“The most efficient accident, in simple assassination, is a fall of seventy-five feet or more onto a hard surface.” So reads an entry in the first manual of assassination developed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA.) This passage was designed to eliminate individuals considered enemies of the United States. Some, however, believe the CIA used its most simple assassination tactic to kill one of its own.

 

On the evening of November 28, 1953, forty-three-year-old CIA scientist Frank Olson was found barely alive on the sidewalk in front of New York City’s Statler Hotel. He had fallen from a tenth floor window and died a few hours later. Foul play was ruled out in his death, which was determined to be either an accident or suicide.

Twenty-two-years after the fall, however, an investigation chaired by the second most powerful person in America questioned the official ruling of Frank Olson’s death.

Frank Olson had a brilliant mind and it is believed the CIA sought to control his thoughts. Many contend that when he expressed resistance, he was eliminated by the agency he served.

Frank Olson

Frank Olson held B.S. and Ph. D degrees in Bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin.

He and his wife Alice had three children, sons Nils and Eric, and daughter Lisa.

The Olson Family

For several years, Frank Olson headed the military’s biological warfare research and development program at Fort Detrick, Maryland. He was an expert in aerobiology, the delivery of deadly viruses and infectious microorganisms via spray and aerosol cans.

In addition to his military position, Olson was also on the CIA’s payroll as the covert agency was involved in germ warfare in association with the Special Operations Division. The most top secret research was being conducted at Fort Detrick. He was the CIA’s Deputy Acting Head of Special Operations.

CIA Scientist

In November 1953, Frank Olson and several colleagues went to a three-day conference. Frank told Alice the group would be discussing research and development projects but that he could not tell her where the event was being held.

Upon his return home, Alice noticed a pronounced change in her husband’s demeanor as he had become severely depressed and withdrawn. Frank told Alice he had done something wrong. The tone in his voice and body language made Alice suspect it was something severe. Frank told her he could not her what he had done, but he did say he had not broken national security.

Traumatized By His Trip

Olson’s boss, Vincent Ruwet, told Alice he believed her husband was near a nervous breakdown.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, 1953, Ruwet took Frank Olson to New York for treatment.

Vincent Ruwet

Alice did not hear from her husband for a week. When Frank did call on the evening of November 18, he said he was exhausted but feeling better. He told Alice he loved her, to kiss the children good night for him, and to tell them daddy would be home soon.

The phone call was the last time Alice spoke to her husband, and their children never saw their dad again.

Frank’s Final Phone Call

That evening, Olson and fellow CIA scientist Robert Lashbrook shared room 1018A on the tenth floor of New York City’s Statler Hotel, across the street from Pennsylvania Station and Madison Square Garden. Lashbrook said the room’s window was closed when they went to bed at approximately 11:00 p.m.

The next thing Lashbrook said he remembered was being awakened by the sound of breaking glass shortly before midnight. As he awoke, he saw his room’s window was broken. He looked outside and saw several people gathered around his colleague lying on the sidewalk clothed in only his underwear and a T-shirt.

The Statler Hotel in 1953

The police investigating concluded foul play was not involved in Frank Olson’s death.

Alice was told her husband had suffered a nervous breakdown and had either committed suicide by jumping through a closed window or had accidentally fallen through the window to his death.  She and many others were skeptical of the determination because suicide victims who leap to their deaths rarely go through closed windows, and it seemed unlikely a person could generate enough force on his own to accidentally fall through a closed window.

Nevertheless, the official ruling of suicide in the death of Frank Olson stood for over two decades.

Foul Play Ruled Out

In 1975, twenty-two-years after Frank Olson’s fatal fall, the Rockefeller Commission was formed to investigate charges of past abuses carried out by the CIA. Headed by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, the report, among other instances, mentioned a government scientist who had plunged to his death from a hotel window ten days after being dosed with the hallucinogenic drug Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).

The scientist was not mentioned by name, but he was later confirmed to be Frank Olson.

The Rockefeller Report

After learning of the report’s findings, Alice Olson and her three now grown children announced they planned to sue the CIA over Frank’s “wrongful death.” The government offered them an out-of-court settlement of $1,250,000, which was later reduced to $750,000. The Olsons accepted and received formal apologies from President Gerald Ford and CIA director William Colby.

 

They were also given what was said to be a complete set of documents relating to the last nine days of Frank’s life. After reading the documents, the family was convinced the CIA, either intentionally or indirectly, was responsible for Frank’s death.

The Olson Family with President Gerald Ford

 

The CIA reports said Frank Olson was among ten scientists who had gone to a retreat in Deep Creek Lake in western Maryland in November 1953. The stated purpose of the meeting was to discuss ongoing research, but in reality, the men were to be used as guinea pigs in testing the effects of LSD.

The Cold War was rapidly heating up and the Soviet Union was viewed as the most dangerous threat to America. The CIA feared the Russians would use LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs to produce anxiety and fear in captured CIA agents. The agency sought to test the effects of LSD in an effort to prepare its American operatives for that possibility. Their own scientists were chosen as the unwitting subjects of their experiment.

The documents revealed eight of the ten men drank Couitreau after having dinner. Unbeknownst to them, the French liqueur was spiked with doses of LSD. The effects were visible within an hour as the men became delusional, dizzy, and discombobulated.

The LSD was said to have been put into the drinks either by Sidney Gottlieb, head of the CIA’s technical services staff, or by his deputy, Lashbrook. When Gottlieb told the scientists the drinks had been spiked with LSD, the men became agitated.

Frank Olson was said to be the most irate. The documents say he told his bosses he no longer wished to work for the CIA or have any involvement in germ warfare programs.

                            Sidney Gottlieb            Robert Lashbrook

Later that week, the documents went on to say, Frank Olson was taken to New York, supposedly suffering from a nervous breakdown as Vincent Ruwet had told Alice. Frank was treated, not by a psychiatrist, but instead by Dr. Harold Abramson, an allergist-pediatrician and LSD expert who worked with the CIA in researching the drug’s psychotropic effects.

Over the following few days, Olson made several more visits to Dr. Abramson, always accompanied by Lashbrook and Ruwet. The documents released to the Olson family do not say what occurred during these sessions.

Dr. Harold Abramson

The documents do state that while he was in New York, Frank Olson experienced delusions and, in one instance, threw away all his identification and money.

After reading the report, the Olsons went public with its findings.  They were soon contacted by Armand Pastore, the night manager at the Statler Hotel at the time of the 1953 incident. He said shortly after Frank was found to have fallen from the window, the hotel’s telephone operator told him she heard the man (Lashbrook) calling from room 1018A say, “Well, he’s gone” and the man on the other end reply, “Well, that’s too bad.” Then they both hung up.

After reading the report and hearing Pastore’s account, the Olson family believes that after Frank told his superiors of his intention to leave the CIA and end his involvement in germ warfare research, the agency had determined he was a security risk and decided to have him eliminated. Author Ed Regis concurs, saying Frank Olson told Ruwet he wanted to quit the biological program after the LSD experiment.

Killed By His Colleagues?

When Alice Olson died in 1993, her sons had their father’s body exhumed to rest beside hers.

Before Frank Olson was reburied, however, an autopsy was performed.

Alice Olson

George Washington University Professor and renowned forensic scientist James Starrs performed Frank Olson’s autopsy forty years after his death. Dr. Starrs was pleasantly surprised and amazed that the remains were in great condition.

After completing his examination, Dr. Starrs criticized the original autopsy performed by the New York Medical Examiner in 1953, saying the report was incomplete as the examiner had not checked for foreign substances or accurately charted Olson’s physical injuries. Although the New York Medical Examiner had stated that there were multiple lacerations on Olson’s face and neck, Dr. Starrs found no such wounds.

In addition, Dr. Starss said that if Frank Olson had fallen out of a closed window, he would have incurred numerous cuts and abrasions. He found no such wounds.

What Dr. Starrs did find was a large hematoma on the left side of Olson‘s head and a large injury on his chest. Most of his forensic team concluded the blunt-force trauma to the head and the injury to the chest had likely occurred in the room before the fall. He believes the window was broken after Olson fell to his death.

Dr. Starrs concluded the police ruling and CIA contention of Frank Olson’s death as either suicide or accident was, “rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide.”

Dr. James Starrs

Forensic Scientist

After Dr. Starrs’ findings were made public, Lashbrook, who was in room with Frank Olson when he plunged to his death, changed his story and said he could not remember if the window had been opened or closed.

Robert Lashbrook died in 2002 at age eighty-four.

Lashbook Amends His Account

In 2012, Nils and Eric Olson filed suit in the United States District Court in Washington, D.C., seeking unspecified compensatory damages and access to additional documents related to their father’s death which they claim the CIA had withheld from them.

Frank Olson’s Sons, Nils and Eric

Largely because of the 1976 settlement between the Olson family and government, the lawsuit was dismissed in July 2013.

In the decision, however, United States District Judge James Boasberg wrote, “While the court must limit its analysis to the four corners of the complaint, the skeptical reader may wish to know that the public record supports many of the allegations [in the family’s suit], farfetched as they may sound.”

Signs of a Cover-up

In 2017, Netflix released “Wormwood,” a documentary detailing the controversy surrounding Frank Olson’s death.

In the six-part miniseries directed by Errol Morris, journalist Seymour Hersh says high ranking sources told him that during the height of the Cold War, the government had a security process to identify and execute domestic dissidents perceived as risks to the Unites States. He said that Frank Olson was viewed as such a dissident and that his death was covered up by his CIA colleagues.

Hersh, however, says he cannot elaborate or publish on the facts because it would compromise his source.

Documentary Released 

Frank’s death was not the only trauma the Olsons endured as another family tragedy also occurred in New York.

Lisa Olson Hayward was only seven-years-old when her father died. On March 19, 1978, she, her husband Greg, and their one-and a-half-year-old son, Jonathan, perished in a plane crash. As a result of intensely high winds, the twin-engine Beechcraft crashed into the 2,800-foot high Katy Mountain in the Adirondack Mountains near Lake Clear, New York. The pilot and one other passenger were also killed.

Lisa was thirty-two-years-old.

Lisa Hayward Olson

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13156876/frank-rudolf_emanuel-olson

SOURCES:
• Associated Press
• Frederick (Maryland) News Post
• Los Angeles Times
• New York Times
• Newark Advocate
• The Telegraph
• Unsolved Mysteries
• UPI
• Washington Post
• Washington Times