A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments

From time to time,there comes along a book which captures your attention and will remain in your memory forever.The reasons for this may have to do with its special topic, style,contents,research or insights.Such a book is H.P.Albarelli's superb book on the murder of Dr.Frank Olson and the CIA's secret Cold War experiments.After a very long period of research-ten years,to be precise-we are presented with one of the greatest mysteries which happened during the ideological conflict between the major superpowers.On November 28,1953,Dr.Frank Olson,who was a biochemist working with the CIA,fell to his death from a hotel window in New York.This event was described in and endless number of works, but was never investigated fully because of some reasons.Most of them had to do with the fact that many documents pertaining to this occurrence were still classified-and,unfortunately, many still remain so.However,Mr.Albarelli has decided to research to mystery surroundung the case and has come up with many significant and nnew conclusions.I will not reveal them, since I would like that the reader read and form his own judgement about them.One thing is very succinct:the CIA committed most horrible crimes against its own workers and American citizens.This fact is not new, but after reading the the book,one gets the impression hat the CIA was the factotum about all that concerned the security and defense of the USA.In the name of fighting America's enemies, evething was permitted, at least as far as the CIA' bosses were concerned.Thus, an innumerable array of crimes were perpetrated against civilians around the world and inside the USA.These crimes included secret experiments with LSD,projects whose aim was to see how brainwashing would affect the minds of others, etc.Men women,prisoners,prostitutes,scientists and foreigners were drugged with various Frankenstein-like stuff and chemicals without their knowledge or consent, causing them to become insane or other personality disorders.Some of them died as a result,while others prayed to die.Secret operations such as MKULTRA,BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE joined the rank of other monstrous and outlandish ideas like the notorious PHOENIX program of the seventies.All of these were illegal, as the committee investigating them during the middle of the seventies of the previous century established.The term chosen quite appropriately for the CIA of those days was:"A ROGUE ELEPHANT".Mind control research was one of the ways that got the blessing of the highest govenment officials.There are six parts in this book.The first one is a reconstruction-in the best possible way-of what happened before,during and after the bizzare accident.The second part,named "From brainwashing to LSD",renders the history of the above-mentioned secret operations.The third part covers a number of individuals who played the major part in Olson's death, and so on.You will meet hideous characters, among them Dr.Sidney Gottlieb,who could easily be named the American Dr. Mengele.Why this is so, you will have to find out for yourself.But Gottlieb was not alone.There were higher officials who condoned those tragic and terrible acts and Mr.Albarelli spares no one.The research which was done in writing this masterpiece is,indeed, beyond any imagination and, in fact, I cannot recall a book where for a tiny event such as Olson's death (which for a historian it can be a microhistory),such an effort was invested in examining tens of thousands of document pages,testimonies,investigations,depositions or court procedures.The book has appendixes about mind control victims and photos of relevant documents.Does the USA employ the same tacticts to day in fighting against its enemies? What about biological and chemical warfare these days? What about the scientists working for secret government project today? We cannot know the answers to theses questions.One thing is clear ,after reading this book:in the name of warfare, American doctors and other scientists perpetrated horrible crimes which were not only a contravention of the Hippocratic oath, but also were committed in spite of the Nurmberg code from 1947.My only criticism concerns the one(s) responsible for proofreading the text.These typos are to be found on pages 187,201(Vogeler and not Volgeler) and 634(all right, and not alright).But all these are are trifle matters.I heartily recommend to read the book to any intelligent reader who would like to learn more about a fascinating episode-one of so many-concerning the Cold War and the way a government branch went berserk when it employed all the illegal means to get to the end.Indeed, Mr.Albarelli's book merits five stars.I wish I could give it some more!!

H.P. Albarelli, Jr. has written a fully detailed, compelling account of the murder of CIA-linked 1950s Army biochemist Frank Olson. The somewhat surprising death of an otherwise little-known Midwestern scientist would become for contemporary historians, journalists, and researchers -- years after the event -- a crucial nexus providing a gathering point for the multitudinous strands connecting a welter of secretive Cold War intelligence and military programs.The Olson case burst upon the public's consciousness in the mid-1970s, along with other revelations at the time concerning CIA and military domestic spying and medical experimentation upon unwitting victims, thanks in part to a landmark expose by then-New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh. Pursued by Olson's family, attorneys, government commissions, newspaper reporters, and even some CIA agents, the truth behind Olson's death after a hundred-foot fall from a Manhattan hotel window on November 28, 1953, has been obscured over the years by a combination of myth, government misdirection, amateurish or hack "research," and, crucially, a lack of access to essential documentation. Now, after almost a decade of research, writer and researcher Albarelli has produced his magnum opus on Olson's death, and it has been well worth the wait."A Terrible Mistake" is part history book, part biography, part memoir, and part mystery tale. In order to understand the story of Frank Olson's life and death, and the cover-up surrounding that death, Mr. Albarelli must take the reader on a journey into the history of Cold War experimentation on mind and behavioral control, implemented by a welter of CIA and military programs whose names have passed into the iconic nomenclature regarding the underworld of American covert activities: Project Bluebird, Project MKULTRA, Project Artichoke, MKNAOMI, and others. In addition, because Olson was a government scientist with top secret clearance working on biological weaponry programs for the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, the book also offers a peek into this very little reported corner of U.S. history.The book is quite long, yet remains a page-turner. I won't reveal the mystery Albarelli solves, i.e., who killed Frank Olson and why, but the long build-up describing the various covert operations of the intelligence agencies, well-documented in the book, builds to a startling pay-off.In the first half of the book, the author describes Olson's life, the government programs that touch upon his work, Olson's death and its aftermath. The latter part of the book picks up from the initial public revelations surrounding his death, coming over 20 years after it occurred, and the following investigations, including the reopening of the murder investigation by the New York City's District Attorney's office in 1996. Throughout, we are entertained by a kaleidoscopic sequence of characters, including former CIA chiefs Allen Dulles and William Colby, CIA psychiatrists, Watergate burglars (for instance, we learn James McCord was the CIA agent initially sent out to deal with Olson's death), former CIA agents, hotel managers, hired assassins, mobsters, high-priced attorneys, dubious informants, U.S. diplomats and generals, politicians (including a mid-1970s appearance by both Don Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney), and many, many more.This is not just a book about a dusty, decades-old murder case. With the news of the past few years around U.S. use of torture, as well as recent revelations by Nobel Prize-winning Physicians for Human Rights surrounding possible torture experimentation upon detainees held by the CIA, the history of similar activities by the same United States agencies, as narrated in Albarelli's book, has direct significance to crucial news events of our own day.I strongly recommend this book. The author's honesty and willingness to look at the facts, rather than wishful thinking, or rely upon accepted wisdom, makes this investigatory journey well-worth the reader's time. The book has a fully-documented "Notes" section, which will satisfy the most avid researcher, or those who wish to double-check the author's assertions. Also included is a section with photographs of key documents.It seems certain that "A Terrible Mistake" will take its place along other classics of its historical genre. But it is also the most fascinating and entertaining book you will purchase for a long time.[Full disclosure: the author mentions me in his Acknowledgments section. I had no role in the writing of his book, and my earlier contact with the author amounted to literally a few e-mails. When I wrote the author later and wondered why I was included in the Acknowledgments section, it apparently was due to his appreciation of my own investigations into the current torture scandal, as published in various places online. I thank him for that, but wish to make it clear here that this review is solely based upon my own reading and reaction to this book.]

Brilliant book and extremely well researched.

I bought the paperback edition because it was £10 cheaper, but I'd have spent the extra money if I'd realised how it was compromised.It's a large print version - that's not so bad in itself (apart from making it a bit weighty), but it's missing the notes and index which is a major drawback for a work like this. Also there's no bibliography (I assume there would have been one?).I'm also concerned that it's not actually complete - on the title page it says 'Volume 2 of 3' but I don't see any offerings of Volumes 1 or 3 on Amazon. As the other reviewer mentioned it being 856 pages long and this is only 557 in 16 point type, I'm sure it must be only a part. This is confirmed by the fact that the table of contents is divided into "Book 2", "Book 3" and "Book 4". No sign of "Book 1"! And "Book 4" is subtitled '1975-1985', yet it only covers 1975.Having said all that, the content is 5-star and then some. Critically important and meticulously researched, and lucidly expounded.

Il s'agit d'un gros livre de 826 pages ! tout en anglais !Dans son enquête, Albarelli cherche à identifier les meurtriers de Frank Olson, un bactériologiste travaillant pour la CIA, dans les années d'après guerre.Olson serait l'agent responsable de l'intoxication de la population de Pont St Esprit en 1951. On a parlé de LSD, ce qui serait cohérent avec le programme MK Naomi, sous programme de MK Ultra, lancé par la CIA au sortir de la guerre. la division des opération spéciales (SOD) de l'armée est également concernée avec le programme SPAN.Il semblerait qu'Olson ait eu des remords et ait exprimé le souhait de quitter la CIA et ses méthodes ignobles...mais on ne quitte pas la CIA comme ça...Donc il a quitté la CIA mais en passant par une fenêtre située au 11 étage d'un hôtel et s'est mal réceptionné. bad luck !une question demeure : pourquoi les services secrets américains considèrent ils encore aujourd'hui l'opération de Pont st Esprit comme ultra secrète ? Si on apprenait que la CIA et la division des opérations spéciales de l'armée étaient bien coupables, ça changerait quoi ? cette affaire date de 1951 et les gens s'en balancent...pourquoi tant de précautions ? la CIA a fait bien pire ! à moins que la piste de Pont St esprit ne mène à autre chose....à JFK ?

This book is fairly lengthy but I found it to be well written and absorbing so it really wasn't any chore to get through it. It presents the story of Frank Olson and his tragic connection to the CIA. It involves the experimentation that the CIA was conducting during operations like MKULTRA, particularly regarding behavioral and mind control, the violations of civil liberties and the ensuing cover-up by successive US administrations and agencies. As I said, it's an easy read and it felt like reading a well-crafted spy thriller only with the unnerving realisation that the events in the book actually took place.

One of the best books I have ever read on the Frank Olson case, very comprehensive with additional information on other Cold War/CIA Mind control experiments. What happened to Frank Olson was straight up murder to cover up the fact the USA government agency was murdering people for science and secrecy.