Parent (12:36)
Which is crazy. How is this legal? It wasn't legal. It wasn't. And they were doing like extreme hypnosis. So they would like hold these victims eyes open and play images of like war and murder and any grues thing that you can think of. The exact thing that you would think of in every kind of movie where they're trying to control people's minds. That's what they were actually doing. The reason they decided to use LSD in so many of their experiments is because in the late forties it was rumored that the Soviets were buying up the world's LSD and that they were trying to make their own LSD in large quantities. So the CIA decided that they were going to do this and create sleeper cells and controls people's minds. So actually the CIA ended up buying a large quantity of the world's lsd. They were like, oh, the Soviets are going to do that? We'll do it first. I don't know for sure if that's what the Soviets were planning on doing. I just know that was the rumor, right? So the CIA ended up with a lot of lsd, like a lot of it. And they did use some willing candidates, but many were not willing. So they used mentally impaired boys that were at a state school, soldiers, sexual psychopaths that were also like at a state hospital. Candidates for assassination training were taken from submarines and were paratroopers. And anyone really awarded for bravery were considered really good candidates because they were eventually going to be assassins. So if you are already brave, bonus points. Although. So they also took murderers and prisoners. Prisoners were great subjects because they would actually volunteer for these experiments in exchange for more rec time and eventually they would turn to universities and college campuses. They would convince the schools that this, these experiments were totally normal, all good, not a big deal. Of course, the schools didn't know what they were like actually getting paid for what these experiments were actually doing. They were just like, oh cool, we're doing an experiment. They had no idea. They didn't even know. And we'll get into this a little bit later. They didn't even know they were working for the CIA. The goal here was to see again if drugs could promote the intoxicating effects of alcohol, make hypnosis easier, and if it would enhance the amount of torture or coercion a person could take. There's actually a lot of different goals. So I feel like I, I like sprinkled them throughout. They're also trying to see if they could fully control a person's mind and make them do what they wanted them to do. And like an artichoke, if they can make sleeper cells, they would deploy the sleeper cells all over the world and then activate them whenever they needed them. So these sleeper cells weren't just going to live at home, they were going to go all over the world and live in communities and be activated when they needed to be. And isn't it funny how like every spy movie you've ever seen, like, this is kind of the scenario. It's funny how those science fiction, those pretend movies are always based off of something that actually happened in real life. Sydney wanted to create a way to seize control of people's minds. And he realized that it was a two part process. So first he had to blast away the existing mind. Second, he needed to find a way to insert a new mind into the resulting void. He didn't get too far on number two, but he did get a lot of work on number one. Allegedly, allegedly. He didn't get too far on number two. We don't know. We do know the situation that made MK Ultra the most famous, and it's like the most public case was the death of Frank Olsen. On November 28, 1953, at about 2:30 in the morning, a man fell to his death out of a window of a hotel room in New York City. His room was on the 10th floor and he was only wearing his underwear. After his body hit the ground, glass then rained down all around him. When people rushed to his aid, he was still alive. And he tried to speak, but he was choking up so much blood that he couldn't actually get anything out and nobody could really understand him. The only thing they knew for sure was that he was talking about the CIA. After a short time of him, like trying to talk and gurgling on blood, he took his final breath and then he passed away. The room was registered to Frank Olsen and a Robert Ashbrooke. When the police entered the room, they found it was completely empty except for a man that was in the bathroom resting his head in his hands. This was Robert. And Robert claimed that he had been asleep when a noise woke him up, suggesting that Frank jumping from the window was the noise that woke him up. And he did tell the police that he couldn't remember if the window had been left open or closed. But either way it was broken now. And honestly the police thought this was like an open and shut case. So they didn't think too much about the situation at first. Basically thought like, this guy's depressed. He was on his way to a, like a hospital the next day anyway, so he's depressed. He wanted to commit suicide. Done. But the night manager, who was the one that had been with Frank as he died, did not agree with the situation. The whole situation was super fishy to this night manager who was like the hero really. Not only was Frank trying to say something about the CIA with his final breath, but how he quote unquote committed suicide was really odd. Frank would have had to get up in the middle of the night, run full speed across the room, dodging both the beds that were in that room, and dive through a closed or open window. It's unclear if it was closed or open, but also the shade and the curtain were both closed, like on the window. So he dives through this window and doesn't get stuck on the curtain or the shade. That's weird. And just so you know, like in the 50s, the windows do open. So it's not like today where you can't open a hotel window. They opened then. So to me, again, if I were going to jump out of a window to commit suicide, I, I would first open it to make it easier. But also like, I don't know, I don't think I would want to take the chance jumping out of 10 story foot or a 10 story window. I would want to go all the way to the top of the roof to jump off the roof. Make sure, like if I'm going to commit suicide, I don't want to mess it up. And also you're going to jump through this window and then it's going to break. Like, wouldn't you break it first to make it easier to jump through anyway? Something just wasn't sitting Right. It obviously isn't sitting right with me either. So the night manager checked the hotel operator to see if any calls had been made from that room that night. And his feeling was correct. The operator said that there had been a call that was just made a few minutes ago because it ran through the switchboard. The operator heard the entire call. So it was like a win win. So Robert had been the one to make the call, and he called a man on Long island called Doct Harold Abramson. The only thing that they said, because this call didn't last very long, the only thing that was said was Robert said, he's gone. And Dr. Abramson replied, well, that's too bad. Frank's family was notified and told that there had been an accident, that he had either fallen or jumped out of his hotel room. His body was so badly damaged, though, that at the funeral they had to have a closed casket because they couldn't fix it. The Olsen family tried to move forward, but it was pretty tough. I mean, he had children, he had a wife. And Frank's son would also ask his wife all the time, like, about his dad. He wanted to know about Frank, which any little boy does want to know about their father. And Frank's wife would always reply with the same thing. You're never gonna know what happened in the room that night. Basically, like just brushing him off. But that just wasn't good enough for Frank's son. So he had a second autopsy conducted on his father. This autopsy found evidence that Frank was injured before the jump out of the window. There was a hole in his head that looked as if it was made by the butt of a gun. And also his body lacked the normal cuts or lacerations that you would expect from someone that jumped out of a closed window. So, I mean, I guess the window had to be open. But again, I mean, the glass rained down around him after he fell out of the window. So either he fell faster because he's heavier, or somebody broke the window, Broke the glass after he fell out of the window. So this led to the theory that he had been assassinated by the CIA. It was theorized that Olsen wasn't cut out for the work that he was doing with the CIA and needed to be eliminated. Why couldn't they just fire him? I don't know. But they chose assassination instead. He must have known too much. It turns out Frank was a scientist working on MK Ultra. Imagine that with Sidney Gottlieb. And just nine or ten days before this whole situation, he had been secretly dosed with LSD on Sydney's orders. So they were like a lot of the scientists were all attending this retreat and Sydney told Robert Ashbrook to lace Frank's drink. He actually he laced a couple of the scientists drinks that night. But Frank did not take it well. He was not good on lsd. By this time they had given up all of their truth serums and decided that LSD was the best true serum that they had. So they were hoping that this drug would make the subject confess and that they would wouldn't remember anything afterwards, which is not the case. If you ever do acid, you remember. Anyway, not saying I've done it, I'm just saying I've heard Frank was in the hotel in New York City because he was being transferred to a hospital for psychiatric care the next day. So the next day Robert was supposed to take him to the hospital, drop him off, or at least that's what they told Frank. And all this was reported in the New York Times. But you know who didn't know any of that? Frank's family. And they actually found out because it was reported in the New York Times. And then to add to the strangeness around this case, just 10 days after his death, the Olson family was invited to the White House to meet the President. What? President Ford gave them a formal apology, and then Allen Dulles also gave them a formal apology. So I'm assuming like for the loss of a loved one. But I think it's more like they're trying to cover the CIA's ass. Basically, they all agreed that this was a wrongful death, that he should have never died. And they were like, hey, if you agree not to sue us, then we will give you $750,000, which for reference, that's about $8.8 million today. That the, the President himself is like, hey, yeah, Frank shouldn't have died. That, that's a real bummer. I'm so sorry for your loss. You know what? We're just going to give you some money. Just a little bit, just a little bit, just to help you out. We're sorry that your husband's dead. Thank you for your service to this country. Here's $8.8 million. You're telling me you don't look further into that? If that's like, what, what is happening? And it wasn't like they didn't want the family to sue because they were worried about money. Like, they don't care about money. Obviously they wouldn't have offered like such a large settlement if they were worried about money. They were Worried about their experiments getting out to the public. So, like, let's shut these, this family up. They're asking too many questions. They're going to learn too much. Let's just shut it down before we have to shut down our whole operation. But again, as we talked about earlier, the Olson children just didn't understand much about their father or his death. Like, what kind of scientist was their father? Like, who was this guy? Not everyone gets invited to the Oval Office to get a personalized apology from a couple of the highest paid people in the, in the country because of science. Like, okay, yeah, we respect our scientists, but like, that much. And it's not like everybody that dies in the CIA gets this invitation to the White House. It was just really weird. Really weird. So the kids started digging and they found out that Frank Olson was one of the top scientists to be assigned to the top secret biological warfare lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland during World War II. The same lab that Sidney Gottlieb's mentor started up and was running. So maybe that's how he got his job at the CIA. Anyway, after the war, he was the lead scientist on Operation Harness, which was a three month biological warfare trial carried out in the Caribbean. And there's a. They were exposing animals to anthrax, tularemia and brucella. He was also part of the Operation Sea Spray, which we talked about earlier. Andy spent a good amount of time at Plum island, which we talked about in excess in the Weaponized Insects episode. I will link that episode in the show notes. Really good episode. But Plum island is where they were modifying insects and it's crazy. It's crazy. Frank specialized in the delivery device for the biological weapons, such as like canisters disguised as shaving cream cans that would disperse anthrax into the air. We also see that in the first Jurassic park movie where they're like, here, just get the samples and put it in this, in the shaving cream bottle. So I'm wondering if that's like a, a tilt to the CIA, but also a lighter that would release gas or lipstick that would kill somebody, things like that. The same year he died, he stepped down as the chief of the Special Operations Division. He said it was too stressful. But he did stay with the CIA. It was around that same time that he met Sidney Gottlieb and Robert Ashbrook. But MK Ultra took a huge toll on Frank. He saw how harsh these guys were being to candidates they were calling expendables. And these things were so inhumane. He didn't want anything to do with it anymore. But he knew too much. And not to mention, like I've mentioned before, these things were illegal. This is all stated in the Geneva Conventions from 1929. But the CIA didn't care. And we already know that the Nazis didn't care. And with Operation Paperclip, I wouldn't be surprised if there were Nazi scientists working on the project or if they had heavily influenced the project. I mean, MK ULTRA is basically a continuation of the work they began in the Japanese and Nazi concentration camps. So we literally brought these scientists over to continue their work, except now we're giving them the people to do it on. People that they're just like random people. And Nazi doctors actually came to America, to Fort Detrick, which was the home base for all these experiments, and they would give lectures to the CIA officers and tell them things like how long it takes for people to die from sarin. Yep, that's the things that the Nazis were telling the CIA agents in lectures. After Frank Olson, that whole scenario kind of blew over a little bit. In 1955 in San Francisco, the CIA had like these rooms set up for more experiments. They had prostitutes lure johns into the room and then dose them with a drug. And an agent would sit behind a two way mirror and watch their reaction. But these rooms were like porno rooms. Like they had like nudie magazines and they had like suggestive pictures all over the walls. It's like a red room and these prostitutes are bringing these guys into the red room, like, here's some LSD and they're gonna watch whatever happens through a two way mirror. The CIA actually had these rooms all over the country, but the one in San Francisco turned from being about dosing John's with LSD and more towards like the sex side of things to see. How does sex affect mind control? Well, it turns out that the best time to get information out of people is right after sex. Outside of that, they were testing people in prisons, as I mentioned earlier. So Whitey Bulger was an organized crime boss who was in the Atlanta Penitentiary when he was exposed to MK ultra. He actually, he volunteered for it. These tests took place in 1957, well after Frank's death and the uproar had completely quieted down. They were like, yep, let's start, you know, testing prisoners. They, I, I bet they had already been testing prisoners. This was just a guy that spoke out. So Whitey said that he was with, quote, eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state. He had total loss of appetite, was hallucinating the room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and feeling violent. We experienced horrible periods of living nightmares and even blood coming out of the walls. Guys turning into skeletons. In front of me, I saw a camera change into the head of a dog. I felt like I was going insane. End quote. He said he was injected with LSD and this was the results. Because, I mean, other convicts were going through this as well. They also set up fake philanthropic accounts that would allow them to fund the research at college and university campuses. But they weren't just doing this in the us. They were doing this in Canada. So all of these colleges, they didn't know that they were doing these experiments for the CIA. They had no idea because they had these fake companies. They're like, hey, we're going to donate this much money, but it needs to go towards this experiment. They're like, all right, cool, let's do it. But of course, around the same time, you have Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, who got his LSD in an experiment sponsored by MK Ultra, and he was a huge supporter of lsd. And then you also have Robert Hunter, who is a singer for the Grateful Dead, and Allen Ginsberg, who was a poet who preached the value of the greatest personal adventure of using lsd. So you've got these people, they're like, oh man, lsd, that's cool. Let's do more of that. And it is theorized that Charles Manson was even a victim of MK Ultra. And we're going to get more into like, his history and life and everything next week on Cult Chronicles. But it wouldn't surprise me because then he took LSD back to the Manson family and tried to control their minds using lsd. So where did he get that idea? Right? Sydney operated with almost no supervision at all. It's almost like the CIA didn't want to know because of, like, this plausible deniability situation. Unfortunately for them, in 1963, the CIA's Inspector General Staff found out about MK Ultra and she shut down this whole project on the grounds of it being immoral. Everyone tried their best to convince the IG that this project was working and it should continue because they're almost there. They just need a few more years. They'll have a breakthrough. But they were like, no way. This is really bad. In 1973, when Sidney got Leb was leaving the agency, he destroyed a lot of information. Or maybe he took it with him, not really sure. Either way, the information for MK Ultra was gone. And in 1975, when this project Got out to the public. There wasn't a lot of information on it because most of it had been destroyed. In fact, there was even a hearing, a congressional hearing about this project. And Congress kept hitting roadblock after roadblock with not being able to find any paperwork on the projects. And the agents were like, oh, I don't remember. I don't know what happened. Huh? I wasn't there for that. I don't remember. I do not recall. Right. So they weren't getting anywhere with this hearing. The CIA swears up and down that the project had long been abandoned. But a former agent of the CIA came out and stated in an interview that the CIA loves to participate in disinformation campaigns. Imagine that. And so he was like, yeah, I don't think MK Ultra is gone. I think they just are telling you that it is. And they renamed it or reclassified it or whatever, right? Because Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke are the exact same with a different name. And that same agent that was like, yeah, they like disinformation campaigns. He insists that MK Ultra continued, whether it be under a different name in the CIA or with Sydney after he left the Agency. I don't know if we'll ever know. Like, if. If it was with Sydney. Was he still funded by the CIA after he left the CIA? Maybe. I mean, they were. They were funding all these universities and colleges to do these experiments. Why not fund him? Because they're using like, black channel or black funds anyway, so it wasn't like they were above board to begin with. And even now, like, I know that there have been a lot of rumors on the Internet over certain artists or different people being victims of MK Ultra. I've heard of Doja Cat. Doja Cat being accused of such things. I don't know who that is. Somebody messaged me about this. I don't know who Doja Cat is, but this person was. I guess they're like an artist pop. Maybe they're being accused of being. Being in the MK Ultra program. And then a lot of times people accuse shooters of being in MK ultra. So I know that in Aurora, Colorado, there was a theater shooting back in what, 2011, 2012. And like, people think that because he was kind of like crazy, people think that he was under the guise or under this spell of MK ultra or even like the Trump assassinations or the Trump attempted assassinations, that people think these guys are just, they're scapegoats, but they're under the effects of MK Ultra. As if the CIA has figured it out and the only way they could have done that is if the research continued. Isn't that interesting? What do you guys think? I love to hear your opinions. Please share them with me wherever you can until next week, my friends. Stay skeptical. I will actually keep you apprised of next week. If my voice is gone, we might not have an episode next week. Just I gotta recuperate from whatever this cold is. I feel fine. But my voice is going out so we'll see what happens. Stay skeptical my friends and I will see you all then.
