FCG Contact info:
Telephone:
(202) 546-3732
(202) 546-3799
FAX:
(202) 543-3156
Postal address:
THE FUND FOR
CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT
122 MARYLAND AVENUE, N.E.
WASHINGTON D.C. 20002
Email FCG’s Director,
Conrad Martin:
FunConGov@aol.com
Web sites:
The Fund for Constitutional Government
The FCG’s Investigative Journalism Project
How to help
Funds are urgently needed to continue the work involved in research, public education, and pursuit of legal remedies in this very difficult matter.
Contributions to the Frank Olson Legacy Project can be made through The Fund for Constitutional Government in Washington.
The FCG is acting as the fiscal sponsor for the The Frank Olson Legacy Project. A statement of purpose for this project is provided below.
The Fund for Constitutional Government
Contributions are tax-deductible for the contributor, and the FCG retains no overhead costs.
Checks should be made out to:
“FCG/Frank Olson Legacy Project.”
Please notify the FCG by phone or email when a contribution has been mailed.
Email: Fund for Constitutional Government
Please also notify Eric Olson by email when a contribution has been mailed.
The Fund for Constitutional
Government is a publicly supported, charitable, nonprofit corporation
established in 1974 to expose and correct corruption in the federal government
and other major national institutions through research and public education.
The Fund and its Board of Directors believe that this country's leaders
and decision makers should be held to principles and standards set forth
in the Constitution.
The Investigative Journalism Project is an ongoing vehicle through which FCG provides financing and encouragement to journalists committed to uncovering stories of corruption in government and violations of constitutional principles. Over $350,000 has been granted to print and broadcast journalists in the past thirteen years. The average grant size is $1,000 to $3,000, although there have been exceptions, most notably for an Emmy Award-winning television documentary about Iran-Contra, produced by Charlie Stuart in 1988
.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
RUSSELL D. HEMENWAY
CHAIRPERSON
ANNE B. ZILL
PRESIDENT
STEVEN AFTERGOOD
JACK BLUM
MICHAEL CAVALLO
PATRICIA DERIAN
MARION EDEY
FRAMCES T/ FARENTHOLD
HAMILTON FISH III
A. ERNEST FITZGERALD
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
STEWARD R. MOTT
NANCY RAMSEY
SAM SMITH
ALICE TEPPER-MARLIN
ROBERT WALTERS
ROBERT E. WHITE
THE
FUND FOR
CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT
122
MARYLAND AVENUE, N.E.
WASHINGTON D.C. 20002
(202) 546-3799
FAX: (202) 543-3156
FunConGov@aol.com
February 2, 1998
Dear Grantsmaker:
The Fund for Constitutional Government is pleased to act as the fiscal
sponsor for the Frank Olson Legacy Project, Eric Olson’s investigation
of the questionable circumstances surrounding the death of his father.
I have enclosed a copy of our 501(c)(3) letter for your files As fiscal sponsor, The Fund for Constitutional Government agrees to accept all financial, legal and administrative responsibility for this project. If I can be of further assistance, or if you require any additional information, I can be reached at (202) 546-3799.
Sincerely,
Tracy L. Glisson
FCG SecretaryThe FCG
is a 501(c)(3) corporation.
Contributions are deductible for tax purposes
The
Frank Olson Legacy Project
Fund for Constitutional
Government; Project for Investigative Journalism
Eric Olson, PhD
1. Background of
the project
2. Purpose
3. Project description
1. Background
It is probably fair
to say that no project undertaken by the American government in the Cold
War period was more diametrically opposed to democratic, constitutional
values than MK-ULTRA. That project’s roots go back to experiments
with truth serums and strategies for interrogations conducted by the OSS
in the days of Wild Bill Donovan. But it was not until the early 1950’s,
when the OSS had metamorphosed into the CIA, that unsupervised, unethical
experimentation in techniques to manipulate the human mind, and to control
human behavior, became a major strategic preoccupation within the American
intelligence establishment. In a speech given at Princeton in early 1953
Allen Dulles called “mind warfare” the most strategically important
battlefield of the Cold War, and asserted that the United States must
do whatever was required to win in this arena. Richard Helms, who became
a principle architect of the programs gathered under the umbrella of “MK-ULTRA”
to insure this supremacy, was later to say that "there is no answer
to the moral issues" raised by the experiments that were carried
out to win the mind control war.
In late 1953 my father
became a casualty of MK-ULTRA. The circumstances surrounding his death
were so closely guarded within the CIA that for more than two decades
my family remained unaware that there was any explanation at all for my
father’s fatal after-midnight plunge through a closed window of a
New York hotel room. Then in June of 1975 a front-page article in the
Washington Post reported that the Rockefeller Commission’s investigation
of the CIA had uncovered a suicide of an unnamed Army scientist that had
resulted from an unwitting MK-ULTRA LSD experiment.
The anonymity of
that reported suicide, which we later confirmed to be my father, was an
indication—to which we paid all-too-little heed at the time—that
my father’s death was being repressed even as it was coming to light.
Had the external circumstances of that “suicide” not fitted
the story of my father’s death so precisely, we would still not know
that the CIA was involved in my father’s death.
The
back yard press conference in which my family demanded full disclosure
of the details of my father’s death led to a presidential apology
in the Oval Office, and then to a lunch with William Colby in his seventh
floor CIA office in which the Director gave me a stack of documents which
he claimed would provide a full explanation of my father’s death.
Two decades later, though, it appears that the file we received from Colby
was a false file used to conceal the truth within the CIA itself. The
emerging story of how my father died is more incredible, and far more
sinister, than ever.
If the years 1953-1975
were characterized by complete ignorance of the circumstances that led
to my father’s death, the years 1975-1994 could be described, at
least for me, by bafflement as to how the LSD experiment at Deep Creek
Lake in which my father had been an unwitting subject was connected to
the incoherent scenario in that New York hotel room in which he died.
During this period I became convinced that my father’s death was
not, in fact, an LSD suicide, but was, rather, what CIA assassination
manuals of the time would call a "contrived accident"—the
disguised murder of a potential whistle-blower whose revelations could
have de-railed years of subsequent unethical experimentation. (A
law review article by Joseph Rauh and James Turner describing a case
brought against the CIA for one particularly horrendous episode of this
continued MK-ULTRA research was published with support from the Fund for
Constitutional Government.)
My growing suspicions
about what had killed my father led me to have his body exhumed in 1994
and to a forensic investigation conducted by Professor James Starrs of
George Washington University Law School and a team of his colleagues.
Upon the conclusion of his investigation Professor Starrs concluded that
my suspicions had been correct: my father’s death was almost certainly
a homicide.
Armed with this new
finding I collaborated with a prominent Washington attorney (Harry
Huge, a partner in the firm of Powell, Goldstein, Frazer and Murphy)
in drafting a memorandum for New York District Attorney Robert Morganthau,
in which we summarized the reasons why the case of my father’s death
should be re-opened and thoroughly investigated by the New York DA.
Our memorandum proved
persuasive. In early 1996 the New York District Attorney assigned two
experienced prosecutors the task of investigating a case which was, by
then, precisely as old as my father had been when he died: forty-three
years. A grand jury was convened and new evidence subpoenaed.
Two years later the
first court decision bearing upon the Frank Olson case was handed down
by a California federal court. This decision, in which a motion to quash
the DA’s subpoena to depose the CIA official who was in the hotel
room with my father when he died has been denied, paved the way for grand
jury testimony by the CIA escort of my father.
2. Statement of
purpose
There is no single answer to the question of why I have pursued the investigation of my father’s death so relentlessly for decades. What began as (and continues to be) a son’s determination to know what took the life of his father (I was nine when my father died) became, in graduate school, an investigation of the psychology of survivors and the effort to develop a psychotherapeutic method suitable for survivors of trauma and repression of meaning. After 1975 my attention turned to the context of my father’s death in one of the darkest chapters of post-war American history.
Recently I have found
myself enmeshed in an investigation of the bizarre overlap of common interests—"germ
warfare confessions" in the Korean war, technology for the strategic
delivery of mind altering substances in military and intelligence contexts,
poisons for use in assassination in covert operations in such places as
Guatemala—that motivated the CIA’s collaboration with my father’s
"Special Operations" bacteriological warfare research group
at Ft. Detrick in Frederick, Maryland.
My father's case
challenges the moral universe of anyone who begins to think about it.
Clearly the administration of LSD to an unwitting subject raises important
issues about the risks to democratic values inherent in secret, unsupervised
government research projects, especially those which violate the law.
In this respect, though, my father’s case is not unique. But the
bizarre context in which my father actually died points to a less conventional
ethical issue, one for which there are far fewer privileged examples.
I refer to the question of murder as a final recourse in the conduct of
research modeled upon the Nazi example.
Put simply, the implication
of my father’s case is that treating human subjects as guinea pigs
implies consequences more grave than violation of civil liberties. Such
projects are impossible without a willingness to dispose of the research
subjects—and critical scientists as well as—when the experiments
go awry: or when the guinea pig/subjects threaten to become insufferable
embarrassments or dangerous whistle-blowers.
To my knowledge,
no commentary on MK-ULTRA, including those that have chronicled the brazen
attitudes of its researchers, has broached this ultimate issue. Even John
Marks’ useful book on CIA mind control experiments (The
Search for the Manchurian Candidate) — though it was motivated
by my father’s case, and includes a chapter devoted to “The
Case of Dr. Frank Olson”—skirts this awkward problem, preferring
finally the convenient but ultimately untenable liberal assumption that
my father’s death was an accident resulting from poor clinical judgment
on the part of his caretakers.
3. Project description
— research — coordination of the legal case — media support
— writing/publishing —
I seek to remain
in a position to contribute to the work described above through the ability
to solicit tax-deductible contributions to this multi-faceted project.
Four distinguishable activities constantly spill into each other and ultimately
become nearly inseparable. First there is continuing research into both
the immediate biographical context and the broader historical context
surrounding my father’s death, as well as into the plethora of political,
ethical, and psychological issues raised by this experience. Achieving
even rough mastery of the relevant CIA and Cold War history, which entails
familiarity with voluminous Congressional and other relevant investigatory
materials, is already a daunting task.
This research in turn enables me to contribute to the continuing investigation
under way at the office of the New York District Attorney. The law firm
I have retained in Washington, the prosecutors in New York, and I maintain
a close collaboration sustained by constant phone conversations, faxes,
and by frequent trips to Washington and New York for meetings.
Successful prosecution
of a case as complex and controversial as this one also requires continuing
public communication in order to obtain political support. The prosecutors
in New York have advised me to support the media’s interest in this
sensational case with help in planning suitable reports and with participation
in interviews. The case has already been the subject of special reports
on CBS’s "Eye to Eye," NBC’s "Unsolved Mysteries,"
the Discovery Channel’s "Discover Magazine" series, a special
hour-long documentary on "Mind Control" for the Turner Network,
an intriguing feature on the syndicated series "Sightings,"
and has been the subject of many broadcast and print-media news reports
and magazine features. CNN’s “Newsstand” aired a major
feature on this case (“Cold Justice”) as did A&E’s
“Investigative Reports” (“Mind Control Murder”
produced by The Principal Film
Company, London). All of these forms of coverage provide valuable
public education as well as support for the legal process. This activity
and its time-consuming demands will certainly grow as the case advances.
Finally, I am at
work on a book to be called Shattered: A Labyrinthe Tale of the CIA,
LSD, a Lost Father, and the Collage Method, for which I have contracted
with Avon Books, New York. My approach in this book seeks to integrate
the story of my father’s death with the story of my own efforts to
make personal sense of it in my own life and work. Part murder mystery,
part investigative report and historical analysis, part family drama,
part personal search, part philosophical and psychological reflection,
this unconventional book will combine a personal account of my long effort
to comprehend a complex episode in American history with the demonstration
of a psychological method that readers can employ in their own efforts
to cope with experiences of loss, fragmentation, and irretrievable meaning.
In view of the ambitious scope of both this book and work on the case in general, a brief word about my own background is perhaps in order. In graduate school at Harvard, before the initial facts about my father's case had emerged, I had already collaborated on many research and writing projects with Yale University psychiatrist and psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton. Lifton’s early book on brain washing (Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, 1959), his subsequent work on the psychology of survivors (including Death in Life, 1967 and Home from the War, 1974), and his later book on Nazi medical experimentation (The Nazi Doctors, 1986), provide uncannily pertinent models for investigation of and reflection upon my father’s case. The title of a book we edited together, Explorations in Psychohistory, captures the spirit of the search in which I was later to embark. My Harvard MA degree in teaching, and my interdisciplinary Harvard PhD in "Clinical Psychology and Public Practice" (1976) now seem to have been specifically designed to prepare me for the complex project into which this case has thrust me. My professional career after Harvard has included college teaching, psychological research and writing, and psychotherapeutic practice.
BOARD OF ADVISORS
JAMES ABOURIZK
ARIS ANAGNOS
FELICE D. COHEN
WILLIAM DOBROVIR
BONNIE DUGGER
MARGARET GATES
FRED HARRIS
JIM HIGHTOWER
DAVID HUNTER
TED JACOBS
CHARLES MORGAN
VICTOR REUTHER
HOWARD ZINN
CONRAD MARTIN
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR