"Dr. Mary's Monkey"

[Jan Klimkowski]

From Gordon Thomas' 1988 memo to Eric Olson, son of Frank Olson (see full memo in my post #64 in this thread).

William Sargant was one of the scientific leaders of the British version of "MK-ULTRA":

Time and again Dr Sargant expressed the view that, from all he had learned from the M15 and his own contacts in Washington, there was a strong prima facie case that Frank Olson had been murdered. Sargant believed that Frank Olson could also have been given a cocktail of drugs that included more than LSD. He said he knew that Dr Gottlieb had been researching into slow-acting depressants which, when taken, could drive a person to suicide.

He also believed that, from his own meetings with Frank Olson, there was a very real possibility that your father could become a whistle-blower if he believed that what was happening was wrong.

After my book was published, I continued to meet with Dr Sargent. At that time, I was hoping to see a new edition of the book published (this was not to be) and I wanted to get Dr Sargant's permission to use all he had told me in a new edition. He said I could only publish what he had said after his death. He died in 1988. This Is the account he gave me of your father's death which I now feel free to make public.

in the summer of 1953 Frank Olson travelled to Britain, once again to visit Porton Down. Sargent met with him. Olson said he was going to Europe to meet with a CIA team led by Dr Gottlieb. By then Sargent had learned that Frank Olson was acting deputy head of SO (Special Operations).

Sargent was satisfied that the CIA team were doing similar work that M16 were conducting in Europe - executing without trial known Nazis, especially SS men. (One of the survivors of the British "hit squad" is Peter Mason who lives in Montana: I know nothing about him).

Sargant saw Frank Olson after his brief visit to Norway and West Germany, including Berlin, in the summer of 1953. He said he was concerned about the psychological changes in Frank Olson. In Sargent's view Olson, primarily a researchbased scientist, had witnessed in the field how his arsenal of drugs, etc. worked with lethal effect on human beings (the "expendable" SS men etc.). Sargant believed that for the first time Olson had come face to face with his own reality.

Sargant told me he believed Frank Olson had witnessed murder being committed with the various drugs he had prepared. The shock of what he witnessed, Sargent believed, was all the harder to cope with given that Frank Olson was a patriotic man who believed that the United States would never sanction such acts. Part of that assumption was formed by Sargent because he had come to see Frank Olson as a somewhat naive man: "locked up in his lab mentality" was, I recall, one of the phrases Sargant used.

I remember Sargent telling me that he spoke several times in 1953 with Frank Olson at Sargent's consulting rooms in Harley Street, London. These were not formal patient/doctor consultations but rather Sargent trying to establish what Frank Olson had seen and done in Europe.

Dr Sargent's own conclusion was that Frank Olson had undergone a marked personality change; many of Olson's symptoms soul searching, seeking reassurance etc. were typical of that, Sargent told me.

He decided that Frank Olson could pose a security risk if he continued to speak and behave as he did. He recommended to his own superiors at the SIS that Frank Olson should no longer have access to Porton Down or to any ongoing British research at the various secret establishments Olson had been allowed prior free access to.

Sargent told me his recommendation was acted upon by his superiors. He was also certain that his superiors, by the nature of the close ties with the CIA, would have informed Richard Helms and Dr Gottlieb of the circumstances why Frank Olson would no longer be given access to British research. Effectively a substantial part of Frank Olson's importance to the CIA had been cut off.

When Dr Sargant learned of Frank Olson's death I recall him telling me it came in a priority message from the British Embassy in Washington Sargant came to the immediate conclusion that Olson could only have been murdered. I recall him telling me that in many ways the staged death was almost classic.

Gordon Thomas' account seems entirely plausible to me.

The claim that, in the early 1950s, "expendable SS men" were being used in terminal behaviour modification and drug experimentation by British and American intelligence, at classified sites such as Porton Down (the British centre for top secret CBW research), is completely credible.

It is also completely believable that some of the lead researchers would have possessed a moral conscience, and would have sought to blow the whistle on such experimentation. And for such integrity, these moral researchers would have been "suicided" and their deaths, when exposed, used as part of the official narrative covering up these crimes against humanity.