'WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?'
How a Brit doctor created CIA torture techniques with sick human experiments on mental patients
BRIAN Turley stood with a black bag on his head, his fingers numb from supporting the weight of his whole body against a cold cell wall.
He'd been made to stand in the agonising stress position in a Northern Irish interrogation centre for hours as deafening white noise was blasted at him — techniques designed to psychologically break him into revealing information.
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Brian was one of 14 so-called "hooded men" who were rounded up by the British Army in 1971 when violence erupted during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
The horrific methods he was subjected to were designed to draw out confessions — and they're still being used around the world today.
Although hundreds of suspected terrorists had been put in internment in Northern Ireland, 14 were selected to be subjected to a series of psychological interrogation techniques developed by the CIA during the 1950s.
"I thought they were going to kill us," Brian said.
"Nine days of hell,"; Brian says, "That’s all it was, nine days of hell."
It was actually a Scottish psychiatrist, Dr Ewen Cameron, who led the research in developing the horrific methods in twisted experiments on the innocent patients in his care.
Cameron forced the patients in his care into radical "sensory deprivation" tests where they were restrained and blindfolded — and he even drugged them into comas for weeks.
Now a new documentary film, Eminent Monsters, seeks to tell how Cameron's sick experiments led to the creation of torture methods that are still used to this day in Guantanamo Bay.
CIA mind control
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Cameron's work as director of a world-leading psychiatric hospital, the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, cemented his reputation in history when he carried out evil experiments in the 1950s.
During the Cold War, the CIA set up a mind-control programme called MK Ultra designed to develop techniques for psychological warfare.
The Agency had 160 secret projects in 80 institutions — one of which was at the Allan.
There, Cameron was given a portion of the CIA's $25million research funding for human experimentation to develop his theory of "psychic driving".
'Why are you doing this to me?'
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His method, which was intended to help re-programme the minds of mentally ill patients, was to play the same message over and over again to patients administered with muscle relaxants and LSD.
Cameron also researched extensively in sensory deprivation, putting patients in chemically induced comas which could go on for weeks in the Allan's dreaded "sleep room".
Dr Harvey Weinstein wrote a book about his father's experiences at the Allan where he was put through the endless psychic driving technique — which included being put to sleep for two months.
When he left the horror hospital, he returned home a broken man in a sleepwalking state, barely able to stand or speak.
"When you look at the nurses’ notes, my father is interacting with the voice [being played repeatedly to him], saying ‘where is my voice’," Dr Weinstein said.
"And then very quickly my father is saying, 'Stop this, I want this to stop, why are you doing this to me?’"
Many of Cameron's patients, who were also subjected to aggressive electroconvulsive therapy, were left with lifelong damage to their mental health, even though his research had been intended to help them.
But the CIA found his techniques useful — they would become part of the infamous KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual, described by some as guide to torture.
'The only thing that makes sense is your panic and fear'
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In the 1970s, Cameron's grim techniques were used once again — this time by the British Army.
But instead of them being used on mental patients, they were used as methods for interrogating suspected terrorists in Northern Ireland.
Francie McGuigan, one of the hooded men, alleges being woken in up in his bed in the middle of the night with the butt of a rifle in his stomach.
He was detained and taken to a Northern Irish interrogation centre by helicopter with black bag on his head.
In his disorientation, he said: "The only thing that makes sense is your panic and fear”.
There, he says the skin on his bare feet was scraped off as he was dragged from room to room, being deprived of sleep and subjected to agonising stress positions while screaming white noise was blasted at him.
As the sensory deprivation fuelled his distress, Francie said the screaming sound began to take over his brain during his nightmare ordeal.
"I remember there came the acceptance that the end result of this is my death," he said.
"I actually remember looking forward to it because it’d stop the pain and it would stop this whole thing that had taken over my body and my mind."
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The horrific experience went on for days and Francie claims he was so distressed that he even tried to kill himself by repeatedly bashing his head against a radiator pipe that he was chained to.
Professor Tim Shallice, a neurophysiologist who interviewed the hooded men after their release, was damning about the experiences they'd been made to endure.
"It became clear that this was the scientific development of brainwashing techniques," he said.
"What you see in these techniques is the state devising methods to essentially destroy the personality of an individual by scientific means.”
In 1978, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that while the hooded men's treatment was "inhuman and degrading", it didn't amount to torture.
'The goal, psychologically, was to create the most dreadful conditions'
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And that ruling had enormous consequences — it was even cited in the so-called "Torture Memos", advising the CIA and US President on what might be permissible during the War on Terror.
Thirty years after the hooded men were subjected to Cameron's methods, they were used once again — this time on suspected al-Qaeda members after 9/11 in 2001.
American interrogators called the brutal practices "enhanced interrogation techniques" and they were used at secret "black site" prisons — and at the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Camp.
Mark Fallon was appointed as the Department of Defense's Chief Investigator.
The goal, psychologically, was to create the most dreadful conditions you could establish for a human being
Mark Fallon on Guantanamo Bay
"The goal, psychologically, was to create the most dreadful conditions you could establish for a human being," Fallon said of Guantanamo.
"And the enhancement to that, if there was an enhancement, was based on a programme called ‘learned helplessness’.”
This was a psychological principle learned from an experiment electrocuting dogs which found that the fundamental survival instincts of an animal could be undermined if you tortured them enough.
Degraded in the dark
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Mohamedou Ould Slahi, the son of a Mauritanian camel herder, was arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay as a suspected al-Qaeda member.
There, he too was subjected to Cameron's techniques of sleep deprivation, along with new interrogation methods.
In one case, he was shackled to the floor in a dark room illuminated solely by a strobe light as the Drowning Pool song "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor" was loudly blasted at him all day.
He was also sexually assaulted while restrained — but it wasn't until his captors told him they'd arrest and rape his mum that his resolve broke.
Although Slahi signed a confession, it was ultimately deemed to be the result of torture and he was released without charge — after 14 years of detainment.
'You will break yourself down'
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British Pakistani Moazzam Begg was another suspect kept in Guantanamo — he was arrested and subjected to two years of psychological interrogation after travelling to Afghanistan in 2001 with his wife and children to help set up a school.
During his detention, which included 22 months in solitary confinement, he could hear a screaming woman in the next room that he was told was his wife being tortured.
"Slowly but surely, it eats away at you," Begg said.
"You start to tell yourself you’re not a father, you’re not a son, you’re not a husband, you’re just the number they’ve given you. Because if you start thinking outside of that, you will break yourself down."
He too was released without charge after three years.
General Stephan Xenakis, a psychiatrist who met many of Guantanamo Bay's inmates, says its brutal use of Cameron's techniques and others didn't even help the War on Terror.
"There is absolutely no evidence, absolutely not a shred of evidence, that these tactics used on these men really gave us any intelligence that was important or useful to our country," he said.
A decade after Obama ordered its closure, Guantanamo Bay is still open to this day.
Eminent Monsters: A Manual for Modern Torture was released in the UK of February 16.
US President Donald Trump announces Guantanamo Bay will remain open during his State of the Union speech to the House of Representatives
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