in the newspaper publico.es
"They taught us psychological tactics: how to study the fears and weaknesses of a prisoner. Have to get up and stay standing, not let him sleep, bare and insulated, put rats and cockroaches in his cell, give rotten food, including dead animals, throw cold water on the face, changing the temperature of their environment. " The CIA was forced to admit the truth of the words that Florencio Caballero, one of the most brutal torturers Honduran intelligence agency, said in 1988 to The New York Times.
The CIA had become a teacher and instigator of the Latin American dictatorships. Pressed by reporters, issued the Kubark manual, which was studied by apprentice torturers. It appeared the key elements of research by a psychiatrist resident in Canada named Ewen Cameron. Connection between the agency and Cameron remained in obscurity until the former patients of the psychiatrist reported to the agency and the government to fund some research that violated medical ethics. After paying a compensation of over $ 750,000, the CIA acknowledged his involvement.
New ways to fight
In the fifties, appearing on television prisoners by American soldiers in Korea denouncing capitalism alerted the secret services of Western countries. These events showed that the Communists had found a way to "brainwash" the captives. Therefore, the June 1 1951, various intelligence agencies met in Montreal with the apparent aim to prepare soldiers to withstand in the event of capture. In addition, launched a program known as MKULTRA, which aimed to find new ways to win the Cold War without resorting to arms.
The project is led Sidney Gottlieb, chemical and military psychiatrist who began administering LSD and other substances to innumerable subjects to find new special interrogation techniques. Gottlieb tried to prisoners, drug addicts, prostitutes, employees and agents of the CIA. Some went mad, others suffered irreversible psychological damage, according to reports, at least one of these experiments worked murió.En Donald Hebb, director of the Department of Psychology at McGill, who won a scholarship to investigate the isolation and sensory deprivation.
Following his studies, he informed the CIA that the methods used in individuals generated partial loss of memory and assimilation of new behaviors. Hebb joined the investigation and justified his attitude: "We realized that we were helping to develop a immoral interrogation techniques, whose power was tremendous." Not everyone shared these reservations. His colleague, Ewen Cameron, arch enemy, anti-intellectual, considered the destruction of mind was "the first step to healing."
destruction as a cure
Cameron, Scottish-born American psychiatrist, public recognition peaked in 1954 when he was on the doctor who testified about the health of Rudolf Hess. Cameron had moved away from the standards of conventional therapy and was based on an innovative principle: to destroy the mind and make tabula rasa on which to impose new patterns of behavior.
In 1957 he was awarded its first grant from the CIA. The hospital became Allan Memorial Institute in jail and treated patients with minor mental disorders, including depression postpartum, who became guinea pigs. Increased the use of electroshock, reaching 360 downloads per patient in 30 days, applied techniques of sensory deprivation, isolation and disruption of sleep cycles. He also used drugs to break the identity of patients. Cameron died in 1967, but the tragic fruit of his research continues today.
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