Victim of CIA drug tests exhumed

FORTY YEARS after he plunged to his death from the 13th floor of the Hotel Statler in New York the body of Frank Olson, to whom the CIA secretly gave LSD as part of an experiment, was exhumed this week at the request of his sons.

Although the government has already paid dollars 750,000 ( pounds 500,000) compensation to the Olson family, they want forensic scientists to examine the body to see if there is any evidence that he was, in fact, murdered.

The exhumation is the latest episode in the saga surrounding the death of Olson in 1953 at a time when he was a civilian scientist working on a top secret germ warfare project in Maryland.

Without telling him, the CIA gave him LSD as part of an experiment nine days before he jumped through the closed window of the hotel.

None of this would have been known if the CIA had not accidentally released a file to the Rockefeller Commission, looking at illegal CIA operations within the US in 1975, which gave details of the experiment.

In 1976 the government paid dollars 750,000 to Olson's family, admitting that the CIA was responsible for his apparent suicide.

Nevertheless, an air of mystery still surrounds many aspects of Olson's last days. Armond Pastore, the night manager of the hotel, says: 'I never heard of anybody jumping through a closed window with the blind down.'

Olson's sons say that the 1953 autopsy was very cursory because the medical examiner was ignorant of the background of what had happened. Forensic scientists will now examine the remains - which are preserved in a concrete burial vault - more carefully for signs of foul play. Professor James Starrs says: 'Hopefully we'll also find out whether he suffered any injuries before he went out the window.'

The fate of Olson as an unwitting guinea pig for the CIA has helped fuel a widespread suspicion among Americans that government agencies have few inhibitions in using them in tests.

Last year it was revealed that for 25 years after the end of the Second World War extensive experiments on the effects of nuclear radiation had been carried out on patients, usually poor and black, with no check on the after effects.

The CIA says their investigation of the Olson case gives no reason to suspect 'that homicide was involved'