Deep Creek Lodge

Deep Creek Lodge was a log building in the woods of Western Maryland, beside Deep Creek Lake, built as a Boy Scout camp about 25 years before the CIA used it. Surrounded by the water of a mountain lake on three sides, with the peaks of the Appalachian chain looking down over thick forest, the lodge was isolated enough for even the most security-conscious spy. Only an occasional hunter was likely to wander through after the summer months.¹

The November 1953 retreat

Sidney Gottlieb chose Deep Creek Lodge for a working retreat beginning November 18, 1953, where he planned to test LSD on scientists from the Army's Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort Detrick. Twice a year, the SOD and TSS men who collaborated on MKNAOMI held planning sessions at remote sites. The SOD group was led by Dr. John Schwab, Lt. Colonel Vincent Ruwet, and Dr. Frank Olson, and included biochemist Benjamin Wilson. Gottlieb brought three CIA coworkers, among them his deputy Robert Lashbrook. The germ warriors came under the cover of being wildlife writers and lecturers, having carefully removed Fort Detrick parking stickers from their cars.¹

After dinner on Thursday, November 19, Gottlieb produced a bottle of Cointreau and poured drinks for the group. Unknown to the SOD men, he had laced the liqueur with LSD, and about twenty minutes passed before he told them what they had swallowed. Wilson recalled that "no one was aware anything had happened until Gottlieb mentioned it." Ruwet later called the experience "the most frightening experience I ever had or hope to have." The meeting dissolved into laughter and boisterous talk before turning unpleasant. Olson grew psychotic, unable to understand what had happened and convinced that someone was playing tricks on him; he and most of the others could not sleep. When the men gathered the next morning, Olson was still agitated, the meeting had soured, and they all straggled home.¹

Olson's deterioration

Back at home Olson told his wife he had made "a terrible mistake" and felt humiliated by his behavior at the retreat. On Monday he reported to Ruwet, said he wanted to resign, and questioned his own competence. Ruwet and Lashbrook took him to New York to see Dr. Harold Abramson, an allergist with a CIA clearance who served as the Agency's informal LSD consultant. Olson's condition worsened over the following days: he became convinced people were waiting outside a theater to arrest him, wandered the Manhattan streets at night, tore up his money, and discarded his wallet. In the early morning of November 28, 1953, Olson went through the closed window of his tenth-floor room at the Statler Hotel, with Lashbrook present in the room, falling to his death on the street below.¹

Public disclosure

The dosing at Deep Creek Lodge remained secret for more than two decades. In June 1975 the Rockefeller Commission report briefly described an unnamed Army scientist's drug-induced death, and the Olson family recognized the case from press coverage; Ruwet confirmed it to them. In 1976 Congress voted the family $750,000 in compensation and President Gerald Ford apologized to them in person. The Church Committee examined the same events that year as part of its inquiry into CIA testing of drugs on unwitting subjects.²