Forbidden History - Extra: Frank Olson: The Man Behind the Victim

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

Bonus Episode: In this episode of Forbidden Fruit, we take a deep dive into the life of CIA operative Frank Olson. We explore his career, partaking in some of the CIA's most clandestine experiments, and how his participation ultimately led to his death.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to Forbidden Fruit, the Forbidden History Podcast Extra. In our last episode, we heard about the CIA Mind Control Project, M.K. Ultra, and the unexplained death of biological and chemical scientist Frank Olson. In this episode, we will further explore Olson's life and career, where M.K. Ultra was merely one secret research program of which he had

intimate knowledge. And it's what he saw across the years that may have cost him his life. Frank Olson is born in July 1910 in Wisconsin to Swedish immigrant parents. He studies at the state's university and earns a PhD in bacteriology. While there, he meets the love of his life, classmate Alice, and the pair would go on to marry and have three children, Eric, Neels, and Lisa. To help pay off the costs of his education, Olson enrols in the Reserve Officers Training Corps and is called to active duty at Fort Hood in Texas. He does so at a key moment in history for the United States is about to enter the Second World War. Olson's expertise in the field of bacteriology gets him noticed, and he's appointed captain in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps,

the branch of the army tasked with defending against attack by chemical and biological weapons. Officially, the political leadership of the United States is against the use of such weapons. The horrors of the gas attacks in the First World War had been etched in people's memories. but at the same time, America continues developing them, preferring to at least have them available should the enemy cross the line and deploy them on the battlefield. Men of Olson's expertise are therefore in high demand. He soon receives a phone call that will draw him into a life of secrecy

from which death will be the only escape. In December 1942, Olson's phone rings. On the other end of the line is his former university thesis advisor, a man called Ira Baldwin. But Baldwin is not calling to reminisce about the good old days. He has recently been requested by the U.S. government to leave his university post and direct a secret biological weapons program. He is putting together a team, and he wants all. Olson to join it.

Olson accepts the invitation. He is told to pack his bags and head for a recently deserted airfield in Maryland called Fort Ditrich. Fort Diedrich was once the home of a cadet pilot training center, but with its pilots now at war, it has been abandoned. Its buildings and facilities, including its large aircraft hangar, remain, and are now to be repurposed. Under its new name, Camp Dietrich, the site becomes the home of the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories.

This new research program will be as top secret as the Manhattan Project. Olson's research includes the use of aerosolized anthrax as a weapon, and he will combine his findings with those of former Nazis brought to the U.S. through Operation Paperclip. In 1944, Olson is discharged from the army, but he remains at Dietrich on a civilian contract, continuing his work researching aerobiology, work that is soon to become ever more important to the American government. By 1949, almost four years have passed since the end of the Second World War, but research into biological weapons is continuing, and the calm Caribbean Sea, has been identified as the ideal testing ground for biological agents.

On the waters surrounding the island of Antigua, Olson and his fellow scientists conduct a series of experiments under the code name Operation Harness. This would be the beginning of the morally dubious experiments Olson would partake in and the toll it would take on his psyche. Animals, including sheep, guinea pigs, and rhesus macaques are packed onto inflatable dungies

and taken out to sea. Once they are at a safe distance from humans, they are exposed to biological agents such as anthrax and the effects of the bacteria are monitored. But the experiments do not go to plan. Local radio signals interfere with the sampling equipment while poor sea conditions

make the measurement of bacteria in the atmosphere almost impossible. Operation Harness proves a failure, but dangerous experimentation continue nevertheless. And the following year, Olson will be involved in another project, only this time, the unwitting population of an entire city

will be its lab animals. In 1950, Olson works on Operation C spray. Two types of bacteria, which they believe to be harmless, are sprayed over the San Francisco Bay Area in order to test the vulnerability of populated areas to bioweapon attack. The airborne bacteria spreads throughout the city.

Based on results from monitoring equipment, every resident likely inhales 5,000 particles. Less than a month later, one hospital sees 11 patients present symptoms of a rare and serious urinary tract infection. Army officials argue that any link to Operation C-spray is coincidental, and later lawsuits against the federal government would fail to prove a conclusive link.

We don't know how Olson reacted to these experiments, but what these two secret operations do reveal is a dangerously cavalier attitude to risk. And soon, Olson would be involved in experiments so immoral that he himself would have doubts about the research, doubts that may have led to his untimely death. By now, it has become clear that victory in the Second World War has not led to a safe world. In fact, the globe has split in two. On one side, the capitalist west, and on the other, the communist east.

Among senior U.S. military officials, as well as CIA officers, there are increasing fears that the Soviet Union is secretly working towards mastering biological warfare. And so, at Camp Dietrich, the Special Operations Division, or SOD, is established. Its purpose is to research covert methods of utilizing chemical weapons in the greatest of secrecy. One evening, Olson is relaxing with a colleague, John Schwab, and it is while they're playing cards that Schwab makes an approach. He has just been named the SOD's first chief, and he wants Olson to join him. The job description is intriguingly vague, collect data of interest to the division with particular emphasis on the medical biological aspects, and coordinate with other agencies conducting work

of a similar or related nature. Olson accepts the new position, but it would soon become clear that by other agencies, Schwab is referring to the CIA. According to one study, Olson's time at the SOD sees him specialize in

the airborne distribution of biological germs, or, put simply, turning everyday objects into lethal aerosols, a biological warfare version of James Boll, K-Branch. Olson is said to have disguised deadly aerosols as shaving cream and insect repellent, created a cigarette lighter which sprays an almost instantly lethal gas, and engineered a lipstick

which kills on contact with skin. It is around this time that the first signs emerge, that his work is beginning to affect him. He also directs experiments that involve the poisoning, gassing and torture of laboratory animals. As his son, Eric, later stated, my father would come to work in the morning and see piles of dead monkeys. That messes with you. He wasn't the right guy for that.

Olson's moral objections are only to increase. For once more, the experiments make the leap from an animal to human test subjects. In spring, 1953, Olson travels to the microbiological research establishment at Portendown in Wiltshire, England. Here, government scientists are studying the effects of sarin and other nerve gases. On the 6th of May, a volunteer subject, a 20-year-old soldier, is exposed to the deadly nerve agent. Olson watches on as the soldier begins foaming at the mouth before collapsing into convulsions.

An hour later, the soldier dies. Olson decides to reveal his discomfort to a psychiatrist who helped direct the research, William Sargent. A month later, Olson travels to a CIA safe house in Germany. Here, he sees men dying, often in agony, from weapons that he had helped produce. After visits to Scandinavia and Paris, Olson returns to England and confers. in Sargent once more. But Sargent is not on Olson's side. Immediately after their meeting,

he writes a report stating that Olson was deeply disturbed over what he had seen in the CIA safe houses in Germany and displayed symptoms of not wanting to keep secret what he had witnessed. The content of the report makes it clear that Sargent isn't concerned about Olson's mental well-belled.

being, but for the secrecy of the research program. Sergeant sends his report to his superiors, knowing that it will be forwarded to the CIA itself. Through Sargent's report, the CIA now know that Olson is becoming disaffected with his work. And what is even more alarming to them is the vast amount of secret information that he has been privy to, not only bacterial warfare research, but also the CIA's mind control program, M.K. Ultra. To make matters worse, allegations are now circulating that the United States had used biological weapons during the Korean War.

Such is Olson's level of security clearance that if this was indeed true, he would know about it. To the CIA, he is rapidly becoming a dangerous liability. It was in early November of that same, year, 1953, that Olson's drink was spiked with LSD at a party with colleagues. And by the end of the month, he would be dead. Olson's expertise in the fields of bacterial and chemical science had seen him elevated to the height of scientific research. It had seen him intimately involved in American history's most clandestine and controversial projects.

We know that Olson's reaction to what he witnessed led to his death. But whether it was by his own hands or not, we will never truly know. This is an audio production by Like a Shot Entertainment, presented by Bridget Lappin. Executive producers, Danny O'Brien, and Henry Scott. Story producer Maddie Bowers, assistant producer, Alice Chudor. Thank you for listening.