WEBVTT - The Window 0:00:05.240 --> 0:00:08.039 When the Hotel Statler opened, it had twenty two hundred 0:00:08.119 --> 0:00:12.040 rooms in nineteen nineteen, that made it the largest hotel 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:15.400 in the world. Just across from Penn Station on Seventh 0:00:15.400 --> 0:00:19.439 Avenue in New York City, the hotel had a real 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:23.479 old school charm for decades. Guests could put their clothing 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:27.000 and shoes in a servador, essentially a special cabinet that 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:29.840 allowed items to be passed to and from rooms without 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:34.880 guests having to interact with employees. It wasn't great for tipping, 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:37.800 since it eliminated the social presence of an outstretched hand, 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:43.519 but the servador service was clandestine private fitting since the 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:47.960 Statler was also a popular hangout for CIA operatives, including 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:54.080 one who checked out through a window. Every story you 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:57.040 read or here about Frank Olsen starts just like this 0:00:57.760 --> 0:00:59.920 with his body pitching out of a tenth story win 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:04.280 dough at the Hotel Statler. It happens around two thirty 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:10.720 am on November ninety three. Olsen is a biological warfare 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:14.600 scientist working for the United States Army and the CIA, 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:19.000 and he's not well. He's in the city to get treatment. 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:23.760 Olsen has been exhibiting suspicious behavior enough to make him 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:28.520 a security risk. So Olsen is at the Statler, but 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:33.399 he's not alone. Robert Lashbrook, sleeping in the bed nearby, 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:37.840 is there to look out for his welfare. He doesn't 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:40.479 do a very good job of it, because one moment 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:46.199 Olsen is in bed, the next he's going out the window. Well, 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:49.760 that's not quite accurate. He goes out the window, yes, 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:53.360 but first he goes through the glass pane of the window, 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:57.440 shattering it. He doesn't even bother pulling up the blinds, 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:01.000 so he goes through those two. He falls for a 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:06.360 few seconds, then lands on the sidewalk below. Pedestrians crowd 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:10.800 around him, horrified. He's on his back and still in 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:15.520 his undershirt and shorts. He would soon succumb to his injuries, 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:21.680 but he wasn't dead yet. After he passes, and for 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:25.440 the next seventy years, Olsen's family, journalists, and even intelligence 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:27.720 operatives will search for the words he didn't have the 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:32.880 strength to utter. Did Frank Olsen die by suicide? Was 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:37.480 in an accident? Or did the CIA's grand experiment with 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:42.359 LSD finally go too far and prompt the sanctioned execution 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:47.880 of a government employee. The information may have been on 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:50.799 the tip of Frank Olson's tongue, but he couldn't answer, 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:55.160 and if his death was indeed a homicide, that silence 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:59.400 was the whole point. Frank Olson had seemed too much 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:04.800 and was in danger of unmasking the whole affair. Olsen 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:07.760 wasn't the only death on the pavement that night. Many 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:12.280 secrets of the Cold War, of cruel and outrageous human experimentation, 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:18.680 died with him. That's where Frank Olsen's story always ends, 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:23.320 and where it always begins, through the window and down 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:27.000 to the pavement. In a movie, the camera would pan 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:31.440 down as he fell. Instead, it should pan back up. 0:03:32.960 --> 0:03:35.720 It should move past the windows and brick exterior of 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:40.640 the hotel Statler, past the curtains and flagpoles, and right 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:46.080 back into the room ten eighteen A, where Robert Lashbrook 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:50.400 is sitting bolt upright in his bed, confused, or at 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:56.080 least seemingly confused at what had just happened. When he 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:59.080 gets dressed and follows the police to the station, they'll 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:02.080 find a small slip of paper inside his pants pocket. 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:05.720 The camera should zoom in on it so you can 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:09.160 see the ink stains on the paper, the indentations of 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:14.440 the pen strokes, the paper is important. According to HP Albarelli, 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:18.440 the paper has a set of initials on it. G 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:25.080 W for George White, MH for Morgan Hall, White's alter ego. 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:31.560 And then address one Bedford Street, where George White was 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:35.320 conducting an illicit LSD campaign just a mile and a 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:40.919 half away. Maybe Frank Olson had been there, maybe he 0:04:41.000 --> 0:05:00.320 was going there. Either way, his death would change everything. Yeah. 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:21.280 For I Heart Radio, this is Operation Midnight Climax and 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:26.120 I Heeart original podcast, I'm Noel Brown and this is 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:37.080 episode five The Window, Part one, a Living Nightmare. When 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:41.200 the CIA's chief chemist, Sidney Gottlieb hired George White, he 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:44.960 was looking for a psychedelic mercenary, a predator he could 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:49.760 unleash on the general population. When White sent back details 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:54.640 of his experiments in Greenwich Village, Gottlieb devoured them. But 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:58.680 those weren't enough for him. In Gottlieb's head, for America 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:01.800 to emerge victorious the Cold War, he had to know 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:05.159 everything about LSD and how it would affects people in 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:11.680 the intelligence field, starting with himself. On the surface, it 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:16.719 sounds almost ethical, Gottlieb claimed he'd administered asset to himself. 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:19.920 More than two hundred times. It was like a physician 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:23.720 following his own prescribed diet, But there was a key difference. 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:28.479 Gottlieb was a consenting subject. He knew exactly what he 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:31.880 was ingesting. But the drug works differently on people who 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:36.680 don't know they're being dosed, and as George White found out, 0:06:37.279 --> 0:06:42.200 acid had an unpredictable effect on subjects. Bad trips sent 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:46.640 some people to rooftops to contemplate suicide, or landed them 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:52.440 in sanitariums LSD was a kind of psychic scalpel. In 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:56.640 the right hands, it could be beneficial. In the wrong hands, 0:06:56.920 --> 0:07:01.359 it was assault, and make no mistake. In November nineteen 0:07:01.400 --> 0:07:06.200 fifty three, Sidney Gottlieb committed widespread assault, and even though 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:09.560 George White wasn't anywhere near the CIA retreat where it happened, 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:13.760 the consequences would eventually shut down his whole New York operation. 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:20.800 That weekend, Gottlieb but organized retreat at Deep Creek Lodge 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:23.840 in Maryland for some of the CIA's chemists as well 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:26.640 as those who worked for the Army's Special Operations Division. 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:31.760 The two groups often worked together on various biochemical projects. 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:35.880 This was a world beyond drugs, one in which the 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:41.000 CIA sought ways to kill or incapacitate enemies using biological warfare. 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:44.960 If George White was a mercenary. The chemists of the 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:48.880 government supplied the weapons, and Frank Olsen was one of 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:52.040 the people who was there that weekend. As a chemist, 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:55.720 Frank Olsen had been recruited into the Army's Chemical Development Division, 0:07:56.200 --> 0:08:00.240 though he was technically a CIA employee. He studied ways 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:04.600 to weaponize germs, obscuring them in shaving creams or insect repellents. 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:08.200 There was a lighter that, once flicked, would dispense a 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:12.880 lethal gas in a pocket spray that could induce pneumonia. 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:16.840 Olsen sometimes went to a secret Army base on Plumb 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:20.480 Island off of Long Island, where chemicals too dangerous for 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:26.160 the mainland were studied. In nineteen fifty, intelligence operatives released 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:30.080 a cloud of traceable but harmless bacteria over San Francisco 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:34.920 using large aerosol hoses. They called it Operations Sea Spray. 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:38.400 They wanted to see how far a chemical attack could travel. 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:43.880 Before long, eleven people checked into hospitals with urinary tract infections. 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:50.040 The microbe wasn't as harmless as they thought. When American 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:54.080 soldiers captured in Korea confessed to using biological weapons. The 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:58.120 CIA insisted it was brainwashing. Frank Olsen believed they were 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:00.880 telling the truth, that the anther acts and other deadly 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:03.480 pathogens he brewed in his lab were being used on 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:06.839 the enemy. He knew the chemicals were in the hands 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:09.360 of the United States because he had held them in 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:14.360 his own hands. Olsen was a lab geek, a man 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:18.600 of science. He was quiet and reserved, A family man 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:21.719 with a wife and three children. He didn't have the 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:26.760 kind of callousness intelligence operatives developed over time, yet he 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:29.200 was often called to the scene of experiments that would 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:34.320 rattle his conscience. Toxic clouds were administered to laboratory animals 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:38.040 like monkeys, their bodies being added to a rising pile. 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:43.960 Olsen witnessed fierce interrogations in foreign countries where humans writhed 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:47.360 in pain in response to experimental chemicals that would burn 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:54.120 their eyes or disrupt their breathing before killing them. Once 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:58.040 Olsen had visited a microbiological research lab at Porton Down 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:01.920 in Wiltshire, England. Volunteers had agreed to be dosed with 0:10:01.960 --> 0:10:06.040 nerve gases. Olsen watched as one man collapsed in front 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:10.680 of him, foaming at the mouth before he died. Olson 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:14.320 later told a British psychiatrist named William Sergeant that he 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:17.559 had been to American and British testing sites in Frankfurt, Germany, 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:23.480 and that he'd seen something awful. Sergeant recommended Olsen never 0:10:23.640 --> 0:10:27.000 be allowed back to Porton Down. He was a security risk. 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:50.760 Anyone with a conscience was a security risk. As an 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:54.320 expert in biological warfare, Olsen had been summoned to examine 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:57.120 the fallout of a mass hysteria event that occurred in 0:10:57.120 --> 0:11:01.920 the small French town of Point Saint Aspri in August. 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:06.840 It's one of the strangest chapters in twentieth century history 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:10.760 and foreshadows the worst of George White's domestic exploits in 0:11:10.800 --> 0:11:14.400 the years to come. Point Santa Spree is the kind 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:18.679 of small town in France people describe as idyllic. Classic 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:22.520 architecture is everywhere. A bridge made of stone extends over 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:25.960 the Rhone River, and the tiny streets act as arteries 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:28.760 for the residents to exist in a kind of suspended 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:32.480 state of simple living that sustained them for hundreds of years. 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:36.880 The Bouvier family hails from here, one of their own. 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:44.200 Jacqueline Bouvier became Jacqueline Kennedy. That simplicity, that isolation, may 0:11:44.240 --> 0:11:47.199 have been why someone turned the dream of Point Santa 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:56.560 Spree into a living nightmare. A postal worker was in 0:11:56.600 --> 0:11:59.080 the middle of his shift when he began to feel it, 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:05.160 a sensation. He was shrinking, growing smaller and smaller as 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:09.120 the small town around him grew larger and larger. He 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:13.520 saw and felt fire raging all around him. Snakes crawled 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:16.480 up his legs and around his arms, dragging them down. 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:22.440 He was descending into madness, and so were hundreds of 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:29.840 other residents. The townspeople began shrieking, crying, moaning. A man 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:32.960 was convinced he had transformed into a plane and jumped 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:36.360 out of a second story window, arms spread like wings. 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:40.440 He broke both of his legs, then stood up and 0:12:40.520 --> 0:12:44.160 kept running, more terrified of whatever was chasing him than 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:48.160 the pain of his broken bones. Many grew so manic 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:51.200 they had to be herded away. The postal worker was 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:53.880 brought to a hospital and put in a straight jacket. 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:58.920 Three teens were chained to a bed. They were fighting 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:02.800 their own demons, and nothing could soothe them. Their mettal 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:11.000 bed frames shook as they struggled. Over the next few days, 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.040 more and more people were hospitalized or put in asylums 0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:19.520 with hallucinations. One villager put it this way, I am dead, 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:22.520 and my head is made of copper, and I have 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:27.200 snakes in my stomach and they are burning me. At 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:32.120 least four people died. No one has ever conclusively proven 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:36.360 what happened in Point Santa Spree, but some blamed ergot 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:42.640 poisoning ergot, which is highly toxic, and large amounts may 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:46.360 have gotten into the bread in the local bakeries. Others 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:50.680 of theorized the CIA made Point Santa Spree one huge 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:54.200 chemical trial, which is why Olsen was in the vicinity 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:58.040 to assess the outcome. It was just another chapter, and 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:00.800 what he feared was a madness, not on the part 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:04.000 of the people, but in the corridors of American intelligence. 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:08.840 George White mentioned Point Cenisprie briefly in a letter to 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:12.520 a friend in nineteen fifty four. He called it the 0:14:12.600 --> 0:14:18.760 Little French Villages Stormy epidemic. Stormy was a George White 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:22.800 slang term for LSD that was the dark side of 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:29.440 intelligence work, and Olsen's mood grew darker with it. Two 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:32.440 years later, Frank Olsen was one of the employees invited 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:36.240 to Sydney Gottlieb's retreat. Gottlieb wanted to make sure the 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:39.840 CIA and the army scientists at Fort Dietrich were working 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:43.480 in tandem, that they were on the same page. But, 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:46.800 and this was usually the case with Gottlieb, he had 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:51.520 another motive. He wanted to dose everyone there with LSD. 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:57.560 Gottlieb gathered the men in the lodge and gestured for 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:01.040 his colleague Robert Lashbrook to begin pouring drinks from a 0:15:01.080 --> 0:15:06.720 bottle of Quantros, an orange flavored liqueur. Lashbrook filled glasses 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:10.800 with Quantros and then, of great discretion, added an ampule 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:14.600 of LSD to each. He handed the glasses to the 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:18.080 gathered scientists, and he and Gottlieb watched as they began 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:23.240 ingesting the concoction. Within twenty minutes, the men began to 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:31.640 experience the expected early symptoms confusion, hallucinations, fear. The severed 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:34.160 and mounted heads of hunted and captured deer in the 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:38.920 lodge began to stare them down their lips moving, gentlemen, 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:42.400 I assure you what you are feeling is completely normal. 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:48.440 You've all been administered a dose of LSD. Gottlieb spoke calmly, 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:51.080 like he was informing a group of people to proceed 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:54.160 to a fire exit. The men went off into their 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:58.760 own corners of consciousness, grappling with the newly open borders 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:02.960 of their minds. But unlike George white seemingly random drugging 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:06.520 of Linda King and Barbara Smythe, Gottlieb took a special 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:10.800 interest in how Frank Olson reacted. He'd been earmarked as 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:16.240 a possible problem. Gottlie pulled Olson aside and began asking 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:20.480 him questions, Questions that might one day be posed to 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:26.040 Olsen by enemy agents, the invisible Soviets who loomed large 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:30.440 in the American imagination of the day, Questions that might 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:34.400 wear down someone under the influence of both drugs and morality. 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:40.520 What exactly was said in those hours, only Sidney Gotlieb 0:16:40.600 --> 0:16:44.120 could answer, and when he was eventually asked years later, 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:48.400 he wouldn't. But we know what happened. After the retreat 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:52.320 came to an end, Frank Olson returned home and Withdrew 0:16:53.280 --> 0:16:55.520 his wife and children were greeted by a husband and 0:16:55.600 --> 0:16:59.880 father who seemed more uncertain about his work than ever Brad. 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:03.480 It was simply the accumulation of horrors Frank Olsen had witnessed, 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:07.159 or maybe it was the LSD tearing down walls he 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:12.359 had erected in his mind to compartmentalize his responsibilities. Something 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:17.080 had shifted and Olsen wanted out. He went to his 0:17:17.119 --> 0:17:21.879 immediate supervisor, Lieutenant Colonel Vincent Ruett, and said he was resigning. 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:26.240 Ruett begged him to reconsider, not to do anything. Rash 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:31.760 ru had also phoned Gottlieb to express his concern. Remember, 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:34.600 Olsen was one of perhaps only two dozen people in 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:37.560 the world who had knowledge of the CIA's top secret 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:41.920 experiments like mk Ultra. For one of them to abruptly 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:47.879 announced they were finished done well, it wasn't possible. It 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:50.360 was akin to a mafia member turning up one day 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:54.440 and saying, is giving up the life. Some places don't 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:59.760 have an exit door. Gottlieb told Ruett and Lashbrook to 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:01.919 take Olson to New York City, where he saw a 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:05.960 doctor named Harold Abramson. He was an allergist who was 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:08.520 giving LSD to his patients on behalf of the CIA. 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:12.960 If Olsen revealed something he shouldn't it would be okay. 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:18.400 Abramson was one of them. He prescribed sedatives in Bourbon, 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:22.160 but Olson's mood didn't improve. He didn't want to see 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:27.240 his family, He kept insisting he wanted to, in his words, disappear. 0:18:28.640 --> 0:18:31.520 They went to Long Island to see Abramson again, this 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:34.200 time at his home, then went back to New York. 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:40.080 One night, Olsen wandered out into the streets, throwing away 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:43.840 his wallet and identification cards, a gesture that seemed to 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:48.399 indicate he wanted to throw away his government identity, but 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:55.480 he couldn't. Gottlieb would never allow that. They convinced Olsen 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:58.200 he would be best off in a sanitarium in Maryland 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:02.640 to get round the clock care. He seemed agreeable, if 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:06.440 you believe Lashbrook. He even seemed happy. The two men 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:08.720 planned to drive back to Maryland the next day to 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:11.639 check Olson into a facility. They got a room at 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:16.840 the Hotel Statler. They went to bed. When Lashbrook woke up, 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:20.720 Olsen was already on the pavement where he would never 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:26.960 regain consciousness. A flurry of phone calls followed, which the 0:19:26.960 --> 0:19:31.679 hotel's telephone operator overheard. Lashbrook called Abramson's telling that Olson 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:35.600 was quote gone, not that he had died by suicide 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:39.040 or jumped or fell out of a window, but just gone. 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:44.200 The authorities were called. They talked to Lashbrook, who told 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.760 them he awoke to the sound of crashing glass. At 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:49.920 the police station. He emptied his pockets, which had a 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:52.879 slip of paper with George White's address and initials on it. 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:58.639 Frank Olson's family was notified. No one told them Olson 0:19:58.720 --> 0:20:01.720 had been dosed with LSD days prior to his death. 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:06.000 The whole affair was documented as a suicide. Olsen had 0:20:06.000 --> 0:20:09.680 either fallen or jumped out of the window. No one 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:14.199 said he was pushed. But if he had been pushed, 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.360 If Sydney gottlie But decided Frank Olsen had become too 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:21.520 dangerous to try and contain, and arranged for someone to 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:26.240 push him, who would it be. Certainly not Gotlei himself, 0:20:26.760 --> 0:20:30.600 who was nowhere near the Hotel Statler that night, and 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:34.119 certainly not Robert Lashbrook, who was a CIA employee, not 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:39.280 a field operative, not someone with experience, nothing out of life. 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:43.080 If you were Sydney Gottlieb and you needed to dispose 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:50.399 of Frank Olson, whose number would you call at his 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:54.000 federal Bureau of Narcotics Office, George White kept a photo 0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:58.160 of a corpse on the wall, a real corpse. When 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:01.120 people would ask why an obvious as many people did, 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:04.040 White explained that the photo was of a spy he 0:21:04.040 --> 0:21:06.280 had been forced to kill with his bare hands during 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:10.679 the war. He was, after all, a graduate of Camp X, 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:14.800 the school of mayhem and murder. To take a human 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:17.439 life in the name of national security was nothing to 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:20.720 be ashamed of. To White, it was something to put 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:25.000 in a frame. When Sydney Gottley decided Frank Olsen was 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:28.360 a problem, he had to have called someone. And while 0:21:28.400 --> 0:21:32.000 there was no shortage of CIA assassins, Godly had few 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:35.119 men he could trust, even fewer who knew about him 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:37.760 k Ultra and the effects of LSD on the mind, 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:41.600 and only one with a photo of a dead man 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:52.879 on his wall. Part two, The Coincidence. So where was 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:56.439 George White during all of this? Frank Olson's trip to 0:21:56.440 --> 0:22:00.159 New York, his visits with Robert Lashbrook, his wandering the 0:22:00.160 --> 0:22:03.600 city streets, and its plunge from a ten story window. 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:07.480 If Sydney Gottlieb had his way, White would have been 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:11.080 glued to Olson the entire time. Got Leave had called 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:14.600 White to ask him to do exactly that, to escort 0:22:14.640 --> 0:22:18.480 Olson back to Maryland and right into a mental health facility. 0:22:19.160 --> 0:22:22.240 The conversation got far enough along that White scribbled down 0:22:22.280 --> 0:22:27.200 Frank Olsen's home telephone number. But then White told Godle 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:31.440 something he had never told him before. I can't said, 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:35.959 mind you, this wasn't necessarily an assignment to get rid 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:39.359 of Frank Olsen, just escorting him around at the time. 0:22:40.280 --> 0:22:44.640 But White said no, and the reason was something Godlie 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:51.560 couldn't argue with. George White's mother was dying, so White 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:55.639 got on a plane on November eleven nine and headed 0:22:55.640 --> 0:23:01.399 straight for Carl's Bad, California. Her funeral was novemb He 0:23:01.440 --> 0:23:05.560 didn't return to New York until December. That meant White 0:23:05.560 --> 0:23:08.880 had missed the Deep Creek Lodge meeting, Frank Olsen's slow 0:23:08.960 --> 0:23:14.840 descent into despair and his death by weeks. On both sides. 0:23:15.800 --> 0:23:18.560 If anyone could claim they had virtually nothing to do 0:23:18.640 --> 0:23:21.760 with Olson's death, it would have to have been George White. 0:23:23.000 --> 0:23:26.280 But here's a recurring thing about White. He didn't need 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:29.560 to be on the scene to be involved. White could 0:23:29.560 --> 0:23:33.680 put wheels in motion. He was, after all, not physically 0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:36.520 present for dozens of arrests in the famous Hip Sing 0:23:36.640 --> 0:23:40.480 Tong drug ring case that made his career, But none 0:23:40.480 --> 0:23:43.840 of those arrests would have been possible without him. So 0:23:44.560 --> 0:23:46.840 if White couldn't have been around Frank Olsen in the 0:23:46.920 --> 0:23:54.400 last weeks of his life, what could he have done? Hello, Pierre, 0:23:54.920 --> 0:23:59.480 It's g Pierre Lafitte. The name sounds like a French 0:23:59.560 --> 0:24:02.480 capper lar in a detective novel, and that wouldn't be 0:24:02.520 --> 0:24:06.119 too far off. Lafitte was a narcotics agent and a 0:24:06.200 --> 0:24:10.119 close ally of Whites. He was instrumental in making Whites 0:24:10.200 --> 0:24:14.280 New York lsd pad a hopping social scene, recruiting guests 0:24:14.280 --> 0:24:16.960 for White to dose and then watching from behind a 0:24:17.040 --> 0:24:22.800 two way mirror for the effects to materialize. White trusted 0:24:22.880 --> 0:24:25.879 Lafitte enough to bring him into an exclusive inner circle, 0:24:26.440 --> 0:24:28.760 one in which he got c I a security clearance. 0:24:29.600 --> 0:24:32.840 He knew a lot of the government's dirty secrets. He 0:24:32.880 --> 0:24:36.720 was a world traveler, having helped White on drug excursions overseas. 0:24:37.720 --> 0:24:40.240 Pierre Lafitte was the kind of man who might need 0:24:40.280 --> 0:24:42.399 to keep track of which name he was using on 0:24:42.440 --> 0:24:48.280 any given day. There was something else about Lafitte Earlier 0:24:48.320 --> 0:24:51.440 that year, White had made arrangements for Lafitte to begin 0:24:51.520 --> 0:24:55.080 working as a bell captain at a hotel, the Hotel Statler. 0:24:57.400 --> 0:25:01.000 Could it have been a simple moonlighting job. That seems unlikely. 0:25:01.960 --> 0:25:05.159 Just a month earlier, Lafitte had made national headlines for 0:25:05.200 --> 0:25:09.520 his undercover work recovering paintings stolen from a church in Kentucky. 0:25:09.960 --> 0:25:13.960 This was something else White might have wanted to keep 0:25:14.000 --> 0:25:17.720 watch on the drug investigation there. He might have suspected 0:25:17.720 --> 0:25:21.280 hotel employees of some kind of wrongdoing. He needed a 0:25:21.320 --> 0:25:24.080 pair of eyes the Statler for reasons that have never 0:25:24.119 --> 0:25:30.840 explicitly been spelled out. So out of the dozens or 0:25:30.880 --> 0:25:34.199 even hundreds of hotels in New York City, why did 0:25:34.280 --> 0:25:37.719 Robert Lashbrook book himself and Frank Olsen into the Hotel 0:25:37.800 --> 0:25:42.520 Statler the night of Olsen's death? Of all the hotels 0:25:42.520 --> 0:25:45.679 in Manhattan, why did those two just happen to be 0:25:45.720 --> 0:25:48.760 in the one hotel. Pierre Lafitte had the freedom to 0:25:48.880 --> 0:25:52.280 roam where he was a familiar face to hotel employees, 0:25:53.400 --> 0:25:57.320 where he could, if he wanted, unlock any hotel room 0:25:57.400 --> 0:26:01.399 door that had something he wanted on the other side. 0:26:02.560 --> 0:26:04.879 When White had to turn down got leave because he 0:26:04.880 --> 0:26:07.680 had to be in California. He asked Lafitte to keep 0:26:07.680 --> 0:26:12.000 an eye on Olsen to monitor the situation. We know 0:26:12.160 --> 0:26:15.439 Lashbrook had White's initials and pad address, as though he 0:26:15.480 --> 0:26:17.920 expected to make contact with White at some point during 0:26:17.920 --> 0:26:23.439 the trip. Maybe White was expected back earlier. Then Olsen 0:26:23.560 --> 0:26:31.199 died by suicide. Allegedly, it was always a strange premise 0:26:31.280 --> 0:26:34.200 to begin with the idea he would launch himself through 0:26:34.200 --> 0:26:39.119 a window. No matter how despondent someone becomes. They're easier ways, 0:26:40.200 --> 0:26:42.480 and most people would at least bother to pull up 0:26:42.520 --> 0:26:50.440 the blinds. First. Decades later, Frank's son Eric Olsen would 0:26:50.480 --> 0:26:53.760 walk into room ten eighteen A and see how small 0:26:53.800 --> 0:26:57.240 it was, how unlikely it was that anyone could get 0:26:57.240 --> 0:27:01.200 a running start to launch themselves out the window. Olsen 0:27:01.240 --> 0:27:04.919 had even tracked down a long retired Sidney Gottlieb, asking 0:27:05.000 --> 0:27:08.640 him what had happened to his father. Gottlieb would say 0:27:08.680 --> 0:27:13.359 only that everyone, Gottlieb the CIA Olson had perhaps gone 0:27:13.400 --> 0:27:16.560 too far in their search for mind control, but he 0:27:16.640 --> 0:27:21.679 still insisted Olsen had died by suicide. He even suggested 0:27:21.840 --> 0:27:24.679 Eric find a support group for children whose fathers had 0:27:24.720 --> 0:27:32.439 taken their own lives. Eric took another approach in he 0:27:32.480 --> 0:27:35.520 had his father's body exhumed so a professor of law 0:27:35.520 --> 0:27:38.960 and forensic science could examine him. Eric had wanted to 0:27:39.000 --> 0:27:41.560 wait until his mother had passed away before pursuing his 0:27:41.720 --> 0:27:44.520 hunch that there was something amiss about his father's death 0:27:45.160 --> 0:27:50.320 that Sydney Gottlieb was lying. The autopsy was a fascinating 0:27:50.359 --> 0:27:54.040 look at the final moments of Frank Olston's life, articulating 0:27:54.080 --> 0:27:57.679 more and more of the words he couldn't speak. It 0:27:57.800 --> 0:28:02.480 revealed Olsen had a previously undis closed head injury, ahematoma 0:28:02.480 --> 0:28:06.400 on the left side. He may have been struck by 0:28:06.440 --> 0:28:12.040 a blunt object before landing on the pavement. Who hit him, 0:28:12.040 --> 0:28:15.960 not Lashbrook, probably, but someone could have opened the door 0:28:16.080 --> 0:28:20.000 to ten eighteen A that night. Someone who confronted Olsen, 0:28:20.600 --> 0:28:23.280 who wanted to orchestrate something that looked like a suicide. 0:28:24.280 --> 0:28:27.480 Someone who was following a CIA manu on the Ideal 0:28:27.520 --> 0:28:31.560 Methods of Eliminating a target, a document that was later 0:28:31.640 --> 0:28:39.600 declassified in and described preferred method of murder. The most 0:28:39.640 --> 0:28:43.960 efficient accident in simple assassination is a fall of seventy 0:28:44.000 --> 0:28:49.520 five ft or more onto a hard surface, elevator shafts, stairwells, 0:28:49.600 --> 0:28:53.440 unscreened windows, and bridges will serve. In chase cases, it 0:28:53.480 --> 0:28:56.720 will usually be necessary to stun or drug the subject 0:28:56.960 --> 0:29:00.920 before dropping him. Care is required to en No wound 0:29:01.080 --> 0:29:05.520 or condition not attributable to the fall is discernible after death. 0:29:10.480 --> 0:29:12.880 The facts of Frank Olsen's death or that he was 0:29:12.960 --> 0:29:17.000 dosed with LSD in November of nine and didn't react 0:29:17.040 --> 0:29:20.040 well to it, He had already been concerned about the 0:29:20.080 --> 0:29:22.560 kind of work he was being asked to do. He 0:29:22.600 --> 0:29:25.320