Booktree.ng_Forgotten-Witness

“Where is your mother, now?” Ambrose asked when the
door closed and Eugene was gone.
“That isn’t your concern yet. Not until there are hearings,”
Josie answered.
“There won’t be hearings, Ms. Bates.” When Josie didn’t
respond, his curiosity got the best of him. “Do you want to
know why?”
“It seems you want to tell me.”
“There is only one reason and that is because they would be
futile. Everyone who was responsible for what happened to
your mother is dead or of no consequence. Who would we
punish? Who would we apologize to?”
“You know about Marigold, don’t you? What is it?” Josie
asked.
“Marigold was the name assigned to the project to care for
those people who were affected by some of our more
ambitious attempts to understand the human mind. MKUltra
and CHATTER subjects were among them. The people who
participated were well cared for and given the best of
everything. If you saw the house in Hawaii, you know that.
Sadly, we were never able to reverse the effects of their
treatments but we did not abandon them.”
“Participated?” Josie breathed. “These people didn’t
participate. They were kidnapped and assaulted. The
government is not excused when their actions are egregious
just because they offer a bed to the tortured.”
“The government has paid a high price for MKUltra,”
Ambrose argued, unhappy that she wasn’t pacified. “We lost
the confidence of our citizens even though we had their best
interests at heart. Certainly we can be misguided, but that
doesn’t mean there wasn’t good to come from all these things.
We learned so much about the mind and our soldiers benefited.
Because of these programs, we learned to create weapons that
attack the brain and not the body.”
“You destroyed lives,” Josie countered.