In telling our story, we are concerned that neither the personal pain this family has experienced nor the moral and political outrage we feel be slighted.. General Manager. So I said What was the conversation? She said the man in the room called this number out in Long Island and said Well, hes gone and the man on the other end said Well, thats too bad and they both hung up.. Hundreds of names, places and dates were blacked out. The whole subject of the relationship between a wife and a husband who is doing top secret, classified work is a subject one could discuss at some length. Eric had captioned the photograph Happy Bikers. There were 8mm videos shot two decades earlier of Erics father, Frank, playing in the garden with the children. TRESPASS INTO TEMPTATION Once, Eric Olson says, he was, too. Lashbrook asked agent Walter P. T. to remain in the reception room while he spoke to Dr. Abramson. Already on July 11, 1975just one day after our press conferencethe White House was outlining a strategy to handle our case, a strategy that would ensure that we did not request pertinent information regarding what had actually happened to Frank Olson. Sometime around 1973, right before MK-ULTRA founder and, by then, CIA director Richard Helms hung up his trenchcoat and stepped down from the CIAs top post, he ordered the majority of secret MK-ULTRA documents destroyed due to a burgeoning paper problem. Among the eradicated material, Lee and Shlain report, were all existing copies of a classified CIA manual titledLSD: Some UnPsycbedelic Implications.. It was the last time Alice would ever see him. His reiterated one-liner to me during my telephone call was I have nothing to say on the matter.. Eric never bought that argument. Ohio State quarterback C.J. Dispatched to New York immediately after Olsons death, the investigator listened through a closed door as Abramson told Lashbrook he was worried as to whether or not the deal was in jeopardy and thought the whole operation was dangerous and the whole deal should be reanalyzed.. These figures compare quite favorably with Cohens estimates for patients in psychotherapy: 1.8 psychotic episodes per thousand patients, and 1.2 attempted suicides and 0.4 completed suicides per thousand. But declassified invoices the division submitted to the CIA give a sense of the work. 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 Cold War was at its height. 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.. But it wasnt until Eric showed me a letter his mother received out of the blue on July 13th 1975 that I began to understand just how narrow it was. If desired, I am prepared to start work on this project immediately. He died in 1988. By calling Chestnut Lodge so late in the day it was possible to give the impression that immediate care was needed, leaving it to Dr. Gibson to take the responsibility for delaying the arrival for a day. The real story is not merely a story that no one could love. Later, at a news conference in the backyard at Frederick, under the big trees, the family announced that they were going to sue the government for wrongful death. The aim of the drugging at Deep Creek was apparently to assess the extent of Frank Olsons disaffection and alienation, given the depth of his ethical qualms. He was a great friend of the Bushes, once the Bush family lawyer, a pipe-smoking patriarch who believed that the CIA should be like an ivy league university, taking inspiration not only from agents, but also from scientists, academics, and whoever else might come up with something new. It enabled the C.I.A. In London, Eric learned from a reporter that his father had talked with an expert on brainwashing about something he had witnessed at research installations in Frankfurt. I think it should be noted, she said, that an American family can receive communication from the President of the United States. Noted writer and intelligence expert Jim Hougan combed through the magicians files which are now housed in David Copperfields secret warehouse in Nevada. The CIA had slipped LSD into Frank Olsons Cointreau at a camping retreat called the Deep Creek Lodge. Alice Olson covered the whole subject of Frank's death with a silence that was both baffling and intimidating. On the latter visit, the doctor gave the biochemist two bottles: one of bourbon and one of the sedative Nembutal an unorthodox prescription for someone in Olsons condition. By 2 a.m. Saturday morning, just hours after the phone call, and hours before his scheduled flight back to Washington, Olson was dead. inadvertently declassified an assassination manual dating from late 1953, Eric Olson was able to read the following: ''The most efficient accident, in simple assassination, is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. We joked about it., He said, Theyre trying to find out what kind of guy I am. According to the official CIA account, Gottlieb performed the same experiment on the men at Deep Creek Lodge. And that was my final interview in this deeply disturbing investigation. Yet he remained in the hotel for two more nights. Olson had moved three times in high school and was struggling in biology, an essential course for his major. The shade had also been pulled down. He has nothing else to say. Ed Regis,The Biology of Doom: The History of Americas Secret Germ Warfare Project The activities at Deep Creek, it suggests, were designed to find out what Olson knew, what he had done, and what he was likely to do. The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. As far as that program was concerned, disclosure was already well underway. He said that when he found Olson, his eyes were open while he was making a supreme effort to speak, but words were only an incomprehensible gurgle. They quickly produced gas masks and anthrax weapons, in order to be able to strike back in kind. Norman told Eric that the Artichoke story was true. research enterprise might conceivably be replicated in todays society. (Copies of this memorandum are available.) We were problem-solving.. The Vollum strain found in the early Detrick papers is first replaced by a Vollum sub-strain called M36, produced by the British biological weapons program by passing the Vollum strain through a series of monkeys to increase its virulence. My fathers murder crossed a line in the sand which the U.S. government has always publicly respected. At Learys suggestion, according to a former colleague, he took psilocybin again, this time with Aldous Huxley and Ginsberg. In Stockholm, he worked to develop the psychotherapeutic technique he had begun at Harvard: the collage method, a process that involved clipping pictures and pasting them into photomontages. So I hid out at a nearby Hooters, courtesy of a CBS camera crew, who were following me about. The two films are masterfully woven together . Absolute reliability is obtained by severing the spinal cord in the cervical region. I did sign a confession, relating to germ warfare. The 1975 White House documents include the following comments: First, a passage from a September 1975 memorandum by White House attorney Roderick Hills addressed to Richard Cheney: two circumstances affect our analysis of the Justice Department position. His clandestine work for the CIA was one secret he was able to maintain until the very end. He died because of security concerns regarding disavowed programs of terminal interrogation and the use of biological weapons in Korea. Contrary to conventional press accounts, CIA-employee Olson was not a simple research scientist with SOD but was a high-ranking division administrator holding the titles assistant division chief and director of plans and assessments. My deepest thanks to him. Plotting a covert germ assault is easier if the rooms cubic footage and ventilation system are known, he says. Gottlieb testified in a private session with the senators because of ill health (his voice was piped via loudspeakers to reporters in another room) and under a grant of immunity from prosecution. Although not applying to calendar year 1953, other characteristic sources of income are from publishers of books, etc., and from individuals to whom he has given instructions in magic. This was another sign that something was still amiss. The assassin usually has insufficient technical knowledge of the limitations of weapons, and expects more range, accuracy and killing power than can be provided with reliability. ''I was outclassed,'' Eric remembers. Gottlieb was very enthusiastic about Mulhollands approach and wanted to move ahead quickly. Whos there? came a gruff and uninviting male voice. None of that counterespionage where you drink out of my teacup and I drink out of yours. Although ethical standards for such experiments were considerably murkier then than they are now, the CIA launched its LSD research on unwitting subjects even though the U.S. was a party to an international understanding that, in effect, banned such activities. Ruwet would spent long-daytime hours with Mrs Olson. He had been an agent in a powerful position and possessing detailed covert information. One of the specialists interrogating Blome is Donald Falconer, a friend and colleague of Frank Olson. Now, I dont know his name that fact is sealed, but lets call him what he is VICTIM. (Before you get too pissed off, recognize that I mean it.) The techniques employed will vary according to whether the subject is unaware of his danger, aware but unguarded, or guarded. and John Kelly. His blood loss was not yet severe, and he recovered rapidly. The party in his suite had been imposed on him under false pretenses, by people he knew but without the knowledge of his official hosts. These cases usually involve distance betweeen the assassin and the subject, or comparative physical weakness of the assassin, as with a woman. And while the CIAs Security and Medical offices maintained a long list of other doctors, including psychiatrists, with such top secret approval, Abramsons work and interest placed him well inside the Technical Services Staffs family. Gottlieb was determined that his secret activities remained secret even within the wider reaches of the CIA. MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD SUBJECT: Project ARTICHOKE. At the same time, the son got a court order to have an autopsy performed. Frank Rudolph Olson died on November 28, 1953, when he fell from the 13th floor of Manhattan's Hotel Statler. 50.26 It is contemplated the above would provide a contribution to the general efforts in the area of non-electrical means of communication. I recommend that you join a support group for children whose parents have committed suicide.. I didnt think that if knowledge is knowledge of murder, then its not enough because then you want justice. Jacobsen Lab Virtual Tour Watch on Contact Information 12 Oxford Street Cambridge, MA 02138 jacobsen@chemistry.harvard.edu p: 617-496-3688 Websites Jacobsen Research Group Research Areas Catalysis Inorganic Organic Organometallics If Eric is right, slipping LSD into Olson's Cointreau was not an experiment that went wrong: it was designed to get him to talk while hallucinating. Artichoke is the program that is not fun. They say he jumped. When other-people who ingested the drug reported similar effects, the chemical became something of a pharmaceutical curiosity: a mysterious drug searching for something to cure. That report, made public in 1975, discussed the safe house operations and the connection to the Bureau of Narcotics: TSD (Technical Services Division) entered into an informal arrangement with certain cleared and witting individuals in the Bureau of Narcotics in 1955 which provided for the release of MK-ULTRA materials for such testing as those individuals deemed desirable and feasible. Farmers would invite us to stay in their houses. 1998. Within months, the Korean War was raging, Sen. Joseph McCarthy was launching his hunt for Communist agents, and pressure was on to build new U.S. germ weapons. We sat there and said nothing. Foiled and frustrated I made a quick but courteous departure and in my abstracted frame of mind took a taxi back to Grand Central Station. Doctoral Alumni in Psychology, Harvard University People whose names are followed by an asterisk (*) received a Ph.D. from the Department of Social Relations. I did eight years for the Feds because I refused to rat when I got busted for pot.. One writer declined Erics invitation to attend tomorrows press conference by saying We know the CIA kills people. But if the medical report is accurate, it appears to rule out the possibility that the weapons strain included bacteria collected during or after Boyles illness. He was also certain that his superiors, by the nature of the close ties with the CIA, would have informed Richard Helms and Dr Gottlieb of the circumstances why Frank Olson would no longer be given access to British research. Only two or three Agency officers at any time were cleared for access to Fort Detrick activities. Did Lashbrook have something to worry about? Sound: Jan Schmiedt Notwithstanding these purported justifications for silence, there are those whose intimate knowledge of critical details imposes upon them a singular duty to speak. In the end it was impossible not to read the CIAs assassination manual as anything but a blueprint for the murder of Frank Olson. We went all the way!, Yeah, said Eric. Hairs from a number of bodily locations on Dr. Olson, some fitted with a root structure, were also submitted to Dr. Caplan. Then in 1997, Eric obtained a copy of the C.I.A.s 1953 assassination manual, now declassified. It seemed like the prelude to murder. Directly in the Forehead [8]. In a suburb of New York, Eric Olson meets long-time CIA veteran Ike Feldman. These drugs could be administered surreptitiously with food or drink, and given the bleakness of his existence, they might even offer a brief period of relief and pleasure, thereby creating a whole new category of longingand new leverage for his interrogators.. The CIA was able to secretly buy small amounts from Sandoz, but this was not considered sufficient. Some of his subjects suffered brain damage and other debilitations. 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