WAVING goodbye to her dad as he was hospitalised for excruciating headaches, Julie Tanny never imagined it would be the last time she saw him as the loving father she knew.
Three months later, a different person came home – cold, physically abusive, and unable to recognise his own children.
Charles Tanny pictured when he was a loving dad
Charles pictured after the experiments appearing cold and distantCredit: Julie Tanny
Julie pictured with her mum and sisterCredit: Julie Tanny
An empty husk of his former self, Julie’s dad Charles had undergone mental and physical torture at the hands of CIA-backed psychiatrist Dr Donald Ewen Cameron.
Charles and hundreds of others were electrocuted, fed until they were comatose, and forced to listen to jarring taped messages on repeat for hours on end.
Dr Cameron’s tests at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal were part of a top-secret series of mind-control experiments – code-named MKUltra.
From the 1950s, the 20-year Cold War-era project used members of the public in brainwashing trials as the CIA sought a way to control people’s thoughts.
Julie, 71, directly blames Dr Cameron and the MKUltra program for her dad’s declining and eventual death.
Charles suffered two massive heart attacks and a which left him unable to talk before he died in 1992.
She has vowed to get justice – and is the lead plaintiff in a decades-long battle to get fair compensation for the trauma she and other victims’ families have faced.
Before the horrors at the Allan Memorial Institute, Charles was a loving dad who would take his kids to sports games and out to different places every week, Julie said.
Julie told The Sun: “We were very close with my father, every weekend we went somewhere together, the four of us – and that just ended.”
But her life was flipped upside down when Charles came home a different person.
She said: “He was a very, attentive, involved father… and that completely vanished.”
Life became “extremely difficult” with her new father, she explained.
And this was a common thread between victims’ children, Julie added, explaining that parents would be “completely out of it” following tests.
Many victims had their drinks unknowingly spiked with LSD, while others were electrocuted in an attempt to shock them into vulnerability.
Julie Tanny’s parents pictured before Charles’ testsCredit: Julie Tanny
Julie Tanny is battling to get compensation for the emotional damage she and others sufferedCredit: Facebook
Dr Donald Ewen Cameron was the lead psychiatrist running the testsCredit: Wikipedia Commons
The tests have been compared to atrocious experiments carried out by – as Nazi and Axis Power doctors were recruited to help the program.
The CIA destroyed much of the evidence related to the programme, which ran from 1953-1973 across several different countries – but more harrowing details have emerged over the decades.
Referring to many other children of victims, she added: “The after-effects of the experiments were just horrendous.
“It’s still, to this day, 70 years later, very difficult for a lot of families to deal with.
“One of the hardest things was getting people to do interviews, because after all these years, they still can’t talk about it.”
Julie said those subjected to “strong shock treatments” often suffered cardiac problems.
“There were people who died from heart attacks during the procedures, and my father didn’t die on the table, but what happened to him was he had two massive heart attacks, and then a massive stroke at 59,” she said.
“He couldn’t speak, write, read, or communicate in any way after that happened.”
What was MKUltra?
MKUltra was a top-secret mind-control programme run by the CIA during the Cold War.
It officially ran from 1953 to 1973, at the height of the Red Scare and fears of Soviet brainwashing.
The CIA wanted to control minds – to force confessions, manipulate behaviour, and even create obedient “perfect spies”.
They tested drugs, hypnosis, sleep deprivation, and psychological torture on people.
The program became infamous for giving people LSD without their knowledge to see how it affected them.
Many test subjects didn’t know they were part of experiments – including ordinary citizens, prisoners, and hospital patients.
The CIA set up secret apartments where people were lured in and secretly dosed while being watched.
One scientist, Frank Olson, plunged to his death from a hotel window after being unknowingly given LSD by one of his colleagues.
The CIA destroyed many MKUltra records after the experiments ended – meaning the full truth may never be known.
The program was exposed in the 1970s during investigations which shocked the public.
Popular Netflix show Stranger Things was inspired by MKUltra – incorporating themes of human experimentation, government conspiracy, and the Cold War.
The disturbing tests were therefore not only responsible for a haunting change in personality – but also making him “very sick”, Julie said.
“He couldn’t communicate at all… it was just really empty,” she said.
Charles was subjected to the notorious de-patterning tests.
In these sick experiments, patients would be forced to listen to the same message over and over again in a bid to make them either believe what they were hearing or reduce their personality to a clean slate.
At one point in the files, scientists explained that Charles needed to be brainwashed further because he was still asking about his family.
Julie said: “In my father’s files it talks about [how] they’re gonna put him in for another month, because they haven’t gotten him to where they want him to go yet… because he’s still referring to his former life and asking to see his wife.”
When he was removed from the experiments, the doctors concluded that this was “as far as we can take him”.
Julie pictured when she was a child
Julie said he was an ‘attentive father’ who loved spending time with his kidsCredit: Julie Tanny
The Allan Memorial Institute, at McGill UniversityCredit: Getty
“Where the hell did they want him to go?” Julie still asks herself.
Highlighting just how extraordinary some of the victims’ stories are, she said: “Who would believe such a story that the CIA and the government were funding brainwashing experiments, you know?”
At least 800 people are now suing Royal Victoria Hospital, McGill University and the Government of for their complicity in the project.
Julie emphasised that it wasn’t only direct patients of the tests whose lives were ruined – but also their families.
She described the toll Charles’ condition took on her brother.
“After this happened to my father, my brother described emptiness, loneliness, no affection, no interest,” she revealed.
Julie said the experiments took away the dad she and her siblings loved so much.
“My father was still there, but he wasn’t,” she said.
An LSD experiment carried out by two doctors in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1955Credit: Getty
Declassified CIA files show MKUltra being documented throughout the yearsCredit: Wikimedia Commons
The nightmare experiments took place in a range of different states and went on for decades before they were brought to light.
Julie said: “They would walk into a nightclub and drop acid in people’s drinks and leave. Well, what was the point? Crazy stuff.
“One woman was dragged naked down the hall to the ‘sleep room’.
“Crazy stuff – I don’t know that anybody ever really figured out the whole point of that MKUltra programme.
“And I think it was a mass failure.”
She continued: “I don’t think there’s a lot of personal stories in the news, because people just don’t talk about it.
“They may have a general idea of what they did to people with the de-patterning and everything, but they don’t know the real horror stories of when it was over.”
Speaking on the lawsuit that scored a huge win last year after an appeal was thrown out, she said: “We will get justice. We will. And I’m… I’m positive of that now.”
“It’s a real David and Goliath case… but it’s gained a lot of momentum.”
Julie believes more people will come forward in the coming months as the lawsuit for compensatory damages gains more traction.
The experiments inspired hit Netflix show Stranger ThingsCredit: Netflix
Eze Chidiebere Paul
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