Mark Gagnon

So this was peak Cold War paranoia.

Korea was fighting, the Soviets had nukes, American prisoners of war were confessing on camera that the U.S.

had biological weapons, and American intelligence was convinced that brainwashing was a real phenomenon.

Now, this led to two things, Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke.

These were...

MKUltra's predecessors.

Their goal was simple in theory and pretty scary in practice.

They basically wanted to know whether or not drugs, hypnosis, psychological torture or some type of sensory manipulation could be used to break down prisoners and get secret intelligence or erase or alter memories of people that had seen terrible things or even allow full control over a human being.

Now, Fort Detrick Special Operations Division worked closely with these projects for one main reason.

The CIA needed people who understood toxins and aerosols, but most importantly, how to deliver them silently.

And S.O.D.

had exactly that.

So because of his position, Olson wasn't just in the lab at Detrick.

He also traveled and visited CIA linked black sites in places like Germany and France where suspected spies and prisoners of war were being interrogated.

Officially, these sites were for debriefing or screening, but unofficially, they were where the U.S.

and its allies could do things that would never fly on American soil.

Think almost like Guantanamo Bay in the modern day.

It was later suggested that during these trips abroad, Frank Olson would witness brutal interrogation and torture that was justified as science experiments and potentially new experiments on people who never consented to any of this.

So if you're wondering why any of that would involve a biochemist, remember, part of what Bluebird and Artichoke were testing was the idea that drugs could make someone more malleable.

And to do that, they needed someone who understood what these drugs did and how to administer them.