Following in Uncle Sam’s dirty footsteps: chemical and biological warfare testing in the UK

In 1953 Dr Drank Olsen, a scientist working for the CIA, was found dead on the pavement outside a New York hotel. The Agency instituted a cover-up of the circumstances of his death. The cover-up survived until 1975 when it was revealed that Olsen had been one of many people who had been unwittingly given LSD as part of the Agency’s experiments with the drug, and that LSD had been a contributory factor in his suicide. In an article in the Mail on Sunday Kevin Dowling disclosed that this account was also a cover-up.(1) In the course of a telephone conversation with me, Dr. Eric Olsen, the son of the late Dr. Frank Olsen, explained that his father’s body was exhumed after a court order in 1994, and examined by a team led by James Starrs, Professor of Law and Forensic Science at the National Law Center, George Washington University. The first autopsy, allegedly carried out by the CIA, claimed that the body had suffered cuts and abrasions caused by Olsen crashing through the window pane of the hotel room from which he was supposed to have jumped. This second autopsy found no evidence of such cuts and abrasions, but did find a haematoma, unrecorded at the first post-mortem examination, on the left-hand side of Olsen’s skull, most probably caused by a heavy blow, probably a hammer, before the fall from the window. Therefore, Professor Starrs suggested, based on the available evidence, the most probable cause of Olsen’s death was homicide and not suicide.(2) This new information suggests that Frank Olsen was murdered because he was considered a security risk to the CIA’s highly sensitive and top secret mind control programmes.

The Nuremberg trials revealed how far Nazi Germany had gone in the development of mind control means, using prisoners of war, as well as Jews. The result was the conviction of 23 German doctors, and the injunction that never again should humans to be used in such a fashion. But the behaviour of the accused at the Moscow show trials at which they confessed to crimes they palpably had not committed, and the accounts given by the POW’s from the Korean War, attracted the interest of the Western intelligence in research and development of methods to control and alter the human mind. The judgements at Nuremberg and human rights issues became irrelevant once more.

As a biochemist, Frank Olsen had worked in the US Army’s Special Operation Division at Fort Detrick, Maryland since 1943. During the Cold War era, like many of his colleagues, he provided his services to the CIA in their mind control programmes, under the direction of Dr. Sidney ‘The Gimp’ Gottlieb. The US Army’s programmes on the use of LSD(3) and an array of other chemicals and their effects on the human mind, encouraged the CIA to embark on the biggest series of programmes and projects in mind control.

The CIA sought the assistance and cooperation of other western countries. On April 20, 1950, the Director of the CIA, Roscoe Hillenkoetter gave the go ahead to the CIA’s Project BLUEBIRD. A year later, in April 1951, CIA began liaison with the Army, Navy, and the Air Force to prevent duplication of their efforts.(4) Two months later on 1 June 1951, at a meeting held in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Montreal, Canada, the CIA invited Britain and Canada to join forces in

‘Research into the general phenomena indicated by such terms as “confessions”, “menticide”, “intervention in the individual’s mind” together with methods concerned in psychological coercion, change of opinions and attitudes, etc etc.'(5)

At the meeting were Dr. Donald Hebb (Defence Research Board University Advisor, Canada); Dr. Ormond Solandt (Chairman, Defence Research Board, Canada); Dr N. W. Morton (a staff member of Defence Research Board); a Commander Williams;(6) Sir Henry Tizard, at that time Chairman of the British Advisory Council on Scientific Policy and Defence Research; and Drs. Haskins, Dancey, and Tyhurst.(7)

The birth of MKULTRA

Officially, MKULTRA was established on April 13, 1953, at Richard Helms’ suggestion, and with Allen Dulles’ (DCI) approval as an ‘ultra sensitive work’.(8) However, the operational wing of MKULTRA, better known as MKDELTA, had begun in 1952. MKDELTA’s task was to use chemical and biological weapons products to alter the human mind. The CIA’s Clandestine Services was in charge of this programme, and it often used foreigners in its experiments abroad. Also in 1952, the CIA initiated another programme through the Special Operations Division (SOD) of the US Army’s Biological Research Center at Fort Detrick, Maryland to produce biological weapons for the CIA’s use. This was called Project MK-NAOMI.(9) Through MKNAOMI, the Special Operations Division developed an array of deadly substances for the CIA.(10) Frank Olsen worked on these projects, and between May 1950 and August 1953 he visited detachments in Porton Down in England, and in France, Germany, and Norway.(11)

Increasingly unhappy about the effects of some of these experiments on humans, Frank Olsen began to show the signs of distress. As acting chief of the Special Operations Division for some months during 1952-53, Olsen had access to all information concerning the developments of the arsenal of toxic substances in the CIA.(12) After a trip to Paris and Norway, Olsen told his boss, Lt. Colonel Ruwet, that he was so unhappy that he would prefer to be discharged or fired to carrying on with his work. This led to a memo being issued within Fort Detrick initiating an investigation into ‘a possible breach of security after a trip to Paris and Norway’.(13) Olsen knew too much.

Unbeknown to Ruwet, Olsen had already expressed his anxiety and disillusion to Dr. William Sargant, a Harley Street psychiatrist, who was appointed by the British Government to cooperate with the US agencies in their mind control programmes.(14) Whether Sargant reported this matter to the CIA or not is not clear, but on Tuesday November 23 1953, Olsen told Ruwet that he was ‘all mixed up’. Seriously worried about the possible breaches of security, Ruwet decided that Olsen needed ‘psychiatric attention’.(15) After an emergency meeting with Sid Gottlieb, and Robert Lashbrook, Gottlieb’s deputy, it was decided to send Olsen to Dr. Harold Abramson in New York. Abramson, an allergist and immunologist not formally trained in psychiatry, was chosen because of his TOP SECRET clearance by the CIA. After discussion, Olsen accepted the decision, and Ruwet left him with Lashbrook. By now Olsen was quite certain that the CIA was ‘out to get him’.(16) On November 28 1953, Olsen’s body was discovered on the pavement outside the Statler Hotel, New York. Apparently he had thrown himself out of the 13th floor window, committing suicide, nine days after Gottlieb had spiked his drink with LSD. The CIA denied Olsen’s family permission to examine his body, on the grounds that it was badly mutilated. Recent forensic findings proved that this description was false. After Olsen’s death, in concert with the CIA’s findings, Abramson wrote ‘Olsen was in a psychotic state…..with delusions of persecution.'(17) The CIA made sure that Olsen’s widow, Alice, received a full pension. In 1975, the Rockefeller Commission found CIA’s actions illegal and granted Mrs. Alice Olsen an apology and $750,000. Alice and her son Eric Olsen were invited to the White House, where President Ford officially apologised for the CIA’s actions. Throughout these years, Ruwet kept close contact with Alice Olsen, and became a close family friend and confidant, encouraging Alice to drink. Whether Ruwet’s action was an act of remorse, or designed to make sure the truth would not become public, remains unknown.

ARTICHOKE

Amongst hundreds of records released by the CIA on its Project ARTICHOKE, there is an interesting memorandum, which provides an insight into some aspects of ARTICHOKE, in which foreign human subjects for experiments were involved; this coincides with the period when Dr. Olsen was making repeated trips to Europe.

A memorandum of 12 February 1952, originally classified Secret, refers to a conversation between the writer of the memorandum, and another person. Both names were deleted by the CIA. The following paragraphs in particular are rather interesting;

‘3. [deleted] followed the writer a long document which apparently was merely a proposal for extensive “Artichoke” both here and abroad and involved the outlay of approximately [deleted]. This plan more or less provided for the establishment of a laboratory in the United States (somewhere locally) and a large working area overseas.

4. [deleted] proposal seemed to be along the following lines:

1. OSI would recruit or have already been promised medical men, and scientists, etc. who would be available for the application of the latest possible techniques of all types to overseas subjects.
2. These techniques would be trained and produced by various agencies in the United States as [ deleted].
3. These men would be a sort of super-expert, combining psychiatry, psychology, and medical knowledge and would tackle the subjects in the field.
4. The subjects would be primarily individuals [deleted] or
   individuals whom the Agency wished to do away with. [deleted] subjects that there were [deleted] or all types where plenty of subject material could be had [emphasis added].
5. The very latest “ideas” would be used including electro-shock, lysergic acid, drugs, electroencephalograph, hypnosis, etc., etc.
6. The old “Bluebird” idea of an interrogation team would, of course, be done away with since these experts could administer the drugs, carry on interrogation, and handle the whole work themselves, apparently on an individual basis.'(18)

It remains unclear how many victims were claimed by the CIA in these programmes.

MKSEARCH

In June 1964, Sid Gottlieb renamed MKULTRA as MKSEARCH.(19) MKSEARCH was to deal with the most sensitive behavioural activities and programmes, seven sub-projects, mostly dealing with most deadly means of developing chemical and biological substances which would disorient, discredit, injure and even kill the targets. Many unwitting subjects fell victim to these programmes. Using various National Institute of Mental Health hospitals and facilities, Dr. Harris Isabel ran an Addiction Research Center in Lexington, Kentucky, using LSD, and a host of unproven drugs. Isabel particularly targeted the black and gay communities. Bob Hyde’s group in Boston Psychopathic, Carl Pfeiffer at the University of Illinois Medical School, Harold Abramson at Mt. Sinai Hospital and Columbia University in New York, Louis Joylon West at the University of Oklahoma, and not forgetting Harold Hodge and his group, all used unwitting subjects in extensive behavioural control tests, using various chemical and biological substances.(20)

In the UK

Similar events were taking place in Britain, though details are sketchy. There is a brief reference in Peter Wright’s Spycatcher. He notes that ‘the whole area of chemical research was an active field in the 1950s’, and refers to a joint MI5/MI6 ‘program to investigate how far the hallucinatory drug lysergic acid diethyalmine (LSD) could be used in interrogation, and extensive trials took place at Porton.'(21) Wright gives no date for this but, from the context it appears to be in the 1950s – the period when Olsen was visiting Porton Down. In Lobster 26, December 1993, I revealed that Dr. Graham Pearson, Director of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment, had written to me admitting that between 1961 and 1972, 72 service volunteers had taken part in LSD trials in the UK; and the Sunday Telegraph has reported that ‘dozens of servicemen say they were tricked into painful chemical experiments at the government’s Porton Down test centre by being told they were helping with research into the common cold.'(22)

In 1966, two major scientists, Dolores McMahon, a Senior Scientific Officer and C. Gordon Smith, Director of Porton Down, used terminal leukaemia patients at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London. Apparently with their consent, the patients were deliberately infected with the lethal Langut and Kyasanur Forest virus. They were told that it might counteract the high levels of white cells in their blood. Four patients died, and two developed encephalitis. In 1968, Eric Hadden, then Director of Porton Down, in a BBC interview admitted that CS gas was tested on ‘aged people, asthmatic people, young people.'(23) In a letter to me in October 1993 Dr. Graham Pearson, former Director of British Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment (CBDE) stated that up to 200 human trials were then taking place. In 50s and 60s this number would have been far higher.

The victims of some of these early tests are still alive. Lance Corporal Mick Roche, who was asked to inhale nerve gas through a face mask, now in his mid-50s, suffers from chest problems, hypertension and what his doctor describes as a mysterious premature aging. He was one of a group of ten subjected to these tests. Another man now age 60, suffers from blindness and eye pain. In 1951 he took part in trials which exposed his eyes to nerve gas. A former aircraft fitter in the navy, he now suffers from shakes, and an uncontrollable muscle disease like Parkinsons Disease. He was a teenager when took part in the same test, and was never told about their long term after-effects.(24)

On 31 July, 1995 I wrote to to Dr. G. D. Coley, the Director of UK Chemical & Biological Defence Establishment, enclosing a 38 page list of chemical and biological warfare substances, asking him to identify those on which the CBDE had conducted or were conducting any kind of research and development. On 11 August 1995, Dr. Coley responded somewhat reluctantly, nevertheless marking the relevant items on the list. He had identified no less than 390 groups of substances in whose research or development CBDE has been involved. Among the 390 are: amphibian toxins, anthrax, anti human immuno-deficiency virus, bacterial toxins, biological bombs, micro bomblets, botulinum toxin, radiological weapon cloud transport, cholera, gas gangrene, cobra toxin, Congo Crimean haemorrhagic fever, cytotoxin, defoliants, DNA virus, lassa fever, green monkey virus, methantrophic bacteria, monkey pox, neurotoxins, plague, poxvirus, rabies virus, resistant tickborne virus, riot control agents, smallpox virus, tetanus toxin, toxin weapons, tuberculosis, typhoid, yellow fever – and so the list continues.

In addition to this colourful list of substances, there remains yet another category which are listed only by name and number, and about which nothing is known, such as; BPL, BHA, blue27/b bomb, freon pe65702a, JEDS, SAEB, tc-83, td-1 agent, nl-1 agent, and many more.

In another letter, dated 21 June 1995, in response to my inquiry concerning the use of chemical biological agents in populated areas, e.g. London Underground,(25) Dr. Coley wrote,

‘As we stated in our letter of 31 May, studies after 1955 involved the use of non pathogenic simulants. Your letter refers to trials in the London Underground. Studies, which had no generic name, involving simulants were conducted in 1963-64.’

It still remains unclear which tests were conducted prior to 1955, and what kind of chemical or biological agents were used. However, Dr. Coley in his letter of May 31, 1995, provides a taste of the trials which took place prior to 1955:

‘Between 1948 and 1955 several trials involving the use of pathogens were conducted off the Scottish coast and in the Caribbean. ….. (emphasis added).(26)

The sad truth is that like the Americans, the British state pursued a policy of cynically employing under-informed, and unsuspecting civilians, service personnel and foreigners as guinea pigs. What has been described above is surely the tip of an iceberg.

Notes

1. Kevin Dowling, ‘The Olsen File: A Secret that could destroy the CIA’, Mail On Sunday (Night and Day section) August 23, 1998, and several conversations with Mr. Dowling
2. Telephone conversation with Dr. Eric Olsen, October 20, 1998; plus exchanged e-mails. In his memoir the former SAS member Peter Stiff discusses forms of assassination and describes ‘an old trick popular with the various government security services throughout the world. I would knock on his door. When he answered I would club him, sweep him bodily to the window and throw him out head first.’ See Lobster 32 p. 11.
3. See my ‘US Army Intelligence Mind Control Experiments’ in Lobster 23.
4. Document released to author in 1991 by the CIA on the origins of the creation of ARTICHOKE, and its contents.
5. Document whose only identification mark is stamp saying it came from the collection of the manuscript division, Library of Congress.
6. Possibly Eric Charles Williams, in 1951 Director of Operational Research at the Admiralty.
7. The only documented result of this meeting was the award of contract X-38 to Dr. Donald O. Hebb, from McGill University to conduct research in Sensory Deprivation. On 25 January 1954 Ormond Solandt, Chairman of the Canadian Defence Research Board, apparently in response to some Canadian press attention, wrote to an unidentified ‘Minister” in the Canadian government explaining that the Defence Research Board had awarded Hebb the contract research at McGill University in September 1951, and that it had ‘originated from a discussion among Sir Heny Tizard, representatives of the US Central Intelligence Agency, Dr Hebb….and myself in June 1951.’ Like the document cited in note 5, this document came from the Library of Congress and has no other identification marks. Solandt’s comment that the meeting was with ‘representatives of the US Central Intelligence Agency’ suggests that the three unidentified Doctors on the list were the ‘representatives of the US Central Intelligence Agency’.
8. Memorandum from ADDP Helms to DCI Dulles, dated April 3, 1953, Tab A, pp. 1-2.
9. . Summary Report on CIA Investigation of MKNAOMI, Report Book I, pp. 360-63. Also see Kennedy Subcommittee Hearings on Biological Testing Involving Human Subjects by DoD, 1977.
10. Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot captured by Soviet Union, carried one such toxin concealed in a silver dollar, and did not use it .
11. Documents released to Olsen’s son and stamps on his father’s passport. Information from a phone call with son. A glimpse of what was going on in Norway, with US money, was given in ‘US and Norway “used insane for Nazi-style tests”‘, The Times 29 April 1998, which claimed ‘the American authorities financed 4,000 experiments on humans from 1944 to 1994’ in Norway.
12. John Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, Allen Lane, London, 1979, p. 77
13. See Dowling, note 1, confirmed by Olsen’s son. It may not be a coincidence that Stanley Glickman, the American who was unwittingly dosed with LSD in Paris, had this done to him in 1952 – and probably by Gottlieb. See Douglas Valentine’s piece on this which follows this one.
14. See Dowling, note 1 above. Sargant was the author of Battle for the Mind: the mechanics of indoctrination, brainwashing and thought control, Heinemann and Pan, London 1957 and 59.
15. Kennedy Subcommittee, see note 12.
16. Ibid.
17. Kennedy Subcommittee note10, pp. 394-403
18. In a document dated 3 November 1960, the CIA apparently set out to achieve the following effects using deep hypnosis.
    1. Induce deep trance in an unwitting and unwilling subject.
    2. Induce deep trance rapidly, i.e., within seconds.
    3. Produce indefinitely durable amnesia concerning the trance.
    4. Produce indefinitely durable control of future behavior through post hypnotic suggestion, including behavior in conflict with the subject’s normal pattern.’
19. Origins of MKSEARCH is described in CIA’s document 449, dated April 8, 1964, and document S-1-4 untitled, and undated. Also see, document 450, dated June 9, 1964, wherein Richard Helms recommends that MKULTRA to be renamed as MKSEARCH, as a new charter for Sensitive Research Programs .
20. Substantial volume of records were released to the author by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) on the work of Isabel and many others, named in this article. Also see CIA document 24 July, 1953, Memo; Liaison and Security Officer/TSS Subject No. 71; an account of the Chemical Division in NIMH94; CIA document 37, dated 14 July 1954, and several others released by the CIA. These were among 700 pages of documents I supplied this year to Del Walters of the American TV company ABC for a documentary on this subject. The programme was broadcast on 4 November.
21. Spycatcher p. 160
22. Sunday Telegraph 2 November 1997. Three years after my piece The Daily Telegraph reported on 1 February 1996 that LSD had been tested on British troops in the 1960s.
23. Information from an Observer Films programme proposal, ‘In the National Interest’, 4 January 1997. The company approached me for a documentary production on LSD research in Britain. This information was shared with me in the process of research for the documentary.
24. Ibid.
25. ‘The Day Germ Warfare came to Tooting Broadway’, The Independent, Tue. 28 March 1995.
26. In his letter of May 31, 1995, Dr. Coley stated that ‘Trials involving the use of biological agents were chiefly carried out by the Microbiological Research Establishment and its predecessors. The MRE closed in 1979.’ He added; ‘Studies undertaken since 1955 involved the use of non-pathogenic simulants such as Bacillius globigii and Escherichia coli which were judged not to present a risk to health. The work was conducted in order to assess the potential hazards of BW attack and to evaluate detection systems.’