On November 28, 1953, the wages of truth were paid to US Army Captain Frank Olson when he fell to his death from the window of a hotel in New York City.

Frank had been a biological warfare specialist employed at Fort Detrick in Maryland during the Korean War. While the specifics of his work have never been revealed, he was clearly involved in biological weapons (BW) research, including the use of anthrax as a BW weapon.

On or about Wednesday morning, November 18, 1953, Frank unknowingly ingested LSD which had been put into his drink by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb at a retreat for members of the CIA's Special Operations Division. Following this dose of LSD, Frank became depressed, and he subsequently expressed a desire to get out of the germ warfare business. Ultimately he was taken to New York City to see a CIA psychiatrist for treatment of his LSD-induced mental state. On November 28, he fell from the window of the hotel where he was staying and died on the sidewalk below.

His family originally was not informed about the dose of LSD; the official story was that in his depressed mental state Frank had jumped out the window causing his own death. However, following the Church Committee hearings of 1975 into the domestic activities of the CIA, his family learned about the LSD episode. Frank’s body later was exhumed, and an independent autopsy was performed. It was then discovered that Frank’s body had injuries that must have occurred prior to his plunge from the window, suggesting that Frank had been assaulted in the room and thrown out the window to his death.

Why was Frank Olson killed?

During the Korean War, the North Koreans and the Chinese had accused the United States of using BW weapons, including anthrax. Some captured Air Force personnel, including officers, had confessed to the use of BW and other atrocities in Korea. The United States has always denied the use of BW, but there is credible evidence that BW weapons were indeed used during that conflict (see The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea by Stephen Lyon Endicott and Edward Hagerman for a discussion of the evidence).

If the United States had used biological weapons during the Korean War, Frank Olson would have known about it. When the captured Air Force personnel who had signed the confessions were repatriated in the fall of 1953, the United States asserted that they had been tortured and “brainwashed” and that their confessions therefore had been “false”. Frank Olson’s change of heart, LSD-drugging by the CIA, and death occurred shortly after the repatriated prisoners had recanted their confessions. It is possible that the chain of events leading to Frank's death was intended to silence him so that additional facts regarding America’s use of BW in Korea would never be known.

In the July 2, 2008, issue of The New York Times, there was an article entitled China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo. According to the article (which is still available from the NYT website), our heroic interrogators at Guantánamo have been using enhanced interrogation techniques similar to those used during the Korean War to extract “false” confessions from Air Force personnel regarding germ warfare and other atrocities.

What if those confessions had not been false? What if retraction of the “false” confessions following repatriation occurred under threat of court martial for aiding the enemy or treason? What if Frank Olson was murdered by his own government to cover up its war crimes? Would that not mean that “enhanced interrogation” does in fact work, and explain our government’s dogged insistence that its use be continued?

The July 2, 2008, New York Times article included a link to a study report entitled Communist Attempts To Elicit “False” Confessions From Air Force Prisoners Of War by Albert D. Biderman, M.A. The final sentence of that report reads as follows:

“Unlike the cynical Nazis who merely perpetrated the Big Lie, the Chinese Communist personnel whom our prisoners encountered in Korea were required to live the Big Lie.”

I ask you, who actually is required to live the Big Lie: the Chinese, the North Koreans, or the citizens of the United States? The fact that Frank Olson was paid the wages of truth should help you answer that question.

[By the way, when Frank Olson’s family sued the federal government for his wrongful death, it appears that President Ford’s chief of staff and a senior White House assistant were key players in the discussions and negotiations which followed. You’ve probably heard of them – Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.]