Branches Book

BRANCHES

government's first response was to deny all involvement, including the use of his work in Norway and West Germany. There is actually no evidence of any even remotely suspicious activity happening in Norway or West Germany. Olson’s son, who didn’t believe that his father would commit suicide, took the CIA to court. In court, they admitted to drugging Olson with LSD 9 days prior to his death at the secret meeting in Maryland. When the CIA was asked to bring more documents to court to provide further details of what took place, they claimed to have lost all of the files in a fire. Theory #2: The Olson Family For 22 years, Frank Olson’s death was considered suicide by defenestration. It wasn’t until 1975 that they learned that he had been drugged with LSD right before death. What’s worse is that the Olsen family discovered this horrifying truth from the newspaper . It was this point that the family realised that everything they knew about Frank’s death was a lie. “The evidence points to a murder, and not a drug-induced suicide,” Eric Olson said in November of 2012, “one set of lies [were] replaced with another set of lies.” Eric, Frank’s son, never believed the CIA. He believed that, after his father discovered what his work was being used on in 1953, he decided to resign. His biological research for the MK Ultra project was used in the murder and torture of suspects in Norway and West Germany. He saw his work being used to hurt and kill people. After vocalizing his decision to resign with the CIA, he was brought to Maryland and drugged with LSD. He was then taken to New York for psychiatric treatment. However, according to Eric Olson, this was not the real reason for his visit to New York. Eric believes that his father was brought there to be murdered because he knew too much. The family asked for a settlement from the government to compensate them for the 22 years they had been lied to. The government refused the initial amount asked for but agreed to compensate the family with 60% of what they asked for. The children, Eric and Nils Olson, each took home a settlement of $187,500. After reading the documents the CIA sent the family in 1975, Eric spotted multiple contradictions and lies. As the investigation continued, MK Ultra became more and more known to the public and thus was no longer top secret. Many of the original documents were burned. Because of this, the truth behind Frank Olson’s death may never be truly known. However, not all hope was lost because, in 1993, former CIA director William Colby reached out to the family. He told the family that there was more to Frank Olson’s death. Colby died soon after that before he was able to tell the family anything..

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