The Assassination of Frank Olson

Frank Olson was a scientist. He held a PhD in biochemistry and worked at Fort Detrick in Maryland, the US Army's center for biological warfare research. His specific work involved the development and testing of biological agents and the study of their potential military applications. He had security clearances at the highest levels available to civilian researchers working in defense programs in 1953. He was not a marginal figure in the intelligence research community. He was a senior scientist with knowledge of programs the government wanted kept secret.

On November 19, 1953, Olson attended a retreat at Deep Creek Lake in Maryland with colleagues from the CIA's Technical Services Staff. During the retreat, CIA officer Sidney Gottlieb, the director of MK-Ultra, secretly dosed several attendees' drinks with LSD. Olson was one of them. He was not told. He did not consent. He began experiencing severe psychological disturbance in the days that followed. Nine days later, he fell from the window of his room on the tenth floor of the Hotel Statler in New York City and died.

The CIA told Olson's family that he had suffered a mental breakdown and jumped from the hotel window. The family was given a settlement of $750,000 by Congress in 1975, after the CIA disclosed for the first time that Olson had been given LSD without his knowledge. The settlement came with an apology from President Gerald Ford and CIA Director William Colby. It did not come with a full account of what had happened at the Hotel Statler.

The CIA's account, even after the 1975 disclosure, maintained that Olson had jumped. The CIA officer Robert Lashbrook, who was sharing the hotel room with Olson on the night of his death, stated that he was awakened by the sound of breaking glass and found Olson gone. Lashbrook called the CIA before calling the police. The time between Olson's fall and the arrival of emergency services has never been fully accounted for in any publicly available document.

Olson's son Eric spent decades pursuing the full truth of his father's death. He hired attorneys, filed FOIA requests, and engaged forensic experts. His investigation led to the 1994 exhumation that changed the legal status of the case.

In 1994, forensic pathologist James Starrs of George Washington University led a team that exhumed Frank Olson's body from its grave in Frederick, Maryland. Starrs was a respected figure in forensic science who had conducted exhumations in several high-profile historical cases. His team conducted a thorough forensic examination of the remains.

Starrs's findings were significant. He identified a hematoma on the left side of Olson's skull, above the left eye. The hematoma was consistent with blunt force trauma. It was not consistent with a fall from a window. When a person falls and strikes the ground, the injuries concentrate at the impact point and radiate outward in patterns consistent with the mechanics of the fall. A blunt force hematoma above the eye, in the absence of corresponding contact injuries, suggests the trauma occurred before the fall, not as a result of it.

Starrs concluded that the evidence was consistent with Olson having been struck on the head before going through the window and was inconsistent with the suicide account. He described his findings as pointing toward a homicide. The Manhattan District Attorney's office opened an investigation based on Starrs's findings.

The Manhattan District Attorney's investigation into Olson's death as a potential homicide ran through the late 1990s. The investigation faced the same evidentiary problems that had prevented accountability for MK-Ultra more broadly: the most relevant records had been destroyed, the principal suspects were dead, and the statute of limitations on any surviving charges was a matter of legal dispute given the decades that had passed.

Robert Lashbrook, the CIA officer who was in the room when Olson died, was alive and was interviewed by investigators. He maintained his original account. Sidney Gottlieb, who had authorized the LSD dosing, died in 1999 before the investigation concluded. CIA records relating to the Olson case that had not been destroyed remained partially classified and were not fully available to the investigation.

The District Attorney's office ultimately concluded that while the forensic evidence raised serious questions about the suicide ruling, a homicide prosecution could not be supported given the evidentiary record available. The case was closed without charges. The ruling on Olson's death has never been officially changed from suicide.

Frank Olson worked in the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, which was the division responsible for developing biological weapons and for research into their operational use. His specific knowledge included work on aerosolized biological agents and their delivery mechanisms. He also had knowledge of certain CIA programs involving the use of biological and chemical agents that went beyond what was publicly acknowledged at the time.

In the weeks before his death, Olson had expressed to colleagues a desire to leave government work. He had been visibly disturbed after the Deep Creek Lake retreat where he was dosed with LSD. Some accounts describe him as having become concerned about the ethical dimensions of the work he had been involved in and as having considered making disclosures that would have been damaging to the programs he knew about.

Whether Olson's knowledge and his apparent intention to leave the program constituted a motive for his elimination has not been established by any available evidence. It is the question that Eric Olson spent decades trying to answer. The CIA documents that might address it remain partially classified. The people who could have answered it definitively are dead.

A senior US government biochemist was secretly given LSD by CIA officers in 1953 and died nine days later in a fall from a New York hotel window. His family was told it was suicide. Twenty-two years later the CIA disclosed the LSD dosing. Forty-one years after his death, exhumation produced forensic evidence of blunt force trauma inconsistent with a fall. The Manhattan District Attorney opened a homicide investigation and closed it without prosecution. The CIA documents that might explain what happened that night remain partially classified. The death has never been officially reclassified.