The son has been saying for years that his father was murdered. According to this, from the article, the only thing the new documents show is that the WH was concerned about Public Relations. The WH is always concerned about Public Relations.
But newly obtained documents show that the Ford administration continued to conceal information about Olson -- particularly, his role in some of the CIA's most controversial research of the Cold War, on anthrax and other biological weapons.
Revealing to the public, in 1977 or '78, that the CIA was experimenting with LSD in the 1950s would have caused a panic. The NYT, Wa Post, and Dan Rather were so hot to overthrow the government they would have claimed the experiments were still going on. Watergate had recently ended, and much to the dissatisfaction of the press, Nixon had not been publicly hanged and Republicans had not been rounded up and exterminated. The revelation of CIA drug experiments twenty years prior would have started yet another round of witch hunts.
After Ford, we got Carter, and a whole new set of problems. With double digit inflation, gas shortages, and 18% mortgage rates, people in the US weren't interested in what happened in the fifties, they wanted to go back to the fifties.
...[snip]Senator INOUYE. Thank you very much.
Admiral Turner, MKULTRA subproject 3 was a project involving the surreptitious administration of LSD on unwitting persons, was it not?
Admiral TURNER. Yes, sir.
Senator INOUYE. In February 1954, and this was in the very early stages of MKULTRA, the Director of Central Intelligence wrote to the technical services staff officials criticizing their judgment because they had participated in an experiment involving the administration of LSD on an unwitting basis to Dr. Frank Olson, who later committed suicide. Now, the individuals criticized were the same individuals who were responsible for subproject 3, involving exactly the same practices. Even though these individuals were clearly aware of the dangers of surreptitious administration and had been criticized by the Director of Central Intelligence, subproject 3 was not terminated immediately after Dr. Olson's death. In fact, according to documents, it continued for a number of years. Can you provide this committee with any explanation of how such testing could have continued under these circumstances?
Admiral TURNER. No, sir, I really can't....[snip]