The Trailblazing American MK-Ultra Attorney You Ought to Be Aware Of:
John C. Turner Esq.
© 2010 Brad Kempo B.A. LL.B.
Barrister & Solicitor
It was no more than five years into the Cold War. The Soviet Union had ‘The Bomb’ and the civilized world felt threatened by the global spread of totalitarianism to the point of NATO Alliance members seeking every conceivable means to successfully challenge this profound historical threat – including violating The Nuremberg Code’s prohibition on covert human experimentation. Decades later MK-Ultra victims came forward and demanded justice and compensation. And one U.S. lawyer practicing in Washington D.C. was at the helm of seeking damages for one individual who became a mid-20th century lab monkey for the CIA.
On September 9, 2002 the Canadian lawyer appeared in the Federal Court of Canada to argue the merits of a motion that because he’d been aggressively impoverished for over a decade by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies to advance the militarized Article 7 violation the defendant ought to pay all his costs of prosecuting the litigation. Case law was on his side. The relief was denied because the Chinada High Command had instructed its agent on the Bench, then Associate Chief Allan Lutfy (now C.J.), to take every necessary step to ensure the litigation never went anywhere. Due diligence had been conducted on the predecessor to this 1990s equivalent of MK-Ultra during which it was discovered that in the '50s and '60s the CIA and Canadian authorities had secretly experimented upon many dozens of unsuspecting people in Canada for the purpose of developing strategies and tactics with which to challenge the Soviets. It didn’t matter what was submitted into evidence or argued. It all fell on deaf ears because of malicious judicial bias that sought to ratify, protect and perpetuate the most coveted and China-benefiting military program in the country. Of note is the fact it wasn’t the civilized world seeking the means to contain an antithetical and most threatening ideology, it was the other way around. Canadian closet authoritarians and their serial human rights abusing totalitarian partners had been developing a powerful Pandora’s Box of technologies, techniques, strategies and tactics to make all kinds of security protocols obsolete – government, military, intelligence, corporate, etc. – and undermine the institutions of democracy and capitalism by compromising and even forcing out of office key figures in high office with what would to colleagues and the public appear be their own behavior; and to satisfy an insatiable craving for schadenfreude to so torture and torment victims they'll commit suicide (surreptitious assassination without culpability). American lawyers John C. Turner and Joseph Rauh Jr. took Jan’s case in spite of its bizarre allegations; and because they were and ultimately succeeded they published a detailed account for the history books – and which proved to be critical for those who were victims in the future and thus would be able to demonstrate that while this kind of State behavior was abandoned long ago in the civilized world, it was alive and well north of the 49th Parallel.
Early in 1979 Canadian Member of Parliament David Orlikow called our office with a horror story that bordered on the incredible.
Source: http://www.raven1.net/anat-1.htm
The lengthy and informative article includes passages such as this one:
[T]his case involving the CIA goes far beyond the typical public interest litigation precisely because it addresses an area of lawbreaking where normal political and legal remedies are not available. As the late Senator Frank Church concluded, after leading the congressional investigation of the CIA's improper activities in the 1950s and 1960s, that agency was "a rogue elephant" operating outside the law and protected by a shroud of secrecy. This is an account of that rogue elephant's reckless experimentation upon unwitting Canadian citizens, as well as the story of a public interest litigation against an opponent of immense power and dubious purpose.
[…]
This review of the CIA's actions in the United States and Canada demonstrates how completely unprincipled was the Agency's original brainwashing program, as well as its course of legal manoeuvers years later when it was required to answer for its misconduct. […] We insisted on all the facts in this case before agreeing to represent the Orlikows and other victims of the CIA's Canadian fiasco. From the beginning and throughout the long fight for justice our clients told us the truth. Without this confidence we would not and could not have properly represented them.
Posted on the Article 7 Accountability Institute’s website is every fact and circumstance so that prospective counsel can feel disclosure fulfills this most fundamental requirement as articulated by these two trailblazing attorneys. What the Canadian lawyer can offer lawyers Jan Orlikow couldn’t is that he's already put his credibility to the test during the Federal Court litigation. He filed seven motions and attached to each was an affidavit that gave defence counsel the right under the Rules of Court to cross-examine him to challenge the veracity of his allegations. That they didn’t do so was because the Department of Justice leadership knew the case was doomed to failure, so why bother. In its arrogance, what the defendant didn’t put its mind to was how that repeatedly unchallenged credibility could be transferred to other forums of accountability. (For more on this see what’s posted at http://federalcourtlitigation.yolasite.com). Added is the fact that the coalition, comprising of thousands of democracy, rule of law, human rights and free market advocates around the world have examined the evidence and are in full agreement about the nature, duration and suffering, injury and loss occasioned upon him by this secret program.
The publication ends with:
From our first discussions until the ultimate resolution of the case, on the day before the trial was to have begun, there were six rounds of offers and counter-offers. Throughout this process, we were aware that by Justice Department regulation, there was a $750,000 ceiling on any settlement we could achieve without the personal involvement of the Attorney General. In our estimation, the difficulties, uncertainties, and delays of securing such approval from even the post-Meese Justice Department meant that as a practical matter, 3/4 of a million dollars was the best we could do short of trial. On October 2, 1988, the U.S. Attorney's Office agreed to the payment of a settlement of 3/4 million dollars to plaintiffs. With the ex gratia payment by the Canadian Government, we had recovered about a million dollars for our clients.
To our knowledge this represents the largest payment made by the CIA in litigation arising out of the MKULTRA program. […] Equally important to us and to the Canadian victims as well, the dollar amount was enough to convey the symbolic message of U.S. Government contrition. Regardless of boilerplate denials, everyone knows that the CIA acknowledged its past wrongdoing -- no one pays 3/4 of a million dollars unless they did something wrong.
The settlement, along with the details of our case and the massive wrong that was done to these innocent Canadians, was reported on major television networks, newspapers, and magazines in both Canada and the United States. In some respects, the impact of such focused attention on this one event -- an extraordinary admission of responsibility and contrition by the CIA, may have more widely disseminated the story of the Agency's abuse of our clients than would routine reports from a trial lasting many weeks. In retrospect, there is little question that settlement had been the right course in this case.
The final confirmation came in a chance meeting with CIA Director Webster at a Justice Department reception. When we thanked him for breaking the deadlock, the Director expressed his gratitude for having learned of the case and stated "Sometimes you see the right thing to do, and you do it."
In an Afterword the authors state:
A public interest litigation is a special kind of struggle, where plaintiffs' lawyers represent both their clients and a larger principle that they seek to vindicate. The burdens of serving both are heavy, but the satisfactions of success are even greater. And, as the story of the Orlikow case illustrates, the fight itself is nothing if not engrossing and challenging. Where else can a lawyer interrogate a CIA Director one day and draft questions for a Member of Parliament the next? To us it seems that public interest lawyers enjoy the lion's share of the satisfactions in our profession.
[…]
ith all its frustrations, the Orlikow case was highly satisfying -- a lesson in the capacity of an enlightened legal system to do justice even when the most powerful agencies and interests are arrayed against it. May we call it one ray of hope in troubled times?
On December 17, 2010 John C. Turner was contacted by the Canadian lawyer and introduced to his legacy.
* Part II is posted at http://www.turnerhome.org/jct/anat-2.html and Part III at http://www.turnerhome.org/jct/anat-3.html
