to the United States. Despite working for 28 years in Canada, he never became Canadian and even maintained his residence south of the border in Lake Placid, New York (Collins, 1988). However, this topic bears on the discussion of the history of psychology in Canada because it looks at how modes of treatment have changed, how attitudes toward patients have changed, and, most importantly, because it was Canadians who were affected by what went on at the Allan Memorial.
Psychic Driving, Ewen Cameron, and the Allan Memorial Psychiatric Institute
Dr. Ewen Cameron was a very well known psychiatrist who worked for 21 years at the Allan Memorial Psychiatric Institute in Montreal, Quebec. He was highly esteemed among his colleagues and his peers; Gillmor (1987) suggests that Cameron was, when he died in 1967, "one of the most respected psychiatrists in the world" (p.1). At different times, he was head of the Quebec, Canadian, and American Psychiatric Associations, and he was a co-founder and the first president of the World Psychiatric Association (Gillmor, 1987). He became the head of the Allan Memorial upon its opening in 1944, and made it famous for his stance that "no doors in the Allan would be locked . . . [for] even if one ward was locked, society would judge the institution by that ward" (Gillmor, 1987, p. 1). He believed that "madness" - his own term - was something that needed to be treated rather than feared, and that patients could not be locked up if they were to realize that they still belonged to society (Collins, 1988). Cameron, then, was very humane in his treatment of patients - at least early on - and, as we shall see later, very progressive in his views regarding the mentally ill, both when compared to other members of society and other health professionals.
Cameron was an ambitious man. As Collins (1988) points out, he saw what was going on with the soldiers who were returning from the Second World War, and he wanted to be able to ease the stress and anxiety from which they were suffering. A loftier goal of Cameron’s was to conquer the process of aging. In time, he set up different research programs at the Allan Memorial. Of special interest to Cameron was the idea of sleep teaching. He had been in correspondence with Max Sherover, an American who had conquered his patients nail-biting habits by continuously playing a tape recording to them while they slept (Collins, 1988). Cameron began to experiment with the idea himself. He would, during a normal therapy session, record what he thought was a key statement that one of his patients had made (Gillmor, 1987). Later, Cameron would replay the statement repeatedly to the patient, in an attempt to break down the patient’s defense mechanisms and reach deeper material. Over time, Cameron developed this technique into a therapy that he called psychic driving. He introduced his form of therapy in a paper published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in January, 1956. As he explained it, psychic driving allowed for "the penetration of defenses, the elicitation of hitherto inaccessible material, and setting up of a dynamic implant" (Cameron, 1956, p. 503) or recurring thought that influenced the patient’s behaviour even after playback of the key statement had been stopped for some time. Cameron also reported that at times, the patient resisted listening to the repetition of the statement; this was handled by administering sodium amytal, a disinhibitant or "truth drug" (Collins, 1988), or by exposing the patient to the repetition during a period of prolonged sleep (Cameron, 1956). In his article, Cameron also admits to using stimulant drugs and LSD - without the patients’ consent - to disorganize the patient and thus allow the driving technique full access to the patient’s psyche. Collins (1988) explains that Cameron, keeping with the climate of the day, referred to his treatment as brainwashing; this term was en vogue in the 1950s, with the Cold War and Korean War fresh in everyone’s minds.
The term "brainwashing" caught the eye of members of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). During the Korean War, 70% of the 7,190 American prisoners of war "either made confessions or signed petitions calling for an end to the American presence in Asia" (Gillmor, 1987, p. 78), and the CIA believed that the only possible explanation for this was that the Chinese had brainwashed the American prisoners. As such, the CIA wanted to study brainwashing. Rather than directly fund research, the CIA funded cover organizations who would not be scrutinized as the CIA would be (Collins, 1988). One of these cover organizations was the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology (SIHE); this group funded Cameron’s research into psychic driving from 1957 to 1960 (Collins, 1988).
Cameron, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly extreme in his attempts to develop psychic driving into a successful therapeutic technique. Some patients were still able to resist the treatment, and consequently Cameron was not quite getting the results he wanted. He began using electroconvulsive therapy in association with psychic driving, and referred to this as "depatterning". His aim was to disorganize disturbed or resistant patients, to allow psychic driving to have its full effect. He believed that "you could regress patients, particularly schizophrenics, back to their infancy" (Gillmor, 1987, p. 56). This was done by administering ECT at much higher levels than it had ever been applied before. Under Cameron’s plan, patients received ECT "up to three times daily" (Gillmor, 1987, p. 56), and this pattern of treatment would continue for thirty days (Collins, 1988). After this, he would attempt to "repattern" his patients with psychic driving. However, by this point, the patient was often "unable to walk or feed himself, and [was] likely incontinent" (Gillmor, 1987, p. 56).
Despite the objections of some of his colleagues, Cameron carried on trying to perfect his psychic driving technique (Gillmor, 1987). In 1961, he lost the financial support of the SIHE, and by 1964, his treatments were beginning to prove useless. He himself referred to psychic driving as "a ten-year trip down the wrong road" (Gillmor, 1987, p. 136). He left the Allan Memorial later that same year.
Fifteen years later, a group of nine former patients at the Allan Memorial brought suit against the CIA for funding research that led to harm of the patients at the Allan (Collins, 1988). Their lawyer, American civil rights lobbyist Joseph Rauh, wanted to settle out of court because of the advanced age and declining health of his clients (Collins, 1988). However, the CIA was willing to neither settle nor negotiate. Rauh subsequently filed a formal complaint, requesting one million dollars per plaintiff. He then tried to get the Canadian government to support the plaintiffs in their suit against the CIA, [but] to no avail. During the filing of depositions, "CIA and U.S. Justice Department lawyers . . . were . . . stopping testimony where they could on the grounds that it might be damaging to national security" (Collins, 1988, p. 220-21). The Canadian government still would not help, passively saying they "couldn’t release any American-originated documents without the approval of its correspondent" (Collins, 1988, p. 221). The CIA offered a "nuisance settlement" of $25,000 per plaintiff, which was summarily refused. Finally, in 1988, the case went to trial. The lawsuit, however, was fruitless; the CIA never paid any money to any of the plaintiffs, nor did they issue an apology.
Cameron’s Use of Electroconvulsive Therapy
Cameron’s use of electroconvulsive therapy would likely be judged barbaric by the standards of today, as ECT is now used in a much more humane way than it was in the past. As Holmes (1997) explains, before ECT begins, the patient is administered both a strong sedative and a muscle relaxant. The purpose of the sedative is to ensure that the patient is unconscious when their convulsions begin and the purpose of the muscle relaxant is to reduce violent muscular contractions during the convulsion. Indeed, Holmes (1997) states that "
efore muscle relaxants were used, patients often broke bones during the convulsions" (p. 268). The strength of the electrical current that is used varies between 70 and 150 volts, and lasts from between 0.1 to one seconds. Treatment is usually administered three times a week, and if the patient has not responded within five to eight administrations of ECT, "it is usually concluded that ECT will not be effective, and it is stopped" (p. 270). Cameron, in contrast, administered much higher doses of ECT. Gillmor (1987) reports that Cameron had been overseeing use of ECT at the Allan Memorial since 1951, but he "…felt that a more forceful application of it might produce more impressive results" (p. 55). Rather than administering a single shock to the patient, he would shock the patient six times in rapid succession (Collins, 1988). He would apply this technique -known as a "Page-Russell", after its inventors - twice a day for thirty days in a typical attempt to depattern one of his patients. At times, patients would even receive three treatments a day (Gillmor, 1987). Cameron used a current of 150 volts, which lasted for one second. At the Allan Memorial, patients received anywhere from 30 to 150 treatments of ECT.
It is easy to see that Cameron was more extreme in his use of ECT than psychiatrists are today. However, to determine if Cameron was misguided in his use of ECT, we must compare how his contemporaries used ECT, and how ECT use changed after Cameron developed his technique. The most obvious difference between Cameron’s application and current use of ECT is the number of shocks administered. Page and Russell, two British doctors, had developed the afore-mentioned Page-Russell technique, in which patients received a series of shocks, each four seconds apart (Gillmor, 1987). Two American doctors, Kennedy and Ancell, also were testing the effects of multiple applications of ECT. Thus, Cameron was not alone in his repeated use of ECT. Page and Russell, however, only recommended daily administration of ECT, as did Kennedy and Ancell. Mukherjee, Sackeim, and Schnur (1994), in their review of 50 years of use of ECT, report that in the studies they looked at, "treatment frequency varied from twice weekly to a 5-days-per-week schedule" (p. 172). This is still a much lower rate of application than Cameron was using. As such, Cameron’s use of the treatment two or three times daily does appear extreme. In 1985, Public Health Reports advised that "[r]egressive ECT (administration of a large number of treatments during a short period . . . ) is ‘no longer an acceptable treatment’ . . . and multiple-monitored ECT . . . has not been demonstrated to be sufficiently effective’" (p. 549).
Another consideration is the voltage used in the application of ECT. As Strain, Brunschwig, Duffy, Agle, Rosenbaum, and Bidder (1968) point out, "electrical parameters have been demonstrated to be a factor in memory loss" (p. 294). This is significant because many former patients at the Allan reported chronic memory loss (Collins, 1988). Cameron again, however, used a voltage comparable to that of Page and Russell (Gillmor, 1987), and even within the range currently used (Holmes, 1997). Frankel (1975) and Strain et al. (1968) both report use of the same voltage, with Strain and his associates administering the shock for two seconds instead of just one.
Overall, then, Cameron was not using a shock that was too severe for his patients to handle. Where he became extreme in his use of ECT was in the frequency of application. Even if he believed that a "more forceful application . . . might produce greater results" (Gillmor, 1987, p. 55), he should not have increased the number of applications so greatly in such a short period of time. I believe that this was unconscionable. It shows a complete lack of regard for the well being of his patients, and a lack of understanding of the treatment that he was using. Cameron can perhaps be forgiven for not knowing beforehand what the effects of his use of ECT would be; one of Cameron’s successors defended him, saying that "Cameron’s work must be viewed from a historical perspective and should not be judged in light of current ethical practices" (Robertson, cited in Gillmor, p. 139). However, Cameron should have been able to recognize the adverse effect that his ECT use was having on his patients, and he should have ceased what he was doing long before lack of funding forced him to do so.
At first, it seems perplexing that Cameron would have pushed ahead with treatment, in light of the adverse effects he must have been seeing in his patients. Still more intriguing is why Cameron would persist in developing the treatment against the objections of his colleagues at the Allan. Gillmor (1987) points out that most of Cameron’s staff did not approve of the way Cameron was using ECT. One doctor said that the
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"problem . . . was that there was never enough money to set up a proper rehabilitation program. That would . . . interfere with Cameron’s ‘quick fix’ solution. It would be less of a breakthrough . . . if patients required six months of [post-treatment] therapy" (Gillmor, 1987, p. 57).
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In addition, Cameron’s fellow psychiatrists at the Allan did not approve of his treatment ideas (Gillmor). Collins (1988) explains why Cameron would push on in spite of all of this criticism; Cameron wanted to win a Nobel Prize for his research. Even Cameron’s son believes that Cameron was driven by this goal. I sincerely hope that this was not behind Cameron’s push to develop psychic driving and depatterning as a cure for schizophrenia. This does not seem to fit with the man who developed the open-door policy for his patients at the Allan. It is bad enough that his patients suffered severe memory loss, and were left as shells of their former selves. If this was the result of Cameron’s ignorance, at least we can say that Cameron was trying to cure them. However, if all of this is the result of Cameron’s quest for recognition and acclaim, then he has done a terrible injustice to the patients who were entrusted in his care, to other psychiatrists and psychologists who are to be scrutinized and distrusted more because of his actions, and to the Canadian public, who supported his work through government funding. If all of this happened because of his need for recognition, he cannot be called a humanitarian; rather, he could be said to show a complete lack of regard for mental patients and their care.
Attitudes Toward Mental Patients: Have They Changed?
If Cameron truly was more interested in achieving recognition than in caring for his patients, then he must not have had a very positive attitude towards mental patients. This can only be speculated - we cannot know for sure what Cameron’s motivating factors were. Perhaps we would not be surprised to find out that Cameron was driven by his ambition and had a negative attitude toward mental patients. However, we would be surprised to find out that his attitude did not differ greatly from that of society as a whole. Here we will look at whether attitudes toward mental patients have changed in the last 30 to 40 years - that is, whether such treatment could happen now - and try to delineate where research ends and treatment begins.
One would assume that Cameron must not have had a very high regard for his patients’ rights if he was willing to inject them with LSD or administer repeated treatments of ECT. Morgan (1971) points out, however, that this fits with the attitude of Cameron’s time. Research ethics were previously not something one had to worry about; researchers were "…used to proceeding with their work without thinking or worrying about general ethical questions . . . [t]he usual rule has probably been: if you’re interested, investigate" (p. 276). The public would not have any objection to such treatment of mental patients; while Johannsen (1969) points out that the term "mental patient" can "…refer to anyone who has ever obtained help from a mental health professional." (p. 218), it is more often taken by the lay person to refer to an individual who has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Johannsen (1969) relates information regarding a study done by Cumming and Cumming in Canada in 1957, looking at attitudes toward the mentally ill. Rather than educating the public, the "experiment served . . . to solidify pre-existing attitudes of fear and defensiveness" (p. 219). In fact, every group Johannsen looked at - the public, general medical practitioners, employees in mental institutions, patients’ relatives, employers, religious clergy, and political leaders - had negative attitudes toward mental patients. These negative attitudes ranged from "fear, distrust, and dislike" (p. 219) to an underestimation of "the seriousness of the constituent’s symptoms" (p. 222). Rabkin (1972) summarizes the problem nicely in stating that the "public tends to reject disturbed behaviour that is socially visible, even if it is not severe in terms of incapacitating effects on the patient" (p. 159).
Because such attitudes have been so prominent, research has been allowed that has ignored the rights of the individual. Morgan (1971) argues that this is because researchers working in hospitals were trained in a university setting. The emphasis in a university setting is to publish in scholarly journals, win research grants, and so on. When they transfer to the hospital setting, they take this "university mentality" with them. The researcher is faced with factors - such as the rights of individuals - which they are not accustomed to having to deal with. The result is that the patient’s rights are often ignored. Whether or not one believes that this is purposeful depends on how one views the academic system as it is set up. The scope of this paper is far too small to deal with this issue, but it is really no surprise that such a mindset has developed as a result of the academic ideal; that is, to publish.
There is some evidence that attitudes toward mental patients are changing. Waterman (1974) stresses that we must emphasize the rights of the individual, as "each [research] participant is a distinct individual entitled to the full protection of his rights" (p. 470). To value research findings above the individual, to state that "most subjects suffered no ill harm" is of no benefit to those who do suffer (Waterman, 1974) . Morgan (1971) points out that the individual must be regarded as an end, rather than a means to an end; the patient cannot be valued less than the research itself. This begs the question, where does research begin and treatment end? It seems obvious that Cameron’s work at the Allan Memorial was research; to call it treatment would be farcical, not to mention a complete disservice to all of the patients Cameron "treated". It would seem that treatment ends and research begins when the mental health professional / would-be-researcher values the research or experimentation more than the well being of the patient. Any time that the individual’s goal is to earn accolades, or win recognition, it is research. Research does need to be done; no science, including psychology, can progress without it. However, new treatments should not be developed if, during the development of treatment, the well being of those being experimented on is not given the greatest importance.
As mentioned, attitudes toward mental patients are changing, but not enough. Riverview, a psychiatric hospital in Coquitlam, B.C., has gone from having more than 4,000 beds in the 1960s to less than 800 at present (lecture, January 30, 1997), largely because of budgetary constraints. The public is often resistant to having former mental patients in their communities (Holmes, 1997); there is still a great deal of ignorance as to who "mental patients" are and what "mental illness" is, just as Johannsen (1969) described 30 years ago. What does all of this - the events at the Allan Memorial, the use of ECT, changing attitudes toward mental patients - mean for psychology? I think it means that psychology cannot really move forward as a discipline until it educates people as to what mental illness really is. So many people view mental illness as a sign of weakness, or an imperfection in the individual, when often (at times, at least) it is due to nothing more than a chemical imbalance in the brain. Without this type of education, it is conceivable that something similar to the events at the Allan could happen again.
Psychology also has to work at gaining back the trust of the public. Events like what went on at the Allan Memorial only make people critical and distrustful of psychologists. We need to educate the public as to what it is that we actually do now - and I hope that is, to try to help people - and work at gaining trust. Without trust, we will not have the support and cooperation of the public, and we cannot move forward as a discipline.
The events at the Allan Memorial Psychiatric Institute in the 1950s and 1960s set psychology back to its dark ages. As a discipline, psychology is still trying to work its way back into the trust of the public. Cameron said that "psychic driving [was] a potent procedure" (1956, p. 508); I do not think he realized just how potent it was. I believe, however, that if psychology can learn from Cameron’s mistakes, and if we can educate the public to the point that they understand mental illness and mental patients, then perhaps some good can come out of all this. It is unfortunate that it took the destruction of so many people’s lives for this to happen.
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References
Cameron, E. (1956). Psychic driving. American Journal of Psychiatry, 112 (7), 502-09.
Collins, A. (1988). In the sleep room: The story of the CIA brainwashing experiments in Canada. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys.
Electroconvulsive therapy useful in selected severe disorders, panel finds. (1985, Sept./Oct.). Public Health Reports, 100, 548-50.
Frankel, F. H. (1975). Reasoned discourse or a holy war: Postscript to a report on ECT. American Journal of Psychiatry, 132 (1), 77-79.
Gillmor, D. (1987). I swear by Apollo: Dr. Ewen Cameron and the CIA-brainwashing experiments. Montreal: Eden Press.
Holmes, D. S. (1997). Abnormal psychology (3rd ed.). New York: Longman.
Johannsen, W. J. (1969). Attitudes toward mental patients. Mental Hygiene, 53 (2), 218-28.
Morgan, J. (1971). Some reflections on the problems of research ethics. Ontario Psychologist, (5), 276-84.
Mukherjee, S., Sackiem, H. A., & Schnur, D. B. (1994, Fall). Electroconvulsive therapy of acute manic episodes: A review of 50 years’ experience. American Journal of Psychiatry, 151, 169-76.
Rabkin, J. G. (1972). Opinions about mental illness: A review of the literature. Psychological Bulletin, 77 (3), 153-71.
Strain, J. J., Brunschwig, L., Duffy, J. P., Agle, D. P., Rosenbrum, A. L., & Bidden, T. G. (1968). Comparison of therapeutic effects and memory changes with bilateral and unilateral ECT. American Journal of Psychiatry, 125 (3), 294-304.
Waterman, A. S. (1974). The civil liberties of the participants in psychological research. American Psychologist, 29 (6), 470-71.
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From: copernicus12223 Sent: 22/02/2005 9:17 AM
Today Martti Koski , a Finnish immigrant in Canada believes he has been targeted by the RCMP as the latest "guinea pig" in bizarre experiments in mind control and "telepathic terrorism" using microwaves.
These few examples represent just a tiny portion of the whole range of "dirty tricks" by authorities that have come to light in recent years. But, even a complete list of what we know would be limited because it would only be a list of what we know. What we don't know must be the real concern. And as Martti Koski's story reveals, what we don't know is probably hurting us.
The Leader-Post Regina, Saskatchewan Saturday, Dec. 13, 1980
FIVE CANADIANS SUING CIA OVER EXPERIMENTS IN 1950'S
VANCOUVER (CP) - Robert Logie says he was a guinea pig for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, and constantly relives a nightmare of hospital brainwashing sessions that included hallucinogenic injections and massive electric shocks.
He and four other Canadians launched a $5 million suit this week in Washington against the U.S. government. They are claiming $1 million each in damages from what they say was a CIA- funded multi-million-dollar research experiment into the behavior of drug-induced patients.
Logie, a 42-year-old reclusive bachelor, said in an interview his troubles are connected to Montreal hospital LSD experiments he was subjected to in the late 50s.
(..............)
Logie says he was a "human guinea pig" for a CIA drug experiment program called MKULTRA Sub Project 68, one of a series of CIA-sponsored schemes to test interrogation, behavior control and brainwashing.
He said the CIA paid Cameron at least $60,000 to conduct the mind-control experiments and an additional $35,000 went to McGill in the form of grants to the psychiatry department.
Logie said a U.S. agency called the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology was a front organization for the CIA program.
Logie said he arrived here in 1968 with no knowledge of who he was or where he was. He said he slept under a bridge for five nights before going to the police. A Vancouver relative identified him after a newspaper printed his photograph.
"I don't know if my amnesia is related to the LSD experiments," he said. "All I know is that the nightmare never stops."
* * * * * * * * * *
Friends,
I know what I am about to tell you will sound bizarre, almost beyond belief - RCMP surreptitious testing of a telepathic amplifier that works with microwaves to control people's minds and bodies, voices in the air, spy schools, interrogation, toxic gas--I know how crazy it all sounds.
I know your first reaction will likely be to dismiss me as some kind of a "kook" who has sadly lost touch with reality. I know if I hadn't been victimized by this "experimentation" I would probably react the same way. But I am asking you not to.
I am asking you to take a few minutes to read through this pamphlet, to think about other things we all know have happened that tested our belief and trust in those in charge of our society, to reflect on the story I have to tell and finally, to give me the benefit of your doubt.
For, if there is, in your mind, the slightest chance what I have to tell holds some truth, doesn't it demand and deserve your further concern?
I know my story sounds like the plot from some low budget science fiction spy thriller that could never happen in real life. The problem is it did happen in my life. And it could happen in yours if you don't join me in my battle today to expose and resist this attack on human dignity.
I may have been one of the first victims of this sinister program; but, without your help, you can be sure I will not be the last victim.
Martti Koski
January 1981
Ottawa
My Story
In the beginning I simply thought I was slowly going mad. I knew it wasn't normal to hear "voices" and mine were with me for two to three hours every day. I felt they came at me through the ceiling from the suite above me.
But, I wasn't really worried. I had resigned myself to the thought I was suffering from some sort of neurotic disorder--impossible to get rid of, but harmless enough. Then, in the late summer of 1979, after four years of this "talk", things suddenly got a lot worse.
I seemed to lose control of most of my normal body functions and emotions. It was as if someone or something could control my sleep, my sense of smell and taste. Food was, by turns, made to taste very salty or acidic. Sexual functions, urination, bowel movements and basic metabolism--all were affected.
Finally, I couldn't even work. I'm a welder and I came to be unable to breathe in any air contaminated with carbon dioxide. It made me salivate excessively and foam at the mouth.
By now "the voices" were with me 24 hours a day. I was being talked to every waking hour. I was allowed minimal sleep--about an hour a day. If I left my apartment I immediately became very drowsy, yet indoors I could not sleep.
My heartbeat became erratic and finally uncontrollable. In December, 1979, I was admitted to the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton, the victim of a "heart attack".
It was in the hospital I first suspected I was the victim of something more sinister than my body's own normal reaction to physical or emotional illness.
For the first time the "voice" identified itself. It told me it was a spokesman for the RCMP and that I had been selected for "training" as a spy. The first phase of my training would be to learn how to survive in a Russian insane asylum. The hospital would serve as my training ground.
I remained in the hospital for three days, the subject of many bizarre and strange encounters and experiments. In one instance, I was given medication but simultaneously warned by "the voice" not to take it as it was ********. When I did take it, I suffered heart palpitations.
I was warned not to go into a certain room. But I was later lured into it by a "doctor" and then subjected to interrogation and a battery of "tests" related to sexual functions and organs.
The interrogation began with an electric shock being applied to my penis. Then the telepathic talk of the voice encouraged me to masturbate to avoid becoming impotent. But, I was unable to achieve ejaculation.
The "voice" warned me if I failed to ejaculate I would suffer extreme consequences; my scrotum would become elongated and I would have to be operated on. When I left this interrogation room and went back to my hospital room, the old man sharing it with me exposed himself to me, revealing a scrotum about 15 centimeters long.
These kind of sexual and genital "experiments" carried on throughout my whole time in the hospital.
During my time in the hospital I was also unable to sleep due to severe headaches that seemed to be induced each time I attempted to sleep.
When I left the hospital I returned to my apartment. But, I soon again experienced problems with my breathing and extreme headaches.
I decided to flee my home to seek release from the problems that were hounding me.
I stayed away from my apartment for 10 days, living in cheap hotels--but I was not left alone. My sleep continued to be disrupted; my bladder ruptured twice because I had somehow lost the ability to sense the need to urinate.
I decided to look for help again at the hospital. But it was the same as the first time--it was still a "spy school" where I was "in training".
This time the "training" involved stealing shirts and engaging in a kind of black market where cigarettes were used to "buy" services from other patients (inmates).
As in my first experience, some of the doctors and some patients participated in the play-acting to create the impression of a Russian insane asylum. One doctor I remember by name was Dr. Peter Hayes.
I returned to may apartment. But was, one morning soon after, awakened by a phone call from someone who hung up as soon as I answered. Immediately gas poured into my room for about 15 seconds causing my mouth to fill with blood. Then "the voice" told me this was my last warning.
Afraid for both my sanity and my life I decided to return to my native Finland, a decision that was to convince me, more than ever, of the RCMP intrusion into and takeover of my life.
In order to leave Canada I would need my passport; but, when I went to look for it, I couldn't find it. I had apparently misplaced it. I decided to leave Canada from Toronto where I could also apply for a new passport.
I traveled to Toronto by Greyhound bus pursued all the while by "the voices". On this trip I noticed a marked RCMP car seemed to be following the bus for several hours. And several times the bus was met by RCMP cars and people who I took to work for the RCMP left the car to ride on the bus and vice versa.
It was also on this bus trip that I got the first hint of the kind of experimentation I was being subjected to: the voices began to call me the "Microwave Man", and all the while the "spy training" exercises continued.
Among other things: *I was told what food to eat and what food was dangerous. If I ate forbidden food I suffered severe heartburn and feverishness;
*the voices told me I needn't worry about my credit card spending as my line of credit had been extended to unlimited. *I was given my first "assignment" (to find out the population of Toronto and then how many men and how many women);
*my voices became Finnish-speaking, female voices. Things in Finland were no better than they had been in Canada. The "voices" clung to me. The one change was they now identified themselves as being from the star Sirius.
The experiments and voices carried on for the whole two and one half months I stayed in Finland.
I believe my mother was at last somehow convinced to aid the authorities. She confessed to me, just before my departure, she had placed prescription drugs I had no need of in my luggage. Part of a plan to induce another "heart attack"?
My return journey to Canada by ship, train and plane took over five days and nights, during which time I was not allowed to sleep at all.
Back home in Edmonton the strange occurrences piled them- selves one on another. First, I found my wayward passport on my kitchen table.
Next I was subjected to several toxic gas experiments. It seemed to me now other tenants in the building were either agents of the RCMP or co-operating with the police force in their experiments.
In an elaborate and excruciating experiment that involved hypnosis and supporting special effects employing fire trucks circling around me I was presented with a program of indoctrination to convince me criticism of the American society was a "cancer" and a threat to us all. I was told I was "unclean" and "contaminated" with this "cancer". The fire trucks were to be used in a massive cleansing or washing away of the contagion.
My ability to withstand this heavy physical and psychological bombardment was at its breaking point--and then I chanced on a way to begin to resist.
By now it was early April. The days were warming up. I discovered the power of the microwaves were lessened in the open air. I was even able to sleep out on the grass in the sunshine. This sleep--the first rue sleep I had in months-- was enough for me to begin to rebuild my will to resist the forces at work against me.
As soon as I began to resist--with measures described in the following--the experimentation began to ease off. I still hear the Finnish "voices", but the "talk" is less intensive. They call this stage "custody".
But my fear for my health and life continues. (At one point the "voices" told me my ultimate fate will be to suffer a "natural death" in five years.)
And, my worries about what is in store for the entire Canadian society continues.
Reply
Recommend Message 3 of 13 in Discussion
From: copernicus12223 Sent: 22/02/2005 9:18 AM
Why Me?
Why was I chosen as a test subject? Is there something special about me that singles me out for this kind of attack, or is it simply that "they" are out to get me? The answer is: "Yes and no."
(......)
I am single. I live alone. My only relative in Canada lives thousands of miles from me. I do not belong to any frater- nal groups, organizations or political parties. I have difficulty communicating with other Canadians because of my poor spoken English. In short, an ideal target: I don't have a large circle of acquaintances and my ability to reach out and make new contact is limited.
Moreover, I believe the preparation time--in my case four years--is designed to reinforce this isolation, to promote "strange" behavior and to discourage, even further, friendships or contacts.
Fighting Back
I began my struggle to expose what was happening to me by posting handbills on telephone poles and the boarding around construction sites throughout Edmonton. The posters accused the RCMP of making me a victim of experiments with "a kind of tele- pathic amplifier that works with microwaves". I asked others who feared they too might have been caught in such "experiments" to contact me..several did..I was not alone. Half of the people who contacted me said they had been subjected to this experimentation when in prison.
In an effort to place my predicament before more people I wrote letters to the daily newspapers. None was ever printed. (The Edmonton Sun did however, later carry a "news" item casually dismissing and denigrating my accusations and efforts to defend myself.)
In May, 1980 I wrote a four page letter to the Finnish ambassador outlying my whole ordeal. I have never even received an acknowledgment that my letter was received
. I laid my concerns before the city police and government agencies such as the Alberta Human Rights Commission and the Alberta Law Enforcement Board. None investigated the matter.
The Alberta Human Rights Commission informed me the matter was beyond their responsibilities as there was no racial discrimination involved. The Alberta Law Enforcement Commission at first "lost" my letter of complaint. After several visits over a period of two months Mr. R. Smith, a commission employee, promised: "I'll see what I can do." The next day I got a visit from RCMP Corporal G. A. Forbes.
Forbes began his "investigation" by asking my permission to request m;y medical records--records I was never allowed to see myself. I gave permission and I assume Forbes saw my records. At any rate, he contacted me again and said he intended to investigate further. I never heard from him again.
By July and August of 1980 I was more determined than ever to put my revelations before the public. I composed a five page leaflet setting out everything that is included here and distributed 16,000 of them throughout Edmonton.
Again I got several responses from people who claimed to have been victimized as I was and am. But there was no reaction from the news media or any official body
. And, of course, I wrote my MP. Again, no response. I came to Ottawa, the nation's capital, the place where "the buck stops", in early December of 1980 resolved to spend the little money I have saved in one final attempt to get people to pay attention to this problem.
The pamphlet you are reading now will be the last thing I can do. I have kept back only enough money to return to Finland.
Why Does Nobody Speak Out?
Why doesn't anyone listen to, or grow concerned enough over these charges to investigate further?
A large part of the answer lies with how dependent we are on the major news media to shape our view of reality: if we see it on TV, hear it on the radio or read it in the newspaper it happened--if we don't, it didn't. Blacking out stories like mine--censoring them in fact--is the first line of defense the authorities take in defending or hiding their unethical and illegal activities.
One recent example of how such censorship works comes immediately to mind. On December 30 one Ottawa AM radio station carried news of a program in the U.S. that had carried out the unauthorized sterilization of 70,000 people. The news report went on to say 7,000 of these people lived in the State of Virginia and they had launched a law suit against the government over the matter. One source quoted in the story was the Virginia Civil Rights Association.
Although I heard the item in three newscasts that day on that same station, I monitored other Ottawa radio and television stations and the item was never reported. What is more, the daily newspaper in Ottawa did not carry anything about the story. Freedom of the press means the freedom not to print the news the powers don't want to be printed.
This blackout technique has a double effect: first, it allows the authorities to keep victims like myself isolated, out of contact with others who may have experienced the same things; second, if information does become public, like my using the posters and now this pamphlet for example, the person behind the publication is considered to be some kind of singular "kook" or "crazy", somebody beyond the fringe of "normal" society.
A second element playing a large part in cutting off investigation into claims like mine is the deliberately bizarre and frightening nature of it all. Telepathic terrorism with microwaves--none of us wants to believe it can happen.
When some people reacted to my posters and leaflets and called the RCMP to protest, the first tactic the police used was to sympathetically explain I was mentally ill. They advised the callers to just tear up my leaflet and forget about it.
(The logical thing for people to then have asked of course, would have been: Why the RCMP didn't arrange, since they knew of my supposed mental illness, my commitment to a mental hospital? If my story was false, why didn't the force launch a libel suit against me? Why, instead, did they allow me to remain free and to distribute my information that could do nothing to help their already tarnished image?)
Adding to the bizarre and unsettling nature of the whole matter is the fact victims of such experiments don't usually understand what really happened to them.
Often there is memory loss or the shock of such experiences is so severe any intelligent and logical recounting of what has gone on is next to impossible. Again, it becomes far easier to believe the victim is suffering from such an unusual kind of mental disorder, than the effects of surreptitious police activity.
All things considered, is it so surprising no one seems to listen or be concerned about these charges?
It's Not As If It Hasn't Happened Before
Mind control with microwaves administered by the RCMP; devices capable of long distance mood, sleep and heartbeat control; victims that are left paralyzed or mentally dead; voices from outer space or from God--it all sounds so weird, so beyond belief.
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. But it's not as if things like this--like making ordinary, unsuspecting people into unknowing and involuntary "guinea pigs"--it's not as if it hasn't happened before.
Early Experiments After World War II
It is now known that Japanese used US soldiers as guinea pigs in bacteriological experiments. After the war US army didn't sue these Japanese scientists that have experimented with US P.O.W.'s (prisoners of war), because Japan shared with USA all the information they got in these brutal human experiments. So US army sold the rights of their death soldiers for gain their killers got in human experiments that usually put an end to unlucky US soldiers lives.
(1) Many of the same Japanese scientists that killed US P.O.W.'s in the time of the second world war worked for US sponsored experiments in early fifties. The victims of this time were Japanese children, prisoners and the mentally sick. Experiments were different bacteriological and frost bite experiments mostly, for example in some experiments victims were forced to tip their limbs into cold water and stay there until their limbs were frozen solid.
(2) The US had also bacteriological experiments of their own. The bacteria that could be deadly were sprayed in the subway system of New York and in air of six other towns. The accurate amount of people that died in these experiments is not known.
(3) These few examples of US army's illegal experiments that leaked out likely represent a tiny portion of mountains of experiments that are still secret. Even these experiments leaked out are not usually stated in the textbook of the history of medical ethics so it is not exaggerated to say that the science of medical ethics reveals only a tip of the iceberg of illegal human experimentation.
The CIA and Mind Control Experiments
The CIA started it's research to control people's minds in 1949 after the end of the second world war. The early research consisted in the search for the truth-serum and use of hypnosis. Victims of these experiments were often suspected spies or double-agents. One of the chemicals that was seen as a potential truth serum was LSD. After some curious scientists had taken small amounts of LSD themselves they started tests with voluntary prisoners. Prisoners, who volunteered in these experiments were mostly heroin addicts and the pay they got from volunteering was usually some amounts of heroin or other drugs they desired.
Besides in prisons, experiments started with voluntary college and university students, mental patients and just ordinary American citizens who were picked up by CIA paid hookers and in special rooms that were equipped by two way mirrors and other bugging devices to monitor how LSD disrupts the behavior of unaware subjects. Often the CIA unwittingly dosed people with LSD and then let the local doctor certify the apparent "insanity" of these people.
The LSD prophet Timothy Leary got his first knowledge of LSD by volunteering for CIA's mind control experiments. John Marks explains in his book "The CIA and Mind Con- trol" how LSD and ******** mushrooms found their way by CIA's mind control experiments into the hands of voluntary students and the American counterculture.
The files of crimes that were connected to CIA's mind control projects were nearly all destroyed in 1972 after the Watergate scandal by a decision of two CIA officials, Richard Helms and Sid Gottlieb. The most unaware victims that were ******** by LSD or other drugs haven't gotten any compensation for damages. Also the CIA paid criminals who committed the poisonings and other crimes are still free and American police forces are not willing to find them.
Telemetric Brain Manipulation
(4) In 1962 the people at the U.S.-Moscow Embassy found a new kind of microwave transmission. The Soviets were using multiple frequencies and widely fluctuating microwave beams with highly irregular patterns which did not appear to be applicable to the intelligence gathering. The microwave beams being directed at the Embassy were referred to as the Moscow Signal.
In the autumn of 1965 the Institute for Defense Analyses convened a special task force to solve the problem. They duplicated some of the Soviet experiments showing that microwaves affected the central nervous system of the test animals.
In addition the Advanced Research Projects Agency - a highly secret organization within the Department of Defense - set up a special laboratory where over a number of years experiments were conducted in which Rhesus monkeys were irradiated with microwaves at power densities and frequencies similar to those of the Moscow Signal. The results still remain secret. Similar studies which have been after that have clearly shown that microwaves can exert a profound effect upon the central nervous system and on the behavior of Rhesus monkeys and other primates.
(5) Easier than to manipulate people with microwave radiation was to apply electric current directly into specific parts of the human brain. In the sixties scientists were able to control mood, behavior, sleep and many other functions of animals and humans using radio controlled telemetric devices that administered controlled amounts of electric current into specific parts of the brain.
Dr. Lawrence Pinneo with his collaborators at the Stanford Research Institute were able to even evoke smooth controlled movements in monkeys by using computer made brain stimulation programs. The program was written by analyzing natural movements of the monkey.
(6) A kind of breakthrough in the area of telemetric brain stimulation was Dr. Jose Delgando's "Stimoceivers" - small miniature transmitter-receivers that are activated by radio. It has no batteries and can be implanted underneath the skin for a lifetime so that the brain can be stimulated and recorded indefinitely.
(7) The modern technology would miniaturize the "Stimoceiver" into one-tenth of the original inch wide device. More powerful devices are made by using rechargeable batteries that are charged by microwaves. Just recently Hitachi Ltd. revealed a new rechargeable battery that is no more thick than half of a human hair. It is very difficult to say how small are the smallest batteries made for secret military and intelligence bugging devices.
(8) In 1975 a primitive mind reading machine was tested at the Stanford Research Institute. The machine was a computer which recognizes a limited amount of words by monitoring a person's silent thoughts. This technique relies upon the discovery that brain wave tracings (EEG) show distinctive patterns that correlate with individual words - whether the words are spoken aloud or merely subvocalized (thought of).
(9) On June 22, 1976 the National Enquirer had a story about the Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). "Since 1973 The Advanced Research Projects Agency had been sponsoring a program to develop a machine that could read minds from a distance by deciphering the brain's magnetic waves. A scientist involved in the program had declared that the ultimate goal of his work was to exercise control over the brain."
(10) There were some alarming interests of DARPAs research that the US army tried to ease. The following passage is from a letter written November 19, 1976 by Robert L. Gilliat, Assistant General Councel for Manpower, Health and Public Affairs for the Department of Defence: "As indicated in my letter of November 12 information which I have received from the Advanced Research Projects Agency is to the effect that the so-called "brain wave" machine which was the subject of the National Enquirer article . . . is not capable of reading brain waves of anyone else than a willing participant in the laboratory efforts to develop that particular device. It's technical limitations I am told, do not permit any long range use. I have no reason to doubt that information".
(11) Robert L. Gilliant didn't know anything about Dr. Delgados' "Stimoceiver" or other similar equipment which make possible long range recording and manipulation of brain electrical activity. Also he didn't realize that no one can stop his brain activity or brainwave patterns when he is no more a "willing participant."
Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has not ended the brain research. According to Dr. Craig Fields it is supported on five-years research program to analyze human brainwave patterns in real time. DARPA is involved in efforts to develop a fifth- generation supercomputer.
(12) IN the seventies published information in the area of telemetric brain research started to become scare. Dr. Jose Delgado and other scientists who did non-secret brain research started to have difficulties in getting their work funded. The pretext reason was ethical considerations for this type of research. However, in the view of the history of human experimentation in the USA the reason looks odd. More obvious is that US military and intelligence agencies were taking over the research and used their muscle to end all non-secret research.
The same time as the funds ended reports in scientific publications covering telemetric brain research ended. There were seldom reports even covering the telemetric research of animal brains.
(13) Transferring the funds from non-secret research into secret had many benefits:
A. The potential enemy (USSR) didn't get any valuable information.
B. There were no delays of research because of legal and ethical research standards. As we know in history US army and CIA have been able and are still able to carry out many kinds of illegal and brutal medical experiments even if there are loss of lives.
C. Because of secrecy of the research there is no public concern. People don't worry about things they don't know. This makes the government able to secretly harness the dark side of this technology to control "troublemakers" like fringe political leaders, objectionable union officials, etc.
I believe, that whatever form of electromagnetic manipula- tion is used to control my behavior it could be found out and proved by thorough laboratory research.
For me, research is too costly and difficult. For example, a good sweep-receiver costs around 50,000 FMK and it doesn't reveal Dr. Delgado's "Stimoceiver" type or other sophisticated bugs.
I have gone - with all my evidences - to Finnish Police authorities and asked for sufficient investigation to find out if there are any marks, devices or other proofs of electromagnetic manipulation of my brain.
Despite the evidences I had I was unable to get proper investigation from Finnish Police authorities. More obvious reason than simple stupidity is that Finnish authorities as authorities in many other countries, appreciate more good relations with another country than constitutional rights, health or even life of one Finnish citizen. If police don't investigate crimes of foreign intelligence services they won't find them. So nothing would cool warm relations between Finland and another country.
Another way police would use this kind of cases is secret investigation in which the victim of the crime don't get any information. This makes possible all kinds of dark deals between departments of foreign affairs.
I have found another person who - besides being a victim of mind-manipulation experiments - has also written a book of her experiences a a human guinea pig. The person is Dorothy Burdick and her book has the name "Such Things Are Known" (1982 Vantage Press, Inc. 516 West 34th St., New Yoirk, NY 100012, USA).
Dorothy Burdick's experiences are very similar to mine and she has also done some research to fin out who manipulates her brain and how the manipulation is done.
The fact that two people with no knowledge of each other have exposed in the form of book and pamphlet what happens to them means that there are a group of hundreds or maybe thousands of similar victims of this new manipulation technique. These people do not know each other. They don't know who is torturing and manipulating them. Usually these people don't get any help from police other government authorities or any organizations. They are used a experimental animals tortured, manipulated, wounded and possibly killed.
(14) Some organizations are fighting against using animals in medical experiments but no organization is fighting against practice of military and intelligence agencies to use innocent non-voluntary civilian as test animals in dangerous and sometimes deadly experiments. It looks rather that all the institutions of society are turned to passively supporting this kind of despotism.
Canadian Government's Hard of Hearing Technique
I have sent over 40 thousand of these pamphlets to Canada. Most of them I have sent to prominent Canadians, all members of Supreme Court, etc. Also I have sent this pamphlet twice to all members of the Canadain Parliament. One of the members, M. P. Bill Domm has two times asked the head of RCMP, Solicitor General Robert Kaplan to answer accusations I have made. Solicitor General promised to answer, but has eventually delayed answering the matter now over three years. At the same time torture and brain-manipulation of victims has been continuing.
This type of delays and silencing one is seldom seen in democratic countries with working parlimentarianism. People responsible for Canadian law-enforcement and Pierre Trudeaus cabinet above them are playing a kind of Don't see, don't hear, don't know and don't believe game. Adolf Hitler and more recent- ly Argentina's military junta used similar "hard of hearing" technique to hide their brutalities.
My experiences show that there is a microwave manipulation network around the globe. Obviously these installments are made to monitor and manipulate political leaders and other important person, wherever they are.
We live in the year 1984 and "Big Brother" is everywhere.
What Has Happened?
In 30, January 1981 M. P. Bill Domm sent a letter to solicitor General Robert Kaplan and asked him to comment upon accusations I had made. In a letter Solicitor General Kaplan promised to find out as well as offer his comments upon my booklet.
Apparently Robert Kaplan found out my accusations were true and correct because in spite of his promise he never replied. If the country had a real, working parliamentary system Robert Kaplan would have been forced to make an honest investigation.
Canadian parliament did not work this way. It remained silent and asked no uncomfortable questions. At the same time as Canadian parliament is exercising "right to maintain silence" innocent people have been used for human experiments, tortured and probably killed.
Behavior like this of the Canadian parliament shows that Canadian democracy exist only on paper. Behind the leading parties' ideological smokescreen is a set of crude Nazi practices. Leaders of the Canadian parliament are silently backing brutal human experiments, very similar to those done by the Nazis, the only difference being the use of immigrants instead of Jews.
My possibilities to get justice from the Canadian legal system are about as great as for a Jew trying to get justice from the Nazi Third Reich courts after SS forces had beaten him and burned his house.
How To Help
If the leaders of Canadian parliament had NOT known the crimes I have explained in my booklet they would have arranged an investigation that had covered also RCMP's and army's secret files and saved the reputation of Canadian legal standard.
The members of the cabinet try to avoid a whole case. They use police and army authorities as disposable workgloves for their criminal activities. Similarly as Josef Stalin, Richard Nixon and lately Ronald Reagan, they are ready to explain for public that they had been totally unaware of crimes that high police or army officers had organized.
If you want to help me, please write to any member of the Canadian Parliament or the Canadian Prime Minister (address: House of Commons, Ottawa). Ask them to use their powers to restore justice for country, and arrange a public investigation for my case. That investigation should cover also army and police secret files. If you get any answer I should be very happy to know what their response is.
You Help Me Also If You:
A. Distribute this information. Give this pamphlet to someone else after you have read it. Better still, copy it as many times as you can and pass out those copies. Unlike most publications this one may be reproduced, stored or transmitted free so that more people will read this and more people can become aware and act.
B. Investigate my charges. Perhaps you have contacts that can uncover more details of those things that have happened when police force had closed their eyes. It was a couple of investigating journalists who arranged me a contact to Robert Naeslud, victim of Swedish brain research who got a listening device removed from his brain by surgery. Unfortunately no large newspaper printed their story. Unlike is told, the free press, democratic society's "watchdog", barks only when the owner of the dog asks it to bark.
I would be glad of any contact with anyone who has fears they have been similarly victimized or who is just concerned others may have been. Please contact: Martti Koski, Kanervakummuntie 5, 21290 Rusko, Finland.
Bibliography
1) Lennart Utterstrom: "Japani teki julmia ihmiskokeita sodan aikana" Helsingin Sanomat, (H:ki, Finland) May 5, 1982, p. 32.
2) Peter McGill: "US backed Japan's germ tests on mentally sick". The Observer, August 21, 1983.
3) William Scobie: "Germ war trial for Pentagon". The Observer, March 29, 1981.
4) John Marks: The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate'". The CIA and mind control, (New York Times books, 1979).
5) Paul Brodeur: New Yorker. December 13, 1976.
6) Elliot Valenstein: Brain Control (New York, Wiley, 1973), pp. 77-79.
7) Jose Delgado: Physical Control of the Mind (New York, Harper, 1969), pp. 92-96.
8) "Flat Battery", New Scientist, July 28, 1983, p. 271. 9) Walter Bowart: Operation Mind Control. (Fontana Books, 1978) p. 268.
10) Paul Brodeur: The Zapping of America (New York, W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1977) pp. 298-299.
11) Ibid.
12) Steven J. Steinberg: "Ajattelen, siis koneet toimivat". Suomen Kuvalehti 19/1982. (H:ki, Finland) pp. 42-46.
13) Robert J. Trotter: "A Shocking Story". Sceince News, April 13, 1974. pp. 245-246.
14) The rough estimation of the amount of victims can be made by multiplying the amount of expressions of victims (in this case the book and pamphlet) with approximate probability, that random person in this situation makes this kind of expression. Example: One person of hundred mind control victims is able and willing to write of his experiences and get it published. One of this kind of book is published. Estimate of victims is one hundred.
Besides books above, I'd like to mention Alan V. Shellin & Edward M. Option, Jr. "The Mind Manipulators" (London, Paddington Press, 1978).
Reply
Recommend Message 4 of 13 in Discussion
From: copernicus12223 Sent: 22/02/2005 9:20 AM
The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate" (W.W. Norton and Company: New York), describes Orne as receiving funding for his MKULTRA experiments through the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, a known CIA front organization:
The Society demanded "no stupid progress reports," recalls psychologist and psychiatrist Martin Orne, who received a grant to support his Harvard research on hypnotism . As a further sign of generosity and trust, the Society gave Orne a follow-on $30,000 grant with no specified purpose. A 1962 report of Orne's laboratory, the Institute for Experimental Psychiatry, showed that it received two sizable grants before the end of that year: $30,000 from Human Ecology and $30,000 from Scientific Engineering Institute, another CIA front organization. Orne says he was not aware of the latter group's Agency connection at the time, but learned of it later. He used its grant to study new ways of using the polygraph. The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate", John Marks, W. W. Norton & Company 1991, p.172-173.
From the above quote it is reasonable to assume that not only did Orne not keep "progess reports", but he probably did not videotape the hypnosis as is common with a forensic interview. Orne was the director of studies on hypnosis from 1960-1964 at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston and also the Executive Director of the Institute for Experimental Psychiatry, both of which participated in the experiments. The court record in the United States Supreme Court case of Central Intelligence Agency vs John Cary Sims and Sidney M. Wolfe, 471 U.S. 159, 85 L.Ed. 2d, 105 S.Ct. 1881 (1985) includes a partially redacted undated CIA memorandum entitled "Memorandum for: Deputy Director for Support; Subject: Institute for Experimental Psychiatry". This CIA memorandum on Orne's Institute for Experimental Psychiatry discussed the flow of grant funds through an intermediary, Human Ecology, to the "Institute" (Addendum D).
According to John Mark's: "Martin Orne's work for the Agency was described in Subproject 84. He contributed a chapter to the Society-funded book, The Manipulation of Human Behavior, edited by Albert Biderman and Herbert Zimmer (New York: John Wiley & Sons; 1961), pp. 169-215. Financial data on Orne's Institute for Experimental Psychiatry came from a filing with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Attachment to Form 1023". Described as a "Teaching Fellow, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard University Medical School", Orne's chapter in The Manipulation of Human Behavior, is entitled "The potential uses of hypnosis in interrogation" and indicates "this paper is based in part upon work under a grant from the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, Inc.", p. 169.
Orne knew of CIA involvement. The Joint Appendix in CIA vs Sims, 471 U.S. 159, 85 L.Ed. 2d, 105 S.Ct. 1881 (1985), also contains the following memorandum on Orne's subproject 84 funded by the CIA:
DRAFT [Deleted]
17 August 1960
MEMORANDUM FOR; THE RECORD
SUBJECT: Continuation of MKULTRA, Subproject 84
***
6. This project has been handled to date in a Government Sterile fashion and none of the personnel at [Deleted] have been witting of true sponsorship. It is contemplated that Dr. [Deleted] will be made witting of the sponsorship and purpose on or about 1 September 1960 in order to guide his project along lines that will further Agency operational needs.
/s/ [Deleted]
Chief
TSD/Research Branch
APPROVED FOR OBLIGATION
OF FUNDS:
Research Director
Date: 8-19-60
Attached:
Statement of Progress
Distribution:
Original only
How mind wrecking were the MKULTRA experiments? In one of the more publicized subprojects, Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, who like Orne received funding through the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, subjected his unwitting patients to megadoses of LSD, drug-induced sleep states of up to 65 days, and electroshock therapy at 75 times the usual intensity. Congressional Record - Senate, 99th Cong. 1st Session, Volume 131 No. 106, Part 2, 131 Cong. Rec. S. 11008 quoting The Experiments of Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, Washington Post July 28, 1985. In one case, Cameron gave a patient as many as 109 electroshock treatments, well above the guidelines of between 4 and 8 treatments. Like Orne, Cameron had been well credentialed. Cameron was one of the most prominent psychiatrists in North America and past president of both the American Psychiatric Association and Canadian Psychiatric Association, yet he grossly abused his position of influence and power. Cameron's antics were the subject of the suit in Orlikow, et al vs U.S., 682 F. Supp. 77 (DC 1988) which ultimately settled for $750,000.00.
Due to the CIA's illegal record destruction, less is known about the specifics of Orne's mind control experiments under MKULTRA. As a purported legal expert on hypnosis, brainwashing and interrogation however, one questions whether Martin Orne could truly render an unbiased opinion given his dubious past connection with MKULTRA. It is unfortunate that Orne was permitted to influence an uninformed judiciary resulting in the forfeiture of the right to testify for previously hypnotized crime victims and witnesses. This effort to suppress critical testimony was carried forward into the 1990s as a scientific advisory board member of the Philadelphia based False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF). The FMSF advocates the interests of those accused of child sexual abuse and has sought to bar repressed memory testimony from the courtroom. Despite the rhetoric of Orne and the FMSF debunking repression, the phenomenon of repression following trauma (e.g., dissociative amnesia) is scientifically established in hundreds of peer reviewed studies involving all types of trauma (e.g., child sexual abuse, war trauma, torture, robbery, motor vehicle accidents, etc.) and recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. Over 68 peer reviewed studies demonstrate the existence of full or partial dissociative following child sexual abuse. In 30 of the studies the average base rate was 29.6 % experiencing full or partial dissociative amnesia.
During much of his career, Orne advocated the "safeguard" test for the admissibility of post hypnotic testimony. Significantly, and for no supportable scientific reason, Orne altered his position later in his career and began advocating for the adoption of the per se rule of inadmissibility for post hypnotic testimony. This occurred in a debate published on the Borawick case in the Cultic Studies Journal. One questions why Orne was so motivated to bar posthypnotic and repressed memory testimony from the courtroom? Perhaps he was growing concerned that his own past involvement in MKULTRA would be exposed, subjecting him to possible criminal and civil liability as in the Orlikow case.
The irony is that Orne, a PhD and MD no less, misused hypnosis on unwitting human subjects without their informed consent and without adhering to forensic guidelines. He then went on to advocate restrictive legal rulings without scientific support to shield himself and his disciples from legal liability. Both the current state of the science on memory, suggestibility and hypnosis, coupled with the background set forth above, more than justifies a revision of our thinking on post-hypnotic testimony and warrants adoption of the more liberal per se admissibility rule. Most certainly, when post-hypnotic testimony following a properly conducted forensic interview is no less reliable than nonhypnotic memory there is absolutely no reason to abandon the use of forensic hypnosis in criminal investigations.
I hope this information is of use to you in your continued pursuit of forensic hypnosis in criminal investigations. If there is any other information I can provide, please feel free to contact me.
Very truly yours,
_______________________
Helen L. McGonigle
HLM:lom
Enclosure
cc:
ADDENDA
A - Court Adopts Problematic Legal Test for Therapeutic Hypnosis, Sexual Assault Report, March/April 1998.
B - Overview of the four tests for the admissibility of post-hypnotic testimony
C - Book Review by Helen L. McGonigle, Memory, Trauma Treatment and the Law,
CTLA Forum, Vol. 17, No. 2 (March/April 1999) with excerpts from MTTL.
D - Declassified CIA memos from the Joint Appendix in CIA vs Sims. The U.S. Supreme Court's legal opinion can be found at http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html by typing " 471 U.S. 159". A summary of 5 legal cases dealing with this subject matter is at http://members.aol.com/smartnews/fivecases.htm. The 1977 Kennedy Committee hearings from 1977 are available at any good legal library having the Congressional Record. See, Project MKULTRA, The CIA's Program of Research in Behavorial Modification; Joint Hearing Before the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, United States Senate, 95th Congress, 1st Session August 3, 1977. It was through the questioning of Senator Richard S. Schweiker of Pennsylvania that the CIA, through the Office of Naval Research, was involved as early as 1955 in the creation of a amnesia inducing device which could cause brain concussions through sound waves without warning and without leaving physical marks.
Reply
Recommend Message 5 of 13 in Discussion
From: copernicus12223 Sent: 22/02/2005 9:21 AM
Estabrooks Promotes the “Super-Spy”
As soon the OSS began, George Estabrooks (b. 1885, d. 1973) started traveling to Washington, D.C.. Estabrooks was a Canadian who spent three years at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He received a doctorate, in 1926, from Harvard. He was a prominent figure in the American hypnosis scene for fifty years--from the 1920s to the 1970s. Most of those years he was head of Colgate University’s Department of Psychology. Estabrooks produced the first recorded induction (a Victrola record). He published over sixty articles and several books, the most interesting of which is titled simply Hypnotism.
Estabrooks promoted the use of hypnoprogrammed spies by both the military and police. He suggested that police agents could gather information from “the criminal class.”
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From: <NOBR>copernicus12223</NOBR> Sent: 29/01/2005 11:56 PM
If allowed a free hand, the authorities could proceed to plant such prepared subjects... always with the idea of obtaining information which might, sooner or later, be of real use to the police. (Hypnotism, p. 191)
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From: <NOBR>copernicus12223</NOBR> Sent: 29/01/2005 11:57 PM
He described a method for programming a double agent, whose unconscious mind would be loyal to his country (or his secret agency, or military unit), but whose conscious mind would be loyal to whatever country (organization, religion, or relationship) that was being infiltrated and reported on.
...we will use hypnotism to induce multiple personality. Hypnotism is the means to an end, though the technique would be impossible did we not have hypnotism at our disposal....
In his normal waking state, which we will call Personality A, or PA, this individual will become a rabid communist. He will join the party, follow the party line and make himself as objectionable as possible to the authorities.
Then we develop Personality B (PB), the secondary personality, the unconscious personality...is rabidly American and anticommunist. It has all the information possessed by Personality A, the normal personality, whereas PA does not have this advantage.
My super spy plays his role as a communist in the waking state, aggressively, consistently, fearlessly. But his PB is a loyal American, and PB has all the memories of PA. As a loyal American, he will not hesitate to divulge these memories. (Ibid., p. 200)
Unknowing Subjects - In Hypnosis, Estabrooks writes as if he is surrounded at Colgate by persons he has made into unknowing hypnotic subjects.
One excellent subject, so trained, had been reading one of my manuscripts.
“I can believe everything you say,” he said, “but one thing. When you tell me that you can remove all knowledge of ever having been hypnotized, I simply don’t believe it.”
“Jack,” I said, “have you ever been hypnotized?”
“No.”
“Do you think I could hypnotize you?”
“No!”
In one second he was hypnotized. (Ibid., p. 188)
Jack knew no better, but Estabrooks had the satisfaction of proving the man entirely wrong and demonstrating complete hypnotic control over him. Estabrooks viewed persons who were susceptible to hypnosis as fodder for the mill of any hypnotist’s notion of higher purpose, be it research, profit, patriotism, or the mesmerizer’s personal entertainment. His attitude echoed that of Dr. Cook who, in 1927, advised beginning hypnotists to boldly develop a stable of hypnotic subjects:
First secure a good subject and practice upon him until you can hypnotize him with absolutely no difficulty, and then place him in the profound [somnambulistic/amnesic] stages of hypnosis...Next secure two or three more subjects and develop them, and thus gradually add to the number. (Cook, p. 125)
In another incident described by Estabrooks, a visitor had joined the hypnotic operator and his unknowing subject in the lab. As the three casually chatted about a recent boxing match, the hypnotist tapped his pencil three times upon the table top, as if in thought. That was the subject’s induction cue; his eyes instantly closed as he shifted to deep trance. The operator and his guest performed various hypnotic demonstrations of the subject in his somnambulistic state, then awakened him.
He immediately starts talking about that boxing match! A visitor to the laboratory interrupts him: “What do you know of hypnotism?”
The subject looks surprised, “Why, nothing.”
“When were you hypnotized last?”
“I have never been hypnotized.”
“Do you realize that you were in a trance just ten minutes ago?”
“Don’t be silly! No one has ever hypnotized me and no one ever can.” (Ibid., p. 197)
The subject was unaware of the missing time and unknowing of his “other life,” the time he spent under hypnosis.
Estabrooks Promotes Secrecy - and Reveals Secrets - Estabrooks played a curious dual role in the history of hypnoprogramming. He urged secret government hypnosis research. He said that hypnosis would become a valuable weapon as new techniques were discovered in the future. He participated in researching new techniques: “For developing some of them... plead guilty.” (Estabrooks, Future of the Human Mind, 1961, p. 221) He urged the use of consciously unknowing hypnoprogrammed, doubleminded agents, and he had manufactured such subjects.
Estabrooks referred, again and again, to the necessity for secrecy about the specifics of that technology and its possible military applications. But the professor also loved to talk, write, hint, and brag about that secret technology: “The facts and ideas presented are, so to speak, too true to be good...” (Hypnotism, 1944 ed., p. 193) In the first edition of Hypnotism (1943), he laid the groundwork for his hypnotic “superspy” concept. His second expanded upon it. The third edition (1957) added two long chapters on military and unethical hypnosis. He worked hard to inform the public that creating an unknowing, robotically obedient, hypnotic subject was possible—even easy. He made valuable information available about the existence and methods of that technology. Imagining an argument with a nonbeliever in amnesic hypnoprogramming, Estabrooks wrote:
He might... question... Will your controls hold? How long will that posthypnotic suggestion last without reinforcement? Can you count on complete amnesia? Where is your proof that no one but yourself and such others as you may designate can hypnotize that man? Questions such as these...merely involve details of technique. The theoretical and factual basis of that technique no competent psychologist would question. (Hypnotism, p. 193)
Estabrooks, M. H. Erickson, and the FBI Experiment
In 1939, Estabrooks set up a hypnosis experiment for the FBI. He recruited M.H. Erickson, one of America’s most prominent medical hypnotists, to do it. Erickson had worked for years in areas with application to unethical hypnosis and had his own stable of somnambulists. Years later, at a Colgate conference (which was taped and later transcribed in a book which Estabrooks edited), the two reminisced about that experiment. Erickson recalled:
“...[They] sent up a couple of laboratory men to investigate the possibilities of using it. I had Tommy go into a trance. For one whole hour of discussion-answer I did not know what the FBI men were doing. They uncrossed their legs and crossed them; they took cigarettes, and one lit the other’s cigarette, and the next time the other lit the first one’s cigarette.
"At the end of the hour they asked me to awaken Tommy, to bring him out of the trance, talk awhile, then put him back in the trance, and reorient him to that first trance. They had a program of exact movements, and they asked me...to have him visualize the entire procedure. Tommy gave a blow-by-blow account of the first hour, including the exact time in which so-and-so uncrossed his legs, when he recrossed them, when he shifted his hat over to one side, when he lit the other fellow’s cigarette, when the other fellow lit his cigarette.
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They had that entire program all mapped out, and I was an innocent bystander. But Tommy did it. Then I had Tommy come out of that trance and go back into a trance in which he regressed to the second trance and gave a report on the first trance with extreme accuracy...
It proves that apparently the hypnotic subject can record a tremendous amount of data, that he can recover it in a perfectly remarkable fashion, and that his sense of order and system of experiencing things is very meaningful.” (Estabrooks, ed., Hypnosis: Current Problems, pp. 270-271)
How to Program an Unknowing Hypnotic Subject
Estabrooks estimated that ten hours of hypnosis would be enough to accomplish his basic intention. However, he recommended a ten-month regimen for candidates who were to be both personality split and highly trained. What he called “candidates” were not volunteers. His basic procedure (given in Hypnotism, p. 195) for creating the unknowing hypnoprogrammed subject began with a disguised induction. It then proceeded to suggested amnesia, sealing against hypnotic competition, and the giving of a posthypnotic suggestion for instant re-induction by cue:
1) Covertly identify a specimen of the 20% of persons who are genetic somnambulists and easily can go to an amnesic depth of trance. Induct by a “disguised” method.
2) While the subject is in trance, give a posthypnotic suggestion for him to become deeply hypnotized again whenever the hypnotist gives a certain cue (such as tugging the left ear lobe with the right hand).
3) Also, give a posthypnotic suggestion which will deny the subject any conscious knowledge of this hypnosis, or any subsequent one. That causes an artificial, selective amnesia for all hypnosis events.
4) Give a posthypnotic suggestion that nobody else can hypnotize this subject (called sealing).
5) Give a suggestion under hypnosis that the subject will act in trance just as if awake (called waking hypnosis).
Estabrooks also suggested the creation of hypnoprogrammed messengers to convey secret information. He called for hypnotic conditioning in individuals who risk capture (such as Air Force pilots) to reinforce resistance against enemy interrogation and brainwashing. And he experimented with murder caused by indirect suggestion.
Wiener Links Computer Research with Neuroscience
Norbert Wiener, a professor of mathematics at MIT, organized a 1942 conference called “Problems of Central-inhibition in the Nervous System.” (That’s Pavlovian terminology meaning problems in hypnotic induction.) Wiener’s organizational backup and funding for this very significant meeting came from The Josiah Macy Foundation, a false front funding and facilitating conduit for secret government research.
Cybernetics - In 1942, the Josiah Macy Foundation funded and sponsored a symposium where prominent mathematicians, engineers, and physiologists kicked off the new science of cybernetics. This was the first of a series of cybernetics conferences that the OSS covertly sponsored via the Macy Foundation. Wiener defined “cybernetics” as “the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal...” (Wiener, Cybernetics, p. 19)
The specific purpose of that meeting was to begin development of a common vocabulary and shared concepts: machine as human, human as machine. The long-term goals of cybernetics were to create 1) machines with a human (or more than human) ability to remember, learn, and plan, and 2) human beings who would obey like machines—predictably, instantly, absolutely, unconsciously.
Humans could become mechanized only if the intricacies of physiological brain function could be understood. The cyberneticists accepted Pavlov’s view of the human mind as a central-nervous-system-dominated, knowable linkage of technical mechanisms. They set out to study and experiment with minds the same way they had already experimented with salamander cells and molecules. Cybernetics moved forward rapidly toward its dual goals of building a conscious machine, as nearly alive as possible—and an unconscious (on command) human who could function as nearly like a machine as possible.
False Fronts
During World War II, OSS and CIA research objectives were often pursued and funded by linkage organizations which channeled OSS/CIA money but kept the source of their money and directives a secret. The Josiah Macy Foundation, The Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology (based at Cornell), the Geschicter Foundation for Medical Research, and the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry were all false front organizations that channeled covert Agency funds.
The Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry sponsored brainwashing research, symposia, and publications such as “Factors Used to Increase the Susceptibility of Individuals to Forceful Indoctrination.” The Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology channeled funds into research on creating amnesia for recent events by means of electroshock “treatments”; research on programming by forced listening to a repeated taped message; hypnosis, and so on. The Josiah Macy Foundation
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From: copernicus12223 Sent: 22/02/2005 12:20 PM
http://archives.cbc.ca/IDCC-1-71-723-4327/conflict_war/somalia/
I believe clayton matchee was treated to Dr. Ewens legacy of psychic driving
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From: copernicus12223 Sent: 18/03/2005 8:57 PM
http://archives.cbc.ca/IDCC-1-71-723-4327/conflict_war/somalia/
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From: copernicus12223 Sent: 18/03/2005 9:23 PM
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Rebels in 'Two Commando'
A subversive rebel group in the military is protected by a notorious wall of silence.
<NOBR>Sept. 1, 1993</NOBR> - <NOBR>3:45 </NOBR>
<NOBR>
The whistleblower witness
Maj. Barry Armstrong testifies at the Somalia Inquiry.
</NOBR><NOBR>March 13, 1997</NOBR><NOBR> - </NOBR><NOBR>2:43 </NOBR>
<NOBR>http://archives.cbc.ca/IDCC-1-71-723-4325/conflict_war/somalia/</NOBR>
<NOBR>cover up on national security site:</NOBR>
<NOBR>http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/Reports/somalia/VOL5/V5C41_e.asp</NOBR>
<NOBR></NOBR>
<NOBR></NOBR>
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From: copernicus12223 Sent: 21/03/2005 7:20 PM
Several times working for laboready I would go to work and not remember the time spent working. One awkward time I was hired through laboready and worked at the head R.C.M.P office in ottawa. A strange guy asked me if I remembered the place and while I was cleaning up what looked like chairs and tables there were blood stained carpets and chairs. Looked like a blood bath I still wonder what happened there I knew someone got killed.
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From: copernicus12223 Sent: 21/03/2005 7:45 PM
I remember playing a game with Robert L Thompsett monopoly on the computer and this is where it gets weird. I still remember playing the game eand remember falling asleep as well. I commented to Robert L Thompsett how good I was playing games I even win while I am asleep.
Another weird memory is RObert L THompsett talking to the landlord telling him there is a lot of money involved. The memory just seems like it is just there not a drea not reality.
Another time is this guy arguing with Robert L Thompsett and asking him to tell me I am in a gas chamber kept begging RObert to make me believe I was in a gas chamber.
I told Robert L Thompsett about a watch capable of transferring information through contact wwith another person. Soon after that my watch took on water when I went into the shower. The rubber was out of line but I knew nobody could take the watch off. Next thing I knew the watch was falling apart peices broke off at a friends place. It was calculator watch and the rubber peices kept falling out.
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From: copernicus12223 Sent: 21/03/2005 8:01 PM
I remember Robert L Thompsett warning me early on not to mention anything to a man named peter. I met peter later on at laboready he asked me strange questions. A woman came in looked russian took her gloves off sat down at the other side of the table, peter a blonde guy healthy looking about forty ish trench coat and a doctors bag old style. His hair looked like he used hairspray he looked like a bum just like RObert L Thompsett. I remember he asked me if I recognized the woman I did but covered by saying she looks like she carries a l ot of weight on her shoulders.
I did not tell peter but I remembered a hospital and the doctor mentioned something about my poor short term memory. I remember the woman too she was wearing hospital gown with blood all over it.
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From: copernicus12223 Sent: 21/03/2005 8:05 PM
Working at laboready I was sent to the hospital through ability moving and I heard voices like I was in surgery. More questions about my short term memory.....
I am remembering more and more fragments including watching a guys head blown off at the police station. And myself ordered to kill him
