--- category: U.S. State created: 2026-09-22 summary: State of Fort Detrick, Edgewood Arsenal, Aberdeen Proving Ground and Fort Meade, where the CIA dosed Frank Olson at Deep Creek Lake in 1953 and the Army's remote-viewing unit began in 1977. tags: - Place - USState - MKULTRA - RemoteViewing - Accelerationism updated: 2026-09-22 --- ### Fort Detrick and Deep Creek Lake [Frank Olson](/people/frank-olson/), an Army bacteriologist and [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/) contractor, worked on biological weapons at [Fort Detrick](/places/fort-detrick/) in Frederick. On November 18 and 19, 1953, [Sidney Gottlieb](/people/sidney-gottlieb/) convened a retreat of about ten [Technical Services Staff](/organizations/office-of-technical-service/) officers and contractors at a cabin at Deep Creek Lake in western Maryland, where Olson was among those given [LSD](/concepts/lsd/) without warning; he died in New York nine days later.[^1][^2] The Army gave LSD to soldiers at Edgewood Arsenal in a parallel program.[^1] Garland Williams of the [Federal Bureau of Narcotics](/organizations/federal-bureau-of-narcotics/) helped establish the [Office of Strategic Services](/organizations/office-of-strategic-services/) training schools in Maryland and Virginia.[^3] [Frank Wisner](/people/frank-wisner/), who had directed the CIA's Office of Policy Coordination, retired to his farm in Maryland under psychiatric care and shot himself on October 29, 1965.[^11] ### Remote Viewing The Army's remote-viewing program began at [Fort Meade](/places/fort-meade/) in 1977 under the name Gondola Wish, and continued as Grill Flame, [Center Lane](/programs/center-lane/) and [Sun Streak](/programs/sun-streak/) before the [Star Gate](/programs/stargate-project/) name.[^4] At Aberdeen Proving Ground, [John Kramar](/people/john-kramar/) was chief of the Ground Warfare Division of the Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity, which evaluated Grill Flame in 1979, and the Aberdeen physicist [Evan Harris Walker](/people/evan-harris-walker/) was named principal investigator of a 1978 Army request to fund a remote-viewing machine.[^5][^6] [Eldon Byrd](/people/eldon-byrd/) studied the effects of electromagnetic fields on living systems at the Naval Surface Weapons Center at White Oak.[^7] ### Accelerationism and the Zizians The federal case against members of [The Base](/organizations/the-base/), 8:20-cr-00033, was brought in the District of Maryland; William Garfield Bilbrough IV of Denton pleaded guilty in December 2020 to conspiring to transport and harbor the Canadian reservist [Patrik Jordan Mathews](/people/patrik-jordan-mathews/), whom he had driven east from Michigan after August 30, 2019.[^8] In April 2025 the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, the state's fusion center, published an advisory describing The Base's founder, [Rinaldo Nazzaro](/people/rinaldo-nazzaro/), as having "for years garnered suspicions of being a Russian intelligence asset."[^9] On February 16, 2025, [Jack LaSota](/people/jack-lasota/) of [The Zizians](/organizations/the-zizians/) was arrested with [Michelle Zajko](/people/michelle-zajko/) and Daniel Blank near Frostburg in Allegany County, where they were living in two box trucks, and prosecutors moved to try the group's members together in Maryland.[^10] [^1]: Kinzer, Stephen. *Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control.* Henry Holt, 2019; Marks, John D. *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control.* Times Books, 1979, ch. 5. [^2]: Albarelli, H.P. *A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments.* Trine Day, 2009. [^3]: Kinder, Douglas Clark, and William O. Walker III. "Covert Connections: The FBN, the OSS, and the CIA." *The Historian* 53, no. 4 (1991); Marks, ch. 6. [^4]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Proposed Star Gate Management Strategy," c. October 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100150002-0. [^5]: "John Winston Kramar," obituary, McComas Family Funeral Homes, January 20, 2026; U.S. Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity, "Project Grill Flame AMSAA Phase I Efforts," Interim Note No. 15, July 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100080005-8. [^6]: Department of the Army, DAMI-ISH, draft, "Request for Funding, FY 79, Re: Parapsychology - Feasibility for a Hard Copy 'Remote Viewing' Machine," July 7, 1978, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100080003-0; "Dr. Evan Harris Walker," obituary, McComas Family Funeral Homes, August 2006. [^7]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis.* Little, Brown, 2017, pp. 104-107. [^8]: U.S. Department of Justice, District of Maryland. "Member of 'The Base' Pleads Guilty in Maryland," case 8:20-cr-00033-TDC. https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/member-violent-extremist-group-base-pleads-guilty-maryland-federal-charges-transporting [^9]: Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center. "US Neo-Nazi Group with Russia-Based Leader Calls for Targeted Ukraine Attacks." April 2025. https://mcac.maryland.gov/2025/04/us-neo-nazi-group-with-russia-based-leader-calls-for-targeted-ukraine-attacks/ [^10]: U.S. Department of Justice, District of Maryland. "Alaskan Individual Charged with Possessing Firearms and Ammunition as a Fugitive from Justice." June 2025; "Members of violent Zizian cult to face trial together in Maryland." *The Baltimore Banner,* 2026. [^11]: As cited on the Frank Wisner page (Weiner, *Legacy of Ashes,* 2007; Thomas, *The Very Best Men,* 1995).