Wormwood (2017) s01e02 Episode Script

It's a shame the adults in this family don't communicate anymore.
It didn't go well.
Did you break security? 'Course not.
Did you falsify data? They laughed at me.
Well, did you say something funny? Why would they laugh at you? I made a terrible mistake.
Do you wanna tell me about it? After my father's death, Vin Ruwet came, looked through all my father's things, removed certain items, but, interestingly enough, left this very conspicuous two-page carbon copy of the invitation to the Deep Creek Rendezvous.
My father's research group at Detrick had a relationship with a group at CIA.
They occasionally had meetings, where they would discuss ongoing projects.
This was one of those meetings.
The second purpose was to get these guys together, have a kind of cocktail hour, spike the punch.
- The LSD cocktail.
- Yes.
Then kind of precipitate a conversation about scientific work, and see how the conversation goes.
And that's "the experiment.
" Everybody was okay, except Frank Olson kind of went off the deep end.
Frank Olson couldn't handle his drugs.
Yeah.
That's right.
But the trouble with that story is, he wasn't over the deep end during the weekend.
He came back with the family, and was stone-cold sober and very reflective, and, in fact, concerned about his future and the family's future.
- Went to the movies.
- Went to the movies.
Saw a good biopic about Martin Luther.
My mother always kind of said, you know, kind of matter-of-fact way, "Hmm, we might have made a bad choice of movies.
" Will you recant or will you not? You asked for a simple answer.
Here it is.
Unless you can convince me by scripture and not by popes or counsels, who have often contradicted each other unless I am so convinced that I am wrong, I am bound to my beliefs by the text of the Bible.
My conscience is captive to the word of God.
To go against conscience is neither right, nor safe.
Therefore I cannot and I will not recant.
Here I stand.
I can do no other.
God help me.
Amen.
My father, the very next day, goes to work and sort of metaphorically nails his thesis on the door, and says, "I'm leaving.
I'm quitting.
" He goes to New York Tuesday morning.
Late Friday night, early Saturday morning, he's dead.
I mean, that is a very fast sequence.
Hello, Frank.
I think you should fire me.
Excuse me? I made a fool of myself at the meeting.
I messed up the experiment.
There's no right answers here, Frank.
It's not that kind of test.
You didn't do anything wrong.
I lost control.
I can't do this anymore.
I don't have it in me.
I want you to fire me.
Can I get Robert Lashbrook on the line, please? Effort has been made to limit the current investigations of the Central Intelligence Agency to domestic activity in which it may have engaged.
The President told reporters aboard Air Force One that the CIA must stick to its charter, and he said actions that violated the charter would not be tolerated.
Director William Colby was on the record as saying, "I think that family skeletons are best left where they are, in the closet.
" He apparently had some literal skeletons in mind.
The subject today concerns CIA's involvement in the development of bacteriological warfare materials with the Army's biological laboratory at Fort Detrick.
CIA's retention of of an amount of shellfish toxin, and CIA's use and investigation of various chemicals and drugs, and associated delivery systems suitable for clandestine use.
A search was made for any records or other information available on the project.
This search produced information about the basic agreement between the Army and the CIA relating to the project, and some limited records covering its activities from its beginning in 1952 to its termination in 1970.
Roughly a week after the visit to the White House we go to the CIA to have this lunch with William Colby.
The emblem of the CIA is there, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
" You walk past that, pretty soon you're sitting in the office of the director of the CIA.
How many people get that? Not many.
This was another occasion where I really dropped the ball.
He goes around the table and asks, "What is everybody doing?" I'm a graduate student at Harvard in psychology.
He goes, "I'm very interested in psychology myself.
" He says, "I'm interested in the polygraph.
" "The lie detector.
" And then he says to me, "What are you interested in?" So I start to explain, "Well, I'm doing this thing around collage.
" He goes, "Wow.
That's interesting.
" So we get into this kind of crazy discussion between the lie detector and the collage method, which was pretty insane.
This was summer of '75.
The Vietnam War had just ended.
It was known at that time that Colby had headed Phoenix Program, which had assassinated roughly 20,000 people.
The estimates vary.
And he was really in charge of this thing.
Pretty soon we were in a discussion about whether the Vietnam War could have ended differently or not.
And he said, "All we needed was more guns" "more rifles, and we could have prevailed.
" Colby's attorney, Mitch Rogovin, comes in, carrying this stack of documents.
Rogovin says to us, "We hope you won't discuss any of this with the press.
" This is for your own edification, benefit, knowledge, "not for public consumption.
" This pile of documents is really a flimsy account.
First of all, it was incoherent.
You've got statements by different people, from different perspectives.
They're not really compatible with each other, and they don't add up to a narrative.
You read the things and you go nuts.
You go, "What? W-W-Wait a minute.
What about this? What about that?" The whole package of documents just disintegrates.
I mean, you kind of have nothing left.
And, obviously, if we had known what the documents were like, and if we had had our wits about us, we would have said to Colby, "Look, we're gonna try to go through these documents," but we're gonna need your help.
So we would like to come back in a couple of weeks and sit with you, "and you can walk us through this.
" Well, we didn't do that.
And it turns out, you only get one chance, if then.
That chance is not really a chance, because you're not alert enough to know that's what you're gonna need.
You're gonna need somebody to sit with you and elucidate these things.
I call it the experiment suicide story.
It was the story told by the president, the attorney general, the Rockefeller Commission Report, the media, everybody.
I certainly didn't go into it thinking it might be something more egregious than that.
We proceeded, wanting to get all the documents the government had.
It's typical legal litigation kind of strategy.
We go to the CIA.
Alice refused to go.
She told me, "Colby was there when all this happened.
" I don't need to hear from him.
" We come into the seventh floor, the hotbed of the CIA.
It all looked normal until I saw these bowls.
Burn bowls? Burn bowls, yeah.
Made it clear where I was.
The destruction of documents was very important to this organization.
Colby's gonna do some kind of apology.
He was very nervous and stiff.
He apologized.
He said, "Here's these documents.
" And it's what we call "The Colby Documents.
" And they said it's everything there is on the whole matter.
As you imagine it, is there a call from the White House to Langley saying, "Give them all the documents"? Probably, "Give as little as possible, but give them something.
" Clearly, there were documents that had to have been created at the time this happened, right? The reports, there's investigations.
We got clearly official documents, which demonstrates a real cover-up.
I remember the term they used: "backstopping.
" Trying to prevent anybody from really finding out what happened.
And very clear from that set of documents that what was going on was, "We've got to come forward with something more than we said in 1953, but as little as possible.
" occurred at a meeting in the vicinity of Deep Creek Lake in Western Maryland.
Let's say, to me, it was the most frightening experience I ever had, or ever hope to have.
Uh Perhaps this was complicated by the fact that I didn't know what was wrong with me.
I suspect that Dr.
Olson had the same feelings, although I don't wanna put myself into his mind.
When he came back from Deep Creek, he'd been gone for three days, and he came in very depressed, very quiet, and I sat at the table and said, "It's a shame the adults in this family don't communicate anymore.
" Because it was so totally unlike him.
And the weekend, uh, he spoke very little, but he was concerned about a bad mistake.
He had not done well at the meetings.
People had laughed at him.
And it was very It was totally unlike the kind of person that he was.
I couldn't comprehend what was happening.
You're home early.
They want me to see a psychiatrist.
What? What? What psychiatrist? W-Why do you need to talk to a psychiatrist? They want me to talk to someone with higher clearance.
'Cause they're concerned They're concerned that I might be a danger to you and the children.
I'm not sure I understand.
Vin? What's what's going on? I-I-I'm going with him.
Mal, can you give us a minute? Be outside if you need me.
I just don't know what's going on.
It's all gonna be okay, I promise.
Okay.
Mal's gonna drive you home.
Frank and I are going on to New York with Dr.
Lashbrook.
He'll make sure everything's all right.
Okay.
Bye.
When did you start to suspect that these documents might not be complete? If you mean, "When was the first inkling?" it was quick.
But it wasn't yet, "Oh, this Something else might have happened.
" It wasn't at that level yet.
It's like, "Oh.
Can they really operate this way?" Can they not have an overall summary, or conclusions and analysis, "and just have these scattered, sketchy statements and memos?" Partly, I'm looking for a human level.
You put this guy in this state.
Then you have him in your custody for nine days.
The focus was security, and not the well-being or health of Frank Olson.
They decide he needs psychiatric treatment, so they sent him to an allergist.
You should mention that Dr.
Abramson is an employee of the CIA.
Part of his work for them involved drugs.
LSD has found its greatest dangers, I believe, in the hands of those who are not qualified to use it.
Namely, those who administer it to themselves.
When properly qualified physicians use it, I do not consider it a drug that's any more dangerous than any other drug used in medicine.
He gives three statements in the Colby Documents that become increasingly defensive, self-serving and CIA-serving.
My father is taken to New York, sees this "doctor," Dr.
Abramson, who turns out to have not been a psychiatrist.
Turns out to be an allergist who did practice some version of psychiatry.
Who, it also turns out, my father knew from years before, when they were developing ways of aerosolization of various biological agents, including anthrax.
Allergists are very concerned with how particles are distributed in the air.
Dr.
Abramson? It's awfully nice to see you, Dr.
Olson.
It has been such a long time.
Since the last war.
I'll take it from here.
Have a seat.
May I offer you a drink? I'd love one.
So, how am I supposed to help you? Is this a problem where you're thinking the wrong thoughts, and I'm supposed to help you think the right ones? I can't live up to anyone's expectations.
At home, work.
I can't keep doing what I've been doing.
Well, is it because you feel trapped? I I don't know.
I don't remember that.
Um I mean, I panicked when I took over the division.
Vin has that job now.
I have something else that we could try.
Okay? Shall we? What is the similarity between a newspaper and a radio? They're both a means of communication.
What is the similarity between an egg and a seed? They both grow into something else.
Name the number that rhymes with the name of a very tall plant.
A number? I don't know.
This is confusing.
- I'm sorry? - It's confusing.
I can't concentrate.
Having trouble concentrating.
Name the number that rhymes with the word for what we feel when we think of our enemies.
It's making less and less sense to me.
Would you like me to repeat the question? What is the number that rhymes with the name of the word that we use when we think about the people who are our enemies? I don't know.
I can't do this.
The answer is eight.
Hate.
No, the answer is eight.
I'd like to be home for Thanksgiving.
Of course.
All right, now, to help you along during this period of anxiety, I am going to give you a little something.
Here you go.
And, uh, this will take the edge off.
We all need that from time to time.
We wanna emphasize that there are many areas involved in this whole incident about which we know, uh, little or nothing.
And one area is the whole trip to New York.
Uh, what exactly the purpose of that trip was.
What kind of treatment he received, if it was treatment, what the purpose of the consultation was with Dr.
Abramson.
The concern that we've had has been that apparently my father did pose some kind of security risk after he was given the drug.
And given that, what kind of precautions were gonna be taken, um for his well-being? And we know very little about that.
You got a settlement.
Which was not a settlement.
It was further an unsettlement, you might have called it.
Actually, what it really was, was payoff money.
But it wasn't even the amount that had been agreed upon.
That was the worst part of it.
So how much were you going to be awarded? $1.
25 million was the agreed amount.
It ended up being $750,000.
You also along the way have to sign an agreement saying, "This resolves all claims" for now and forever, "that could arise from any circumstance pertaining to this death.
" At which point I didn't even wanna take the money at all, because I thought the whole thing was just a travesty.
It was absurd.
You and your partner disagreed about this.
We did.
My partner and I agreed that the money was about as good as we probably could get.
And he thought, since we don't have a motive that's plausible let's take it.
We know enough about what happened.
I thought one of the reasons to go on was that the motive would appear.
There was a conference phone call with my partner, me and Alice.
I mean, Alice was the matriarch head of family.
She was the main one.
She didn't base it on the money.
She just said, "It's bad enough knowing they drugged him, and he killed himself.
I don't know if I could bear it if you found out they killed him.
" I certainly didn't argue with that.
They knew I strongly felt that we should go on.
I thought we could get the same money deal later too.
The government was so eager to shut this down that I felt they would be eager later, or maybe they would be $100,000 less eager, or something like that.
Not not half.
Maybe $100,000 more eager? Depending if we were getting anywhere, yeah.
They might have doubled it.
It was not off the wall, or an irrational way to proceed.
And who knew it would occupy the rest of Eric's life? What kind of resolution do you imagine for yourself? I think one can't imagine one.
The only way Shakespeare had of resolving Hamlet was to create a bloodbath.
And we had a bloodbath.
When long-buried secrets come to life it kind of wreaks havoc with the existing plotline.
It throws you off balance, throws relationships off balance.
Which I think happened with my sister and her husband.
Gotten this financial settlement.
And my sister got a portion of it.
Her husband wanted to invest it in a lumber mill up in the Adirondack Mountains.
Chartered a small private plane to fly up to upstate New York, to make this investment.
There was already a raging snowstorm.
Now, why didn't the pilot know about it? Who knows? Who knows? My sister hated to fly in airplanes, but somehow she got into this small plane, with her husband, with her small child, and my sister was pregnant at the time.
The plane went down.
Everyone died.
Three years after '75, we have to go to a funeral where there are three caskets: My sister, her husband and their child.
It was after that that I sort of felt like, "I've had enough," and I started spending long periods of time in Sweden.
That was kind of what happened.
It was, like, "This is all too much.
" When a child is confronted by an adult who's wearing a mask, the child can actually enjoy it like a game.
But when the mask is removed to reveal yet another mask, the reaction is panic.
Complete disorientation.
I think that's what Eric's experience has been.
It's been painful to watch the waves of devastation.
The mystery of his father's death was the thing that got him making collages.
The tragedy is, the mystery of his father's death has prevented him from successfully bringing that psychological work to some realization.
When my father died, I went into the closet, and pulled out his Kodak retina camera, which now nobody owned, so now it's my camera.
Ruwet knew that I was interested in photography, so he gives me a photographic enlarger, and some other photographic stuff.
And he also gave me a power jigsaw.
You put a photographic enlarger together with a jigsaw what is the child of that marriage? The collage method.
And then the idea that this could be diagnostic in some way, that's much later.
Much later, yeah.
Much later.
I had come to Boston to start graduate school, and I trudged my way over to this apartment of this guy Eric Olson, hoping to get paid a little bit to cut photographs out of this giant pile of Time Life books.
He had selected key images that he thought would work well in this scanning book, from which people would grab images that sort of struck them.
The scanning book itself was a fabulous object.
Giant book, maybe 3ft by 2ft, and opens out.
You can see totally various images.
Over here is a fire.
Over here is a face.
Over here is jungle.
Over here is a nude.
Over here is a boxer's face being contorted with the punch.
Over here is an atomic detonation.
It took another three years or so before we rented the apartment on Ellery Street.
That became the collage house, our kind of laboratory.
If you're a traditional psychotherapist, all you need is a quiet room and a couple of chairs.
To do this stuff, you have to have an immense amount of physical wherewithal.
Just getting these images was, of course, a very big thing.
Eric knew this person connected to Time Life books, who, with the stroke of a pen, could have a thousand of them delivered to his apartment.
Be the first collage he ever made, just playing around late at night.
It's very simple.
It was very quickly put together.
In the middle, there is an image of a building.
A body is in mid-fall.
At the bottom of the building, there is a clock.
He was unaware when he made it of the connection between this image and his own father's death.
And it kind of washed over him with a sort of jolt of revelation.
"Oh, my God.
It's my father.
" Something like that experience is at the heart of this whole work with collage.
When I came back from Sweden, having been away for three years he said, "I think it's time that we look into this matter again.
" Of course, the room had this archetypal reverberation from my childhood, which was always this question of, "Well, what happened in the room? What happened there?" A line my mother would repeat to me endlessly, "You are never gonna know what happened in that room.
" You are never gonna know what happened in that room.
You are never gonna know what happened in that room.
"You are never gonna know what happened in that room.
" A threat, an injunction, a caution, a prohibition.
You can take this sentence, "You are never gonna know what happened in that room," and you could read it in so many different ways.
Seemed to come from her in so many different ways that it became, like, the echo chamber of my childhood.
"You are never gonna know what happened in that room.
" You don't want to ever know what happened in that room.
"I don't wanna know what happened in that room, and if you find out, I'm gonna have to know.
" She definitely didn't wanna know.
It was almost like a challenge, to which my response was, "I'm gonna figure out what happened in that bloody room.
" Now we're sitting here, almost 62 years later, talking about this room? It's really unbelievable.
What's behind all this? Are they checking me for security? We're trying to help you.
Mm.
Hey, have some of that whiskey that Harold gave you.
The show doesn't start for another hour or so.
Oh, I'm strictly a gin man these days.
I think they're waiting for me outside.
What are you talking about? - They're outside right now.
- We're gonna go home.
We're going home, just like you wanted.
See? Okay? Should we, uh, go back to the hotel? - I think I'm gonna stay to the end.
- I'd like to go back.
Wanna go back? Let's go.
Damn it.
Hello? Morning, Colonel Ruwet.
This is your wake-up call.
- Thank you.
- Happy Thanksgiving.
Frank? Frank? Are you in there? Get dressed.
We got a problem.