Take Two translates the day’s headlines for Southern California, making sense of the news and cultural events that affect our lives. Produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from October 2012 – June 2021. Hosted by A Martinez.
We turn now to another story about the CIA, one that has become part of popular lore: the curious death of U.S. Army biological warfare specialist, Frank Olson.
It sounds like the stuff of "X-Files" or the "Manchurian Candidate," a government scientist working on bio weapons during the height of the Cold War. On a November night in 1953, Olson plunged to his death from the tenth-floor window of his New York hotel room.
Just days before, he had been given LSD by the CIA without his knowledge as part of a series of secret experiments in mind control. The government labeled Olson's death a suicide, but his family has always believed there was more to the story.
Today, nearly 60 years later, Olson's two sons are filing a wrongful death suit against the government. They allege their father's death was not suicide, but murder.
Here to talk about the case is journalist Jon Ronson, who wrote about Frank Olson in his book, "The Men Who Stare at Goats."