A federal judge in Washington, DC has dismissed a lawsuit that alleged the CIA murdered one of its own agents in 1953 and then attempted to pass it off as a suicide.
Sixty years after the death of bioweapons expert Dr. Frank Olson,
United States District Judge James E. Boasberg ruled last week
that the family of the former Central Intelligence Agency
specialist can’t sue the US government.
The family of Dr. Olson filed a lawsuit against the CIA in late 2012
accusing the agency of a clandestine murder that had made it a
hot topic of discussing more than half a century after the fact.
But while Judge Boasberg agrees that many of the allegations put
forth by the Olson family are likely true – even while
admittingly coming off as unbelievable – he ruled that an earlier
settlement agreed upon by the scientist’s children and the sheer
tardiness of the late suit have left him unable to allow the case
to continue.
“[T]he public record supports many of the allegations that
follow, farfetched as they may sound,” Boasberg began his
ruling. Pages later, however, he wrote, “Concluding that most
of the allegations are both untimely and waived by a prior
settlement agreement, and that any timely or preserved claims
fall outside of the United States’ waiver of sovereign immunity,
the Court will grant the Government’s Motion” to dismiss.
The agent’s two children, Eric
and Nils Olson, have long insisted that their father was murdered
by the CIA after expressing his interest in resigning from the
spy agency. Ultimately he received his wish, but only after
falling 13 floors from a New York City hotel after a meeting with
a CIA doctor and a colleague who the Olson family say helped
orchestrate his death.
According to the family’s attorney, Dr. OIson discussed leaving
the CIA after being poisoned with LSD against his will as part of
the MK ULTA behavioral engineering project, a top-secret CIA
program that existed in part all the way through the 1970s.
Days after allegedly and unwillingly becoming a government guinea
pig, Olson reportedly told a colleague he wanted to resign from
the agency. That friend alerted Dr. Robert Lashbrook of the
Chemical Division of the CIA’s Technical Support Staff, who in
turn took Olson to New York in order to see a doctor. Then for a
week in late 1953, the CIA shuffled Olson around the East Coast
for various so-called psychiatric treatments before ultimately
checking him into a Manhattan high-rise.
“The night of November 27, Lashbrook and Olson shared a room
at the Statler Hotel in Manhattan,” Judge Boasberg recalled
in his ruling. “Both had two martinis before bed. At 2:30 a.m.
on November 28, Olson fell out of the window of his hotel room,
tumbling thirteen stories to his death.”
Olson went on to cite a CIA manual made a short time after that
included a “secret assassination” technique that could
potentially cover-up such a death.
“For secret assassination . . . the contrived accident is the
most effective technique” because “[w]hen successfully
executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually
investigated,” the report read.
“Specifically,” added Boasberg, “the manual counseled
that ‘[t]he most efficient accident . . . is a fall of 75 feet or
more onto a hard surface . . . [such as one from] unscreened
windows.’ The manual also recommended that assassins use a blunt
object to inflict ‘[b]lows . . . directed to the temple,’ but
noted that ‘[c]are is required to insure [sic] that no wound or
condition not attributable to the fall is discernible after
death.’ Finally, the manual suggested that ‘[i]f the subject’s
personal habits make it feasible, alcohol may be used . . . to
prepare him for a contrived accident of any kind.’”
Indeed, the exhumation of Olson’s body decades later revealed a
blow to his head on par with what the CIA manual suggested, and
the official cause of death was later changed from suicide to
“unknown.” But even though Boasberg declined to rightfully
dismiss the family’s claims, he wrote that the delayed filing
coupled with an early settlement left him unable to move the case
anymore forward.
The family said their 1975 settlement with the US government
shouldn’t be considered valid, though, since they “relied on
the CIA’ assurances that all documents relevant to the
circumstances surrounding the death had been turned over.”
Eighteen years later, former CIA Director William Colby sent one
of Olson’s sons a message indicating there was more to the story
of his father’s death. Colby died shortly after, however, and the
murder claim was not filed in court until nearly two decades
later.
“If Plaintiffs’ theory were right, the statute of limitations
would never definitively run. They could wait another decade,
request additional information from the CIA, and then (deeming
the response inadequate on account of negligent supervision) sue
for every instance of “negligent supervision” since 1953,”
wrote Boasberg. “The continuing-violation doctrine does not
stretch so far.”
Coupled with the 1975 settlement that gave Eric and Nils Olson
$187,500 each, Judge Boasberg ruled that the court must side with
the government’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Republished with permission from: RT