WEBVTT - Season 7 Episode 1: The Fall Without End (Pt.2 of 2) 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:03.320 The following episode contains graphic scenes of injury and death 0:00:03.480 --> 0:00:07.039 that some may find disturbing. For rental discretion is advised 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:22.600 you're listening to Unexplained, Season seven, episode one, The Fall 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:34.440 Without End, Part two. For Frank Olson's family, prior to 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:38.720 the revelations of the nineteen seventy five Rockefeller Inquiry, it 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:42.559 had always felt like there was some key information missing 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:45.839 from the story of Frank's death. But now that they 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:49.120 had some of those missing pieces, the full picture was 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:52.680 worse than they could have imagined. Not only had Frank's 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:56.160 death been indirectly caused by the government he devoted his 0:00:56.280 --> 0:01:00.280 life to, but the CIA had been actively like to 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:04.400 the family ever since, and they'd done it through Vincent Ruitt, 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:08.000 who had become a trusted friend for both Alice and 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:12.280 her by then grown up children. Within days at the 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:15.920 report's release, the family held a press conference in their 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:20.080 backyard and announced their intention to file a lawsuit against 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:25.360 the CIA. But Alice was also determined to set something straight. 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:29.600 Stoically reading out a prepared statement in front of the 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:33.880 photographers and reporters, she painted a picture of Olsen in 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:37.360 his final days that was at odds with the agencies. 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:43.480 He wasn't irrational or mentally unstable, she said. Instead, she 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:47.040 felt he was simply consumed by melancholy and had talked 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:52.320 repeatedly about leaving his job. Scrambling to contain the fallout, 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:56.600 the CIA enlisted some friends in high places to help 0:01:56.640 --> 0:02:01.480 with damage control. The Rockefeller report had been damaging enough. 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:05.640 If Frank Olsen's family followed through with the lawsuit, it 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:09.880 could force the agency to disclose classified information that could 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:14.120 put national security at risk. It fell to then President 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:18.960 Gerald Ford's chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeldt and his deputy, 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:24.360 Dick Cheney, to manage the situation. Their first mission was 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:27.840 finding a way to placate the family, and so it 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:31.720 was that shortly after the press conference, Alice Olsen received 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:35.880 a letter in the post. Inside she found an invitation 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:40.960 to the White House. On July twenty first, nineteen seventy five, 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:45.880 Alice and her three children, Eric, Nils, and Lisa arrived 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:50.400 at sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. It was hard not to 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:53.760 be overawed as they were welcomed into the Oval office 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:57.440 by President Ford himself, who began by making a formal 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:00.840 apology to the family. On behalf of the U s government. 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:05.240 He also expressed his personal sympathy for what they'd been through. 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:09.480 White House officials promised the family that there would be 0:03:09.680 --> 0:03:12.640 no more lies from now on, and that they'd be 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:22.720 given all of the facts as soon as possible. It 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:25.720 was a week later when Alice and her children met 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:29.919 with CIA Director William Colby, who gave them a thick 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:36.080 sheaf of declassified documents containing information about Frank's death. After 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:40.400 so many years with no answers, it felt like striking gold, 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:44.640 But the documents opened up as many questions as they 0:03:44.680 --> 0:03:49.040 had answers. As Alice scanned through the pages, she could 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:52.920 see immediately that they were not being given the full picture. 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:58.080 Line after line had been redacted, leaving only a muddled, 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:02.880 bity version of the truth with many crucial details left out. 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:08.360 Like most high level CIA employees, Olsen's work with the 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:12.920 agency had to be kept absolutely secret. His family had 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:16.760 always believed that he was a civilian employee working for 0:04:16.839 --> 0:04:20.159 the military, and there was nothing in Colby's documents to 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:24.880 contradict that. As far as they knew, Olson's involvement with 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:28.520 the CIA had begun just days before his death, when 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:31.200 they droped him in as an unwitting guinea pig in 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:36.440 their psychedelic drug experiment. Even after reading through the documents, 0:04:36.760 --> 0:04:40.200 they had no idea just how close Olson's ties to 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:44.160 the agency were, or, more perdinently, that he was one 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:47.560 of just a handful of men who knew the CIA's 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:52.440 darke As secrets. The document release was the first step 0:04:52.520 --> 0:04:56.680 and a lengthy negotiation between the American government and the Olsons. 0:04:57.600 --> 0:05:00.880 After that, the family agreed to a seven hundred and 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:05.040 fifty thousand dollars settlement in exchange for signing a contract 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:09.800 not to pursue any further legal action. The amount was 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:13.680 much less than they'd initially been promised, but perhaps in 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:17.240 the absence of the whole truth and knowing what impossible 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:20.520 lengths it would take to get it, it provided some 0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:24.320 closure at least, and with that, just as they had 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:28.000 been forced to do two decades earlier, the Olsons tried 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:31.200 to move on with their lives, choking back all of 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:36.440 their unanswered questions. But Eric, Alice and Frank's oldest son, 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:41.520 just couldn't do it this time. Ever since his father's 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:45.039 mysterious death, he'd thought about what it would feel like 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:49.599 to finally know the truth. He'd imagined catharsis and a 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:54.160 sense of relief, the very least he deserved. Yet now 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:58.559 he felt none of that. If the CIA had really 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:03.360 come clean, this LSD story was the whole truth, then 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:06.160 why did it still feel like the wool was being 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:16.600 pulled over his eyes? Like the rest of the surviving family. 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:20.760 For years, Eric turned the events of nineteen fifty three 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:23.960 over and over in his head to make the pieces 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:28.640 fit together into a coherent story. After weeks of trying, 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:34.040 he eventually succeeded in tracking down Sydney Gottlieb and Robert Lashbrook, 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:39.640 the CIA scientists who'd overseen the disastrous LSD experiment that 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:45.440 had supposedly sent Olson spiraling into madness. Gottlieb was the 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:48.120 one who slipped the drug into the Quontroe that night. 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:53.799 Although disciplinary action had been recommended by the CIA's General Council, 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:56.400 he was let off with little more than a slap 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:59.640 on the wrist and had remained in senior positions at 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:03.720 the age for many years. When Eric showed up at 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:07.680 his door, accompanied by his mother Alice and brother Nils, 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:12.200 Gottley was polite and apologetic, making all the right noises 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:16.560 about the terrible circumstances of Frank's death, but when they 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:20.040 left his house later that afternoon, they did so with 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:25.320 nothing they didn't already know. Lashbrook, who'd shared the hotel 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:28.440 room with Olson on the night he died, wasn't much 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:33.400 more forthcoming. When the family tracked him down in Ohai, California, 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.120 he invited them to take a seat in the living room, 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:39.720 where he proceeded to walk them through everything he remembered. 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:43.880 He and Olson had both gone to sleep around ten 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:47.840 thirty pm, he said, a few hours later he was 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:51.840 startled awake by the sound of glass breaking. When his 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:55.480 eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw the broken glass 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:59.480 all over the floor, the smashed out window, and the 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:03.840 curtain billowing at the chilly night air, And then he 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:09.000 saw that Olson's bed was empty. The man seemed twitchy 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:13.080 and nervous as he talked, his eyes darting about the room, 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:16.960 seemingly unable to meet with Eric's or any one else. 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:21.160 The story was precisely the same as what he'd told 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:25.080 the police at the time, and Eric didn't buy any 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:29.360 of it. It was then that Eric decided he had 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:41.400 to see the scene of the crime for himself. At 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:44.800 some time during the nineteen eighties, Eric Olsen booked a 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:48.000 flight to New York and checked into the Statler Hotel 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:52.640 in Midtown Manhattan. At the reception desk, he requested Room 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:56.880 ten eighteen A on the thirteenth floor, the room in 0:08:56.920 --> 0:09:01.840 which his father had spent his final hours. The hotel 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:05.200 had changed hands several times in the past three decades, 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:08.439 but the structure was the same, not least of all 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:13.480 the grand colonnaded lobby from where night manager Armond Pastory 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:17.679 witnessed Frank fall to the pavement all those years before. 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:22.520 Looking about, Eric shuddered at the thought of it as 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:26.720 distorted images of his father's death raced through his mind. 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:31.319 Taking the lift up to the thirteenth floor, of all places, 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:33.600 it was hard not to feel the weight of it 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:37.680 all as he traced his father's last footsteps to room 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:42.000 ten eighteen A, And as soon as Eric walked inside, 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:47.360 all of his misgivings about Robert Lashbrook's story only intensified. 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:52.800 For one, the room was much much smaller than he'd imagine, 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:56.840 and so was the window, that pane of glass which 0:09:56.840 --> 0:10:00.800 had loomed so largely over him in countless nights for 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:06.200 so many years. So much more compact and mundane. He'd 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:09.800 often imagined his father taking a running jump through this 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:14.880 closed window and plummeting thirteen stories to his death. But 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:18.760 looking at it now, this mental image made no sense. 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:22.120 There wasn't enough space in the room to run at 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:26.400 any kind of speed or gather enough momentum to shatter glass. 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:30.640 There was also a radiator right in front of the window, 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:33.720 and the sill was so high that you'd have to 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:38.080 make a significant leap to reach it. In that moment, 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:42.880 the official story went from far fetched to just plain bullshit. 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:48.120 In Eric's mind, his father's apparent suicide had always been 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:53.839 emotionally hard to swallow, but now it also seemed physically impossible. 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:58.120 But Eric was powerless to do more. It was clear 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:03.240 that the government had closed ranks. Lashbrook and Gottlieb had 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:05.880 said all they were ever going to say, and the 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:09.520 only other person who knew what really happened inside this 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:16.120 room had been permanently silenced, or had he. The dead 0:11:16.160 --> 0:11:20.680 tell no tales, but their bodies do. In the usual 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:24.839 course of things, when a person dies a violent, unnatural, 0:11:24.920 --> 0:11:28.960 or mysterious death, a coroner gets the chance to examine 0:11:28.960 --> 0:11:33.560 their corpse interpret whatever clues are present and determine a 0:11:33.640 --> 0:11:37.640 cause of death based on the evidence. But no autopsy 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:42.040 was ever performed on Frank Olsen. The government had made 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:46.440 sure of it. Forty years later, Eric set out to 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:49.920 right that wrong. He was going to have his father's 0:11:49.960 --> 0:12:01.600 body exhumed. On a bright summer's day in nineteen ninety four, 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:06.480 the Linden Hills Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland was unusually busy. 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:12.160 Eric Olsen stood beside his father's grave, squinted under the 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:15.520 glare of the sun as a mechanical digger clawed its 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:19.280 way through the soil, while a small crowd of reporters 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:25.559 stood watch around him. Moments later, Frank Olson's now exposed 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:29.720 casket was carefully raised from the earth, the word only 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:36.400 slightly decomposed after forty years underground. From there, it was 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:41.560 transported to the forensics department of George Washington University Law School, 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:46.240 where a team of pathologists began the slow, painstaking process 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:52.120 that should have taken place years earlier. In nineteen fifty three, 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:55.760 Alice Olsen had been told that Frank's body was too 0:12:55.840 --> 0:12:59.319 badly damaged for an open casket funeral to be held, 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:04.040 and that his face was disfigured from lacerations caused by 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:08.160 the glass breaking around him. But when the forensic team 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:12.480 opened the casket, they found an embalmed corpse in close 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:17.959 to perfect condition. There were no serious cuts or lacerations 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:21.960 on his face at all, and no microscopic shots of 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:26.600 glass embedded in his head or neck. Certainly nothing close 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:29.360 to the kinds of injuries one would expect to find 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:32.640 on a man who'd jumped through a plate glass window 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:37.280 head first. But what the team did find was a 0:13:37.360 --> 0:13:42.560 large hematoma on Olsen's left temple, a gathering of blood 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:47.000 about the size of a fist pulled underneath unbroken skin. 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:51.079 They all agreed that this injury could not have been 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:54.640 caused by his impact with the ground, because the velocity 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:58.520 of that fall would have caused much more extensive damage, 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:02.839 and in any case, Olson had reportedly landed on his back, 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:08.439 not his side. Opinions varied on what exactly this meant. 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:12.240 One pathologist suggested Olson might have hit his head on 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:15.920 the window frame as he jumped, but the others disagreed. 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:21.000 To James Stars, the lead pathologist, there was no doubting 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:24.960 that the blow to the head had happened before Olson 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:29.840 went through the window, someone he believed, though he couldn't 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:34.360 prove it at first, not Frank unconscious before he died. 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:39.280 Stars and his team spent more than a month studying 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:42.920 the body before finally calling a news conference to deliver 0:14:43.000 --> 0:14:48.080 their findings. When Stars addressed reporters, he acknowledged that the 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:52.520 team hadn't found any smoking guns, there was no scientific 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:58.240 evidence to contradict the official narrative. However, he emphasized the 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:02.040 inexplicable injury on Old Wilson's temple and the lack of 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:07.400 any lacerations consistent with broken glass. He said that in 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:11.600 his opinion, the hematoma could only have been caused by 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:14.880 a direct, stunning blow to the head, and that he 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:18.760 was exceedingly skeptical that Olson had gone through the window 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:23.760 by his own force alone. Asked to clarify what he meant, 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:28.520 Stars finally came right out and said it. I think 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:34.600 Frank Olsen was intentionally, deliberately and with malicious forethought thrown 0:15:34.680 --> 0:15:46.440 out of that window. For Eric pathologist James Starr's conclusion 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:51.280 felt like coming up for air after two decades swimming underwater, 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:55.320 for the first time someone had said out loud what 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:59.200 he had long suspected that his father had been murdered, 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:03.840 But just why would the CIA want Frank Olsen dead. 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:09.040 To answer that question, it's essential to understand just what 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:13.680 exactly Olson was doing at Fort Detrick, where he worked 0:16:13.720 --> 0:16:17.800 in the decade prior to his death. During World War II, 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:22.040 Detric was the U. S Army's base of operations for 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:26.440 developing biological weapons, and Olsen was one of the first 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:31.520 scientists to join a clandestine team working on aerosol pathogen 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:38.560 technologies that is, turning diseases like anthrax into airborne weapons. 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:42.560 For a number of years, he made several visits to 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:45.760 a secret military base on an island just off the 0:16:45.800 --> 0:16:49.760 eastern coast of New York, where the army tested toxins 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:53.080 that were considered too dangerous to be brought onto the 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:58.680 US mainland. After the war ended, that mission seemed destined 0:16:58.680 --> 0:17:02.800 to fade into obscurity because the government's focus had shifted 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:07.639 to nuclear weapons. But then in nineteen fifty came the 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:12.280 Korean War, or the Fatherland Liberation War as it was 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:16.399 known in North Korea, and with it a new enemy 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:22.760 with new capabilities. At some point, the CIA became convinced 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:26.760 that the North Korean military had developed ways to brainwash 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:31.359 American prisoners of war after many of them signed statements 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:36.159 criticizing the US government while in captivity. Though there was 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:39.600 no concrete evidence that this was true, the fear of 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:45.960 psychological warfare became an obsession, and so the Special Operations 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:50.199 Division at Fort Detrick was given a new mission to 0:17:50.280 --> 0:18:02.760 investigate ways in which you can control someone's mind. Scientists 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:06.240 like Frank Olsen were tasked with studying the use of 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:10.280 drugs for both interrogation and brainwashing as part of a 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:14.680 top secret program that began under the name Project art Choke. 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:21.680 In that process, they bore witness to horror. Olsen observed 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:26.640 the brutal interrogation of prisoners at CIA safe houses in Germany, 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:32.240 where men were subjected to torture, hypnosis, and forced drug use. 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:37.800 These interrogations were designed not just to extract information, but 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:43.280 also to test the limits of experimental brainwashing techniques. When 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:48.119 detainees died, their lives were simply dismissed as collateral damage, 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:54.080 the unavoidable cost of protecting US national security. Olson had 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:58.600 been upset enough when laboratory monkeys died at Detrich. Seeing 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:02.480 human beings being to the watcher to death shattered him completely. 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:07.639 In nineteen fifty three, when Olson officially began working for 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:11.960 the CIA project, Artichoke was succeeded by a new program 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:17.720 which would expand its extreme interrogation techniques even further. That 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:23.199 program was known as MK Ultra. It was in the 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:28.439 mk Ultra era that Olson's misgivings really consumed him. In 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:32.120 the spring of nineteen fifty three, he flew to England 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:38.959 to visit porton Down the world's oldest chemical warfare facility. There, 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:45.200 government scientists were experimenting with newly developed, highly toxic nerve agents. 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:50.719 Olson's visit coincided with one of the most controversial events 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:55.280 in Port and Down's history. That May, a twenty year 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:59.320 old airman named Ronald Madison volunteered as a guinea pig 0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:02.720 in what he'd been told would be a series of 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:06.600 fairly innocuous experiments to help find a cure for the 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:11.720 common cold. In actual fact, Madison had been unwittingly brought 0:20:11.760 --> 0:20:15.320 in to help test the effects of saren, a highly 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:20.080 toxic nerve agent, on the human body. The ultimate aim 0:20:20.160 --> 0:20:23.840 of the experiment to test what level of exposure was 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:40.320 necessary to incapacitate a person On May sixth, nineteen fifty three, 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:45.640 but Poorten down. Leading aircraftsman Ronald Madison was layered into 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:50.439 a laboratory and instructed to roll up his sleeve. A 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:54.359 man in a white coat with thick protective gloves measured 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:58.600 out two hundred milligrams of liquid saren before pouring it 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:05.119 onto some material. The material was then tied onto Madison's arm. 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:09.560 The effects started slowly at first, the sense of something 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:15.400 burning heating up within Madison's body. Soon he was screaming 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:20.840 in agony, and moments later he began to convulse, his 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:24.440 body and limbs jerking all over the place, as though 0:21:24.480 --> 0:21:29.080 he was being electrocuted. His skin seemed to be vibrating. 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:33.159 Madison's eyes rolled into the back of his head, and 0:21:33.359 --> 0:21:38.480 thick bubbles of something viscous, like frogsborn, as one observer 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:42.720 later put it, spilled out of his mouth. The men 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:46.720 in coats gathered round quickly. He began to panic while 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:51.920 some tried to hold Madison's body still. Fifteen minutes later, 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:58.280 he lost consciousness. Madison was quickly ferried over to Portendown's 0:21:58.320 --> 0:22:02.960 medical unit. Eighteen year old Alfred Thornhill was tasked with 0:22:03.119 --> 0:22:07.159 carrying him inside. When he arrived, he found the place 0:22:07.200 --> 0:22:10.439 had been completely cleared of all other patients, and a 0:22:10.480 --> 0:22:13.320 group of men in white coats were waiting for him 0:22:13.560 --> 0:22:18.320 next to an empty bed. Thornhill carried Madison over and 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:22.480 laid him down, then allegedly watched on in disbelief and 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:27.439 terror as Madison's leg inexplicably rose up from the bed, 0:22:28.040 --> 0:22:31.720 and first his ankle began to turn blue, then his 0:22:31.880 --> 0:22:35.960 lower leg, then up above the knee, as though a 0:22:36.040 --> 0:22:41.200 strange blue liquid were being poured into him. Seconds later, 0:22:41.680 --> 0:22:44.640 one of the men in coats pulled out a hypodermic 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:49.880 syringe and plunged the needle into Madison's body, and shortly 0:22:49.920 --> 0:23:02.280 after that Madison was declared dead. After everything else that 0:23:02.359 --> 0:23:06.600 Frank Olsen had witnessed, Ronald Madison's death was a bridge 0:23:06.640 --> 0:23:11.480 too far. Soon after, he confided in a psychiatrist at 0:23:11.480 --> 0:23:16.040 Porton down William Sergeant, admitting how disturbed he was by 0:23:16.040 --> 0:23:20.080 what he'd seen. He talked not just about Madison, but 0:23:20.160 --> 0:23:23.960 also about the other atrocities he'd seen at CIA safe 0:23:24.040 --> 0:23:28.879 houses in Germany, where he'd watched prisoners dying painful deaths 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:34.800 from toxins that he'd personally helped to develop. Olsen's guilt 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:39.200 was overwhelming, and confessing how he felt would have no doubt, 0:23:39.359 --> 0:23:42.920 brought some relief. But if he believed he was speaking 0:23:42.960 --> 0:23:48.560 to Sergeant in confidence, he was mistaken. Sergeant immediately wrote 0:23:48.640 --> 0:23:52.280 up a report about Olsen's state of mind and submitted 0:23:52.320 --> 0:23:55.800 it to his superiors. He wrote that, in his opinion, 0:23:56.160 --> 0:23:59.280 Olsen was upset enough that he might be unwilling to 0:23:59.359 --> 0:24:03.240 keep his mouth shut. In other words, he was a liability, 0:24:03.680 --> 0:24:06.720 and Sergeant wanted to make sure that he had no 0:24:06.840 --> 0:24:11.600 further access to porton Down. It was around this time, 0:24:11.840 --> 0:24:16.160 in August of nineteen fifty three, that Olson returned home, 0:24:16.560 --> 0:24:19.399 and his wife and brother in law noticed he seemed 0:24:19.480 --> 0:24:23.399 strangely withdrawn and depressed, But the true reason for his 0:24:23.520 --> 0:24:26.879 mood would only make sense to them many years later. 0:24:28.040 --> 0:24:31.359 During World War II, Olson had been proud to be 0:24:31.440 --> 0:24:35.679 part of the fight against Adolf Hitler's fascist regime in 0:24:35.800 --> 0:24:40.200 part because of its heinous track record of human experimentation. 0:24:41.480 --> 0:24:44.520 Now his own country was doing the very same thing. 0:24:45.920 --> 0:24:51.280 Shortly after Peter Sargeant alerted them, British intelligence officials forwarded 0:24:51.320 --> 0:24:56.960 his report onto their American counterparts. In Sergeant's opinion. Olsen 0:24:57.200 --> 0:25:03.639 was deeply dangerously disillusioned with the agency and its entire mission. Many, 0:25:04.040 --> 0:25:11.000 including Frank's son Eric, believed the CIA strongly concurred. In 0:25:11.080 --> 0:25:15.040 nineteen ninety seven, a few years after Frank Olsen's body 0:25:15.160 --> 0:25:20.560 was exhumed, the CIA inadvertently released a document titled A 0:25:20.600 --> 0:25:26.239 Study of Assassination. It's essentially an assassination manual, and the 0:25:26.359 --> 0:25:31.000 very first edition dates back to late nineteen fifty three, 0:25:31.280 --> 0:25:37.840 precisely when Olsen died. According to this manual, the ideal 0:25:37.880 --> 0:25:41.280 way to assassinate someone is by dropping them from a 0:25:41.320 --> 0:25:45.440 height of at least seventy five feet onto a hard surface. 0:25:46.400 --> 0:25:50.200 In some cases, the author notes, it's necessary to stun 0:25:50.240 --> 0:25:55.120 the victim first, ideally with a blow to the temple. 0:25:56.200 --> 0:25:59.720 Reading this, with all its apparent echoes of his father's 0:25:59.720 --> 0:26:04.880 own death, was a horrifying experience for Eric Olsen. The manual, 0:26:05.280 --> 0:26:08.760 in combination with the new autopsy results and what he'd 0:26:08.840 --> 0:26:13.280 learned about his father's work on MK Ultra, finally seemed 0:26:13.280 --> 0:26:15.840 to give him the certainty he had longed for his 0:26:16.119 --> 0:26:26.520 entire adult life. Eric Olsen was now sure that the 0:26:26.560 --> 0:26:31.280 CIA's so called mere coulpa in the nineteen seventies, when 0:26:31.280 --> 0:26:34.800 they admitted to dosing his father with LSD had in 0:26:34.880 --> 0:26:39.440 fact been part of a much larger cover up. Inadvertently 0:26:39.600 --> 0:26:43.359 driving a man to suicide through a reckless experiment as 0:26:43.400 --> 0:26:47.280 a terrible sin, but it would pale in comparison to 0:26:47.359 --> 0:26:52.480 the CIA assassinating one of its own. There's no doubt 0:26:52.520 --> 0:26:56.680 that the Deep Creek Lake retreat really happened, and that 0:26:56.760 --> 0:27:01.560 Frank Olsen and his colleagues really were dosed WITHSD, But 0:27:01.680 --> 0:27:05.080 in light of the fact that Olson's bosses likely saw 0:27:05.160 --> 0:27:08.440 him as a threat, the possible true purpose of it 0:27:08.520 --> 0:27:13.439 becomes much murkier. Perhaps the LSD was a test to 0:27:13.520 --> 0:27:16.880 see if Olsen would confess his misgivings to them under 0:27:16.880 --> 0:27:20.680 the influence of drugs, Or perhaps it was even more 0:27:20.720 --> 0:27:24.800 sinister than that, designed to discredit Olson and give the 0:27:24.840 --> 0:27:28.320 agency a pretext to risk him away to New York 0:27:28.520 --> 0:27:32.240 for so called treatment and assess just how much of 0:27:32.280 --> 0:27:36.760 a risk he really posed. During that trip, the only 0:27:36.840 --> 0:27:41.440 people that Olson saw were on the CIA payroll, Sydney 0:27:41.480 --> 0:27:47.440 Gottlieb Vincent Ruitt and Harold Abramson, the doctor and John Mulholland, 0:27:47.520 --> 0:27:52.600 the magician. His supposed paranoia, and his attempts to get 0:27:52.640 --> 0:27:56.200 away may in fact have been a perfectly rational response 0:27:56.320 --> 0:27:59.600 to the realization that he had a target on his back. 0:28:00.800 --> 0:28:04.640 If the CIA truly believed that Olson posed an imminent 0:28:04.720 --> 0:28:08.280 threat to national security, then there's no telling what lengths 0:28:08.359 --> 0:28:11.280 they might go to keep him quiet. And if it 0:28:11.359 --> 0:28:14.800 was decided that he had to be eliminated, then, according 0:28:14.880 --> 0:28:18.159 to their own manual, the best way to do it 0:28:18.200 --> 0:28:22.080 would be a drop from a great height thirteen flaws. 0:28:22.400 --> 0:28:28.280 For example, in light of this hypothetical narrative, Robert Lashbrook's 0:28:28.280 --> 0:28:32.480 strange phone call to Harold Abramsom just after Olsen went 0:28:32.560 --> 0:28:35.920 out at the window makes a lot more sense. Their 0:28:36.000 --> 0:28:41.080 peculiar exchange. Well he's gone, said Lashbrook. That's too bad, 0:28:41.520 --> 0:28:46.160 replied Abramsom. Is nonsensical in the context of a sudden 0:28:46.240 --> 0:28:50.400 and unexpected suicide, not so in the context of a 0:28:50.480 --> 0:28:56.520 meticulously planned murder. In twenty twelve, prosecutors in New York 0:28:56.840 --> 0:29:02.160 formerly reclassified Olson's cause of death from suicide to unknown, 0:29:03.280 --> 0:29:06.640 and Eric and his brother Nils promptly filed a suit 0:29:06.680 --> 0:29:10.880 against the CIA, formally alleging that their father was murdered. 0:29:11.720 --> 0:29:14.760 Though the suit was dismissed a year later. It was 0:29:14.840 --> 0:29:18.680 not due to a lack of merit. In fact, Federal 0:29:18.800 --> 0:29:22.560 Judge James Boseburg made it clear that, in his opinion, 0:29:22.960 --> 0:29:27.160 the public record supported many of the allegations, but for 0:29:27.200 --> 0:29:32.200 a variety of procedural reasons, including the Statute of Limitations 0:29:32.560 --> 0:29:35.160 and the fact that the family had signed an agreement 0:29:35.520 --> 0:29:39.720 waiving their right to pursue any further legal action, the 0:29:39.800 --> 0:29:45.720 case went no further, and so despite the overwhelming evidence 0:29:45.840 --> 0:29:50.240 pointing in a single direction, it seems Frank Olsen's cause 0:29:50.280 --> 0:30:02.800 of death will officially always remain unexplained. This episode was 0:30:02.840 --> 0:30:07.240 written by Emma Dibden Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions 0:30:07.280 --> 0:30:11.840 podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All other elements of 0:30:11.880 --> 0:30:15.280 the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me 0:30:15.560 --> 0:30:20.600 Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook, with stories 0:30:20.680 --> 0:30:23.600 never before featured on the show, is now available to 0:30:23.640 --> 0:30:27.880 buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, 0:30:28.240 --> 0:30:32.520 Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the 0:30:32.560 --> 0:30:35.880 show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to 0:30:35.880 --> 0:30:39.000 get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the 0:30:39.040 --> 0:30:41.719 stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an 0:30:41.760 --> 0:30:44.760 explanation of your own you'd like to share. 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