SUBPROJECT 68: THE CASE CONTINUES

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00965R000706950019-8
Release Decision: 
RIFPUB
Original Classification: 
U
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
December 21, 2011
Sequence Number: 
19
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
October 27, 1985
Content Type: 
OPEN SOURCE
File: 
Body: 
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/21 :CIA-RDP90-009658000706950019-8 ART1ClF ON PaGE Jack Anderson and Dlale Yan Atta WASHINGTON POST 27 October 1985 Subproject 68: The Case Continues Secretary of State George Shultz is sched- uled to meet tomorrow with his Canadian coun- terpart, Joe Clark, for their regular quarterly get-together. Ak~ag with acid rain, East-West relations and trade, the two will be discussing a matter that has become a sore point with the Canadians but has received Gttk attention on this side of the border: CIA misbehavior in Canada 28 yearn ago. Using the code name "Subproject 68," the CIA funded gruesome psychobgical experi- ments on Canadian citizens as part of its infa- nwus MK-ULTRA program of brainwashing and micd-bending. According to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court here by veteran civil rights attorney Joseph Rauh, at least nine, and Possibly more than 50, Canadians were unwit- ting CIA guinea Pif;s? The suit has dragged on for five years, with the CIA refusing to negotiate a reasonable settlement with the victims. In a private letter this month to the chief of Canada's Labor .Party, Clark wrote: "I am not satisfied with the slow pace of discussions in District Court, but this, of course, is beyond our con- trol." Sean Brady, Clark's p;ess secretary, told our associate Tony Capaccio: "We expect to be dis- cussing this issue in some detail" with Shultz at the Calgary, Alberta, meeting. Subproject 68 started in January 1959, when the CIA approved a X0,000 grant to Dr. Ewen Cameron, a work(-renowned psychiatrist at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal. The CIA has insisted, in its defbnding against Rauh's lawsuit. that it had not solicited Cameron's ap- plication for the grant. But that's not the way the agency's "project monitor" remembered it. Tn a sworn deposition two years ago; John W. Gittinger--said he had asked a CIA undercover man to apptach Cameron and encourage him to apply for a grant. (There is no evidence that Cameron was aware he was asking for or taking money fr+mn the CIA, which used a front group.? Gittinger testified that he was interested in Camemn's work on voice-stress analysis, which he figured would help the CIA in its studies of the stress an individual undergoes during interrogation. He admitted, however, that Cameron's application for the grant con- tained no plans for such work. "I went along with the idea of giving him the $60,000," Gittinger explained, "because that's what he asked for. We wanted contact with him ar-d to know what he was doing, Primarily in the audio area... What, in fact, was in Cameron's application was a proposal to conduct the kind of experi- ments that even a CIA general counsel charac- terised years later as "repugnant "Cameron's proposal called, among other things, for "the breaking down of ongoing patterns ~ the pa- tient's behavior by means et particularly inten- sive dbctro-atwcla! (depatterning)." His prq~oaal also called for "the intensive repetition (16 hours a day for six to seven days) of prearranged verbal signals" while the patient was "kept in partial sensory isolation.'. Even more aminaroly, Cameron's application stated: "We propose to use,LSD-25 and other similar agents as a means of breaking down the ongoing patterns afbehavior." This mention of the unpredictable hallucino- genic drug should have bey a red flag to the CIA officials. Three years earlier, then CIA di- rector Allen Dulles had chastised Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, head ~ the Technical Services Divi- sion, for its role in the suicide of Dr. Frank Olson, a civilian empbyee of the Army. Olson was surreptitiously given a dose of LSD in a glass of liqueur. He leaped through a 10th-floor hotel room window a few days later. ' Gittinger testified in his 1983 deposition that he hadn't noticed the LSD proposal in Camer- on's application. In any case, the CIA project monitor said it was not his job to raise ques- tions about Cameron's testing methods. ff the CIA officials were unconcerned about LSD ex- periments three years after being admonished for using them, what exactly were they con- cerned with in the Canadian venture? One reason for exporting MK-ULTRA, Git- tinger testified, was that association with a psy- chiatrist of Cameron's renown would be "good cover" for the CIA front group that gave him the $60,000 grant. In retrospect, Gittinger acknowk~dged 26 years later, in his deposition: "That was a fooh ish mistake. We shouldn't have done it.... I'm sorry we did it because it turned out to be a temble mistake." The program, Gittinger explained, "turned out to be something of no interest" to the CIA. . Cameron, however, wrote athank-you note to the CIA-Ii~a-t soaety in early 1960, saying the grant had been "invaluable." . ass, vnroa re.uur smakw, tnc. Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/21 :CIA-RDP90-009658000706950019-8