CIA on LSD

[rosenlake at mac.com]

A chilling article in today's New York Times Magazine: "What did the
C.I.A. do to his father?" It's about Frank Olson, who went out the
window of a midtown New York hotel in 1953. Turns out he was a working
for the CIA on germ warfare and became a security risk after visiting
American-British research facilities near Frankfurt. His son, who was 9
when Frank died, contends that he saw testing being done on human
subjects -- ex-Nazis and captured Soviet agents -- and, already not too
comfortable with his work on monkeys, he confided to a London
psychiatrist and consultant to British intelligence on brainwashing, who
reported to the firm that Olson was a risk.

"Olson, a scientist by training, would have known that he was working
for a government that had put Nazi scientists on trial at Nuremberg for
immoral experiments on human beings. Now, in the late summer of 1953,
his son says he believes, a naïve American patriot faced up to the
possibility that his own government was doing the same thing. If the
C.I.A. was in fact experimenting with 'expendables' in Germany, and if
Olson knew about it, Eric [the son] reasoned, then it would not be
enough to hospitalize him, discredit him with lies about his mental
condition, and allow hime to slip back into civilian life. It would be
better to get rid of him altogether but make it look like suicide."

Eric Olson exhumed his father's body, which was kept out of view from
the family with the claim that it was horribly broken up and lacerated.
In fact, it was still almost perfectly embalmed, with no cuts, but with
signs of a blow to the temple right out of the CIA assassination manual.

There's more . . .

<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/01/magazine/01OLSON.html>

Olson tried to resign, and they sent him to New York for medical help
and to meet his fate. "He begged them to 'just let me disappear.'"

Here's the New York Times obituary for Sidney Gottliev, who slipped LSD
into Olson's Cointreau at a meeting -- it was right after that when
Olson decided to quit.
<http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/10/magazine/990310OLSON.html>

"John Gittinger, a C.I.A. psychologist who vetted Gottlieb -- 'one of
the most brilliant men I've ever known' -- and worked with him for 22
years, said the agency began the tests because it was gripped by 'a
great fear' in the cold war. It was afraid that the Soviet Union would
corner the market on LSD and use it as a chemical weapon or that China
would perfect the black art of brainwashing, Gittinger said.

"The agency and Gottlieb believed the United States had to fight by any
means necessary.

"'We were in a World War II mode,' Gittinger said. 'The war never really
ended for us.'" 

And here's Alice Olson's obituary. She was Frank's wife. This article
summarizes the official story.
<http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/06/magazine/930806OLSON.html>

Go saoraid,
Eric R