But promotions and parties concealed Olsons qualms about his work. During the Cold War, top Army scientists toiled stealthily in rural Maryland to make covert weapons coveted by new enemies. On Friday, we transported the remains to the biology department at Hagerstown Junior College where we would conduct the autopsy, analyze the skeletal features and obtain specimens for toxicological analysis. What was in the minds of the men who for two decades pursued the dream of a mind-control drug? Your new story is not as much fun, I agreed. The major difficulty is placing the first burst exactly on the target, as most machine gunners are trained to spot their fire on target by observation of strike. He had his fathers mummified body exhumed. It was here in the Olson family back yard in 1975 that the world first learned the name of a man who, the story went, had been unwittingly drugged with LSD by the Central Intelligence Agency 22 years earlier and then jumped to his death from a 10th-floor hotel room. I knew that if the Olson sons had only a vendetta against the C.I.A., the report of inconclusive results which we had in hand would add a dollop of scientific certainty to their anger leaving them disinclined to go further with drug testing, but much to their credit they agreed to fund the new testing. For myself, however, the likelihood of Dr. Abramsons direct involvement in the death of Dr. Olson is less plausible than that it was the outcome of the C.I.A.s own calculated misdeeds. In the Agencys terminology, the ideal tactic is to intercept a question before it has a chance to be stated, thereby shutting off curiosity before a direction of thought can be formulated, articulated, and acquire momentum. That night he died in New York City. The man in the room had called a number out on Long Island while she had listened in. He said I could only publish what he had said after his death. 1985. He told me that. On November 19, Gottlieb met with six MKULTRA personnel, including Olson, at Deep Creek Lodge in rural Maryland. He lives on a farm outside of Washington and gets up every morning to milk his goats. Earlier that morning, Frank Olson had fallen or jumped, as Ruwet put it, from the window of a New York City hotel room. , a professor of psychiatry at Yale and an expert on brainwashing, takes the view that the CIAs mind-control experiments were the product of a lurid imagination, leading to destructive processes in the name of science. Dr. Lifton, whom the CIA tried unsuccessfully to recruit in the early 1960s to work on the psychological breakdown of captured enemy guerrillas, said that all these events showed how our profession can be drawn into corruption. Quite aside from the moral issues, Lifton believes that the CIA research was not a serious professional effort, for it lacked the nccessary scientific standards. In the absence of closure, the Olsons personal trauma would also remain buried, in a state of unspoken denial. The memorandum stated in part LOVELL reported that QUARLES and George MERCK were about to kill the Schwab activity at Detrick as un-American. The memorandum later continued LOVELL knew of Frank R. OLSON.. Sources say that Saracco and Bibb have obtained incontrovertible evidence that reveals that CIA officials Lashbrook and Gottlieb, as well as officials from the New York City Medical Examiners Office, directly participated in the cover-up of Blauers death. in 1975 and had brought Frank Olsons LSD dosing to public attention. And then, in this home video, Eric was back at home, exhilarated, talking on the phone to Nils: I saw daddy today!. My fathers murder crossed a line in the sand which the U.S. government has always publicly respected. The personality of the LSD user, his expectations for the experience, the setting in which the drug is consumed-all are factors in the complicated equation that determines LSDs effects. A computer animation of the most likely scenarios for Frank Olsons fall was to follow after additional on scene measurements based on the recollections of those present at the scene on the occasion of Olsons death-fall. The two films are masterfully woven together . And he immediately put his talents to work, this time against Americans. to hide, forever, a perfect murder. Such a threat is of no value unless it can be carried out, so it may be necessary to plan the assassination of various responsible officers of the oppressive regime and hold such plans in readiness to be used only if provoked by excessive brutality. Terry Lenzners CIA connection Occasionally, I felt as if I were out of my body.. The New York Times Also variations of techniques according to whether material is in a solid, liquid or gaseous form. The Evan Thomas-Ed Regis examples are valuable, though, not only from the perspective of questions they raise for political theory but also for the quite complex psychological issues they embody. The person who puts the spin on the story controls it from the beginning. He helped found Harvards Social Relations Department, which had been generously funded by covert intelligence agencies. On Nov. 24, concerned colleagues took him to New York to see a doctor, Harold Abramson, who had experimented with LSD. He directed my attention to an ambiguity in the way I had described what he had said during the meeting he had had with Jim Starrs Gibson pointed out that my description could be read as implying that he had had some sort of affiliation or relation with the CIA, or had access to special information from that source. Frank Olson did not quit. . He and Dr. Lashbrook had Thanksgiving dinner in New York, but Olson telephoned his wife on Friday and told her he expected to be home that Saturday. His death was ruled an accidental drowning when water swamped his canoe. Baltimore Sun, page one Alice Olson covered the whole subject of Frank's death with a silence that was both baffling and intimidating. The next day, Olson went straight to Ruwet's office and said he wanted to resign. The public first learned of MK-ULTRA in 1977, with the disclosure of thousands of classified documents and CIA testimony before a Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy. In 1975 after the family press conference the Olson family was immediately assured by the President that the government would provide more restitution. Adam Cray. Whatever restraints on LSD tests had been imposed by the Olson death seem to have been abandoned when the agency received the electrifying news, in October 1954, that Eli Lilly & Company had succeeded in synthesizing the drug in its laboratories. He said he hadnt. Lashbrook told the police he was awakened by the sound of breaking glass. How should we read the word disappeared? Back to School with Gus Johnson chronicles the legendary Fox Sports broadcaster's mid-life decision to criss-cross the country and enroll at Harvard as an extension of his lifelong love of . In comparison with the other guys from the CIA, he has an open face. John Marks chapter, combined with the spin that was put on the story of my fathers death by the CIA in 1975, formed the basis for the publics belief that Frank Olson committed suicide after being drugged with LSD in a secret CIA experiment. It became clear to them that there was something darker in this tragic incident than a failed LSD experiment. This was due to two factors: a) until recently only volatile liquids could be disseminated in a suitable fashion in bulk. It would also explain the low exit velocity that allowed Olson to hit the wooden impediment on the sidewalk below. Assisted by his deputy Lashbrook, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, head of the TSS Chemical Division, led the sessions in the lodges chestnut-paneled living room, opposite a roaring fire in a stone hearth. So there it is: the elephant in the room finally named, even if its features remain entirely unexplored. He grew anxious that someone might have tampered with the beverage, a not entirely paranoid concern given his earlier secret LSD dosing. Senators wanted to know why the CIA had retained a lethal stock of shellfish toxin and cobra venom after President Richard M. Nixons 1969 order to destroy all biological weapons stocks. The film climaxed with Luther declaring, No. He was 9 years old. U. S. authorities claimed that the Chinese had brainwashed their prisoners, cleaned out their minds and inserted the false information. Since Abramson had attended Olson several times on the days previous to his death, why was it not sufficient that Abramson, a medical doctor, write up his own report. There was a 24-hour contingent of Quakers down at the Fort Detrick gates, peace protestors, and Frank would wander over to chat to them, much to the dismay of his colleagues. This means that the first call was received on Nov. 27, 1953, at about 4:00 P.M. Hearing this, Dr. Gibson inquired about the reason, asking whether the plans had been changed. Is that the reason he hasnt been caught? . Using the material of a given reality collage brings forth, through transposition, another reality, which reveals the inner essence of that which has become dulled through habituation. The .300 F.A.B. And why was he just sitting there many removes from any positive action? Being located close to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where a fierce four-day battle was waged in 1863 that turned the tide of the American Civil War, he is fully apprized of local efforts in historical preservation. The situation was consistent with the CIAs surreptitious drugging of hundreds of unwitting American citizens as part of their Cold War experiments. One element in this may have been the realization that security at the hospital would indeed have posed unsolvable problems. New evidence in Olson case suggests similarities with other incidents by H.P. Numerous others lost their grip on reality. ''Fine. Dr. Gibson said that the more natural response would not have been Dr. However, this added testing would cost a minimum of $2000. Or Department of Defense? Very, very close, every day of the week for two and a half years. Embittered, cynical, frustrated and utterly undeterred Eric pressed ahead with his own private investigation. He is affiliated with medical facilities Saint Mary's Hospital and Waterbury Hospital. This notwithstanding,Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deceptionremains John Mulhollands most secret book of secrets. Down at reception, Pastore asked the hotel telephone operator whether she had overheard any calls from 1018A. (Visual text!) The Olson death remained a suicide stemming from depression for 22 years. The Frank Olson case, it seems, is far from being closed, even 50 years later. Those four sentences stimulated the authors own Freedom of Information Act request calling for the Central Intelligence Agency to release of any information or records relating to Mulhollands work with the CIA, including any written agreements between him and the Agency, copies of the documents he produced, or other related materials. I dont want to say it. He could not imagine how anyone could have gotten a running start in such a room without awakening the person in the next bedthe man who was posted there to watch Erics supposedly delusional and suicidal father. But while Mulholland prepared a detailed memo on what the manual would cover, theres no evidence in the CIA documents that he ever turned it in. Any locally obtained edge device may be successfully employed. Lashbrook admitted making two calls but has denied saying anything of the sort. By then, Dr Sargant was physically not a well man but his memory was still good. Most of his historical foot-notoriety, however, stems from his freelance work using prostitutes to lure unsuspecting johns to a CIA safehouse in San Francisco, where the unwitting pleasure-seekers would instead be dosed with MK-ULTRA acid. One of Detricks early scientific directors told me that the impetus to get the United States into biological warfare research was driven much more by what the Japanese were doing in Manchuria than by what the Nazis were doing in Germany. It was an absurd idea, a caricature of how the Chinese had induced their prisoners to write elaborate confessions, nevertheless, there was much discussion of the question at the United Nations and in the newspapers. Now after the passage of so many years since his fathers death, the political scene in Washington, D.C. had changed. Why was Olson in John Mulhollands office on November 25? These cases usually involve distance betweeen the assassin and the subject, or comparative physical weakness of the assassin, as with a woman. We want you to test these mind-bending drugs. I said, Why the hell do you want to test mind-bending drugs? He said, Have you ever heard ofThe Manchurian Candidate? I know aboutThe Manchurian Candidate. By that time the name Frank Olson had started to achieve the almost mythical status it subsequently acquired. I find it remarkable that the notion of a file being accidentally missed finds its way into this account, especially when one considers how many things about the death of Frank Olson the CIA has claimed were accidents. To wit: in 1953 the Olson family was told that the death of Frank Olson was an accident; when other materials were being shredded in 1973 the file on Frank Olson was accidentally not destroyed; when the Rockefeller Commission investigators were gathering materials at the CIA an Agency secretary accidentally gave them the Olson file, which was not supposed to be released (this explanation provided to the Olson family bySeymour Hersh); when the Rockefeller Commission came into possession of the Olson file in 1975 they accidentally forgot to notify the Olson family that the story of the death of their husband-father, kept secret for twenty-two years, was about to come to light; the CIA also accidentally failed to notify the Olson family when they came to know that the Olson story was about to be anonymously disseminated both in the Rockefeller Commissions report and in the press; the story of Frank Olsons death as it was described in the notoriously missing file which was accidentally not destroyed was that Olson had been accidentally kept on a high floor of a hotel during his stay in New York for psychiatric consultation because of an accidental failure of judgment in which the severity of his disturbance was underestimated; Sidney Gottlieb told the Olson family in 1984 that he had had no idea that LSD could cause the sort of effects it caused in Olsons case, and that in that sense the drugging of Olson was a mistake and an accident.. When the story finally surfaced in the Rockefeller Commission report on CIA abuses, they got official apologies from President Ford and from CIA Director William Colby, who handed over CIA documents on the case. . Fuck them, Feldman said. Olson, a scientist by training, would have known that he was working for a government that had put Nazi scientists on trial at Nuremberg for immoral experiments on human beings. On another level, the above ground one, it partook of investigations into the facts and circumstances of Olsons death. The scientists who worked in these laboratories in the early fifties, and who collaborated closely with Frank Olson, were looking for new hallucinogenic substances. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/01/magazine/cia-what-did-the-cia-do-to-his-father.html. They hoped to find a way to use the drugs on the battle ground. On the morning of January 1, 1963, Dr. Gilbert Bogel, and his lover, Mrs. Margaret Chandler, were found dead on a river bank after a riotous party given by staff of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. If a drawn shade separated the glass from the flesh, then perhaps the shade buffered kept the glass from piercing Olsons underwear-clad body, but it is nevertheless inexplicable that we found no cuts on the front of the lower extremities from dragging across glass shards on the bottom edge of the window. The shock of what he witnessed, Sargent believed, was all the harder to cope with given that Frank Olson was a patriotic man who believed that the United States would never sanction such acts. Whites credentials were impeccable: A former crime reporter on the West Coast before he joined the narcotics bureau, White had soon become one of the top international undercover agents under Harry Anslinger, the grandfather of Americas war on drugs. I find an unholy desire to tell you about the worst fiasco we ever had, which is why this letter has to be UltraBAP [Burn After Perusal]. Five days later divers found a body identified as Colbys. Seattle, WA By day, Eric Olson does software quality engineering, tearing code apart for the good of the product. Copyright 2022 Eric Olson, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. He authored the first police report on the death of Dr. Olson and, therefore, presumptively, was the first police officer on the beat to respond to the alarm of a mans having fallen. The original estimated completion date was May 1, 1954. He seemed deeply and singularly anxious about it but he would not reveal the nature of his mistake. The preliminary estimate will reveal gaps in information and possible indicate a need for special equipment which must be procured or constructed. See? said Eric. Three main objectives loomed largest in my approach to this exhumation: 1. One question is why Lashbrook (or Abramson if that was who the caller was) would have called to arrange hospitalization, possibly to begin as early as that same night, if the intention was to kill the patient. I have connections with local people as a dentist, and I see people on a daily basis who come in and read the local paper, and that affects me., Nils looked over at Eric, who was saying something to Julia, across the garden, but we couldnt hear what. American prisoners of war, paraded before the press by their North Korean captors, confessed in Zombie-like fashion that the US was using chemical and biological warfare against them. Gottleib and Lashbrook have been subpoenaed to testify Sept. 20 before a Senate subcommittee investigating the MK-ULTRA project. Lashbrook left the agency, but Gottlieb remained in senior positions for 20 more years. The CIAs practice was to maintain no records relating to the planning and approval of MKULTRA programs. Nevertheless, they are mistaken. By the Gottlieb-Gardiner theory, a defectors wall, whether psychotic or normal, can be shattered by the use of LSD. View . One interesting detail links White to the 1953 case of Dr. Frank Olson, and Army employee who was working with the CIA at Camp Detrick, Md. LSD was invented in Switzerland by Albert Hofmann, a researcher for Sandoz pharmaceuticals. As he continued to assemble his postmortem collage, Eric also encountered signs and symbols of a less fantastical nature. At this point, the matter was considered so important that the CIAs Office of Scientific Intelligence prepared its bulky top-secret study, Strategic Medical Significance of Lysergic Acid Diethylamidc (LSD-25), which was circulated to only seven senior officials besides Dulles. Given Gottliebs intellectual perspicacity (he had been familiar with the work of the professors with whom I worked in graduate school and even claimed to have financed Robert Liftons early work) I found this hard to believe. 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