eric olson harvard

By the time the priest and the ambulance came, the stranger on the sidewalk was dead. Others were chemical warfare specialists, experts on everything from sterilization to mass extermination. Starrs concluded that the forensic evidence was rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide.. These interrogations sometimes led to the deaths of the subjects being interrogated. and that his father was killed to silence him about the lethal activities hed been involved in, projects codenamed Artichoke and MK-ULTRA. But the destination, whether it was San Francisco or the truth about what happened to Frank Olson, was still on the same map. Biological agents would appear to be well adapted to subversive use since very small amounts of such agents can be effective, the report said. The next day, Olson went straight to Ruwet's office and said he wanted to resign. Then when she died in 1994 he decided to test the official story of his fathers death. Walter believes the original weapons strain of anthrax, a variety called Vollum after the British scientist who isolated it, was upgraded with bacteria collected from three Detrick workers who were accidentally infected. With this additional work at hand, it was soon evident that Mulholland would not be able to have the manual finished as anticipated. 27.38 Outside intervention was clearly advisable, not only for Frank Olsons sake, but for the sake of Camp Detrick and the biological warfare program, and in particular for the overall security of the SO Division. It was agreed that the trip should be made the following day. put in a good word. Isnt this what Communism is all about anyway! The early phases of the perceptual act often serve to register the emotional value of the stimulus precisely in order to steer subsequent perceptual phases away from the stimulus or from some aspects of it. In 1996 Eric asked Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morganthau to open a new investigation. Olson got so suspicious and upset that the meeting was quickly ended. And stayed on, right on through to 1953.. Dr. Fritz Hoffmann, a chemist from former Nazi Germany, had been hired a few years earlier to spur the search for new behavior-modifying substances. Online Marketplace Sales Leader: Extensive experience in online sales strategy, product development, optimization of content for user experience, SEO, and advertising, and off-site inventory . If Ruwet is to be believed, Olson said he was ashamed to see his family in his present condition, and worried that he might become violent with his children. . No symptoms of overt derangement presented themselves. Walter, in Florida, agreed with Patricks diagnosis. What was someone like Sidney Gottlieb, a poisoner, an assassin (albeit a not particularly good one), the man indirectly responsible for the death of Frank Olson, doing in the middle of this other, funny, psychic story? But a world in which morality has no meaning is one in which eventually everything is permitted. Subsequent CIA memos claimed that he had previously suffered from suicidal tendencies and that LSD had simply triggered his suicide. For nearly five years, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthaus cold-case unit has been conducting an unprecedented criminal investigation into the mysterious death of Fort Detrick biochemist Frank Olson. I had heard he was short, five three, and Id read how George White used to dress him in a pinstriped zoot suit, blue suede shoes, a Bursalino hat with a tu rned-up brim, and a phony diamond ring, then send him onto the streets of San Francisco to pose as an East Coast heroin dealer. Dr. Leviskys calculations revealed three separate fracture sites: one was in the upper body, particularly the ribs and shoulders where Olson must have collided with a construction barrier at street level; another in the lower legs as they impacted the sidewalk with the forces of velocity having traveled upward to cause a book fracture in the pelvis (opening it like the pages of a book); and dissipating the upward thrust so as to protect the vertebral column from any dislodgement; and thirdly, a horizontally aligned fracture to the right temporal and parietal bones of Dr. Olsons skull, occasioned in all probability when his head hit the sidewalk after his feet had first struck the pavement and he just toppled over. It has been a source of deep personal gratification to know how wellThe Sphinxhas been received during the years.[15]The final issue, the 597th, was Volume 52, #1, dated March 1953. Copies of these documents are available. According to Colonel Ruwerts further recollections in 1953 he journeyed to New York City with Dr. Olson on the Tuesday prior to Olsons death for an emergency visit to Dr. Harold Abramson, a medical doctor who had a grant-in-aid from a C.I.A. Wormwood is assembled as a hallucinatory, psychologically penetrating collage and plays like a pulse-pounding thriller, a damning indictment of institutional malfeasance, and a chilling portrait of both self-destructive obsession and the elusiveness of truth. Espionage. In fact the SO Division was only physically located at Detrick. The man whom the CIA documents credit with inspiring the program is Dr. L. Wilson Greene of the Army Chemical Corps, who had long urged the United States to embark upon psychochemical warfare. By the Gottlieb-Gardiner theory, a defectors wall, whether psychotic or normal, can be shattered by the use of LSD. Yet the next day, he called his wife to assure her that he was better and expected to see her the following day. And why was he just sitting there many removes from any positive action? More recently his colleagues at the laboratory included DR. SID GOTTLEIB, who was chief of the Technical Services Division, and ROBERT V. LASHBROOK, Ph.D, who joined the organization only in 1952. . They uncovered seven cartons of MKULTRA material. We thought if the president of the United States wants to kill somebody, we want to be able to do it, said Walter, now 78 and retired in Florida. The Army sent him to another language school, this time in Monterey, California, where he added Mandarin Chinese:to his repertoire. At every point there seems to be a convergence of the evidence, Nils Olson says. Congressional investigators said much of the information was confirmed by a former military aide to President Eisenhower, Col. Phillip Corso. Cold War research ran the gamut, from investigations of sleep deprivation to perfecting anthrax delivery systems. The atomic bomb was a sinister threat, but more terrifying still were possible Soviet assaults on the mind and body from within through drugs and disease. The cops said what happened he said: I dont know, I just heard a crash of glass and I then I see, that Frank Olson is out of the window. And Murray was part of this drug-testing pyramid. Link to Stephen Endicott website, Co-author with Edward Hagerman of: Another of the memos, written by Cheney on July 11, 1975, the day after the Olson family press conference, and addressed to his boss Donald Rumsfeld (yes, that Donald Rumsfeld) raised concern for: the possibility that it might become necessary to disclose highly classified national security information in connection with any court suit, or legislative hearings.. Baltimore Sun Among these were members of the former team of doctors already wanted by the U.S. Army war crimes unit for having conducted the ghoulish high-altitude (oxygen and pressure deprivation) experiments on Dachau inmates that killed at least seventy. Eric believed his father was a civilian scientist, working with chemicals at the nearby Fort Detrick military base. was in fact experimenting with ''expendables'' in Germany, and if Olson knew about it, Eric reasoned, then it would not be enough to hospitalize him, discredit him with lies about his mental condition and allow him to slip back into civilian life. Write this down. What do you mean, fell or jumped?, We dont know if he fell, said one of the men. Posing as Joe Capone, junk dealer and pimp, Feldman infiltrated the seamy North Beach criminal demimonde. October 14th, 2008 at 9:00 am. She had to yell over the sound of the digger. In the course of a long search not a single shred of evidence has corroborated the governments story, which, it is important to remember, was never really a story at all. This version of events comprises the core chapter of John Marks 1979 book. Here was a top government scientist, engaged in some of the most secret projects at the height of the Cold War. You call this science? And Gottlieb basically replied, Yeah, it was a bit casual. Of course it bears mention that it could be random broken glass on the sidewalk having no connection to Dr. Olsons death. How should we read the word disappeared? (One paragraph of the CIA report on Mr. Olsons death is blanked out by a censor) Perhaps Colby didnt pay close attention, because there are certainly some disquieting matters in the conduct and reported conversations of Frank Olsons colleague, Robert Lashbrook, and the New York allergist, Dr. Harold Abramson, in the hours after Mr. Olsons death. According to 1998 interviews with former-CIA official Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, it was Rinkels close associate, Dr. H.E. He did not call Lt-Col Ruwet, the chief of the Special Operations Division, right away. His little brother Nils and his sister Lisa were in the next room. His conclusions can be found in his textbook Battle for the Mind; it remains a standard work on the subject of mind control. In all types of assassination except terroristic, drugs can be very effective. When it was mentioned that the call related to the death of Dr. Olson, she was unwilling to discuss the matter of Dr. Abramsons treatment of Dr. Olsons or his experiments with LSD or her knowledge or involvement in it. According to this interpretation, Olsons fatal fall was the result of a bad trip, a tragic, yet accidental, consequence of the CIAs Cold War wet dream of developing a magical brainwashing elixir. Pogue Distinguished Chair in Research on Cardiac Birth Defects; With a head full of acid and gin, White prowled downtown clubs and bars. Enhancer is the focus of his Transcription factor research. John Lennon was far from the only sixties acid-hero to make the connection between the mood of the streets and the secret CIA labs. And know the place for the first time. I also learned upon a visit to the window shades manufacturer in Alexandria, Virginia, that the shade, if drawn, would have impeded Dr. Olsons exit making it implausible that he could have exited with it drawn at the time. The consequences of military confrontation could well be global thermonuclear war. THE YEAR OF ARMAGEDDON (with Max MorganWitts) White says to me,Cmon, Ike. By night, he is a builder, tinkering away for the joy of seeing his creations come alive. As one psychoanalyst (Roy Schafer) put it, the mystery of how the repressed makes its appearance in the psychoanalytic dialogue is that patient refers to what he is passing over as he passes over it. The reciprocal task of the psychoanalyst, therefore, becomes that of hearing the alienated voice of the other within the rhythms of the patients multivocal speech. Before General Stubblebine came along, the secret psychic spies had another administrator: Sidney Gottlieb. Eric lives on foundation grants, book advances and some help from his brother and others. Nelson A. Rockefeller. But it also generated alarm. Fat. He is on duty that night, when Frank Olson falls from the 13th floor, landing on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. He died in 1988. 33.19 Hes only a chemist with a degree from City College, but hes nonetheless a genius. Eric explained to me that his mother, Alice, had been buried in Mount Olivet cemetery in Frederick, Maryland while his father, Frank, had been interred in 1953 in Linden Hills Cemetery, also in Frederick. It is requested that the original six month time period be extended an additional six months. To Eric, the newly revealed facts painted a grim picture of his fathers death having been a C.I.A. You cant go out with a colleague for a drink and get a little intimate without being told The Story. But the new autopsy findings were certainly enough for a New York public prosecutor, Stephen Saracco, to win the right for a grand jury to begin hearing the evidence he had uncovered. Within minutes, uniformed New York City police officers and hotel employees came to Lashbrooks room. The LSD testing of these tissues through radio-immunoassays (RIA) was deemed inconclusive. No sooner had MK-ULTRA been established than Gottlieb proceeded to organize 13 subprojects that called for the support of LSD research for the purposes of disturbance of memory, discrediting by aberrant behavior, altering sex patterns, eliciting information, enhancing suggestibility, and creating dependence. Clinching the story In her grief Alice Olson took drinking to excess, ultimately becoming an alcoholic. The evidence suggested that someone had knocked Olson over the head either while he slept or during a struggle, and then tossed him out the window. He became disorientated and fell out of the window. Care is required to insure that no wound or condition not attributable to the fall is discernible after death. Puncture wounds of the body cavity may not be reliable unless the heart is reached. Mulholland was born in Chicago, Illinois, on June 9, 1898. Although it is the standard practice to keep the relatives out of the autopsy room I made an exception in this case due to my noticing the uncanny resemblance between Eric in life and his father in death. The meeting quickly devolved into laughter and random psychedelic incoherence, and by various accounts several of the men grew uneasy. For that matter, the (supposed) impetus for the program was the reported success of communist countries in brainwashing. The word itself originally applied to several soldiers whod fought in the Korean War who exhibited strange behavior and had large blank spots in their memoriesparticularly when it came to their travels through regions of Manchuria. In this context, the fact that Richard Helms was CIA chief of operations at the time of my fathers 1961 suicide attempt has sinister implications. Thats all I knew about it at first. When Frank Olson is buried again today, only bones will be returned to the ground the tissue has been removed for study. W. Irving Jones Jr., 80, of Frederick, a biochemist, remembers his supervisor, Dr. Ralph E. Lincoln, giving him an unusual request some months after the electricians death. When the Church Committee published its findings, Eric realized that Gottlieb had been involved in work much darker than mere experimental drugging., In 1978, an even bigger shocker surfaced: In his memoir, former CIA chief William Colby admitted that Frank Olson was more than an Army scientist, as the official story claimed. In another place the Colby documents refer to something called the Schwab activity at Frank Olsons division at Detrick as being arguably un-American. The documents imply that issues pertaining to this activity were somehow involved in Frank Olsons death. It doesnt much matter where, because the place would not have been familiar or identifiable to him. His failure to recall whether he kept a record of the event in his patrolmans notebook was a challenge to his credibility as was his memory lapse on whether this was the one and only jumper he had investigated. So Frank Olson was also in Berlin early in August 1953. He explored a host of biological agents, toxins, and other drugs as well as such areas as crop and material sabotage, harassment techniques for offensive use, gas propelled spays and aerosols, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and electroshock. Even the nails are clipped or retained in full. The rifle shold be a wll made bolt or falling block action type, handling a powerful long-range cartirdge. According to a later agency review, these helpers included at least ninety-three universities and other governmental or nonprofit organizations, including Harvard, Cornell, the University of Minnesota, the Stanford University School of Medicine, the Lexington, Kentucky, Narcotics Farm, several prisons and penitentiaries, the Office of Naval Research, and the National Institutes of Health. He personally handled contracts with outside institutions, approving every payment, no matter how small. During this visit, Dr. Olson became highly suspicious and mixed up. Once, Eric Olson says, he was, too. Fremont-Smith and Abramson were the links between the universities and MKULTRA. He was too late, however, to do the same for William Colby, the CIA chief who apologised for Olsons death. After years of government silence on the subject of Frank Olsons death, the family had finally achieved recognition and, most importantly, a promise of full disclosure. 1636: New York University (NYU) The couple stopped for lunch at a coffee shop just outside the Capitol, but Olson wouldnt touch his coffee. The consequences of a magic trick going wrong might be embarrassment or a decline in bookings; a covert operation going bad could cost an agent his or her life. According to Ken Alibek, a former deputy chief of the Soviet program who defected to the United States in 1992, a scientist named Nikolai Ustinov accidentally pricked himself while injecting a guinea pig with Marburg virus in 1988. Were sorry for that.. Indeed, his story makes you wonder about that noble phrase ''The truth shall make you free.'' Unlike the rifle and machine gun, this is a short range weapon and since it fires pistol ammunition, much less powerful. But for what reason? Those were strong indicia that a thorough autopsy could potentially accomplish something more than previously-contingent on the condition of Olsons remains. Eric Olson has returned to live in the house his father built for the family in Frederick in 1950. It was apparent that John Mulhollands files had been gone through and sanitized by someone who knew the Agency and knew how to eradicate any hint of its presence.[67], Despite these efforts and unbeknownst to Gottlieb and his staff, some MKULTRA documents still remained. On Thanksgiving Day, they had found him in a shell-shocked state in the hotel lobby. But Raji was still talking. Ward and his partner, detective Robert Mullee, took Lashbrook to the precinct house for interrogation. See bio. If, as a result of Eric Olsons persistence in trying to uncover what really happened to his father, and the investigating skills of public prosecutor Saracco, this turns out to be a lie, it could well be the beginning of the end of the agency. They found that the poisons had come from the SO Division under a CIA-Army project code-named MKNAOMI. Erics mother had created from the same scant facts offered to Eric this scenario: Frank Olson was in New York. Patrick, who joined the bioweapons program in 1951, the year the microbiologist died of anthrax, said unequivocally that the Vollum weapons strain was altered by passage through Boyles body and became Vollum 1B. The family had only been told that the stress of his job had led to a nervous breakdown and that Frank Olson had killed himself. In fact, Eric Olson believes that only his fathers drink was spiked, and that the substance he imbibed was probably not LSD but something stronger. That night, Frank Olson plunged to his death from his room on the hotels thirteenth floor. On January 8, 1953, Harold Blauer, a professional tennis player, reportedly died from a massive overdose of a mescaline derivative at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. a. On a hot day in August, Eric and his brother Nils and Erics son, who usually lives in Sweden, and Nilss wife and their children, and some of Erics friends and I, were sunbathing by the pool, when a truck covered with pictures of party balloons Capital Party Rentals pulled up in his driveway to drop off 100 plastic seats. This claim would later be found false acid trips are not at all like psychosis but Kauderss account impressed the hospital staff. Heavily censored documents I have already received under the Freedom of Information Act confirm that my father was under intense surveillance by the FBI and the CIA in 1960 and 1961, because he was planning to visit China and Cuba, in violation of US passport restrictions. But whether that glass was the window glass of room 1018A or some foreign piece of glass of infinitesimally minute size that had been lying about on the 7th Avenue sidewalk of the Hotel Statler are equally possible, and that issue is a conundrum not answerable by scientific means. A significant portion of the human population within selected target areas may be killed or incapacitated., Setting an imaginative tone for what would follow, the report listed potential targets: ventilating systems, subway systems, water supply systems stamps, envelopes, money, biologicals and cosmetics contamination of food and beverages.. Further, the entire anterior (front) portion from head to toe of the flesh of Frank Olsons remains was devoid of lacerations, save those to be expected from the many compound fractures, and from that in the upper thoracic region where a laceration had been sutured up, probably during embalming. He has made a careful and exhaustive study of the history of prestidigitation and is the possessor of an extensive library of old volumes in this field. This fits with what my mother had always said: Korea really bothered your father. Gradually a completely new story of the death of Frank Olson was emerging, one that bore very little resemblance to the one that had long-since become the conventional wisdom on this issue. Although bioengineering today could produce more virulent pathogens, nothing has changed in the most challenging part of covert biological attack: delivering germs so that they infect people, Patrick said. The effects of LSD-25 appear to be specific and are not related to any of the factors mentioned above. A request for a re-review of these files is still pending. It was rather the noise of the window shade spinning in its upper housing. My fathers case covers both. While Alice's memory was of Frank being in the grip of an ethical dilemma, Ruwet told C.I.A. Early the next morning, Frank Olson appeared in his bosss office to tender his resignation. The call consisted of only two sentences. Cournoyers assertions resonated strongly with Eric. The act may be executed by sudden, vigorous [excised] of the ankles, tipping the subject over the edge.'' Maybe some mysterious Harold junior would come along and kindly explain everything. Even more puzzling were the reports numerous references with all details blacked out to the CIAs Project ARTICHOKE. It was filled with pure Sandoz LSD-25. Now he was to show the intelligence community how to use the methods of magic to exchange information covertly with one another. So there it is: the elephant in the room finally named, even if its features remain entirely unexplored. Everest, confident as God. About the year, 1751, a grant of land was given to Mr. George Deakins by King George II, of England, in payment of a debt. Soon a list of 37 physiological agents was drawn up for possible use in interrogations. and tell Harold that we cycled all the way from, She said, These people are very smart. On the Sunday night Alice tried to calm him down by taking him to the cinema in Frederick to see whatever was on, which turned out to be a new film called Martin Luther. The study of prostitutes for clandestine use. Are their accusations accurate? Um, Eric paused. When Dr. Gibson read about the exhumation of Frank Olsons body he contacted Professor James Starrs, director of the forensic team, to tell his side of the story. One of the most confusing aspects of the story of what happened to Frank Olson is the inconsistency in the accounts given by the key witness, CIA employee Dr. Robert Lashbrook, who was allegedly asleep in next bed in the same small hotel room at the time Frank Olson went out the window (Psychology Today, poster 5). Back in Frederick, Lisa Olson confronted Vincent Ruwet, her father's old boss at Detrick. He found some of it in an unrelenting passion for his clandestine labors. Roy Meachums columnFredericks Candidate'(News-Post, Aug. 4) makes a very useful contribution to the burgeoning literature on the death of my father, Dr. Frank Olson. Anthrax was cultivated in this building, then placed in bombs. Lashbrook, the other occupant of the room, was found to be sitting in the bathroom on the toilet with his head in his hands. I provided the background on the case to each person and all of them responded with alacrity to my invitation, even after hearing the many complexities and, possibly imponderables that lurked on the horizon. Disappointed, Eric found it difficult acquiring another attorney to take the lead. in 1998 1 wrote and presented for Britains Channel 4, The Spying Machine, a major television documentary in which for the first time key members of Mossad appeared, describing their work. The public first learned of MK-ULTRA in 1977, with the disclosure of thousands of classified documents and CIA testimony before a Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy. men, they say, but contract killers associated with the Trafficante mob family hired by the C.I.A. There is a piece missing and I am not sure that I am the one to give it to you. A human being may be killed in many ways but sureness is often overlooked by those who may be emotionally unstrung by the seriousness of this act they intend to commit. It is possible to kill a man with bare hands, but very few are skillful enough to do it well. It spread to undergraduate students, then to other campuses. People arent bad, merely sick. All such improvised weapons have the important advantage of availability and apparent innocence. Second would be that my mother or I should have been made aware of it, if it happened. This story of my fathers death as it was experienced by insiders was brought up to date for me in 2001 when one of my fathers closest Detrick colleagues and friends told me what he knew about the events that preceded my fathers death. At the end of the meeting Gottlieb snapped to Eric, I can see youre still wrapped up in your fathers death. Farmers would invite us to stay in their houses. TheWashington Posts coverage of the Rockefeller Report noted that in the early 1950s an unnamed civilian employee of the Department of the Army had leaped to his death from a New York hotel window after the CIA had given him LSD without his knowledge. Starrs is not sure that Olson will be able to do so. He took his movie camera. 20% b. Carried out by a team led by James Starrs, Professor of Law and Forensic Science at The National Law Centre, George Washington University, it could find no sign of the cuts and abrasions that the first autopsy said had been caused by crashing through the window glass. I telephoned Dr. Bruce Goldberger, Dr. Caplans associate and the man from whose testing these results were derived. Friday evening he came home and spent the weekend in this house with my mother, my brother and sister and me and during much of the weekend they sat on the sofa which was just over here. It seemed remarkable to me that the organizational gap in the intelligence world between the light side (psychic supermen) and the dark side (covert assassinations) has been so narrow. And the steeled reluctance to be honest, forthright and candid by persons with knowledge of the occurrence on matters pivotal to the question of homicide or suicide bespeaks an involvement more sinister than mere unconcern, arrogance or even negligence. Was that the CIA agent reporting that he had solved the Frank Olson problem in the Hotel Pennsylvania? Copyright 2022 Eric Olson, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. I dont know if work at TSS deserves to be as hush-hush as is presented to us here, but it is certainly a special place. It also explains why the Agency was unable to find these MKULTRA documents in response to a subsequent U.S. Senate Select Committee investigation of CIA abuses in 1975.

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