CONT'D: IT DIDN'T START WITH ABU GHRAIB

CONT'D: IT DIDN'T START WITH ABU GHRAIB
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2005/3244cheney_olson_case.html

On Nov. 30, 1998, after a year of correspondence, author Gordon Thomas sent a memorandum to Eric Olson, explaining how he came to learn this previously undisclosed, critical detail about the Cold Creek Lake gathering. He identified two men, whom he had come to know very well, as his confidential sources on Helms's presence at Cold Creek Lake: Dr. William Sargant, a noted British psychiatrist who had worked on secret MI5/MI6 and CIA mind control experiments from the 1940s through the 1970s; and William Buckley, the Beirut CIA station chief, who had been kidnapped and tortured to death by terrorists in the mid-1980s. Earlier, as Richard Helms's deputy, Buckley had been directly involved in the mind control program, working closely with Dr. Gottlieb, et al.

The Gordon Thomas memo opened up far more than the added detail of Richard Helms's presence at the Cold Creek Lake session. Thomas's extensive discussions with Dr. Sargant, whose 1957 book Battle for the Mind—the Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing was a virtual how-to-do-it manual for mass social engineering and brainwashing, dramatically broke open the Olson case. In telling his story to Thomas, Dr. Sargant also confessed his own, pivotal role in the Olson murder.

It is therefore worth quoting extensively from the Thomas memorandum, the full text of which is posted on the website of the Frank Olson Legacy Project ( www.frankolsonproject.org ).

"In the 1950-60 period that is relevant to the events surrounding your father, I was a senior BBC writer/producer employed by the Science Department. Dr. Sargant was engaged by me as a consultant for a number of programmes. A relationship developed between us that became close and remained so until his death in 1988.... I am assured that because of the highly unusual circumstances of your father's death, the details have remained on file with several of the above-mentioned agencies, specifically the Mossad. The circumstances surrounding the death are taught as a case study at the Mossad Training School outside Tel Aviv...."

Note, parenthetically, that after the Manhattan DA's office reopened its investigation, one of the Assistant DA's assigned to the case, Steve Saracco, during the course of his investigation, independently corroborated through sources in Israel, that the Mossad did study Frank Olson's death as a picture-perfect, deniable assassination.

The Thomas memorandum continues: "At the time we spoke of your father, Dr. Sargant was Director of Psychological Medicine at St. Thomas' Hospital, London, England. He was also a consultant to the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI5/6), largely because of his work in the eliciting of confessions by the Soviets.... He told me he had visited Langley several times and had met with Dr. Sydney Gottlieb, Richard Helms and other senior CIA officials. During those visits he had also met with Dr. Ewan Cameron and, on one occaion, he had met Dr. Lashbrook and your father, Frank Olson.

"Subsequently Dr. Gottlieb and Frank Olson visited London and, according to Dr. Sargant, he accompanied them to Porton Down, Britain's main research centre for biological/chemical research. Dr. Sargant's interest in the work going on there was to study the psychological implications of mind-blowing drugs such as LSD. He told me that he developed a rapport with Frank Olson during a number of subsequent visits Frank Olson made to Britain. Dr. Sargant remarked that 'he was just like any other CIA spy, using our secret airfields to come and go.' Evidence in support of that can be found in Frank Olson's passport....

"From time to time, he referred to the death of your father and, as I clearly recall, he said his paperwork on the case had been handed over to the competent authorities in the British Secret Intelligence Service.

"Time and again Dr. Sargant expressed the view that, from all he had learned from the MI5 and his own contacts in Washington, there was a strong prima facie case that Frank Olson had been murdered. Sargant believed that Frank Olson could also have been given a cocktail of drugs that included more than LSD. He said he knew that Dr. Gottlieb had been researching into slow-acting depressants which, when taken, could drive a person to suicide.

"He also believed that, from his own meetings with Frank Olson, there was a very real possibility that your father could become a whistle-blower if he believed that what was happening was wrong...."

Then comes the clincher, which revealed Sargant's own role in the events of the final months of Frank Olson's life: "In the summer of 1953 Frank Olson travelled to Britain, once again to visit Parton Down. Sargant met with him. Olson said he was going to Europe to meet with a CIA team led by Dr. Gottlieb. By then Sargant had learned that Frank Olson was acting deputy head of SO (Special Operations)....

"Sargant saw Frank Olson after his brief visit to Norway and West Germany, including Berlin, in the summer of 1953. He said he was concerned about the psychological changes in Frank Olson. In Sargant's view, Olson, primarily a research-based scientist, had witnessed in the field how his arsenal of drugs, etc. worked with lethal effect on human beings (the 'expendable' SS men, etc.). Sargant believed that for the first time Olson had come face to face with his own reality.

"Sargant told me he believed Frank Olson had witnessed murder being committed with the various drugs he had prepared. The shock of what he witnessed, Sargant believed, was all the harder to cope with given that Frank Olson was a patriotic man who believed that the United States would never sanction such acts....

"I remember Sargant telling me that he spoke several times in 1953 with Frank Olson at Sargant's consulting rooms in Harley Street, London. These were not formal patient/doctor consultations, but rather Sargant trying to establish what Frank Olson had seen and done in Europe.

"Sargant's own conclusion was that Frank Olson had undergone a marked personality change; many of Olson's symptoms—soul searching, seeking reassurance, etc., were typical of that, Sargant told me.

"He decided that Frank Olson could pose a security risk if he continued to speak and behave as he did. He recommended to his own superiors at SIS that Frank Olson should no longer have access to Porton Down or to any ongoing British research at the various secret establishments Olson had been allowed prior free access to.

"Sargant told me his recommendation was acted upon by his superiors. He was also certain that his superiors, by the nature of the close ties with the CIA, would have informed Richard Helms and Dr. Gottlieb of the circumstances why Frank Olson would no longer be given access to British research. Effectively a substantial part of Frank Olson's importance to the CIA had been cut off.

"When Dr. Sargant learned of Frank Olson's death—I recall him telling me it came in a priority message from the British Embassy in Washington, Sargant came to the immediate conclusion that Olson could only have been murdered. I recall him telling me that in many ways the staged death was almost classic."

Classic, indeed. In May 1997, around the same time that Eric Olson had begun his correspondence with Gordon Thomas, the New York Times had published a front-page story by Tim Weiner, reporting on newly declassified CIA documents about the 1954 CIA-orchestrated coup d'état in Guatemala against the government of Jacobo Arbenz.

Among the declassified documents obtained by the National Security Archive, a Washington, D.C. think tank, was a late 1953 CIA assassination manual.

Under a subhead "2. Accidents," the manual read: "For secret assassination, either simple or chase, the contrived accident is the most effective technique. When successfully executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually investigated.

"The most efficient accident," the manual continued, "in simple assassination, is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator shafts, stair wells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve.... If the assassin immediately sets up an outcry, playing the 'horrified witness,' no alibi or surreptitious withdrawal is necessary.... Care is required to insure that no wound or condition not attributable to the fall is discernible after death....

"If the subject's personal habits make it feasible, alcohol may be used [2 words excised] to prepare him for a contrived accident of any kind."

Several paragraphs later, under subhead "3. Drugs," the manual noted, "In all types of assassination except terroristic, drugs can be very effective. If the assassin is trained as a doctor or nurse and the subject is under medical care, this is an easy and rare method.... If the subject drinks heavily, morphine or a similar narcotic can be injected at the passing out stage, and the cause of death will often be held to be acute alcoholism."

And finally, under subhead "5. Blunt weapons." "Blows should be directed to the temple, the area just below and behind the ear, and the lower, rear portion of the skull."

Among the approximately 150 pages of CIA documents that had been handed over to the Olson family by William Colby in their July 1975 meeting, were two eyewitness accounts of Frank Olson's final days, which took on special meaning when cross-gridded with the CIA's 1953 assassination manual.

The first document was by Colonel Ruwet. Ruwet had accompanied Frank Olson to New York, on Nov. 24, 1953, for psychiatric consultations with Dr. Harold Abramson. The consultation was arranged by the CIA's Dr. Lashbrook, who also travelled to New York with the two Army Chemical Corps men. Ruwet wrote, "We arrived in New York without incident, proceeded from LaGuardia Airport to Dr. Abramson's office; arrived there approximately 5 p.m. We left Dr. Olson with Dr. Abramson who requested us to come back in about 1 hour. After an hour we came back and Dr. Abramson suggested that we go to a hotel and we told him we had reservations at the Statler Hotel. He stated that he would come up to our room about 10:30 with some sedatives and also suggested that we have a 'high-ball.'...

"At about 10:30 p.m. Dr. Abramson came and brought a bottle of bourbon and some 'Nembutal' for Dr. Olson."

Dr. Abramson's own account, written on Dec. 4, 1953, made no mention of his instructions to Dr. Olson to take bourbon and Nembutol, two powerfully interactive substances. But he did write the following: "Mr. Olson was in a psychotic state when hospitalization was decided upon with delusions of persecution. There are two aspects in regard to the relationship to the work in which he was engaged. It is well known that it is an occupational hazard to mental stability to be doing the type of work connected with his duties. Guilt feelings are well known to occur to a greater or less extent. Superimposed on these guilt feelings which are certainly an occupational hazard is his participation in an experiment wherein he felt that many of his feelings became overwhelming. It is well known that many drugs produce this effect. For example, I have had a patient of mine recently attempt suicide after taking one capsule of Nembutal. A capsule of Nembutal contains one and one-half grains. This is a therapeutic dose which is taken by thousands of people daily yet this patient's personality structure was so oriented that one dose of this material taken by thousands of people daily was sufficient to have her reach for the box which she did. Fortunately her husband was present and caused her to vomit up the capsules. It is certainly conceivable and certainly cannot be excluded that Mr. Olson's participation in an experiment in which a drug was administrered could in just the same way precipitate a crisis which would upset the mental processes so that disorientation and the lack of mental functioning might be produced with the results readily observed."
Closure

In early May 2001, Eric Olson received an unexpected telephone call from one of his father's oldest friends and closest collaborators at Fort Detrick. Norman Cournoyer had served with Frank Olson during World War II, when the two men "had designed the protective gear worn by U.S. troops in the Normandy invasion in case they were met by biological weapons" (this quote is from Eric Olson's contemporaneous memo on his three-day meeting with Cournoyer).

Cournoyer had recently seen an April 1, 2000 New York Times Magazine story on the Olson case by Michael Ignatieff, and had decided, after much soul-searching, to provide Eric Olson with the missing pieces of the story behind the U.S. Government's murder of his father.

Olson travelled to Amherst, Mass. and met with Cournoyer from May 16-19, 2001.

Among the things that Cournoyer revealed to Eric: First, sometime in 1946 or 1947, Frank Olson's career turned onto a "new path." He went to work for the CIA, and was drawn into a program euphemistically called "information retrieval." Under such exotic code-names as BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA, Olson, an expert in chemical and biological weaponry, was drawn into work on interrogation methods, designed to draw information from even the most tight-lipped targets. The drugs and other chemical techniques used in these programs were tied to the most extreme forms of interrogation techniques, often incorporating torture.

For most of his time with the CIA programs, Olson remained in the laboratory at Fort Detrick. But beginning in 1950, according to Cournoyer, Olson began travelling abroad, taking part in live interrogations of "expendables," wartime Nazi criminals, suspected Soviet spies, and double-agents.

Cournoyer told Eric Olson that, following a trip to Europe in July and August of 1953, Frank Olson had come to him in confidence. Cournoyer still maintained his top secret security clearances, so Olson had no qualms about telling his friend that he had been eyewitness to more than one murder-by-interrogation. Cournoyer later told two German documentary filmmakers: "Frank told me, 'Norm, they went to extremes. Did you ever see a man die? I did. People being interrogated died.' He told me he was going to leave. He was getting out of the CIA."

Cournoyer also told Eric Olson that his father had said that he suspected that the United States had used biological weapons against North Korea, a charge later explored by two Canadian researchers in a book-length exposé.

On Aug. 12, 2002, the German television network ARD broadcast the documentary by Egmont Koch and Michael Wech, titled "Code-Name ARTICHOKE." The filmmakers added another crucial piece to the Frank Olson story, corroborating the accounts of Norman Cournoyer and Dr. William Sargant about Frank Olson's final trip to Europe in July and August 1953.

Koch and Wech exposed secret CIA Cold War interrogation centers in West Germany, including a facility in Oberursel, north of Frankfurt, dubbed "Camp King." Here the CIA conducted torture/interrogation experiments on Nazi convicts and Soviet spies. Among the "advisors" working at "Camp King" was Professor Kurt Blome. Blome had been the Deputy Surgeon General of the Third Reich, responsible for all of the biological experiments conducted at concentration camps like Dachau. Blome had been arrested at the end of World War II and put on trial at Nuremberg, but under a secret U.S. Government program, "Operation Dust-Bin," had been recruited to teach the Americans how to conduct innovative interrogations.

According to Frank Olson's passport (he had been issued a diplomatic passport in 1950, another indication of his new CIA employment), he had made several trips to West Germany—to Frankfurt, Heidelberg, and Berlin—between 1950-53. A careful review by Eric Olson of his fathers slides and home movies confirmed he had been at the CIA's clandestine headquarters for West Germany, at the old I.G. Farben headquarters in Frankfurt. In August 1953, he had been at the U.S. Army's headquarters in Berlin, where several top Soviet spies were being interrogated