Congressional investigators said much of the information was confirmed by a former military aide to President Eisenhower, Col. Phillip Corso. How differently the above account reads if one keeps in mind the following facts: (1) Frank Olson was not an army employee; according to the CIAs own file (the one that Helms accidentally missed and therefore did not destroy, and also according to William Colbys autobiography) Olson was not an army employee; he was, in fact, a CIA employee; (2) the Special Operations Division for which Olson worked was closely allied with the CIA, and with the CIAs efforts to develop methods for special interrogation; (3) the CIA officer in charge of the experiment in which Olson was drugged (Sidney Gottlieb) was the same man who developed the exotic poisons for use in the attempted assassinations of Castro and Lumumba; (4) Gottlieb has testified that the poison for use in the attempted assassination of Lumumba came from the laboratory (Detrick) in which Frank Olson worked; (5) Frank Olson had made a trip to Europe and specifically to Germany on Special Operations business in the summer of 1953 before he was killed in November of that year. The moment was one to be savored by him and the Olson family. The walls were covered with Toulouse-Lautrec posters of French cancan dancers. His little brother Nils and his sister Lisa were in the next room. I believe that properly to devise the required techniques and devices and to describe them in writing would require 12 working weeks to complete the two sections. Elevator shafts, stair wells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve. It was the first, long-awaited and long-feared battle between the West and Communism. Olson and all but two of the others (one a teetotaler, the other abstaining because of a headcold) drank it. The family decision not to file suit, made in deference to Alice Olsons desire to bring the 22-year ordeal to closure, would prove to be a mistake. It was all garbled, and I was trying to get his name.'' 1.36 Consequently, the decision to employ this technique must nearly always be reached in the field, at the area where the act will take place. While Gottlieb was looking for better sources of LSD, the CIAs ARTICHOKE committee developed concern that for-agency personnel might, Lill &I t h e influence of drugs, reveal top-secret information to outsiders. The next day, Olson returned home early and spent the weekend in a mood that Alice remembered as withdrawn but not remotely psychotic. Mr. Olson graduated from Pomona College (1962), and Harvard Law School (1965), and was a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School (1965-66). Saracco decided there was indeed enough evidence to convene a grand jury for an investigation into the death. There was the Eiffel Tower. He had regularly visited Alice Olson, shared a drink with her, become a trusted friend of the children. It was a real Harold Junior, one of his fathers best friends from Detrick, a man who knew everything, and was willing to tell Eric the whole story. He was soon working in a new and highly secretive subgroup: the Special Operations Division (SOD). The CIA leadership feared a mind control gap.. [63], Even if Mulholland were not a skilled hypnotist they still might have gone to see him, even if hypnosis were the purpose, counters Eric Olson. See bio. You speak all these languages. Eric Olson. He was a conflicted man living in conflicted times who died leaving conflicting leads. Sargant heard Olson out and then reported to British intelligence that the young American scientist's misgivings were making him a security risk. What little money he managed to scrape together he funneled back into the investigation. We were problem-solving.. The next morning, he returned to Ruwet's office and insisted that his resignation be accepted. Denial is the black art all intelligence services long ago perfected. He was trying to mumble something, Pastore later told reporters, but I couldnt make it out. Frank Olson was described in these heavily redacted reports as one of the C.I.As guinea pigs, making him a victim. I heard about prostitutes. Biological agents would appear to be well adapted to subversive use since very small amounts of such agents can be effective, the report said. He received them pleasantly but conceded nothing. Quick now, here, now, always But you cant quite make out what it is.. A deeply moral and religious man, Frank Olson had been grappling with an ethical dilemma related to his work. Albarelli, who had been conducting his own research into the Olson death, claimed to have contact with retired CIA agents in Florida. and that his father was killed to silence him about the lethal activities hed been involved in, projects codenamed Artichoke and MK-ULTRA. In 1997, after the C.I.A. improve their skills, He was to prepare a manual of tricks for slipping drugs into the drinks of unsuspecting test subjects. The incident had made this man unstable and had ruined his life,so it was alleged, possibly precipitating his early death. Nearly a year before Blauers death, beginning in 1952, the relationship between the CIA and Fort Detricks SOD was formalized through a written agreement. (Or perhaps the guardian did more than watch. He had entered a world of covert operations, espionage, mind control, drugs, and even death. Eric Olson may not have the whole story. By 1938, he had written a book on the subject,Beware Familiar Spirits,which traced the history of modern spiritualism and described its techniques. Thus, their refusal can legitimately be read as evidence of concealment, and conceivably, even more incriminating mirrorings. The scientists who worked in these laboratories in the early fifties, and who collaborated closely with Frank Olson, were looking for new hallucinogenic substances. A brilliant chemist with personality tics numerous enough to satisfy a novelists appetite for the aberrant (Norman Mailer and Barbara Kingsolver have immortalized him in their fiction), Gottlieb at the time had not yet been dubbed the CIAs Dr. Strangelove. But a few decades of diligent work and a congressional inquiry or two would eventually remedy that oversight. He was a person who believed in what he was doing, who felt the work that he was doing at the Center in Frederick was important for the United States. Overcoming a pronounced stutter and a clubfoot to rise through the ranks of the CIA, he would later describe himself as the Agencys Dr. He wondered if it was in the realm of possibility to break through the window with so little space allowed to gain momentum and so many obstructions at the window. Sidney says, Stop the car. He pulls out a dart gun and shoots this big eucalyptus tree with a dart. himself. Lisa was active as a teacher for the deaf. The following summer, the Agency asked the magician to undertake another assignment. The man identified as an army scientist turned out to be Frank Olson. Their ultimate purpose, they said, was to imprint what had happened to their father in ''American memory.''. After the death of Dr. A. M. Wilson in April of 1930, he took over editorship ofThe Sphinx. The element silicon, second only to oxygen in its abundance in the earths crust, is a principal component of glass. The same concerns are evident in a memo that was written by White House Deputy Staff Director Dick Cheney to his boss Donald Rumsfeld on July 11, 1975, the day after our family press conference. H. as Morgan Hall, Whites undercover name. Eric Olson has visited Falconer several times, hoping his fathers old friend might one day confide a crucial secret in him. Early in July, after months of negotiation, the two government departments gave in and agreed that the grand jury should hear Saraccos team examine Lashbrook at Venture County Courthouse during the week beginning 24 August. We were biking companions, and also went rock climbing and rappelling. His description of that setting, I later came to learn, matched the conditions prescribed by the CIA for drugging an unsuspecting victim, and the physical psychological symptoms he experienced matched those of an LSD trip. Jack is an active, wiry man, a contemporary of mine, who has more than once tracked the story of an undetermined death to resolve its particular manner. Could be. The result is that the issue of the vast territory that falls between the poles of these extreme cases, what we might call plain old everyday national security terminations, has been effectively omitted from the discourse of Cold War history (except of course in Stalins Russia where the end justified the means.) From the perspective of analyses like that of Michel Foucault one might ask not only about the occasional necessity for such acts, but also about the role such terminations would have played in disciplining a democratic population for fighting a Cold War in which covert operations and plausible deniability were the key weapons. 16.22 As Pastore placed his pass-key into the door, the police drew their guns as a precautionary measure. By curing them, psychologists can prevent war. Now in his 70s, Feldman still looks and talks like Edward G. Robinson playing gangster Johnny Rocco inKey Largo. Yet I did find people who would talk, though there were major frustrations in the doing. That night while he slept in the adjacent bed, Olson slipped out of the room and wandered the streets of New York. That the CIA had much to hide became dramatically evident during the summer of 2001, when Eric obtained documents from the Gerald Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In spite of the fact that there is enough evidence against him, Kurt Blome will be acquitted in Nuremberg. If one were to believe the more sinister gossip, its true. A former CIA official reported in an interview that he was given LSD 21 times for this purpose at one of the agencys cover facilities in Washington. This material could potentially aid in discrediting individuals, eliciting information, implanting suggestion and other forms of mental control.[2]. Only now the reason was that he had been drugged with LSD by the CIA eight days earlier. A medical examiner will try to determine the direction of impact, the type of object that caused it, and how often contact was made. An expert in biochemistry and aerobiology, Olsons specialty was delivering such deadly diseases in sprays and aerosol emulsions. In righteous outrage, the Olson family invited the media to a press conference in July 1975 to announce their intention of suing the government for its complicity in the wrongful death of Frank Olson. Clearly, the Chinese had found new and formidable brainwashing techniques that could transform American servicemen into Manchurian candidates programmed to do Communist bidding. The original cost was $3,000.00, of which $1,500.00 is remaining as of now. Yet even before this new angle could be explored more thoroughly the Olson family was visited by yet another tragedyone that was indirectly instrumental in bringing me into this steamy John Carre-like brew. Ruwet would spent long-daytime hours with Mrs Olson. Dr. Gibson said that the more natural response would not have been Dr. All of this, of course, depends on having a well-preserved body, and organs, which we did. The 1975 Senate investigation revealed that the SO Division supplied biological materials for several planned CIA attacks, none of which were successful. Eight miles of paved roads run past more than 34,000 graves. Almost immediately, though, the investigation encountered a major setback. If this was ''closure,'' it was of an especially cursed kind. Is this possible?[12]. Ive ruined my life, he says in one interview. Ed Regis,The Biology of Doom: The History of Americas Secret Germ Warfare Project Eric is second from the right. One series of tests on CIA employees was designed to see whether LSD could i break the so-called pentathol block. During interrogations, captured agents were often given sodium pentathol-or truth serum sometimes combined with hypnosis, as in the case of the Soviet double agents, in an effort to get them to disclose secrets. LSD emerged as one of the interrogation drugs of choice. Show more detail. Net Worth in 2022. But the top-secret program had also involved other interrogation methods, including torture and attempts to induce amnesia in blown agents who knew too much. Dr. Eric Olson, MD is an Orthopedic Surgery Specialist in Waterbury, CT and has over 39 years of experience in the medical field. He had been embalmed and his face was unmarked and untroubled. His photographs also primarily show private moments. .In Dr. Leviskys laboratory at York College the remains of Dr. Olsen were kept in a secure vault under lock and key while Jack Levisky and his assistant, Sherry Brown, worked to macerate (deflesh) the bones. They later received $750,000 in compensation. Gottlieb later testified and Richard Helms confirmed that in ordering the destruction of the papers, Gottlieb was carrying out then-CIA Director Helms verbal orders. The CIAs general counsel ruled that the death resulted from circumstances arising out of an experiment undertaken in the course of his official duties for the United States government. His family, thus, was eligible for death benefits. No one, at any rate, willing to admit it. Portions of this article were taken from the forthcoming book,A TERRIBLE MISTAKE: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIAs Cold War Experimentsby H.P. But at the time, fearing correctly that the Soviet Union had an even larger bioweapons program, Army scientists were driven to come up with more and more lethal disease strains.. Eric was told directly by the New York DAs source that the case of Frank Olsons death has been taught in Israel as a case of perfect murder., An alternative story of the death of Frank Olson And for his mother, the subject of his fathers death became a taboo. They gave his widow and children a government pension, and Gottlieb got away with a slap on the wrist. For seven years, his father's bones have lain in a filing cabinet in James Starrs's office. The Olson family was disturbed by what they had learned. He also directs the Hamon Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine and the Wellstone Center for Muscular Dystrophy Research. And we are familiar with the risks taken with the lives of persons who were subjects of unwitting government experiments of various kinds. The only manifestation was that he could not sleep. and symptoms of drugs that might be used () We should look into the use of amnesia-producing drugs., 25.34 Voice of Franz Gajdosch-dt./ Former barkeeper at Camp King: Olson reportedly had the worst trip. The word revealed in the headline is ironic in that no name is provided. If Olson was murdered, the question is why? His report of his dental comparisons was thorough and constituted additional strong support for the remains being those of Frank Olson, even though it lacked the element of surprise that his dental expertise revealed from the exhumed teeth of Jesse Woodson James. September 17, 1996, Tuesday. Under the circumstances, the agency was fearful that its own agents could be brainwashed, and in 1950, it embarked on defensive research to find ways of protecting them. Detrick scientists made a secret deal to obtain the results of Japanese biological warfare research that had entailed some of the most ghastly human experiements of the century. He does not follow orders, and has had numerous altercations with MPs (), 15.52 Voice of Norman Cournoyer/Friend of Frank Olson: But of course one does not ask questions that lead in the direction of issues that one does not wish to face. DiMaio said that Robert Lashbrook, when questioned by the medical examiners stenographer, Max Katzman, failed to say anything about Olson having taken LSD or that he was under psychiatric treatment. With their mother locked in silence, the children were left alone with their own sense of shame about their father's death. 33.07 Voice of Ira (Ike) Feldman/Former CIA agent: The police officer was most courteous and pointed to my being somewhat over burdened, as he said, for a man of my years with the items I was lugging about with me. The laboratory experiment in which Frank Olson had unwittingly participated had been part of a truth drug program, supervised by Sidney Gottlieb and George Hunter White, which involved getting people to disclose all under the influence of a drug clandestinely administered. First aired on German television August 12, 2002. Problems with the conventional story But they werent a band of al-Qaida fanatics or enemies of any kind. Eric gazed, smiling, at the screen. And weve never heard of a younger person than my brother who cycled across the United States. Erics mother Alice was sleeping down the hall. Originally published August 9, 2002. Others, while not quite doing evil, simply lost their ethical direction. I must say, he messed up. Eric says he knows the truth, but it is not the ''smoking gun'' kind of forensic truth that will force the agency to go to court and be put through the discovery process. Why Mulholland decided to do this is a matter of some conjecture. Three days later, Olson agreed to be admitted to a Rockville psychiatric hospital. He took a number of courses at both Columbia University and at New Yorks City College, but did not attain a degree. He got out as quickly as he could after high school and ended up in Ohio and India and New York and Massachusetts and Stockholm and California, but in 1993 he thought he would just crash out for a few months, and then ten years passed, during which time he hasnt decorated for three reasons: And, really, his life ground to a shuddering halt on November 28th, 1953, and if your living environment is meant to reflect your inner life, Erics house does the job. At the New York Psychiatric Institute in January 1953, less than a year before Olson died, other experiments had been conducted. It was officially referred to as Project MK/NAOMI, an adjunct to the larger CIA behavior modification program that within months became known as MK-ULTRA. At the army headquarters in Berlin, Olson apparently witnessed brutal interrogation methods. They found that the poisons had come from the SO Division under a CIA-Army project code-named MKNAOMI. There were so many ways for Eric to recount his new version of the story at the press conference. (That town was named for two nineteenth century survey parties who happenedaccidentallyto meet up there.) These telling results left no further doubt that the remains we had autopsied were those of Dr. Frank Olson to the exclusion of anyone else. He must have put a curve on what he said, for the woman gave a low intimate laugh. Decision and instructions should be confined to an absolute minimum of persons. Lashbrook admitted making two calls but has denied saying anything of the sort. In that sense the real Frederick Candidate, the real subject of brainwashing and mind control, was not Frank Olson. The practice of keeping little or no record of the activity was standard MKNAOMI procedure, a CIA investigator wrote. One of these, Harold Searles, authored a book, Collected Papers on Schizophrenia and Related Subjects that is one of the great classics of psychotherapeutic literature, and which I read with enormous profit while treating a schizophrenic patient in Sweden. Sheikh Mohammed is considered the architect of two attempts on the World Trade Center: the one that failed, in 1993, and the one that succeeded so catastrophically, eight years later He was flown to an undisclosed location (a place the CIA calls Hotel California) presumably a facility in another cooperative nation, or perhaps a specially designed prison aboard an aircraft carrier. However, knowledgeable sources who have seen the CIA documents said Lashbrook identified G. The caller said he had known his friend was dead because the window was on a high floor of the hotel.. 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