Frank Olson
Encyclopedia
Frank Olson was a U.S. Army biological warfare specialist employed at Fort Detrick
in Maryland. Believed to have committed suicide in 1953 as a result of depression, it was later revealed that he had been exposed to LSD and other psychoactive drugs as part of experiments
, leading some to believe that he had been assassinated by the CIA.
in Frederick, Maryland
. He was recruited from the University of Wisconsin, where his departmental advisor was Ira Baldwin, the civilian scientist who, along with industrial partners like George W. Merck
and the U.S. military, established the U.S. bioweapons program in 1943, a time when interest in applying modern technology to warfare was at an all-time high.
His specific research work at Fort Detrick's Special Operations Division has never been revealed, but he was clearly involved in biological weapons research. He had been assigned as a contact with the CIA's Technical Services Staff, run by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb
and his deputy Robert Lashbrook regarding experiments with bioweapons, toxins, and mind control
drugs. This was the MKNAOMI - MKULTRA program, previously known as Project Artichoke
and earlier, Project Bluebird, and justified based on claimed Soviet efforts to create a "Manchurian Candidate." In 1953, as Deputy Acting Head of Special Operations for the CIA, Olson associated with Dr. William Sargant
, investigating the use of psychoactive drugs at Britain's Biological Warfare Centre at Porton Down
. Hence, he was privy to the innermost secrets of the CIA interrogation and biowarfare programs.
Ed Regis reports that the meeting at which Olson was dosed with LSD took place at Deep Creek Lake:
"Deep Creek Lake was three hours by car from Camp Detrick. On Wednesday morning, November 18, 1953, about a week before Thanksgiving, a group from the SO Division, including Vincent Ruwet, chief of the division, John Schwab, Frank Olson, Ben Wilson, Gerald Yonetz, and John Malinowski, drove out to the retreat...The Detrick group was met at the lodge by Sid Gottlieb, his deputy Robert Lashbrook, and a couple of others from the CIA....On the second day of the retreat, after dinner, Gottlieb spiked a bottle of Cointreau with a small quantity of a substance that he and his TSS colleagues privately referred to as "serunin" but which was in fact lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD."
According to the government's version of events, Olson subsequently suffered severe paranoia and a nervous breakdown
. The CIA sent him to New York to see one of their psychiatrist
s, who recommended that Olson be placed into a mental institution for recovery. This all took place after Olson asked to quit the biowarfare program the week after the retreat http://books.google.com/books?id=Or3OQLphU2gC&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=%22and+that+in+fact+he+had+decided+he+would+like+to+be+out+of+the+germ+warfare+business.%22&source=bl&ots=VyffrdwyHM&sig=cEEoWalLTQcwMeHfnyCZUwgXzNU&hl=en&ei=mjTgTM6mJcL6lwfm-Z3lAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAw:
"Ruwet was surprised to see Olson at 7:30 in the morning, but asked him in. Olson told Ruwet that he was dissatisfied with his own performance at the retreat, that he was experiencing considerable self-doubts, and that in fact he had decided he would like to be out of the germ warfare business. He wanted to leave Camp Detrick and devote his life to something else."
The LSD
experience may have led Olson to this conclusion, but it was one he had been thinking of for some time. The CIA asked him to go to New York to meet with their private psychiatrist, Harold Abramson, who was centrally involved in the "research".
The CIA claimed that on his last night in Manhattan
, Olson purposely threw himself out of
the window of his tenth-floor hotel room at the Hotel Pennsylvania
, which he had been sharing with CIA agent Robert Lashbrook, dying on impact.
The biological warfare programs and the chemical interrogation programs then remained almost completely hidden from the public, until Nixon's closure of the biowarfare program in 1969 and the Church Committee hearings of 1975.
started uncovering some of the CIA's MKULTRA
activities. In 1975, the government admitted that Olson had been dosed with LSD without his knowledge. The government offered his family an out of court settlement of $750,000, which they accepted.
In 1994, Eric Olson had his father's body exhumed to be buried with his wife.
The family decided to have a second autopsy performed.The 1953 medical report done immediately after Dr. Olson’s death indicated that there were cuts and abrasions on the body. Theories sparked about Olson being assassinated by the CIA. This was boosted by the fact that just a year earlier, in 1952, a document had been released to CIA workers about assasination. The standard method was to hit in the temple with a blunt instrument then impact onto hard surface from a height. When the second autopsy was performed by James Starrs, Professor of Law and Forensic science at the National Law Center at George Washington University, his team searched the body for any cuts and abrasions and didn’t find any. Professor Starrs found a large hematoma on the left side of Dr. Olson's head and a large injury on his chest. The team concluded that the blunt force trauma to the head and injury to the chest did not happen during the fall. They most likely happened in the room before falling out of the window. The evidence was called "rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide
." Based on his findings, in 1996 the Manhattan District Attorney
opened a homicide investigation into Olson's death, but was unable to find enough evidence to bring charges.
Fort Detrick
Fort Detrick is a U.S. Army Medical Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland, USA. Historically, Fort Detrick was the center for the United States' biological weapons program ....
in Maryland. Believed to have committed suicide in 1953 as a result of depression, it was later revealed that he had been exposed to LSD and other psychoactive drugs as part of experiments
Project MKULTRA
Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, was the code name for a covert, illegal CIA human experimentation program, run by the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence. This official U.S. government program began in the early 1950s, continued at least through the late 1960s, and used U.S...
, leading some to believe that he had been assassinated by the CIA.
Biography
Frank Olson was a senior U.S. microbiologist at Fort DetrickFort Detrick
Fort Detrick is a U.S. Army Medical Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland, USA. Historically, Fort Detrick was the center for the United States' biological weapons program ....
in Frederick, Maryland
Frederick, Maryland
Frederick is a city in north-central Maryland. It is the county seat of Frederick County, the largest county by area in the state of Maryland. Frederick is an outlying community of the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is part of a greater...
. He was recruited from the University of Wisconsin, where his departmental advisor was Ira Baldwin, the civilian scientist who, along with industrial partners like George W. Merck
George W. Merck
George Wilhelm Herman Emanuel Merck , was the president of Merck & Co. from 1925 to 1950.-Biography:Born in New York and raised in Llewellyn Park, New Jersey, he attended Harvard College, graduating in 1915. World War I prevented him from pursuing an advanced degree in Germany; instead, he joined...
and the U.S. military, established the U.S. bioweapons program in 1943, a time when interest in applying modern technology to warfare was at an all-time high.
His specific research work at Fort Detrick's Special Operations Division has never been revealed, but he was clearly involved in biological weapons research. He had been assigned as a contact with the CIA's Technical Services Staff, run by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb
Sidney Gottlieb
Sidney Gottlieb was an American chemist probably best known for his involvement with the Central Intelligence Agency's mind control program MKULTRA.-Life:...
and his deputy Robert Lashbrook regarding experiments with bioweapons, toxins, and mind control
Mind control
Mind control refers to a process in which a group or individual "systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator, often to the detriment of the person being manipulated"...
drugs. This was the MKNAOMI - MKULTRA program, previously known as Project Artichoke
Project ARTICHOKE
Project ARTICHOKE was a CIA project that researched interrogation methods and arose from Project BLUEBIRD on August 20, 1951, run by the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence...
and earlier, Project Bluebird, and justified based on claimed Soviet efforts to create a "Manchurian Candidate." In 1953, as Deputy Acting Head of Special Operations for the CIA, Olson associated with Dr. William Sargant
William Sargant
William Walters Sargant was a controversial British psychiatrist who is remembered for the evangelical zeal with which he promoted treatments such as psychosurgery, deep sleep treatment, electroconvulsive therapy and insulin shock therapy.Sargant studied medicine at St John's College, Cambridge,...
, investigating the use of psychoactive drugs at Britain's Biological Warfare Centre at Porton Down
Porton Down
Porton Down is a United Kingdom government and military science park. It is situated slightly northeast of Porton near Salisbury in Wiltshire, England. To the northwest lies the MoD Boscombe Down test range facility which is operated by QinetiQ...
. Hence, he was privy to the innermost secrets of the CIA interrogation and biowarfare programs.
Ed Regis reports that the meeting at which Olson was dosed with LSD took place at Deep Creek Lake:
"Deep Creek Lake was three hours by car from Camp Detrick. On Wednesday morning, November 18, 1953, about a week before Thanksgiving, a group from the SO Division, including Vincent Ruwet, chief of the division, John Schwab, Frank Olson, Ben Wilson, Gerald Yonetz, and John Malinowski, drove out to the retreat...The Detrick group was met at the lodge by Sid Gottlieb, his deputy Robert Lashbrook, and a couple of others from the CIA....On the second day of the retreat, after dinner, Gottlieb spiked a bottle of Cointreau with a small quantity of a substance that he and his TSS colleagues privately referred to as "serunin" but which was in fact lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD."
According to the government's version of events, Olson subsequently suffered severe paranoia and a nervous breakdown
Nervous breakdown
Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...
. The CIA sent him to New York to see one of their psychiatrist
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...
s, who recommended that Olson be placed into a mental institution for recovery. This all took place after Olson asked to quit the biowarfare program the week after the retreat http://books.google.com/books?id=Or3OQLphU2gC&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=%22and+that+in+fact+he+had+decided+he+would+like+to+be+out+of+the+germ+warfare+business.%22&source=bl&ots=VyffrdwyHM&sig=cEEoWalLTQcwMeHfnyCZUwgXzNU&hl=en&ei=mjTgTM6mJcL6lwfm-Z3lAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAw:
"Ruwet was surprised to see Olson at 7:30 in the morning, but asked him in. Olson told Ruwet that he was dissatisfied with his own performance at the retreat, that he was experiencing considerable self-doubts, and that in fact he had decided he would like to be out of the germ warfare business. He wanted to leave Camp Detrick and devote his life to something else."
The LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
experience may have led Olson to this conclusion, but it was one he had been thinking of for some time. The CIA asked him to go to New York to meet with their private psychiatrist, Harold Abramson, who was centrally involved in the "research".
The CIA claimed that on his last night in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, Olson purposely threw himself out of
Defenestration
Defenestration is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.The term "defenestration" was coined around the time of an incident in Prague Castle in the year 1618. The word comes from the Latin de- and fenestra...
the window of his tenth-floor hotel room at the Hotel Pennsylvania
Hotel Pennsylvania
The Hotel Pennsylvania is a hotel located at 401 7th Avenue in Manhattan, across the street from Pennsylvania Station and Madison Square Garden in New York City.- History :...
, which he had been sharing with CIA agent Robert Lashbrook, dying on impact.
The biological warfare programs and the chemical interrogation programs then remained almost completely hidden from the public, until Nixon's closure of the biowarfare program in 1969 and the Church Committee hearings of 1975.
Legacy
His family had no knowledge of the details of the accident until the Rockefeller CommissionUnited States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States
The U.S. President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the United States...
started uncovering some of the CIA's MKULTRA
Project MKULTRA
Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, was the code name for a covert, illegal CIA human experimentation program, run by the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence. This official U.S. government program began in the early 1950s, continued at least through the late 1960s, and used U.S...
activities. In 1975, the government admitted that Olson had been dosed with LSD without his knowledge. The government offered his family an out of court settlement of $750,000, which they accepted.
In 1994, Eric Olson had his father's body exhumed to be buried with his wife.
The family decided to have a second autopsy performed.The 1953 medical report done immediately after Dr. Olson’s death indicated that there were cuts and abrasions on the body. Theories sparked about Olson being assassinated by the CIA. This was boosted by the fact that just a year earlier, in 1952, a document had been released to CIA workers about assasination. The standard method was to hit in the temple with a blunt instrument then impact onto hard surface from a height. When the second autopsy was performed by James Starrs, Professor of Law and Forensic science at the National Law Center at George Washington University, his team searched the body for any cuts and abrasions and didn’t find any. Professor Starrs found a large hematoma on the left side of Dr. Olson's head and a large injury on his chest. The team concluded that the blunt force trauma to the head and injury to the chest did not happen during the fall. They most likely happened in the room before falling out of the window. The evidence was called "rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide
Homicide
Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...
." Based on his findings, in 1996 the Manhattan District Attorney
New York County District Attorney
The New York County District Attorney is the elected district attorney for New York County , New York. The office is responsible for the prosecution of violations of New York state laws....
opened a homicide investigation into Olson's death, but was unable to find enough evidence to bring charges.
External links
- "Son probes strange death of WMD worker" - Scott Shane writing for The Baltimore SunThe Baltimore SunThe Baltimore Sun is the U.S. state of Maryland’s largest general circulation daily newspaper and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries....
(September 12, 2004) - The Frank Olson Legacy Project - explores the circumstances of Frank Olson's death and the political and ethical issues embedded in them
- The Frank Olson MurderGerman documentary (includes a confession by an insider)LSD A Go Go Short documentary about the Frank Olson case
- audio interview with Olson's sons, Part 1
- audio interview with Olson's sons, Part 2
- Code Name ARTICHOKE, Hugh Turley, Hyattsville Life and Times, April 2008.
- "Did the CIA Drug Paul Robeson? – a Look at the Secret Program Mk Ultra" Part 1. 23:16 minutes. Amy Goodman interviews Paul Robeson, Jr., Dr. Eric Olson, Martin Lee. Democracy Now!Democracy Now!Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...
. Thursday, July 1, 1999. Retrieved August 22, 2010.