Wormwood (2017) s01e01 Episode Script
Chapter 1: Suicide Revealed
1 I'll see you tomorrow.
I love you, Alice.
[TV REPORTER.]
18,000 fight fans jammed into Madison Square Garden tonight.
[BELL DINGS.]
[REFEREE.]
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven [TICKING.]
[FRANK.]
"And the third angel sounded.
" And there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp.
And it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters.
And the name of the star is called Wormwood.
And the third part of the waters became Wormwood.
"And many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
" [DOOR RATTLES.]
["NO OTHER LOVE" BY PERRY COMO PLAYING.]
No other love have I Only my love for you Only the dream we knew No other love Watching the night go by Wishing that you could be Watching the night with me Into the night I cry Hurry home Come home to me Set me free Free from doubt And free from longing Into your arms I'll fly Locked in your arms I'll stay Waiting to hear you say No other love have I No other love [ERROL.]
What were you told at the time of your father's death? I was told that, "Your father has had an accident.
" He fell or jumped out the window "and he died.
" This is the story of my childhood.
When I'm awakened early in the morning on November 28th, brought out into the living room, and there sit my father's boss, Vincent Ruwet and a family doctor and my mother.
And this is, like, really early in the morning, I don't know, 4:30, five o'clock in the morning.
So there's this kinda foggy, dark, early-morning light.
Ruwet was the one who told me, he says, "Your father was in New York.
" He had an accident.
"He fell or jumped out the window, and he died.
" And I was completely paralyzed by this.
Not only because this was the news that your father has died that, in a way, was the least of it.
He had an accident and he fell or jumped out the window.
And how do these terms comport with each other? If he jumped out the window how is that an accident? But on the other hand, what does it mean to say you fell out of a hotel room window? What does that even mean? What does that look like? A lot of my childhood and youth were spent kind of juggling these terms around.
How does fall, jump, and accident How can you arrange this triangle of terms, so that this thing gets sorted out in any possible way? How does fall, jump and accident How can you arrange this triangle of terms, so that this thing gets sorted out in any possible way? [ECHOING.]
How can you arrange this triangle of terms, so that this thing gets sorted out in any possible way? Behind which, the whole emotional reaction, "Your father just died," got lost because I couldn't even understand what they just said.
For me it was like a bomb was just dropped on my head.
At that moment, the world stopped making sense entirely.
[CAMERA ROLLS.]
[ERIC.]
Somehow, I need to talk about this.
Which was the last thing my mother wanted to hear.
Her thing was, "Well, haven't we already talked about that?" [CHUCKLING.]
I had to "When did we talk about it?" "Well, we talked about that.
I've told you everything.
" It's like one of those things, "When did you tell me?" "We have talked about that.
Why do you keep bringing this up? Can't you let this go?" That was the whole thing, "Can't you let this go? We have to move on here.
" [REPORTER 1.]
When the Rockefeller report on the CIA came out, there was in it a grisly story of a CIA experiment on an unwitting civilian who was given LSD.
[REPORTER 2.]
The CIA experimenting with LSD apparently caused the suicide in 1953 of civilian scientist Frank Olson.
But for 22 years, the man's family was led to believe that he had killed himself in an isolated, irrational act.
[ERIC.]
When the story came out in the Rockefeller Commission Report, I get this phone call from my brother-in-law.
"You should read the Washington Post today.
" So I ran down to Out of Town News in Harvard Square, get the Washington Post read this thing, and I'm just totally blown away.
There it is, on the front page, "Suicide revealed.
" "The Rockefeller Commission has discovered that an army scientist," after being drugged with LSD, jumped out the window of a New York hotel.
How many scientists could be jumping out of windows in 1953 in New York City? This has gotta be my father.
But, wait.
They didn't call us.
They didn't notify us, didn't say, "It's your father.
" How do you know? - [CAMERA ROLLS.]
- Maybe it isn't.
My sister Lisa and her husband Greg decided immediately that the person who would know whether this referred to Frank Olson or not is my father's former boss, Vin Ruwet.
They initially got his wife, who said, "Vin is not home.
" He wouldn't know about this anyway.
"Goodbye.
" It turned out he had been over at the CIA, getting instruction about how to handle this because he knew his phone was gonna start ringing.
I guess on authorization from the Agency, he did confirm, "Yes, this is your father.
" But that's basically all he did.
[DAVID.]
I still remember, one o'clock in the morning, asleep, getting a call from Eric July, 1975.
"Did you see the headlines in the paper today? The guy on the front page of the newspaper hurling out the window, that's my father.
" Dealing with him both as a friend and now as a client, having to deal with the CIA, Congress, the president, the Department of Justice, all of whom have their own interest to release as little as possible, and try to make this thing go away.
- [ERROL.]
Keep the cover-up going? - Yes.
And remember, this is 1975.
A lot is going on.
The Rockefeller Commission Report, the investigations in Congress over the FBI and domestic surveillance Nixon has resigned, a lot of turmoil and a lot of questions about the integrity of the US government.
[REPORTER 3.]
This is the Rockefeller Report, released tonight, 299 pages.
It says many things: That the CIA did engage in unlawful activities, that it did go beyond its mandate, that it did succumb to political pressures from the White House.
It confirms there was domestic spying on American civilians, unlawful wiretaps, the opening of private mail, even a drug-testing program involving the use of LSD against unsuspecting persons.
We'll talk with the reporter who first broke the story of domestic misdeeds.
Seymour Hersh, as a reporter for The New York Times, you wrote a story last December, in which you said there had been a massive illegal domestic spying operation by the CIA.
Was it Watergate that first aroused your suspicions? While working on Watergate, chasing down all those various leads, etcetera, I ran into a couple of guys, one who had just left the CIA, who said, "If you think Watergate's something, find out what we've been doing," and he was sort of murky about it.
Was it difficult, developing the story? Yeah.
[REPORTER 4.]
Did you find people in the CIA who were literally waiting to spill the beans on their employer? [HERSH.]
It was complicated.
They had goen and made efforts inside the Agency to get the Justice Department involved.
They wanted Colby to do something about what they knew to be a fact.
There was an internal report of misdeeds.
They were getting no action.
I happen to think that if this story hadn't been published in some form or another.
I doubt if all of these investigations would be going on.
That's self-serving, but that's simply the way I look at it.
[REPORTER 4.]
Do you regard the report released tonight as confirmation of your original story back in December? [HERSH.]
You bet.
Lord knows, Washington's been quibbling about the word "massive" for a few months, including, I must say, an awful lot of the press corps.
And as they say, I hope they're all eating crow tonight.
I know I'm not.
[ERIC.]
When my father's case had suddenly been disclosed, we decided, well, "Let's call Seymour Hersh.
" It's due to him that we even are able to go down this road.
He would write the first story that would appear before a major press conference that we were gonna have the following day.
So Hersh arrives at our house, this is June 1975, and he walks in the front door, and I'm the guy who opens the door.
Without introducing himself, without any hello or anything, he goes, "This must be the most goddamn uncurious family in the United States.
" He says, "How you could have lived with this bullshit story for 22 years" is beyond me.
" The next day, his article appears.
We then have this press conference, which, due to his article, was extremely well attended.
We decided to have this at our home, because we felt we'd be more comfortable speaking on our own ground.
Fort Detrick, where my father worked, is just beyond the trees.
If there weren't leaves on the trees, you could see Fort Detrick down below.
I wanna introduce my family to you.
This is my mother, Alice Olson.
This is my brother, Nils Olson.
My sister, Lisa Olson Hayward.
And I'm Eric Olson.
This has been something that we've lived with as a kind of shrouded mystery, the question of how my father died, for 22 years.
So now, that kind of shrouded, most mysterious part of our lives is about to become the most public aspect of our lives, as individuals and as a family.
And that shift parallels another shift for all of us, which is the shift from thinking that my father's death was some sort of mysterious suicide, to knowing that it was a CIA atrocity.
[DOORBELL RINGS.]
Hello, Alice.
[VINCENT.]
We're gonna be inside most of the time.
We don't really fish.
Do you believe that story? [ALICE LAUGHS.]
[VINCENT LAUGHS.]
[ALICE.]
Okay.
[CUPS CLINKING, LAUGHTER.]
Ready, Frank? - Bye.
- Bye.
[BIRD SQUAWKING.]
[ENGINE STARTS.]
[RADIO REPORTER 1.]
Just-released films lay bare the truth behind communist charges of germ warfare in Korea, and the so-called confessions of captured US airmen.
Confiscated films show the red press conferences, where the American fliers admitted dropping germ bombs on civilian territory, statements broadcast by the communist propaganda machine throughout the world, and even carried into the halls of the United Nations.
These confessions form the basis of a blatant symphony of hatred.
[RADIO CHATTER.]
[WEBB PIERCE'S "THERE STANDS THE GLASS" PLAYING.]
That will ease all my pain That will settle my brain It's my first one today There stands the glass That will hide all my tears That will drown all my fears Brother, I'm on my way [GRUNTING.]
Gentlemen.
[STAMMERS.]
We have much to discover.
All right.
[CAR DOOR CLOSES.]
[ERIC.]
If you're nine years old, and you're identified with your father, identification at that age is a very radical notion.
It's in that mirroring that you find yourself.
I was strongly identified with him at the time.
And suddenly, he just disappeared.
The memories of him are really fragmentary.
The trauma of his death really, you know, wreaked havoc with a lot of memory.
I do have a fragmentary memory of him pushing me on a bike.
[CAMERA ROLLS.]
[ERIC.]
As I look at this little film clip, it's as if I'm starting to fall forward off this bike.
That whole identification thing with him, the falling and so on.
Bike riding is a funny thing, where you're constantly on the edge of falling, actually.
It's only the speed that keeps you balanced.
So there's something about the body, and the falling, and the not falling, and the forward motion, something about all that, and the balance, it just was very calming to me to ride bicycles.
And, you know, I loved it.
[ERROL.]
Did he teach you to ride? [ERIC.]
Yeah.
He did.
[ERROL.]
And you remember the funeral? [ERIC.]
I don't, actually.
I have some fragmentary memory of sitting in a pew of this church.
I had some kind of almost out-of-the-body experience that I'm kind of in that place, and yet I don't have a clue where I actually am, and what's going on.
What I remember much more clearly is right after the funeral, the whole congregation basically goes to the cemetery.
My mother didn't want me to go to that, so I was [CHUCKLES.]
Oh, wow.
I was taken over to Vin Ruwet's house.
I remember being suddenly in a room, which seems, in my memory, utterly barren.
You don't know why you're there.
Extreme alienation.
Cut off from everything.
That's my memory of this.
Vin Ruwet.
Some room.
As a kid, you have sort of intuitions.
You kind of sense people you like, and don't like.
You don't know why, you don't know what's going on, but you do have this kind of visceral reaction.
I just remember being in that house, feeling lost.
Where the hell am I? There's nobody there.
It's, like, go in this room and wait.
[LIGHTER CLICKS.]
[ERIC.]
After my father died, Ruwet starts to come up to the family house pretty much every day to have martinis with my mother.
[ERROL.]
Gin or vodka? Gin, I think.
Gin.
Yeah.
Gin.
This was the beginning of her slide into alcoholism, and as we later found out from those CIA documents we got from Colby, he had been ordered to, quote, "Keep track of the wife.
" It was a directive to Ruwet: "Keep track of the wife.
" [ERROL.]
Vin Ruwet is your father's boss.
[ERIC.]
Exactly.
In this special operations group, which is kind of sub-set within Detrick.
And my father had been the chief of it, but he stepped down some months earlier.
Ruwet was a military guy.
He was a colonel.
And as soon as you got into his presence, you felt like, "Oh, Jesus, I'm gonna do something wrong here.
" He, early on, was made nervous by me, and I don't know what I was saying, but I was somehow giving off signals that I wasn't well-adjusted in the context of this whole story that my father suddenly vanished.
Another thing you have to remember here too, is that my father didn't die.
He really disappeared.
When he went to New York, we never saw him again.
He's put in a casket in New York taken back to Frederick.
They say, "You can't open this thing", because, unfortunately, he's been too seriously injured.
"We wouldn't want you to see this.
" So no one ever saw him again.
My father was the son of Swedish immigrants who came to this country around 1890.
He was born in a small mining town: Hurley, Wisconsin.
And he goes to the University of Wisconsin to study basically agronomy, growing crops.
Kind of like a generation beyond the farm, in a way.
His thesis advisor and chairman of the department there becomes the advisor to the government in setting up this biological warfare installation calls my father to join in that operation.
That's important to remember: How quick this whole transformation was, from being a laboratory research guy, interested in growing things, to being involved in biological warfare, and killing things.
My mother always said that when he came home from work for lunch, she could see from his expression that the experiments that morning had gone well, which meant all the monkeys had died And this was always a very traumatic thing for him, seeing the monkeys die in the lab.
[MAN 1.]
You are in Fort Detrick, where some 600 military and civilian scientists work together in research at the army biological laboratories, to protect this country against a biological attack.
Because a biological attack would most likely come in the form of an invisible cloud, the study of these clouds, or aerosols, is important.
[MAN 2.]
Chemical, biological warfare cannot be ignored.
Working up defenses against chemical-biological warfare is the responsibility of the Army Chemical Corps.
[BIRDS SQUAWK.]
[OWL HOOTS.]
[SIGHS DEEPLY.]
Bombs away.
You've taken over for Dr.
Olson at just the right time.
[CLICKS TONGUE.]
Well, we look forward to our continued collaboration with the Agency.
[GLASSES CLINKING.]
I just don't understand why anyone would betray their country.
[GOTTLIEB.]
Those men weren't weak.
Just susceptible to certain influences.
Remember they've got methods we're just beginning to understand.
We're desperate to keep up.
It's pseudo-science.
It's a waste of government funding.
[GOTTLIEB.]
It's a lot easier to break a man than you might think, Dr.
Olson.
Confusion to the enemy.
Hear, hear.
[SNORTS.]
[GOTTLIEB.]
Gentlemen.
TSS has embarked on a new program called MKUltra.
This program is designed to help us to better understand human behavior who we are, what we do, and, more importantly, what we could reveal.
In this Cold War, the most dangerous weapon is information.
When a few scared boys confess on the world stage, it diminishes our country's credibility.
We must find a way to contain these lies.
You are the men who know the secrets.
We are the men who keep the secrets.
[STAMMERS.]
Our coexistence depends on trust.
Tonight, we're going to put that trust to the test.
By now, you're probably feeling a little unusual.
We have slipped a potential truth serum into your cordials.
[CHUCKLES.]
You're all a bunch of jokers.
Huh? You're all a bunch of thespians.
[LAUGHTER.]
I think that you're the one on stage tonight, Dr.
Olson.
[RAUCOUS LAUGHTER.]
[DAVID.]
Rod Hills, the counsel to the president, called me at home.
My name was all over in the media.
I thought it might be a prank by a friend.
"President Ford wants to apologize to Alice Olson.
We'd like you to come in on Monday.
All of you.
" I thought, "Oh, this is terrific.
Alice is gonna really appreciate this.
" But then I thought, you know, this could project that it's over.
And this was by no means over.
We hadn't started yet.
I felt they were perhaps trying to short-circuit it.
- [ERROL.]
Which they were, no? - Yeah, absolutely.
They were trying to seal us in.
[ERIC.]
It was only a few days after the press conference that we're in the White House.
I mean, in one sense, it's kind of emblazoned in my memory, but it's emblazoned in a very spotty way.
There's certain things that I recall.
I don't have a continuous memory of everything.
But there were certain moments of it that I really recall.
First of all, we were almost late to the meeting.
We were caught in a traffic jam on the beltway and had to go over onto the shoulder, and speeding past cars, doing all kinds of stuff to get down to the White House in time for this meeting.
And we're ushered in fairly quickly.
There was no waiting.
I mean, we were kind of taken directly into the Oval Office, and there is Gerald Ford.
He had kind of a personal warmth that my mother responded to very strongly.
I was pretty transfixed myself, just by the by the beauty of that room.
When the president sort of looks at you and, you know, says, "We're sorry," that's a very powerful moment.
Ford didn't say actually much of anything about the content of what he was apologizing for.
I later discovered he was told not to.
[REPORTER 5.]
Mr.
Ford today apologized, expressed the sympathy of the American people, and promised the family it would be given all the facts on Olson's death.
[ERIC.]
What they then told us was, we are just so distraught about what's happened, we think you should get compensation, but we're concerned that if you go to the courts, you're gonna lose.
If you lose, you're not gonna get what you're rightfully entitled to, therefore we think it would be much better if you went through Congress, and we're gonna help you.
Later, when I was given the White House correspondence which included memos back and forth between Cheney, Rumsfeld and others, I realized what had been going on there, because they're quite clear in saying if the lawsuit goes forward, this family is gonna have a right to information, which we're not gonna give them.
So what we gotta do is make sure that this family does not go forward with this lawsuit.
Somebody got a brainstorm.
Invite them to meet the president.
We're the only people in the whole history of this country who ever got an apology from the president in the Oval Office for the unintended consequences of some government policy.
I mean, you really gotta stop for a minute and pause and go, "Wow.
How often does that happen?" That would be zero.
It doesn't happen.
And it worked.
They got us to drop the idea of a lawsuit.
Instead proceed with this what became a private bill in Congress.
I had three objectives.
One was that there be full disclosure of all information relating to my father's death.
The second was that the CIA would give assurances that this would never happen again, and they recognized that this was an illegal act which was done, and the third was that there be a financial settlement with the family.
I think we all felt, after today, meeting with the president, that there was a kind of a healing effect in his expression on behalf of the American people of apology and sympathy.
I think we all responded to that very much.
The tragedy that happened to the family, uh, was very deep and very real, and it was committed by the government, and it should not have happened.
But I think it is remarkable, and it should be noted that an American family could call a press conference, and receive communication through the press, and to the president of the United States.
I think that is a tremendous tribute to our country.
[ERROL.]
When did the parallels with Hamlet occur to you? It took me a long time to say, "Wait a minute.
[CHUCKLES.]
There may be something here.
" The whole idea of the ghost of Hamlet's father, "Remember me," that you have some kind of a task ahead of you.
[GHOSTLY VOICE.]
Remember me.
[ERIC.]
Hamlet can't unpack this crime [ERROL.]
without destroying everything around him.
Including himself.
It's not as if he's a distant observer, who can kind of figure this thing out without being undone by it.
It affects everything.
He starts making all kinds of mistakes.
You don't know if the guy is off the rails.
He probably doesn't even know it.
You kind of lose a baseline of assumptions, because you're now questioning everything.
[RAUCOUS LAUGHTER.]
[OVERLAPPING CHATTER.]
[EERIE LAUGHTER.]
[OVERLAPPING CHATTER.]
[MAN 3.]
Absolute Absolute trust.
Absolute trust.
Dangerous information.
[ECHOING.]
Absolute trust.
Dangerous information.
[GOTTLIEB.]
Welcome, Dr.
Olson.
Have a seat.
["EVERYONE'S LAUGHING" BY THE DRIFTERS AND CLYDE MCPHATTER PLAYING.]
Ooh-ooh-ooh Everyone's laughing 'Cause everyone knows I loved then lost you But that's the way it goes I thought you were mine I felt so proud But since you've gone Everyone's laughing out loud They stand around, yes And signify Although it hurts me I hold my head up high Let's start all over Why can't we agree? 'Cause everyone's laughing Everyone's laughing at me I don't like to shake off Why don't we make up? Everyone treats me like [WHINES.]
I love you, Alice.
[TV REPORTER.]
18,000 fight fans jammed into Madison Square Garden tonight.
[BELL DINGS.]
[REFEREE.]
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven [TICKING.]
[FRANK.]
"And the third angel sounded.
" And there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp.
And it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters.
And the name of the star is called Wormwood.
And the third part of the waters became Wormwood.
"And many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
" [DOOR RATTLES.]
["NO OTHER LOVE" BY PERRY COMO PLAYING.]
No other love have I Only my love for you Only the dream we knew No other love Watching the night go by Wishing that you could be Watching the night with me Into the night I cry Hurry home Come home to me Set me free Free from doubt And free from longing Into your arms I'll fly Locked in your arms I'll stay Waiting to hear you say No other love have I No other love [ERROL.]
What were you told at the time of your father's death? I was told that, "Your father has had an accident.
" He fell or jumped out the window "and he died.
" This is the story of my childhood.
When I'm awakened early in the morning on November 28th, brought out into the living room, and there sit my father's boss, Vincent Ruwet and a family doctor and my mother.
And this is, like, really early in the morning, I don't know, 4:30, five o'clock in the morning.
So there's this kinda foggy, dark, early-morning light.
Ruwet was the one who told me, he says, "Your father was in New York.
" He had an accident.
"He fell or jumped out the window, and he died.
" And I was completely paralyzed by this.
Not only because this was the news that your father has died that, in a way, was the least of it.
He had an accident and he fell or jumped out the window.
And how do these terms comport with each other? If he jumped out the window how is that an accident? But on the other hand, what does it mean to say you fell out of a hotel room window? What does that even mean? What does that look like? A lot of my childhood and youth were spent kind of juggling these terms around.
How does fall, jump, and accident How can you arrange this triangle of terms, so that this thing gets sorted out in any possible way? How does fall, jump and accident How can you arrange this triangle of terms, so that this thing gets sorted out in any possible way? [ECHOING.]
How can you arrange this triangle of terms, so that this thing gets sorted out in any possible way? Behind which, the whole emotional reaction, "Your father just died," got lost because I couldn't even understand what they just said.
For me it was like a bomb was just dropped on my head.
At that moment, the world stopped making sense entirely.
[CAMERA ROLLS.]
[ERIC.]
Somehow, I need to talk about this.
Which was the last thing my mother wanted to hear.
Her thing was, "Well, haven't we already talked about that?" [CHUCKLING.]
I had to "When did we talk about it?" "Well, we talked about that.
I've told you everything.
" It's like one of those things, "When did you tell me?" "We have talked about that.
Why do you keep bringing this up? Can't you let this go?" That was the whole thing, "Can't you let this go? We have to move on here.
" [REPORTER 1.]
When the Rockefeller report on the CIA came out, there was in it a grisly story of a CIA experiment on an unwitting civilian who was given LSD.
[REPORTER 2.]
The CIA experimenting with LSD apparently caused the suicide in 1953 of civilian scientist Frank Olson.
But for 22 years, the man's family was led to believe that he had killed himself in an isolated, irrational act.
[ERIC.]
When the story came out in the Rockefeller Commission Report, I get this phone call from my brother-in-law.
"You should read the Washington Post today.
" So I ran down to Out of Town News in Harvard Square, get the Washington Post read this thing, and I'm just totally blown away.
There it is, on the front page, "Suicide revealed.
" "The Rockefeller Commission has discovered that an army scientist," after being drugged with LSD, jumped out the window of a New York hotel.
How many scientists could be jumping out of windows in 1953 in New York City? This has gotta be my father.
But, wait.
They didn't call us.
They didn't notify us, didn't say, "It's your father.
" How do you know? - [CAMERA ROLLS.]
- Maybe it isn't.
My sister Lisa and her husband Greg decided immediately that the person who would know whether this referred to Frank Olson or not is my father's former boss, Vin Ruwet.
They initially got his wife, who said, "Vin is not home.
" He wouldn't know about this anyway.
"Goodbye.
" It turned out he had been over at the CIA, getting instruction about how to handle this because he knew his phone was gonna start ringing.
I guess on authorization from the Agency, he did confirm, "Yes, this is your father.
" But that's basically all he did.
[DAVID.]
I still remember, one o'clock in the morning, asleep, getting a call from Eric July, 1975.
"Did you see the headlines in the paper today? The guy on the front page of the newspaper hurling out the window, that's my father.
" Dealing with him both as a friend and now as a client, having to deal with the CIA, Congress, the president, the Department of Justice, all of whom have their own interest to release as little as possible, and try to make this thing go away.
- [ERROL.]
Keep the cover-up going? - Yes.
And remember, this is 1975.
A lot is going on.
The Rockefeller Commission Report, the investigations in Congress over the FBI and domestic surveillance Nixon has resigned, a lot of turmoil and a lot of questions about the integrity of the US government.
[REPORTER 3.]
This is the Rockefeller Report, released tonight, 299 pages.
It says many things: That the CIA did engage in unlawful activities, that it did go beyond its mandate, that it did succumb to political pressures from the White House.
It confirms there was domestic spying on American civilians, unlawful wiretaps, the opening of private mail, even a drug-testing program involving the use of LSD against unsuspecting persons.
We'll talk with the reporter who first broke the story of domestic misdeeds.
Seymour Hersh, as a reporter for The New York Times, you wrote a story last December, in which you said there had been a massive illegal domestic spying operation by the CIA.
Was it Watergate that first aroused your suspicions? While working on Watergate, chasing down all those various leads, etcetera, I ran into a couple of guys, one who had just left the CIA, who said, "If you think Watergate's something, find out what we've been doing," and he was sort of murky about it.
Was it difficult, developing the story? Yeah.
[REPORTER 4.]
Did you find people in the CIA who were literally waiting to spill the beans on their employer? [HERSH.]
It was complicated.
They had goen and made efforts inside the Agency to get the Justice Department involved.
They wanted Colby to do something about what they knew to be a fact.
There was an internal report of misdeeds.
They were getting no action.
I happen to think that if this story hadn't been published in some form or another.
I doubt if all of these investigations would be going on.
That's self-serving, but that's simply the way I look at it.
[REPORTER 4.]
Do you regard the report released tonight as confirmation of your original story back in December? [HERSH.]
You bet.
Lord knows, Washington's been quibbling about the word "massive" for a few months, including, I must say, an awful lot of the press corps.
And as they say, I hope they're all eating crow tonight.
I know I'm not.
[ERIC.]
When my father's case had suddenly been disclosed, we decided, well, "Let's call Seymour Hersh.
" It's due to him that we even are able to go down this road.
He would write the first story that would appear before a major press conference that we were gonna have the following day.
So Hersh arrives at our house, this is June 1975, and he walks in the front door, and I'm the guy who opens the door.
Without introducing himself, without any hello or anything, he goes, "This must be the most goddamn uncurious family in the United States.
" He says, "How you could have lived with this bullshit story for 22 years" is beyond me.
" The next day, his article appears.
We then have this press conference, which, due to his article, was extremely well attended.
We decided to have this at our home, because we felt we'd be more comfortable speaking on our own ground.
Fort Detrick, where my father worked, is just beyond the trees.
If there weren't leaves on the trees, you could see Fort Detrick down below.
I wanna introduce my family to you.
This is my mother, Alice Olson.
This is my brother, Nils Olson.
My sister, Lisa Olson Hayward.
And I'm Eric Olson.
This has been something that we've lived with as a kind of shrouded mystery, the question of how my father died, for 22 years.
So now, that kind of shrouded, most mysterious part of our lives is about to become the most public aspect of our lives, as individuals and as a family.
And that shift parallels another shift for all of us, which is the shift from thinking that my father's death was some sort of mysterious suicide, to knowing that it was a CIA atrocity.
[DOORBELL RINGS.]
Hello, Alice.
[VINCENT.]
We're gonna be inside most of the time.
We don't really fish.
Do you believe that story? [ALICE LAUGHS.]
[VINCENT LAUGHS.]
[ALICE.]
Okay.
[CUPS CLINKING, LAUGHTER.]
Ready, Frank? - Bye.
- Bye.
[BIRD SQUAWKING.]
[ENGINE STARTS.]
[RADIO REPORTER 1.]
Just-released films lay bare the truth behind communist charges of germ warfare in Korea, and the so-called confessions of captured US airmen.
Confiscated films show the red press conferences, where the American fliers admitted dropping germ bombs on civilian territory, statements broadcast by the communist propaganda machine throughout the world, and even carried into the halls of the United Nations.
These confessions form the basis of a blatant symphony of hatred.
[RADIO CHATTER.]
[WEBB PIERCE'S "THERE STANDS THE GLASS" PLAYING.]
That will ease all my pain That will settle my brain It's my first one today There stands the glass That will hide all my tears That will drown all my fears Brother, I'm on my way [GRUNTING.]
Gentlemen.
[STAMMERS.]
We have much to discover.
All right.
[CAR DOOR CLOSES.]
[ERIC.]
If you're nine years old, and you're identified with your father, identification at that age is a very radical notion.
It's in that mirroring that you find yourself.
I was strongly identified with him at the time.
And suddenly, he just disappeared.
The memories of him are really fragmentary.
The trauma of his death really, you know, wreaked havoc with a lot of memory.
I do have a fragmentary memory of him pushing me on a bike.
[CAMERA ROLLS.]
[ERIC.]
As I look at this little film clip, it's as if I'm starting to fall forward off this bike.
That whole identification thing with him, the falling and so on.
Bike riding is a funny thing, where you're constantly on the edge of falling, actually.
It's only the speed that keeps you balanced.
So there's something about the body, and the falling, and the not falling, and the forward motion, something about all that, and the balance, it just was very calming to me to ride bicycles.
And, you know, I loved it.
[ERROL.]
Did he teach you to ride? [ERIC.]
Yeah.
He did.
[ERROL.]
And you remember the funeral? [ERIC.]
I don't, actually.
I have some fragmentary memory of sitting in a pew of this church.
I had some kind of almost out-of-the-body experience that I'm kind of in that place, and yet I don't have a clue where I actually am, and what's going on.
What I remember much more clearly is right after the funeral, the whole congregation basically goes to the cemetery.
My mother didn't want me to go to that, so I was [CHUCKLES.]
Oh, wow.
I was taken over to Vin Ruwet's house.
I remember being suddenly in a room, which seems, in my memory, utterly barren.
You don't know why you're there.
Extreme alienation.
Cut off from everything.
That's my memory of this.
Vin Ruwet.
Some room.
As a kid, you have sort of intuitions.
You kind of sense people you like, and don't like.
You don't know why, you don't know what's going on, but you do have this kind of visceral reaction.
I just remember being in that house, feeling lost.
Where the hell am I? There's nobody there.
It's, like, go in this room and wait.
[LIGHTER CLICKS.]
[ERIC.]
After my father died, Ruwet starts to come up to the family house pretty much every day to have martinis with my mother.
[ERROL.]
Gin or vodka? Gin, I think.
Gin.
Yeah.
Gin.
This was the beginning of her slide into alcoholism, and as we later found out from those CIA documents we got from Colby, he had been ordered to, quote, "Keep track of the wife.
" It was a directive to Ruwet: "Keep track of the wife.
" [ERROL.]
Vin Ruwet is your father's boss.
[ERIC.]
Exactly.
In this special operations group, which is kind of sub-set within Detrick.
And my father had been the chief of it, but he stepped down some months earlier.
Ruwet was a military guy.
He was a colonel.
And as soon as you got into his presence, you felt like, "Oh, Jesus, I'm gonna do something wrong here.
" He, early on, was made nervous by me, and I don't know what I was saying, but I was somehow giving off signals that I wasn't well-adjusted in the context of this whole story that my father suddenly vanished.
Another thing you have to remember here too, is that my father didn't die.
He really disappeared.
When he went to New York, we never saw him again.
He's put in a casket in New York taken back to Frederick.
They say, "You can't open this thing", because, unfortunately, he's been too seriously injured.
"We wouldn't want you to see this.
" So no one ever saw him again.
My father was the son of Swedish immigrants who came to this country around 1890.
He was born in a small mining town: Hurley, Wisconsin.
And he goes to the University of Wisconsin to study basically agronomy, growing crops.
Kind of like a generation beyond the farm, in a way.
His thesis advisor and chairman of the department there becomes the advisor to the government in setting up this biological warfare installation calls my father to join in that operation.
That's important to remember: How quick this whole transformation was, from being a laboratory research guy, interested in growing things, to being involved in biological warfare, and killing things.
My mother always said that when he came home from work for lunch, she could see from his expression that the experiments that morning had gone well, which meant all the monkeys had died And this was always a very traumatic thing for him, seeing the monkeys die in the lab.
[MAN 1.]
You are in Fort Detrick, where some 600 military and civilian scientists work together in research at the army biological laboratories, to protect this country against a biological attack.
Because a biological attack would most likely come in the form of an invisible cloud, the study of these clouds, or aerosols, is important.
[MAN 2.]
Chemical, biological warfare cannot be ignored.
Working up defenses against chemical-biological warfare is the responsibility of the Army Chemical Corps.
[BIRDS SQUAWK.]
[OWL HOOTS.]
[SIGHS DEEPLY.]
Bombs away.
You've taken over for Dr.
Olson at just the right time.
[CLICKS TONGUE.]
Well, we look forward to our continued collaboration with the Agency.
[GLASSES CLINKING.]
I just don't understand why anyone would betray their country.
[GOTTLIEB.]
Those men weren't weak.
Just susceptible to certain influences.
Remember they've got methods we're just beginning to understand.
We're desperate to keep up.
It's pseudo-science.
It's a waste of government funding.
[GOTTLIEB.]
It's a lot easier to break a man than you might think, Dr.
Olson.
Confusion to the enemy.
Hear, hear.
[SNORTS.]
[GOTTLIEB.]
Gentlemen.
TSS has embarked on a new program called MKUltra.
This program is designed to help us to better understand human behavior who we are, what we do, and, more importantly, what we could reveal.
In this Cold War, the most dangerous weapon is information.
When a few scared boys confess on the world stage, it diminishes our country's credibility.
We must find a way to contain these lies.
You are the men who know the secrets.
We are the men who keep the secrets.
[STAMMERS.]
Our coexistence depends on trust.
Tonight, we're going to put that trust to the test.
By now, you're probably feeling a little unusual.
We have slipped a potential truth serum into your cordials.
[CHUCKLES.]
You're all a bunch of jokers.
Huh? You're all a bunch of thespians.
[LAUGHTER.]
I think that you're the one on stage tonight, Dr.
Olson.
[RAUCOUS LAUGHTER.]
[DAVID.]
Rod Hills, the counsel to the president, called me at home.
My name was all over in the media.
I thought it might be a prank by a friend.
"President Ford wants to apologize to Alice Olson.
We'd like you to come in on Monday.
All of you.
" I thought, "Oh, this is terrific.
Alice is gonna really appreciate this.
" But then I thought, you know, this could project that it's over.
And this was by no means over.
We hadn't started yet.
I felt they were perhaps trying to short-circuit it.
- [ERROL.]
Which they were, no? - Yeah, absolutely.
They were trying to seal us in.
[ERIC.]
It was only a few days after the press conference that we're in the White House.
I mean, in one sense, it's kind of emblazoned in my memory, but it's emblazoned in a very spotty way.
There's certain things that I recall.
I don't have a continuous memory of everything.
But there were certain moments of it that I really recall.
First of all, we were almost late to the meeting.
We were caught in a traffic jam on the beltway and had to go over onto the shoulder, and speeding past cars, doing all kinds of stuff to get down to the White House in time for this meeting.
And we're ushered in fairly quickly.
There was no waiting.
I mean, we were kind of taken directly into the Oval Office, and there is Gerald Ford.
He had kind of a personal warmth that my mother responded to very strongly.
I was pretty transfixed myself, just by the by the beauty of that room.
When the president sort of looks at you and, you know, says, "We're sorry," that's a very powerful moment.
Ford didn't say actually much of anything about the content of what he was apologizing for.
I later discovered he was told not to.
[REPORTER 5.]
Mr.
Ford today apologized, expressed the sympathy of the American people, and promised the family it would be given all the facts on Olson's death.
[ERIC.]
What they then told us was, we are just so distraught about what's happened, we think you should get compensation, but we're concerned that if you go to the courts, you're gonna lose.
If you lose, you're not gonna get what you're rightfully entitled to, therefore we think it would be much better if you went through Congress, and we're gonna help you.
Later, when I was given the White House correspondence which included memos back and forth between Cheney, Rumsfeld and others, I realized what had been going on there, because they're quite clear in saying if the lawsuit goes forward, this family is gonna have a right to information, which we're not gonna give them.
So what we gotta do is make sure that this family does not go forward with this lawsuit.
Somebody got a brainstorm.
Invite them to meet the president.
We're the only people in the whole history of this country who ever got an apology from the president in the Oval Office for the unintended consequences of some government policy.
I mean, you really gotta stop for a minute and pause and go, "Wow.
How often does that happen?" That would be zero.
It doesn't happen.
And it worked.
They got us to drop the idea of a lawsuit.
Instead proceed with this what became a private bill in Congress.
I had three objectives.
One was that there be full disclosure of all information relating to my father's death.
The second was that the CIA would give assurances that this would never happen again, and they recognized that this was an illegal act which was done, and the third was that there be a financial settlement with the family.
I think we all felt, after today, meeting with the president, that there was a kind of a healing effect in his expression on behalf of the American people of apology and sympathy.
I think we all responded to that very much.
The tragedy that happened to the family, uh, was very deep and very real, and it was committed by the government, and it should not have happened.
But I think it is remarkable, and it should be noted that an American family could call a press conference, and receive communication through the press, and to the president of the United States.
I think that is a tremendous tribute to our country.
[ERROL.]
When did the parallels with Hamlet occur to you? It took me a long time to say, "Wait a minute.
[CHUCKLES.]
There may be something here.
" The whole idea of the ghost of Hamlet's father, "Remember me," that you have some kind of a task ahead of you.
[GHOSTLY VOICE.]
Remember me.
[ERIC.]
Hamlet can't unpack this crime [ERROL.]
without destroying everything around him.
Including himself.
It's not as if he's a distant observer, who can kind of figure this thing out without being undone by it.
It affects everything.
He starts making all kinds of mistakes.
You don't know if the guy is off the rails.
He probably doesn't even know it.
You kind of lose a baseline of assumptions, because you're now questioning everything.
[RAUCOUS LAUGHTER.]
[OVERLAPPING CHATTER.]
[EERIE LAUGHTER.]
[OVERLAPPING CHATTER.]
[MAN 3.]
Absolute Absolute trust.
Absolute trust.
Dangerous information.
[ECHOING.]
Absolute trust.
Dangerous information.
[GOTTLIEB.]
Welcome, Dr.
Olson.
Have a seat.
["EVERYONE'S LAUGHING" BY THE DRIFTERS AND CLYDE MCPHATTER PLAYING.]
Ooh-ooh-ooh Everyone's laughing 'Cause everyone knows I loved then lost you But that's the way it goes I thought you were mine I felt so proud But since you've gone Everyone's laughing out loud They stand around, yes And signify Although it hurts me I hold my head up high Let's start all over Why can't we agree? 'Cause everyone's laughing Everyone's laughing at me I don't like to shake off Why don't we make up? Everyone treats me like [WHINES.]