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Speaker 1: The following episode contains graphic scenes of injury and death

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Speaker 1: that some may find disturbing. For rental discretion is advised

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Speaker 1: you're listening to Unexplained, Season seven, episode one, The Fall

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Speaker 1: Without End, Part two. For Frank Olson's family, prior to

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Speaker 1: the revelations of the nineteen seventy five Rockefeller Inquiry, it

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Speaker 1: had always felt like there was some key information missing

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Speaker 1: from the story of Frank's death. But now that they

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Speaker 1: had some of those missing pieces, the full picture was

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Speaker 1: worse than they could have imagined. Not only had Frank's

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Speaker 1: death been indirectly caused by the government he devoted his

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Speaker 1: life to, but the CIA had been actively like to

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Speaker 1: the family ever since, and they'd done it through Vincent Ruitt,

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Speaker 1: who had become a trusted friend for both Alice and

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Speaker 1: her by then grown up children. Within days at the

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Speaker 1: report's release, the family held a press conference in their

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Speaker 1: backyard and announced their intention to file a lawsuit against

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Speaker 1: the CIA. But Alice was also determined to set something straight.

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Speaker 1: Stoically reading out a prepared statement in front of the

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Speaker 1: photographers and reporters, she painted a picture of Olsen in

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Speaker 1: his final days that was at odds with the agencies.

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Speaker 1: He wasn't irrational or mentally unstable, she said. Instead, she

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Speaker 1: felt he was simply consumed by melancholy and had talked

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Speaker 1: repeatedly about leaving his job. Scrambling to contain the fallout,

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Speaker 1: the CIA enlisted some friends in high places to help

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Speaker 1: with damage control. The Rockefeller report had been damaging enough.

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Speaker 1: If Frank Olsen's family followed through with the lawsuit, it

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Speaker 1: could force the agency to disclose classified information that could

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Speaker 1: put national security at risk. It fell to then President

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Speaker 1: Gerald Ford's chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeldt and his deputy,

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Speaker 1: Dick Cheney, to manage the situation. Their first mission was

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Speaker 1: finding a way to placate the family, and so it

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Speaker 1: was that shortly after the press conference, Alice Olsen received

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Speaker 1: a letter in the post. Inside she found an invitation

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Speaker 1: to the White House. On July twenty first, nineteen seventy five,

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Speaker 1: Alice and her three children, Eric, Nils, and Lisa arrived

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Speaker 1: at sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. It was hard not to

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Speaker 1: be overawed as they were welcomed into the Oval office

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Speaker 1: by President Ford himself, who began by making a formal

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Speaker 1: apology to the family. On behalf of the U s government.

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Speaker 1: He also expressed his personal sympathy for what they'd been through.

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Speaker 1: White House officials promised the family that there would be

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Speaker 1: no more lies from now on, and that they'd be

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Speaker 1: given all of the facts as soon as possible. It

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Speaker 1: was a week later when Alice and her children met

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Speaker 1: with CIA Director William Colby, who gave them a thick

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Speaker 1: sheaf of declassified documents containing information about Frank's death. After

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Speaker 1: so many years with no answers, it felt like striking gold,

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Speaker 1: But the documents opened up as many questions as they

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Speaker 1: had answers. As Alice scanned through the pages, she could

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Speaker 1: see immediately that they were not being given the full picture.

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Speaker 1: Line after line had been redacted, leaving only a muddled,

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Speaker 1: bity version of the truth with many crucial details left out.

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Speaker 1: Like most high level CIA employees, Olsen's work with the

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Speaker 1: agency had to be kept absolutely secret. His family had

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Speaker 1: always believed that he was a civilian employee working for

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Speaker 1: the military, and there was nothing in Colby's documents to

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Speaker 1: contradict that. As far as they knew, Olson's involvement with

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Speaker 1: the CIA had begun just days before his death, when

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Speaker 1: they droped him in as an unwitting guinea pig in

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Speaker 1: their psychedelic drug experiment. Even after reading through the documents,

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Speaker 1: they had no idea just how close Olson's ties to

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Speaker 1: the agency were, or, more perdinently, that he was one

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Speaker 1: of just a handful of men who knew the CIA's

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Speaker 1: darke As secrets. The document release was the first step

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Speaker 1: and a lengthy negotiation between the American government and the Olsons.

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Speaker 1: After that, the family agreed to a seven hundred and

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Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars settlement in exchange for signing a contract

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Speaker 1: not to pursue any further legal action. The amount was

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Speaker 1: much less than they'd initially been promised, but perhaps in

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Speaker 1: the absence of the whole truth and knowing what impossible

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Speaker 1: lengths it would take to get it, it provided some

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Speaker 1: closure at least, and with that, just as they had

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Speaker 1: been forced to do two decades earlier, the Olsons tried

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Speaker 1: to move on with their lives, choking back all of

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Speaker 1: their unanswered questions. But Eric, Alice and Frank's oldest son,

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Speaker 1: just couldn't do it this time. Ever since his father's

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Speaker 1: mysterious death, he'd thought about what it would feel like

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Speaker 1: to finally know the truth. He'd imagined catharsis and a

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Speaker 1: sense of relief, the very least he deserved. Yet now

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Speaker 1: he felt none of that. If the CIA had really

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Speaker 1: come clean, this LSD story was the whole truth, then

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Speaker 1: why did it still feel like the wool was being

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Speaker 1: pulled over his eyes? Like the rest of the surviving family.

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Speaker 1: For years, Eric turned the events of nineteen fifty three

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Speaker 1: over and over in his head to make the pieces

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Speaker 1: fit together into a coherent story. After weeks of trying,

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Speaker 1: he eventually succeeded in tracking down Sydney Gottlieb and Robert Lashbrook,

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Speaker 1: the CIA scientists who'd overseen the disastrous LSD experiment that

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Speaker 1: had supposedly sent Olson spiraling into madness. Gottlieb was the

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Speaker 1: one who slipped the drug into the Quontroe that night.

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Speaker 1: Although disciplinary action had been recommended by the CIA's General Council,

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Speaker 1: he was let off with little more than a slap

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Speaker 1: on the wrist and had remained in senior positions at

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Speaker 1: the age for many years. When Eric showed up at

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Speaker 1: his door, accompanied by his mother Alice and brother Nils,

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Speaker 1: Gottley was polite and apologetic, making all the right noises

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Speaker 1: about the terrible circumstances of Frank's death, but when they

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Speaker 1: left his house later that afternoon, they did so with

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Speaker 1: nothing they didn't already know. Lashbrook, who'd shared the hotel

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Speaker 1: room with Olson on the night he died, wasn't much

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Speaker 1: more forthcoming. When the family tracked him down in Ohai, California,

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Speaker 1: he invited them to take a seat in the living room,

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Speaker 1: where he proceeded to walk them through everything he remembered.

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Speaker 1: He and Olson had both gone to sleep around ten

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Speaker 1: thirty pm, he said, a few hours later he was

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Speaker 1: startled awake by the sound of glass breaking. When his

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Speaker 1: eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw the broken glass

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Speaker 1: all over the floor, the smashed out window, and the

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Speaker 1: curtain billowing at the chilly night air, And then he

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Speaker 1: saw that Olson's bed was empty. The man seemed twitchy

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Speaker 1: and nervous as he talked, his eyes darting about the room,

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Speaker 1: seemingly unable to meet with Eric's or any one else.

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Speaker 1: The story was precisely the same as what he'd told

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Speaker 1: the police at the time, and Eric didn't buy any

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Speaker 1: of it. It was then that Eric decided he had

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Speaker 1: to see the scene of the crime for himself. At

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Speaker 1: some time during the nineteen eighties, Eric Olsen booked a

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Speaker 1: flight to New York and checked into the Statler Hotel

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Speaker 1: in Midtown Manhattan. At the reception desk, he requested Room

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Speaker 1: ten eighteen A on the thirteenth floor, the room in

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Speaker 1: which his father had spent his final hours. The hotel

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Speaker 1: had changed hands several times in the past three decades,

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Speaker 1: but the structure was the same, not least of all

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Speaker 1: the grand colonnaded lobby from where night manager Armond Pastory

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Speaker 1: witnessed Frank fall to the pavement all those years before.

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Speaker 1: Looking about, Eric shuddered at the thought of it as

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Speaker 1: distorted images of his father's death raced through his mind.

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Speaker 1: Taking the lift up to the thirteenth floor, of all places,

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Speaker 1: it was hard not to feel the weight of it

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Speaker 1: all as he traced his father's last footsteps to room

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Speaker 1: ten eighteen A, And as soon as Eric walked inside,

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Speaker 1: all of his misgivings about Robert Lashbrook's story only intensified.

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Speaker 1: For one, the room was much much smaller than he'd imagine,

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Speaker 1: and so was the window, that pane of glass which

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Speaker 1: had loomed so largely over him in countless nights for

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Speaker 1: so many years. So much more compact and mundane. He'd

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Speaker 1: often imagined his father taking a running jump through this

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Speaker 1: closed window and plummeting thirteen stories to his death. But

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Speaker 1: looking at it now, this mental image made no sense.

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Speaker 1: There wasn't enough space in the room to run at

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Speaker 1: any kind of speed or gather enough momentum to shatter glass.

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Speaker 1: There was also a radiator right in front of the window,

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Speaker 1: and the sill was so high that you'd have to

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Speaker 1: make a significant leap to reach it. In that moment,

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Speaker 1: the official story went from far fetched to just plain bullshit.

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Speaker 1: In Eric's mind, his father's apparent suicide had always been

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Speaker 1: emotionally hard to swallow, but now it also seemed physically impossible.

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Speaker 1: But Eric was powerless to do more. It was clear

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Speaker 1: that the government had closed ranks. Lashbrook and Gottlieb had

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Speaker 1: said all they were ever going to say, and the

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Speaker 1: only other person who knew what really happened inside this

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Speaker 1: room had been permanently silenced, or had he. The dead

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Speaker 1: tell no tales, but their bodies do. In the usual

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Speaker 1: course of things, when a person dies a violent, unnatural,

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Speaker 1: or mysterious death, a coroner gets the chance to examine

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Speaker 1: their corpse interpret whatever clues are present and determine a

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Speaker 1: cause of death based on the evidence. But no autopsy

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Speaker 1: was ever performed on Frank Olsen. The government had made

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Speaker 1: sure of it. Forty years later, Eric set out to

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Speaker 1: right that wrong. He was going to have his father's

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Speaker 1: body exhumed. On a bright summer's day in nineteen ninety four,

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Speaker 1: the Linden Hills Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland was unusually busy.

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Speaker 1: Eric Olsen stood beside his father's grave, squinted under the

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Speaker 1: glare of the sun as a mechanical digger clawed its

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Speaker 1: way through the soil, while a small crowd of reporters

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Speaker 1: stood watch around him. Moments later, Frank Olson's now exposed

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Speaker 1: casket was carefully raised from the earth, the word only

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Speaker 1: slightly decomposed after forty years underground. From there, it was

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Speaker 1: transported to the forensics department of George Washington University Law School,

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Speaker 1: where a team of pathologists began the slow, painstaking process

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Speaker 1: that should have taken place years earlier. In nineteen fifty three,

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Speaker 1: Alice Olsen had been told that Frank's body was too

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Speaker 1: badly damaged for an open casket funeral to be held,

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Speaker 1: and that his face was disfigured from lacerations caused by

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Speaker 1: the glass breaking around him. But when the forensic team

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Speaker 1: opened the casket, they found an embalmed corpse in close

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Speaker 1: to perfect condition. There were no serious cuts or lacerations

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Speaker 1: on his face at all, and no microscopic shots of

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Speaker 1: glass embedded in his head or neck. Certainly nothing close

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Speaker 1: to the kinds of injuries one would expect to find

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Speaker 1: on a man who'd jumped through a plate glass window

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Speaker 1: head first. But what the team did find was a

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Speaker 1: large hematoma on Olsen's left temple, a gathering of blood

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Speaker 1: about the size of a fist pulled underneath unbroken skin.

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Speaker 1: They all agreed that this injury could not have been

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Speaker 1: caused by his impact with the ground, because the velocity

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Speaker 1: of that fall would have caused much more extensive damage,

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Speaker 1: and in any case, Olson had reportedly landed on his back,

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Speaker 1: not his side. Opinions varied on what exactly this meant.

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Speaker 1: One pathologist suggested Olson might have hit his head on

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Speaker 1: the window frame as he jumped, but the others disagreed.

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Speaker 1: To James Stars, the lead pathologist, there was no doubting

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Speaker 1: that the blow to the head had happened before Olson

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Speaker 1: went through the window, someone he believed, though he couldn't

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Speaker 1: prove it at first, not Frank unconscious before he died.

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Speaker 1: Stars and his team spent more than a month studying

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Speaker 1: the body before finally calling a news conference to deliver

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Speaker 1: their findings. When Stars addressed reporters, he acknowledged that the

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Speaker 1: team hadn't found any smoking guns, there was no scientific

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Speaker 1: evidence to contradict the official narrative. However, he emphasized the

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Speaker 1: inexplicable injury on Old Wilson's temple and the lack of

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Speaker 1: any lacerations consistent with broken glass. He said that in

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Speaker 1: his opinion, the hematoma could only have been caused by

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Speaker 1: a direct, stunning blow to the head, and that he

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Speaker 1: was exceedingly skeptical that Olson had gone through the window

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Speaker 1: by his own force alone. Asked to clarify what he meant,

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Speaker 1: Stars finally came right out and said it. I think

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Speaker 1: Frank Olsen was intentionally, deliberately and with malicious forethought thrown

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Speaker 1: out of that window. For Eric pathologist James Starr's conclusion

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Speaker 1: felt like coming up for air after two decades swimming underwater,

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Speaker 1: for the first time someone had said out loud what

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Speaker 1: he had long suspected that his father had been murdered,

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Speaker 1: But just why would the CIA want Frank Olsen dead.

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Speaker 1: To answer that question, it's essential to understand just what

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Speaker 1: exactly Olson was doing at Fort Detrick, where he worked

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Speaker 1: in the decade prior to his death. During World War II,

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Speaker 1: Detric was the U. S Army's base of operations for

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Speaker 1: developing biological weapons, and Olsen was one of the first

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Speaker 1: scientists to join a clandestine team working on aerosol pathogen

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Speaker 1: technologies that is, turning diseases like anthrax into airborne weapons.

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Speaker 1: For a number of years, he made several visits to

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Speaker 1: a secret military base on an island just off the

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Speaker 1: eastern coast of New York, where the army tested toxins

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Speaker 1: that were considered too dangerous to be brought onto the

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Speaker 1: US mainland. After the war ended, that mission seemed destined

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Speaker 1: to fade into obscurity because the government's focus had shifted

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Speaker 1: to nuclear weapons. But then in nineteen fifty came the

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Speaker 1: Korean War, or the Fatherland Liberation War as it was

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Speaker 1: known in North Korea, and with it a new enemy

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Speaker 1: with new capabilities. At some point, the CIA became convinced

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Speaker 1: that the North Korean military had developed ways to brainwash

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Speaker 1: American prisoners of war after many of them signed statements

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Speaker 1: criticizing the US government while in captivity. Though there was

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Speaker 1: no concrete evidence that this was true, the fear of

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Speaker 1: psychological warfare became an obsession, and so the Special Operations

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Speaker 1: Division at Fort Detrick was given a new mission to

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Speaker 1: investigate ways in which you can control someone's mind. Scientists

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Speaker 1: like Frank Olsen were tasked with studying the use of

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Speaker 1: drugs for both interrogation and brainwashing as part of a

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Speaker 1: top secret program that began under the name Project art Choke.

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Speaker 1: In that process, they bore witness to horror. Olsen observed

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Speaker 1: the brutal interrogation of prisoners at CIA safe houses in Germany,

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Speaker 1: where men were subjected to torture, hypnosis, and forced drug use.

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Speaker 1: These interrogations were designed not just to extract information, but

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Speaker 1: also to test the limits of experimental brainwashing techniques. When

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Speaker 1: detainees died, their lives were simply dismissed as collateral damage,

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Speaker 1: the unavoidable cost of protecting US national security. Olson had

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Speaker 1: been upset enough when laboratory monkeys died at Detrich. Seeing

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Speaker 1: human beings being to the watcher to death shattered him completely.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty three, when Olson officially began working for

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Speaker 1: the CIA project, Artichoke was succeeded by a new program

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Speaker 1: which would expand its extreme interrogation techniques even further. That

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Speaker 1: program was known as MK Ultra. It was in the

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Speaker 1: mk Ultra era that Olson's misgivings really consumed him. In

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Speaker 1: the spring of nineteen fifty three, he flew to England

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Speaker 1: to visit porton Down the world's oldest chemical warfare facility. There,

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Speaker 1: government scientists were experimenting with newly developed, highly toxic nerve agents.

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Speaker 1: Olson's visit coincided with one of the most controversial events

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Speaker 1: in Port and Down's history. That May, a twenty year

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Speaker 1: old airman named Ronald Madison volunteered as a guinea pig

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Speaker 1: in what he'd been told would be a series of

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Speaker 1: fairly innocuous experiments to help find a cure for the

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Speaker 1: common cold. In actual fact, Madison had been unwittingly brought

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Speaker 1: in to help test the effects of saren, a highly

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Speaker 1: toxic nerve agent, on the human body. The ultimate aim

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Speaker 1: of the experiment to test what level of exposure was

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Speaker 1: necessary to incapacitate a person On May sixth, nineteen fifty three,

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Speaker 1: but Poorten down. Leading aircraftsman Ronald Madison was layered into

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Speaker 1: a laboratory and instructed to roll up his sleeve. A

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Speaker 1: man in a white coat with thick protective gloves measured

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Speaker 1: out two hundred milligrams of liquid saren before pouring it

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Speaker 1: onto some material. The material was then tied onto Madison's arm.

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Speaker 1: The effects started slowly at first, the sense of something

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Speaker 1: burning heating up within Madison's body. Soon he was screaming

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Speaker 1: in agony, and moments later he began to convulse, his

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Speaker 1: body and limbs jerking all over the place, as though

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Speaker 1: he was being electrocuted. His skin seemed to be vibrating.

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Speaker 1: Madison's eyes rolled into the back of his head, and

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Speaker 1: thick bubbles of something viscous, like frogsborn, as one observer

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Speaker 1: later put it, spilled out of his mouth. The men

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Speaker 1: in coats gathered round quickly. He began to panic while

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Speaker 1: some tried to hold Madison's body still. Fifteen minutes later,

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Speaker 1: he lost consciousness. Madison was quickly ferried over to Portendown's

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Speaker 1: medical unit. Eighteen year old Alfred Thornhill was tasked with

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Speaker 1: carrying him inside. When he arrived, he found the place

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Speaker 1: had been completely cleared of all other patients, and a

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Speaker 1: group of men in white coats were waiting for him

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Speaker 1: next to an empty bed. Thornhill carried Madison over and

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Speaker 1: laid him down, then allegedly watched on in disbelief and

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Speaker 1: terror as Madison's leg inexplicably rose up from the bed,

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Speaker 1: and first his ankle began to turn blue, then his

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Speaker 1: lower leg, then up above the knee, as though a

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Speaker 1: strange blue liquid were being poured into him. Seconds later,

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Speaker 1: one of the men in coats pulled out a hypodermic

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Speaker 1: syringe and plunged the needle into Madison's body, and shortly

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Speaker 1: after that Madison was declared dead. After everything else that

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Speaker 1: Frank Olsen had witnessed, Ronald Madison's death was a bridge

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Speaker 1: too far. Soon after, he confided in a psychiatrist at

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Speaker 1: Porton down William Sergeant, admitting how disturbed he was by

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Speaker 1: what he'd seen. He talked not just about Madison, but

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Speaker 1: also about the other atrocities he'd seen at CIA safe

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Speaker 1: houses in Germany, where he'd watched prisoners dying painful deaths

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Speaker 1: from toxins that he'd personally helped to develop. Olsen's guilt

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00:23:34,960 --> 00:23:39,200
Speaker 1: was overwhelming, and confessing how he felt would have no doubt,

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Speaker 1: brought some relief. But if he believed he was speaking

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Speaker 1: to Sergeant in confidence, he was mistaken. Sergeant immediately wrote

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Speaker 1: up a report about Olsen's state of mind and submitted

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Speaker 1: it to his superiors. He wrote that, in his opinion,

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00:23:56,160 --> 00:23:59,280
Speaker 1: Olsen was upset enough that he might be unwilling to

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Speaker 1: keep his mouth shut. In other words, he was a liability,

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Speaker 1: and Sergeant wanted to make sure that he had no

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00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:11,600
Speaker 1: further access to porton Down. It was around this time,

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Speaker 1: in August of nineteen fifty three, that Olson returned home,

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Speaker 1: and his wife and brother in law noticed he seemed

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00:24:19,480 --> 00:24:23,399
Speaker 1: strangely withdrawn and depressed, But the true reason for his

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00:24:23,520 --> 00:24:26,879
Speaker 1: mood would only make sense to them many years later.

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Speaker 1: During World War II, Olson had been proud to be

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Speaker 1: part of the fight against Adolf Hitler's fascist regime in

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00:24:35,800 --> 00:24:40,200
Speaker 1: part because of its heinous track record of human experimentation.

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Speaker 1: Now his own country was doing the very same thing.

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Speaker 1: Shortly after Peter Sargeant alerted them, British intelligence officials forwarded

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Speaker 1: his report onto their American counterparts. In Sergeant's opinion. Olsen

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Speaker 1: was deeply dangerously disillusioned with the agency and its entire mission. Many,

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Speaker 1: including Frank's son Eric, believed the CIA strongly concurred. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, a few years after Frank Olsen's body

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00:25:15,160 --> 00:25:20,560
Speaker 1: was exhumed, the CIA inadvertently released a document titled A

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Speaker 1: Study of Assassination. It's essentially an assassination manual, and the

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Speaker 1: very first edition dates back to late nineteen fifty three,

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00:25:31,280 --> 00:25:37,840
Speaker 1: precisely when Olsen died. According to this manual, the ideal

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Speaker 1: way to assassinate someone is by dropping them from a

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Speaker 1: height of at least seventy five feet onto a hard surface.

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Speaker 1: In some cases, the author notes, it's necessary to stun

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Speaker 1: the victim first, ideally with a blow to the temple.

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Speaker 1: Reading this, with all its apparent echoes of his father's

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Speaker 1: own death, was a horrifying experience for Eric Olsen. The manual,

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Speaker 1: in combination with the new autopsy results and what he'd

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00:26:08,840 --> 00:26:13,280
Speaker 1: learned about his father's work on MK Ultra, finally seemed

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00:26:13,280 --> 00:26:15,840
Speaker 1: to give him the certainty he had longed for his

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00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:26,520
Speaker 1: entire adult life. Eric Olsen was now sure that the

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00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:31,280
Speaker 1: CIA's so called mere coulpa in the nineteen seventies, when

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00:26:31,280 --> 00:26:34,800
Speaker 1: they admitted to dosing his father with LSD had in

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00:26:34,880 --> 00:26:39,440
Speaker 1: fact been part of a much larger cover up. Inadvertently

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Speaker 1: driving a man to suicide through a reckless experiment as

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Speaker 1: a terrible sin, but it would pale in comparison to

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Speaker 1: the CIA assassinating one of its own. There's no doubt

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00:26:52,520 --> 00:26:56,680
Speaker 1: that the Deep Creek Lake retreat really happened, and that

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00:26:56,760 --> 00:27:01,560
Speaker 1: Frank Olsen and his colleagues really were dosed WITHSD, But

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Speaker 1: in light of the fact that Olson's bosses likely saw

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00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:08,440
Speaker 1: him as a threat, the possible true purpose of it

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00:27:08,520 --> 00:27:13,439
Speaker 1: becomes much murkier. Perhaps the LSD was a test to

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Speaker 1: see if Olsen would confess his misgivings to them under

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Speaker 1: the influence of drugs, Or perhaps it was even more

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Speaker 1: sinister than that, designed to discredit Olson and give the

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Speaker 1: agency a pretext to risk him away to New York

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Speaker 1: for so called treatment and assess just how much of

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Speaker 1: a risk he really posed. During that trip, the only

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Speaker 1: people that Olson saw were on the CIA payroll, Sydney

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Speaker 1: Gottlieb Vincent Ruitt and Harold Abramson, the doctor and John Mulholland,

359
00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 1: the magician. His supposed paranoia, and his attempts to get

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00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:56,200
Speaker 1: away may in fact have been a perfectly rational response

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Speaker 1: to the realization that he had a target on his back.

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Speaker 1: If the CIA truly believed that Olson posed an imminent

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Speaker 1: threat to national security, then there's no telling what lengths

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Speaker 1: they might go to keep him quiet. And if it

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00:28:11,359 --> 00:28:14,800
Speaker 1: was decided that he had to be eliminated, then, according

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Speaker 1: to their own manual, the best way to do it

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Speaker 1: would be a drop from a great height thirteen flaws.

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Speaker 1: For example, in light of this hypothetical narrative, Robert Lashbrook's

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Speaker 1: strange phone call to Harold Abramsom just after Olsen went

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Speaker 1: out at the window makes a lot more sense. Their

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00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:41,080
Speaker 1: peculiar exchange. Well he's gone, said Lashbrook. That's too bad,

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Speaker 1: replied Abramsom. Is nonsensical in the context of a sudden

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Speaker 1: and unexpected suicide, not so in the context of a

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Speaker 1: meticulously planned murder. In twenty twelve, prosecutors in New York

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Speaker 1: formerly reclassified Olson's cause of death from suicide to unknown,

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Speaker 1: and Eric and his brother Nils promptly filed a suit

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Speaker 1: against the CIA, formally alleging that their father was murdered.

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Speaker 1: Though the suit was dismissed a year later. It was

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Speaker 1: not due to a lack of merit. In fact, Federal

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Speaker 1: Judge James Boseburg made it clear that, in his opinion,

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Speaker 1: the public record supported many of the allegations, but for

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Speaker 1: a variety of procedural reasons, including the Statute of Limitations

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Speaker 1: and the fact that the family had signed an agreement

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Speaker 1: waiving their right to pursue any further legal action, the

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Speaker 1: case went no further, and so despite the overwhelming evidence

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Speaker 1: pointing in a single direction, it seems Frank Olsen's cause

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00:29:50,280 --> 00:30:02,800
Speaker 1: of death will officially always remain unexplained. This episode was

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Speaker 1: written by Emma Dibden Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions

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00:30:07,280 --> 00:30:11,840
Speaker 1: podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All other elements of

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Speaker 1: the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me

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00:30:15,560 --> 00:30:20,600
Speaker 1: Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook, with stories

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00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:23,600
Speaker 1: never before featured on the show, is now available to

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Speaker 1: buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble,

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Speaker 1: Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the

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Speaker 1: show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to

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Speaker 1: stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an

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Speaker 1: explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can

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