Wormwood (2017) s01e03 Episode Script
Chapter 3: The Forbidden Threshold
1 [GRUNTS.]
[BREATHES HEAVILY.]
- What took so long? - I had to make a call.
[ELEVATOR BELL DINGS.]
This is on us now.
[BELL DINGS.]
He could be anywhere.
We'll find him.
[BELL DINGS.]
I had to report this to our security office.
[BELL DINGS.]
[DOOR CLOSES.]
[BELL DINGING.]
Hey.
[EXHALES.]
[EXHALES.]
I couldn't sleep.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER.]
[FRANK.]
I threw it all away, just like you told me to.
[VIN.]
You threw out your wallet? [FRANK.]
You told me to do it.
I think you must have dreamt that, Frank.
That's right.
I must have been dreaming.
We found him.
Happy Thanksgiving.
[ERIC.]
Lashbrook was a chemist who did the liaison work between the CIA and Detrick, an assistant to Gottlieb.
Gottlieb is the guy who took the poison in 1961 to assassinate Patrice Lumumba the only democratically elected leader the Congo has ever had.
And he was also involved with all these attempts to assassinate Castro with various kinds of contraptions and concoctions, and poisoned cigars and all these various things.
So to say that he was involved in the assassination of Frank Olson was not some wild leap.
[REPORTER 1.]
The CIA's drug-testing program on unsuspecting Americans had been more extensive than the Agency had admitted.
[REPORTER 2.]
The released CIA documents deal with a project, code name, MKUltra.
[REPORTER 3.]
Intelligence Agency and the US Army spent millions for research into drugs and techniques, which would make spies from other countries tell their secrets, and make our own spies forget theirs.
[REPORTER 4.]
Both agencies have been involved in testing LSD and chemical warfare compounds to a much greater extent than either has publicly admitted.
[ERROL.]
Had you always known about the guest book for your father's funeral? [ERIC.]
It's actually a scroll and the names Lashbrook and Gottlieb were on this thing.
I started to think about it a lot in connection with the visit that we made to both of them in 1984.
I persuaded my mother and brother to join me, seeing some of the key figures from the story.
We started off by going to see Armond Pastore, the night manager of the hotel.
His memories were extremely vivid.
He never got over this.
And that began what became a long friendship.
Then we went to California to see Robert Lashbrook.
Lashbrook says that during that whole time in New York, Gottlieb was actually there.
And we go, "That can't be.
The documents say that Gottlieb wasn't there.
" What happens is when a cover story is very old, people forget the cover story.
We tried to think, "How did he say Gottlieb was there when he wasn't there?" Actually, we missed the point that he's telling the truth now, because he forgot he wasn't supposed to say Gottlieb was there.
Gottlieb's story was he was just back in Washington kind of minding his own business, not particularly concerned about what was going on.
Everything was under control.
Lashbrook tells us Gottlieb was in New York all of those days.
Then we invited Vin Ruwet to come to the house.
"Was there any moment when you regarded my father as a security risk? Either before Deep Creek, during Deep Creek, or after Deep Creek" Vin got visibly tense.
Said no, and I started to say, "Well, if you did drug him, if he reacted badly, as you say, well, then he was a security risk.
He had to be a security risk, 'cause you didn't know what a drugged person who's privy to all this top-secret information is gonna do.
How can you say he wasn't?" At that point, he said he wanted to go out and have a smoke.
Give me some light! So he stepped outside, and came back some minutes later.
Didn't really address that question at all.
Then we went to see Sy Hersh in his office, to ask him, "Is this a plausible idea, that this was a murder?" He was dialing numbers out of his head.
I don't know who he was calling.
Then he puts down the phone, and says, "Well, the consensus of opinion is in 1953, the CIA wouldn't have killed a colleague.
" But then he looked at me, straight in the eye, and he said "But I advise you to let this go.
You're too smart to get involved with this.
" Then we went to see Sidney Gottlieb.
Gottlieb was in Virginia, Culpeper, Virginia.
He, at that point, was living in this sort of modernist house that he shared with the founder of Scandinavian design.
He loved folk dancing, raising goats and organic gardening.
We get to his house, my brother, my mother and me.
We come to the front door, ring the bell, and Gottlieb comes to the door.
He says, "I had a dream last night that you all came to the door, pulled a gun and just shot me.
" And he said, "I'm so relieved to find that you don't have a weapon.
" We begin reassuring him, you know, "Of course we wouldn't have a weapon, we're just happy to see you, and we mean you no harm.
" You're already being mind-controlled, and you're not even yet in the door.
Soon as we sit down, he goes, "The former Gottlieb, who used to be me, did some things that I'm not proud of, but I'm not him.
I can't answer for some of the things he did, because I just don't recognize him anymore.
" So I said, "Well, why don't we have a reunion at Deep Creek Lake, and kind of think over the events of 1953, from the standpoint of whoever we are now?" [CHUCKLING.]
Gottlieb looked at me like, "I don't think so.
" You know, he was really kind of horrified by that idea.
And then he said, "Your father and I were very much alike.
We both got into this because of patriotic feelings, but we both went a little too far.
And we did things that we probably shouldn't have done.
" [REPORTER 5.]
Dr.
Sidney Gottlieb, a shadowy former CIA official, a sort of mystery CIA man, made a fascinating statement today about the mind-control program he ran for the CIA.
[REPORTER 6.]
That started in 1953 with the suicide of an Army employee, who was fed LSD.
The incident was hushed up with reprimands for the two CIA officers responsible, and a ruling of death in the line of duty, so the Army man's widow could get benefits.
[ERIC.]
At the end of seeing some of the key figures I decided, "Well, you know, I now have to go see this, this room.
" Because by then I had enough kind of data about the whole experience that everything kind of converged, and the question of, well, could this have happened in the room, and what would that be like? [DOOR LOCK CLICKS.]
[LOCK CLICKS.]
[ERIC.]
It's awkward if when you go into a hotel, you want a room, but you'd really like a particular room.
I didn't say I'd had a romantic liaison there, but I kind of let them think that.
[CHUCKLES.]
I was very ambivalent about doing this, and I wanted to do it.
At the same time, it was kind of like finally crossing this forbidden threshold.
That night, Betty Lifton, Robert Lifton's wife, came over, and Teri McLuhan, Marshall McLuhan's daughter, who was a good friend, she came over.
And we had something, I don't know what you would call it, a séance or something, but Betty wanted to do sort of just a little moment in the room.
Almost as a consecration of this place.
As soon as I got into the room, I just wanted to close the door and leave again.
I beat a hasty retreat and went to the Vanguard to hear this band, and then came back and spent, I must say, a completely sleepless night.
I don't think I slept one wink in that room.
But I wanted the feeling that I had spent a night in this room, that I had seen the place.
There was no suicidal jump out this window.
In fact, the word "jump" doesn't even apply.
It's not jump.
No one ever thinks well, jump.
What do we mean by "jump"? You're not standing on a ledge, considering jumping.
You're in a room.
You can't jump.
You have to dive.
The window had this sash in the middle of it.
I mean, it was a two-paned window.
You would have had to get horizontal to get out this window.
I mean, the verb "jump" no longer was operative.
It was either "fall" or "dive.
" And did he dive, out this window, in the middle of the night, while Lashbrook, his CIA escort, was asleep? If he dives out the window, that's an amazing stroke of luck on their part, because they had a problem with him.
He was very, very upset with what was going on.
They take him to New York to get "help.
" He then dives out the window.
Suddenly, the problem is solved.
We didn't have to worry about it anymore, because he's gone.
This didn't create a problem, it solved one.
[MCCARTHY.]
My fellow Americans, there's nothing accidental about this picture.
It's a pattern of deliberate communist infiltration.
Impossible, you say? Yes.
Have a good time in the Big City? [MCCARTHY.]
But there you have it.
It's all a matter of cold record.
And the most amazing and disturbing thing about this incredibly unbelievable picture, is that as the danger of this nation is slowly and laboriously exposed, instead of an admission of guilt, or stupidity, cheap politicians from coast to coast join the chorus of the communist Daily Worker and shout, "Oh, isn't this McCarthyism an awful thing? Isn't it terrible to dig out these communists?" [FRANK.]
Stop the car.
Just stop the car.
[VIN.]
Give us a minute.
Vin? I'm all mixed up.
You should just let me go.
I wanna disappear.
[VIN.]
Can't do it, Frank.
[DOOR OPENS.]
[VIN.]
Bob, he can't go home like this.
[LASHBROOK.]
Mal, you're gonna drive Vin home, okay? And you? You're coming with me.
[VIN.]
Don't worry about Alice.
- I'll tell her you're gonna be fine.
- [FRANK.]
Sure.
[DOOR CLOSES.]
We need to talk.
I shouldn't have called Security this morning.
I thought we lost him.
He had to have been gone for hours.
[GOTTLIEB.]
Things will settle when you get to New York.
Harold will know what to do.
["HOUND DOG" BY BIG MAMA THORNTON PLAYS.]
You ain't nothin' but a hound dog Been snooping 'round my door You ain't nothin' but a hound dog Been snooping 'round my door You can wag your tail But I ain't gonna feed you no more You told me you was high-class But I can see through that Yes, you told me you was high-class But I can see through that And, Daddy, I know You ain't no real cool cat You ain't nothin' but a hound dog Been snooping 'round my door You're just an old hound dog Been snooping 'round my door You can wag your tail And I ain't gonna feed you no more Oh, play it, play it, play it Oh, listen to that there old hound dog Oh, play it, it's all right in here Listen to that old hound dog holler [MUSIC STOPS.]
[BREATHES HEAVILY.]
[CHUCKLES.]
We need to leave now.
[SIGHS.]
[ERROL.]
Why two trips to New York? [ERIC.]
Yeah, the double trip.
My father goes to New York with Lashbrook, and with Vin Ruwet.
The three of them go.
But they come back presumably to take my father back to Frederick.
They get as far as Washington and my father says he's not feeling well, and he wants to go back to New York.
Ruwet will continue on to Frederick, assure my mother everything is going well but Frank won't be home for Thanksgiving.
Then Lashbrook and my father go back to New York.
[DOORBELL RINGS.]
Now one of the things that it does, this little detour in the story, back to Washington and back to New York again, is it provides an escape for Ruwet.
I mean, he's not there when whatever's gonna happen happens.
He is back in Frederick.
If they're gonna murder him, Ruwet can't be there, because he's ostensibly a friend.
This enables him to say, "I wasn't there.
I don't know what happened.
Was it fall? Was it a jump? It was an accident.
" All the incoherent things he later said.
If he had been there, that would have been a different kettle of fish.
When we went to see Lashbrook, we asked him about the trip back to Washington.
And he gave one of the craziest answers I've ever heard in my life.
He goes, "We went back to my apartment.
" He had an apartment near Dupont Circle.
And my father gets really crazy, and starts doing handstands in the corner.
[BREATHES HEAVILY.]
[ERROL.]
Could your father do that? I don't know if he could.
I never was aware that he could.
No one ever said he could.
Why didn't that show up in any of these reports? Why do we have to go to California all these many years later in '84 to get this story, which should have been told in 1953, if Lashbrook was telling the truth then? The question that I've been posing, "What happened in the room?" really needs to be rephrased in terms of, well, "In what world did that room exist?" What was the context of this? What was my father doing? What was the CIA doing? How did my father happen to be in that room? Once you began to answer those questions, the room question kind of resolved itself.
Part of what made the room issue so inscrutable was, well, why would any sinister thing happen in that room? Why? But once you know what's going on in the affairs that my father had become embroiled in, then you go, "Yeah, how many choices did they actually have?" And to make it even more complicated, he's complicit in all of this.
That's important to know, because if you weren't complicit, then you wouldn't have knowledge.
Had you been a distant observer, you wouldn't know enough to be a risk.
My mother always said the one thing that she knew about my father's state of mind was that he was very upset about Korea.
She thought that he was convinced that the United States was using biological weapons in Korea, and he was very, very distraught, upset, angry that that was happening, because the US was denying it constantly.
[REPORTER 7.]
Early in the Korean War, the Chinese and North Korean communists began making accusations that the United States was resorting to germ warfare.
The world paid little attention to these obvious propaganda charges.
And in an apparent attempt to manufacture something that resembled proof the Chinese, early in 1952, began an elaborate campaign to extort false confessions from captured American Air Force personnel.
Was this brainwashing? I took part in germ warfare as far as I know, at the very beginning.
We reported to the enlisted man from intelligence that we had dropped two 500-pound duds, which were actually the germ bombs.
When I think of my future when I think of someday, though I'm not married yet, I intend to be when my son asks me what I did in Korea, how can I tell him that I came over here and dropped germ bombs on people, destroying and bringing death and destruction? How can I go back and face my family? [ERIC.]
Sidney Gottlieb had a whole research program called psychological discrediting.
One of the ways that you discredit people is to say, well, what this person is saying, and what this person is doing is the result of some kind of manipulation of their mind, of their brain.
This is brainwashing.
Whatever they're saying is not coming from them, it's coming from their programming.
And the question never came up then or now whether these statements that they made were completely false, mostly false, a little bit false.
Was there even a shred of truth in any of them? Now, whenever the term "germ warfare confessions" is made, that term is always proceeded by the word "false.
" The word "brainwashing" itself was originated by an American reporter in Hong Kong in 1950.
It refers to the internal Chinese communist policy of ideological remolding, or thought reform.
It is well known that almost all American soldiers captured in Korea were exposed to attempts to convert them to communism.
[QUINN.]
Truly speaking, and thank God I'm back where I can speak the truth again, I don't, and never have considered what I did up there as a confession, as confessing anything, because I don't see how a person can confess something that he has never done.
I did sign a confession relating to germ warfare, but the statements contained in this confession were false.
They were obtained under duress.
I made a confession.
It was not a confession that had any basis in fact whatsoever.
The confession I made was ridiculous, preposterous.
Our country had never waged germ warfare under any stretch of the imagination.
[ERIC.]
Biological weapons are ideally suited for deniable operations.
The disease just starts spreading, and nobody knows where it came from.
So this conflation of things, biological weapons on the one hand, covert operations on the other, was what brought Detrick and the CIA together, and my father was in the center of that.
He was arguably in the most dangerous spot in the whole Cold War.
When you just put it so coldly like that, you realize they didn't have many options.
And the United States did not have Siberia to send people to.
[ERROL.]
Well, as your father said, "Can't I just disappear?" And, of course, that's another one of these lines that can be read in different ways.
When that appears in these documents that we got from William Colby, their intention in disseminating that line was, "Well, this is a sign that he must be crazy, and wants to just vanish somehow.
" When you start to know the story more deeply, you realize, at that point, he's probably terrified, and I think what he's doing is really kind of pleading with them, "Look, I'll just I'll just disappear.
Can't I just disappear?" I think that's what that line actually means.
Their own experiment suicide theory is deeply disturbing in a way that they don't quite acknowledge.
[ERROL.]
If he was suicidal, do you put him 13 stories up, over Seventh Avenue? I talked to the manager of the hotel, who said it was their policy if someone was psychologically disturbed, to put them on a low floor.
They were never told that about Olson.
He's with Lashbrook, this key person.
- [ERROL.]
CIA? - [KAIRYS.]
CIA.
They make it sound like Lashbrook's there to support him.
I think Lashbrook is the security detail.
He's a guard.
And maybe worse.
I don't know.
He was in the room.
He's the only one who's acknowledged in the documents that was with Olson when he died.
[LASHBROOK.]
He's expecting you.
[ABRAMSON.]
Well, here we are again, Frank.
What seems to be troubling you? Lashbrook and Vin have a master plan.
I wanna know what it is.
[EXHALES DEEPLY.]
[LIGHTER CLICKS.]
I feel like they're giving me dope to keep me awake.
I see.
You're losing control, Frank.
Are you forgetting the premium placed on control? I heard voices last night.
And Vin told me to throw away my wallet.
Don't worry.
We know just the place for you.
[FRANK.]
I'm being admitted to Chestnut Lodge Sanitarium.
Uh I don't know.
It's near Frederick.
Don't worry.
No.
I love you.
Okay.
Bye.
[RECEIVER CLICKS.]
[SWITCHES ON TV.]
[TV COMMENTATOR.]
18,000 fight fans jammed into Madison Square Garden tonight.
This fight means a great deal to both these men.
His reflexes are much, much slower than they used to be.
[TICKING.]
[FRANK SNORES SOFTLY.]
[TICKING CONTINUES.]
[FRANK SNORES SOFTLY.]
[DOOR OPENS.]
[DOOR LOCKS.]
[LIGHTER CLICKS.]
[DOOR RATTLES.]
[FOOTSTEPS THUDDING.]
[DOOR CLOSES.]
[GLASS SHATTERING.]
[KNOCKING ON DOOR.]
["THE FINGER OF SUSPICION" BY DICKIE VALENTINE PLAYS.]
Someone broke into my heart And stole a beat or two The finger of suspicion Points at you Someone took away my sleep And never left a clue The finger of suspicion Points at you Just as soon as they can make The guilty one confess I know exactly what I'm gonna do I'll take and lock her charms Forever in my arms Then who is bound To be the guilty, who? The finger of suspicion Points at you Someone broke into my heart And stole a beat or two The finger of suspicion Points at you Someone took away my sleep And never left a clue The finger of suspicion Points at you Just as soon as they can make The guilty one confess I know exactly what I'm gonna do I'll take and lock her charms Forever in my arms [WHINES.]
[BREATHES HEAVILY.]
- What took so long? - I had to make a call.
[ELEVATOR BELL DINGS.]
This is on us now.
[BELL DINGS.]
He could be anywhere.
We'll find him.
[BELL DINGS.]
I had to report this to our security office.
[BELL DINGS.]
[DOOR CLOSES.]
[BELL DINGING.]
Hey.
[EXHALES.]
[EXHALES.]
I couldn't sleep.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER.]
[FRANK.]
I threw it all away, just like you told me to.
[VIN.]
You threw out your wallet? [FRANK.]
You told me to do it.
I think you must have dreamt that, Frank.
That's right.
I must have been dreaming.
We found him.
Happy Thanksgiving.
[ERIC.]
Lashbrook was a chemist who did the liaison work between the CIA and Detrick, an assistant to Gottlieb.
Gottlieb is the guy who took the poison in 1961 to assassinate Patrice Lumumba the only democratically elected leader the Congo has ever had.
And he was also involved with all these attempts to assassinate Castro with various kinds of contraptions and concoctions, and poisoned cigars and all these various things.
So to say that he was involved in the assassination of Frank Olson was not some wild leap.
[REPORTER 1.]
The CIA's drug-testing program on unsuspecting Americans had been more extensive than the Agency had admitted.
[REPORTER 2.]
The released CIA documents deal with a project, code name, MKUltra.
[REPORTER 3.]
Intelligence Agency and the US Army spent millions for research into drugs and techniques, which would make spies from other countries tell their secrets, and make our own spies forget theirs.
[REPORTER 4.]
Both agencies have been involved in testing LSD and chemical warfare compounds to a much greater extent than either has publicly admitted.
[ERROL.]
Had you always known about the guest book for your father's funeral? [ERIC.]
It's actually a scroll and the names Lashbrook and Gottlieb were on this thing.
I started to think about it a lot in connection with the visit that we made to both of them in 1984.
I persuaded my mother and brother to join me, seeing some of the key figures from the story.
We started off by going to see Armond Pastore, the night manager of the hotel.
His memories were extremely vivid.
He never got over this.
And that began what became a long friendship.
Then we went to California to see Robert Lashbrook.
Lashbrook says that during that whole time in New York, Gottlieb was actually there.
And we go, "That can't be.
The documents say that Gottlieb wasn't there.
" What happens is when a cover story is very old, people forget the cover story.
We tried to think, "How did he say Gottlieb was there when he wasn't there?" Actually, we missed the point that he's telling the truth now, because he forgot he wasn't supposed to say Gottlieb was there.
Gottlieb's story was he was just back in Washington kind of minding his own business, not particularly concerned about what was going on.
Everything was under control.
Lashbrook tells us Gottlieb was in New York all of those days.
Then we invited Vin Ruwet to come to the house.
"Was there any moment when you regarded my father as a security risk? Either before Deep Creek, during Deep Creek, or after Deep Creek" Vin got visibly tense.
Said no, and I started to say, "Well, if you did drug him, if he reacted badly, as you say, well, then he was a security risk.
He had to be a security risk, 'cause you didn't know what a drugged person who's privy to all this top-secret information is gonna do.
How can you say he wasn't?" At that point, he said he wanted to go out and have a smoke.
Give me some light! So he stepped outside, and came back some minutes later.
Didn't really address that question at all.
Then we went to see Sy Hersh in his office, to ask him, "Is this a plausible idea, that this was a murder?" He was dialing numbers out of his head.
I don't know who he was calling.
Then he puts down the phone, and says, "Well, the consensus of opinion is in 1953, the CIA wouldn't have killed a colleague.
" But then he looked at me, straight in the eye, and he said "But I advise you to let this go.
You're too smart to get involved with this.
" Then we went to see Sidney Gottlieb.
Gottlieb was in Virginia, Culpeper, Virginia.
He, at that point, was living in this sort of modernist house that he shared with the founder of Scandinavian design.
He loved folk dancing, raising goats and organic gardening.
We get to his house, my brother, my mother and me.
We come to the front door, ring the bell, and Gottlieb comes to the door.
He says, "I had a dream last night that you all came to the door, pulled a gun and just shot me.
" And he said, "I'm so relieved to find that you don't have a weapon.
" We begin reassuring him, you know, "Of course we wouldn't have a weapon, we're just happy to see you, and we mean you no harm.
" You're already being mind-controlled, and you're not even yet in the door.
Soon as we sit down, he goes, "The former Gottlieb, who used to be me, did some things that I'm not proud of, but I'm not him.
I can't answer for some of the things he did, because I just don't recognize him anymore.
" So I said, "Well, why don't we have a reunion at Deep Creek Lake, and kind of think over the events of 1953, from the standpoint of whoever we are now?" [CHUCKLING.]
Gottlieb looked at me like, "I don't think so.
" You know, he was really kind of horrified by that idea.
And then he said, "Your father and I were very much alike.
We both got into this because of patriotic feelings, but we both went a little too far.
And we did things that we probably shouldn't have done.
" [REPORTER 5.]
Dr.
Sidney Gottlieb, a shadowy former CIA official, a sort of mystery CIA man, made a fascinating statement today about the mind-control program he ran for the CIA.
[REPORTER 6.]
That started in 1953 with the suicide of an Army employee, who was fed LSD.
The incident was hushed up with reprimands for the two CIA officers responsible, and a ruling of death in the line of duty, so the Army man's widow could get benefits.
[ERIC.]
At the end of seeing some of the key figures I decided, "Well, you know, I now have to go see this, this room.
" Because by then I had enough kind of data about the whole experience that everything kind of converged, and the question of, well, could this have happened in the room, and what would that be like? [DOOR LOCK CLICKS.]
[LOCK CLICKS.]
[ERIC.]
It's awkward if when you go into a hotel, you want a room, but you'd really like a particular room.
I didn't say I'd had a romantic liaison there, but I kind of let them think that.
[CHUCKLES.]
I was very ambivalent about doing this, and I wanted to do it.
At the same time, it was kind of like finally crossing this forbidden threshold.
That night, Betty Lifton, Robert Lifton's wife, came over, and Teri McLuhan, Marshall McLuhan's daughter, who was a good friend, she came over.
And we had something, I don't know what you would call it, a séance or something, but Betty wanted to do sort of just a little moment in the room.
Almost as a consecration of this place.
As soon as I got into the room, I just wanted to close the door and leave again.
I beat a hasty retreat and went to the Vanguard to hear this band, and then came back and spent, I must say, a completely sleepless night.
I don't think I slept one wink in that room.
But I wanted the feeling that I had spent a night in this room, that I had seen the place.
There was no suicidal jump out this window.
In fact, the word "jump" doesn't even apply.
It's not jump.
No one ever thinks well, jump.
What do we mean by "jump"? You're not standing on a ledge, considering jumping.
You're in a room.
You can't jump.
You have to dive.
The window had this sash in the middle of it.
I mean, it was a two-paned window.
You would have had to get horizontal to get out this window.
I mean, the verb "jump" no longer was operative.
It was either "fall" or "dive.
" And did he dive, out this window, in the middle of the night, while Lashbrook, his CIA escort, was asleep? If he dives out the window, that's an amazing stroke of luck on their part, because they had a problem with him.
He was very, very upset with what was going on.
They take him to New York to get "help.
" He then dives out the window.
Suddenly, the problem is solved.
We didn't have to worry about it anymore, because he's gone.
This didn't create a problem, it solved one.
[MCCARTHY.]
My fellow Americans, there's nothing accidental about this picture.
It's a pattern of deliberate communist infiltration.
Impossible, you say? Yes.
Have a good time in the Big City? [MCCARTHY.]
But there you have it.
It's all a matter of cold record.
And the most amazing and disturbing thing about this incredibly unbelievable picture, is that as the danger of this nation is slowly and laboriously exposed, instead of an admission of guilt, or stupidity, cheap politicians from coast to coast join the chorus of the communist Daily Worker and shout, "Oh, isn't this McCarthyism an awful thing? Isn't it terrible to dig out these communists?" [FRANK.]
Stop the car.
Just stop the car.
[VIN.]
Give us a minute.
Vin? I'm all mixed up.
You should just let me go.
I wanna disappear.
[VIN.]
Can't do it, Frank.
[DOOR OPENS.]
[VIN.]
Bob, he can't go home like this.
[LASHBROOK.]
Mal, you're gonna drive Vin home, okay? And you? You're coming with me.
[VIN.]
Don't worry about Alice.
- I'll tell her you're gonna be fine.
- [FRANK.]
Sure.
[DOOR CLOSES.]
We need to talk.
I shouldn't have called Security this morning.
I thought we lost him.
He had to have been gone for hours.
[GOTTLIEB.]
Things will settle when you get to New York.
Harold will know what to do.
["HOUND DOG" BY BIG MAMA THORNTON PLAYS.]
You ain't nothin' but a hound dog Been snooping 'round my door You ain't nothin' but a hound dog Been snooping 'round my door You can wag your tail But I ain't gonna feed you no more You told me you was high-class But I can see through that Yes, you told me you was high-class But I can see through that And, Daddy, I know You ain't no real cool cat You ain't nothin' but a hound dog Been snooping 'round my door You're just an old hound dog Been snooping 'round my door You can wag your tail And I ain't gonna feed you no more Oh, play it, play it, play it Oh, listen to that there old hound dog Oh, play it, it's all right in here Listen to that old hound dog holler [MUSIC STOPS.]
[BREATHES HEAVILY.]
[CHUCKLES.]
We need to leave now.
[SIGHS.]
[ERROL.]
Why two trips to New York? [ERIC.]
Yeah, the double trip.
My father goes to New York with Lashbrook, and with Vin Ruwet.
The three of them go.
But they come back presumably to take my father back to Frederick.
They get as far as Washington and my father says he's not feeling well, and he wants to go back to New York.
Ruwet will continue on to Frederick, assure my mother everything is going well but Frank won't be home for Thanksgiving.
Then Lashbrook and my father go back to New York.
[DOORBELL RINGS.]
Now one of the things that it does, this little detour in the story, back to Washington and back to New York again, is it provides an escape for Ruwet.
I mean, he's not there when whatever's gonna happen happens.
He is back in Frederick.
If they're gonna murder him, Ruwet can't be there, because he's ostensibly a friend.
This enables him to say, "I wasn't there.
I don't know what happened.
Was it fall? Was it a jump? It was an accident.
" All the incoherent things he later said.
If he had been there, that would have been a different kettle of fish.
When we went to see Lashbrook, we asked him about the trip back to Washington.
And he gave one of the craziest answers I've ever heard in my life.
He goes, "We went back to my apartment.
" He had an apartment near Dupont Circle.
And my father gets really crazy, and starts doing handstands in the corner.
[BREATHES HEAVILY.]
[ERROL.]
Could your father do that? I don't know if he could.
I never was aware that he could.
No one ever said he could.
Why didn't that show up in any of these reports? Why do we have to go to California all these many years later in '84 to get this story, which should have been told in 1953, if Lashbrook was telling the truth then? The question that I've been posing, "What happened in the room?" really needs to be rephrased in terms of, well, "In what world did that room exist?" What was the context of this? What was my father doing? What was the CIA doing? How did my father happen to be in that room? Once you began to answer those questions, the room question kind of resolved itself.
Part of what made the room issue so inscrutable was, well, why would any sinister thing happen in that room? Why? But once you know what's going on in the affairs that my father had become embroiled in, then you go, "Yeah, how many choices did they actually have?" And to make it even more complicated, he's complicit in all of this.
That's important to know, because if you weren't complicit, then you wouldn't have knowledge.
Had you been a distant observer, you wouldn't know enough to be a risk.
My mother always said the one thing that she knew about my father's state of mind was that he was very upset about Korea.
She thought that he was convinced that the United States was using biological weapons in Korea, and he was very, very distraught, upset, angry that that was happening, because the US was denying it constantly.
[REPORTER 7.]
Early in the Korean War, the Chinese and North Korean communists began making accusations that the United States was resorting to germ warfare.
The world paid little attention to these obvious propaganda charges.
And in an apparent attempt to manufacture something that resembled proof the Chinese, early in 1952, began an elaborate campaign to extort false confessions from captured American Air Force personnel.
Was this brainwashing? I took part in germ warfare as far as I know, at the very beginning.
We reported to the enlisted man from intelligence that we had dropped two 500-pound duds, which were actually the germ bombs.
When I think of my future when I think of someday, though I'm not married yet, I intend to be when my son asks me what I did in Korea, how can I tell him that I came over here and dropped germ bombs on people, destroying and bringing death and destruction? How can I go back and face my family? [ERIC.]
Sidney Gottlieb had a whole research program called psychological discrediting.
One of the ways that you discredit people is to say, well, what this person is saying, and what this person is doing is the result of some kind of manipulation of their mind, of their brain.
This is brainwashing.
Whatever they're saying is not coming from them, it's coming from their programming.
And the question never came up then or now whether these statements that they made were completely false, mostly false, a little bit false.
Was there even a shred of truth in any of them? Now, whenever the term "germ warfare confessions" is made, that term is always proceeded by the word "false.
" The word "brainwashing" itself was originated by an American reporter in Hong Kong in 1950.
It refers to the internal Chinese communist policy of ideological remolding, or thought reform.
It is well known that almost all American soldiers captured in Korea were exposed to attempts to convert them to communism.
[QUINN.]
Truly speaking, and thank God I'm back where I can speak the truth again, I don't, and never have considered what I did up there as a confession, as confessing anything, because I don't see how a person can confess something that he has never done.
I did sign a confession relating to germ warfare, but the statements contained in this confession were false.
They were obtained under duress.
I made a confession.
It was not a confession that had any basis in fact whatsoever.
The confession I made was ridiculous, preposterous.
Our country had never waged germ warfare under any stretch of the imagination.
[ERIC.]
Biological weapons are ideally suited for deniable operations.
The disease just starts spreading, and nobody knows where it came from.
So this conflation of things, biological weapons on the one hand, covert operations on the other, was what brought Detrick and the CIA together, and my father was in the center of that.
He was arguably in the most dangerous spot in the whole Cold War.
When you just put it so coldly like that, you realize they didn't have many options.
And the United States did not have Siberia to send people to.
[ERROL.]
Well, as your father said, "Can't I just disappear?" And, of course, that's another one of these lines that can be read in different ways.
When that appears in these documents that we got from William Colby, their intention in disseminating that line was, "Well, this is a sign that he must be crazy, and wants to just vanish somehow.
" When you start to know the story more deeply, you realize, at that point, he's probably terrified, and I think what he's doing is really kind of pleading with them, "Look, I'll just I'll just disappear.
Can't I just disappear?" I think that's what that line actually means.
Their own experiment suicide theory is deeply disturbing in a way that they don't quite acknowledge.
[ERROL.]
If he was suicidal, do you put him 13 stories up, over Seventh Avenue? I talked to the manager of the hotel, who said it was their policy if someone was psychologically disturbed, to put them on a low floor.
They were never told that about Olson.
He's with Lashbrook, this key person.
- [ERROL.]
CIA? - [KAIRYS.]
CIA.
They make it sound like Lashbrook's there to support him.
I think Lashbrook is the security detail.
He's a guard.
And maybe worse.
I don't know.
He was in the room.
He's the only one who's acknowledged in the documents that was with Olson when he died.
[LASHBROOK.]
He's expecting you.
[ABRAMSON.]
Well, here we are again, Frank.
What seems to be troubling you? Lashbrook and Vin have a master plan.
I wanna know what it is.
[EXHALES DEEPLY.]
[LIGHTER CLICKS.]
I feel like they're giving me dope to keep me awake.
I see.
You're losing control, Frank.
Are you forgetting the premium placed on control? I heard voices last night.
And Vin told me to throw away my wallet.
Don't worry.
We know just the place for you.
[FRANK.]
I'm being admitted to Chestnut Lodge Sanitarium.
Uh I don't know.
It's near Frederick.
Don't worry.
No.
I love you.
Okay.
Bye.
[RECEIVER CLICKS.]
[SWITCHES ON TV.]
[TV COMMENTATOR.]
18,000 fight fans jammed into Madison Square Garden tonight.
This fight means a great deal to both these men.
His reflexes are much, much slower than they used to be.
[TICKING.]
[FRANK SNORES SOFTLY.]
[TICKING CONTINUES.]
[FRANK SNORES SOFTLY.]
[DOOR OPENS.]
[DOOR LOCKS.]
[LIGHTER CLICKS.]
[DOOR RATTLES.]
[FOOTSTEPS THUDDING.]
[DOOR CLOSES.]
[GLASS SHATTERING.]
[KNOCKING ON DOOR.]
["THE FINGER OF SUSPICION" BY DICKIE VALENTINE PLAYS.]
Someone broke into my heart And stole a beat or two The finger of suspicion Points at you Someone took away my sleep And never left a clue The finger of suspicion Points at you Just as soon as they can make The guilty one confess I know exactly what I'm gonna do I'll take and lock her charms Forever in my arms Then who is bound To be the guilty, who? The finger of suspicion Points at you Someone broke into my heart And stole a beat or two The finger of suspicion Points at you Someone took away my sleep And never left a clue The finger of suspicion Points at you Just as soon as they can make The guilty one confess I know exactly what I'm gonna do I'll take and lock her charms Forever in my arms [WHINES.]