1957

By Joseph Rauh, Jr. and James Turner, the lawyers who litigated against the CIA in the 1980s.

Early in 1957, Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, Director of the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, formally applied for funding from the "Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology," a CIA front at Corn-ell University Medical School, New York City. Cameron described his brainwashing experiments as follows:

"(i) The breaking down ongoing patterns of patient's behavior by particularly intensive electroshocks (depatterning).

(ii) Intensive repetition (16 hours a day for 6-7 days) of prearranged verbal signal.

(iii) During this intensive repetition the patient is kept in partial sensory isolation.

(iv) Repression of the driving period is carried out by putting the patient, after the conclusion of the period, into continuous sleep for 7-10 days."

Cameron also proposed testing "LSD and similar agents" in "depat-terning" his patients. Sidney Gottlieb and other CIA officials approved the application and over four years, provided $60,000 for the experiments.

In the 1980s, the CIA and State Department launched a public counterattack on the Canadian government for questioning the propriety of CIA activities. The CIA effectively converted the Canadian government into an active and hostile opponent.

In press briefings, interviews and Court pleadings, the CIA hammered away at one theme - Canada funded Cameron too. Legally, this was irrelevant, but politically, it was devastating. As one U.S. Attorney said, "We're going to wrap the Canadian Government financing of Cameron right around their necks."

This steady counterattack left the Canadian government completely cowed, apparently a fairly easy thing for the U.S. to accomplish. To turn off the public heat for supporting our case, the Mulroney government commissioned an "independent study" by a former Tory M.P., John Cooper. The result was neither independent nor a study, but a several hundred page brief concluding Canada was blameless, and CIA involvement was "a red herring."

The "Cooper Report" was compiled and written by Canadian Justice Department lawyers, whose job was to defend Canada against claims of liability based on its involvement with Cameron. A more clear conflict of interest is difficult to imagine. No Canadian Bar disciplinary committee has investigated the lawyers who did it.

The "Cooper Report" asserted that Cameron had done nothing wrong. Without interviewing any of our clients or reviewing their medical records, the report announced there was probably little if any lasting harm to the victims. The report reproduced the CIA's principal defenses, now as the "independent" conclusions of an official Canadian government investigation. The "Cooper Report" was a complete whitewash.

What once had appeared to be our strongest potential ally, threatening even to take the U.S. to the International Court of Justice at the Hague, now sought to exonerate the CIA in every conceivable way possible. The Canadian government did such a good job for the CIA that the "Cooper Report" became the first exhibit in the CIA's final effort to defeat our case through a motion for summary judgment. In addition, the same psychiatrists who the Canadian government had retained to ratify the Cooper whitewash were the CIA's expert witnesses. Canada completed the legwork that an associate in a good law firm usually does for a senior partner.

Source: Rauh and Turner, "Anatomy of a Public Interest Case against the CIA," Hamline Journal of Public Law and Policy, Fall 1990.

Dr. Ewen Cameron

(1901-1967)

Dr. Ewen Cameron was a member of the Nuremberg tribunal (1945). He examined and diagnosed Rudolf Hess, Hitler's devoted "deputy Fuhrer" responsible for Nazi party matters, saying that he was insane, thus helping to save Hess' life. In 1961, Cameron became president of the World Psychiatric Association, which was riddled with Nazi psychiatrists and apologists. Cameron's mind control experiments violated the Nuremberg Code for medical ethics.