It turned out to be the most mind-bending of all the interviews I had conducted in this investigation. Eric knows that to charge the most secretive agency of American government with murder is to incur the suspicion that you have become deranged by anger, grief, paranoia, greed or a combination of all four. They used them., 47:24 Voice of Norman Cournoyer/Friend of Frank Olson: For this reason at the funeral in 1953 Frank Olsons casket was closed. At the funeral, attended by several dozen relatives, friends of the family, and members of my team, the remains were lowered into the ground for what could be their final rest. He and Nils would reach the goal San Francisco by small continuous increments of motion along a single strand. This was in Erics mind a test-run for another goal he would one day reach in an equally fastidious way: the solution to the mystery of what happened to his father in that hotel room in New York at 2am. Bogle, a brilliant scientist, had told friends that he was about to go to the US to work on scientific research of great military importance. (He can be said to have dismissed Olsons death during hearings in 1977 as one of the risks of running such experiments.). Detective James Ward initially referred to the case as a possible homocide in his report. Sargant told me he believed Frank Olson had witnessed murder being committed with the various drugs he had prepared. Then in 1975 the Rockefeller Commission, set up by President Ford to examine the extent of the CIAs illegal domestic operations, revealed that an unnamed army scientist had died after CIA experts, experimenting with mind-bending drugs, had secretly slipped him a dose of potent LSD. Five days after the Oval Office session, the Olson family met with CIA Director William Colby at the spy agencys headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It is another to prove it. On September 18, Gottlieb filed an amendment to the MKULTRA Project Records that noted The time period for the original proposal by Mr. Mulholland was six months, which would expire about 11 October 1953. Dangers include injecting too much drug, so that an erection can last dangerously long and kill penile tissue. The potions are not administered orally, as they were by the CIA, because the drug must affect only the penis and not the rest of the body. Will be to arrive where we started The glaring gap that still remained pertained not to what had happened in 1953 but to what had happened in 1975. It was on the sidewalk in front of the Penn Bar, adjacent to the place where he had found Dr. Olsons body. We categorically deny that.. It was made immediately after Frank Olson went out of the window. Dr. Gibson is certain that he then asked whether the friend to be admitted was currently under the care of a physician, or was receiving any sort of treatment. My letter to the New York City police departments pension division seeking to contact him was forwarded to him but I received no reply from him. Pastore wasnt the only interested party to take note of the recent news headlines. 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. As for the question of whether security could have been guaranteed at Chestnut Lodge, Dr. Gibson gives a clear negative response. A gun or a bomb leaves no doubt that a deliberate attack has occurred. . The New York Times With the external front under control, the Agency then turned to its own internal investigation. A hammer may be picked up almost anywhere in the world. Of course, we do not know if LSD had adverse effects on these patients; indeed, some dying patients today take LSD voluntarily, to experience the powerful visions that it stimulates in their final days. Abramson also gave Gregory Bateson, Margaret Meads former husband, his first LSD. Robert Lashbrook must have been a hard-boiled type, nerves of steel. Premier, ARD, WDR August 12, 2002, 0.02 Koch, Egmont R. and Michael Wech.Codename: ARTICHOKE.Egmont R. Koch Filmproduktion. The Army sent him to another language school, this time in Monterey, California, where he added Mandarin Chinese:to his repertoire. When I asked for his experiential evidence that such a thing had happened in some reported case or cases involving an exhumation many years after the fact, the answer was one that no true scientist would tender. A far-fetched ides, perhaps, but one whose currency was not limited to the CIA. If there isn't enough for the Manhattan D.A. Given the many references in the Colby document to ARTICHOKE, Eric began to wonder if the Deep Creek dosing had been part of an interrogation targeting his father. ''Everyone was in a plot to 'get' him,'' he told Lashbrook. Brainwashed: Where the Manchurian Candidate came from, A new documentary film, Code Name Artichoke (produced this year by German public television and widely shown internationally and in the US on WorldLink TV) on the death of my father, Dr. Frank Olson, revisits this question and presents new evidence. Although the agency tested compounds ranging from mes-caline to extracts from poisonous mushrooms, the key drug was LSD-25, a synthetic variation on a c ompound found in a fungus. We are familiar with the stories of those whose lives were ruined when they became victims of unjustified accusations during the McCarthy witch hunts. The laugh was an attractive and alarming trait, because sometimes he would laugh about things that weren't funny at all. THAMES NUMBER ONE One of them was a former CIA pimp named Ira Ike Feldman. Then in June 1975 a special commission chaired by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller released the findings of its investigation into illegal CIA domestic operations. In fact the 1970s version of the Frank Olson story was a story that everyone could love. The kit consisted of a lethal toxin possibly anthrax concealed in a tube of toothpaste. At the time, planners regarded bioweapons as a valuable military option more devastating than chemical weapons, but more selective than a nuclear attack. However most of the passages pertaining to ARTICHOKE in the documents provided to the Olson family have been carefully deleted. He died because of security concerns regarding disavowed programs of terminal interrogation and the use of biological weapons in Korea. I hope this helps to set the record straight. Olson phoned his wife I talked to Vin, he said I didnt make a mistake, everything is fine and Im not going to resign.But Tuesday morning saw a return of his anxiety and depression. National security might be at stake. A Harley Street psychiatrist, Dr. William Sargant, now dead, was sent by the British goverment in the early 1950s to evaluate MK-ULTRA. Copyright 2003. by Alston Chase. Cold War research ran the gamut, from investigations of sleep deprivation to perfecting anthrax delivery systems. The end is where we start from. Hitherto acceptable longstanding concepts of fair play must be reconsidered. MAGDALENE, Fiction: If the United States took advantage of tragic accidents to make its anthrax deadlier, those experiments were mirrored at least once in the Soviet program. Incredible as it sometimes seemed, in both cases, the place one finally got to was still part of America. Now the family has learned that the Ford administration was keeping information from the family, concerned that family members would ask questions about the scientists work that the government was unprepared to answer. That kind of an attitude of loyalty was one way of expressing your Americanism.. The bloody battles of Pork Chop Hill, Eerie and Old Baldy were headline news. The two became good friends. In the summer of 2002, he and his brother Nils were finally ready to lay their father, and the mystery, to rest. It is altogether improbable that Dr. Olson would have gone unresisting to his death if he were conscious of a third persons trying to force him out the window to a certain death. He rattled through a list of key events that occurred in 1953. She knew he had not been sleeping well, she knew he wasnt really at peace. Feldman had acquired three or four to set himself up with cover.. Educational Programs. Gibbons stated that he is stopping any LSD tests which may have been instituted under CIA auspices.. This is a biological warfare story. My father's case covers both. In secret testimony before the Senate Church Committee on Assassinations, the former CIA chemist admitted to his key role in CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders. . By the 1960s, Alice had developed a drinking problem that eventually led to the loss of her job as a teacher and a drunk driving arrest on Christmas Eve. New York: The cause of death was confirmed by an autopsy finding of bacteria resembling anthrax in the brain. Disraeli, the British Prime Minister under Queen Victoria, born of Jewish parents, but they say he had the best upper-class English accent of anyone in the British Isles. Unbeknownst to us, the intent of the White House in having the family meet personally with the President was to ensure that the Olson family pursue a course that would enable the government to maintain secrecy even as it was being alleged that the full story concerning this incident was being released. Orley R. Bourland Jr., 75, who worked as a plant manager, said anthrax from Krehs finger was isolated and designated BVK-1, for Bernard Victor Kreh. If the assassin is trained as a doctor or nurse and the subject is under medical care, this is an easy and rare method. And the documentary evidence from 1953 demonstrates a concerted pattern of concealment and deception on the part of those persons and agencies most closely associated withand most likely to be accountable fora homicide most foul in the death of Dr. Olson. Within less than two hours, Lashbrook was set loose and the case was closed out as D.O.A. Eliot He recalls this strange night now as a revelation. EARTHQUAKE (with Max MorganWitts) According to Lashbrook, Olson was cheerful and appeared to enjoy the entertainment. He appeared no longer particularly depressed, and almost the Dr. Olson I knew prior to the experiment.. The significance of this absence of lacerations is less a criticism of Dr. Di Maio than a commentary on the way Dr. Olson exited through the window. But Starrs was looking at an undamaged face, devoid of cuts. in the summer of 1953 Frank Olson travelled to Britain, once again to visit Parton Down. and allergist who had parlayed a fascination with behavior-modifying drugs into lucrative MK-ULTRA contract work. In 1959 Bateson, in turn, helped arrange for a beat poet friend of his named Allen Ginsberg to take the drug at a research program located off the Stanford campus. In fact the headline Suicide Revealed was triply ironic. Dirty tricks. Olson received his Ph.D. from the University of Central Florida, MBA from the Stetson University, and a BBA in marketing from University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He said I could only publish what he had said after his death. Dr. Gibson said he found this very believable. The Rockefeller Commissions account of the suicide of an Army scientist not only neglected to add the mans name and his CIA affiliation; it omitted any reference to his high position in the countrys most secret biological weapons laboratory. He told me that he developed a rapport with Frank Olson during a number of subsequent visits Frank Olson made to Britain. In the face of this implication the CIA enforcers of the early 1950s did not flinch, though historians along with the general public have continued to see the state in all its finery.. Remembered by his colleagues for his forcefulness as well as for his marked stuttering while excited, Gottlieb came closest to the image of the sinister scientist in the whole strange cast of agency characters. (Illustrations by Haruo Miyauchi). He refused to elaborate, and he didnt mention anything about Gottlieb drugging him. Fulfilling any legal requirements in Maryland for an exhumation was next in my line of investigative fire. Some of these people would become regulars with me in my future exhumations. Dr. Gibsons father the author of The Shadow! They gave the exclusive on their personal story to Seymour Hersh of The New York Times, and when he came through the door of the house in Frederick, his first words were: ''This must be the most uncurious family in the United States. Meeting me must have been strange for him, but I imagined there was more. You call this science? And Gottlieb basically replied, Yeah, it was a bit casual. Consultant, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine Administrative Appointment Chair, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine Academic Rank Professor of Medicine EDUCATION Fellowship - Sleep Medicine Mayo Graduate School of Medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine But the U.S. government has long denied using bioweapons, and most U.S. experts reject the charge. ], Lashbrook told the police that Olson had come to New York on 24th November to seek help for mental illness. It was the C.I.A.s investigation into Frank Olsons death. She had been drinking on the quiet since the 1960s, and had begun locking herself in the bathroom and coming out mean and confused. And then Erics mother became hysterical. The thing is, the governments lid on its secrets remains so tight, we may never know the whole story, Dont go there, Dan, he muttered to himself. According to the hotel switchboard operator, who had listened in, it was a short conversation consisting of only two lines: Well, hes gone, a man in the hotel room had said. I can't believe you fell for that story for 22 years.'' Wholesale experimentation with the drug was launched in the early 1950s. As he discovered himself-along with the CIA-it is not easy to unlock mens minds and wrest the secrets from them. For instance, Walter said, their scientists bred antibiotic-resistant bacteria to make standard Soviet and Chinese treatments useless against U.S. weapons. There was no explanation in these pages, for example, about why the C.I.A. Used here with permission of the authors. Having experienced what Ellen Herman called a collapse of faith in the rational appeal and workability of democratic ideology and behavior, the generation of scholars that emerged from World War II had sought to perfect the tools of social control by which the elite would save democracy. Are you in any way motivated by ideology over this? the man from Fox News asked. It was intended to assess what kind of risk he posed and then eliminate him if necessary. analyzing the documents obtained by the Olson family from CIA Director William Colby in June 1975 5323 Harry Hines Boulevard Dallas, Texas, 75390 | Telephone 214-648-3111, Copyright 2023. They specialize in Orthopedic Surgery, has 39 years of experience. Saracco has already offered Lashbrook immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony. The family now came to the painful realization that Frank Olson might have been murdered. The CIA also explored use of psychosurgery and repeated electric shocks directly into the brain. I know of no work in which any any historian has explored this issue. September 17, 1996, Tuesday. Discovered by Dr. Albert Hoffman on April 16, 1943, d-lysergic acid diethylamide or LSD as it would become known seemed to be a drug custom-made for the intelligence community. Espionage. In response, my father leaned toward me across the table and whispered, Theyve given OPC the, Well, here I am on hotshot duty in TSS, and there you are, honcho number one to the big man in Berlin. Indeed, one ex-agent told me it would be foolish to think that a program as fruitful as MK-ULTRA would be discontinued. The assassination range of the sub-machine gun is point blank. Army bosses would ask: Are you keeping them happy? SD was invented in Switzerland by Albert Hofmann, a researcher for Sandoz pharmaceuticals. Bacteriological warfare is remarkably cheap; it has been described as the poor mans nuclear bomb. A deadly virus sufficient to wipe out every living person over an area of one square mile would cost only about $50. And a few Detrick retirees who worked in the SO Division or collaborated with it spoke sparingly about what they know. What is Olsons new assignment? Skip to main content Main navigation Mobile. Once again, as we went down the path suggested by these questions we discovered that all the assumptions on which they were based were incorrect. A most uncommon request, but one to which I acceded. 5. So he was terminated instead. Reading this passage at the kitchen table in Frederick, Eric realized that the word he had been looking for all his life was not ''fallen'' or ''jumped'' but ''dropped.'' Eric Olson. Social historians and political satirists immediately labelled these events a great historical irony, and Eric repeated these words to me through gritted teeth because he doesnt appreciate the fact that his fathers death has become a fragment of an irony. He said I could only publish what he had said after his death. When I ask him what he has learned from his ordeal, he says, ''Never dig up your father.'' The former head of the United States Special Operations Command, he retired from the United States Navy in 2011 as a full Admiral after 38 years of military service. 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