A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments by H. P. Albarelli Jr

Author:H. P. Albarelli Jr. [Albarelli, H. P. Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Human Experimentation in Psychology, Technology & Engineering, Moral and Ethical Aspects, Military Science, Psychology, Social Science, 20th Century, Conspiracy Theories, History & Theory, Research, Intelligence & Espionage, LSD Drug, Case Studies, Psychotropic Drugs, Political Science, General, United States, History
ISBN: 9781936296088
Publisher: Trine Day
Published: 2015-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

At the beginning of this period, the illicit trade in refined narcotics depended to a large extent on diverting legally manufactured narcotics. Organized criminals were typically located at the tag end of the drug-manufacturing and marketing process.

During the 1930s and 1940s, the majority of legal drug factories and pharmaceutical houses were located in Germany, France, and Switzerland, including such companies as Merck, Hoffman La Roche, A.G., I.G. Farben, and Sandoz, all major suppliers of morphine, heroin, cocaine, and dilaudide. As Block describes it, “While legal shipments went out the front doors of these firms, countless crates of drugs earmarked for illicit trafficking were going out the back doors. It was a highly lucrative operation for many criminals at the time.” It was also quite lucrative for the pharmaceutical companies.

Like subordinates George White and Charles Siragusa, Williams would gravitate from the world of pursuing gangsters and illegal drug traffickers to the world of deep intelligence. Williams’ baptism into the clandestine world occurred in June 1940, when as a reserve officer at the rank of colonel, he was reactivated for wartime duty and made chief of the resurrected Corps of Intelligence Police (CIP), part of the Army’s Military Intelligence Division. The CIP, forerunner to the Army’s better known Counter Intelligence Corps, originated in 1917, and at its peak operated with 250 agents. Its mission was to serve as a secret domestic intelligence group that spied on German-Americans and infiltrated groups suspected of subversive activities. It especially targeted the activities of suspected “Reds,” labor unions like the International Workers of the World, groups of Socialists, and some African-Americans, about whom it charged, “At the bottom of the negro unrest German influence is unquestionable.”

The CIP also served as a special security group for the American Expeditionary Force in France. Col. Ralph H. Van Deman, who earned the title “Father of American Military Intelligence,” had initially wanted to recruit CIP agents who possessed “outstanding personal character, military aptitude, fluent linguistic ability in French and German, social poise and diplomatic manner.” Informed by veteran recruiters, “There ain’t no such animal,” Van Deman had to settle instead for more flexible standards. His initial group of recruits consisted of “a former felon, a French deserter, a pro-German, a mentally unbalanced individual,” a Communist who had done hard time for “demonstrations against the property of John D. Rockefeller,” several “morons,” “a sharp Creole,” a “very shrewd Hebrew,” “a coterie of Harvard men,” and “an Englishman, with all characteristics appended.”

On October 25, 1917, just as this motley band set foot on French soil, U.S. Marines arrested them because of their suspicious appearance. Among the rag tag group was a French teenager from Louisiana (perhaps younger than sixteen, and his nationality remains in dispute) who would later work in New York under the name Jean-Pierre Lafitte, on assignments for George White and Garland Williams.

Following World War I, the CIP nearly slid into oblivion. In 1940, the outfit resurged with the outbreak of a new war in Europe, and the Army scrambled to staff it with qualified men.

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