CIA scientist Frank Olson, who was part of the CIA’s mind-control project MK-Ultra, fell from his Manhattan hotel room and died on the sidewalk. His death remains one of the most mysterious to this day, as he knew some of the CIA’s darkest secrets. In 1994, his son exhumed his body, searching for evidence of foul play.
Frank Olson was 43 years old when he died on November 28, 1953. He was a scientist, a CIA officer, and one of the few people who knew about the CIA’s Project MK-Ultra. This project focused on mind control experiments, including using LSD to see if it could be used against U.S. enemies. The U.S. feared that the Soviet Union was ahead in developing mind control techniques.
Olson was deeply involved in the project, making him part of an elite group. However, this also made him a security risk if he ever revealed what he knew about the top-secret program.
A week before his death, Olson was unknowingly given LSD during a retreat with CIA and Army colleagues. While others at the meeting were also drugged, Olson had a much stronger reaction. He became anxious, had trouble focusing, and couldn’t sleep. He even forgot how to spell. At some point, he told his wife, “I’ve made a terrible mistake,” though she never learned what he meant.
“My uncle Frank Olson died sometime around 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 28, 1953 when he “jumped or fell” from his room on the 13th floor of the Statler Hotel in New York City,” writes Paul Vidich, author of The Coldest Warrior.
Frank Olson was a highly skilled Army scientist who worked at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, a top-secret U.S. Army facility that researched biological warfare agents. He had gone to New York to see a security-cleared psychiatrist in the company of a CIA escort.
Olson’s sealed casket was delivered to his wife two days after his death. She was advised not to view the body because they said he had severe facial injuries. Olson was buried the next day, and she received a quick pension soon after. For 22 years, that was all the family knew.
In June 1975, new information surfaced. A report by the Rockefeller Commission, which was investigating illegal CIA activities, mentioned an army scientist who was unknowingly given LSD and died after falling from a New York hotel window. The case caught the family’s attention. After checking with the CIA, the Army confirmed that the scientist was Frank Olson. Major newspapers reported the story with headlines like “Suicide Revealed.”
Just 10 days later, the family was invited to the Oval Office, where the president personally apologized for Olson’s death. Within a year, the family received a $750,000 settlement in exchange for releasing all claims against the U.S. government. (Source)
The questions surrounding Frank Olson’s death could have ended if his sons, Eric and Nils, had accepted the official story. But in 1994, they chose to exhume their father’s body and have a second autopsy done.
James E. Starrs, a professor of law and forensic science, led the investigation. He didn’t find clear evidence of murder, but also didn’t find the “multiple cuts” expected if Olson had crashed through a closed hotel window, as the official story claimed. (Source)
Starrs suggested it’s possible someone could have broken the window afterward to make it look like Olson had jumped. He expressed doubt that someone could jump through a small window in the dark, over obstacles like a radiator and window sill.
Starrs added, “I’m skeptical that anyone could clear a radiator, a 31-inch high window sill, pass through a 3-by-5-foot window opening obscured by a drawn shade, all in the darkness of a hotel room at night.”
Over the years, information has slowly come out about Frank Olson’s work. He was the Acting Chief of the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick and worked closely with the CIA’s Research and Development team. With his high security clearance, Olson knew about secret projects like “Artichoke,” a mind control program that used harsh interrogation techniques.
But why would someone drug a trusted colleague like Olson? That question has remained unanswered for 6 decades.
On November 18, 1953, Olson attended a retreat at a cabin on Deep Creek Lake in Maryland. CIA and Army scientists from the technical services and chemical corps divisions were there, according to author Stephen Kinzer. They drank Cointreau that had been secretly spiked with LSD, and 20 minutes later, it was clear they had been drugged. Olson seemed to be more affected than the others. Ten days later, while seeking medical help in New York, he fell from a hotel window in the middle of the night.
The Olson family was later told that the scientists were drugged as part of an experiment. The goal was to see if a scientist, if captured and drugged, would reveal secret information.
This revised narrative shed new light on earlier events. Olson’s rushed burial and the expedited pension approval were meant to stop the family from asking questions. Later, the speedy presidential apology, the $750,000 payment, and their waiver of claims conspired to continue the cover-up.
Frank Olson’s death has become a symbol of our interest in the darkest secrets of the Cold War. It also highlights the questionable powers the CIA gave itself in the name of national security. Even 66 years later, the case remains unclear and still draws a lot of attention.
Errol Morris examined the case in his 2018 Netflix series Wormwood. In 2019, former New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer also wrote about it in his bestseller Poisoner-In-Chief, a biography of Sidney Gottlieb, Olson’s CIA boss.
This revised narrative shed new light on earlier events. Olson’s rushed burial and the expedited pension approval were meant to stop the family from asking questions. Later, the speedy presidential apology, the $750,000 payment, and their waiver of claims conspired to continue… pic.twitter.com/l7eufIZdIA
— Vicky Verma (@Unexplained2020) September 10, 2024
Eric Olson never accepted that explanation, however. On August 8, 2002, Eric called reporters to his home to announce that he had reached a new conclusion about what had happened to his father.
“The death of Frank Olson on 28 November 1953 was a murder, not a suicide,” he declared. “Frank Olson did not die because he was an experimental guinea pig who experienced a ‘bad trip’. He died because of concern that he would divulge information concerning a highly classified CIA interrogation program in the early 1950s, and concerning the use of biological weapons.”
Without proof, however, Eric Olson’s suspicions will forever remain just that.
Paul Vidich writes:
Olson’s death remains officially classified as “undetermined,” but all the evidence that has emerged over several decades points toward murder and none of it points away. Like a black hole, existence is proven by evidence that points to existence and not by direct observation. Among the things that have become known:
-Three months before his death Olson spent two weeks with his brother-in-law (my father) reroofing a family cabin in the Adirondacks. My father saw a man who was in a deep moral crisis. He wasn’t suicidal. He was a man who had begun reading the Bible to find answers to disturbing questions.
-On Feb. 23, 1954 (three months after Olson’s death), the CIA and the Department of Justice signed a Memorandum of Understanding that allowed the CIA to withhold information relating to criminal activity if disclosure compromised intelligence sources and methods. In 1975, Senator Bella Abzug questioned Lawrence Houston, CIA general counsel at the time of Olson’s death, and an author of the memo. She asked, with specific reference to Olson, “In other words, the Memorandum of Understanding, in your judgment, gave authority to the CIA to make decisions to give immunity to individuals who happened to work for the CIA for all kinds of crimes, including murder.” Houston answered, “Yes.”
-Mossad, which started using “targeted killings” in 1962, for decades included the death of Frank Olson in its assassination training program as an example of the perfect murder—“perfect” due to the skill with which it had been made to look like a suicide.
