The Jumper

Hey true weirdos, thank you so much for all your support because of your support We were able to win some awards with this podcast in the past year and be sure to stick around for the conversation We have after the episode The place sure wasn't as grand as it used to be But the Statler Hotel in New York City was still clinging to its former greatness as best it could Once upon a time it had been the largest hotel in the whole world It was like its own little city 2,200 rooms Restaurants ballroom shops it even had its own newspaper and library But in those cold pre-dawn hours in November 1953 there was no pretending that the old girl hadn't gotten shabby with time her glory days the 1920s 30s and 40s were long past and the world had moved on People had once crowded its ballrooms to dance to big band music While people at home gathered around the radios to hear NBC broadcasts live from the hotel's cafe The National Broadcasting Company invited to listen to Glenn Miller of music But now people were trading evenings at glitzy nightclubs for the comfort of watching TV in their own homes The Statler with its 22 stories looming over Penn Station had become a less glamorous Hotspot and a more affordable place to sleep convenient to the train If we're honest things had gotten Weird at the Statler hard to pinpoint exactly how or why?

but the atmosphere now It was just off Faded grandeur can easily descend into a dusty sort of creepiness Hallways as wide as avenues Vaulted in marble with crystal chandeliers that once through sparkling light onto every surface dark now to save electricity Shadows collecting in the corners of vast spaces that were once filled with the sound of laughter And music and ice cubes clinking glasses Grand old hotels like the Statler are Always haunted by memory as much as by any spectral apparition and in those chill pre-dawn hours on November 28th, 1953 the Statler welcomed a new ghost a Man who registered as Frank Olson of Frederick, Maryland Plunged to his death from a 10th floor window of the Stadler Hotel Police were not yet able to confirm the man's identity. It was Frank Olson. All right, did he jump?

Was he pushed and was it the CIA it gave him that fatal shove I Stop The doorman on duty that night at the Statler Hotel was no stranger to middle-of-the-night, New York City You know, it's rhythms when he heard it that far-off tinkle of shattering glass Registered a sound that by itself wasn't unusual It was more where that sound of breaking glass was coming from The doorman looked up Then a body came pinwheeling out of the night sky struck a temporary wooden partition Erected to cover construction work on the hotel's facade the body ricocheted off the plywood and slammed hard into the sidewalk We've got a jumper And ten stories above drapes fluttered from an open window That window belonged to room 10 18 a two guests were registered Robert Lashbrook and Frank Olson You Popcorn Twizzlers and wine not a healthy diet or lifestyle Factor is how I stopped using my busy schedule as an excuse for why I was eating like an eight-year-old with factor I've got fully prepared meals designed by dietitians crafted by chefs ready in two minutes. No planning No cooking no shopping and so good y'all are listeners So, you know, I make very many bad choices, but the shredded chicken taco bowl from factor buddy Quality ingredients lean proteins fresh colorful veggies healthy fats. No refined sugars. No refined seed oils No artificial sweeteners with factor you're having delicious meals that fit your goals and your schedule and you're never bored with 100 rotating weekly meals to choose from head to factor meals Calm slash true weird stuff 50 off and use the code true weird stuff 50 off to get 50% off and free Breakfast for a year offer only valid for new factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase Make eating healthy easy with factor Police entered room 10 18 a at first glance It was empty cold November air rushing through the open window The window had been smashed completely and the covers on the bed nearest looked as though they've been flown to the floor Moving carefully an officer pushed on the bathroom door There was a man in there slumped on the toilet head in his hands Behind him an undershirt and pair of socks were draped over the shower curtain rod The man told the cops that he'd been asleep and was awakened by a noise He had no idea what happened The man on the toilet was Robert Lashbrook Meet that dr. Robert Lashbrook He described himself as a chemist who worked as a consultant for the Department of Defense That was the cover story for what the man really did He was with the Central Intelligence Agency up to his eyeballs in a top-secret program focused on mind control a program called MK ultra from the 1975 Rockefeller Commission report investigating CIA activity in the late 1940s the CIA began to study the properties of certain behavior influencing drugs such as LSD and how such drugs might be put to intelligence use this interest was prompted by reports that the Soviet Union was experimenting with such drugs and by

speculation that the confessions introduced during trials in the Soviet Union and other Soviet bloc countries during the late 1940s might have been elicited by the use of drugs or hypnosis great concern over Soviet and North Korean techniques in brainwashing Continued to be manifested into the 1950s. We'd know more about MK ultra today If not for the fact that the former CIA chief the daddy of all MK ultra daddies Sidney Gottlieb Destroyed most of the full descriptions of experiments conducted during the program when he retired in 1973 What we do know is surreal and shocking One of the stated intentions of MK ultra was to develop new methods and techniques for interrogation The CIA was also looking for ways to induce amnesia And how better to create the perfect assassin a side quest included developing ways to kill a person Without leaving any evidence that might suggest foul play Like putting the victim in a tightly sealed small room with a block of dry ice Which gives off toxic carbon monoxide fumes and then melts without a trace with a program like MK ultra Brute force and the will to do the job could only take you so far If mind control was the goal and mind-altering drugs were gonna have to be considered There was a 1956 program involving an alkaloid substance called bulbocat mean They dose prisoners into a catatonic state to test whether or not loss of memory or willpower might be a side effect Oh and the prisoners they didn't know that they were CIA guinea pigs Neither did members of the military who unknowingly participated Same went for some patients and state mental hospitals and while we're at it throw in some unwitting college students, too The CIA even experimented on their own people Another project embedded in MK ultra was codenamed artichoke To CIA agents in Russia were suspected of having turned double agent Ooh Cold war spy stuff the two men were dosed with sodium pentothal Aka truth serum and then hypnotized and interrogated both men had excellent recall under hypnosis Offering up detailed memories that went back 15 years Afterward neither agent had a single recollection about the interrogation the report generated by the CIA officers in charge described the experiment as extremely valuable We've done a handful of episodes true weird stuff about specific MK ultra programs One that operated out of brothels in San Francisco in New York Another involved long-term brainwashing of patients at a mental hospital in Montreal Some of it is so lurid and insane that you ask yourself. Wait a minute Did the CIA deliberately set this up so that no one would ever ever ever believe a single word Some folks make defending this sort of thing their whole personality the ends justified in this crowd People who will defend almost anything if you wrap it up in the flag, they were just doing their jobs They were patriots. They didn't know They knew in discussing the problem of getting the right psychiatrist to assist the CIA in an MK ultra experiment One official said of a candidate his ethics might be such that might not care to cooperate in certain more revolutionary phases of our project they knew Why else did agency director Sidney Gottlieb go on a spree of destroying everything?

He could lay his hands on as soon as he walked out the door a Man like Gottlieb is thinking about his place in history as he retires about legacy Gottlieb didn't want the truth of MK ultra to be his so Just what was Gottlieb's deputy? Dr. Robert Lashbrook doing at the Statler Hotel on November 28th 1953 and who the hell was Frank Olson the house Frank Olson was a scientist the son of Swedish immigrants Olson was born and raised in Wisconsin The boy was clearly brilliant But the family didn't have the kind of money it would take for Olson to chase his dreams all the way to a PhD He joined the Reserve Officers Training Corps to help pay for his schooling and then the US entered World War two not long after Olson was packed off to Fort Hood in Texas where he served as a captain in the US Army Chemical Corps The expression it's who you know well Olson's thesis advisor at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Ira Baldwin had been tapped by the army to run a secret program developing biological weapons Baldwin would later go on to mentor chemist spy and mastermind of the CIA's MK ultra program Sidney Gottlieb But in his new capacity as the head of the chemical warfare program One of Baldwin's first moves was to recruit Frank Olson to join his team at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland Olson agreed and the army signed off on the transfer Just a few months later the Army's Chemical Corps took over and established the secret biological warfare laboratories a Secret that was kept so well That the public had no idea that it even existed until January 1946 four months after VJ Day This was the kind of classified program that required Olson to bring the following document home for his wife Alice to sign She was his emergency contact It was called the Chemical Corps medical treatment and death form in the event of death I authorized the commanding officer at Camp Detrick, Maryland to make arrangements for and conduct the processing of my remains And to place them in a sealed casket, which shall not thereafter be opened in the fine print Frank Olson also authorized post-mortem examination of his remains to be made exclusively by proper army Representatives as their discretion that fine print would later come back to haunt his family When Olson was discharged from his army service, he stayed on at Fort Detrick as a civilian contractor He worked on programs like operation harness, which honestly sounds too crazy to be real It was a series of secret biological warfare trials carried out by the government of the United Kingdom in the Caribbean Olson along with colleagues from Fort Detrick made the trip to Antigua Rhesus macaque monkeys guinea pigs and sheep were loaded aboard dinghies anchored offshore The plan was to expose the animals to clouds of anthrax and Brucella bacteria The water was rougher than they planned for which meant the dinghies had to be anchored closer to shore Bad news for the island's inhabitants who would now also be inhaling anthrax and Brucella It involved Royal Navy ships towing a line of dinghies carrying crates of animals into a semicircle off Antigua Another vessel was then towed upwind to spray four or five pound bombs of the deadly germs over the dinghies Which were then brought back to land So that was the plan really?

Secret reports show that dreadful planning turned the tests into a joke Since 10% of the monkeys suffered from seasickness on the way out and 8% were dead by the time they got there It was far worse with the guinea pigs 2,225 died before the tests even began to cap it all more than 2,000 pounds of animal feed went bad and the sheep They had to shoot 500 out of 600 animals Making it all totally pointless was the fact that the equipment they brought to measure the bacteria in the air Malfunctioned due to interference from local radio signals They did congratulate themselves though that in spite of pretty much everything going wrong Only one member of the crew was made sick from the exposure couple years later in 1950 Olson worked on Operation sea spray This was a secret experiment conducted by the US Navy for seven days in September 1950 the Navy released two kinds of bacteria from a ship just off the shore of San Francisco the two kinds of bacteria were serratia marcesans and Bacillus globigii the army set up 43 monitoring stations around the city After a week it was determined that all 800,000 San Francisco residents had unknowingly inhaled about 5,000 particles Sure enough 14 days after the experiment concluded 11 people ended up in the hospital with very rare and serious urinary tract infections Such a weird inexplicable outbreak that it ended up in a medical journal One man died, of course neither the army or the Navy gave San Francisco any warning that they'd be spraying biowarfare agents at the city Frank Olson's career as a civilian contractor dovetailed with the beginning of the Cold War paranoia CIA leadership and senior military command were convinced that the Soviet Union was outpacing the US in terms of progress in chemical and biological warfare and so in 1949 the special operations division was formed Purpose to figure out how chemical and bioweapons could be deployed covertly Within a year Frank Olson was made acting chief of the special operations division somewhere along the way Olson was recruited into the CIA and Found himself assigned to the committee developing project artichoke What's A nice boy from Wisconsin doing in a secret chemical warfare program Getting so stressed out that he developed ulcers So much stress that in 1953 Olson stepped down from his position as chief of the special operations division But he didn't leave Because the SOD was now a research station for the CIA and Olson was a CIA guy Though it appears that maybe he shouldn't have been Olson just might have been too sensitive too tender-hearted for the work He also had issues with authority and made no secret of his firm opposition to any form of control scientific information by the military or otherwise This was apparently an opinion shared by many of his fellow scientists and military command was willing to deal with it Just so long as there was no question of Olson's loyalty to his country And there wasn't Olson's colleagues may not have found him the most likable or chill guy But no one questioned his intellect or integrity He could be tactless some said drank too much on occasion and got silly lacked diplomacy Could be that Olson was just an abrasive person or maybe He was just a bad fit for a job that required extremely elastic

Ethics All the fate lines leading to that cold November night at the Statler Hotel began converging in 1952 when Olson attended a conference on the use of psychochemicals as a new concept of warfare Also in attendance Dr. Sidney Gottlieb The conference was hosted by dr. L. Wilson green He was the man responsible for the special operations division at Fort Detrick and a real fan of mind-altering drugs covert ops you bet battlefield bring it on Sidney Gottlieb was fascinated though He later admitted that he didn't see how a war could be won without killing anyone or destroying property as green suggested but for smaller conflicts and certain other Situations was promising then green dropped his top-secret bombshell a new and previously unknown drug that caused hallucinations and even suicidal ideation Only the tiniest amount was needed to cause uneasiness vertigo restlessness difficulty of concentration sight disturbances a feeling of suffocation Hysteria unsteady and uncertain movements of the arms and legs and hallucinations those green said could be simple or Elaborate and complex he quoted one researchers experience flickering glittering glimmering scintillating rapid and slow blotting of colors sparks whirling traveling small dots Light flashes and sheet lighting and the name of this Incredible compound it is a derivative of ergot called lysergic acid diethylamide or as the Swiss researcher who discovered it called it LSD Dr. Green was especially hyped because as he explained it LSD produced mental abnormalities in all four of the categories prioritized by the military epilepsy manic depressive psychosis Psychoneurosis and toxic psychosis how to get this LSD to the target subjects Dissemination from a bomb or a generating device in the form of a colorless odorless vapor or fine dust like crop dusting Turning chemical or biological weapons into aerosols that could be dispersed either broadly crop dusting or more intimately via special fountain pen or eyeglass case and you'll never guess whose area of expertise was aerosols Frank Olson Olson specialty was the airborne distribution of biological germs Dr. Olson had developed a range of lethal aerosols in handy sized containers They were disguised as shaving cream and insect repellents they contained among other agents staph anteroxin a Crippling food poison the even more deadly Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis and most deadly of all Anthrax further weapons he was working on included a cigarette lighter which gave out an almost instant lethal gas A lipstick that would kill on contact with skin and a neat pocket spray for asthma sufferers that induced pneumonia So very James Bond Olson's passport was filling up with stamps England Germany Africa France Norway Speaking on condition of anonymity former officials at Fort Detrick said that Olson's work in Oslo may have been connected to experiments with psychoactive drugs on patients at mental hospitals and

on children who were categorized as disenfranchised war babies maybe all those stomach troubles he was having or starting to make sense and Then came the meeting held in one of the cottages at Deep Creek Lake in Maryland from box six folder marked Intelligence Olson Frank of the Richard B. Cheney files at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library Dr. Frank a Olson biochemist was a civilian employee of the army working at Fort Detrick in a cooperative effort with the CIA on November 19 1953 at one of the periodic meetings for Detrick and CIA personnel a Dosage of LSD was placed by CIA personnel in drinks consumed by dr. Olson and others All of whom were members of the group prior to receiving the LSD Dr. Olson had participated in discussions where the testing of such substances on unsuspecting subjects was agreed to in principle however Neither dr. Olson or any of the others was made aware that they had been given LSD until about 20 minutes after the fact on the morning of November 20th Olson returned home to Maryland He was behaving oddly ignoring his children refusing to eat He told his wife that they were trying to poison him They were putting something in the food He was acting like a man scared out of his mind at one point He nearly sobbed I've made a terrible mistake Frank also told his wife that he planned to resign from Fort Detrick Over the course of the next several days Frank Olson experienced Significant side effects to the LSD he'd been given The decision was made to bring him to New York City to be seen by dr. Harold a Abramson Who served as a CIA consultant on all things?

Pharmaceutical on November 24th 25th and 26. He met with dr. Abramson Olson came home early from work on November 24th accompanied by a co-worker John Stubbs his wife Alice was surprised to see him and then shocked when he told her that Stubbs was there because They're afraid I might hurt you Alice alarmed and panicked couldn't get any of her questions answered Frank was hurriedly packing a bag and assuring her that everything would be fine in just a few days fine Everything Frank Olson was hustled off to New York accompanied by his boss at the Special Operations Division Vincent Ruitt and CIA chemist dr. Robert Lashbrook After seeing him on the 27th. Dr. Abramson believed that Hospitalization would be in dr. Olson's best interest Arrangements were made for a hospital room near dr. Olson's home in the Washington area But his home could not be prepared until the following day Consequently, dr. Lashbrook of the CIA and dr. Olson stayed at the Hotel Statler in New York on the night of November 27th Lashbrook described Olson as being cheerful and chatty during cocktails and dinner Lashbrook and Olson Retired at about 11 p.m They occupied separate twin beds in the same room on the 10th floor At approximately 2 30 Saturday morning Lashbrook was awakened by a loud noise He reported that Olson had crashed through the closed window blind and closed window and had fallen to his death You One phone call had been placed from room 1018 a of the Statler Hotel on the night of November 28th 1953 a phone call made to a Dr. Harold Abramson at South Oaks Hospital on Long Island We know this because in those days Hotels employed switchboard operators Sometimes the Statler's night manager admitted if things were slow The operator might stay on the line and listen in and she listened in to that brief call What did she hear?

The guest in room 1018 a said well, he's gone That's too bad Sidney Gottlieb got a little smack on the hand from the director of the CIA Alan Dulles Really Sidney you should have considered the rights of the individual before you spiked their drinks with LSD naughty boy Robert Lashbrook didn't get a smack weirdly since it turned out that he was the one who dosed Frank Olson on December 9th 1953 the General Counsel for the CIA Issued a single paragraph regarding the death of scientist Frank Olson It is my conclusion that the death of dr. Olson is the result of circumstances arising out of an experiment undertaken in the course of his official duties for the US government and that there is Therefore a direct causal connection Between that experiment and his death I have been authorized to state that this is the official position of the Central Intelligence Agency Frank Olson died because Sidney Gottlieb and his crew spooks got sloppy But they just couldn't come out and admit that there was too much at stake Too many powerful people who were too allergic to accountability to risk revealing just what was happening inside Fort Detrick the army the CIA the government itself Plus these were the early days of MK ultra and that was one heavily protected secret No Whether he was pushed or he jumped it didn't matter Frank Olson story would be Depressed scientist goes through a window the end Yet those last few days of his life in Manhattan Frank Olson allegedly begged Lashbrook and Ruit to let him go. He would disappear. He promised he swore he pleaded Please please just let me go That would never be allowed Because scared as Frank Olson clearly was of something his superiors were equally scared of him Frank Olson knew things had seen and participated in things that were meant to stay secret Olson do most if not all of the special operation division secrets He had repeatedly visited Germany and brought home pictures from Heidelberg in Berlin where the US military maintained clandestine interrogation centers Olson said colleague and friend Norman Cornyer Wasn't afraid to speak his mind. He pulled no punches and that said Cornyer is what scared them With every passing day Olson's doubts had only deepened in spring 1953 he visited the top-secret microbiological research establishment at Port and Don in Wiltshire where government scientists were studying the effects of sarin and other nerve gases on 6 May a volunteer subject a 20 year old soldier was dosed with sarin there began foaming at the mouth Collapsed into convulsions and died an hour later Afterward Olson spoke about his discomfort with a psychiatrist who helped direct the research William Sargant a month later Olson was in Germany where he visited a CIA safe house in Stuttgart and Witnessed men dying often in agony from the weapons. He'd made Olson paid William Sargant a visit in the UK immediately afterward his distress describing what he had seen was enormous To Sargant it seemed that Olson was no longer inclined to keep what he knew secret

Sargant put it all in a report for his superiors knowing the information would be shared with the CIA Knowing what that could mean Spy versus spy a Sergeant said his country in the USA had common interests to protect Sargant was just doing his job and now We're in the dining room of the Statler Hotel on November 28th 1953 Olson had not only accepted that he would be spending some time as a psychiatric patient According to Lashbrook. He was looking forward to it Already had a list of books picked out to read Lashbrook later said that Frank seemed almost like his old self after dinner the two men returned to room 1018 a Frank Olson washed his socks in the bathroom sink and draped them over the shower curtain rod to dry The two men watched TV for a bit and then at approximately 225 a.m We've got a jumper The CIA's security arm got busy as soon as Olson's body hit the sidewalk The NYPD would have to be encouraged not to investigate and to help the CIA clean it all up Lashbrook would be given a cover job No one not even the most dogged beat copper reporter would ever be able to ferret out that he worked for the CIA As Alice Olson and her children were being notified of Frank's death Remember, this was Thanksgiving weekend CIA agent James McCord was in room 1018 a at the Statler getting the story from Lashbrook Super deep poli-sci history nerds are like wait James McCord one of the Watergate burglars Yep, one in the same This country got some lowdown dirty history and every once in a while the light gets flicked on and you can see that cockroaches scurry Cockroaches, we didn't even know knew each other much less were in cahoots Anyway, the CIA was successful in covering up. Well, not Frank Olson's death but all of the circumstances of his work and Any possible connection that could be made to the CIA or the military?

And they would have gotten away with it, too If it wasn't for those meddling kids at the once-great Washington Post in June 1975 the paper ran a wild story about an army scientist who'd been unwittingly dosed with LSD by the CIA and then throw himself out a hotel window while that Rockefeller Commission report didn't identify Olson by name the location date and Occupation of the dead man made it clear just exactly who they were referring to You can imagine the family's horror and their freshly reawakened grief and trauma Alice Olson responded with a press conference of her own It was a relief. She said to learn that her husband had not suffered some mysterious unexplained mental breakdown The Rockefeller Commission report stated that Frank Olson had a history of instability Alice and her son Eric were adamant that that was untrue and then she announced that the Olson family was filing a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the CIA Gerald Ford was president at the time and his chief of staff was a guy named Donald Rumsfeld Rumsfeld along with his deputy Dick Cheney were like this lawsuit can't happen It can't it will give Alice Olson's attorneys an opportunity to dig up the kinds of secrets that no one in government could risk getting out highly classified secrets Dick Cheney already well on his way to becoming the role model for Batman villains everywhere recommended that President Ford make a public expression of regret and Expressive willingness to meet personally with mrs. Olson and her children from box six folder marked intelligence Olson Frank of the Richard B Cheney files at the Gerald R Ford presidential library the CIA General Counsel rendered an opinion that the death resulted from Circumstances arising out of an experiment undertaken in the course of his official duties for the u.s.

Government and Cheney also acknowledged the CIA never made contact with the family prior to the publication of the Rockefeller report no government Representatives ever disclosed the full details Concerning dr. Olson's death and they never would have Not without the combined pressure from the Rockefeller Commission and the press The Olson family would never have known the truth Although only a creature who just got to earth would believe that they know the full truth now The Cold War CIA and the entire MK ultra program is like a labyrinth Inside a nesting doll wrapped in a cipher No matter how many threads you untangle Somehow you never can get the knot quite undone President Ford invited Alice Olson and her three grown children to the White House on July 21st 1975 it was a first no family of any dead CIA Officer had ever been beckoned into the Oval Office to receive an apology on behalf of the u.s. Government Not long after that historic occasion Then director of the CIA William Colby also met with the Olson's to apologize It was a terrible thing. That should never have happened. He said White House lawyers offered the Olson family $750,000 in exchange for dropping its legal claims after some hesitation the family accepted Congress passed a special bill approving the payment That was the end of it or it should have been Alice Olson died of pancreatic cancer on August 26th 1993 For the rest of her life. It was said that she was troubled by what her late husband knew particularly about the use of biological weapons in the Korean War son Eric a Harvard trained psychologist had been skeptical for decades that his father had died by suicide a 1984 conversation with Sidney Gottlieb hadn't gone as the older spy had hoped because instead of persuading reassuring Eric Olson Gottlieb's words only increased his uneasiness and on June 2nd 1994 Eric Olson stood by his father's grave as the casket was exhumed a Law school spent a month studying Olson's body His tests for toxins in the body. He reported had turned up nothing the wound pattern. However was curious Stars had found no glass shards on the victim's head or neck as might be expected if he had dived through a window Most intriguingly although Olson had reportedly landed on his back the skull above his left Eye was disfigured. I would venture to say that this hematoma is singular evidence of the possibility that dr Olson was struck a stunning blow to the head by some person or instrument prior to his exiting through the window of room 1018 a stars concluded Later, he was more emphatic. I think Frank Olson was intentionally deliberately with malice aforethought thrown out of that window It's interesting and ironic That it was the CIA's own mastermind Sidney Gottlieb who planted the seed of suspicion in Eric Olson's mind Perhaps Gottlieb forgot that he was talking to an expert in human psychology and not merely a grieving son Who knows as Eric Olson later said it was at that moment that the determination?

To show that he Sidney Gottlieb played a role in murdering my father was born But why do it at all? Why drug the man and pitch him through a window? Surely Frank Olson wasn't the first government employee with a security clearance to not have what it takes for all that dirty wet black ops work Are you telling me the folks who can't cut it just get offed?

That'd surely be the HR department from hell Not saying it isn't possible because nothing's off the table with this clown car full of demons, but There might be another reason my Frank Olson went through that window One that has nothing to do with LSD. Well, that's not exactly true. Hold that thought thing is No one was ever supposed to know what really happened in a place called Ponce in Esprit in 1951 But Olson knew he was part of it. He was talking too much So much so that a neighbor who also worked at Fort Detrick reported him to security so Ponce in Esprit a little township in southern France a place about as far from the secret biochemical weapons labs at Fort Detrick as you could get Business would Frank Olson having a place like that Well, that'd be CIA business. And if you love a coincidence You'll love this one See cuz there was like this weird outbreak in Ponce in Esprit. It was an outbreak of the effect it were Hallucinating seeing sounds hearing colors a mass psychotic episode almost like a Mass-massive trip Wait just a minute Are you telling me that those zany CIA pranksters dosed an entire?

French village with acid We're gonna fly air Mk. Ultra to France and take a look on the next true weird stuff Special thanks to our voice talents on this episode Sam Moore Kary "Doc" Bowser Lamar Richardson Erin Cox and Don Morgan Sherry I would love to ask you a question, but I don't even know where to begin with this. This is so terribly disturbing You know, this is one of those that was rumored and whispered about and people today still act like it's unresolved but I'm here to tell you that in 1975 the United States apologized to the Olson family for the Dosing of their beloved husband and father and him going through a window what they didn't admit to was did he fall did he jump was he pushed and Here's the scary thing and we're gonna see this. This is gonna come up again in the next episode when we head over to France Um Like I've never done acid because I've never done LSD Because you know ABC after-school specials taught me that spiders would come out of my hands and I will claw my own eyes out But one of the common Things that you see in people that are tripping balls, especially people that don't understand what's happening to them Is this jumping through windows?

Mm-hmm. It's this defenestration is what it's called is apparently like pretty common thing and There are different theories on it that I've seen one is that it's not suicide at all. It's folks who think they can fly Yeah, which is even sadder so Yeah, the Frank Olson story it's such a A Heartbreak because here was a farm boy from Wisconsin the son of immigrants who?

somehow He was so brilliant and somehow Thanks to the army was able to get an education that put him in a position where his talents would be exploited to make bio and chemical weapons and He really he really wasn't the guy for that He was so troubled by it. He he was a mess. He he could not make peace with What he did for a living and he was talking and acting out and he did have ulcers and he was miserable and he was depressed and he was a as far as like the CIA and the Department of Defense was concerned. He was a walk-in liability Mm-hmm Yeah, there's a reason why they call them spooks at the CIA. Yeah So the meeting where he was dosed he wasn't the only CIA Employee that was given LSD Most of the people there were dosed But Frank had a bad reaction to the drug and this whole here's what we're here's what I don't think We'll ever know although it's knowable or was knowable before Gottlieb went buckwild in the warehouse with the files What we'll never know is What part of the trip to New York was?

Legitimate or was the whole thing designed to get him there to kill him to take him out of the picture because he really did go meet with Abramson who was the psychologist psychiatrist of choice for the agency and He really had accepted that he needed some sort of care so You could then go. Well, maybe his death. Maybe he thought he could fly and his death really was an accident or did Lashbrook and and Gottlieb and the whole Organization put him into the Statler Hotel take him to see dr. Abramson, but there was never any intention to get him help He was always going to be Taken off the game board. What do you think to me?

It feels like they took him to New York for the purpose of killing him. That's just the feeling that I had by all that That's the feeling I had too and I kept asking myself girl You know how you feel about the CIA the Cold War CIA and Gottlieb and these guys are you are you just you know? Are you being fair? But when you look at the totality of the days Leading up to that death in 1953. Mm-hmm. I'm with you. It feels like a setup. Yeah So the thing with Frank Olson I've this story has hovered on the periphery, you know, since I've been old enough to be a giant weirdo and Of course, I always thought something nefarious went down with the man But I learned things working on this episode that just have you it just you're like what?

So Sidney Gottlieb now keep in mind that when Gottlieb destroyed the MK ultra files these were paper files Yeah, and and Gottlieb knew that See once upon a time in America. This is gonna sound like such science fiction, but once upon a time in America we had functional Government we had a functional Congress functional sentence Senate we had branches of government that were co-equal that served to check and balance each other. We actually did have Some guardrails was there corruption? Yes and lies Yes And terrible things done in the name of the American people that would keep the American people up at night all true right, but we had a more functional government that we are currently enjoying in the year of our Lord 2026 and so Gottlieb knew that He was in danger of having everything that the CIA had done in MK ultra exposed by this Congressional investigation and the the only thing to do would be to destroy the files So he did he literally drove to the warehouse. This is how the world was before we had digital He drove to the warehouse and just shredded and burned stuff. It's gone forever Not everything he didn't get everything but he got a lot Mm-hmm so there there are things that we're never going to know because they were in those files and as I'm as I'm talking about CIA director Sidney Gottlieb Destroying files does anything else come to mind right now like in today's headlines, maybe some other highly controversial files It does um it does You know The thing about this is The they must have had some kind of the wife the family, you know having some kind of evidence to be able to hold the government accountable for this and $750,000 in 1975 money is almost five million dollars. So it's a lot of money even for the government. That's a lot of money That's not something you usually budget for So it's it's a it's a lot of money and so they must have known but you you have to ask yourself this question When it comes to dosing people or killing that soldier with sarin gas or whatever it is that they're doing It's not just one person that's making that decision It's a whole bunch of people that are making those kinds of decisions and do they?

Rationalize or because they feel like they're part of a crowd making that decision that that absolves them of some responsibility I don't know how you could do those things Experiment on humans dose people without their knowledge and not have that keep you up at night My guess is it's a combination of things and it's the same combination a combination of things That we have playing out in real time today. Here we go. There are people Who are Just devoid of empathy sociopaths even psychopaths, right?

Look at the rate of psycho psychopathy and in the c-suites in American corporations. These are people that are very good at making calculations based on You know net gains Without so much concern for human life So you've got some of that and you can't tell me that there isn't some of that in the Cold War CIA There is but you have this other thing, too You have people that are a lot of the the folks that were recruited in including Frank Olson We're military and one of the things that makes the military function is an authoritative command structure You follow orders you signed up You took an oath and you follow orders and you don't question those orders because at your level what you don't know what you don't know Right, and then there's that whole thick layer of patriotism that gets smeared on top of it And you you can't possibly Understate the paranoia that that gripped this country during the Cold War years People were so convinced that the Soviet Union was going to nuke us the kingdom come that almost anything was justifiable To prevent that from happening and so you can kind of understand how even you know Are a regular ordinary decent human being who's been recruited as a scientist for the the DOD or the CIA?

You can see them buying that Well, I absolutely want to save America for my children and grandchildren Like I don't fault those people for their for their firm belief that they're doing They're committing wrongs in the name of a greater good, right? I think if you if you don't understand that then you're just like clueless about what even the military is What you if you're gonna if you're gonna go across the world and blow up other people's children in the name of protecting your own Children, do you see yeah, you see that kind of weird cognitive dissonance Yeah, and one of the things that Frank Olson was really bad at was that he was very very bad At holding two conflicting beliefs in his mind without going mad He it drove him crazy. It made him so depressed and so erratic because he couldn't reconcile how you could commit atrocities, but it would be for the good and So people like that don't don't tend to last long in a place like Gottlieb's CIA Where terrible things you just look at the MK ultra stuff we've covered on this show Terrible things were done to human beings. Look at what happened to that man at Oak Ridge Who was in the car accident and they injected him with plutonium and tormented him for weeks?

Look at what happened at Ravenscroft in Montreal with the mind-control experiments. Look at what happened to children they were pulling orphans out of orphanages and experimenting on their little bodies to see how much radium and And uranium and polonium poisoning they could take But these people defended that With the idea that this is how we save the world. You got to break a few eggs, etc. Etc Frank Olson just it wasn't good at that and that just goes to show you that you can be brilliant and extremely adept at One aspect of your job and Then fail completely at another brilliant in the laboratory troubled by the morality I Think that makes him such a tragic Figure such a tragic character. I like I like the term you use elastic ethics Yeah, I mean that's what you have to have and the funny thing about your ethics and this is just part of being a person some people You know, they hold on to the idealism. They had his children their whole lives but for most of us that that shit gets denit and chipped and scraped and scratched and All of our I mean all of us or most of us I would say Have some elastic ethics, you know, you'll see people that are absolute a plus solid citizens But if they get home from the store and they weren't charged for that pack of pork chops Are they really going back?

little things little nicks and cuts and you get enough of those little nicks and cuts on your conscience and your ethics and your Your honesty and it gets easier and easier to Stretch and of course you've you've rational out rationalized at all. Oh Yeah, you were saving the world the Cold War CIA was saving the world and they had an almost bottomless budget to do it and they had a government all three branches carefully looking the other way Because you know, we got to bend and break some rules if we're gonna save the world Don't be you hear the expressions people say don't be such a choir boy Yeah, you know and there was also this in Dutch in on Fort Detrick and Olson's world There was a little bit of a macho component to it like toughen up man Yeah, this is the real work of this is the real work of democracy. This is the real work of liberation And it's it's ugly and it's messy and if you can't cut it, well, how many men want to be told they can't cut it?

It's a tough thing. Yeah, it's a tough thing, especially if you're a young man and you're not fully formed And if you if you look at Olson's career journey, so, you know Wholesome farm boy and he he joins the reserves because that's how he can get his education paid for Hey, that's an old story, isn't it? How many times have you heard that?

The water got hotter by degrees for Frank, you know, he's in Fort Hood and and you know, he's he's not doing anything in Fort Hood That's keeping him from sleeping at night. He's He's really excited by the work and and then another thing happens Baldwin his mentor Baldwin is shooting up through the ranks in the in the covert bio and chemical warfare program and We're all people we all have egos It feels good to be singled out by a very important person and to be told you're our guy You're the one Won't help us save the world you're young you're idealistic you literally just got off the cow wagon and These very powerful men that you admire are telling you. Hey you have what it takes to be one of us I Don't have any illusions about how strong I would be in the face of that. I've often said I'm so grateful that no one ever Offered me a price for my soul So I never had to figure out what that price would be Um, I thought it was very interesting that that name James McCord came up because I did remember him from doing Watergate things That that was a name that came up Yeah, can I just tell you I don't know what I go ahead I Enjoy bumping into Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney All over to weird stuff Dick Cheney, man. He's everywhere He's everywhere. Were you not surprised to see rummy and dick? No, I wasn't actually No, I wasn't Youthful with all their hair and tight waistlines. Yeah Rumsfeld and Cheney have had their hands in everything for longer than I've been alive Longer than you've been alive. I mean, it's crazy town What Cheney and Rumsfeld Rumsfeld were involved in?

It's the same cast of characters just recycling into different roles and it shows you to how power works because for a lot of people They first discovered rummy and dick in the Bush administration Remember? Oh, yeah Mm-hmm, but turns out that dick dick Cheney Basically shot out of his mother's womb in a suit headed for Washington because he's just been there for ever Yeah, now thing and I guess it's because of the kinds of personalities that they have that they are well suited to involving themselves in such activities and I think to You know, I don't want to like paint all of these people with just the villain brush Although that's fair. I think to that it It's easy for us from this perspective to judge them so harshly Because we don't understand how many hours and days Led up to those decisions where they really did think that they were doing something important right for their country or for humanity very few people are all bad, you know, and There's nothing more dangerous Than an idealist who becomes cynical and has power That's a dangerous character. Nobody is all bad but if you have somebody who is a sociopath or a psychopath who has found a way to Integrate themselves into some kind of a system where they appear like they're normal. Let's say You know, they have no problems with doing any of this stuff Oh, no, not even a they sleep like babies They do and and if you can I mean I've been watching this play out on the political and government stage my whole life This idea that well, this was a profoundly evil and shitty thing that we've done, but hear me out Hear me out. We had good reasons. Good reasons, right?

And there's a lot like this was another one of those This was another one of those where I had to leave a lot out including Olson's conviction that Chemical and bioweapons had been used in the Korean War And and I that's just the first that I had heard that I was not aware that that happened in the Korean War He was that was maybe one of the biggest Challenges that his superiors had with him because like you just said boy, that's the first time I'm hearing about it and they would like it to remain that way and If you think about when so Olson, you know died in the 50s We were freshly exiting that conflict and It was a very unpopular war The American people were very ticked off by the Korean conflict And I don't think they would have enjoyed opening their morning papers and pour in their milk on their Cheerios to discover that The American people had launched bio and chemical weapons in North Korea something. This is yeah Some secrets need to stay secret and especially since I thought we resolved this at the end of World War one. Ha ha ha ha ha Everything is a lie. Everything's alive There were a lot of um, there were a lot of avenues in Olson's work like it at Fort Detrick, which I Think now people know about it. But at the time that this was happening, you have to understand that Americans had no idea there even was a chemical or biological warfare program. Mm-hmm. They didn't know You know much less that it was in Maryland at Fort Detrick, right or that it was a joint operation Between the army and the CIA and you know, whatever whatever other the Navy was involved I mean look at Operation Harness. Have you ever heard anything so batshit? I mean your tax dollars No, that was such a debacle Oh my god, and and oh and by the way, the people of Antigua who were exposed to anthrax and Brucella bacteria Yeah, good luck to you Islanders How about how about the experiment in San Francisco?

How about that? The experiments you were describing are so insane and so haphazard and so Non-scientific in their approach it one. It makes you wonder who decided that they could do this Hey a clown car full of demons because my answer if you are Let's say you're doing this and you're saying all of this is because it's the good of the country or whatever But but this was this was even this was just haphazard. This was just reckless. It wasn't even It was it was too goofy to be sinister the San Francisco thing so the one bacteria, which This is over We know now that that bacteria is linked to these really terrible urinary infections kidney infections and Damage and even death. Okay, we know that now But at the time that this happened Suddenly there's this outbreak of this rare and bizarre Medical this anomaly in the city of San Francisco so anomalous That it ended up in the medical journals. Oh, here's a mystery Well one a mystery to the CIA or the Navy was it?

Because they were blasting it off the coast of California and there are people there are people right now that are like well That's what we have to do. No, that is not what we have to do. We do not need to spray Biological warfare weapons at unsuspecting citizens. That is not what we need to do not citizens of this country So Please stop what we need to do is practice the art of governing in and and Miller and I'm in our military as Ethically as possible with the understanding that there will be Lines cook that are crossed, but if we're just gonna say fuck it. Yeah, just spray toxins at the people What are we doing? Like that's nuts. You can't defend that. No So Sherry I am very excited about the next episode that's coming up I will say that okay, so let's talk so You know, um, I'm the Frank Olson thing has been hovering around us our whole life Oh the CIA scientists that was tripping balls who went through a window wasn't murder well This weird outbreak in France is less known here But it's a Hell of a coin there are two things about the outbreak at Paulson esprit And that's why we're gonna do a whole episode about it that are fascinating one is well First of all, the entire town went and seen Hmm First of all, why was Frank Olson anywhere near Paulson esprit?

It's a great question. And it's an also interesting coincident and also, why Did the man who discovered LSD show up in Paulson esprit to see if he couldn't help? Hmm with the cleanup Sandoz laboratories where LSD was discovered and Sandoz was the only place that you could get LSD and the CIA had a standing order with Sandoz for LSD Sandoz laboratory is in Switzerland. Just a hop skipping a jump from Paulson esprit in France and Albert Hoffman lived and worked Switzerland for Sandoz So it could just all be a coincidence Sometimes if you get enough coincidences lined up you can kind of blur your eyes a little bit and turn it into a story Right, but it's a hell of a coincidence now remember in this this is going to be important because where when Hoffman synthesized LSD lysergic acid diethylamide When he synthesized that do you remember what he synthesized it from I don't know ergot Ergot is a fungus that grows on green and the outbreak in Paulson esprit Started with contaminated bread from a bakery so for the longest time It was supposed that This whole town lost its mind because of contaminated grain But there were so many things that at that did not add up to support that and so many weird coincidences and so much bizarre weird loose threads including a Passing mention to Paulson esprit in a CIA memo about Frank Olson So, it's probably nothing y'all know your government doesn't lie to you It would never do anything nefarious God bless the USA and all that so it's probably just But let's find out together on the next episode of true weird And if you listen to us on Apple podcasts hit the plus button in the top right corner And now it helps an independent podcast like ours to get discovered and we really appreciate it if you subscribe rate and review true weird stuff hit our website true weird stuff calm for show notes and Photos and videos when we have it and bonus content everything true weird is waiting for you at true weird stuff Calm and follow true weird stuff on Instagram true weird stuff is in Now! Media production Our executive producer is Anthony Garcia The show is written and hosted by me Sheri Lynch along with my deeply weird director Max Sweeten our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser Additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr original graphics by Kevin Nash original artworks by Olivia Axland true weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and Copyright 2026 Now! Media all rights reserved all wrongs remembered