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Speaker 1: Okay, so imagine this the ultimate Cold War well fantasy. Right,

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we're talking about the perfect assassin.

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Speaker 2: But not just any assassin, not someone you can just

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buy off.

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Speaker 1: Or threatning exactly, not someone you blackmail or you know,

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coerce into submission. This is something much more frightening. A

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blank slate, a completely blank slate, a person who's loyalties,

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their memories, their entire identity clean, systematically wipe, clink gone. Yeah,

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what's left is just this empty vessel, ready to be

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programmed with a new mission, a new past, whatever their

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handler needs.

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Speaker 2: It's pure spy fiction. It's the premise of the Manurian candidate,

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really a controllable agent who is high functioning, lethal, and

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at the end of the day, completely disposable.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like fiction, it does.

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Speaker 2: But for Western intelligence in the early nineteen fifties, especially

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the CIA, this wasn't a movie plot. This was a

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desperately sought, heavily funded, and highly secret operational objective.

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Speaker 1: And that, for you, is exactly where we jump into

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our deep dive. Today. We are unpacking the chilling reality

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behind that fantasy. We're focusing specifically on M Culture Subprojects

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sixty eight.

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Speaker 2: Right, These were the CIA funded mind control experiments that unfolded.

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And this is the shocking part for many people at

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the Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal, Canada, in.

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Speaker 1: Canada, not some secret black site, a respected.

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Speaker 2: Hospital, a very respected hospital. And this ran from nineteen

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fifty three all the way to nineteen sixty three under

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the direction of an internationally acclaimed psychiatrist, doctor Ewan Cameron.

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Speaker 1: What stands out immediately, and I think it's something you

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have to hold on to throughout this entire story, is

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the profound, just the disturbing disconnect. Yes, on one hand,

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you have the intelligence objective, which we can read in

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the actual d classified CIA files. They wanted a sharp,

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functional asset, a weapon of precision.

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Speaker 2: Someone who could carry out complex tasks, who could blend

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in exactly.

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Speaker 1: But the reality of Cameron's experimental process it produced functional humans, that's.

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Speaker 2: The only way to describe it. Emotionally crippled, permanently disabled

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subjects who were suffering from catastrophic, irreversible memory loss. They

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weren't sophisticated assassins. They were they were broken people.

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Speaker 1: So for this deep dive, we've stacked up some incredibly

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dense and frankly disturbing material to make sure we cover

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every painful angle. We're drawing heavily on legal documents, heartbreaking

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patient accounts, especially.

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Speaker 2: Those detailed in Ann Collins's pivotal book In the Sleep Room.

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It's essential reading on this absolutely.

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Speaker 1: We've also got the declassified CIA files that outline the

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explicit goals of m cultural Subprojects sixty eight, and some

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really rigorous historical and legal analyses like those. You find

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an anatomy of atrocity.

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Speaker 2: And our mission here is not just to recount the facts,

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not just to list what happened. It's to uncover the specific,

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granular details of how scientific ambition and desperation.

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Speaker 1: Amplified by this overwhelming geopolitical fear.

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Speaker 2: Right how all of that led to the utter violation

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of one of the most fundamental medical ethics.

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Speaker 1: Known to humanity, Premium non nosair.

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Speaker 2: First of all, do no harm, a rule that doctor

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Cameron just cast aside in his pursuit of what he

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publicly called the holy grail of twentieth century psychiatry, a

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somatic cure.

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Speaker 1: It's a terrifying study in how easily institutional claim and

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a greater good narrative can mask the most horrific abuse. Okay,

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So let's unpack that initial environment, the atmosphere that really

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provided the oxygen for this kind of horror to take

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root in an institution.

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Speaker 2: You have to set the stage for the early nineteen fifties.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we're talking about a period defined by intense global paranoia.

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The West, and particularly the US intelligence community, was genuinely

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panicked about what the Communist block was supposedly doing with psychology.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, that geopolitical tension had really metastasized into what was

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perceived as a mind control gap, a psychological arms.

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Speaker 1: Rate, the mind control gap. I like that phrasing.

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Speaker 2: Western intelligence was haunted by Cold War losses, shifts in

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global loyalty, and they became deeply, deeply alarmed by the

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apparent brainwashing successes they were attributing to the Soviets and

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the Chinese. They saw it as this secret psychological super weapon.

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Speaker 1: And they had specific examples that were fueling this panic. Right,

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It wasn't just a vague fear, No, it was very specific.

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Speaker 2: They were looking at these highly public, very dramatic show

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trials in Hungary. The case of the Catholic leader Joseph

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Cardinal men Senti is a famous one. He appeared on trial,

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completely defeated, almost zombie like during his confession.

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Speaker 1: To people in the West, that just didn't look like

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a normal confession. It looked coerced in some new, terrifying

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way exactly.

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Speaker 2: That public display was deeply unsettling. But the panic it

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really crystallized around the u US prisoners of war from

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the Korean War. When a number of these American soldiers

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collaborated or confens to war crimes, or just seemed to

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adopt Communist ideology. The intelligence community couldn't reconcile this. It

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didn't fit with traditional methods of coercion or torture.

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Speaker 1: So they jump to a conclusion.

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Speaker 2: They concluded that the Communist must have some kind of secret,

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sophisticated scientific technique, a literal brainwashing mechanism that could control

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minds and just flip loyalties on a switch.

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Speaker 1: So the pressure to develop a counter weapon or even

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their own version of this weapon became incredibly intense. It

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wasn't just about catching up anymore.

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Speaker 2: No, it was seen as vital for national security, a

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defense against this invisible psychological threat.

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Speaker 1: What's fascinating here and just chilling in retrospect, is how

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the Western response mirrored the high stakes, technologically driven effort

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of World War Two.

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Speaker 2: You mean the Manhattan Project exactly.

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Speaker 1: There was this firm, almost desperate belief that the solution

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to this supposed psychological threat lay in American technology and

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scientific shortcuts.

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Speaker 2: A quick fix, a technological silver bullet.

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Speaker 1: They wanted a psychological Manhattan Project, an instant erase button

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for something as complex as human psychology. And political loyalty

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is what led directly to the formation of in culture, and.

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Speaker 2: In that atmosphere, that desperate quest for a technological fix

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entered doctor Ewan Cameron.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and when you read his history before all this,

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before nineteen fifty three, he seems like a legitimate giant

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in his field, it makes his later actions almost impossible

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to reconcile.

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Speaker 2: His reputation was initially impeccable. He was born in Scotland

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in nineteen oh one, died in nineteen sixty seven, immigrated

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to North America and achieved you know, international acclaim. He

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wasn't some fringe scientist working.

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Speaker 1: Out of a shed, No, he was the establishment.

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Speaker 2: He was foundational in the reform of psychiatric hospitals. He

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championed the open door system, trying to move away from

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these archaic lockdown institutions, and notably he established the world's

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very first psychiatric day hospital in Montreal back in nineteen

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forty six, a.

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Speaker 1: True pioneer by all appear.

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Speaker 2: Usual establishment figure, and to underscore his influence, in nineteen

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sixty one, right in the middle of these dark experiments,

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he becomes the founding president of the World Psychiatric Association

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the WPA.

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Speaker 1: That context is just it's vital because it highlights this

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terrifying discrepancy it does.

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Speaker 2: Here you have a man of immense professional standing pursuing

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what he calls the holy grail, the somatic cure. But

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his ambition completely overrode the most basic ethical imperative that

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governed his entire profession.

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Speaker 1: His research, the psychic driving and deep patterning. It was

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all presented as this radical, aggressive form of psychiatric treatment.

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It was meant to cure severe mental illness by completely

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rebuilding the personality.

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Speaker 2: But that pursuit, that desperate need to achieve the cure

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needed vast, uninterrupted funding. And that's where this clandestine political

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network comes in and enables the most unethical practices you

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can imagine.

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Speaker 1: So let's detail that funding structure, because it's a brilliant

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case study in institutional denial and covert operations.

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Speaker 2: Well, Cameron was working at the Allen Memorial Institute, which

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again had significant public and institutional trust, and his work

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was supported by substantial public funds from the Canadian government.

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Speaker 1: How substantial will be talking here.

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Speaker 2: Sources indicate grants estimated at up to half a million dollars,

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and this is between nineteen fifty and nineteen sixty.

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Speaker 1: Five, which was a lot of money back then.

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Speaker 2: A huge amount. But it's important to note that later

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inquiry suggested that Canadian officials, while funding the institution were

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reportedly not aware of the full unethical scope of what

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was happening with their money.

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Speaker 1: Plausible deniability or perhaps just willful.

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Speaker 2: Ignorance could be either, but that plausible deniability was key.

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Speaker 1: But the really toxic money stream, the one tied directly

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to this blank slate assassin objective that came covertly from

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the United States.

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Speaker 2: Yes, this was the CIA's m Culture program. Specifically, they

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were funneling money into what was designated Subprojects sixty eight.

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Speaker 1: And they didn't just write them a check from Langley.

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Speaker 2: Oh No, it was far more sophisticated. This CIA funding

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was routed through a specially created front organization. It was

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called the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, and

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that started in nineteen fifty.

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Speaker 1: So this whole elaborate system was an arbitrary It was

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designed for one.

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Speaker 2: Thing, maximum deniability for everyone, which raises the big question.

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Speaker 1: Did doctor Cameron, the revered president of the World Psychiatric Association,

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know he was being funded by the American spy agency.

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Speaker 2: The sources they indicate he may not have known the

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ultimate CIA source. The agency used these conduitsies front groups

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specifically to create layers of separations.

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Speaker 1: So if anything went wrong.

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Speaker 2: If anything went wrong, the reputation of the outside researchers,

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people like Cameron, would be the ones in jeopardy. The agency, meanwhile,

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could maintain secrecy and legal distance.

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Speaker 1: But whether he knew the final source or not, it's

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almost secondary, isn't it.

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Speaker 2: It is the fact is that these funds facilitated a

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decade of radical human experimentation rooted in the geopolitical fear

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that had gripped the intelligence community. The money enabled the work,

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and the work was directly aligned with the CIA's most

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bizarre and desperate Cold War one.

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Speaker 1: The idea that a world renowned doctor was being used

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knowingly or not to achieve a spy agency's dark objectives.

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That he was essentially a black ops research tool.

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Speaker 2: It's a powerful statement on how state security interests can

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corrupt even the highest echelons of science.

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Speaker 1: And the CIA didn't want someone on the fringe. They

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needed that cover of medical legitimacy exactly.

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Speaker 2: They needed the rigorous institutional support that Cameron, as head

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of a major institute provided. The institution itself lent credibility

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to the outrageous and that allowed the most extreme experiments

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to proceed under the guise of therapeutic research.

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Speaker 1: Now here's where it stops being an abstract Cold War

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story and becomes a horrifying violation of human rights. The

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central methodology that Cameron developed it was a two part

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process he called depatterning and psychic driving.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and we need to spend some serious time detailing

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what these terms actually meant for the human beings on

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the receiving end.

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Speaker 1: So let's start with depatterning.

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Speaker 2: Depatterning was the annihilation phase. It was a brutal, radical

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assault designed quite literally to wipe the subject's mind completely.

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Speaker 1: Clean to achieve that tabula rossa.

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Speaker 2: The blank slate, exactly the thing the CIA was asking for.

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And then psychic driving was the attempted reconstruction, the phase

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where new desirable behaviors or even entirely new personalities were

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supposed to be implanted through just NonStop repetition.

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Speaker 1: And crucially, this extreme regimen wasn't applied to captured spies

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or political prisoners.

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Speaker 2: No, and this is one of the most disturbing parts.

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It was often applied to patients who had been admitted

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for easily treatable issues, people seeking help for postpartum depression, anxiety,

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general neurotic complaints. They came in seeking care and they

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received an assault.

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Speaker 1: And the assault is the right word. Let's break down

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what that assault consisted of.

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Speaker 2: It was comprehensive and sustain over long periods. First, patients

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were subjected to chemically induced sleep. This quickly became known

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by the staff simply as the sleep room.

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Speaker 1: And what did that mean? The sleep room?

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Speaker 2: It meant they were kept in a chemically induced coma

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for weeks at a time, administered these powerful cocktails of

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sedative drugs.

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Speaker 1: Weeks we had to let that sink in. Not days

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of rest, but staggering durations of chemical subjugation often combined

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with sensory.

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Speaker 2: Isolation, and we have specific documented cases that illustrate just

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how extreme this was. Take Gene Steel, one of the

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primary victims whose family fought for justice for years. She

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was put under for a breath taking twenty nine days

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and one series of treatments eight nine days, and that

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was followed by an eighteen day stretch in a second series.

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That's nearly seven weeks spent NonStop in a chemical twilight.

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Speaker 1: Unbelievable.

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Speaker 2: And this relentless drug induced coma. It wasn't the only component.

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It was often combined with massive electro shocks rounds of

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electro convulsive therapy or ECT that went far, far beyond

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any standard therapeutic levels.

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Speaker 1: We should pause and explain what massive really means here.

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I think most people think of ECT as a last

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resort treatment for severe depression control old shocks. How is

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Cameron's approached.

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Speaker 2: Different Well, at the time, a standard course of ECT

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for severe depression might involve say, six to twelve sessions

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over a few weeks. Cameron's regime was exponentially more aggressive.

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How So, it was administered alongside the drug induced comas,

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often multiple times a day. The purpose was crystal clear

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to induce amnesia and cognitive breakdown. The intensity and frequency

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were designed for destruction, not remediation. He was using ect

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as a blunt weapon to shatter the personality. It was

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guaranteed to cause brain damage.

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Speaker 1: So you have the comas the mass of electricity. And

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then there was the experimental drug cocktail.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and this included massive doses of LSD twenty five.

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We know the CIA in general was fascinated by LSD

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as a potential mind control tool or a truth serum.

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Cameron was using it aggressively to break down the patient's

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existing psychological barriers.

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Speaker 1: The victim accounts here must be just horrific.

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Speaker 2: They're crucial to understanding the terror of it. Consider Velma

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or Leco, another victim who received LSD injections on fourteen

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separate occasions. She gave testimony detailing the harrowing physical and

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psychological sensation.

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Speaker 1: What did she describe?

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Speaker 2: She described feeling like her bones were melting during the trip. Later,

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when reflecting on the disorientation and the terror of the

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combined treatments, she said she felt like a squirrel trapped

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in a cage. This wasn't medical intervention. It was prolonged

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chemical torture aimed at total disorientation.

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Speaker 1: So once the patient was utterly depatterned or you know,

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as the outcome, really proved functionally disabled and suffered from

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massive amnesia, then Cameron moved to the next phase.

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Speaker 2: The attempted reprogramming phase, psychic driving.

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Speaker 1: What did that entail?

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Speaker 2: Psychic driving was dependent entirely on relentless, NonStop repetition of

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verbal signals. Cameron believed that by recording these highly negative

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self referential messages that echoed the patient's perceived failings and

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then playing them constantly, he could clear the mental slate

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for the positive programming that was supposed to come later.

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Speaker 1: Can you give us a sense of what on these tapes?

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The content of these messages, because they weren't just neutral phrases.

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Speaker 2: No, they were deeply personally invasive and destructive. Our sources,

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like the Search for the Manchurian candidate, recount the specifics.

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Think about a patient, one patient who was forced to

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listen to tapes saying things like you let your mother

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and father treat you as a child. You don't seem

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to be able to manage your children, You have not

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been able to keep your husband interested sexually.

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Speaker 1: My god, it's hard to even imagine being subjected to

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a non stop recording reinforcing your deepest insecurities and personal failures.

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Speaker 2: And the mechanism for delivering this was just as intrusive.

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The tapes were played non stop through speakers that were

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mounted in football helmets worn by the patients. Football helmets, yes,

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to guarantee the messages were heard even when they were

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barely conscious. The intensity was overwhelming, and.

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Speaker 1: When patients resisted, because of course, the human mind is

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going to resist that kind of annihilation. What was Cameron's

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clinical response?

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Speaker 2: This is where his disregard for ethics becomes just so pronounced.

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The sources note that when patients naturally resisted this relentless

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negative input, you know, by banging their heads against the

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walls in distress.

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Speaker 1: Which seems like a totally sane reaction to an insane.

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Speaker 2: Situation completely, But Cameron's solution wasn't to stop the torment.

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He adapted the process. He put them back into a

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drug induced coma or a chemically induced sleep, guaranteeing the

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continuous repetition was maintained. He made sure the brain had

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absolutely no respite from the negative indoctrination. He literally medically

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enforced the violation of their minds, and.

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Speaker 1: They sometimes added physical pain into the mix to try

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and make the psychological trauma stick.

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Speaker 2: They did sources recount treatments where wires were used to

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administer shocks to the patient's legs at the very end

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of a negative.

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Speaker 1: Message Pavlovian conditioning.

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Speaker 2: Presumably yes, using pain to reinforce that negative association. So

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this combination chemical subjugation, physical assault via ect, psychological torture

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via relentless negative loops, and sometimes physical pain reinforcement, it

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shows a complete system designed for coercive control, not therapeutic recovery.

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Speaker 1: And the scale of this we aren't talking about one

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or two isolated.

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Speaker 2: Incidents, Oh No, this was a sustained institutional effort. The

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treatment spanned a full decade from nineteen fifty three to

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nineteen sixty three, and the numbers are damning. Fifty three

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patients received what he called complete amnesia depatterning in just

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the years nineteen fifty eight and nineteen fifty nine alone.

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This was a continuous, large scale violation of medical effics

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carried out in a revered institution under the umbrella of

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Canadian public funding and CIA black ops money.

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Speaker 1: So we've detailed this horrific process. Now let's pivot to

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the ultimate goal of the people who were signing the checks,

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the CIA. We need to analyze the precise strategic objective

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of sub Projects sixty eight. Okay, they weren't just funding

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a general psychiatric study. They were looking for a blank

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slate that could be operationally useful.

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Speaker 2: That's the absolutely key distinction. And the CIA documents they

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reveal a mandate for precision that stands in stark chilling

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contrast to Cameron's crude brute force methodology. The primary hypothesis was,

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as we said, erasing the existing personality to create hyper

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suggestibility the tabulaaroscigal. But the documents go deeper than.

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Speaker 1: That, and the operative word for the CIA was functional.

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They were not interested in human.

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Speaker 2: Wreckage precisely, they were explicitly searching for chemical agents and

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methodologies that would and I'm courting directly from the declassified

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objectives for Subprojects sixty eight break down the ongoing patterns

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of behavior more rapidly, more transitorially, with less damage to

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the perceptive and cognitive capacities of the individual than the

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present physiological agents Wow.

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Speaker 1: That specific phrase less damage to the perceptive and cognitive capacities.

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That really hammers home the chilling precision they were after.

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Speaker 2: It does. A sophisticated spy or an assassin needs their

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brain to function perfectly. They need judgment, coordination, the ability

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to process complex information even if their foundational identity and

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loyalty have been completely overwridden.

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Speaker 1: Cameron's depatterning, which relied on massive trauma, was just too

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blunt of an instrument for this specific intelligence need.

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Speaker 2: It creates a paradox, doesn't it. They needed the memories gone,

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but the operating system had to stay intact. Cameron's method

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achieved the first part, but it catastrophically destroyed the second.

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Speaker 1: And the CIA wasn't just observing this process from afar.

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They were actively directing the research by dictating which chemical

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tool should be explored to try and perfect this process.

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Speaker 2: That's right. The CIA mandated the exploration of specific chemical

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agents intended to quote inactivate the patient during the period

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of driving while simultaneously maintaining the subject at a higher

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level of activity than standard deep sedation would allow.

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Speaker 1: So they wanted a kind of waking receptive state during

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the psychic driving not just a.

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Speaker 2: Coma, exactly a twilight state of maximum suggestibility.

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Speaker 1: And the specific chemicals they listed our tane, anectine, bulbocapanine, qurr,

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and of course LSD twenty five, what was the ractionale

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behind this this cocktail of compounds.

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Speaker 2: Each chemical had a distinct and terrifying role in the

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control strategy. LSD twenty five, as we know, was for

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inducing severe disorientation and weakening psychological defenses, but the others

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were for physical and psychological control during that driving phase.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so what about bulbocapnine.

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Speaker 2: Bulbocap nine is known to induce catatonia. It would render

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the patient physically immobilized, but possibly still mentally aware, making

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any kind of resistance impossible.

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Speaker 1: And nactineing cur Though.

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Speaker 2: Unfamiliar, they're muscle relaxes or paralytics, essentially chemical restraints. They

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would prevent any physical resistance like the head banging against

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the helmets that we talked about.

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Speaker 1: And the last one, ourtaine.

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Speaker 2: Ourtaane is an anticholinergic. It's often used to manage symptoms

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like tremors, but its dissociative effects were also likely of

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great interest in maintaining that twilight state of consciousness.

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Speaker 1: So the intelligence requirement was basically the creation of a

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controllable zombie who could perform covert operations, and the chemicals

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were the toolkit to ensure immobilization and maximum suggestibility during

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the reprogramming phase.

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Speaker 2: Precisely and you can see how Subprojects sixty eight fit

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into the wider, incredibly dark scope of the entire M

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culture strategy. It wasn't just about the blank slate, It

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was about mastering total mind manipulation through chemical and physical means.

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Speaker 1: What were some of those other goals?

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Speaker 2: The overall M culture goal included the search for substances

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that will promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness, and even materials

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that would result in physical disablement. Cameron's process was the

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most aggressive, most sustained attempt at achieving this total behavioral

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breakdown and subsequent controllable manipulation.

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Speaker 1: So, given that sophisticated mandate for precision, the specific requirement

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for minimal cognitive damage, what was the final operational outcome

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when you judge it against the cia'sone metrics.

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Speaker 2: It was a complete operational failure for intelligence purposes. That

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the project was devastatingly effective at psychological destruction. Yes, it

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produced subjects with catastrophic amnesia and functional regression, but it

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failed utterly in the required second step creating controllable, high

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functioning assets.

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Speaker 1: The blank slate was strategically.

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Speaker 2: Useless, utterly useless for intelligence purposes. The person emerging from

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the treatments was mentally and functionally disabled. They required significant care.

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They weren't ready for covert operations. Even Cameron himself, by

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nineteen sixty three, finally had to admit in his published

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work that his treatment did not work as intended.

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Speaker 1: But here's the chilling connection, and this ties back to

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why these methods are still so relevant today. The operational

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failure to create a spy doesn't mean the techniques themselves

431
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weren't effective in a more destructive.

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Speaker 2: Sense, and that is the ultimate dark irony. While the

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techniques failed to create a functional asset, they proved devastatingly

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effective at identity annihilation and creating a kind of trauma

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based dependency.

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Speaker 1: You mean the trauma itself became a tool.

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Speaker 2: Exactly the trauma induced by deep patterning, the sensory deprivation,

438
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the chemical confusion, the personality breakdown. It resulted in a

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state of extreme psychological vulnerability and sources confirmed that this

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very technique, though a failure for creating assets, would later

441
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influence and be utilized extensively in the development of sophisticated

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torture and enhanced interrogation techniques used on prisoners decades later,

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techniques designed specifically to achieve identity breakdown and induce learned helplessness.

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Speaker 1: So the failure to create a spy doesn't diminish the

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human cost, it only compounds the ethical failure. This is

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where the historical data really collides with the agonizing reality

447
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of individual lives. The consequences for the patient subjected to

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deep patterning weren't abstract medical terms. They were immediate, profound,

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and often irreversible.

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Speaker 2: The most common, and you could argue the most devastating

451
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clinical outcome was profound retrograde amnesia. And this wasn't just

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forgetting a few recent days. Patients suffered massive life altering

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memory deficits. They lost significant portions of their life history,

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their sense of continuity, their personal idea.

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Speaker 1: How far back are we talking.

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Speaker 2: The clinical records documented that some patients lost the ability

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to recall up to two full years of pre treatment memories.

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Speaker 1: Two years.

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Speaker 2: Think about the scope of that loss that includes memories

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of raising young children, key career moments, marriages, the very

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fabric of one's personal narrative, the thing that grounds us

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in reality. The description in the sleep Room is heartbreaking.

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Many were left virtual strangers to themselves and their families.

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Speaker 1: So it wasn't just the memory of facts that was

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stripped away, it was the very competence needed to navigate

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the world.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, this manifested as severe functional regression and disability. Victims

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lost basic life competencies. We have documentation of a patient

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who owned a successful, long established business who forgot how

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to run it entirely, while others forgot how to talk,

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requiring them to relearn fundamental skills that they had possessed

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since childhood.

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Speaker 1: Imagine checking into a hospital seeking help for say, common anxiety,

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00:25:00,279 --> 00:25:02,720
and leaving unable to recall who your children are or

475
00:25:02,720 --> 00:25:04,119
how to operate your own tongue.

476
00:25:04,240 --> 00:25:08,880
Speaker 2: The sources confirmed they suffered severe personality deterioration. They were

477
00:25:08,960 --> 00:25:12,799
left more emotionally unstable, more anxious, more damage than when

478
00:25:12,839 --> 00:25:15,279
they first sought help. The depression they came in with

479
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:19,319
was replaced by a profound trauma based disability.

480
00:25:18,720 --> 00:25:20,119
Speaker 1: And there were physical effects too.

481
00:25:20,319 --> 00:25:23,279
Speaker 2: Oh yes, the effects were physiological as well, resulting from

482
00:25:23,279 --> 00:25:27,119
the severe chemical and physical stress. Long term issues included

483
00:25:27,160 --> 00:25:32,200
persistent urinary incontinence, a constant, painful reminder of the violation

484
00:25:32,319 --> 00:25:33,119
they had endured.

485
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:36,880
Speaker 1: The personal stories, though, are, would truly bring this abstract

486
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:40,680
medical horror into sharp focus. Let's go back to Gene Steele,

487
00:25:40,759 --> 00:25:44,200
whose daughter Alison Steele, fought for years for justice and

488
00:25:44,240 --> 00:25:45,440
gave public testimony.

489
00:25:45,839 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 2: Alison Steel recalled that her mother was never able to

490
00:25:48,799 --> 00:25:51,920
really function as a healthy human being after the experiments.

491
00:25:52,160 --> 00:25:55,440
She suffered from this pervasive nervousness and anxiety, and perhaps

492
00:25:55,519 --> 00:25:59,200
most heartbreakingly, she lost the simple human capacity to joke

493
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:00,000
or to laugh.

494
00:26:00,200 --> 00:26:03,880
Speaker 1: That wasn't just depression. That's a complete emotional annihilation.

495
00:26:04,160 --> 00:26:07,640
Speaker 2: It is the doctors had succeeded in erasing her emotional self,

496
00:26:07,920 --> 00:26:11,440
even if they didn't create the programmable asset the CIA wanted.

497
00:26:11,759 --> 00:26:14,519
Speaker 1: And there's this detail that Elson Steele recounted that is

498
00:26:14,799 --> 00:26:16,240
genuinely chilling.

499
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:18,680
Speaker 2: The preprogrammed statement, yeah.

500
00:26:18,440 --> 00:26:22,480
Speaker 1: She remembers her mother suddenly randomly blurting out these seemingly

501
00:26:22,519 --> 00:26:26,240
preprogrammed phrases like we must do the right thing.

502
00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:30,440
Speaker 2: Relics of the psychic driving tapes buried deep in her subconscious,

503
00:26:30,480 --> 00:26:32,799
manifesting under stress decades later.

504
00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:37,240
Speaker 1: Those fragmented phrases are just their evidence of the structural

505
00:26:37,319 --> 00:26:40,759
damage that was done to her psyche. The identity was shattered,

506
00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:43,799
and these little pieces of indoctrination were just left behind,

507
00:26:44,039 --> 00:26:45,279
haunting her years later.

508
00:26:45,599 --> 00:26:48,759
Speaker 2: The victims themselves said it. They felt the doctors had

509
00:26:48,759 --> 00:26:52,119
stripped you of your soul, leaving them emotionally crippled. The

510
00:26:52,160 --> 00:26:56,160
psychological regression, particularly the loss of the ability to recognize

511
00:26:56,200 --> 00:27:00,119
their own family members cemented that long term trauma, the

512
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:03,079
emotional and cognitive destruction was total.

513
00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:05,279
Speaker 1: And it's so important for you, the listener, to understand

514
00:27:05,279 --> 00:27:08,759
that these victims were often marginalized and really gas lid.

515
00:27:08,839 --> 00:27:11,400
For years, they were struggling to make sense of this

516
00:27:11,519 --> 00:27:15,960
inexplicable amnesia and these personality changes, long before the truth

517
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:18,119
of the CIA's involvement ever became public.

518
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:21,240
Speaker 2: Exactly, they were told their worsening symptoms were just their

519
00:27:21,279 --> 00:27:24,720
own severe mental illness, or that these radical treatments were

520
00:27:24,759 --> 00:27:28,240
necessary for their own good. The complete lack of informed

521
00:27:28,240 --> 00:27:31,240
consent meant they had no framework to understand the violation.

522
00:27:31,839 --> 00:27:35,279
So the trauma was compounded by institutional silence and denial.

523
00:27:35,680 --> 00:27:38,359
Speaker 1: The devastation of sub Projects sixty eight was kept secret

524
00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:41,799
for years, buried under these layers of CIA black funding

525
00:27:42,079 --> 00:27:45,839
and institutional deference. The pursuit of justice for these victims

526
00:27:45,839 --> 00:27:49,279
has been a long, painful and frankly ongoing fight against

527
00:27:49,279 --> 00:27:52,319
systemic roadblocks and institutional denial.

528
00:27:52,039 --> 00:27:54,880
Speaker 2: And the revelation process. It began in the United States,

529
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:57,839
not in Canada, and Culture I was exposed in nineteen

530
00:27:57,839 --> 00:28:01,960
seventy five following the Church Committee investigates into intelligence abuses,

531
00:28:02,559 --> 00:28:05,759
and then the nineteen seventy seven Senate hearings brought Cameron's

532
00:28:05,799 --> 00:28:09,480
activities and the devastating results into public view. That was

533
00:28:09,519 --> 00:28:12,720
the watershed moment, often two decades after the fact, when

534
00:28:12,759 --> 00:28:15,240
many victims finally began to piece together what had actually

535
00:28:15,279 --> 00:28:17,920
been done to them in a trusted psychiatric setting.

536
00:28:17,799 --> 00:28:22,440
Speaker 1: And immediately the ethical breach was just undeniable, monumental. You

537
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:24,839
had the Nuremberg Code, which was established way back in

538
00:28:24,920 --> 00:28:29,359
nineteen forty eight, specifically in response to horrific human experimentation

539
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:30,440
during World War Two.

540
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:35,839
Speaker 2: And that code mandated voluntary, informed consent for any human experimentation.

541
00:28:36,599 --> 00:28:39,480
Speaker 1: This is a crucial point the Nuremberg Code wasn't some

542
00:28:39,559 --> 00:28:44,240
obscure text. It was a universally recognized ethical standard established

543
00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:48,079
by the victorious Allied powers to prevent exactly these kinds

544
00:28:48,119 --> 00:28:49,440
of government sanctioned abuses.

545
00:28:49,680 --> 00:28:53,279
Speaker 2: Cameron's work applied to unwitting, vulnerable patients who had often

546
00:28:53,359 --> 00:28:56,200
checked themselves in for routine help. It didn't just bend

547
00:28:56,240 --> 00:29:02,200
the rules, It egregiously violated this foundational, global recognized ethical principle.

548
00:29:01,920 --> 00:29:06,359
Speaker 1: And yet legal accountability was nearly impossible to achieve, especially

549
00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:09,160
against the CIA, which had held the purse strengths correct.

550
00:29:09,480 --> 00:29:12,240
Speaker 2: The Canadian victims who attempted to sue the US government

551
00:29:12,279 --> 00:29:16,799
faced monumental legal roadblocks. The CIA successfully argued that Canadian

552
00:29:16,799 --> 00:29:20,240
courts simply lacked jurisdiction over the US government. A common strategy,

553
00:29:20,400 --> 00:29:23,200
a very common strategy, and it was facilitated by the

554
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:26,720
project's use of that front group for funding. The agency

555
00:29:26,799 --> 00:29:30,079
hid behind jurisdictional immunity and national security, and.

556
00:29:30,039 --> 00:29:33,519
Speaker 1: This strategy was was buttressed by legal precedents right like

557
00:29:33,559 --> 00:29:37,079
the nineteen eighty five Supreme Court case ciav. Simps.

558
00:29:37,279 --> 00:29:42,920
Speaker 2: Exactly that case effectively granted the agency broad deference in

559
00:29:42,960 --> 00:29:47,240
withholding information related to intelligence sources and methods, So the

560
00:29:47,279 --> 00:29:51,000
CIA used every tool in its legal arsenal to minimize

561
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:52,720
exposure and liability.

562
00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:56,079
Speaker 1: But eventually, after decades of fighting, a small group of

563
00:29:56,119 --> 00:29:57,799
plaintiffs did manage to settle.

564
00:29:57,880 --> 00:30:00,759
Speaker 2: They did. Nine plaintiffs settled with the CIA in nineteen

565
00:30:00,799 --> 00:30:03,880
eighty eight, but the compensation was pitifully minimal when you

566
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:07,079
weighed against the irreparable harm A lump sum of seven

567
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:09,000
hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

568
00:30:08,799 --> 00:30:11,640
Speaker 1: Which comes out to over eighty thousand dollars each right.

569
00:30:11,799 --> 00:30:14,400
Speaker 2: A settlement that was often accepted because the victims, who

570
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:17,839
were already financially and psychologically devastated, simply ran out of

571
00:30:17,920 --> 00:30:20,720
energy and resources to continue fighting the legal might of

572
00:30:20,720 --> 00:30:21,440
the US government.

573
00:30:21,559 --> 00:30:23,880
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, what was the response from the Canadian government? The

574
00:30:24,039 --> 00:30:26,640
government that had provided the public funding and oversight for

575
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:28,759
the institution equally disappointing.

576
00:30:29,240 --> 00:30:31,599
Speaker 2: It was an effort to distance itself from any moral

577
00:30:31,720 --> 00:30:35,559
or legal responsibility. It demonstrated what the sources called a

578
00:30:35,640 --> 00:30:37,839
patronizing deference to US authority.

579
00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:41,799
Speaker 1: The official Canadian inquiry, the nineteen eighty six Cooper Report,

580
00:30:41,839 --> 00:30:42,680
what did that find?

581
00:30:43,079 --> 00:30:45,799
Speaker 2: It concluded that Canadian officials were not aware of the

582
00:30:45,839 --> 00:30:48,880
full extent of the experiments. This became the basis for

583
00:30:48,920 --> 00:30:53,119
their limited liability. However, the lawyer who represented the victims

584
00:30:53,240 --> 00:30:56,279
later described that report as one of the shabbiest, most

585
00:30:56,400 --> 00:30:59,480
mean spirited official documents ever produced.

586
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 1: Implying that the inclusion of ignorance was either an evasion

587
00:31:02,279 --> 00:31:05,200
or the result of a shallow investigation designed to protect

588
00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:05,720
the government.

589
00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:10,799
Speaker 2: Precisely, and the compensation offered by Canada was arbitrary and insufficient.

590
00:31:11,039 --> 00:31:14,079
It created yet another layer of pain for the survivors.

591
00:31:14,079 --> 00:31:17,119
How So well, in nineteen ninety two, the Canadian government

592
00:31:17,160 --> 00:31:20,839
offered payments of one hundred thousand Canadian dollars, but only

593
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:25,839
to seventy seven former patients. Crucially, hundreds of others were denied.

594
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:27,720
Speaker 1: And what grounds were they denied.

595
00:31:27,759 --> 00:31:30,400
Speaker 2: Often for the grotesque reason that they were deemed not

596
00:31:30,519 --> 00:31:33,839
to have been depatterned enough to warrant payment. Imagine the

597
00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:36,759
trauma of being told that your suffering wasn't severe enough

598
00:31:36,839 --> 00:31:40,920
to count. This kind of bureaucratic cruelty just reaffirmed the

599
00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:43,920
government's calculated denial of liability and.

600
00:31:43,799 --> 00:31:47,680
Speaker 1: That systemic failure of accountability. Yeah, it continues today, though

601
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:49,079
in slightly different forms.

602
00:31:49,200 --> 00:31:54,039
Speaker 2: Yes, Al's and Steel Jean Steele's daughter, She recently pursued

603
00:31:54,079 --> 00:31:57,400
a separate legal challenge, and like many others who persist,

604
00:31:57,799 --> 00:32:01,079
she quietly received a C one hundred one thousand dollars payment,

605
00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:03,960
But this was usually in exchange for dropping her legal

606
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:06,480
action and signing a non disclosure agreement.

607
00:32:06,720 --> 00:32:10,119
Speaker 1: So these quiet, often secretive settlements are still being used

608
00:32:10,119 --> 00:32:14,640
by institutions to minimize public accountability and avoid a full reckoning.

609
00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:17,920
Speaker 2: Of the past exactly. But despite the destruction of CIA records,

610
00:32:17,920 --> 00:32:21,920
the assertion of jurisdictional immunity, and the Canadian government's calculated denial,

611
00:32:22,279 --> 00:32:24,279
the fight is far from over. It has to be

612
00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:29,000
the legacy of human wreckage demands recognition and compensation. There

613
00:32:29,079 --> 00:32:32,119
is still an ongoing class action lawsuit filed in twenty

614
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:36,079
nineteen and authorized by Quebec's Superior Court. It's targeting the

615
00:32:36,079 --> 00:32:40,920
Canadian institutions directly involved, specifically the McGill University Health Center

616
00:32:41,279 --> 00:32:44,319
and the Canadian government. It confirms that the victims and

617
00:32:44,359 --> 00:32:47,440
their families are still seeking systemic justice for this decade

618
00:32:47,440 --> 00:32:50,599
of abuse perpetrated in the name of Cold War science.

619
00:32:51,440 --> 00:32:53,920
So if we connect this entire history to the bigger

620
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:57,440
picture sub Project sixty eight really stands as a horrifying

621
00:32:57,480 --> 00:33:00,480
and profoundly relevant case study, a case study in the

622
00:33:00,559 --> 00:33:03,839
dangers of scientific hubris fueled by state security interests.

623
00:33:04,039 --> 00:33:08,079
Speaker 1: The extreme pursuit of total psychological control led not to mastery,

624
00:33:08,359 --> 00:33:11,160
but to the catastrophic destruction of human identity.

625
00:33:10,839 --> 00:33:14,839
Speaker 2: Exactly the attempt to create the perfect weapon, the controllable assassin.

626
00:33:14,920 --> 00:33:17,799
It resulted in the utter violation of every medical and

627
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:20,319
ethical constraint that was established in the modern era.

628
00:33:20,559 --> 00:33:24,440
Speaker 1: And doctor Cameron's the image post revelation transformed completely. He

629
00:33:24,519 --> 00:33:27,319
went from being the WPA president and allotted reformer to

630
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:30,240
being the incarnation of brainwashing.

631
00:33:29,799 --> 00:33:33,599
Speaker 2: All because of that confirmed, documented CIA connection.

632
00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:37,680
Speaker 1: It's a sad reflection on society that these victims who

633
00:33:37,720 --> 00:33:42,440
suffered irreversible cognitive damage were so often marginalized and silenced.

634
00:33:42,559 --> 00:33:45,319
They were deemed credible by and this is a quote,

635
00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:50,160
nobody accept the fringe dwellers, while the institutions just closed ranks.

636
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:53,759
Speaker 2: The institutional power of the CIA and the Canadian government

637
00:33:53,920 --> 00:33:57,440
ensured that the scientific abuses remained shrouded in secrecy and

638
00:33:57,480 --> 00:34:01,880
denial for decades, and that just made recovery and justice

639
00:34:01,920 --> 00:34:05,000
exponentially harder for everyone involved.

640
00:34:04,519 --> 00:34:08,320
Speaker 1: And ultimately the project was an operational failure for intelligence purposes.

641
00:34:08,800 --> 00:34:11,400
It produced no controllable, high functioning.

642
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:14,800
Speaker 2: Assets, but the underlying research, the techniques of identity annihilation

643
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:19,880
and psychological breakdown. They proved horrifyingly effective as tools of torture.

644
00:34:20,360 --> 00:34:23,559
The fact that the same concepts used for depatterning sensory

645
00:34:23,599 --> 00:34:28,320
isolation prolonged chemical incapacitation trauma induction that these later formed

646
00:34:28,360 --> 00:34:31,519
the basis for techniques used in interrogation settings long after

647
00:34:31,559 --> 00:34:33,159
the project was officially shut down.

648
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:35,599
Speaker 1: It confirms the destructive power of Camera's.

649
00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:38,000
Speaker 2: Work it does, and this raises a really important question

650
00:34:38,039 --> 00:34:40,119
for us to ponders as we conclude this deep dive.

651
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:45,000
The Nuremberg Code was created specifically to prevent atrocities like these.

652
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:49,360
It demanded voluntary consent. So when state security and scientific

653
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:53,800
ambition clash and accountability is systematically avoided through the destruction

654
00:34:53,840 --> 00:34:56,880
of records and the assertion of legal immunity, how can

655
00:34:56,920 --> 00:35:00,719
a society ensure that the imperative to treat, or perhaps

656
00:35:00,719 --> 00:35:04,320
more broadly, the imperative to secure the nation never again

657
00:35:04,360 --> 00:35:07,320
outweighs the basic ethical principle to do no harm.

658
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 1: It's a question that remains painfully institutionally relevant today. You

659
00:35:11,079 --> 00:35:13,480
want to know what you think. What is the responsibility

660
00:35:13,480 --> 00:35:16,679
of government institutions when their funded research goes so radically

661
00:35:16,679 --> 00:35:17,880
off the rails. Let us know