But rather than limiting his activities to his live performances, Mulholland had actually embarked on a new endeavoran endeavor far more secretive than anything in the realm of conjuring. Gottlieb therefore set up another subproject to search for new supplies of LSD and other rare drugs in theU.S. In fact, as we have seen, Murray was indeed a Cold War warriornot, perhaps, as prominent a player as some, but a player nonetheless. The two agents, who did not seem to have any prior knowledge about Lashbrook (CIA agent) or his work unit, interviewed him intensively and followed him around all day following Olsons death. 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. A document Eric later saw from his father's personnel file confirmed that doubts had been raised about Olson's security clearance before his death, possibly because of Sargant's warning. After examining and describing wounds for the documentary record, the ME takes swabs from all orifices and cuts pieces from the organs to place on slides for further trace evidence, including firearms, toxicological (poisons), histological (cellular) studies. Before Jim Channon and General Stubblebine and Colonel Alexander came along, there was Allen Dulles, the first great out-of-the-box thinker in US intelligence. Near the Eiffel Tower, his two CIA colleagues sit in a sidewalk caf and watch pretty French girls go by, on the left is John McNulty. I saw no lacerations there, nary a one, although Dr. Di Maios report had indicated the presence of multiple abrasions and lacerations. While we were examining the remains prior to the autopsy, Eric Olson arrived and insisted on viewing his fathers remains. He owned a farm in Frederick Maryland, to which I would journey with my family on many occasions. The Olson family was disturbed by what they had learned. The film was made with such respect that the subject matter seems gloomy when it should be uplifting.). U.S. foreign policy had gone from trust to terror. It has been eight years since the exhumation. The witness had tried to speak to Olson, and had then watched as Olson plunged through the window on a dead run. I also was one of the first writers to uncover the CIAs obsession with mind control, a preoccupation the Agency was forced to confirm ten years after my book on the subject, Journey into Madness, appeared. It was officially referred to as Project MK/NAOMI, an adjunct to the larger CIA behavior modification program that within months became known as MK-ULTRA. I later realized that the analogy goes further, because the pill Powers was supposed to have taken was concocted by the ubiquitous Sidney Gottlieb, and also because the U2 plane Powers was piloting was the brain child of Richard Bissell who (according to Evan Thomas inThe Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA) gave considerable thought to the problem of how to murder someone for security reasons while doing so in a way that would seem to be a natural death and would not arouse undue curiosity. As Ive tried to tell you it conceptually rests on the idea that there are two vectors in this story and they only intersect in one place.. Eric Olson has returned to live in the house his father built for the family in Frederick in 1950. 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. He will face the death penalty. Ive read them through twice, and about all I can do is summarize the impression that they leave on my mind. In short order, it would be possible to conquer territory without a fight. On Friday, we transported the remains to the biology department at Hagerstown Junior College where we would conduct the autopsy, analyze the skeletal features and obtain specimens for toxicological analysis. And there was Frank Olsons mummified body, exhumed in 1994, the year after Alice Olson died. 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. When he came home, his mood was unusually anxious. The Colby documents were photocopies of the agency's own in-house investigation of Olson's death and like Eric's collages: a redacted jumble of fragments, full of unexplained terms like the ''Artichoke'' and ''Bluebird'' projects. The fifth is described in unclassified documents only as an E-41 disseminator.. One section would give modified, or different, tricks and techniques of performance so that the tricks could be performed by women. Yesterday, from the same picnic table, Eric Olson, now 57, spoke again to reporters, this time saying he knows how his father was killed, and why enough answers to allow him to move on. Eric hoped his press conference would, at least, change the language of the reporting of the story. And to Franks son Eric, who takes part in this conversation? 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. I realized full well that the major unresolved mystery continued to be: the large hemorrhage above the left eye. So in 1984, he went to the Hotel Statler (now the Hotel Pennsylvania) to see the room for himself. 33.07 Voice of Ira (Ike) Feldman/Former CIA agent: 1985. At Senate hearings on the matter in 1977, Gottlieb had stated that these were risks worth taking for the sake of national security, the same position he had expressed to me at our one and only meeting. After explaining my interest in removing Frank Olson from one cemetery and his reburial in another cemetery, beside his wife, I was directed to the local district attorney for Frederick County. Both Greg and Lisa, their two-year-old son, Jonathan, and the child that Lisa was carrying had died in the crash, the entire family wiped out. The Evan Thomas-Ed Regis examples are valuable, though, not only from the perspective of questions they raise for political theory but also for the quite complex psychological issues they embody. We would use the injury and the information to make this determination. I checked the name more closely and discovered that the B was in fact an R. I was crushed to hear someone say The old Railey cabin was torn down ten years ago, but I revived fast when the next sentence came. Alice Olson, who knew nothing about the nature of his visit, did recall that when he returned from Europe that summer, Frank was unusually withdrawn. He does not follow orders, and has had numerous altercations with MPs (), 15.52 Voice of Norman Cournoyer/Friend of Frank Olson: He had been working in the Biological Laboratory of the Special Operations Division, of the U. S. Army Chemical Corps (formerly known as the Chemical Warfare Service) at Fort Detrick, Maryland, for about ten years without any problem. I had a couple of my girls pick up these Russian sailors and bring em back to the pad. Manchuria is the area in northeast China directly north of North Korea where, beginning in 1932, the Japanese began an intense program of research in biological warfare. Feldman had acquired three or four to set himself up with cover.. In that sense the real Frederick Candidate, the real subject of brainwashing and mind control, was not Frank Olson. Little is left of the body the Olsons exhumed in 1994. This material could potentially aid in discrediting individuals, eliciting information, implanting suggestion and other forms of mental control.[2]. In resistance situations, assassination may be used as a counter-reprisal. In the end it was impossible not to read the CIAs assassination manual as anything but a blueprint for the murder of Frank Olson. Nils said, At times you go through a phase of believing that maybe the story is a bunch of hooey, and that it was just a simple LSD suicide and that, can trigger a kind of shame spiral. Education Master in Architecture, Harvard University Email [email protected] News Faculty Spotlight: Eric Olsen on Building and Teaching for the Future April 21, 2020 Contact Us Instead, Dr. Gibson was told that Frank Olsons CIA escort had awakened to see Olson standing in the middle of the room. 7.06 They couldnt afford to take the risk of letting my father continue to be involved or, considering all he knew, allowing him to quit. John Mulholland was precisely kind of person the Agency wanted and needed. files still available, that his associate Dr. Margaret Ferguson was still alive in 1993. As Eric struggled to absorb the devastating news, Alice composed herself enough to tell her two other children, seven-year-old Lisa and five-year-old Nils, that their father would not be coming home. This individual was not made aware he had been given LSD until about 20 minutes after it had been administered, the commission said. 5.17 In fact the 1970s version of the Frank Olson story was a story that everyone could love. (Like me!) In the Oval Office, according to newspaper accounts, President Gerald Ford expressed ''the sympathy of the American people and apologized on behalf of the U.S. The program was the creation of gung-ho young operatives who later rose to top positions, among them Richard Helms (lower right), who became CIA director. We decided to turn for assistance to the only governmental institution that might be able to help us. Then another 10 years to exhume the body. They [illeg] is consistently over-rated. I was eating breakfast in the dining room overlooking the lake when Railey appeared again with pictures of the Stone Tavern and some of the smaller cottages. Unwitting LSD recipients were what was needed. It may well be that Olson is wrong that the government merely drugged his father with LSD, treated him thoughtlessly when he fell into madness and covered it up for 22 years. Eric, who is now 54,was never very convinced by this version of events but kept quiet so as not to distress his mother. Eric never bought that argument. The mystery of the death cant be solved until that body is reinserted into the sprawling network of crime, corruption, and power that motivated the murder. But when Owsleys factory in Berkeley, California, was raided in February 1965, the case was thrown out of court since California law did not specifically regulate LSD. But now it was time for him to prepare his taxes. As vice president and secretary of defense of the government of the United States. I just called Norman. But when we opened the casket a lifetime later, I knew Daddy at once. But the sensational notion of LSD administered by the CIA served wonderfully to conceal this gap. Professor of Biomedical Ethics,University of Virginia. 38). Another unanswered question is raised by the small scrap of paper that Robert Lashbrook had in his wallet the night Frank Olson died. On November 19, Gottlieb met with six MKULTRA personnel, including Olson, at Deep Creek Lodge in rural Maryland. He agreed to pay Mulholland $3,000 for his efforts, and was greatly pleased with his discovery of the magician. Not even Superman has been pictured soaring off into the blue in that fashion. But I was compelled to decline, my classes at the University demanding my attention. The two films are masterfully woven together . covert operations] in 1959, he was very interested in MKULTRA, said Gottlieb. He was director of Shepherd Pratt Hospital for twenty years, where a building there bears his name. It makes people think they know things that they dont know and it enables them to have a kind of superficial quasi-sophistication and cynicism which is just a thin layer beyond which theyre not cynical at all.. But as they learn to see, Either the Darkness alters Just outside was a broad terrace with old lawn chairs facing the lake, and a set of wooden stairs going down 50 feet to the water. Why would the government murder an Army scientist simply because he had been used as an unwitting guinea pig in a drug experiment? Hearing of this impending interview Eric Olson had cautioned me, a genuine smile creasing his face, not to drink his coffee. I did and lived to drink more on another day. (Visual text!) activities, noted that a civilian employee of the Department of the Army had jumped from the tenth floor of a New York hotel after he was surreptitiously given the hallucinogenic drug, LSD. Seven years later [Harlot] was calling me to action. And you can see a lot of that just in his face. Dr. Gibson reported to us the statement that had been made to him by the CIA official who contacted him on the morning of Frank Olsons deatha statement identical to one Robert Lashbrook made to Alice Olson, but in direct contradiction to the story told in the Colby documents. As one former CIA doctor put it: We lived in a nevernever land of eyes-only memos and unceasing experimentation., The final report of Senator Frank Churchs Select Committee on intelligence in 1976 summed it LIP this way: The research and development program, and particularly the covert testing program, resulted in massive abridgements of the rights of American citizens, sometimes with tragic conscquences. But with the postwar revelations of Nazi atrocities in the name of science, the need for formal ethical guidelines became painfully clear, The Nuremberg code was the most important document of this period. The bespectacled researcher was a passionate believer in psychochemical warfare and dedicated his time to LSD testing, highly sophisticated experiments in hypnosis, and the search for hallucinatory materials in exotic mushrooms and flowers. (Before you get too pissed off, recognize that I mean it.) Those four sentences stimulated the authors own Freedom of Information Act request calling for the Central Intelligence Agency to release of any information or records relating to Mulhollands work with the CIA, including any written agreements between him and the Agency, copies of the documents he produced, or other related materials. Was it for the reckless CIA LSD drugging at Deep Creek Lake? Ike, he says, youve been doing one hell of a job as an undercover man. LSD favors the prepared mind, wrote Dr. Oscar Janiger, a Los Angeles psychiatrist and early LSD devotee. My deepest thanks to him. Book Information : Title : Inefficient Markets: An Introduction to Behavioral Finance Rating : Frank Olson does have a name. When Starrs raised the lid, he was surprised to find Frank Olsons body remarkably well preserved. Since John Mulholland had died in 1970, there was no way for the Olsons to interview him about his possible involvement in this tragedy. It looks like an exhibit in a down-at-heel museum of the Cold War. Only the bones -- and not all of them -- remain intact. Thatmemorandum, together with the urging of others, persuaded New Yorks District Attorney, Robert Morgenthau, to re-open the investigation. Believing this means, in my friend's words, ''leaving the known universe,'' the one in which it is innocently accepted that an agency of the American government would never do such a thing. While Mulhollands work for the CIA may have ended, the Agency continued its interest in the connection between the techniques of conjuring and espionage. Bremen, Germany Nevertheless, they are mistaken. Elliot didnt mean that at all. According to 1998 interviews with former-CIA official Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, it was Rinkels close associate, Dr. H.E. Marks was told that ORDs files contained 130 boxes of documents relating to behavioral research. Armand Pastore is the manager of the hotel. The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Helms founded the MK-ULTRA program and justified its notably unethical aspects with the rationale, We are not Boy Scouts.. How would the CIA cope with a man who is beginning to have doubts and who is in a position to reveal the most secret of its secrets? Contact:We would love to hear from you. In that spirit, we will try here to convey the path we followed that led, finally, to a very different story of how, and why, Frank Olson died. Fort Detrick in Maryland, where Frank Olson worked experimenting with viral strains (such as the deadly microbes Sidney Gottlieb personally carried to Africa in an aborted attempt to assassinate Patrice Lumumba), was recently the locale of a near disaster involving an outbreak of a newly emerged virus. That was the key conclusion of the Pentagons Committee on Biological Warfare in a secret October 1948 report on covert biowarfare. Then he reported to the hotel desk clerk and telephoned Dr. Abramson. 20% b. 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. He says he believes he knows what happened, even if he doesnt know details of perpetrators and motives. cover organization to engage in LSD experimentation, using it as an adjunct to psychotherapy on abnormal or mentally disturbed persons. It should be assumed that it will never be ordered or authorized by any U.S. Headquarters, though the latter may in rare instances agree to its execution by members of an associated foreign service. Lives in: Mesa AZ. Mysterious characters from Fort Bragg and the CIA came and went at the SO Division, leaving wish-lists and checking progress. We cycled across the country.. Deep Creek Lake in western Maryland, a three-hour drive from Washington. Frank remained agitated all weekend. Artichoke techniques to individuals of dubious loyalty, suspected agents or plants and subjects having known reasons for deception.. On the morning of January 1, 1963, Dr. Gilbert Bogel, and his lover, Mrs. Margaret Chandler, were found dead on a river bank after a riotous party given by staff of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. THE TRIAL: The Life and Inevitable Crucifixion of Jesus We therefore feel ready to rebury the physical remains of our father, our grandfather. 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