Episode 437: The Death of Frank Olson

At 2:30 AM on November 28, 1953, a man in his underwear went through a closed window and drapes at the Statler Hotel in Manhattan. The night manager reached him on the sidewalk while he was still trying to speak. Upstairs, a phone call went out from the room: "Well, he's gone." The man was Frank Olson, a government bacteriologist. His family would spend the next sixty years getting three different explanations from the government for what happened in that room.

Kelly walks through Olson's work building America's biological weapons program at Camp Detrick, his quiet move onto the CIA's books, and a summer 1953 trip to Europe that left him wanting out. Then come the spiked drinks at Deep Creek Lake and the strange final week in New York that ended on Seventh Avenue. Along the way: the original switchboard operators, a full accounting of Mambo No. 5's sequel, and a SAPS read that negotiates its own discount live.

CHAPTERS

0:42 November 28, 1953: the Statler Hotel

6:09 Eric Olson, age nine: fell or jumped

9:38 Who was Frank Olson

11:55 The Special Operations Division, MKNAOMI, and Artichoke

16:35 The 1949 Army security file

23:23 The last trip: Europe, summer 1953

27:53 "Did you ever see a man die?"

31:21 Korea, germ warfare, and the recanted confessions

37:48 Deep Creek Lake, November 1953