I have a question. If your secret intelligence experiment accidentally gives a government scientist LSD, and nine days later he goes through a hotel window, what exactly do you write in the report? “Unexpected outcome”? “Please destroy this memo”? Or do you just put the paperwork in a drawer and hope history develops a very short attention span?
Because for more than twenty years, Frank Olson’s family was told almost nothing. Then the government admitted the LSD part. And suddenly, a supposedly straightforward suicide became one of the strangest unresolved deaths in the history of American intelligence.
Now, before we put on the trench coat and start accusing every filing cabinet in Washington: the fact that the CIA behaved monstrously does not automatically prove it murdered Olson. I know. Terrible news for the dramatic version.
So today we are going to do the annoying thing. We are going to separate what is established, what is suspicious, what is possible, and what remains a story people want to be true because the official version is so morally disgusting that it feels incomplete.
In this episode:
• The man who fell after the secret experiment
• The official story has a very serious problem
• The second look at the body
• So was Frank Olson murdered?
Sources & further reading:
• Project MKULTRA, the CIA’s Program of Research in Behavioral Modification: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/PROJECT%20MKULTRA%2C%20THE%20CIAS%5B12885086%5D.pdf
• Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States: https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/digital-research-room/topic-guides/rockefeller-commission-report-june-1975
• Exhumation and Forensic Investigation: https://frankolsonproject.com/
• Rockefeller Commission Report, June 1975: https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/digital-research-room/topic-guides/rockefeller-commission-report-june-1975
