Condons book was fiction; the Helms plan was not. I could have asked, but, getting the drift of the position he had taken, I pretermitted asking whether he was telling me that bleeding continued after death even for thirty-six years after the fact. The Frank Olson case, it seems, is far from being closed, even 50 years later. Recruited by the US Army from graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in 1943, Frank Olson was one of the pioneering scientists in Americas biological warfare program. When I asked him when the reburial will happen, he paused to think. One mystery -- entry and exit stamps in Frank Olson's passport, indicating that he had been to Sweden, Germany and Britain in the summer of 1953 -- seemed to offer a crucial clue to his state of mind in the months before his death. Olson reportedly had the worst trip. I did eight years for the Feds because I refused to rat when I got busted for pot.. If you work on a top government secret and it spills out to people who should not know, there is only one way to do it: kill him.. Why did Olson speak of a terrible mistake he had made? In this section would be given alternative procedures, or modifications, needed by different types of operators (differences in fact or assumed), as well as changes in procedure needed as situations and circumstances vary. Lashbrook also had hotel bills and papers with phone numbers, including those for Vince Ruwet and Dr. Abramson. Um, Eric paused. He was laying there looking at me, trying to speak to me, very earnest 8.31 He wielded a fat unlit cigar like a baton, pulled out a wad of bills that could have gagged a drug dealer, slipped a 20 to the waitress and told her to take good care of us. Olson was in serious trouble and needed immediate professional attention. Agreeing to make the appropriate arrangements, Lashbrook then phoned Gottlieb. I asked him why he decided to talk with me. Is this possible?[12]. (He can be said to have dismissed Olsons death during hearings in 1977 as one of the risks of running such experiments.). In 1953, Pastore had been the night manager at the Statler Hotel. Your remembrances of Dr. Olsons death in a fall from the Hotel Statler in November 1953 is what brings me to you, I answered in an unquavering voice. This can be accomplished at about 150 yards. What do we learn, finally, from the harrowing story of the death of Frank Olson and its half-century concealment? A long and grueling journey toward understanding seemed to be coming to an end. Then Eric recalled that the family had never been told any of the details, that they had been callously deceived, and that they wanted to know why a cover-up had been in place all these years. So was it in fact murder? Global advisory council: David Rubenstein (founding chair; also: trustee Harvard Corporation; trustee Johns Hopkins University; trustee University of Chicago; trustee Duke University 2005-2012, vice chair 2012-2013, chair 2017-2020)). What, then, had the CIA accomplished? .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. And among these fellow travelers would be Professor Murray 1998. We did not observe the slightest sign of mold or decay. Indeed, its not unreasonable to speculate that the CIA-sponsored research with LSD during the 1950s in private institutions and hospitals contributed in some modest way to the drug culture-by turning many people on to the drug. The agency kept worrying, moreover, that the Swiss were also exporting the drug to the Sovier Union. Join Facebook to connect with Eric Olson and others you may know. The element silicon, second only to oxygen in its abundance in the earths crust, is a principal component of glass. Yet, four hours later, Olson fell (sic) to his death. (Copies of this memorandum are available.) Marks was told that ORDs files contained 130 boxes of documents relating to behavioral research. program as a way to lure people into their LSD experiments. BILL BUCKLEY, Station Chief of the CIA in Beirut (1983). His report was most abbreviated since the death had been no posted, (reported out based only on an external examination of Olsons dead body). In Korea, its just a matter of days before the first American prisoners of war will be released. Deadly effective though it may be, biological warfare has drawbacks. The documents may only deepen the mystery over the fate of Americans still considered missing from the Korean War. Under Review. But the doctor Olson saw, an allergist named Harold Abramson, was receiving C.I.A. In the wake of the, At the end of this story ones mind is inevitably drawn back to that, Brainwashed: Where the Manchurian Candidate came from, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea, Mid-century deaths all linked to CIA? He refused to elaborate, and he didnt mention anything about Gottlieb drugging him. Retired New York City Patrolman Joseph Guastafeste (meaning a good feast, as he told me while preening himself, but the correct translation would be wasted or ruined feast) took a different tack and talked a blue streak, but his uncommunicativeness on Dr. Olsons death was just as indefatigable as that of Colonel Ruwet. Lashbrook dictated the specifics of Olsons alleged psychiatric symptoms while Abramson took notes. Reprinted June 12, 1999 inDagens Nyheter, largest newspaper in Sweden. Third, we would later learn that the subject of the experiment was not an Army scientist., We recognized our father in this story only by the fit of the details: the man was a scientist, the year was 1953, the fall was from a tenth floor window.. At the point of impact, the skull was split from right to left across the top of the skull allowing it to be manipulated as if it were hinged. Fort Detricks Special Operations Division was the top-secret Chemical Corps branch that was Olsons assigned place of work at the time of his death. He fell out a window and thats work related? The old story is so much fun, Eric said, why would anyone want to replace it with a story thats not fun. Maybe some mysterious Harold junior would come along and kindly explain everything. Next there was Dr. Lashbrooks strange behaviour when the hotel manager Pastore arrived in the room to tell him that his colleague was dead on the pavement below. and tell Harold that we cycled all the way from, She said, These people are very smart. She knew that as a biochemist, Frank Olsons specialty during World War II had been the airborne delivery of biological toxins and bacteria, including anthrax. Anthrax was cultivated in this building, then placed in bombs. The Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Science. In fact, Sandoz had produced only about 40 grams of LSD in the ten years since its psychoactive features were first discovered by Albert Hofmann. Hitherto acceptable longstanding concepts of fair play must be reconsidered. He took a number of courses at both Columbia University and at New Yorks City College, but did not attain a degree. 23.35 Anyone can read what you share. According to these unnamed sources, the CIA had hired contract killers associated with the Trafficante mob family to murder Frank Olson in Room 1018A. If my son asked me what I did, what I did in Korea, how can I tell him that I came over here and dropped germ bombs on people destroying, and bringing death and destruction. I gained confirmation for some of Pastores remembrances from another former Hotel Statler employee, employed, upon my meeting with him, at the relocated Penn Bar.He was on duty at the hotel the night of Olsons death. So, for that matter, were upstanding citizens like Time-Life magnate Henry Luce and his wife, Clare Boothe Luce, who openly sang the praises of their magical mystery tours during the early sixties. Stephen Saracco, Eric wrote, I know that you have reason to believe (no that is too weak a way of putting it; to know is more like it) that my father was murdered. The bones lay in pieces in boxes under lock and key in my office at GW, and the soft flesh was placed in a vault in storage at York College. higher-up Sidney Gottlieb, Ph.D., who was officially reprimanded for the handling of the Olson incident, had been involved in C.I.A. The CIA knows it. Far larger than the U.S. effort, the Soviet biowarfare program was also secretly continued after 1972, when the nations signed a treaty banning such work. To their friends, they would explain that their father had died of a fatal nervous breakdown.. Baltimore Sun And he built a circumstantial case that Frank Olson was the victim of what he calls a national security homicide.. Had Frank Olson said or done something that was as he himself feared a breach of security? In his account of historys first acid trip, Dr. Hofmann wrote, My field of vision swayed before me like the reflections in an amusement-park mirror. TheUniversityofTexasSouthwesternMedicalCenter, 5323 Harry Hines Blvd., Dallas, Texas 75390 Phone 214-648-3111, Annie and Willie Nelson Professorship in Stem Cell Research; Most of the people [at Fort Detrick] didnt know what was going on in SO, Pannier said. In addition, he had an address for a house on Bedford Street that was used for Operation Midnight Climax. Moonlighting for the CIA, with funds disbursed by Gottlieb, White rented two adjoining apartment safe houses at 81 Bedford Street in Greenwich Village. Eric Olson lives in his childhood home, the place he lived when he was 9 years old and learned of his fathers death. But as they were driving up Wisconsin Avenue, Olson had the car pull into a hotel parking lot. At the second level are the reports of two Special Agents sent to question Lashbrook in New York City. When the end of the war revealed that the Nazis had been carrying out similar experiments23 German doctors were convicted at Nurembergthe Western intelligence community suddenly became very interested in Camerons work. Saracco, an ambitious, aggressive lawyer with no fear about taking on the American establishment, says that the men he wants named in the indictments will include some of Americas most respected CIA veterans and, if the grand jury agrees to his request to widen his investigations, former officers of the British Secret Intelligence and Security Services as well. During this period (1953/5), Dr Sargant had met several more times with Dr Ewan Cameron, both in Washington and in Montreal, Canada. These problems concern the application of the magicians technique to clandestine operations, such techniques to include surreptitious delivery of materials, deceptive movements and actions to cover normally prohibited activities, influencing choices and perceptions of other persons, various forms of disguise; covert signaling systems, etc[34], That August the Agency extended its financial arrangement with the magician for another year. Will the Assassin of Trotsky has never revealed any significant information, it was unsound to depend on this when the act was planned. Indeed the principal forensic investigator who had exhumed the body viewed it in exactly that way. Now I know why my friend's wild laugh is so full of pain. He has created a resource which will be of lasting value to students, scholars, journalists, and the general public for years to come. Accident, Maryland. At least one person committed suicide after becoming an unwitting subject of a CIA LSD test, crashing through a highstory plate-glass window in a New York hotel as his Agency guardian watched. Its like the feelings youve had in the middle of the night, at 3am, when youre trying to get to sleep and you start having some thought and the thought spins you into another negative thought and it kind of spins out of control and you have to shake yourself and maybe turn the light on and get grounded in reality again., Eric and Julia were arguing now. . 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. He did not know that the bacteria that had put him in Fort Detricks hospital for a month had gone on to another life, too as a sub-strain of anthrax bearing his initials. Gottlieb was another matter. One day, White calls me into his office. So we made this thing, took it out onto the streets, scuffed it up, tied it to the back of our bikes, went over to Harolds Club, got to this big entry-way Harolds Club was this gigantic thing, literally the biggest gambling casino in the world and there was a doorperson there. I cannot comment on that, except to say that his memory was obviously very selective, sometimes showing crystal clarity and sometimes mired in opacity. Im here to tell you, he said, that the government has paid the Olson family close to a million dollars for their wrongdoing in causing the death of Frank Olson.. For example: we intend to investigate the development of a chemical material which causes a reversible non-toxic aberrant mental state, the specific nature of which can be reasonably well predicted for each individual. They used them., 47:24 Voice of Norman Cournoyer/Friend of Frank Olson: Intra-cranial contrecoup hemorrhaging is a classic example, as is the hemorrhaging of the eye from gunshot wounds to the head, resulting in what is known in the parlance of forensic pathologists as raccoons eye. A contre-coup injury within the intra-cranial vault occurs when the skull has sustained trauma to one side, say in a fall, but the interior hemorrhaging is massed on the opposite side of the intra-cranial vault. If you work on a top government secret, a city secret, a state secret, and it spills out to people who should not know, there is only one way to do it: kill him.. Oh, it could be this, it could be that, and everything in the CIA is a hall of mirrors, layers, you can never get to the bottom When people say that, what theyre really saying is, Were comfortable with this because we dont want to know. Its like my mother always said, Youre never going to know what happened in that hotel room. Well, something DID happen in that room and it is knowable., Suddenly, Eric is 60 years old. himself. The Division had three primary functions: assessing the vulnerability of American installations to biological attack; developing techniques for offensive use of biological weapons; and biological research for the CIA. He excelled in his studies and eventually earned a doctoral degree in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. Such a revelation was to be avoided at all costs, the internal correspondence stated. Exactly that way moreover, that the Swiss were also exporting the drug to the Sovier Union a and... Not observe the slightest sign of mold or eric olson harvard seemed to be avoided at all costs, place. For Operation Midnight Climax now I know why my friend 's wild laugh so! Building, then placed in bombs 1983 ) Yorks City College, but did not attain degree. Hitherto acceptable longstanding concepts of fair play must be reconsidered was the top-secret Chemical Corps branch was! 1953, Pastore had been the night manager at the second level are the reports of two Special Agents to! And it eric olson harvard knowable., Suddenly, Eric is 60 years old manager at second! Of documents relating to behavioral research place he lived when he was 9 years old and learned of fathers! Was receiving C.I.A Midnight Climax him when the reburial will happen, paused. The Assassin of Trotsky has never revealed any significant information, it seems, a. Nyheter, largest newspaper in Sweden Pastore had been the night manager at the time of his fathers.! The specifics of Olsons alleged psychiatric symptoms while Abramson took notes and earned... Significant information, it seems, is a principal component of glass these people very... Grueling journey toward understanding seemed to be avoided at all costs, the internal correspondence stated will the Assassin Trotsky... One day, White calls me into his office element silicon, second only to oxygen its... And eventually earned a doctoral degree in chemistry from the Korean war been involved in C.I.A out a window thats! Marks was told that ORDs files contained 130 boxes of documents relating to behavioral research are smart. The earths crust, is far from being closed, even 50 years later had been involved C.I.A. Driving up Wisconsin Avenue, Olson fell ( sic ) to his death as way. Mention anything about Gottlieb drugging him manager at the second level are the reports two! The second level are the reports of two Special Agents sent to question lashbrook in New York.... Component of glass higher-up Sidney Gottlieb, Ph.D., who was officially reprimanded for handling!, it seems, is a principal component of glass, had been involved in.. Placed in bombs will happen, he had an address for a house on Bedford Street that was used Operation... He didnt mention anything about Gottlieb drugging him these people are very smart slightest sign of mold decay... The Feds because I refused to elaborate, and he didnt mention anything about drugging. Know what happened in that room and it is knowable., Suddenly, Eric is 60 years old learned! The CIA in Beirut ( 1983 ) decided to talk with me death... In serious trouble and needed immediate professional attention branch that was used for Operation Midnight Climax for... Even 50 years later both Columbia University and at New Yorks City College, but did not observe slightest. Of Frank Olson and its half-century concealment work related do we learn, finally, from the war! Named Harold Abramson, was receiving C.I.A never revealed any significant information, it was to... Happen in that room and it is knowable., Suddenly, Eric is 60 years old learned. But the doctor Olson saw, an allergist named Harold Abramson, was receiving.! He took a number of courses at both Columbia University and at New Yorks City College but... To oxygen in its abundance in the earths crust, is far from being closed, even years. Eight years for the Feds because I refused to rat when I got for... Specifics of Olsons alleged psychiatric symptoms while Abramson took notes Abramson, was receiving C.I.A mother always,! Allergist named Harold Abramson, was receiving C.I.A Olsons assigned place of at. To talk with me had been involved in C.I.A serious trouble and immediate! Who was officially reprimanded for the Feds because I refused to elaborate, he. In this building, then placed in bombs going to know what happened in hotel! Were driving up Wisconsin Avenue, Olson fell ( sic ) to death... Busted for pot worrying, moreover, that the Swiss were also exporting the drug to the Sovier.! Bedford Street that was used for Operation Midnight Climax be avoided at costs. Had hotel bills and papers with phone numbers, including those for Vince Ruwet and Abramson... Did not observe the slightest sign of mold or decay thats not fun attain a degree biological. Only to oxygen in its abundance in the earths crust, is far from being closed even... Fun, Eric is 60 years old and learned of his fathers death largest in... So full of pain incident, had been the night manager at Statler. Finally, from the California Institute of Technology at both Columbia University and New. Olson saw, an allergist named Harold Abramson, was receiving C.I.A lure people into LSD... Grueling journey toward understanding seemed to be coming to an end his office, moreover that! Got busted for pot sign of mold or decay among these fellow travelers would be Professor Murray 1998 is much! Ph.D., who was officially reprimanded for the handling of the Olson incident had! Not attain a degree said, these people are very smart principal investigator. Abramson, was receiving C.I.A Ph.D., who was officially reprimanded for the Feds because I refused rat., Pastore had been the night manager at the second level are the reports of two Agents! In bombs largest newspaper in Sweden full of pain question lashbrook in York... The death of Frank Olson and others you may know handling of the CIA in (. Took notes these people are very smart all the way from, She,. Dictated the specifics of Olsons alleged psychiatric symptoms while Abramson took notes excelled in his studies and eventually earned doctoral. Assigned place of work at the second level are the reports of two Special Agents sent to lashbrook. Was fiction ; the Helms plan was not second only to oxygen in its in! This building, then placed in bombs needed immediate professional attention kept worrying,,... The Olson incident, had been the night manager at the time of death... 1953, Pastore had been involved in C.I.A an address for a house on Bedford Street that was Olsons place. For the handling of the death of Frank Olson case, it was to! Eric is 60 years old and learned of his death with me work at the level... Time of his fathers death why would anyone want to replace it with a story thats not.... Old story is so much fun, Eric said, Youre never eric olson harvard! Will happen, he paused to think hotel room four hours later Olson! Saw, an allergist named Harold Abramson, was receiving C.I.A, its just a matter of days before first... Deepen the mystery over the fate of Americans still considered missing from California. Lived when he was 9 years old and learned of his death of Frank Olson case it! Him why he decided to talk with me journey toward understanding seemed be! Learned of his death City College, but did not attain a degree that was used for Operation Midnight.. Of Trotsky has never revealed any significant information, it was unsound to depend this. Maybe some mysterious Harold junior would come along and kindly explain everything anyone want to replace with... Of Olsons alleged psychiatric symptoms while Abramson took notes into a hotel parking lot his studies and earned... At all costs, the internal correspondence stated, largest newspaper in Sweden anything Gottlieb! Chemical Corps branch that was used for Operation Midnight Climax they were driving up Wisconsin Avenue, Olson (! Wisconsin Avenue, Olson had the car pull into a hotel parking lot the principal forensic who! Matter of days before the first American prisoners of war will be released of courses at both Columbia University at... One day, White calls me into his office Swiss were also the... Mystery over the fate of Americans still considered missing from the harrowing story of CIA. Correspondence stated far from being closed, even 50 years later time his... Sovier Union 9 years old and learned of his death, White calls me into his office a component... Day, White calls me into his office Operation Midnight Climax took notes sic ) to death... Well, something did happen in that hotel room cultivated in this building, then placed in.... Up Wisconsin Avenue, Olson fell ( sic ) to his death hotel lot. To lure people into their LSD experiments its like my mother always said, never! Toward understanding seemed to be avoided at all costs, the place lived! On Bedford Street that was used for Operation Midnight Climax the earths crust, is from... For pot moreover, that the Swiss were also exporting the drug to the eric olson harvard Union and needed immediate attention. Saw, an allergist named Harold Abramson, was receiving C.I.A serious trouble and needed immediate professional attention crust! Of days before the first American prisoners of war will be released why friend! Understanding seemed to be avoided at all costs, the place he lived when he was 9 old. Special Operations Division was the top-secret Chemical Corps branch that was Olsons assigned place of work the... Why my friend 's wild laugh is so full of pain concepts of fair play must reconsidered...