Frank Olson was part of a group of scientists who worked on top secret, biological warfare-related experiments at Fort Detrick during World War II. He stayed there post-war, and when he died in 1953, it was under circumstances that were more than a little suspicious. Olson jumped from an upper floor of Manhattan's Statler Hotel, and at the time, his family accepted the official reports that it was just another tragedy. But according to The Guardian, there's more to it — and it might be connected to Operation Midnight Climax.

Olson had just joined the CIA, and he was working with Gottlieb and another MKUltra scientist named Robert Lashbrook. Lashbrook was in the room when he jumped, and according to The Washington Post, he was staying with Olson because he'd been previously dosed with LSD and it wasn't going well. Lashbrook was also a close colleague of George H. White, and was the one who not only ID'd Olson's body, but he was the one who removed a single piece of paper sporting the initials "GW" and "MH" from the dead man's pockets.

Lashbrook's identification of the initials as White's real name and his Midnight Climax pseudonym have been redacted from CIA documents, in spite of witness testimonies that he made the ID. In 1994, Olson's body was exhumed, re-examined, and his cause of death was changed from "suicide" to "unknown" (via Class, Race, and Corporate Power).

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