The Sleep room: CIA-funded experiments on patients in Montreal hospital (1998) - The Fifth Estate

even if you don't know the history of the Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal it looks like a natural setting for a movie a horror movie maybe but then the truth about what happened to hundreds of psychiatric patients there a long time ago is a horror story okay so we're on Ruth guy's a piece of Leone now it has become a movie a dramatized account of a bleak chapter in the history of Canadian psychiatry produced by a former Fifth Estate documentary maker Bernhard Zukerman the central character in the TV movie is a world renowned psychiatrist at the Allan in the early 60s his name was dr. Ewen Cameron it's the classic story of good turning to evil in its most simplistic terms I mean dr. Cameron started off as someone who is probably one of the most enlightened psychiatrists in the country but then something happened and whatever happened suddenly here is this enlightened doctor this noble doctor who begins doing more and more in more bizarre experiments on his patients to the point where he is destroying the minds of hundreds of people inspired by the exuberant post-war optimism in technology Cameron thought he'd achieved a major scientific breakthrough how to repair a damaged human mind the media rejoiced even coined a phrase which would become a tragically silly oxymoron beneficial brainwashing Linda MacDonald was a young mother with five children under the age of five when she started feeling low her family doctor knew just the man to make her better I was tired I was depressed my back was hurting and so he said to the children's father why don't you go to Montreal and visit this dr. Ewen camera this famous man who has all of these accolades and have an assessment so we went my medical file even says that I took my guitar with me and that was the end of my life within three weeks dr. Cameron decided to call me an acute schizophrenic and ship me up to the sleep room how long did they put you to sleep for I was in a coma for 86 days 86 days of unbroken sleep total comatose state the theory was simple erase a disturbed mind and start all over again one of dr. Cameron's colleagues at the time was dr. Peter Roper the aim I think really was to wipe out the patterns of thought and behavior which were detrimental to the patient which was sick and replaced them with healthy patterns of thought and behavior I think this may have been stimulated by the effects of the American prisoners of war in Korea how they seemed to have been brainwashed the movie called the sleep room dramatizes one technique for brainwashing extreme sessions of electroshock therapy massive jolts of electricity three or four times a day for weeks according to her hospital records Linda McDonald had 100 of these treatments she entered hospital for treatment of what we can now guess was postpartum depression her records showed the results of shock and radical drug therapy May 15th shows some confusion June 3rd knows her name but that's about all June 11th doesn't know her name I was had to be toilet trained I was a vegetable I had no identity I had no memory I'd never existed in the world before like a baby just like a baby that has to be toilet trained she eventually went home her depression gone and her entire previous life on with it and this is this is one of the twins in that was in 62 before I went to the Allen and this is the same one I think I just look at the pictures and I know that is who they are but I don't remember them as my children at all I mean I know that they came from my body but there's no that that's all I don't know and that's because I was told that these are my children Robert Logie was little more than a child himself when he was referred to dr. Cameron he was 18 he had a sore leg his doctor thought it was all in his head and sent him to the Allen like Linda MacDonald he went through a nightmare of shock therapy and drugs including LSD well I was given a list to you about every second day and injected and sometimes it was mixed with sodium amytal and other drugs most of the drugs were experimental but seemed suitable for brainwashing or as Cameron preferred to call it deep patterning then during the long sleep the patient would be forced to listen to subliminal messages that were supposed to print new sometimes bizarre thoughts on his blank mind I was aware of the speaker under my pillow I was aware of the words which were you've killed your mother you killed your mother yeah who was alive and well was alive among and over and over again this voice well like I say it took takes about two seconds to say that message and this was going on for 23 days and when I went home after being there and when I went home my mother was there and why was she there didn't make any sense so what was going on here dr. Ewen Cameron was at one point head of the world Psychiatric Association and is still admired by some of his former colleagues dr. Peter Roper what is the possibility that we had a good well motivated man whose ego and ambition took charge of his professionalism and led him into some fairly dark places well I would put that chances pretty slight I think it's more likely that if he'd been around to defend himself when this story came out we would have a totally different picture of it what would he say put yourself in his shoes what would he say I think he'd say look I treated these patients to the best of my ability I I didn't get all of them well but most of I got better than they were but in the movie dr. Cameron will not come off so well it accurately shows that many of his patients inaccurately diagnosed as schizophrenic s' were permanently damaged by his methods eventually even Cameron had doubts about his experiments he left the Allen in 1964 died of a heart attack three years later by then the hospital had quietly abandoned the experiments nobody knows for sure exactly how many people dr. Cameron and his colleagues exposed to the program of chemical and electroshock treatment they called D patterning and psychic driving a process which some experts have since called barbaric but many years would pass or there would be any public or official acknowledgement of what those damaged patients had been through it would take a dramatic disclosure in the late 70s that the Allen memorial had been part of a cold war program of brainwashing experiments paid for in part by the CIA hidden among its most sensitive files were CIA records documenting a project called MKULTRA between 1957 and 1961 a CIA front funneled about $62,000 us for brainwashing research by dr. Ewen Cameron the American media got the story first but the Fifth Estate exposed the magnitude of the human tragedy experimental drugs including LSD were administered to human guinea pigs the patients were never told that their treatment was part of a CIA experiment one of those patients was velma Orlick o of Winnipeg she'd been at the Allen in the late 50s for treatment of depression she happened to be married to a member of parliament David Orlick Oh off the NDP she'd considered dr. Cameron a near Saint now she was being told she'd been betrayed by him it was an awful feeling to realize when I found this out that the man whom I had thought cared about what happened to me didn't give it to him I was a fly just to fly first she felt hurt then she got angry and decided to sue one of the most powerful institutions in the world the CIA some a fact when she said she wanted to sue the CIA I said you're crazy how can a couple how can I hate from Winnipeg sue the CIA but she did along with eight other former patients a massive lawsuit that would consume many years and become an obsession for a distinguished American civil liberties lawyer named Joseph Rao he did was what the CIA was in effect asking him to do and what he said he was going to do and he did it Wow and a young assistant named James Turner knew they were up against a formidable opponent in the CIA but they thought the odds would be even a bit by help from a natural ally they were in for a disappointment what we expected to have a very potent ally in the form of the Canadian government and unfortunately instead of helping their own citizens because the Canadian government was worried about its possible liability the Mulrooney government in effect stabbed its citizens in the back at every turn the litigation Ottawa actually helped suppress a key piece of information evidence that CIA officials at the US Embassy had actually apologized to the Canadian government when the CIA experiments were first revealed Jim Turner is still flabbergasted you got to understand how important these apologies and expressions of regret war this is an admission this is legally admissible in court because it is one of the parties the litigation saying I did something wrong and I'm sorry I did it that is prima facie evidence of negligence and of wrongdoing that goes a long long way to bringing the case to a timely conclusion instead of the protracted ten years of litigation that we had mr. Mulrooney the movie underscores the impact of Ottawa's refusal to give the lawyers details of the CIA apology the lawyers eventually upped the ante on the Fifth Estate an action tonight on the Fifth Estate startling revelations about the activities of the CIA in Canada with a publicity wave gathering momentum and the strength of the victims case becoming more apparent the CIA caved in the day before the trial was to begin they settled out of court for 750 thousand dollars at the time it was the largest settlement the CIA had ever awarded and it provides a dramatic finale for the movie because we they couldn't beat us producer Bernhard Zuckerman says besides the financial terms this was a major moral victory here you've got nine little Canadian victims taking on probably the most powerful institution in America the CIA and these little Canadians they win they get the CIA to settle and give them money and in effect an apology saying what we did is wrong the movie ends with the CIA settlement but the story didn't end there troubling questions would persist especially about the Government of Canada so why was Ottawa so ambiguous when it came to helping some Canadian citizens get compensation from Washington for what they endured in a program that was inspired mostly by American cold war fears well the answer was simple the government of canada was even more deeply involved in the Allen memorial experiments than the Americans dr. Cameron's experiments were funded to the tune of half a million dollars by the Federal Department of Health and Welfare during the fifties and the funding didn't stop then they kicked in over 51,000 dollars after the CIA project ended in 1961 which was when a young stressed-out mother named Linda McDonald became part of the Allen memorial story when she discovered that her own government had been funding brainwashing experiments on her she made a dramatic decision you decided to take on the Government of Canada oh sure well hey considering what I'd already been through that was a snap you know what else why not it must have become obvious to you fairly quickly that you were ramming your head into a wall yes I'm stubborn too it got to the point where every time whether it was John Crosbie or Reyna Titian or then the the Honorable Kim Campbell it got to be you guys we're gonna we're going to stay alive and I said that - Brian Mulrooney - if you think I'm going away you've got another thing coming I'm not going to go away Linda McDonald would hound the federal government for four years before finally in 1992 Ottawa grudgingly agreed to compensate her and some of dr. Cameron's other victims $100,000 each in exchange for signing away the right to sue the government or the hospital but it was an ambiguous victory Ottawa refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing at the Allen a conclusion backed up by a legal review of what happened there the report by a prominent progressive conservative lawyer relied partly on expert advice from dr. Frederick Grunberg one of Quebec sleeting psychiatrist who made two controversial assertions that patients hadn't suffered irreparable harm and that they had consented to the treatment well what I meant is that the patient who were admitted at the Institute patients who went in voluntarily so the sort of consent they gave is what was the sort of general consent to the hospital sort of consent that was given for surgery or for any other procedure consent had nothing to do with it dr. Cameron did not describe the treatment he did not clarify he did not give any way shape or form any kind of a hint of what was going to happen that's not consent and I don't even know whether he talked to me because I'll never remember anyway dr. Greenberg shares a widely held view in his profession about the legacy of dr. Ewen Cameron I think it was a misguided man he worked on this sort of very poor theoretical basis and I think he was important considering but I am convinced and I'm still convinced that he really wanted a therapeutic way through he had this motivation that he was going to break this terrible condition you seem to be saying the things that Cameron did were awful but he meant well so will forgive and the victims are or the patient will have to live with the country it's not a question of forgiving as I say the thing is we put what he was doing in the process into perspective or sister of this time and a lot of awful things were going on a lot of people are saying considering the accepted practice and the science available at the time this was an appropriate thing to do to you what it wasn't treatment if that's what you're suggesting it wasn't reitman for anything not a toenail and or anything it was out-and-out guinea pigs for brainwashing experiments that's what it was it's been more than 33 years since the Allen put an end to the practice is initiated by its most notorious doctor it has recovered its world-class reputation as a leader in the treatment of mental illness dr. Peter Roper was dismissed from the Allen two years after dr. Cameron left one of the reasons he insisted on following dr. Cameron's technique which you argued strenuously to continue the DES patterning of your patients well I felt that I had a duty to my patients to give him the best possible treatment and if there was some that were not responding to any other form of treatment the only thing left was departing for that I felt that should be done you sound you sound almost nostalgic for the 50s and 60s oh no it's not nostalgia it's it's the question I think that bothers a lot of doctors that it's rather sad if they're prevented from having that treatment because of administrative political or other reasons which had nothing to do with good medical practice for Linda McDonald good medical practice in 1963 turned an emotional crisis into a horror that would haunt a lifetime this spring she returned to the Ottawa High School where she graduated in 1957 she has no memory of this place or those times or even of who she was back then I am Who I am today my family tells me that I am very much like the Linda that they knew when I was growing up gregarious always talking laughing singing happy positive conversion all I'm grateful for is that Cameron might have been able to wipe a memory but he couldn't wipe a spirit

Channel: The Fifth Estate

Views: 184,951

Rating: 4.7598567 out of 5

Keywords: sleep room, CIA, funded, patients, montreal, Allan memorial Institute, 1950, 1960

Id: TKLy1ALj3Pc

Length: 20min 45sec (1245 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/juarezderek]

MKUltra isn’t just from a show ;)

[u/[deleted]]

A former girlfriend's grandmother was one of their victims. They gave a schizophrenic LSD. It didn't go well for her, or her family.

[u/sammyb67]

So fucked up

[u/[deleted]]

Never forget that the CIA made the Unabomber snap and start sending out bombs after putting him through a branch of this experiment.

[u/ElBufoso]

Why does the CIA still exists? It's by far the biggest terrorist organization in the world.