Psychopaths in our midst — what you should know

What does the emerging neuroscience of psychopathy tell us about how we should deal with it?

By Pascal Wallisch, PhD     Posted on 17 November 2014

The most importantthing to know is that they exist.  Psychopaths are out there – ready, willing and able to take advantage of you without giving it a second thought, even if it were to ruin your life. Indeed, some psychopaths would consider it an added bonus if it did. Worse, you are unlikely to know what you are dealing with because you don't know what to look out for.

This is partly the fault of the media and the way psychopaths are represented in popular culture. The term "psychopath" likely evokes a vivid image of real or fictional characters like Charles Manson or Hannibal Lecter. When pressed for a definition, many people would consider someone who is a sadistic serial killer and criminal mastermind with a deranged and twisted mind who also takes pleasure in the suffering he inflicts as the prototype that defines the condition.

One implication of this definition is that psychopaths must be exceedingly rare and not really something to worry about in everyday life. This is perhaps comforting, but just like real drowning looks nothing like drowning on the big screen, popular imagination harbors a lot of misconceptions when it comes to psychopaths. To make matters worse, psychopaths deliberately work on maintaining a "mask of sanity." They know they have to conceal their nature in order to more effectively manipulate and exploit you, which is why most victims of psychopaths are blindsided by psychopathic behavior.

Fortunately, science made a lot of progress in understanding and detecting psychopaths in the past century.

 

What psychopathy is – and what it's not

Elsevier Connect Contributor

Dr. Wallisch is the author of MATLAB for Neuroscientists, 2^nd Edition, published by Elsevier. The text serves as the only comprehensive study manual and teaching resource for MATLAB, the globally accepted standard for scientific computing, in the neurosciences and psychology.

Book signing at Neuroscience 2014

Dr. Pascal Wallisch will be signing the second edition of MATLAB for Neuroscientists from 11:30 am to 1 pm today in Elsevier booth #115 at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting (#SfN14) in Washington, DC.

The first thing to understand about psychopaths is that the condition is ironically named. The term literally translates to "suffering souls," but while psychopathy objectively does tend to cause a lot of difficulties and strife in the lives of psychopaths, they are unlikely to be distressed by this. Instead, they are generally the ones who are dishing out the suffering, and are doing so without losing much sleep over it. Unlike most mental or neurological diseases, it is not really accurate to say that psychopaths are "suffering" from psychopathy. Generally, they are not actually suffering – rather they make others suffer for their sins. This is why psychopaths don't typically seek treatment for their condition. Psychopaths are usually only diagnosed if and when their behavior is so far outside of the bounds of societal norms that they end up in prison, which about two-thirds of them eventually do. This makes it hard to estimate the prevalence of psychopathy, but experts estimate that between one in 100 to 200 males – the condition seems to be more rare in females – would qualify for a diagnosis of psychopathy if they were evaluated. This rate implies that they are common enough to worry about because you are likely to know a few of them personally, whether you recognize that they are psychopaths or not. Crucially, they cause far more than their fair share of suffering.

So it is critical to understand what psychopathy is and is not. Importantly, while the terms sound similar – and screenwriters like to conflate the condition for dramatic effect – psychopathy has nothing to do with psychosis. Psychopaths generally do not suffer from hallucinations, are not acting in ways that are patently irrational, nor are they out of touch with physical reality.

Traits of psychopaths – and what it's like to be one

What seems to be central to the condition is a dramatically muted emotional affect. While there is controversy in the field about how this manifests specifically, the signs of disordered affect are everywhere. For instance, some studies show that psychopaths do not exhibit normal physiological responses (e.g., increase in sweat or change in heart rate) when looking at disturbing images of atrocities. Some experts maintain that it is next to impossible to startle a psychopath or win a staring contest with one.

The problem with this lack of normal emotional affect is that most of us use it to guide our social behavior. We need emotions like empathy or guilt in order to develop a moral compass, to distinguish what is right from wrong when it comes to treating others. Indeed, psychopaths don't seem to be big on compassion or regret. Studies show that when asked to assess what feels more wrong – kicking a baby or kicking a sack of rice – psychopaths tend to treat either scenario with an equal degree of equanimity.

Of course, this is inconceivable to most of us. Generally speaking, most people expect others to feel and act more or less as they themselves would. However, in the case of psychopaths, this heuristic fails; non-psychopaths can hardly conceive ever doing anything remotely like the things that psychopaths do all the time without any qualms whatsoever.

A metaphor that can help to grasp what it feels like to be a psychopath might be to consider how you would feel about spilling milk. It's unfortunate, but nothing to cry over. And of course one has to break a couple of eggs to make an omelet – that is just how things are. Psychopaths treat people like you would treat objects – things to be manipulated for their personal gain with no conceivable ethical or moral dimension.

As a consequence, the psychopath exhibits a profound indifference to the suffering his actions cause others.

The implications of such a condition are predictably dramatic; freed from the ethical shackles imposed on behavior by conscience, the psychopath pursues his antisocial agenda of personal gain with abandon, uninhibited and untroubled.

This, in turn, leads to a wide variety of behavioral tendencies that can be captured by the tests experts use to diagnose psychopathy in individuals. These sound a lot like blood tests (e.g., PCL-R, which stands for Psychopathy Checklist - Revised), but actually check behavioral traits such as lack of responsibility and remorse, pathological lying, manipulativeness and cunning, sexual promiscuity, impulsivity and irresponsibility, superficial affect and charm, criminal behavior and so on.

While the behavioral manifestations of the psychopathic lifestyle can be bewilderingly diverse, they are all consistent with a disturbed emotional affect as the root cause. Neuroimaging studies suggest that this is indeed the case, as psychopaths show dramatic anatomical and functional differences – relative to controls – particularly in brain regions that together form the paralimbic system, which has been associated with and implicated in emotional processing.

So while psychopathy is classically considered as a personality disorder, it really is a brain disorder, specifically a disorder of emotional circuitry that deals with interpersonal relations. As such, it fits with a number of other conditions that we now recognize as biological in nature, but are manifesting socially or behaviorally.

Sociopath vs. psychopath

This dual nature poses a challenge for society. It also clarifies a common confusion regarding the difference between sociopaths and psychopaths. While some use these words interchangeably, "sociopath" is an ideological term that became fashionable in the 1970s, and which implies that this condition is mostly or even solely determined by dysfunctional social conditions. In light of the evidence that psychopathy involves clearly specified neural systems, which suggests that the condition is biological at its core, there really might be no such thing as a sociopath. Psychopathy appears increasingly less as a character flaw and more like a brain defect.

Nature vs. nurture

Of course, the question whether psychopaths are born or made is very much unresolved, as the etiology of the condition is still unclear. Most likely, it involves a combination of both genetic and social factors. On the one hand, it is increasingly apparent that signs of psychopathy – both behavioral and neural – can already be present very early in childhood, suggesting that there might be a strong genetic component to the condition. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that environmental factors also play a role. For instance, an uninvolved or absent father or physical neglect in childhood are strong predictors of psychopathic traits in adulthood. It is even hard to tease apart genetic and environmental components. For instance, in the example above, it is conceivable that uninvolved fathers are uninvolved because they are psychopaths as well. Obviously, it is ethically unthinkable to do experiments to resolve this question conclusively. As is usually true for complex neural-psycho-social conditions, it is likely the case that a combination of genetic predispositions and environmental triggers underlies the development of adult psychopathy.

How should society deal with psychopaths?

But regardless of cause, plenty of psychopaths exist right now and we have to deal with them, both as a society and individually.

It is perhaps not surprising that the psychopathic lifestyle eventually leads most psychopaths to prison. However, societal notions of justice were conceived in a time before we understood anything about brain disorders, so they are still not well suited to address them. For instance, the criminal justice system does presume that people can tell right from wrong and are equal before the law. But what if psychopaths don't - or can't - care about what is right and wrong and what if the brains of psychopaths are demonstrably different from those of the rest of the population? The current default societal response to psychopathy – imprisonment – seems a bit naïve, as it does not suit the peculiarities of the condition. While going to prison is a deeply traumatic experience for most, all accounts suggest that psychopaths don't seem to be particularly bothered by the occasion. Worse, it seems to have no curative effect – statistically, psychopaths have a probability to reoffend that approaches certainty. Given their mental makeup, this is not surprising. To summarize, prison seems to have no deterrent, punitive or curative effect on psychopaths, which is why it can be considered woefully inadequate as a treatment option. This is another irony of psychopathy – those who are most likely to end up in prison are least likely to be affected by it.

Whether psychopaths can be reformed at all is an open question. Apart from prison, traditional forms of therapy are neither sought by psychopaths, nor is there any evidence that they work. However, there are promising new intervention models that go beyond punishment; for instance, "decompression" that seek to re-form the kinds of psychosocial bonds that the psychopath never made in his childhood. The jury on whether these interventions work in the long term is still out, but we – as a society – need to start taking psychopathy and its underlying brain pathology seriously. Psychopaths can inflict quite a bit of suffering on their path to prison; the annual economic damage in the US alone is estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Also, there is the case of the "successful psychopath" that does not end up in prison. If a psychopath is skilled enough to avoid this fate, he can utilize his natural ruthlessness to single-mindedly go after and achieve his self-aggrandizing goals. While it is not true that – as the characteristically hyperbolic media narrative would have it – 10 percent of Wall Street executives qualify as psychopaths, there is no question that psychopaths are overrepresented in leading positions in many fields. Power and recklessness is a toxic mix, and the fallout from that combination makes for riveting narratives that sell newspapers on a daily basis.

Society will have to come to terms with this one way or the other, as it is getting ever more vulnerable to psychopaths. In a way, it is a great time to be a psychopath, as society is ever more fractured which allows for reputation management and the emergence of a sharing economy (Craigslist, AirBnB, et al) critically relies on trust but provides ideal hunting grounds for psychopaths to exploit unsuspecting victims.

Maybe part of the solution is more research; the science of psychopathy is only now coming into its own as the condition has been understudied for a long time. Perhaps this is not surprising, given that the disorder is inherently paradoxical in nature. Most cultures sharply distinguish the archetypes of victims – who are deserving of our sympathy and compassion – from perpetrators, who are only deserving of our scorn and punishment. But what if there is a condition – psychopathy – where unsuffering victims are remorseless perpetrators that cause a lot of suffering at the same time? Society might ultimately be unsympathetic, but needs a better understanding of psychopathy for sheer self-protection.

As neuroscience progresses, society will increasingly have to come to grips with biological disorders that affect the brain and but manifest socially and behaviorally. In the case of psychopathy, it does so in an extremely detrimental and antisocial fashion. Our institutions and legal theory will have to catch up with our scientific understanding of these conditions and disorders.

How can you protect yourself?

Meanwhile, what can you do as an individual?

Most importantly, awareness of the condition is helpful, as detection is critical. The psychopath next door is unlikely to be a chainsaw-wielding killer – given the psychopathic propensity to cloak their tendencies – but can do a lot of damage to your life all the same. If you consider a normal emotional response central to the human experience, it is critical to understand that there are extremely cold-blooded aliens in human form among us.

There needs to be no value judgment attached to this – think of psychopathy as the moral equivalent of color blindness. While you might not be able to relate to psychopaths, you can still adapt your behavior. And as dealing with a psychopath can be life ruining, the only way to win might be not to play. Unless you happen to be the bigger psychopath.
  

Pascal Wallisch, PhD

Dr. Wallisch is the author of MATLAB for Neuroscientists, 2^nd Edition, published by Elsevier. The text serves as the only comprehensive study manual and teaching resource for MATLAB, the globally accepted standard for scientific computing, in the neurosciences and psychology.

Dr. Pascal Wallisch(@Pascallisch) received his PhD from the University of Chicago, did postdoctoral research at the Center for Neural Science at New York University, and currently serves as Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychology at NYU. His research interests are at the intersection of psychology and neuroscience, specifically cognitive and computational neuroscience. His work focuses on motion perception, autism and the appraisal of film.

His blog is Pascal's Pensées

Criminal Profile of Hillary Clinton:

  Is Hillary Clinton a Psychopathic Serial Crimin  Sunday, August 28, 2016 

http://beforeitsnews.com/crime-all-stars/2016/08/criminal-profile-of-hillary-clinton-is-she-a-psychopathic-serial-criminal-2457143.html

https://beforeitsnews.com/crime-all-stars/2016/08/criminal-profile-of-hillary-clinton-is-she-a-psychopathic-serial-criminal-2457143.html

By Jim Kouri  /  ConservativeBase.com

Mrs. Clinton attempted to laugh her way out, explain her way out and then pretend ignorance when it came to her personal Internet server.

Interpersonal traits include glibness, superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, and the manipulation of others. The affective traits include a lack of remorse and/or guilt, shallow affect, a lack of empathy, and failure to accept responsibility. The lifestyle behaviors include stimulation-seeking behavior, impulsivity, irresponsibility, parasitic orientation, and a lack of realistic goals.

Research has demonstrated that in those criminals who are psychopathic, scores vary, ranging from a high degree of psychopathy to some measure of psychopathy. However, not all violent offenders are psychopaths and not all psychopaths are violent offenders.

If violent offenders are psychopathic, they are able to assault, rape, and murder without concern for legal, moral, or social consequences. This allows them to do what they want, whenever they want. Ironically, these same traits exist in men and women who are drawn to high-profile and powerful positions in society including political officeholders. “Is it any wonder that a sitting President of the United States or the governor of a state — namely Bill Clinton — would be involved in risky sexual behavior, sex crimes or even an alleged rape?

The relationship between psychopathy and serial killers is particularly interesting. All psychopaths do not become serial murderers. Rather, serial murderers may possess some or many of the traits consistent with psychopathy. Psychopaths who commit serial murder do not value human life and are extremely callous in their interactions with their victims. This is particularly evident in sexually motivated serial killers who repeatedly target, stalk, assault, and kill without a sense of remorse. However, psychopathy alone does not explain the motivations of a serial killer.

What doesn’t go unnoticed is the fact that some of the character traits exhibited by serial killers or other criminals (rapists, spousal-abusers, con artists) may be observed in many within the political arena. While not exhibiting physical violence, many political leaders display varying degrees of anger, feigned outrage and other behaviors. They also lack what most consider a “shame” mechanism. Quite simply, most serial killers and many professional politicians must mimic what they believe, are appropriate responses to situations they face such as sadness, empathy, sympathy, and other human responses to outside stimuli.

Understanding psychopathy becomes particularly critical to law enforcement during a serial murder investigation and upon the arrest of a psychopathic serial killer. The crime scene behavior of psychopaths is likely to be distinct from other offenders. This distinct behavior can assist law enforcement in linking serial cases.

Psychopaths are not sensitive to altruistic interview themes, such as sympathy for their victims or remorse/guilt over their crimes. They do possess certain personality traits that can be exploited, particularly their inherent narcissism, selfishness, and vanity. Specific themes in past successful interviews of psychopathic serial killers focused on praising their intelligence, cleverness, and skill in evading capture.

Hillary Clinton has been accused of being honesty-impaired.

Experts recognize that more research is needed concerning the links between serial murder and psychopathy, in order to understand the frequency and degree of psychopathy among serial murderers. This may assist law enforcement in understanding and identifying serial murderers.__Over the past twenty years, law enforcement and experts from a number of varying disciplines have attempted to identify specific motivations for serial murderers and to apply those motivations to different typologies developed for classifying serial murderers. These range from simple, definitive models to complex, multiple-category typologies that are laden with inclusion requirements. Most typologies are too cumbersome to be utilized by law enforcement during an active serial murder investigation, and they may not be helpful in identifying an offender.

As most homicides are committed by someone known to the victim, police focus on the relationships closest to the victim. This is a successful strategy for most murder investigations. The majority of serial murderers, however, are not acquainted with or involved in a consensual relationship with their victims.

For the most part, serial murder involves strangers with no visible relationship between the offender and the victim. This distinguishes a serial murder investigation as a more nebulous undertaking than that of other crimes. Since the investigations generally lack an obvious connection between the offender and the victim, investigators instead attempt to discern the motivations behind the murders, as a way to narrow their investigative focus.

Serial murder crime scenes can have bizarre features that may cloud the identification of a motive. The behavior of a serial murderer at crime scenes may evolve throughout the series of crimes and manifest different interactions between an offender and a victim. It is also extremely difficult to identify a single motivation when there is more than one offender involved in the series.

Identifying a homicide series is easier in rapidly-developing, high profile cases involving low risk victims. These cases are reported to law enforcement upon discovery of the crimes and draw immediate media attention.

In contrast, identifying a series involving high risk victims in multiple jurisdictions is much more difficult. This is primarily due to the high risk lifestyle and transitory nature of the victims. Additionally, the lack of communication between law enforcement agencies and differing records management systems impede the linkage of cases to a common offender.

While many political leaders will deny the assessment regarding their similarities with serial killers and other career criminals, it is part of a psychopathic profile that may be used in assessing the behaviors of many officials and lawmakers at all levels of government.

https://conservativebase.com/criminal-profile-of-hillary-clinton-is-she-a-psychopathic-serial-criminal/

NACOP Chiefs of Police – James Kouri

Jim Kouri is a member of the Board of Advisors and a former vice president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, Inc. a 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit organization incorporated in Florida in May 1967. The Association was organized for educational and charitable activities for law enforcement officers in command ranks and supervisory agents of state & federal law enforcement agencies as well as leaders in the private security sector. NACOP also provides funding to small departments, officers and the family of those officer’s paralyzed and disabled in the line of duty.

 

 

Scientist Frank Olson was drugged with LSD and 'murdered by CIA'

Frank Olson’s family sues CIA, decades after scientist’s mysterious death

Sons say spy agency killed researcher after he unwittingky took LSD in 1953

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/50003125/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/family-sues-cia-decades-after-scientists-mysterious-death/#.XKH2HJhKiUk

By Frederic J. Frommer

AP Associated Press 28^th November 2012

A declassified document describing MK-ULTRA

 

Biochemist Frank Olson, shown here in a 1952 file picture, died in 1953 after falling from a hotel window in Manhattan. Olson's family is suing the federal government over his death.

 

 

Frank Olson



Frank Olson

American bacteriologist

Frank Rudolph Olson was an American bacteriologist, biological warfare scientist, and Central Intelligence Agency employee who worked at Camp Detrick in Maryland

Frank Rudolph Olson was an American bacteriologist, biological warfare scientist, and Central Intelligence Agency employee who worked at Camp Detrick in Maryland

 

November 28, 1953, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

By Raf Sanchez, New York

8:33PM GMT 28 Nov 2012

 

Scientist Frank Olson was drugged with LSD and 'murdered by CIA'

A US government scientist was drugged by CIA agents and then thrown to his death from the 13th floor of a Manhattan hotel after he learned about secret torture sites in Europe, according to a lawsuit filed by his family.

WASHINGTON — The sons of a Cold War scientist who plunged to his death in 1953 several days after unwittingly taking LSD in a CIA mind-control experiment sued the federal government Wednesday. They claimed that the CIA murdered their father, Frank Olson, by pushing him from a 13th-story window of a hotel — not, as the CIA says, that he jumped to his death.

Sons Eric and Nils Olson of Frederick, Md., sought unspecified compensatory damages in the lawsuit filed in federal court, but their lawyer, Scott D. Gilbert, said they also want to see a broad range of documents related to Olson's death and other matters that they say the CIA has withheld from them since the death.

Olson was a bioweapons expert at Fort Detrick, the Army's biological weapons research center in Maryland. Their lawsuit claims the CIA killed Olson when he developed misgivings after witnessing extreme interrogations in which they allege the CIA committed murder using biological agents Olson had developed.

The CIA had a program in the 1950s and '60s called MK-ULTRA, which involved brainwashing and administering experimental drugs like LSD to unsuspecting individuals. The project was investigated by Congress in the 1970s.

Olson consumed a drink laced with LSD by CIA agents on Nov. 19, 1953, the suit says. Later that month, after being taken to New York City purportedly for a "psychiatric" consultation, Olson plunged to his death.

At the time — when Eric and Nils Olson were 9 and 5 years old, respectively — the CIA said he died in an accident and did not divulge to his family that Olsen had been given LSD.

But in 1975, a commission headed by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller released a report on CIA abuses that included a reference to an Army scientist who had jumped from a New York hotel days after being slipped LSD in 1953. Family members threatened to sue, but President Gerald Ford invited the family to the White House, assuring them they would be given all the government's information. CIA Director William Colby handed over documents and the family accepted a $750,000 settlement to avert a lawsuit.

In an email, CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood said that while the agency doesn't comment on matters before U.S. courts, "CIA activities related to MK-ULTRA have been thoroughly investigated over the years, and the agency cooperated with each of those investigations." She noted that tens of thousands of pages related to the program have been released to the public.

In a statement, Eric Olson said that the CIA has not given a complete picture of what happened to his father.

"The evidence shows that our father was killed in their custody," he said. "They have lied to us ever since, withholding documents and information, and changing their story when convenient."

A declassified document describing MK-ULTRA

 

 

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9710121/Scientist-Frank-Olson-was-drugged-with-LSD-and-murdered-by-CIA.html

Eric Olson composes his thoughts Thursday, Aug. 8, 2002,

during a news conference at his house in Braddock Heights, Md. concerning the death of his father

, Fort Detrick scientist Frank Olson 

 

The sons of Dr Frank Olson claim that their father was murdered in 1953 after he discovered that his biological research was being used to torture and kill suspects in Norway and West Germany.

After raising concerns about the killings, Dr Olson was allegedly given LSD in a glass of brandy and then executed by the CIA, triggering what his family claims is "a multi-decade cover-up that continues to this day".

The scientist began working with the spy agency in the 1950s and focused on biological weapons that could be transmitted through the air.

According to the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Washington DC, he traveled to research sites in Norway, France and West Germany as well as Porton Down, a British government facility in Wiltshire.

During his travels in Europe he "witnessed extreme interrogations in which the CIA committed murder using biological agents that Dr Olson had developed".

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11 Nov 2012

The lawsuit gives no details about the reported deaths in Europe and the Ministry of Defence would not comment on Dr Olson's activities in Britain.

A MoD spokesman said that Porton Down had been used to develop countermeasures to biological weapons and "part of this work included ongoing collaboration with our international allies, including the US".

Dr Olson was apparently shaken by what he had seen and returned to the US resigned to resolve from the agency. On November 19, 1953 he was taken to a secret meeting Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, where he was given LSD hidden in a glass of brandy.

Days later he was brought to New York for "psychiatric treatment" by CIA officials who allegedly told his family that he had become unstable and violent.

At 2.30am on November 28, Dr Olson went through the window of the Statler Hotel's room 1018a, which he was allegedly sharing with a CIA doctor, and died in the street below.

The CIA initially claimed his death was an accident but in the 1970s, as its activities were investigated in the wake of the Watergate scandal, it admitted that he had been drugged and said that his death was a suicide.

Dr Olson's family was paid a settlement and invited to the White House by President Gerald Ford, who apologised for the government's concealment of the drugging.

However, the family remained unsatisfied with the government's account and in 1996 exhumed Dr Olson's body and claimed to have found evidence of a blow to the head suffered before his fall.

Prosecutors in New York re-opened an investigation and although they were unable to turn up new evidence decided to change Dr Olson's cause of death from "suicide" to "unknown".

The family are now suing the government, claiming that the CIA is continuing to conceal files relating to their father's death.

“The evidence shows that our father was killed in their custody. They have lied to us ever since, withholding documents and information, and changing their story when convenient," said Eric Olson.

A CIA spokeswoman said that its covert programmes of the 1950s had been "thoroughly investigated" and that "tens of thousands of pages related to the program have been declassified and released to the public.”

 

Eric Olson composes his thoughts Thursday, Aug. 8, 2002, during a news conference at his house in Braddock Heights, Md. concerning the death of his father, Fort Detrick scientist Frank Olson Photo: AP

 

 

Scientist Frank Olson was drugged with LSD and 'murdered by CIA'

A US government scientist was drugged by CIA agents and then thrown to his death from the 13th floor of a Manhattan hotel after he learned about secret torture sites in Europe, according to a lawsuit filed by his family.

 

In Netflix's 'Wormwood', the CIA Murders Frank Olson With LSD

 

https://www.inverse.com/article/35958-frank-olson-wormood-netflix-cia-mk-ultra

 

n 1953, the United States government told the family of scientist Frank Olson that their patriarch had fallen from a hotel window to his death, a tragic suicide induced by work stress. Twenty-two years later, the CIA was forced to admit that its agents had given Olson a glass of Cointreau spiked with LSD immediately before dying, and his death was reclassified as a drug-induced suicide.

The Olson family, however, doesn’t believe this summary of events. They believe that the CIA was guilty of murder.

These real events make up the plot of Wormwood, an upcoming six-part series on Netflix that blends narrative and documentary filmmaking, directed by Errol Morris. In the first trailer for Wormwood, released Monday, the series is described as a telling of the “true story of the CIA, LSD, mind control, and the death of a family man.”

In Wormwood, Peter Sarsgaard plays Olson, a bioweapons expert who worked within a special operations division of the Army’s Biological Laboratory, which worked closely with the CIA. Olson’s family says that in 1953, he went on a work trip to Europe to visit biological and chemical weapon research facilities, where he allegedly witnessed CIA-backed interrogations that used biological agents to coerce subjects, which he found intensely disturbing.

Shortly after, Olson attended a work retreat in Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, where CIA officials, including the head of MK-ULTRA, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, were in attendance. In 1975, the American public discovered that MK-ULTRA was a secret CIA project that, between 1953 and 1964, conducted unethical experiments on unknowing subjects with the goal of achieving mind control. Many of these tests included administering LSD on unsuspecting civilians, which the CIA later acknowledged “made little scientific sense.”

It was in Deep Creek Lake that Olson became one of the unsuspecting victims of MK-ULTRA. There, CIA agents secretly slipped LSD into his drink, as a scene in Wormwood’s trailer shows. Olson was told, 20 minutes after the fact, that his drink had been laced, and then he left the retreat in an agitated state. On November 24, he told a colleague and his wife that he planned to resign. But before that could happen, the CIA forced him to attend a “psychiatric evaluation” four days later. On November 28, he was found on the sidewalk after emerging from the window of the Statler Hotel in New York.

A declassified document describing MK-ULTRA

In 1975, the Washington Post revealed that a federally commissioned investigation into the situation found that “a civilian employee of the Department of the Army unwittingly took LSD as part of a Central Intelligence Agency test.” During a joint hearing on MK-ULTRA conducted in 1977, Senator Edward Kennedy acknowledged that “At least one death, that of Dr. Olson, resulted from these activities.”

Olson’s family has cried murder ever since. In 2012, they filed a lawsuit accusing the CIA of a cover-up, but in 2013 the case was dismissed because it was filed too late after the event took place. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, however, did acknowledge that “the public record supports many of the allegations that follow, far-fetched as they may sound.”

What actually happened to Olson, as well as his family’s continued quest to reveal the truth, will play out in Wormwood. The series will be released on December 15.

 

See below: The CIA Drugged Thousands of U.S. and Canadian Citizens

ast week, NASA released an ultra high definition video of the International Space Station, but many people may have trouble experiencing it as it was filmed. It’s not because of space radiation or mystery holes, but because of something far more Earthly.

The video, which was created in partnership with the European Space Agency, shows the crew of the ISS conducting a range of scientific experiments, all in unprecedented 8K. But the video’s uniqueness is also its downfall: Most computer monitors, even the very largest of desktop monitors, aren’t big enough to show 8K video in all its splendor. To put it another way, that’s a resolution of 7,680 pixels wide x 4,320 pixels tall, whereas the typical high-def YouTube video is 1,920 x 1,080 pixels.

1951, Project Artichoke

23 May 2016 No Comments

https://www.timeofreason.com/united-states-government-operations-in-mind-control-and-human-experimentation/projectartichokefrankolson_thumb/

Project ARTICHOKE (also referred to as Operation ARTICHOKE) was a CIA project that researched interrogation methods and arose from Project BLUEBIRD on August 20, 1951, run by the CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence.
[1] A memorandum by Richard Helms to CIA director Allen Dulles indicated Artichoke became Project MKULTRA on April 13, 1953. [2]

The project studied hypnosis, forced morphine addiction (and subsequent forced withdrawal), and the use of other chemicals, among other methods, to produce amnesia and other vulnerable states in subjects.

ARTICHOKE was an offensive program of mind control that gathered together the intelligence divisions of the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and FBI. In addition, the scope of the project was outlined in a memo dated January 1952 that stated, "Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation?"

A 22 January 1954 CIA memo shows that the Agency also pondered using hypnotized assassination.
The report’s central question was, “Can an individual of [redacted] descent be made to perform an act of attempted
assassination involuntarily under the influence of ARTICHOKE?” 
According to a subsequent CIA report, “ARTICHOKE is the Agency
cryptonym for the study and/or use of ‘special’ interrogation methods that have been known to include the use of drugs and chemicals, hypnosis, and ‘total isolation,’ a form of psychological harassment.”

Later, the document stipulated that this assassination attempt would be “against a prominent [redacted] politician or if necessary, against an American official.” 
After “American official” there was a hand written asterisk. 
At the end of the document, next to another handwritten asterisk, the words “simulated only” were handwritten.

According to the memo, CIA operatives would test this theory on a foreign national (his country of origin is redacted) who was once an Agency asset, but had since stopped cooperating.

During this program, Dr. Frank Olson, a US Army biological weapons researcher, was given the drug LSD without his knowledge. At 2.30 am on November 28, 1953, Dr Olson went through the window of the Statler Hotel’s room 1018a, which he was allegedly sharing with a CIA doctor, and died in the street below. The government declared his death a suicide. However, the family remained unsatisfied with the government’s account and in 1996 exhumed Dr Olson’s body and claimed to have found evidence of a blow to the head suffered before his fall.

In 2012 his sons filed a lawsuit against the US Government, claiming that their father was murdered in 1953 after he traveled to Europe and “witnessed extreme interrogations in which the CIA committed murder using biological agents that Dr Olson had developed”.

https://historyarchive.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/looking-back-1953-cia-doses-men-with-lsd-at-deep-creek-lake-part-1/

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LOOKING BACK 1953: CIA doses men with LSD at Deep Creek Lake (Part 1)

September 10, 2015 by jimrada

Dr. Frank R. Olson, a former biochemist on July 10, 1952 at Fort Detrick, allegedly committed suicide in 1953, when he jumped or fell from the tenth floor of a New York building. Olson’s family is suing the CIA in regard to the death. (AP Photo)

 

Two bottles of Cointreau sat on the table in front of Frank Olson. Both were open. Both were the same. He reached out for one of the bottles to pour himself an after-dinner drink. He was relaxing in a cabin with other men who had been forced to attend a three-day retreat at Deep Creek Lake from 11/18-20.

He hadn’t wanted to attend. He was having doubts about the ethicality of his work. He didn’t need to about the results of the work in which he was involved at Camp Detrick, in Frederick. He needed to think and clear his mind.

He knew the men he was sharing the large cabin on the lake with. They were members of the Special Operations Division and the CIA. Vincent Ruwet, Olson’s division chief and friend, had picked him up at his house and they had driven west to find this somewhat isolated cabin. It was a large, two-story rental cabin, off of Route 219 about 30 yards from Deep Creek Lake and 100 yards from the nearest neighbor.

The invitation to the “Deep Creek Rendezvous” said that a cover story had been given for the meeting. “CAMOUFLAGE: Winter meeting of script writers, editors, authors, lecturers, sports magazines.”

Olson believed they were there to talk about the joint projects of the Special Operations Division and CIA involving things like biological warfare and using drugs for mind control.

Unbeknownst to Olson, this was also a camouflage story to get him and others to the cabin for an experiment.

The men enjoyed a hearty dinner on Thursday, November 19, and then settled down in the cabin’s living room for after-dinner drinks. Robert Lashbrook, a CIA employee and one of the attendees, poured drinks for eight of the men present. He served the drinks and then poured himself and Sidney Gottlieb drinks from a separate bottle, although there was still liqueur in the first. If it struck anyone as odd or if anyone even noticed, no one remarked on it. Olson took the drink offered him. It was a simple choice, but one that would cost him his life.

He drank the Cointreau and then lost himself in his own thoughts. Sometime between then and Friday afternoon, Olson and the men were told their drinks had been dosed with LSD, according to the Church Committee report.

When Olson returned home that evening, his wife, Alice, “sensed something was wrong the moment he walked in the door. There was a stiffness in the way he kissed her hellow and held her. Like he was doing something mechanical, devoid of any meaning or affection,” H. P. Albarelli wrote in A Terrible Mistake.

Olson’s thoughts now were definitely elsewhere. Later that evening, he admitted to her, “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

On Monday morning at 7:30 a.m., Olson was waiting for Ruwet when he arrived. Olson admitted he doubts about the work he was doing and said that he wanted to resign.

Olson told his wife later, “I talked to Vin. He said that I didn’t make a mistake. Everything is fine. I’m not going to resign.

The next day, Ruwet and Lashbrook convinced Olson to see a psychiatric doctor in New York. Actually, he was meeting with Harold Abramson, an allergist-pediatrician, who was working with the CIA.

Lashbrook and Olson shared a hotel room on the 13^th floor of the Statler Hotel. Early in the morning of November 28, a loud crashing noise woke him up. According to the CIA, Olson threw himself out of the window, committing suicide.

The truth turned out to be something far darker and disturbing.