Wormwood (2017) s01e04 Episode Script
Chapter 4: Opening the Lid
[FAINT BACKGROUND CHATTER.]
Yes, give me, uh, Virginia 15 W4.
Well [SIGHS.]
He's gone.
[RECEIVER CLICKS.]
[SIREN WAILING.]
[ERIC.]
It's very hard to construct a good cover story.
But it's even harder to sustain that cover story over long periods of time when people forget what the cover story was.
Lashbrook made all these mistakes.
Was the window open or closed? Was the blind up or down? Was he asleep or not asleep? Did he see Frank Olson moving about the room? Call to him and tell him to stop? All these things are different versions of all this.
So Lashbrook wasn't able to sustain a consistent version of this thing.
At all.
In one version of this story, the blind has suddenly snapped up, and is winding around the spindle at the top, hitting the window.
That wakes him up.
He looks out, and sees that Frank is missing, the window is crashed, puts two and two together, and concludes Frank must have jumped out the window.
Yes, uh, Plaza Three, 8338.
[EXHALES DEEPLY.]
Harold.
[CLICKS TONGUE.]
Frank jumped.
[HAROLD.]
Keep me out of this mess.
[RECEIVER CLICKS.]
What are you doing in here? I don't know why he jumped.
Maybe it was his ulcer.
Alright.
Come on.
Come on out of there.
[PHONE RINGING.]
Hello? [ABRAMSON.]
Robert, I spoke to Gottlieb.
I've had some time to think.
[COP.]
Seen a guy jump through glass before? Best to be careful.
Come by my office tonight.
[COP.]
What was the jumper's name? Olson? [RECEIVER CLICKS.]
What's your name? Robert Lashbrook.
[COP.]
Robert, you're coming with us.
[MAN 1.]
The police came in and asked him to come out with his head in his hands, like that.
And the police said, "Well, what happened?" And he said, "All I heard was the glass crash, and he was gone.
I don't remember anything else.
" Who said? Hamlet said, "There's something rotten in Denmark.
" I mean, I knew there was something rotten at the Pennsylvania Hotel that night.
[ERIC.]
July 13th, 1975.
"Dear Mrs Olson.
After reading the newspaper accounts on the tragic death of your husband, I felt compelled to write to you.
At the time of your husband's death, I was the assistant night manager at the Hotel Statler in New York, and was at his side almost immediately after his fall.
He attempted to speak, but his words were unintelligible.
Having been in the hotel business for the last 36 years, and witnessed innumerable unfortunate incidents, your husband's death disturbed me greatly due to the most unusual circumstances of which you are now aware.
My heartfelt sympathy to you and your family.
Sincerely, Armond D.
Pastore, General Manager.
" This had haunted, even tortured him for decades.
I mean, he never, in a sense, got over this.
He was downstairs when the bellhop comes in, rushes through the door, says, "Somebody just went through the window and is lying in the street.
" So, Pastore goes out to the street, notices that my father's actually mumbling something but in that moment, my father dies.
He looks up, and he finds which room it was.
He goes into the hotel, speaks to the switchboard operator, and asks, "Were there any calls from that room?" "Were there any calls from that room, 1018A?" So she says, "Yes, there was a call, and it was so brief that I listened to the whole call.
" The person who made the call says, "Well, he's gone.
" The other end says, "That's too bad," and they hung up.
I don't know how many ways there are of interpreting such a call, except to say that they had agreed that this would happen, and this was notification that it did happen.
And Pastore said he'd been in all kinds of hotels over many years.
He'd seen all kinds of things from mafia murders to suicides to this, to that, to every kind of human behavior you can imagine.
He said this was no kind of suicide.
Absolutely.
"There's something rotten in the state of Denmark," he always said.
"Something rotten in the state of Denmark.
" [ERROL.]
What would you say to Hamlet? [ERIC.]
I'd say go back to Wittenberg and keep track of Ophelia.
There was a woman who I had known at Harvard, and we were planning to get married.
I became just kind of not present in some way.
It wasn't that I stopped caring about her.
It was kind of like just a feeling of disconnection, from kind of everything, including her.
What happens to Hamlet and Ophelia, he kind of just loses interest.
He's just not there and she looks at him, says, "What has happened here?" And he doesn't really have an answer.
He doesn't know himself.
You get tangled up in a very complex scenario involving multiple possible motives multiple possible actors.
Do you wanna examine the unimaginable, which nobody else wants to think about? And now you take it on yourself to open this up.
That is a very destabilizing thing, and it's gonna have huge repercussions on all aspects of your life.
And that's where Hamlet, I think, is just a manual.
I mean, look at look at the mess.
You know, I had enough kind of intellectual and scholarly training to absorb meaning at various historical levels, and that became a kind of ballast against this upheaval, which I was causing by digging up everything.
Not least the body itself.
In 1993, my mother had died.
Suddenly you could ask this question, "Well, what happened to my father?" in a different way than you could ever ask it before.
She wasn't there to kind of say, well, anything.
It was what Kierkegaard would call almost a dizziness of freedom.
You can ask this question, and you have to live with whatever you're gonna do.
What if you could examine the remains, and come to some kind of conclusion here? I mentioned it to my brother, who right away said, "Well, gee, did you know that our old friend, Jim Starrs," who's a law professor "did you know that he had become a forensic scientist who specializes in exhuming bodies, to resolve historical cases?" To which I said, "You don't say?" [LAUGHS.]
No shit.
Really? I do not carry a shovel.
I am not a grave robber.
I am possibly a grave digger.
I don't pass cemeteries at night or day, wistfully thinking of returning at night.
I'm not a resurrectionist by a long shot.
I do feel that there are some all-important first steps that must be taken before an exhumation is justified.
What's the chances that you're gonna have a family friend specializing in exhuming bodies to resolve difficult historical crimes? It's gotta be very low.
Had we had to find an exhumer of bodies looking in the Yellow Pages, I don't think I would have done this.
Eric likes to say that this is totally my idea, and therefore all my fault.
[CHUCKLES.]
Which it wasn't.
It was kind of irresistible.
They were gonna have to move the coffin of his father from where it was buried to a new site where his mother was gonna be buried.
Question was, "Are you gonna open the lid?" The same question could be posed every step of the way.
Was it right to reopen his own set of questions about the case at many points? He's always been unable not to go ahead and do it.
But I think he's always felt that every time he has reengaged it, it sucked him into this terrible hole.
His whole life has been sucked into the grave.
[ERIC.]
The documents that we received in 1975 from the CIA, which were supposedly gonna give us some answers, actually didn't do that.
They were more unsatisfying than ignorance had been before that.
The longer we've lived with those documents, I think the more unsatisfied we've been.
[REPORTER 1.]
What do you know for sure? We know that he died as a result of falling on the ground, from a 13th floor window.
That's what we know for sure.
First autopsy, and the result of the first autopsy, was listed as, in the in the cause of death, was fell or jumped.
- [REPORTER 2.]
Fell or jumped.
- Fell or jumped.
Now, that's interpreted as being suicide.
In 1975 there was a redetermination, and he said it was an accidental.
Okay? - [REPORTER 3.]
Dr.
Starrs - Excuse me.
[ERROL.]
Is this a cautionary tale? [ERIC.]
Yes.
'Cause many people have approached me, and I always say, "Stipulate that whatever you suspect happened did happen and probably worse than you could even imagine, and let it go.
" Because once you open up this kind of a passageway Once you open up the grave of your father.
What's the end point? What if they do find something? Then what? How decisive is that gonna be? Is it gonna be the end of the story? We know this now.
Or is that gonna just raise a further question? If it raises a further question, how far are you willing to go with this? What knowledge would you have to have, what kind of event would have to occur till you finally say, "I'm done?" That's the problem.
My father's case was extreme worst-case scenario in this, because the forensic team did find decisive evidence that he had been murdered.
Now what do we do? How was the show? [GRUNTS.]
[WARD.]
What do all these letters mean? Combination for a safe.
Really? What kind of a safe is that? That's an awful long combination.
Must be a big safe.
It's a matter of national security.
[DOOR CLOSES.]
[WARD.]
What do you think of this? [MAN.]
He seems a a bit light on his feet.
Maybe the dead one was gonna tell the wife.
[WARD.]
Nah, he's military.
Who was that commie, fell out of a window a few years back? [MAN.]
State Department.
Duggan.
Had an accident putting on his shoe.
Must have lost his balance.
[WARD CHUCKLES.]
Hoover really didn't like that guy.
[MAN.]
Okay.
See what the FBI knows about this.
[DOOR CLOSES.]
You seem completely disconnected.
Was he a friend of yours? [LASHBROOK.]
An acquaintance.
Hm.
You're not giving us much here.
Dr.
Olson was Army.
I think you should contact Lieutenant Colonel Vincent Ruwet.
He knew his wife.
[KNOCKING ON DOOR.]
[CLICKS TONGUE.]
Sounds like you're free to go.
[BELL RINGS.]
Sid, it's Bob.
I'm back at the hotel.
[GOTTLIEB.]
Listen, an agent from the security office has been assigned to follow you.
Goddamnit.
Be careful.
[TRUMPET FANFARE PLAYING IN FILM.]
[EXPLOSION.]
[EXPLOSIONS IN THE DISTANCE.]
They must have spotted us from Red Top.
Those shells are too darn close.
I thought this was the day the war was supposed to be over.
They ought to tell those guys in Panmunjom, man.
Somebody ought to tell those commies! - [MAN 2.]
Medic! - [MAN 3.]
Over here.
Medic! Medic! This way.
Medic! [EXPLOSIONS.]
That's a tough break any time, but on the last day.
[DOOR CLOSES.]
[FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING.]
Fancy meeting you here.
[DOOR OPENS, CLOSES.]
[REPORTER 4.]
There's startling new information in the case of a former government scientist whose drink was laced with LSD by the CIA.
[REPORTER 5.]
reported more than two years ago that Frank Olson, a former CIA scientist, may have been murdered.
[REPORTER 6.]
Now, modern technology and old-fashioned science have convinced a team of forensic pathologists that Olson may have been murdered.
[ERIC.]
The only moment that was actually a moment of peace in this all, I went to this lab where his body lay on this table.
He was actually well preserved.
He had been embalmed for whatever reason.
And I looked at him and I saw his face.
And I recognized him.
There is a certain need to see the dead body.
It's kind of a moment of saying goodbye and of acknowledging the death, that the death did happen.
I actually touched the remains.
[ERROL.]
What did you touch? Part of the skull.
And even his penis was still visible.
You know, there was enough flesh somehow that you could even recognize his sexual organ, which is astounding.
- Are you sure you wanna do this, Eric? - Yeah.
I am.
[ERROL.]
And what did Starrs find? He found two things, really.
One was a negative finding, and one was a positive finding.
He didn't find any evidence of going through glass.
[ERROL.]
The window was broken.
[ERIC.]
The window was broken.
The medical report at the time had said there were lacerations.
There were no lacerations.
Second of all, they found this impact on the skull, above one of the eyes, which they said could only have come from a blow in the room.
[ERROL.]
It couldn't have been caused by the glass? No.
No.
If it had been, he wouldn't have gotten out the window.
He wouldn't have made it.
I can and unhesitatingly say, uh that I am exceedingly skeptical of the view that Dr.
Olson went through that window on his own.
That leaves the strong probability, in my view, that he went through at the hand, or the hands, of someone else.
Uh, I cannot say that from the scientific evidence alone.
And I know Jack Frost, Dr.
Frost, and I have gone over this at some length and he apparently having more athletic ability than I do, feels it's possible to lower your head, and go through that window, hitting the glass, and cause that kind of hematoma.
But that's a large hematoma.
We're gonna make a formal statement of response to this report when we've had time to study the report, which we haven't had at this time.
This is the first I've heard the report, and I haven't yet read it.
[REPORTER 7.]
You think he was murdered? I've thought that all along.
He and his team concluded that this was, "A murder most foul," was the phrase he used.
[EXHALES DEEPLY.]
And this was before '97.
The CIA's assassination manual was released, with a trove of documents pertaining to the coup in Guatemala.
I contacted the National Security Archives at George Washington University.
Their response was, "Well, which assassination manual do you want? We have five-inches thick of these things.
" And I said, "Well, the one from '53.
" They said, "Oh, you want the first one.
" And I'll never forget the day in 1997 when I'm sitting at the kitchen table, actually the table from which I got the last view of my father as he heads off to work.
I'm sitting there reading this thing.
The preferred method of assassination push somebody off a high building, or out of a window.
And then you just say, "We didn't see anything.
We don't know what happened.
" - [ERROL.]
"I was asleep in bed!" - [ERIC.]
"I was asleep.
" The verb finally came after all these years.
Wasn't "fall.
" Wasn't "jump.
" Wasn't "dive.
" The verb they use is "drop.
" They say before dropping the subject, it is desirable to give them a blow on the head to render them unconscious.
And they say above one of the eyes is the place you do it.
So, what do you do now, armed with this additional piece of evidence? We go to see Harry Huge in his office in Washington.
An attorney who I had first met in connection with the Buffalo Creek flood disaster.
He was the attorney who started this case against Pittston Coal for building an illegal and certainly unsafe slag dam.
Rains came.
The dam gave way.
This gigantic wave of black water with all this slag mixed into it.
Gates of hell opened up.
[MIMICS EXPLOSION.]
Down through this narrow winding valley, ripping up everything in its path, houses, trees, cars, people, whatever.
And in 1972, you are? I was a graduate student at Harvard.
And I was working on my doctoral thesis, The Collage Method.
Harry Huge decides that in addition to suing for negligence, there would be for psychological damages.
[HARRY.]
Eric Olson was part of the team developing our case.
Recording the stories of the survivors that we then filed to say, "Look at the damages.
How do you measure something like this, except in terms of punitive damages, not in terms of wrongful death, but in terms of pain and suffering?" It's hard not to notice that it comes just before Eric finds out about his father.
I was living in Alexandria, and Eric came to see me with his brother Nils, and his mother and asked if I would take the case on.
So I went in to see Paul Porter on Monday morning, his office.
Walked in.
"Paul, I've got this wonderful case.
" And he just sat there and he looked at me.
And he said, "Well, Harry, we have a little problem here.
" [CHUCKLES.]
And I said, "What's the problem?" He said, "Well, we represent the CIA.
" [ERROL.]
Did you have the feeling, even at that time, that things were being held back? Yes.
But it wasn't so evident as it became later on.
Something about Eric's father.
Something about what Eric's father was doing.
And Fort Detrick was doing.
That's what lead Eric on this quest.
I, quite frankly, with Eric, tried everything that I knew how to try.
I said, "A civil action isn't gonna do it.
So, let's get a criminal investigation going.
" [ERROL.]
Why will a civil action fail? Because you can't haul somebody up in front of a grand jury, and threaten them with going to jail if they don't tell the truth.
A prosecutor can indict a hamburger if he wants to.
That's why I wrote that memorandum, which did lead to a cold-case investigation with Saracco and Bib.
Saracco was a very experienced assistant district attorney in the DA's office in Manhattan.
In the mid-'90s they established a cold-cases unit.
One of the first cases that then came across the transam was our letter, and they decided to open an investigation of this.
[ERROL.]
Why did you think it should be reopened? I mean, it never really was closed.
It was never carried as a homicide.
It was carried as a suicide.
With Professor Starrs's conclusions after the body was exhumed and re-autopsied, and coupled with an assassination manual, they asked us to look into it, which we did.
The first thing we did was write a letter to the General Counsel of the CIA indicating that we were reopening it.
The letter I got back from CIA said "Your subpoenas are meaningless.
However, we will cooperate 100%.
" They had no sooner done that than they get word that someone who they were gonna wanna interview, namely William Colby, from whom we had gotten these documents to start with in '75, had disappeared.
In a canoe.
Near his summer house.
He had gone out canoeing, and vanished from his canoe.
The guys assigned to this case were completely floored by this.
We no sooner start this case, and make a document request to the CIA, than the former director himself vanishes.
And it was a week before they even found the remains.
They finally washed ashore somewhere.
[ERROL.]
Maybe he just wanted to disappear.
[ERIC.]
Well, that's what his son thinks.
He thinks his father actually did commit suicide, because his father had written to him shortly before, saying, "You may find my body in the bottom of a ravine," and he had made some other comments that his son interpreted to mean that he was overwhelmed by basically remorse and guilt about a lot of things.
And that he couldn't bear this anymore.
In Colby's autobiography, which he calls Honorable Men there is this passage where he says the time when we, the family of Frank Olson, came to his office, was one of the most challenging professional assignments he'd ever had in his entire career.
If anybody in '75 knew that the story we were being told was not true, it would have had to have been Colby.
[INTERVIEWER 1.]
It's difficult to judge a son who really wants to know what happened to his father.
I think that's a very natural feeling by a son, particularly one that disappeared in these kinds of murky situations.
Very natural he would think, "Is there something behind this?" Is it reasonable to believe that foul play was a factor within the Olson death? As far as I know, the the pure story is that he took the thing, and then he jumped out of the window up in New York.
That's all I know about it.
I think the people there think they've got the full story.
Uh, I know they did when I was there.
They thought they had the full story.
I certainly thought that was the full story.
And how do you convince them, the family, of that? There will be a lingering doubt in the minds of family forever, I guess.
Can't help it.
[ERROL.]
Did Saracco ever get additional documents from the CIA? I don't think so, but I don't know for sure, because this was all done under grand jury secrecy.
So I don't know exactly what they got, and what they didn't get.
But I do know that I was constantly on them to kind of suggest, "Well, try this, try that, try the other thing.
" And they were Hm They were they were kind of over their heads.
This is more than a cold case, and as I finally concluded, just because my father landed on a New York street doesn't make this a New York street crime.
[STEPHEN.]
We were attempting to take testimony from Dr.
Lashbrook.
Of course, he was too infirm, or too elderly to travel to New York to go before a New York grand jury.
That litigation compelling him to testify lasted about a year.
What he said to us is, of course, grand jury testimony, and it can never be disclosed.
[ERROL.]
What if, say, for example, Lashbrook had said, "I killed him.
" I mean, Lashbrook wasn't in the muscle end of the CIA.
There was never any indication that Lashbrook was the killer.
But there was always the possibility that he knew who was.
Sure.
[DOOR CLOSES.]
Why don't you, uh, wait out here? [EXHALES.]
I'm worried that we have a problem.
No, Robert.
I think you're the one that has a problem.
Perhaps we should listen to the tape.
[SWITCHES TAPE ON.]
[ABRAMSON.]
Well, here we are again, Frank.
What, uh, seems to be troubling you? [FRANK.]
Lashbrook and Vin have a master plan.
I wanna know what it is.
I feel like they're giving me dope to keep me awake.
[TAPE STOPS.]
I think it best that I dictate your statement to you.
As far back as March of 1953 Frank's wife was suggesting that he see a doctor for his depression.
[LIGHTER CLICKS.]
Frank was suffering from delusions, guilt, persecution complex.
He thought he was stealing, because he was taking a pension.
I mean Frank was a little crazy.
What I'm worried about is whether or not our research is in jeopardy.
I think this whole operation was dangerous.
Our whole deal should be reanalyzed.
How about we have a drink, okay? [TYPEWRITER KEYS CLACKING.]
Always good to see you, Robert.
[SIGHS DEEPLY.]
[TICKING.]
I sure thought you'd make it.
[SNORES SOFTLY.]
[CLICKS.]
[SNORES SOFTLY.]
[DOOR CLOSES.]
[LOCK CLICKS.]
[FRANK GROANS.]
Uh, who are you? [MAN.]
It's time to go.
[FRANK.]
To go? Time to go where? [EXHALES.]
[EXHALES DEEPLY.]
I have to use the bathroom.
Bob? Bob, are you in there? Bob? Bob? [DOOR RATTLES.]
[FRANK.]
Bob? Bob, open the door.
Bob.
Open the door.
Hey, Bob.
Bob [DOOR RATTLES.]
Come on, Bob.
Open the door.
[FRANK.]
Bob? Bob.
[GRUNTS.]
Just wait.
Just wait, wait, wait! Wait.
[EXHALES DEEPLY.]
Sit down.
Sit down.
[EXHALES.]
[WHINES.]
Yes, give me, uh, Virginia 15 W4.
Well [SIGHS.]
He's gone.
[RECEIVER CLICKS.]
[SIREN WAILING.]
[ERIC.]
It's very hard to construct a good cover story.
But it's even harder to sustain that cover story over long periods of time when people forget what the cover story was.
Lashbrook made all these mistakes.
Was the window open or closed? Was the blind up or down? Was he asleep or not asleep? Did he see Frank Olson moving about the room? Call to him and tell him to stop? All these things are different versions of all this.
So Lashbrook wasn't able to sustain a consistent version of this thing.
At all.
In one version of this story, the blind has suddenly snapped up, and is winding around the spindle at the top, hitting the window.
That wakes him up.
He looks out, and sees that Frank is missing, the window is crashed, puts two and two together, and concludes Frank must have jumped out the window.
Yes, uh, Plaza Three, 8338.
[EXHALES DEEPLY.]
Harold.
[CLICKS TONGUE.]
Frank jumped.
[HAROLD.]
Keep me out of this mess.
[RECEIVER CLICKS.]
What are you doing in here? I don't know why he jumped.
Maybe it was his ulcer.
Alright.
Come on.
Come on out of there.
[PHONE RINGING.]
Hello? [ABRAMSON.]
Robert, I spoke to Gottlieb.
I've had some time to think.
[COP.]
Seen a guy jump through glass before? Best to be careful.
Come by my office tonight.
[COP.]
What was the jumper's name? Olson? [RECEIVER CLICKS.]
What's your name? Robert Lashbrook.
[COP.]
Robert, you're coming with us.
[MAN 1.]
The police came in and asked him to come out with his head in his hands, like that.
And the police said, "Well, what happened?" And he said, "All I heard was the glass crash, and he was gone.
I don't remember anything else.
" Who said? Hamlet said, "There's something rotten in Denmark.
" I mean, I knew there was something rotten at the Pennsylvania Hotel that night.
[ERIC.]
July 13th, 1975.
"Dear Mrs Olson.
After reading the newspaper accounts on the tragic death of your husband, I felt compelled to write to you.
At the time of your husband's death, I was the assistant night manager at the Hotel Statler in New York, and was at his side almost immediately after his fall.
He attempted to speak, but his words were unintelligible.
Having been in the hotel business for the last 36 years, and witnessed innumerable unfortunate incidents, your husband's death disturbed me greatly due to the most unusual circumstances of which you are now aware.
My heartfelt sympathy to you and your family.
Sincerely, Armond D.
Pastore, General Manager.
" This had haunted, even tortured him for decades.
I mean, he never, in a sense, got over this.
He was downstairs when the bellhop comes in, rushes through the door, says, "Somebody just went through the window and is lying in the street.
" So, Pastore goes out to the street, notices that my father's actually mumbling something but in that moment, my father dies.
He looks up, and he finds which room it was.
He goes into the hotel, speaks to the switchboard operator, and asks, "Were there any calls from that room?" "Were there any calls from that room, 1018A?" So she says, "Yes, there was a call, and it was so brief that I listened to the whole call.
" The person who made the call says, "Well, he's gone.
" The other end says, "That's too bad," and they hung up.
I don't know how many ways there are of interpreting such a call, except to say that they had agreed that this would happen, and this was notification that it did happen.
And Pastore said he'd been in all kinds of hotels over many years.
He'd seen all kinds of things from mafia murders to suicides to this, to that, to every kind of human behavior you can imagine.
He said this was no kind of suicide.
Absolutely.
"There's something rotten in the state of Denmark," he always said.
"Something rotten in the state of Denmark.
" [ERROL.]
What would you say to Hamlet? [ERIC.]
I'd say go back to Wittenberg and keep track of Ophelia.
There was a woman who I had known at Harvard, and we were planning to get married.
I became just kind of not present in some way.
It wasn't that I stopped caring about her.
It was kind of like just a feeling of disconnection, from kind of everything, including her.
What happens to Hamlet and Ophelia, he kind of just loses interest.
He's just not there and she looks at him, says, "What has happened here?" And he doesn't really have an answer.
He doesn't know himself.
You get tangled up in a very complex scenario involving multiple possible motives multiple possible actors.
Do you wanna examine the unimaginable, which nobody else wants to think about? And now you take it on yourself to open this up.
That is a very destabilizing thing, and it's gonna have huge repercussions on all aspects of your life.
And that's where Hamlet, I think, is just a manual.
I mean, look at look at the mess.
You know, I had enough kind of intellectual and scholarly training to absorb meaning at various historical levels, and that became a kind of ballast against this upheaval, which I was causing by digging up everything.
Not least the body itself.
In 1993, my mother had died.
Suddenly you could ask this question, "Well, what happened to my father?" in a different way than you could ever ask it before.
She wasn't there to kind of say, well, anything.
It was what Kierkegaard would call almost a dizziness of freedom.
You can ask this question, and you have to live with whatever you're gonna do.
What if you could examine the remains, and come to some kind of conclusion here? I mentioned it to my brother, who right away said, "Well, gee, did you know that our old friend, Jim Starrs," who's a law professor "did you know that he had become a forensic scientist who specializes in exhuming bodies, to resolve historical cases?" To which I said, "You don't say?" [LAUGHS.]
No shit.
Really? I do not carry a shovel.
I am not a grave robber.
I am possibly a grave digger.
I don't pass cemeteries at night or day, wistfully thinking of returning at night.
I'm not a resurrectionist by a long shot.
I do feel that there are some all-important first steps that must be taken before an exhumation is justified.
What's the chances that you're gonna have a family friend specializing in exhuming bodies to resolve difficult historical crimes? It's gotta be very low.
Had we had to find an exhumer of bodies looking in the Yellow Pages, I don't think I would have done this.
Eric likes to say that this is totally my idea, and therefore all my fault.
[CHUCKLES.]
Which it wasn't.
It was kind of irresistible.
They were gonna have to move the coffin of his father from where it was buried to a new site where his mother was gonna be buried.
Question was, "Are you gonna open the lid?" The same question could be posed every step of the way.
Was it right to reopen his own set of questions about the case at many points? He's always been unable not to go ahead and do it.
But I think he's always felt that every time he has reengaged it, it sucked him into this terrible hole.
His whole life has been sucked into the grave.
[ERIC.]
The documents that we received in 1975 from the CIA, which were supposedly gonna give us some answers, actually didn't do that.
They were more unsatisfying than ignorance had been before that.
The longer we've lived with those documents, I think the more unsatisfied we've been.
[REPORTER 1.]
What do you know for sure? We know that he died as a result of falling on the ground, from a 13th floor window.
That's what we know for sure.
First autopsy, and the result of the first autopsy, was listed as, in the in the cause of death, was fell or jumped.
- [REPORTER 2.]
Fell or jumped.
- Fell or jumped.
Now, that's interpreted as being suicide.
In 1975 there was a redetermination, and he said it was an accidental.
Okay? - [REPORTER 3.]
Dr.
Starrs - Excuse me.
[ERROL.]
Is this a cautionary tale? [ERIC.]
Yes.
'Cause many people have approached me, and I always say, "Stipulate that whatever you suspect happened did happen and probably worse than you could even imagine, and let it go.
" Because once you open up this kind of a passageway Once you open up the grave of your father.
What's the end point? What if they do find something? Then what? How decisive is that gonna be? Is it gonna be the end of the story? We know this now.
Or is that gonna just raise a further question? If it raises a further question, how far are you willing to go with this? What knowledge would you have to have, what kind of event would have to occur till you finally say, "I'm done?" That's the problem.
My father's case was extreme worst-case scenario in this, because the forensic team did find decisive evidence that he had been murdered.
Now what do we do? How was the show? [GRUNTS.]
[WARD.]
What do all these letters mean? Combination for a safe.
Really? What kind of a safe is that? That's an awful long combination.
Must be a big safe.
It's a matter of national security.
[DOOR CLOSES.]
[WARD.]
What do you think of this? [MAN.]
He seems a a bit light on his feet.
Maybe the dead one was gonna tell the wife.
[WARD.]
Nah, he's military.
Who was that commie, fell out of a window a few years back? [MAN.]
State Department.
Duggan.
Had an accident putting on his shoe.
Must have lost his balance.
[WARD CHUCKLES.]
Hoover really didn't like that guy.
[MAN.]
Okay.
See what the FBI knows about this.
[DOOR CLOSES.]
You seem completely disconnected.
Was he a friend of yours? [LASHBROOK.]
An acquaintance.
Hm.
You're not giving us much here.
Dr.
Olson was Army.
I think you should contact Lieutenant Colonel Vincent Ruwet.
He knew his wife.
[KNOCKING ON DOOR.]
[CLICKS TONGUE.]
Sounds like you're free to go.
[BELL RINGS.]
Sid, it's Bob.
I'm back at the hotel.
[GOTTLIEB.]
Listen, an agent from the security office has been assigned to follow you.
Goddamnit.
Be careful.
[TRUMPET FANFARE PLAYING IN FILM.]
[EXPLOSION.]
[EXPLOSIONS IN THE DISTANCE.]
They must have spotted us from Red Top.
Those shells are too darn close.
I thought this was the day the war was supposed to be over.
They ought to tell those guys in Panmunjom, man.
Somebody ought to tell those commies! - [MAN 2.]
Medic! - [MAN 3.]
Over here.
Medic! Medic! This way.
Medic! [EXPLOSIONS.]
That's a tough break any time, but on the last day.
[DOOR CLOSES.]
[FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING.]
Fancy meeting you here.
[DOOR OPENS, CLOSES.]
[REPORTER 4.]
There's startling new information in the case of a former government scientist whose drink was laced with LSD by the CIA.
[REPORTER 5.]
reported more than two years ago that Frank Olson, a former CIA scientist, may have been murdered.
[REPORTER 6.]
Now, modern technology and old-fashioned science have convinced a team of forensic pathologists that Olson may have been murdered.
[ERIC.]
The only moment that was actually a moment of peace in this all, I went to this lab where his body lay on this table.
He was actually well preserved.
He had been embalmed for whatever reason.
And I looked at him and I saw his face.
And I recognized him.
There is a certain need to see the dead body.
It's kind of a moment of saying goodbye and of acknowledging the death, that the death did happen.
I actually touched the remains.
[ERROL.]
What did you touch? Part of the skull.
And even his penis was still visible.
You know, there was enough flesh somehow that you could even recognize his sexual organ, which is astounding.
- Are you sure you wanna do this, Eric? - Yeah.
I am.
[ERROL.]
And what did Starrs find? He found two things, really.
One was a negative finding, and one was a positive finding.
He didn't find any evidence of going through glass.
[ERROL.]
The window was broken.
[ERIC.]
The window was broken.
The medical report at the time had said there were lacerations.
There were no lacerations.
Second of all, they found this impact on the skull, above one of the eyes, which they said could only have come from a blow in the room.
[ERROL.]
It couldn't have been caused by the glass? No.
No.
If it had been, he wouldn't have gotten out the window.
He wouldn't have made it.
I can and unhesitatingly say, uh that I am exceedingly skeptical of the view that Dr.
Olson went through that window on his own.
That leaves the strong probability, in my view, that he went through at the hand, or the hands, of someone else.
Uh, I cannot say that from the scientific evidence alone.
And I know Jack Frost, Dr.
Frost, and I have gone over this at some length and he apparently having more athletic ability than I do, feels it's possible to lower your head, and go through that window, hitting the glass, and cause that kind of hematoma.
But that's a large hematoma.
We're gonna make a formal statement of response to this report when we've had time to study the report, which we haven't had at this time.
This is the first I've heard the report, and I haven't yet read it.
[REPORTER 7.]
You think he was murdered? I've thought that all along.
He and his team concluded that this was, "A murder most foul," was the phrase he used.
[EXHALES DEEPLY.]
And this was before '97.
The CIA's assassination manual was released, with a trove of documents pertaining to the coup in Guatemala.
I contacted the National Security Archives at George Washington University.
Their response was, "Well, which assassination manual do you want? We have five-inches thick of these things.
" And I said, "Well, the one from '53.
" They said, "Oh, you want the first one.
" And I'll never forget the day in 1997 when I'm sitting at the kitchen table, actually the table from which I got the last view of my father as he heads off to work.
I'm sitting there reading this thing.
The preferred method of assassination push somebody off a high building, or out of a window.
And then you just say, "We didn't see anything.
We don't know what happened.
" - [ERROL.]
"I was asleep in bed!" - [ERIC.]
"I was asleep.
" The verb finally came after all these years.
Wasn't "fall.
" Wasn't "jump.
" Wasn't "dive.
" The verb they use is "drop.
" They say before dropping the subject, it is desirable to give them a blow on the head to render them unconscious.
And they say above one of the eyes is the place you do it.
So, what do you do now, armed with this additional piece of evidence? We go to see Harry Huge in his office in Washington.
An attorney who I had first met in connection with the Buffalo Creek flood disaster.
He was the attorney who started this case against Pittston Coal for building an illegal and certainly unsafe slag dam.
Rains came.
The dam gave way.
This gigantic wave of black water with all this slag mixed into it.
Gates of hell opened up.
[MIMICS EXPLOSION.]
Down through this narrow winding valley, ripping up everything in its path, houses, trees, cars, people, whatever.
And in 1972, you are? I was a graduate student at Harvard.
And I was working on my doctoral thesis, The Collage Method.
Harry Huge decides that in addition to suing for negligence, there would be for psychological damages.
[HARRY.]
Eric Olson was part of the team developing our case.
Recording the stories of the survivors that we then filed to say, "Look at the damages.
How do you measure something like this, except in terms of punitive damages, not in terms of wrongful death, but in terms of pain and suffering?" It's hard not to notice that it comes just before Eric finds out about his father.
I was living in Alexandria, and Eric came to see me with his brother Nils, and his mother and asked if I would take the case on.
So I went in to see Paul Porter on Monday morning, his office.
Walked in.
"Paul, I've got this wonderful case.
" And he just sat there and he looked at me.
And he said, "Well, Harry, we have a little problem here.
" [CHUCKLES.]
And I said, "What's the problem?" He said, "Well, we represent the CIA.
" [ERROL.]
Did you have the feeling, even at that time, that things were being held back? Yes.
But it wasn't so evident as it became later on.
Something about Eric's father.
Something about what Eric's father was doing.
And Fort Detrick was doing.
That's what lead Eric on this quest.
I, quite frankly, with Eric, tried everything that I knew how to try.
I said, "A civil action isn't gonna do it.
So, let's get a criminal investigation going.
" [ERROL.]
Why will a civil action fail? Because you can't haul somebody up in front of a grand jury, and threaten them with going to jail if they don't tell the truth.
A prosecutor can indict a hamburger if he wants to.
That's why I wrote that memorandum, which did lead to a cold-case investigation with Saracco and Bib.
Saracco was a very experienced assistant district attorney in the DA's office in Manhattan.
In the mid-'90s they established a cold-cases unit.
One of the first cases that then came across the transam was our letter, and they decided to open an investigation of this.
[ERROL.]
Why did you think it should be reopened? I mean, it never really was closed.
It was never carried as a homicide.
It was carried as a suicide.
With Professor Starrs's conclusions after the body was exhumed and re-autopsied, and coupled with an assassination manual, they asked us to look into it, which we did.
The first thing we did was write a letter to the General Counsel of the CIA indicating that we were reopening it.
The letter I got back from CIA said "Your subpoenas are meaningless.
However, we will cooperate 100%.
" They had no sooner done that than they get word that someone who they were gonna wanna interview, namely William Colby, from whom we had gotten these documents to start with in '75, had disappeared.
In a canoe.
Near his summer house.
He had gone out canoeing, and vanished from his canoe.
The guys assigned to this case were completely floored by this.
We no sooner start this case, and make a document request to the CIA, than the former director himself vanishes.
And it was a week before they even found the remains.
They finally washed ashore somewhere.
[ERROL.]
Maybe he just wanted to disappear.
[ERIC.]
Well, that's what his son thinks.
He thinks his father actually did commit suicide, because his father had written to him shortly before, saying, "You may find my body in the bottom of a ravine," and he had made some other comments that his son interpreted to mean that he was overwhelmed by basically remorse and guilt about a lot of things.
And that he couldn't bear this anymore.
In Colby's autobiography, which he calls Honorable Men there is this passage where he says the time when we, the family of Frank Olson, came to his office, was one of the most challenging professional assignments he'd ever had in his entire career.
If anybody in '75 knew that the story we were being told was not true, it would have had to have been Colby.
[INTERVIEWER 1.]
It's difficult to judge a son who really wants to know what happened to his father.
I think that's a very natural feeling by a son, particularly one that disappeared in these kinds of murky situations.
Very natural he would think, "Is there something behind this?" Is it reasonable to believe that foul play was a factor within the Olson death? As far as I know, the the pure story is that he took the thing, and then he jumped out of the window up in New York.
That's all I know about it.
I think the people there think they've got the full story.
Uh, I know they did when I was there.
They thought they had the full story.
I certainly thought that was the full story.
And how do you convince them, the family, of that? There will be a lingering doubt in the minds of family forever, I guess.
Can't help it.
[ERROL.]
Did Saracco ever get additional documents from the CIA? I don't think so, but I don't know for sure, because this was all done under grand jury secrecy.
So I don't know exactly what they got, and what they didn't get.
But I do know that I was constantly on them to kind of suggest, "Well, try this, try that, try the other thing.
" And they were Hm They were they were kind of over their heads.
This is more than a cold case, and as I finally concluded, just because my father landed on a New York street doesn't make this a New York street crime.
[STEPHEN.]
We were attempting to take testimony from Dr.
Lashbrook.
Of course, he was too infirm, or too elderly to travel to New York to go before a New York grand jury.
That litigation compelling him to testify lasted about a year.
What he said to us is, of course, grand jury testimony, and it can never be disclosed.
[ERROL.]
What if, say, for example, Lashbrook had said, "I killed him.
" I mean, Lashbrook wasn't in the muscle end of the CIA.
There was never any indication that Lashbrook was the killer.
But there was always the possibility that he knew who was.
Sure.
[DOOR CLOSES.]
Why don't you, uh, wait out here? [EXHALES.]
I'm worried that we have a problem.
No, Robert.
I think you're the one that has a problem.
Perhaps we should listen to the tape.
[SWITCHES TAPE ON.]
[ABRAMSON.]
Well, here we are again, Frank.
What, uh, seems to be troubling you? [FRANK.]
Lashbrook and Vin have a master plan.
I wanna know what it is.
I feel like they're giving me dope to keep me awake.
[TAPE STOPS.]
I think it best that I dictate your statement to you.
As far back as March of 1953 Frank's wife was suggesting that he see a doctor for his depression.
[LIGHTER CLICKS.]
Frank was suffering from delusions, guilt, persecution complex.
He thought he was stealing, because he was taking a pension.
I mean Frank was a little crazy.
What I'm worried about is whether or not our research is in jeopardy.
I think this whole operation was dangerous.
Our whole deal should be reanalyzed.
How about we have a drink, okay? [TYPEWRITER KEYS CLACKING.]
Always good to see you, Robert.
[SIGHS DEEPLY.]
[TICKING.]
I sure thought you'd make it.
[SNORES SOFTLY.]
[CLICKS.]
[SNORES SOFTLY.]
[DOOR CLOSES.]
[LOCK CLICKS.]
[FRANK GROANS.]
Uh, who are you? [MAN.]
It's time to go.
[FRANK.]
To go? Time to go where? [EXHALES.]
[EXHALES DEEPLY.]
I have to use the bathroom.
Bob? Bob, are you in there? Bob? Bob? [DOOR RATTLES.]
[FRANK.]
Bob? Bob, open the door.
Bob.
Open the door.
Hey, Bob.
Bob [DOOR RATTLES.]
Come on, Bob.
Open the door.
[FRANK.]
Bob? Bob.
[GRUNTS.]
Just wait.
Just wait, wait, wait! Wait.
[EXHALES DEEPLY.]
Sit down.
Sit down.
[EXHALES.]
[WHINES.]