The CIA’s House of Horrors: Frank Olson’s Fatal Trip
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Counterpunch
Posted: June 5th, 2026
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/10/the-cias-house-of-ho...
On November 18, 1953, a group of seven men gathered for a meeting. Three were from the US Army’s biological weapons center at Fort Detrick; the other four were CIA officers from the Agency’s Technical Services Division. [On] November 19, the scientists shared an after-dinner glass of Cointreau. The CIA’s Dr. Sidney Gottlieb had decided to spike the Cointreau with a heavy dose of LSD. Gottlieb didn’t tell the officers they had been drugged. One member of the group, Dr. Frank Olson from Fort Detrick ... became “psychotic.” Olson was the army’s foremost expert on biological warfare. Sidney Gottlieb’s deputy, Richard Lashbrook ... took Olson back to New York. Late that night, Lashbrook claimed, he awoke to see Olson run across the room and jump through a curtained and closed window. Olson crashed down to the street from the tenth-floor room. Lashbrook immediately began to cover the CIA’s tracks. His first phone call was not to a hospital or the police, but to Gottlieb. When the police arrived, Lashbrook told them ... that Olson might have killed himself because of job-related stress. Eric Olson was present when his father’s body was exhumed. The forensic pathologist, Dr. James Starrs ... found a deep bruise on Olson’s forehead. The bruise was severe enough to have rendered Olson unconscious, but probably didn’t result from the fall. Starrs also discovered no evidence of cuts from broken glass that should have been present had Olson leaped out a closed window.
Note: Explore the Frank Olson Project to find out more about this tragic case. Learn more about the CIA's MK ULTRA program. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.
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