To Recapture:New! - The Sequoia Seminars History Web page! - this thread, edited, all on one page! Going back to the basics:Henry Burton Sharman ->> Jesus as teacher Canadian Missionaries to China -->> James Gareth Endicott -- >> Zhou Enlai -->> OSS Dixie Mission -->> Japan Unit 731 --->>> BioWarfare Korea ---> Frank Olson BioWarfare and Chemical Warfare - Fort Dietrick - LSD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._B._SharmanH. B. Sharman (Henry Burton, 1865–1953) devoted his life to educating others[1] about the life and teaching of Jesus.
Henry Burton Sharman was born 12 August 1865, in Stratford, Ontario, the eldest of eleven children
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Many of his students went on to lead groups in universities and retreat centers. Groups that carried on his seminar method included Pendle Hill,
Sequoia Seminars, and the
Guild for Psychological Studies [1]. Among his
Canadian students who were influential were
the controversial missionaries to China, the Endicotts, James Gareth Endicott[8] and his wife Shirley,[9] and Murial Duckworth, the tireless peace activist.[10]
He was also influential in the life and teaching of his famous Unitarian sister-in-law, Sophia Lyon Fahs.[11] One sociological study of Sharman's influence made much of a split in his students that occurred in the late 1940s and continued after his death, some focusing on transformation of the individual, and others the transformation of society.[12]
In addition to
Records of the Life of Jesus, Sharman published
Studies in the Life of Christ (1896);
The Teachings of Jesus about the Future, according to the Synoptic Gospels (1909);
Jesus in the Records (1918);
Jesus as Teacher (1935);
Studies in the Records of the Life of Jesus (1938);
Son of Man and Kingdom of God: A Critical Study (1943) and Paul as Experient (1945),
he also supervised the translation of some of his works into Chinese and Japanese.
All are currently out of print, except for
Records of the Life of Jesus, which has been reprinted by the Guild for Psychological Studies.
Sharman's original version used the English Revised Version of the gospel text, published in 1881.
In 1991, the Guild for Psychological Studies published a new edition, based on the Revised Standard Version.
Jesus as teacher [microform] ([c1935])http://www.archive.org/details/MN41440ucmf_0http://www.archive.org/stream/MN41440ucmf_0#page/n7/mode/2up
Update:
Canadian students who were influential were
the controversial missionaries to China, the Endicotts, James Gareth Endicott and his wife Shirley,[9] and Murial Duckworth, the tireless peace activist.[10]
It is very interesting to look at
James Gareth Endicott:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gareth_EndicottJames Gareth EndicottEndicott was born in Szechuan Province, China, the third of five children to a Methodist missionary family and became fluent in Chinese.[1] His family returned to Canada in 1910. His father, James Endicott, was elected the second Moderator of the United Church of Canada from 1926 to 1928.
Endicott enlisted in World War I as a Private.[1] After the war he was educated at the University of Toronto's Victoria College where he was president of the student council and a founder of the university's Student Christian Movement.[1]
Endicott earned a Masters degree and was ordained as a minister in the United Church of Canada.
In 1925, Endicott returned to China as a missionary remaining there for most of the following two decades.
Missionary in China
Endicott taught English in China and became professor of English and Ethics at West China Union University. He became
social advisor to Chiang Kai-shek and political advisor to his New Life Movement and served as an advisor to US military intelligence from 1944 to 1945 as a liaison between the American military and the Chinese Communist forces fighting against the Japanese in World War II .
Initially a supporter of Chiang Kaishek and his wife, he once compared Chiang to Abraham Lincoln and described Madame Chiang as a combination of Helen of Troy, Florence Nightingale and Joan of Arc.[1] He became disillusioned after seeing Chiang's officers starve their troops and by the Kuomintang's corruption.[1]
Endicott was impressed by the Communists and became friends with Zhou Enlai as the Chinese Civil War resumed, and
he became a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party. During the war
he provided an underground network where pro-communist forces could meet and exchange ideas . [2]
After the war, he spoke at student demonstrations, urging opposition to the Nationalist government and provoking criticism from the church in Canada.
This led to his resignation from the ministry and the mission on May 5, 1946 after the United Church of Canada gave him an ultimatum to either modify his public statements or quit.[1] At
Zhou En-lai's urging, he moved to Shanghai to publish the underground anti-Kuomintang Shanghai Newsletter. The newsletter was aimed at westerners in the Kuomintang stronghold as well as at trying to convince western governments that Chiang's regime was corrupt and dictatorial.
Return to Canada
In 1947, he returned to Canada. At a time when western countries were backing Chiang and were optimistic about his government,
Endicott advised the Canadian government that the Kuomintang regime's fall was imminent and then went public with his predictions and his denunciation of the Kuomintang as corrupt. His comments were denounced as traitorous by the media and
he was labelled the most reviled Canadian of the year for his support of the Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party of China and was criticized by the United Church for his support of the revolution.He continued his support for the Chinese Communist Party by giving lectures and publishing the Canadian Far Eastern Weekly which had 5,000 subscribers at its peak.
Canadian Peace Congress
In 1949, he founded and became chairman of the Canadian Peace Congress and helped publish its Peace Letter bulletin.
He also became a senior figure in the World Peace Council serving as president of the International Institute for Peace from 1957 until 1971.
In 1950, as a Canadian delegate to the World Peace Council in Stockholm, Endicott sat on the committee that
drafted the Stockholm Peace Appeal which was the petition that began the international "Ban the Bomb" movementKorean War
Endicott returned on a visit to China in 1952, during the Korean War and, on his return to Canada, charged the United States with using chemical and biological weapons during the war. His charges led him to be vilified in the Canadian press as "public enemy number one" and
he was censured by the United Church for his support of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists.[1]
...
The government threatened to charge him with treason and sedition, but did not follow through, while others called for him to lose his passport and mailing privileges.[1][4]
Later work
Endicott was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952 for his efforts working for "peaceful coexistence between the Christians and the Communists." He continued his advocacy for the People's Republic of China by publishing
the Canadian Far East Newsletter and though he publicly backed the Soviet Union in the initial years of the Sino-Soviet split he was sympathetic to China's arguments and reported them in the newsletter.
Endicott was offered the presidency of the World Peace Council in the early 1960s but declined due to his wife's declining health and what he anticipated as a personally untenable position of leading the council during a period of growing tensions between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China and their respective factions on the council.
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Update: Did the U.S. use Biological Warfare in Korea and how that ties in with the Sequoia Seminars:Korean War
Endicott returned on a visit to China in 1952, during the Korean War and, on his return to Canada, charged the United States with using chemical and biological weapons during the war. His charges led him to be vilified in the Canadian press as "public enemy number one" and he was censured by the United Church for his support of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists.[1]
http://archives.truenorthperspective.com/July_08/July_25/us_and_bio_war.html
United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets From the Early Cold War and Korea, The
By Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman
One of the more sensational events of the early Cold War in Canada was the allegation by the Reverend James G. Endicott that the United States had resorted to germ warfare in pursuing the war in Korea under the banner of the United Nations.
This allegation, made in the early months of 1952, based on Endicott's observations in Northeast China and reports from the Chinese, was quickly dismissed by the Canadian government and efforts were made to discredit Endicott's charges and to undermine his credibility. Resorting to the method, later known as "plausible denial," the Canadian and American governments heaped scorn on the man who was seen as no more than a mouthpiece for the Red China regime.
...
Endicott, however, never gave up, drawing closer and closer to proving his allegations.
Later revelations that the United States had taken over Japanese biological experiments, along with the Japanese scientists who conducted them provided more hard evidence. Only his death in his late nineties prevented Endicott from completing the picture.
The complete (or nearly complete) picture has now been drawn by two scholars from York University, utilizing recently declassified materials from American, Canadian, and British government archives, along with documents from the Chinese Central Archives.
Stephen Endicott (son of the aforementioned Reverend James G.) and Edward Hagerman have done
a masterful job in marshalling the evidence and providing the arguments to make the case for the charge that the United States indulged in biological (bacteriological, germ) warfare under the umbrella of the Korean War.After using atomic weapons in Asia, in hindsight, it seems hardly a deviation for the United States to experiment with biological weapons less than a decade later, and to move on to agent orange, napalm and other devices (including — alleged — biological weapons) in Vietnam in the `60's. In preaching its "higher" standards of behavior to Asians, the West has always been blessed with a shortness of memory.
The United States and Biological Warfare is replete with photos and documents, such that it is difficult not to join with the authors in their summation that the covert planning of the Strategic Air Command for the delivery of bacteriological weapons, along with pressures to widen the Korean War combined with the "circumstantial evidence from the United States, Canada, Australia, Korea, and China," lead "to the conclusion that the United States took the final step and secretly experimented with biological weapons in the Korean War."
Their book is one that deserves wide discussion, not only for what it tells us about how governments deliberately misinform and mislead their citizens, while sacrificing the rights of individuals, but for what it means in the history of Western (American) relations with Eastern Asia.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2010/03/201031761541794128.htmlDirty little secrets Al
Jazeera investigates claims that the US used germ warfare during the Korean War.
Diarmuid Jeffreys Last Modified: 04 Apr 2010 11:25 GMT
...
North Korea alleges that the US used biological weapons against Korean civilians during the war– dropping "germ" bombs containing insects, shellfish and feathers infected with anthrax, typhoid and bubonic plague on villages across the country.
The US has always vehemently denied these claims, dismissing them as crude and outlandish communist propaganda from a secretive and totalitarian state.
Nevertheless, the accusations have refused to go away. Pyongyang continues to press for an apology for an "outrage" that the US insists never happened
A Twenty Year Mystery
In a specially extended edition, People & Power set out to investigate this extraordinary story.
Our journey began in North Korea where we were given unprecedented access to follow a leading Japanese academic, Professor Mori Masataka, who has been trying to unravel the mystery for the last twenty years.
On this, his fourth visit to the country, Mori's intention was to talk to men who claim to have witnessed, first hand, biological attacks on villages in 1952.
But neither he nor People & Power's location producer, Tim Tate, were under any illusions.
North Korea is one of the world's most secretive states and is usually impenetrable to journalists. Everywhere our cameras went, government officials went too, strictly monitoring where and what we could film.
In a vast museum in the centre of Pyongyang, Mori explored a room given over to what the North Koreans claim is direct evidence of US germ warfare – including specimen jars filled with flies, mosquitoes and fleas all allegedly injected with deadly pathogens.
A smartly uniformed army officer, Captain Ryu Uk Hui, drew his attention to some salvaged bomb casings.
On impact, she said, they were adapted to split open and release the insects to infect the local population. A film-show followed.
The grainy black and white footage, purportedly North Korean news film from 1952, appeared to show masses of insects crawling on the snow covered ground beside the bomb casings.
All this could have been phony, of course, and that is how the US has always responded to such claims, especially to filmed "confessions" from 36 captured US airmen - also screened in Pyongyang's museum - in which they give the North Koreans apparently detailed accounts of their participation in the US "germ" raids.
Accounts that, it must be said, were all retracted on the air crews' return home to the US after the war.
...
Later, we are driven deep into the North Korean countryside, to a village called Hwanjin, where two elderly farmers are patiently waiting.
It is clear they have been tidied up for the occasion and both wore patriotic badges pinned to their tunics, yet their weathered faces, calloused hands and still grimy fingernails speak of long years spent in the fields.
Although it is impossible to be sure, neither seems to be a Communist Party apparatchik primed for the occasion. And one speaks with convincing passion about the events that took the life of his father and many others, in the days after the insects came.
"It was in March", says Yun Chang Bin. "The flies were big and their colour was brown-ish.
"Not long after that, about April, terrible epidemics like typhoid fever were spread. People in the village developed high temperatures. Loss of appetite and then aches on the arms and legs, there was much pain."
There were some 50 households in the village, he went on, and more than thirty people died.
"My father died. He suffered a high fever, and then he was not able to use the lower half of his body, he wasn't able to eat and was not able to move."
As his fellow farmer nods encouragingly beside him, Yun Chang Bin looks directly at Professor Mori.
"I want you to go and tell the peace-loving people in the world about the atrocity the Americans committed to inflict pain to us, to make us unhappy, to kill all us Korean people, by scattering germ bombs to exterminate us."
...
But however convincing he has found these accounts, Mori knows that testimony from North Korean citizens will not be enough to convince a sceptical world that the US used germ warfare in Korea.
"A scientific investigation or medical or biological investigation should be carried out. I think it is definitely necessary that a non-political purely-scientific organisation should be sent to North Korea to investigate", Mori says.
As it happens, within months of the original allegations being made back in the 1950s, North Korea invited an international commission to visit the country.International commissionComposed of scientists from France, Italy, Sweden, the Soviet Union and Brazil, and led by Joseph Needham, a distinguished - if left-leaning - British embryologist, the commission toured the affected areas, interviewed the sick and the dying and carried out a detailed analysis of their infections.
The resulting 600-page report included results of post-mortem on the victims: these identified bubonic plague, cholera and anthrax.
It concluded that germ warfare had been deployed exactly as the North Koreans claimed. Yet despite its apparent wealth of scientific evidence, it was again dismissed by the US as communist disinformation.Which is why,
if a new international enquiry was ever undertaken, it would have to spread its net far further than North Korea and to the US, in particular, where the truth almost certainly lies, buried deep in the Cold War secrets of a superpower. was there that People & Power discovered that during the 1940s and 1950s American scientists at the US Army base in Fort Detrick, Maryland, had developed ways of delivering bomb-loads of insects infected with bubonic plague and other deadly pathogens.
Our investigations also uncovered two remarkable documents in the US National Archives.
Unit 731They revealed that the US had bought the expertise of Unit 731, a Japanese army biological warfare team, which conducted human experiments in the 1930s and 1940s to perfect the technology of bacteriological warfare: in World War 2, the Japanese military had dropped thousands of "germ bombs" across Northern China, killing millions of civilians. ...
A third crucial document - marked "Top Secret" - showed that in September 1951, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff issued orders to begin "large scale field tests ... to determine the effectiveness of specific BW [bacteriological warfare] agents under operational conditions."
If these "field tests" were indeed undertaken, then they may have drawn again on the expertise of the Japanese biological warfare team.
In Japan, People & Power found home video footage from one of the former members of that team, shot just before his death, in which he claimed that its leaders had indeed assisted the US in mounting "an attack" in Korea.
But perhaps the most telling evidence came from a former US air force officer who took part in bombing raids over North Korea.
Kenneth Enoch was shot down in January 1952 and held as a POW for 20 months.
"Confessions"
While in captivity, he was one of 36 US air force officers who made written and filmed "confessions" that they had taken part in "germ bomb" missions.
When these POWs were repatriated in 1953, the US department of defence threatened to charge them with treason for co-operating with their captors.
Each then retracted their confessions in front of military cameras: each claimed they had been tortured or indoctrinated by North Korean and Chinese guards.
But when we tracked down and interviewed Enoch, now a sprightly 85 and living in a gated retirement community in Texas, he denied having been ill-treated or indoctrinated – and appeared to make at least a partial admission that the US did use biological weapons in the Korean War.
"The people who deal in that don't have to go and fight, and that's a pretty sweet deal for them. You know, but they send it with you," he said. Nevertheless, he continued to deny that he personally played any part in biological weapons attacks.
Records of Enoch's bombing missions over North Korea were removed by US air force investigators from the official records in March 1952 – two months after he was captured and one week before he made his confession to "germ warfare".
People & Power asked both the US state department and the department of defence for an interview about the issue raised in our film.
They turned down the offer and also declined to answer ten specific questions we put to them about North Korea's allegations
At one point,
Enoch said his statements had been coerced by the North Koreans...
So who is to be believed?
Professor Mori Masataka, thinks he knows the answer. "Use of germ weapons in war is in breach of the Geneva Convention. I think that's why the Americans are refusing to admit the allegations. But I have no doubt. I'm absolutely sure that this happened."
The clear implication, of course, is that were North Korea's claims ever to be proved,
the US might be open to prosecution for war crimes – which would be awkward, to say the least, at a time when the US is relying on its moral authority to underpin international efforts to combat global terrorism and nuclear proliferation.
Either way, one thing is clear.
Until the allegations are laid to rest and the US's innocence or culpability is established beyond doubt - perhaps by an independent enquiry – one of the most enduring Cold War mysteries will continue to haunt Washington's relationship with the world's most secretive state.
This episode of People & Power aired from Wednesday, March 10, 2010.
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Ok - But what does all this have to do with LSD? You ask .... Frank Olson http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/nov2002/arti-n13.shtmlTV film on death of Frank OlsonGerman documentary charges US used biological weapons in Korean WarBy Peter Schwarz
13
November 2002The claim by the Bush administration that Baghdad is threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction is the main pretext for its war preparations against Iraq.
However, a documentary recently broadcast by the German state television channel, ARD, suggests that the US government is itself hiding biological warfare programs from the rest of the world, and actually employed such weapons in 1952 during the Korean War.The documentary, entitled Codename Artichoke—the Secret Human Experiments of the CIA, was aired by ARD last August. A book with the same title was published shortly afterwards.
The authors of both the film and the book, TV journalists Edmond R. Koch and Michael Wech, focus on the case of biochemist Dr. Frank Olson, who died on November 28, 1953 after a mysterious fall from the 13th floor of the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City.
At the time of his death, Olson had been given the highest clearance for access to classified information. He was one of the leading scientists doing research in the field of biological weapons, and had been working for ten years in the biological warfare facilities at Maryland’s Camp Detrick (today, Fort Detrick) near Washington DC.He also occupied a leading position in “Operation Artichoke,” a CIA program that coordinated all projects of the Army, Navy and CIA involving psychedelic drugs, fatal poisons and similar substances. Those involved in this project included German doctors who had experimented with human beings in the Nazi concentration camps.Artichoke involved the use of torture and drugs to interrogate people. The effects of substances such as LSD, heroin and marijuana were studied, using unsuspecting individuals as human guinea pigs. The CIA was eager to identify military uses for substances that altered the psyche. The agency was at that time obsessed with the idea that the Soviets or the Chinese might employ methods of brainwashing to recruit double agents or manipulate the population of entire nations.
Artichoke also included the development of poisons that take effect immediately. These substances were later used in attempts on the lives of a number of foreign leaders, e.g., Abdul Karim Kassem (Iraq), Patrice Lumumba (Congo), and Fidel Castro (Cuba).
Before Frank Olson plunged to his death from a window of the Hotel Pennsylvania in 1953, he exhibited symptoms of behavioural disturbance. Friends, family members and colleagues shown in the film and quoted in the book assume that he had seen things that he felt went too far, and intended to quit his work with the CIA. Prior to his death he had seen a psychiatrist on several occasions, always in the company of a CIA watchdog. He died one day before he was scheduled to be committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Olson’s death was officially described as suicide due to depression. Only in the mid-1970s, when the CIA’s secret activities were scrutinised in the wake of the Watergate scandal, did the government admit to a certain degree of responsibility:
Ten days before his death, the CIA had administered LSD to Olson without his knowledge. President Gerald Ford subsequently apologised to the family, and the CIA paid compensation to his widow.
According to the documentary, this was a further cover-up operation. The film presents evidence suggesting that the death of the biochemical expert was not suicide, but murder.
Frank Olson’s son, Eric, is convinced that his father was assassinated. He has been trying for decades to clear up the circumstances of his father’s death, and has gathered numerous pieces of evidence supporting the thesis of murder, which he made available to the authors of Codename Artichoke.
In 1994 Eric Olson had his father’s body exhumed and examined by a renowned forensic scientist, who concluded that in all probability someone had knocked Frank Olson unconscious in the hotel room and thrown him out of the window, in contrast to the official version, which claimed Olson had jumped.
After the report on the post-mortem had been published, the public prosecutor’s office in Manhattan initiated proceedings against an unknown person. However, the prosecutor lost interest as soon as the CIA intervened into the questioning of
the main witness, the CIA agent Robert Lashbrook, who had accompanied Olson continuously prior to his death and had been in the hotel room when Olson fell out of the window.
A memorandum dated July 11, 1975 and printed in the book strongly indicates that the CIA has something to hide. Addressed to the White House chief of staff, the memo urgently recommended an official apology by the president so as to forestall any trial or official hearing on the Olson case. Otherwise, the memo said, “it might be necessary to disclose highly classified national security information.” Ten days later President Ford met with the Olson family in the White House.
The addressee and the author of this memo are still active and hold prominent positions in government. The former is Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, who was then White House chief of staff, and the latter is Vice President Dick Cheney, who was then Rumsfeld’s deputy.
The following year, after delays in the payment of the promised compensation to the family, another well-known political figure intervened: then-CIA Director George Bush, who himself went on to become US president and whose son is George W. Bush.
Why the cover-up?In the mid-1970s, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush senior collaborated to prevent a thorough investigation into Olson’s death, because they feared that it might “disclose highly classified national security information.” What information?
The authors of the documentary have traced numerous clues, but given the mass of multifaceted evidence presented, it is often difficult to distinguish fact from fiction.
Olson undoubtedly knew about many things that would have discredited the US administration, and it is entirely plausible that the government sought to silence him.The authors describe how German physicians who had worked in Nazi concentration camps were rapidly rehabilitated after the war through the US denazification program and put to work on US research projects on biological and chemical warfare. The book also notes that
Olson and his colleagues carried out large-scale field experiments with biological weapons. In one case
they spread a certain bacillus—which they regarded as harmless—across San Francisco Bay, as a dress rehearsal for a major biological attack on a large city.Both genuine and alleged enemy agents were subjected to horrifying interrogations, some of which Olson must have witnessed personally, the authors conclude. In some cases these interrogations led to the death of the accused. The most convincing proof of this is a telegram from 1954, in which the CIA director inquires about “bodies available for terminal experiments.”
In addition, thousands of people were used, without their knowledge or consent, for experiments with LSD, mescaline, morphine, seconal, atropine and other drugs. The CIA even ran its own brothels in order to lure its victims. As the inspector general of the US Army later stated in a report to a Senate committee: “In universities, hospitals and research institutions” an “unknown number of chemical tests and experiments ... were carried out with healthy adults, with mentally ill and with prison inmates.”
Most of these activities were exposed in the 1970s, when two commissions appointed by Congress—the Rockefeller and the Church commissions—investigated the secret activities of the CIA. A further investigation was published by John Marks, a former employee of the State Department. After legal proceedings based on the Freedom of Information Act, Marks gained access to several thousand pages of classified CIA material. This material is utilised extensively in the documentary.
In 1969 the US officially cancelled all research programs on biological weapons. Fort Detrick was closed down. Today the site is used by the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), which, according to the official line, strictly limits itself to the analysis of biological weapons for defence purposes.
In 1974, the US signed onto the international convention against biological warfare.
Were biological weapons used in Korea?There must be reasons for the continuing secrecy surrounding Olson’s death that go beyond the facts which surfaced in the 1970s.
One possible reason is linked to Korea—and to last year’s anthrax attacks against leading politicians of the Democratic Party and others that cost the lives of five people.During the Korean War, both Pyongyang and Beijing repeatedly accused the US of employing bacteriological weapons. These
accusations were supported by eyewitness reports, photos, laboratory analyses and the remains of biological bombs.
In 1952, two international commissions which examined the war area with Soviet and Chinese help concluded that the US army had indeed used such weapons. This was confirmed in written statements by US pilots who were held prisoner by Korea. Some of them appeared before the international press and repeated their confessions.
The US categorically denied these accusations, describing the evidence presented as forged, characterising the international commissions as instruments of communist propaganda, and claiming that the soldiers’ confessions were the result of “brainwashing.” Allen W. Dulles, the CIA director, even gave a speech devoted to brainwashing, in which he accused North Korea of “having turned around a whole number of our boys.”
When the prisoners of war who had made these confessions returned from Korea in the summer of 1953, they were interrogated by the Artichoke team, which had announced its eagerness to do so weeks in advance. In a memorandum to the top leadership of the CIA, the team said it wanted to use those “who have been exposed to and accepted in varying degrees Communist indoctrination ... as unique research material in the Artichoke work.” Among other things, hypnosis, anaesthetics and LSD were to be used on the former POWs. In this way, Artichoke hoped to gain insight into the enemy’s interrogation methods and to make sure that the returned soldiers did not work for the other side.Koch and Wech, however, believe that Artichoke’s main concern was the confessions of the Air Force pilots. The authors suspect that they contained at least some true revelations.
The authors ask: “Was their will to be broken with LSD? Were they to be subjected to artificial amnesia to make them forget what they saw and did? Biological warfare? Experiments with anthrax and other deadly epidemics?”Frank Olson probably witnessed some interrogations of soldiers returning from Korea. This is the conclusion drawn by the authors from a careful reconstruction of his travels. As the leading expert on the release of biological weapons, he must have known about the use of such devices if and when they were actually employed. Was this first-hand knowledge the ultimate reason for his demise? Did the CIA silence him when it became clear he was seeking to distance himself from the agency?
This suspicion is given credence by a reliable witness,
Norman Cournoyer. In the early years of Camp Detrick, Cournoyer had worked closely with Frank Olson, and remained his best friend until the end. He knew about Olson’s intention to leave the CIA.
In April 2001, Cournoyer, who had read an article about the case in the New York Times Magazine, contacted Eric Olson and said he would tell him the truth about his father’s death. “Korea is the key,” he is quoted as saying.The authors continue: “And then Norman Cournoyer confirmed that the American Air Force had indeed tested biological weapons during the Korean War.” Frank Olson had learned about this and began to despair about what he was doing. In conclusion, Cournoyer said: “Was this the reason for the CIA to kill your father? Probably.”According to Eric Olson, this statement is in line with remarks of his mother, who used to say: “Your father was always worried about Korea.”
According to Koch and Wech, there is a direct connection between the cover-up of the Olson case and the sluggish investigations into the anthrax attacks of October 2001. Last year’s attempts on the lives of two high-ranking representatives of the American state have not been cleared up to this day.
Despite the fact that all evidence points to Fort Detrick and one possible perpetrator is known by name, the investigation has plodded along without any suspects being identified by the government.A serious probe into either Olson’s death or the recent anthrax attacks, the authors believe, could bring to light things that would severely damage the credibility of the United States. They suspect that the anthrax attacker’s knowledge of certain facts makes it impossible for the FBI to lay hands on him.
The authors suggest that this knowledge relates to secret biological warfare programs. They ask, “Is it conceivable that the US army carried out further research on biological weapons in spite of binding international treaties, even after the official termination of offensive projects involving biological weaponry in 1969?” They then charge that there are “very concrete indications that the Pentagon does not give a damn about international agreements on biological warfare.”
They cite several such indications: the production of a genetically improved version of the anthrax bacterium, which was reported by the New York Times on September 11, 2001; the plans by military institutes to develop new microbes that are able to dissolve certain materials; and the consistent refusal of the Bush administration to sign a supplementary protocol to the international convention on biological weapons that would give teams of United Nations experts access to American military laboratories. In the course of the negotiations in Geneva, according to the authors, it became known that Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld wanted at all costs to prevent any such inspections.
* * *
Codename Artichoke—
the Secret Human Experiments of the CIA is available in German only from C. Bertelssmann Verlag, Munich.
