But after Alice died in 1993, Eric, with the consent of Nils, decided to exhume his fathers body. The US government moved immediately to show how sorry it was for what had happened. Eric says that if he ever forgets why Im doing this, he just needs to look around his house, and 1953 comes flooding back to him. It is contemplated the above would provide a contribution to the general efforts in the area of non-electrical means of communication. Sexual encounters and the study of prostitutes for clandestine use. Or, anthrax spores, which are not killed by antibiotics, might have been found in his lungs after death. In June a Defense Department intelligence analyst testified that on the basis of a recent flurry of very compelling reports, he believed that as many as 15 Americans were still being held prisoner in North Korea. This makes Regis next narrative move all the more interesting. ''He was broken up something awful,'' Pastore told reporters many years later, flat on his back with his legs smashed and bent at a terrible angle. Whether the programs accomplishments reached that peak will probably never be public knowledge. White drank so much booze, he couldnt feel his fucking cock. Specific poisons, such as arsenic or strychnine, are effective but their possession or procurement is incriminating, and accurate dosage is problematical. If the work sounds sinister today, there were doubters at the time, too. DATE: 30th November 1998. Eric Olson lives in his childhood home, the place he lived when he was 9 years old and learned of his fathers death. THE TRIAL The first was bacteriological warfare. No assassination instructions should ever be written or recorded, says the CIA assassination manual. Or something in the sight. Gordon Thomas, Non-Fiction: Dr Sargents interest in the work going on there was to study the psychological implications of mind-blowing drugs such as LSD. Baltimore Sun The plane crashed and no one survived. THE CIA has always maintained as a matter of historical record that it has never murdered an American citizen on American soil. This answer also explains why Lashbrook and Olson stayed in the Statler Hotel, rather than in the safehouse that was available to them in Greenwich Village, ten minutes away by taxi. In Alexa, Eric found a technological blank slate -an open field offering new and interesting problems to solve. A very disciplined man, he fought the effects of the LSD. One-fourth of the American scientists who were approached by the CIA agreed to work for it, according to one of the agencys documents. How many army scientists were jumping out of hotel windows in New York in 1953?. It was exactly at this time, when disaffection was collecting in my pores like bile, that Harlot summoned me to his rump office at the farmhouse in Virginia, much as he must have called in several other men like myself, still ambitious enough to know rage that their careers were in irons, yet old enough to suffer the knowledge that their best years were committed and gone. Presumably, the commission means the Treasury Departments Bureau of Narcotics since the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control was not established until 1965. Yet at the time, the family believed that full disclosure was finally at hand. I dont know if Ill ever get another bird or pet. When you think about it, 12, and alone. In November of 1994 Professor Starrs and his team presented the initial findings of their forensic investigation at a press conference. The old story is so much fun, Eric said, why would anyone want to replace it with a story thats not fun. (Psychology Today,poster 5.). While his roots were not really Eastern establishment, the tall, slender Mulholland with his prominent nose and thatch of gray hair certainly looked the part. Before joining ICI, Richardson served as a managing director at FTI Consulting, where she led the financial services public affairs practice. It was a time of intense political and military tension in the divided city, just weeks after the civilian uprising in the Soviet sector. The meeting was set for noon at a suitably anonymous bastion of corporate America, a sprawling Marriott Hotel and convention center on Long Island. He did speak up any time he wanted to. So studying LSDs effects might lead them to drugs for treating mental illness. The startling similarity of this quote to my fathers story is very likely not entirely coincidental. A Gottlieb memo in 1953 stated that MK-ULTRA Subproject 6 is designed to develop a reliable source of lysergic acid derivatives within the U.S., as opposed to our present complete depen upon [DELETED I sources, and in addition, it aims to extend the isolation and testing program of the hypnoti c nat- products from the Rivea species of plants obtained from [DELETED].. While these myriad investigations were occurring around me, I was not quiescent. And among the services he performed would be the experiments on Kaczynski and his cohort. Helms was also responsible for the MK-ULTRA program. operation called Project Bluebird and renamed ARTICHOKE were deleted, but Eric Olson plumbed the depths from other sources. The agency unit that administered this program was the same Directorate of Scientific Research that developed the exotic poisons used in attempted assassinations of Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba. 15.21 The assassination range of the sub-machine gun is point blank. Sargent met with him. It had already been going on for three years. Sure was his immediate reply. It spread to undergraduate students, then to other campuses. Mr. Sejna, a former Czech defense official, had access to information about medical experiments carried out on American prisoners of war by Russian and Czech personnel in a hospital in North Korea during the war. His preservation is best explained by Ambassador Porter who reported to the Secretary of State that the body fortunately was found well-preserved, the coffin having been filled with alcohol but which had evaporated. Of course, like Frank Olson, the linen winding sheet in which both he and John Paul Jones had been wrapped was added protection against post-mortem decay. Mulholland also taught Gottlieb how to slip bio-toxins into the toothbrushes and cigars of Americas enemies abroad. But Dr. Isbells report for the first quarter of 1954 noted that clinical studies at his center were also concerned with intoxication with diethylamide of lysergic acid. In his quarterly report to the CIA, he claimed new insights, including an evaluation of whether the drugs effects varied according to race, age, and social and economic status: We have now studied the subjective changes induced by LSD-25 in more than 50 former narcotic addicts. Dr. Gibson said he remembered having seen Paul Robeson Jr. play football for Cornell in a game against Penn, where Dr. Gibson had studied. There were no lacerations. The skin was brown and shriveled, but the face was still recognizable. University researchers would soon discover that, like Dr. Faustus, the legendary Renaissance magician who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power, they had signed a contract before reading the fine print. In Ruwet and Lashbrooks version of events, the three flew back to Washington later that morning. Eric Olson believes his father who developed misgivings about his work and tried to resign was murdered by government agents to protect dark government secrets. But his first reaction was not to run downstairs or call the police or the hotel operator. But his plans were not to be. That is, the patients of inexperienced LSD therapists were more likely to have bad trips. Ineptitude. As the numbers of people using LSD multiplied, so did sensationalized accounts of its effects. In Mount Olivet Cemetery, which dates its first interment to 1854, lay hundreds of soldiers from both sides of the Civil War, as well as veterans from the past centurys world wars. Perhaps we will never know what really happened to Frank Olson, but the important thing was that Eric had achieved closure. White was with the OSS [Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA]. Without justice, there is no accountability, and without accountability there is no healing, no resolution. Since John Mulholland had died in 1970, there was no way for the Olsons to interview him about his possible involvement in this tragedy. In Zehlendorf he photographs the headquarters of the American army. What do you want? he said with emphasis on each word. At the time of your husbands death, I was the assistant night manager at the Hotel Statler in New York and was at his side almost immediately after his fall. But Frank Olson had a bad trip, perhaps giving rise to the legend that if you take LSD you believe you can fly and you end up falling out of windows. Other high-ranking CIA officials mentioned prominently include Jame Angleton, C. P. Cabell and Stanley Lovell. My own critical response to Murrays Thematic Apperception Test was one of the factors that led to my work on thecollage method. The name itself was a variation on ULTRA, the U.S. intelligence program behind Nazi lines in World War 11, of which the CIAs veteran spies were justly proud. The couple stopped for lunch at a coffee shop just outside the Capitol, but Olson wouldnt touch his coffee. And he is down on the street.. His ongoing meetings with the TSS staff accelerated. Late the next day, according to the C.I.A. People have been so brainwashed by fiction, said Eric as we drove to the local Kinkos to pick up the press releases for the conference, so brainwashed by the Tom Clancy thing, they think, We know this stuff. That might well have happened, he said, if animal tests showed it to be more virulent than the existing weapons strain, the only means of checking potency at the time. If you pass it through a rabbit repeatedly, it will kill rabbits, but it wont kill a cow, Huxsoll said. So we decided to make a sign that said HAROLDS CLUB OR BUST! By night, CIA spy Morgan Hall metamorphosed into a drug-eating denizen of the bohemian coffeehouse scene. 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. During the research and writing of Journey into Madness, Dr Sargent and I met on many occasions, perhaps as many as 20. Alice Olson would recall that her husband returned home deeply depressed. They wanted us to find out if we could actually use it as a truth serum., Actually, it all began with a mistake. 50.26 Piecing these facts together, Eric Olson thought that Lashbrooks account was implausible. I just dont give interviews on that subject, said Andrew M. Cowan Jr., 74, the divisions last chief, who is retired and living near Seattle. While he would be later regarded as one of magics great scholars, his academic achievements were somewhat limited. Because the death occurred in New York we presented amemorandum to the New York District Attorneys Officeoutlining the many reasons for believing that the death of Frank Olson was a murder. Among MKULTRA papers that later came to light, Lee and Shlain write, were, CIA documents describing experiments in sensory deprivation, sleep teaching, ESP, subliminal projection, electronic brain stimulation, and many other methods that might have applications for behavior modification. Some victims are asphyxiated, which results from cutting off oxygen to the brain. A Voice for the Dead: A Forensic Investigators Pursuit of the Truth in the Grave No obstacle would deter him from his mission, not even the taboo of unearthing his fathers bones. It was during that period (1968169), that I first began to explore with him his own relationship with both M15/6 and the CIA. Whites particular area of expertise was the testing of drugs on unwitting human guinea pigs. In the following years, he traveled often to Europe, including making several trips to Germany. As the coffin was lowered into the ground, the CIA men might have felt an odd sense of relief. Then, in the late 1950s, references to the M36 variant of Vollum give way to references to the highly virulent Vollum 1B strain. No 1A strain seems to have existed. Were we close? Down at reception, Pastore asked the hotel telephone operator whether she had overheard any calls from 1018A. We were able to look at the body as if the incident had happened only yesterday. Overcoming a pronounced stutter and a clubfoot to rise through the ranks of the CIA, he would later describe himself as the Agencys Dr. However, he had been under contract to prepare a manual, Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception, that applied the magicians art to covert activities, such as slipping drugs into drinks. And, Eric said, also, there were these two, Eric searched for a moment for the right word to describe the others. In 1953, Frank Olson, a key member of the CIAs brainwashing programme MKULTRA, plunged from a New York hotel window. What brought you here? she asked. He settled in California. 5323 Harry Hines Boulevard Dallas, Texas, 75390 | Telephone 214-648-3111, Copyright 2023. Now, I dont know his name that fact is sealed, but lets call him what he is VICTIM. The most efficient accident, in simple assassination, is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. His death occurred while I was putting the finishing touches onUndue Risk, and his deathbed was steps from my office in the medical school. And weve never heard of a younger person than my brother who cycled across the United States. Wagner, H.T. He also directs the Hamon Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine and the Wellstone Center for Muscular Dystrophy Research. The wife develops uncanny kind of intuitions, about all the things that are not being said and she knows the limits of what she can ask. It had just been learned that the CIA allegedly drugged its employee Frank Olson with LSD before his supposed suicide. You cant go out with a colleague for a drink and get a little intimate without being told The Story. The use of LSD among young people in the U.S. reached a peak in the late 1960s, shortly after the CIA initiated a series of covert operations designed to disrupt, discredit, and neutralize the New Left. Like the documents released to John Marks in 1977, these files were heavily though inconsistently redacted. [53]As the project progressed, it was clear that frequent consultations between Mr. Mulholland and CD/TSS were indeed essential. However, the allegations have proved persistent, and, thanks in large part to a 1952 international study into the matter, are generally taken as a given everywhere in the world outside the 202 area code. I feel satisfied, said Olson, a Harvard-educated clinical psychologist. HEROES OF THE R.A.F. The deaths of two Americans can be attributed to these programs; other participants in the testing program may still suffer from the residual effects.*. Income tax should be paid on the entire amount reported. 43.19 The district attorneys prosecutors have diligently logged hundreds of hours working on it, and were anxious about additional findings that may be forthcoming.. 5.07 Voice of Norman Cournoyer/Friend of Frank Olson: By the end of the 1960s, LSD was illegal. The Special Operations Divison at Detrick was the governments most secret biological weapons laboratory. The great historical irony, Eric said, being that the CIA brought LSD to America thereby bringing a kind of enlightenment, thereby opening up a new level of political consciousness, thereby sowing the seeds of its own undoing because it created an enlightened public. It made great copy, and youll find that this theme is the motif of a lot of books.. This position put him on the boundary between biological warfare and interrogation research, precisely the strange boundary zone evoked in the term germ warfare confessions. The conventional wisdom alleges that in November 1953 he threw himself out of a 13th floor window of the Statler Hotel in New York (now the Hotel Pennsylvania) after having himself been drugged with LSD by the CIA in a mind control experiment. Whites diaries indicate that Gottlieb continued to visit, flying out from Washington several times a year at least until 1961. However most of the passages pertaining to ARTICHOKE in the documents provided to the Olson family have been carefully deleted. Meanwhile, the US army was conducting extensive experiments with a new miracle drug: LSD. But what drugs or their metabolites should we seek to discover? Samples of hair are taken as well, and if the body has recently died, urine is removed from the bladder for drug testing. Pastore then went across the street to look at the upper floors from which Olson had doubtlessly fallen. After 75 years of psychoanalysis -- the talking cure -- here was a therapy, Eric believed, that didn't start from words but from images. It was likely he had struck that, spinning his body about so that he landed feet first on the sidewalk in an almost upright posture. The Olson family had never heard this name, and would not learn of Dr. Gibsons role until 1994. Himwich, along with the Armys Dr. L. Wilson Greene, who first drew the CIAs attention to the wonders of LSD.. If Frank Olsons death was indeed the unintended result of an MK-ULTRA experiment as the report concluded then why all the cryptic references in the document to ARTICHOKE? Was it because Olson was suffering from some embarrassing aftermath of the drug experiment of 19th November as well as from nervous disorder? It remains unclear why Olson was the only one to be seriously affected by the LSD dose. White, who had been instrumental in the cover-up, was promoted to district supervisor. The objectives of the project thus required that the bones be defleshed. Saracco and Bibb did manage to meet with Ruwet in Frederick, Maryland, as reported by H.P. He was staying in the 10th floor of the Statler Hotel, now the Pennsylvania Hotel, across the road from Madison Square Gardens, in midtown Manhattan. I met Elmore Leonard in 1996 at a book signing at a bookshop called Killer Books in Washington, together with his friend James Grady who wrote 6 Days of the Condor (changed to 3 Days of the Condor for the movie). Hamlet has become like a friend to me. Each made treachery and duplicity his byword. military or otherwise, and opposes supervision of his work. We would use the injury and the information to make this determination. The specific question, then, was whether the sub-galeal hemorrhage over the left eye can reasonably be attributable to the impact to the right parietal bone, resulting in the hinge fracture of the skull. Everest was conquered. Contact:We would love to hear from you. However, things began to crumble and by the end of the year, Eric discerned that the DAs office had retrenched on their efforts. In 1949, according to John Marks, who first broke the story of CIA experimentation with LSD, the agencys head of Scientific Intelligence went to Western Europe to learn more about Soviet techniques and to supervise experiments of his own, in order, this official explained, to apply special methods of interrogation for the purpose of evaluation of Russian practices. By the spring of 1950, the agency established a special program under its security division named Operation Bluebird to test behavior-control methods, and started recruiting university scholars to work for the program. The old training group PQ 31 is doing all right for itself, even if PQ has to stand for peculiarwhich is what I can say about my work now. We know that the horizontal divider on this double-hung window was five feet ten inches from the floor of Room 1018A. The M-K identified the initiative as a CIA Technical Services Staff (TSS) project. It had been eight years since we had exhumed his remains and more than time had passed since that time. 130, 12, p. 1827-1850 24 p. Research output : Contribution to journal Review article peer-review Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats 100% And indeed a consoling one. On June 11, 1975, startling new details turned up on Alice Olsons front doorstep, in the morning edition of The Washington Post. But it was very disturbing to see that a CIA manual suggested the exact method of Frank Olsons death.. I was reading your website yesterday and was quite amazed to find out about the circumstances of Colbys death on the eve of being called up to testify before a Grand Jury! His diaries show that Gottlieb and Lashbrook met him at the Bedford Street apartment. On the screen, Frank was riding a wobbly old bicycle and Eric, then a toddler, was resting on the handlebars. Frank Olson also used photography. He spent one night wandering the streets, and at one point he discarded his wallet and his identification papers asking to be allowed to disappear. Ruwet said that Olson did not want to go home to face his wife. But when Owsleys factory in Berkeley, California, was raided in February 1965, the case was thrown out of court since California law did not specifically regulate LSD. But the cottage those guys from the CIA usedthats still there.. Would he be unable to resist revealing secrets? Later in the evening of that same Tuesday, Abramson visited Olsons hotel room and brought a bottle of bourbon and some Nembutal for Dr. Olson. From him I learned that the RIA tests had all given positive results for the presence of LSD in the tissues. After my book was published, I continued to meet with Dr Sargent. Frank Olsons death is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface | 214-648-3111... 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