Myth Making as Compromise - The ‘Real’ Peter Cotton, Part 5

It’s been some time since I wrote about the ‘real’ Peter Cotton.  There is more to add. I am now able, for example, to say what his real name was – David Collingwood (1919-2011). And since he had a considerable amount to do with the subject of Black Bear, now about to be published, it is time I made his contribution clear.
As I have mentioned in previous blog posts (collected together here on my website) I met him in 2005 when he had a house in Guadalajara in Spain. He was a widower, his second wife, Helen, had died the year before and the introduction was made by his step-daughter Caroline. I have also mentioned that I made about nine hours of recordings of what he had to say over several meetings.
What I haven’t mentioned is that he showed me various documents, ‘scraps’ he called them, ‘of the myths we are all subject to.’
One of these was an extraordinary document written by a G F Bakewell in 1947 ‘in light of the current interest in Human Rights.’  The ‘current interest’ was of course the United Nations Charter and the preparation of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). The ‘paper’ was quite long and was an entirely straight-faced attempt to suggest that the use of ‘so-called truth drugs could be construed as being in the spirit of Human Rights Legislation.’
The gist of G F Bakewell’s argument was that such drugs ‘could assist Intelligence Agencies obtain information from unwilling subjects without recourse to torture.’
David Collingwood laughed. It sounded perfectly genuine. I have said before he was rather old-fashioned and amiably patrician in manner but also something of a dramatic story-teller.

‘You see physical violence is so visible. Blood, the fragility of human bodies, distraught witnesses – the horror is obvious.’
I had just been doing voice-over work on a documentary about the Madrid bombings; indeed his step-daughter Caroline runs the studio where the voice-over was done.‘Now imagine what it’s like to be punched in the brain. It’s a perfect match of physiological and psychological attack, certainly if you are unsuspecting.’
In an earlier blog I mentioned Mr Collingwood’s interest in the late Sir Peter Russell, called Peter Wheeler (his birth name) in some Javier Marias novels. Following a bad accident in WW2, Sir Peter was taken away and beaten up by his own side – ostensibly to help him should he face torture at the hands of the Nazis.
The point? British intelligence was not averse to treating its own quite as badly as any enemy would.
While writing Black Bear this aspect of historical reality led to some problems. My editor and publishers disliked the notion that Cotton’s superiors would have connived in what happened to him.
David Collingwood was in no doubt when considering his own case.
‘Christ, yes,’ he said. ‘They gave permission without my knowledge or much thought on their part.’
In 1947 the US Navy or Senior Service began Operation Chatter. They had dibs as it were on the new thinking as described by G F Bakewell. As a result, several thousand people, quite a few volunteers, were subjected to various drugs without understanding what they might experience or what risks they were taking.
David Collingwood said he received multiple doses of scopolamine, mescaline and sodium amytal. ‘Or at least that was what I was later told.’
‘Scopolamine is the “Devil’s Breath”, supposedly much used by criminals in Columbia. It comes from a rather pretty plant. Mescaline is peyote of course. Sodium Amytal was developed by the Germans. It really gets your heart rate up.’
The purpose? ‘Basically to see what happened when you pumped these things into a male of 28 in reasonably good health. It was a kind of jab and see. I assure you the British I saw after the experience were mostly interested a) in whether or not the drugs had rendered me impotent and b) whether I had suffered any hair loss. That was exactly the same as worries about radiation sickness.
‘The so-called experiments were to see whether there might be a magic key to unlocking someone’s mind. I never saw my results, though I was told I had been a useless subject. In any case, the obvious effects of each drug were pretty much established as far as intelligence was concerned. You got drunk-style rambling, acute memory loss – I still have no recall of what happened to me - and a tendency to hallucinate. Some of those experimented on never recovered. But the Operation continued, using different drugs in different doses, rather as if they were mixing shades of paint and they might strike it lucky and get Intelligence gold.

‘The US Navy gave up in 1953 – and then the CIA took over. By that time, however, the drugs were being used as accompaniment to traditional interrogation techniques not as a substitute.
‘A year on I was given a medical. My blood pressure was still high and I was told my heart had probably been permanently affected and I shouldn’t expect a long life. The problem I experienced longest was what I called the see-saw. I’d suddenly get the impression the floor was tilting and I’d slide off. I’d move – but if I moved too far, the floor would start tilting the other way. That lasted until about 1950 and I got into the habit of adjusting my stance. Someone once asked me if I had been a long time at sea.’
‘Didn’t the British say anything else?’
‘No. Not really. Quite soon I realized it was being treated as a sort of joke. The Americans had pumped drugs into me and I had really suffered very few after-effects.
‘Oh,’ he added. ‘I did get to see a very slim report later in my career. The experience was described as a ‘crash course in realism and the benefits of self-reliance. The subject came through the trial well.’
We talked some more.
‘Intelligence services everywhere believe and want others to believe that they deal in much harsher realities than the people they are supposed to defend can bear. That’s what justifies their existence, usually in the claim that they must have the knowledge and capabilities to ward off an enemy as cruel and now as fanatical as can be imagined. I suppose there’s a valid point in there somewhere.’
‘Did you feel betrayed?’
He smiled. ‘It’s not that sort of business. I certainly didn’t imagine any other Intelligence service would behave better. People want to believe what they want to believe. They’ll change the facts. They’ll develop myths. But even there, all myths are a compromise between what you want to think and what is acceptable and attractive to others round you.’