The CIA Didn’t Just Torture, It Experimented on Human Beings

The CIA Didn’t Just Torture, It Experimented on Human Beings

Reframing the CIA’s interrogation techniques as a violation of scientific and medical ethics may be the best way to achieve accountability.

Lisa Hajjar December 16, 2014

Human experimentation was a core feature of the CIA’s torture program. The experimental nature of the interrogation and detention techniques is clearly evident in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s executive summary of its investigative report, despite redactions (insisted upon by the CIA) to obfuscate the locations of these laboratories of cruel science and the identities of perpetrators.

At the helm of this human experimentation project were two psychologists hired by the CIA, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. They designed interrogation and detention protocols that they and others applied to people imprisoned in the agency’s secret “black sites.”

In its response to the Senate report, the CIA justified its decision to hire the duo: “We believe their expertise was so unique that we would have been derelict had we not sought them out when it became clear that CIA would be heading into the uncharted territory of the program.” Mitchell and Jessen’s qualifications did not include interrogation experience, specialized knowledge about Al Qaeda or relevant cultural or linguistic knowledge. What they had was Air Force experience in studying the effects of torture on American prisoners of war, as well as a curiosity about whether theories of “learned helplessness” derived from experiments on dogs might work on human enemies….

The “war on terror” is not the CIA’s first venture into human experimentation. At the dawn of the Cold War, German scientists and doctors with Nazi records of human experimentation were given new identities and brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip. During the Korean War, alarmed by the shocking rapidity of American POWs’ breakdowns and indoctrination by their communist captors, the CIA began investing in mind-control research. In 1953, the CIA established the MK-ULTRA program, whose earliest phase involved hypnosis, electroshock and hallucinogenic drugs. The program evolved into experiments in psychological torture that adapted elements of Soviet and Chinese models, including longtime standing, protracted isolation, sleep deprivation and humiliation. Those lessons soon became an applied “science” in the Cold War.

During the Vietnam War, the CIA developed the Phoenix program, which combined psychological torture with brutal interrogations, human experimentation and extrajudicial executions. In 1963, the CIA produced a manual titled “Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation” to guide agents in the art of extracting information from “resistant” sources by combining techniques to produce “debility, disorientation and dread.” Like the communists, the CIA largely eschewed tactics that violently target the body in favor of those that target the mind by systematically attacking all human senses in order to produce the desired state of compliance. The Phoenix program model was incorporated into the curriculum of the School of the Americas, and an updated version of the Kubark guide, produced in 1983 and titled “Human Resource Exploitation Manual,” was disseminated to the intelligence services of right-wing regimes in Latin America and Southeast Asia during the global “war on communism.”

In the mid-1980s, CIA practices became the subject of congressional investigations into US-supported atrocities in Central America….
http://www.thenation.com/article/193185/cia-didnt-just-torture-it-experimented-human-beings#

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Mind-control survivors claim US Government tortures children

Mind-control survivors claim US Government tortures children
Judy Byington November 25, 2013

….According to survivors, MKULTRA human experimentation involves using children as sex slaves, exposing them to radiation, drugs, hypnosis, plus mental and physical abuse including dislocating joints; food, water and sensory deprivation, electroshock and implantation of electronic devices to further access victims throughout their lives.

Congress supposedly shut down the program in 1964, though many survivors responding to the 2007 Extreme Abuse Surveys might disagree. http://extreme-abuse-survey.net

….These quotes from those who grew up subjected to extreme abuse paid for on our taxpayer dollar can be viewed in a 2013 petition, Request for a Congressional investigation, CIA mind-control of children. You are invited to sign the petition at: http://www.change.org/petitions/request-congressional-investigation-cia-mind-control-of-children

http://www.examiner.com/article/mind-control-survivors-claim-us-government-tortures-children

Request Congressional Investigation: CIA Mind-control of Children – 1977 and 1995 Hearing Videos and Transcripts

– Why are Survivors of CIA Mind-control Claiming Children are Tortured Today?
– Congressional Hearings and Mind Control 1977 and 1995
(links to transcripts and videos of the hearings)

Petitioning The President of the United States

Request Congressional Investigation: CIA Mind-control of Children          

Petition by Child Abuse Recovery

In 1977 and 1995 Congressional hearings survivors of CIA mind-control verified that children are being raped and tortured in mind-control experiments. Congress voted not to release results of their investigation and now appears to allow the program to continue. Help us save these abused children. Why are Survivors of CIA Mind-control Claiming Children are Tortured Today?  View the documented history of CIA mind-control including prior Congressional investigations at http://www.ChildAbuseRecovery.com

To:
The President of the United States
The U.S. Senate
The U.S. House of Representatives
The Governor of UT
The UT State Senate
The UT State House
Judy Byington, MSW, LCSW, ret., Child Abuse Recovery
Utah Senator Mike Lee, Utah Senator
We are outraged that survivors were tortured during childhood by US government and military employees performing brainwashing experiments. Survivors claim that our tax payer dollars are still being used to torture children in these illegal mind-control experiments. We request a Congressional investigation.

Sincerely,
[Your name]

http://www.change.org/petitions/request-congressional-investigation-cia-mind-control-of-children
http://goo.gl/dmkBf0

Why are Survivors of CIA Mind-control Claiming Children are Tortured Today?
Judy Byington Saratoga Springs Child Abuse Examiner

September 6, 2013

Survivors of CIA mind-control are sending letters to Capitol Hill requesting a Congressional investigation of the CIA mind-control program that began in 1950 and supposedly shut down in 1964. Survivors hope to bring public awareness for children still subjected to this illegal human experimentation.

http://www.examiner.com/article/why-are-survivors-of-cia-mind-control-claiming-children-are-tortured-today?cid=db_articles
http://goo.gl/rKHOrj

Congressional Hearings and Mind Control 1977 and 1995
(links to transcripts and videos of the hearings)

Congressional Human Radiation Experiment Hearings 1995:
Mind Control Survivors
http://www.tulanelink.com/mind/valeriewolf_box.htm

http://goo.gl/Wrwzid

http://www.tulanelink.com/mind/interview_04a.htm  http://www.tulanelink.com/mind/tulane_role_04a.htm  http://www.whale.to/b/wolf.html

Valerie Wolf Interview
Valerie Wolf, M.S.W. New Orleans Presentation at Believe the Children Conference, Chicago – April 1997
Mind Control Survivors’ Testimony at the Human Radiation Experiments Hearings: Valerie Wolf — Claudia Mullen — Christine deNicola http://www.whale.to/b/wolf1.html

CKLN-FM Mind Control Series — Part 3
Mind Control Survivors’ Testimony at the Human Radiation Experiments Hearings: Valerie Wolf — Claudia Mullen — Christine deNicola  http://www.whale.to/b/wolf3.html

video of 1995: http://vimeo.com/26848915

videos of 1995 and 1997: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6F2BC0851B3D6A4E  http://goo.gl/fLZg5D

1997 ACHES-MC video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi8YpYBkYGo&list=PL6F2BC0851B3D6A4E&index=4  http://goo.gl/o0He9F

1977 Congregational MK-ultra hearings: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/marks.htm

http://goo.gl/jmNl1W
John Marks

http://web.archive.org/web/20130210215221/http://www.michael-robinett.com/declass/c000.htm

http://goo.gl/Ah1lmJ

1977 congressional hearings:

Project MKULTRA, The CIA’s Program Of Research In Behavioral 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 NINETY-FIFTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION
AUGUST 3, 1977 http://lacavernadefilosofia.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/mk11ultra_senatehearings-el-senado-americano-es-informado-del-mk-ultra-en-ingles-documento-oficial.pdf

http://goo.gl/X3pRfK

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/13inmate_ProjectMKULTRA.pdf

http://goo.gl/VN18Sx

Congressional Hearings and Mind Control 1977 and 1995

Congressional Human Radiation Experiment Hearings 1995:
Mind Control Survivors
http://www.tulanelink.com/mind/valeriewolf_box.htm

http://goo.gl/Wrwzid

http://www.tulanelink.com/mind/interview_04a.htm http://www.tulanelink.com/mind/tulane_role_04a.htm http://www.whale.to/b/wolf.html

Valerie Wolf Interview
Valerie Wolf, M.S.W. New Orleans Presentation at Believe the Children Conference, Chicago – April 1997
Mind Control Survivors’ Testimony at the Human Radiation Experiments Hearings: Valerie Wolf — Claudia Mullen — Christine deNicola http://www.whale.to/b/wolf1.html

CKLN-FM Mind Control Series — Part 3
Mind Control Survivors’ Testimony at the Human Radiation Experiments Hearings: Valerie Wolf — Claudia Mullen — Christine deNicola  http://www.whale.to/b/wolf3.html

video of 1995: http://vimeo.com/26848915

videos of 1995 and 1997: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6F2BC0851B3D6A4E http://goo.gl/fLZg5D

1997 ACHES-MC video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi8YpYBkYGo&list=PL6F2BC0851B3D6A4E&index=4 http://goo.gl/o0He9F

1977 Congregational MK-ultra hearings: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/marks.htm

http://goo.gl/jmNl1W
John Marks

http://web.archive.org/web/20130210215221/http://www.michael-robinett.com/declass/c000.htm

http://goo.gl/Ah1lmJ

1977 congressional hearings:

Project MKULTRA, The CIA’s Program Of Research In Behavioral 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 NINETY-FIFTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION
AUGUST 3, 1977 http://lacavernadefilosofia.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/mk11ultra_senatehearings-el-senado-americano-es-informado-del-mk-ultra-en-ingles-documento-oficial.pdf

http://goo.gl/X3pRfK

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/13inmate_ProjectMKULTRA.pdf

http://goo.gl/VN18Sx

Survivors Ask Congress to Investigate CIA Mind-control of Children, Former Radio One DJ Chris Denning re-arrested by Jimmy Savile detectives

Survivors Ask Congress to Investigate CIA Mind-control of Children
Judy Byington Saratoga Springs Child Abuse Examiner  September 11, 2013

From ages four through fourteen Chris DeNicola testified that she was subjected to radiation, drugs, electrodes, plus endured sexual and other abuses. The torture was directed by head of the CIA mind-control program, a Dr. Green. Tests were designed to split her young mind into parts, create multiple personalities and train her to be an assassin. http://goo.gl/tGuKg8

Survivors of CIA mind-control experiments are requesting Congress to investigate. The petition can be signed by going to: http://www.change.org/petitions/request-congressional-investigation-cia-mind-control-of-children

….According to survivors, the torture of children is continuing today. There are 21 mind-control survivors, therapists and supporters including Actress and Activist Roseanne Barr who signed a letter to members of Congress asking for an investigation of the CIA mind-control program. http://www.ChildAbuseRecovery.com

….The CIA employed doctors and psychologists to monitor its “enhanced interrogation” of detainees at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other US detention sites. These professionals may even have committed unlawful human experimentation according to a medical ethics watchdog, the Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). Their concerns are recorded in an April 2013 leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

….The Nuremberg Code states that voluntary consent of subjects is essential and that all unnecessary physical and mental suffering should be avoided. Two years after the Nuremberg Code 195 countries ratified the Geneva convention which banned medical experiments on prisoners. Evidently, children haven’t been accorded this same basic protection. Survivors of CIA mind-control talk of being sold by relatives into the CIA mind-control program to suffer a childhood of rape, torture and witness to murder.
http://www.examiner.com/article/survivors-ask-congress-to-investigate-cia-mind-control-of-children

Former Radio One DJ Chris Denning re-arrested by Jimmy Savile detectives
THE police squad behind the Jimmy Savile sex abuse investigation have re-arrested former Radio One DJ Chris Denning, it emerged this evening.
By: Dion Dassanayake Published: Tue, September 10, 2013

Operation Yewtree, the squad set up after allegations against the Jim’ll Fix It star emerged, re-arrested 72-year-old Denning at an East London address.
The former radio presenter, who was bailed until October, was originally arrested on June 3 2013 on suspicion of sexual offences and then released….
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/428399/Former-Radio-One-DJ-Chris-Denning-re-arrested-by-Jimmy-Savile-detectives

Japanese mayor: Wartime sex slaves were necessary, Oxford exploitation trial: Guilty verdicts over child rapes

Japanese mayor: Wartime sex slaves were necessary
By MALCOLM FOSTER Associated Press 5/14/13

TOKYO (AP) — An outspoken nationalist mayor said the Japanese military’s forced prostitution of Asian women before and during World War II was necessary to “maintain discipline” in the ranks and provide rest for soldiers who risked their lives in battle.

The comments made Monday are already raising ire in neighboring countries that bore the brunt of Japan’s wartime aggression and have long complained that Japan has failed to fully atone for wartime atrocities.

Toru Hashimoto, the young, brash mayor of Osaka who is co-leader of an emerging conservative political party, also said that U.S. troops currently based in southern Japan should patronize the local sex industry more to help reduce rapes and other assaults.

Hashimoto told reporters on Monday that there wasn’t clear evidence that the Japanese military had coerced women to become what are euphemistically called “comfort women” before and during World War II….

Historians say up to 200,000 women, mainly from the Korean Peninsula and China, were forced to provide sex for Japanese soldiers in military brothels.

China’s Foreign Ministry criticized the mayor’s comments and saw them as further evidence of a rightward drift in Japanese politics under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“We are appalled and indignant about the Japanese politician’s comments boldly challenging humanity and historical justice,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a daily media briefing. “The way they treat the past will determine the way Japan walks toward the future. On what choice Japan will make, the Asian neighbors and the international community will wait and see.”

Asked about a photo of Abe posing in a fighter jet with the number 731 — the number of a notorious, secret Japanese unit that performed chemical and biological experiments on Chinese in World War II — Hong again urged Japan not to whitewash history so as to improve relations with countries that suffered under Japanese occupation.

“There is a mountain of definitive iron-hard evidence for the crimes they committed in the Second World War. We hope Japan will face and contemplate their history of aggression and treat it correctly,” Hong said.

Abe posed, thumbs up, in the aircraft during a weekend visit to northeastern Japan.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry expressed disappointment over what it called a senior Japanese official’s serious lack of historical understanding and respect for women’s rights. It asked Japan’s leaders to reflect on their country’s imperial past, including grave human rights violations, and correct anachronistic historical views….
http://news.yahoo.com/japanese-mayor-wartime-sex-slaves-were-necessary-042050746.html

describes crimes
Oxford exploitation trial: Guilty verdicts over child rapes 14 May 2013  Seven members of a sex grooming ring have been convicted of abusing children from Oxford.

An Old Bailey jury heard six girls were drugged and suffered sadistic abuse while aged between 11 and 15.

The court heard victims were plied with alcohol and drugs before being forced to perform sex acts. Some had also been beaten, burnt and threatened.

Nine men had denied charges including rape, arranging child prostitution and trafficking between 2004 and 2012.

Two were acquitted of all charges….

The abuse began in Oxford but some of the victims would be later taken around the country to be offered to other men who were in contact with the gang.

Victim: “I was scared to say no”

The court heard how the men identified vulnerable girls for abuse then groomed each one of them until they were under the control of the gang….

The Old Bailey was told the key members of the group used and abused the six victims in a systematic and organised sex trafficking ring over eight years until their arrest in 2012.

The court heard how the men identified vulnerable girls for abuse and then groomed each one of them until they were under the control of the gang.

They were then each either abused by the men themselves, given to their friends or offered at a price to others who were not on trial.

The youngest girl to be targeted was 11-years-old. The girls were mostly chosen because their unsettled or troubled lives made them easier to manipulate….

One of the victims had complained to police twice but no one was charged.

A care home manager, who was later sacked, refused to pay her taxi fare when she returned after running away and the 14-year-old was driven back to Oxford where she was raped….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-22438623

MK-ULTRA Violence Or, how McGill pioneered psychological torture

MK-ULTRA Violence Or, how McGill pioneered psychological torture

Features | September 6th, 2012  Written by Juan Camilo Velasquez

Today, many journalists, doctors, and the general public see the Allan Memorial Institute in Royal Victoria Hospital as the cradle of modern torture, a cradle built and rocked by Scottish-born Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron. To the patients of Dr. Ewen Cameron, our university was the site of months of seemingly unending torture disguised as medical experimentation –– an experimentation that destroyed their lives and changed the course of psychological torture forever.

Cameron’s experiments, known as MK-ULTRA subproject 68, were partially funded by the CIA and the Canadian government, and are widely known for their use of LSD, barbiturates, and amphetamines on patients. In the media, they were known as the “mind control” studies done at McGill and were reported as a brainwashing conspiracy from the CIA and the Canadian government….

This story begins on June 1, 1951 at a secret meeting in the Ritz Carlton Hotel on Sherbrooke. The purpose of the meeting was to launch a joint American-British-Canadian effort led by the CIA to fund studies on sensory deprivation. In attendance was Dr. Donald Hebb, then director of psychology at McGill University, who received a grant of $10,000 to study sensory deprivation. It would be fifteen years after this meeting at the Ritz that Cameron would disastrously pick up where Hebb left off.

Dr. Hebb paid a group of his own psychology students to remain isolated in a room, deprived of all senses, for an entire day. In an attempt to determine a link between sensory deprivation and the vulnerability of cognitive ability, Hebb also played recordings of voices expressing creationist or generally anti-scientific sentiments – clearly, ideas psychology students would oppose. However, the prolonged period of sensory deprivation made the students overly susceptible to sensory stimulation. Students suddenly became very tolerant of the ideas that they had readily dismissed before. As a history professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Alfred McCoy described in his book, A Question of Torture, that during Hebb’s own experiments “the subject’s very identity had begun to disintegrate.” One can only fathom the cognitive effects of Hebb’s work….

MK-ULTRA Subproject 68

Cameron’s research was based on the ideas of “re-patterning” and “re-mothering” the human mind. He believed that mental illness was a consequence of an individual having learned “incorrect” ways of responding to the world. These “learned responses” created “brain pathways” that led to repetitive abnormal behaviour.

Dr. Cameron wanted to de-pattern patients’ minds with the application of highly disruptive electroshock twice a day, as opposed to the norm of three times a week. According to him, this would break all incorrect brain pathways, thus de-patterning the mind. Some call it brainwashing; Cameron called it re-patterning….

Step 1: To prepare them for the de-patterning treatment, patients would be put into a state of prolonged sleep for about ten days using various drugs, after which they experienced an invasive electroshock therapy that lasted for about 15 days. But patients were not always prepared for re-patterning and sometimes Cameron used extreme forms of sensory deprivation as well….

Step 2: Following the preparation period and the de-patterning came the process of “psychic driving” or re-patterning, in which Cameron would play messages on tape recorders to his patients. He alternated negative messages about the patients’ lives and personalities with positive ones; these messages could be repeated up to half a million times….

The experiments done at McGill were part of the larger MK-ULTRA project led by Sidney Gottlieb of the CIA. In 1963, the year in which MK-ULTRA ended, the CIA compiled all the research into a torture manual called the Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation Handbook. Yes, a “torture manual” that would eventually define the agency’s interrogation methods and training programs throughout the developing world….

Following 9/11, the war on terror and the generalized fearmongering that ensued, the Bush administration changed the rules of the game out of concern for homeland security. Then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved special practices that included the “use of isolation facility for up to thirty days.” All of a sudden, the U.S. allowed the use of torture methods developed just up University….

Only decades later, in the 1980s, did past victims speak about their experiences, and by the nineties, the lawsuits began to pile up. In response, the Canadian government launched “The Allan Memorial Institute Depatterned Persons Assistance Plan,” which provided $100,000 to each of the former patients of Dr. Ewen Cameron. The compensation came from a recommendation by lawyer George Cooper, in which he clarified that the Canadian government did not have a legal responsibility for what happened, but a moral responsibility.
http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2012/09/mk-ultraviolence/