Frank Olson

Olson served as a captain in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps. Later he was recruited as civilian employee to Camp Detrick, and to the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories, by the distinguished UW scientist Ira Baldwin, the technical director there. (Baldwin had been his departmental advisor at UW.)

At Camp Detrick, Baldwin worked with industrial partners such as George W. Merck and the U.S. military to establish the top secret U.S. bioweapons program beginning in 1943, during World War II, a time when interest in applying modern technology to warfare was high. Olson's duties included experiments with aerosolized anthrax.[1]

At some point while assigned as a civilian U.S. Army contractor, Olson began working as a CIA employee [1]

In May 1952, Frank Olson was appointed to the committee for Project Artichoke, an experimental CIA interrogation program.[5]

Frank Olson was appointed to head Special Operations Division, but later stepped down from that role.[6]

On February 23, 1953, the Chinese broadcast charges that two captured American pilots had claimed the U.S. was conducting germ warfare against North Korea.[7] Other captured Americans such as Colonel Walker "Bud" Mahurin made similar statements.[8][9] The United States government threatened to charge some POWs with treason for cooperating with their captors. [10] After their release, the prisoners of war would publicly repudiate their confessions as having been extracted by torture.[11]

On 27 July 1953, the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed, launching Operation Big Switch, the repatriation of Korean War POWs. (Ultimately, some 12,773 UN POWs were repatriated.) 21 American POWs refused repatriation and defected, and the returning POWs were viewed as potential security risks. As a result, debriefings became "hostile investigations in search of possible disloyalty".[12]

The day the armistice was signed, Olson, a bacteriologist, arrived in Northolt, UK. Olson's home movies from the trip indicate he traveled to London, Paris, Stockholm, and Berlin.[13] Upon his return, Olson's mood was noticeably changed, according to his family.[14][15][16][17]

According to coworker Norman Cournoyer, Olson had witnessed interrogations in Europe and become convinced that the United States had used biological weapons during the Korean War. Olson was also reportedly upset at having seen people killed during interrogation.[17][18]

Journalist Gordon Thomas claims that Olson subsequently visited William Sargant, a British psychiatrist with high level security clearances. According to Thomas, Sargant reported that Olson had become a security threat and his access to military facilities should be limited.[14]

A retreat was scheduled at a cabin at Deep Creek Lake for Wednesday November 18 to Friday November 20, 1953. A tentative participants list included eleven names.[19][20]

Detrick participants

• Dr. Frank Olson, a scientist with the Special Operations Division of the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories at Fort Detrick, who was suspected of being a security risk
• Lt. Col. Vincent Ruwet, Olson's supervisor, the head of the Special Operations Division.
• Dr. John L. Schwab, who had founded the division and in 1953 served as its lab chief[21]
• Dr. John Stubbs, one of the Fort Detrick personnel[21]
• Benjamin Wilson, a member of the Special Operations Division.
• Dr. Herbert "Bert" Tanner, one of the Fort Detrick personnel[21]
• John C. Malinowski, a Detrick staffer who didn't drink alcohol and thus was not dosed.[22]
• Dr. Gerald Yonetz, a Special Operations Division scientist, also attended

CIA participants

• Sidney Gottlieb, a CIA chemist responsible for Project MKUltra.[23]
• Robert Lashbrook, Gottlieb's deputy
• Dr. A. Hughes, suspected to be CIA[21]
• Dr. Henry Bortner, of the CIA[21][24]

On Thursday evening at about 7:30, Olson and some of the other participants were drugged with a "potential truth serum", decades later reported to be LSD.[25][26]^:153

When Olson returned home, his wife noticed his sullen mood. That night, he confided that he had made "a terrible mistake" at the retreat and that people had laughed at him.[20]

After the retreat, Olson returned home at 5pm on Friday, where he spent the weekend with his family.[27] On Sunday, November 22, Olson and his wife went to the movies, watching a biopic about protestant reformation leader Martin Luther.[28] Olson's wife Alice would later recall "we might have made a bad choice of movies"[29]

The next morning, Monday November 23, Olson was reportedly waiting for his boss Col. Ruwet when Ruwet arrived at 7:30 AM. Olson reportedly asked to quit the biowarfare program.[26]^:157 Two hours later, Olson called home sounding relieved; he told his wife that Ruwet said "I didn’t make a mistake. Everything is fine. I’m not going to resign." [5]

On Tuesday, November 24, Olson went to work as usual, but unexpectedly returned home before noon, accompanied by Dr. Joseph Stubbs. Olson explained Stubbs's presence, saying "they're afraid I might hurt you". Olson informed his wife that he had agreed to undergo psychiatric treatment.[5]

That same day, Olson, Ruwet, and Lashbrook flew to New York City. In New York, Olson and Lashbrook met with Harold Abramson, a CIA-linked medical doctor, who had worked with Olson years earlier on studies of aerosolization.[26]^:158[30]

Although Olson's family told friends that he had suffered "a fatal nervous breakdown" which resulted in the fall,[1] the family had no real knowledge of the specific details surrounding the tragedy, until the Rockefeller Commission uncovered some of the CIA's MKULTRA activities in 1975. That year, the government admitted that Olson had been dosed with LSD, without his knowledge, nine days before his death. After the family announced they planned to sue the Agency over Olson's "wrongful death," the government offered them an out-of-court settlement of $1,250,000, later reduced to $750,000, which they accepted.[35] The family received apologies from President Gerald Ford and then-CIA director William Colby.[36]

In 1994, Eric Olson had his father's body exhumed to be buried with his mother. The family decided to have a second autopsy performed. The 1953 medical report completed immediately after Dr. Olson's death indicated that there were cuts and abrasions on the body.[37] Theories that sparked about Olson having been assassinated by the CIA led to the second autopsy, which was performed by James Starrs, Professor of Law and Forensic Science at the George Washington University National Law Center. His team searched the body for any cuts and abrasions and found none, though did find a large hematoma on the left side of Olson's head and a large injury on his chest. Most of the team concluded that the blunt-force trauma to the head and the injury to the chest had not occurred during the fall, but most likely before the fall (one team member dissented).[1] Starrs called the evidence "rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide."[36]

In 1996, Eric Olson approached the U.S. District Attorney in Manhattan, Robert Morgenthau, to see if his office would open a new investigation. Stephen Saracco and Daniel Bibb of the office's "cold case" unit collected preliminary information, including a deposition of Lashbrook, but concluded that there was no compelling case to send to a grand jury.[1] In 2001, Canadian historian Michael Ignatieff wrote for The New York Times Magazine an account of Eric's decades-long campaign to clear his father's name.[1][38][39] Eric Olson asserts that the forensic evidence of death is suggestive of a method used by the CIA found in the first manual of assassination that says "The most efficient accident, in simple assassination, is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface."[40]

On November 28, 2012, sons Eric and Nils Olson filed suit in the US District Court in Washington, D.C.,[41] seeking unspecified compensatory damages as well as access to documents related to their father's death and other matters that they claimed the CIA had withheld from them.[42][43] The case was dismissed in July 2013, due in part to the 1976 settlement between the family and government.[44] In the decision dismissing the suit, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote, "While the court must limit its analysis to the four corners of the complaint, the skeptical reader may wish to know that the public record supports many of the allegations [in the family's suit], farfetched as they may sound."[45]

Netflix released a documentary miniseries, entitled Wormwood (2017), based on the mystery of Olson's death; it was directed by Errol Morris.[46] In the miniseries, journalist Seymour Hersh says the government had a security process to identify and execute domestic dissidents (perceived to pose a risk). He said that Frank Olson was a victim of this and an ongoing cover-up after his death. However, Hersh explained that he cannot elaborate or publish on the facts because it would compromise his source.[40]