Uncover - S8 "Brainwashed" E4: Suing the CIA

Episode Date: September 26, 2020

After discovering that they were the unwitting victims of human experiments, nine of Dr. Cameron’s victims band together to take on a Herculean task – to make the CIA pay. How do you sue one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world? This is Uncover: Brainwashed. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/brainwashed-transcripts-listen-1.5734335

The next thing I know is I wake up and I just remember like something bad happened to me last night, somebody hurt me. This is Carrie Lowe's story. Carrie did everything quote-unquote right. She reported right away. Her legal team says police systematically mishandled her case. Meanwhile, her attackers remain at large. I'm Maggie Rahr and this is Carrie Lowe vs. Available now on CBC Listen and everywhere you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast.

Good evening, I'm Eric Malling. Four years ago, there were some startling revelations about the activities of the CIA in Canada. The American Intelligence Agency had paid for a series of brainwashing experiments under a project codenamed MKUltra. Nine Canadians are now suing the U.S. government for a million dollars apiece. It's 1984, the year that is, not the dystopian state of affairs. Although, the details about MKUltra do take a page right out of George Orwell's novel.

Their lives were disrupted forever as a result of the brainwashing. This is the CBC's investigative program, The Fifth Estate. In Winnipeg, Val Orlico spends a lot of time tending her plants. It's one of the few hobbies she has left. She used to devour books and write long letters. Now she can't concentrate on a book for more than a single page, and writing a letter is beyond her. It was just a terrible nightmare. And I just felt that I could never go back

to what I'd been. When news broke about MKUltra in the late 1970s, thanks to the dogged journalism of John Marks and other American journalists, Val Orlikow and her husband David were paying close attention.

I found out as a result of a major story in the New York Times in August 1977. That's David Orlikow. Here is a situation in which a U.S. agency came into Canada, funded an experiment in Canada, which had very serious adverse effects on Canadians. David Orlikow wasn't just any Canadian.

He was a member of Parliament. But his interest in this case, it wasn't political. It was personal. His wife Velma, who friends called Vel, had been a patient at Montreal's Allen Memorial Institute. A patient of Dr. Ewan Cameron's. 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 a damn. I was a fly. Just a fly. Velma was devastated when she heard about the CIA's role in Dr. Cameron's work. She was angry, too. She wanted answers. She wanted justice. Not just from the Canadian institutions involved, but the American government, too. The CIA. When she said she wanted to sue the CIA, I said, you're crazy.

How can the hate from Winnipeg sue the CIA? I said, you're crazy. How can the hick from Winnipeg sue the CIA? How could the Orlikos, just a couple of self-described hicks from Winnipeg, take on one of the world's most powerful intelligence agencies? Because to go after the CIA in those days, maybe you did need to be a little crazy. Or at least be a fighter. And be ready for a drawn-out and dirty war. I'm Michelle Shepard, and this is Brainwashed, Episode 4, Suing the CIA.

Jim, why don't I just start by having you introduce yourself and tell me who you are. Yeah, I'm Jim Turner. I'm a retired lawyer who represented nine Canadians in a lawsuit against the United States government based on unwitting experimental brainwashing procedures. Jim Turner was the junior attorney on the case against the CIA. He worked alongside legendary American civil rights lawyer Joseph Rao. I worked for Joe actually the final summer that I was in law school. He wrote a piece about lawyers ethics and I helped him as a research assistant. The thesis was that if you're going to be practicing law, you ought to be doing something worthwhile while you're doing it, not just representing anybody that can pay for any cause. And I certainly wholeheartedly supported that. And from that time until Joe's retirement, we were essentially soulmates on the approach to legal issues.

The litany of fights that Joe waged to try to make the world a better place and to battle in the public interest is truly legendary. Rao had represented writers during the communist witch hunts and defended those who fought for voting rights and desegregation. He was one of the foremost U.S. civil rights attorneys of his time. And he brought that humanity to all aspects of the practice of law. But that's not to say that he was some kind of bleeding heart. Man was a fighter. David and Velma Orlikow had found their fighter. Mr. Orlikow said, you got to help me. My wife was admitted to the Alma Memorial Institute.

It was a bout of postpartum depression, and she's never the same afterwards. And do you remember, Jim, meeting David and Val yourself? never the same afterwards. And do you remember, Jim, meeting David and Val yourself? Yes. David and Val Maorlico came to Washington after we were able to tell them that there was a legal way to bring suit. And we met in our offices for several hours. They're both very impressive people, clearly telling the absolute truth about horrible, horrible experiences that they have both had. So they were very sympathetic folks to deal with. How did you go about building this case? We start with David Orlikow and Velma Orlikow, but they're not by themselves. There are other people who were at the Allen Memorial Institute during the timeframe when

CIA funding ran to it. So with David's help, we found eight other people and families who had been impacted. Dr. Harvey Weinstein, whose father, Lou, had been a patient at the Allen, was one of the eight other people. I think it was a Sunday morning. I was sitting and reading the New York Times. And on the left-hand page, there was an article that talked about this CIA project called MKUltra. And one of the places that was mentioned was the Alan Morial Institute. And in the article, it talked about the fact that some Washington lawyers

were going to bring a case against the CIA. Once Harvey convinced his dad to take part in the lawsuit, he traveled to Washington to meet Joe Rowe. It was awesome, if I can use the word in its pure sense. He was a big man and very dignified. And I was cowed, frankly, when I met him. Here I was, you know, this quote, survivor or victim or however you want to describe that. And I needed someone to help me. And in a sense, he became almost a, not a pseudo father per se, but a mentor, someone who could say, you know, the law can be on your side and I'm here to help you and we're

going to work on this. And so I felt as though I had a collaborator, that I was not alone, that Rao and Turner and myself were a team. And that's the way it felt for the next eight years. Eight years. The suit filed 18 months ago was delayed by a United States government motion. Tomorrow, lawyers for the CIA will go before the judge in this case and ask for a delay pending the government of the united states moved to dismiss on various technical grounds the judge waited a over a year to make his decision from the date that we filed this suit in december of 1980 there has been a studied strategy in my estimation of delaying and stonewalling every step in the litigation so that the elderly and frail

plaintiffs will just disappear. A landmark case in which the Canadian plaintiffs charged the Central Intelligence Agency with a reckless disregard for their lives. Now the agency has won yet another delay. The Canadian's lawyer accused the CIA of deliberately stalling. We had some bad luck, not only in the defendant, which is the CIA, an institution that can misuse national security to hide misconduct, but we also had some bad luck in the draw of our judge. It wasn't a bad judge. He just wouldn't decide anything.

And it took an inordinate amount of time to get simple motions resolved. All this is against the backdrop of an elderly lead counsel. You know, Joe wasn't a spring chicken at this point. You know, he was in his 70s. And there was a part of this trying to wait out Joe's biological clock until he couldn't bring it back. Essentially, what Turner and Rao needed to prove was that the CIA knew the experiments were incredibly dangerous and possibly life-threatening, and that the agency should have known that those in charge of MKUltra had a track record of reckless actions that risked lives. This went back to the death of Frank Olson, the CIA biochemist who had been slipped LSD by his colleagues and then days later either jumped or was pushed from a New York hotel window.

There was negligence throughout the operation, but to me, identifying the key actors at the CIA made the negligence just irrefutable because it was the same two individuals who were involved in the Olson death, Sidney Gottlieb and Robert Lashbrook, who had signed off on the funding for Cameron. To put it in kind of crude terms, after they killed Olson, they were given a green light to continue on with the work and hurt more people across the country and across the border into Canada. So that was key. The second is, this is a form of malpractice is what went on in Montreal. And you have to have what's called a standard of care legally to establish malpractice. So we did research and found that standard of care embodied in the Nuremberg Code.

And the first principle, the very first principle of the Nuremberg Code is the informed consent of the experimental subject is essential. There is no record that anybody in the group of people we represented ever consented to be part of any experiment at the Alamo Memorial Institute. Dr. Harvey Weinstein soon became more than just the son of one of the nine plaintiffs in the case He was a psychiatrist, the same profession as Dr. Cameron And he brought that valuable perspective But his expertise went much further went much further. Harvey was in a unique position to provide truly expert assistance to us in assembling the case. In fact, Harvey, indefatigable researcher, and found at the

archives of the American Psychiatric Association a speech where Cameron actually admits that they were testing brainwashing. They were playing with brainwashing techniques at the Allen Memorial Institute. It was vital evidence, the admission that what happened to these patients at the Allen was not about treating their psychiatric ailments, but about brainwashing experiments. Meanwhile, Rao and Turner were deposing the top CIA brass. That included Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA's chemist, the one Stephen Kinzer calls the poisoner-in-chief. We interrogated Gottlieb for three days,

and he was, you've got to understand, Gottlieb was an assassin. One of his first jobs at the agency was to go to the Congo with anthrax to try to assassinate Patrice Lumumba. This is not the usual kind of witness that you interrogate. And he was completely unrepentant. But if you interrogate these guys carefully, you can get key points out of them. And what Gottlieb admitted was they didn't lift a finger to make sure that work they were funding was done ethically. And he also said quite openly that the Olson death was something that he regretted very much, but it just happens. He's basically arguing that's just collateral damage for the greater good of his mission.

You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Wow. Up next was John Gittinger, the CIA's chief psychologist for clandestine services. John Gittinger was the program officer for the Cameron work when it first began. the program officer for the Cameron work when it first began. And before we went out to depose Gittinger, the CIA had repeatedly taken the position that Cameron came to them, that he was unsolicited, that it was just out of the blue that Cameron came to the CIA front in New York and asked for funding. When we deposed Gittinger, we asked him, how did you get to be Cameron? Oh, we were interested in the work he was doing. So did Cameron come to you? Oh, no, we went to him and solicited an application.

And that just exploded one of the principal defenses that the CIA had been asserting through the early years of the litigation. During this time, Rao and Turner reached out to Canada's embassy in Washington for assistance. Surely a sovereign nation would be outraged that the CIA funded the torture of its citizens on its own soil. They assumed the Canadian government would help them build their case. But they assumed wrong. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs.

We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. I heard about it, I think, first from the ambassador, to whom I was very close. Jeremy Kinsman was a young Canadian diplomat based in Washington when the lawsuit against the CIA first got underway. I was the minister for political affairs at the Canadian embassy. for political affairs at the Canadian embassy. And it's in that position I was in charge of all political,

international relations affairs, security, intelligence, legal affairs. Canada's ambassador to Washington was Alan Gottlieb. And I know, it's a bit confusing to introduce another Gottlieb into the story. Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA chemist who created MKUltra. There's no relation between the two. And we were very close. And so whenever there was something delicate to do or something he wanted done by somebody who understood him and where he was coming from, I would be the one who would get it. Ambassador Gottlieb, like David Orlikow, was also from Winnipeg. Alan was very devoted to his Winnipeg origins and always had an ear for anybody from Winnipeg,

and particularly anybody, I'll say, with a grievance. So at the embassy, Jeremy Kinsman became the point person on the MKUltra file, and eventually he went to lunch with Joe Rao. I'm Michel, I have to confess. I'm a progressive. And we progressives have our heroes. And Joe Rao was, to me, a really effective advocate of civil liberties in the United States, taking on a lot of cases.

So I paid a lot of deference to him. He had a sense of indignation about this case. Certainly he wanted me to share that indignation, but he wanted the Canadian government to share the indignation. So he basically expected the Canadian government to stand up for its citizens in this. You bet. And I kind of expected it too, you know. I thought that's what we were all working for. And so we proceeded from there. And it was a great disappointment to me that not everybody felt that way. Early on, when we were dealing with Jeremy Kinsman and the folks at the embassy here in Washington, the Canadian government was very supportive and helped us greatly to get secure information and gave us active support in trying to persuade the CIA to do right

by these people. That changed overnight when evidence that the CIA was not the only funding source for Dr. Cameron came to light. It turns out that the Canadian government, too, had been giving Cameron financial support. Over a period of three years, the CIA, through its front organization, sent more than $60,000 to Dr. Cameron, which is just over half a million dollars today. But a Vancouver journalist uncovered internal government documents that showed Canada had provided even more funding to Cameron than the CIA. The lead CIA lawyer told a reporter that when the case got to trial, he would, quote, wrap the Canadian government's involvement around Joe Rao's neck. So as soon as that became public, there was like a night and day change in approach.

public, there was like a night and day change in approach. I believe the ambassador, Alan Gottlieb, was the one that made it clear to us that the days of assistance were over. But that wasn't the worst blow. One of the time-honored ways to delay and obfuscate the facts is to appoint a commission. And the Canadian government did that. The Canadian government was not only not interested in helping build a case against the CIA, they were worried. Worried that they could now be sued as well. So Canada's Justice Minister asked George Cooper, a Halifax lawyer and former Conservative MP, to investigate whether Canada's funding of Dr Cameron could be considered illegal or improper. But Cooper was instructed to only interview government officials.

Dr Cameron had already died, and none of Dr Cameron's colleagues, nor his patients, or their families were even contacted. The Cooper Report was publicly released in May 1986. He found that Canada had, quote, no legal or moral responsibility for the activities of Dr. Ewan Cameron. He let the CIA off the hook too, writing that the agency was only involved in funding and not involved in instigating, directing, and controlling Cameron's work. This is Rao's reaction at the time the report was released. Everything that the CIA has said to me is mouthed by Cooper.

This could have been written by the CIA. I'm not saying it was because I don't know, but it certainly could have been written by the CIA. I'm not saying it was because I don't know, but it certainly could have been written by the CIA. Well, I'm shocked. No matter who wrote it, it's got to be fact. Ottawa had once threatened to take the U.S. to the International Court of Justice at The Hague, arguing that MKUltra's experiments conducted in Montreal violated Canada's sovereignty. Now, this Canadian report, which essentially exonerated the CIA,

was being used by the agency in a final effort to defeat the case. To try and get a better understanding of what was going on behind the scenes at the time, we submitted access to information requests to the Canadian government, and we found this. A letter to the Secretary of State of External Affairs from a legal advisor. I read it to Turner. So this would be February 13th, 1986, and its subject is the Orlikow case, Can the Cooper Report be Made Public?

And it says, quote, The conclusions of the Cooper Report, if they become public, could indeed have a negative effect on the Canadian plaintiff's case. It is possible and indeed likely that the report may be seen in some quarters as deliberate sabotage. Joe Rao and his clients might go so far as to accuse the Canadian government of collusion with the U.S. government in this matter. The whole Cooper saga still leaves a bad taste in my mouth because they sent guys down here and, you know, I opened my files up to them, worked with them for a substantial amount of time. And then you get this piece of crap.

It was very disappointing. One of the great disappointments during the lawsuit was the transformation of the Canadian government from a vigorous ally to a CIA toady. They carried water for the wrong side for the last few years of the case. And I'll never feel the same about the Canadian government again. When the case against the CIA finally wrapped up, it was thanks in a large part to politics. There were no Hollywood-esque closing remarks to the court, no speeches or banging of a gavel that would reverberate beyond the courtroom walls. The case, like so many other litigations, ended in a settlement.

There had been a change in administrations, and in a final effort to try to get our clients some compensation while they were still alive, we wrote to the new CIA director, Judge Webster. And Judge Webster was one of the people in government who was willing to cut through and override the people who just wanted to cover up and hide past misconduct. Judge Webster, as CIA director, personally intervened in the case and overruled the operations people at the CIA and agreed to a settlement. The CIA paid about $70,000 U.S. to each claimant. Canada threw in another $20,000 each to help cover legal costs.

When you win a case like the Orlico case, it's always bittersweet. Because there's always a feeling that you might have been able to get a little bit more. But you have to be realistic about these things. but you have to be realistic about these things. The problem is that our clients are victims for life. You know, I'm not a lawyer representing them for life. So I can walk away from this and do other things, which I did. But there's still a piece of my soul that feels the hurt of Val Orlico, Louis Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Mary Moreau, Jean-Charles Paget, Robert Logie,

Florence Langevin, and all the other people who we weren't able to include in the lawsuit. These were horrible things that were done. The lawsuit focused on only nine patients, but there were more than 100 women and men subjected to Dr. Cameron's extreme experiments. You have to remember that when you take a public interest case, you have to balance the public interest and the private interest like this. I spent my life trying to balance it.

Joe Rao. You can't take human beings like this and say they have to continue to suffer. They've suffered a great deal. I think we got enough for the public interest. Look, they're paying almost a million Canadians. That is pretty close to an admission of guilt. Oh, they won't say so. The CIA will just say I'm a big nuisance.

But you don't pay almost a million Canadians if you don't really feel that you were at fault. I do know that the CIA has blinked. And a blink is better than nothing. The lead plaintiff, Val Orlico. You see, I would have liked to have had them convicted in some way. I think that the settlement is an amount of money. I don't think it's any amount of money to the CIA.

I just think they flicked a flea off the sleeve of their jacket. You know, I didn't go in this for money. I went in this because I thought it was an outrageous thing that happened and I wanted to do something about it. And so at least we have come this far. None of the victims' families were really ever entirely satisfied with the settlement. And Turner called and said, well, Webster has offered something. There will be a settlement offer. Including Dr. Harvey Weinstein. Jim and I had sort of a dispute about this. And basically he said to me that there really was no choice,

that some of the people were older. My father was older and this was their last chance. And so I had to go along with it. I was appalled, actually, for two reasons. One was because the amount of the settlement was, given the fact that my father never worked again after age 48, and the fact that we'd lost everything, and the fact that I knew some of the other people who had been affected were losing their homes and had no money,

it was painful for me to see what the settlement was. The second thing was, if it was settled out of court, then there was no accountability. Then there was no precedent. Then this could happen again. And that is still something that is very painful to me. This could happen again. When the existence of MKUltra was first made public, the CIA was happy to have it dismissed

as a couple mad scientists experimenting with LSD. Crazy, fearful times in America it was during that Cold War. Strange things happened. Nothing really to see here. Time to move on. But did they? It's a powerful tool to have an intelligence agency Strange things happened. Nothing really to see here. Time to move on. But did they? It's a powerful tool to have an intelligence agency figure out how to break down a person's mind.

You could call it what you wanted, justify it in complicated ways. But at its core, isn't it really just torture? The techniques that were done at the Allen became used in torture techniques around the world. They were used in Argentina, they were used in Chile, they were used in Central America, they were used in Northern Ireland by the British against the supposed IRA terrorists. People certainly must be aware of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. On the next episode of Brainwashed, how MKUltra sheds light on the CIA's black sites. What's important to know is that torture is happening. It's happening right now as we talk, and that the techniques that are used were many of those were developed in the 50s at I'm really interested.

Brainwashed is written and produced by Lisa Ellenwood, Chris Oak, and me, Michelle Shepard. Sarah Melton is our associate producer. Sound design by Cecil Fernandez. Our digital producer is Emily Knau. The senior producer of CBC Podcasts is Tanya Springer, and our executive producer is Arif Noorani. Special thanks to Alina Ghosh, Keith Hart with CBC Radio Archives, and the CBC Reference Library.

For discussions, posts, videos, and pictures, find us on social media. Just search for CBC Podcasts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our theme song is Desert Novel by Key Witness. Brainwashed is produced by CBC Podcasts and The Fifth Estate. Another CBC Podcast you may like is Someone Knows Something.

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