The Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of All Time | Undercover History Updates S1 MEGA EPISODE | Nat Geo

0:03 NARRATOR: He was the first man in U.S. history to hijack a plane for ransom. He leapt out of a commercial jet with a parachute, $200,000, and was never seen again, dead or alive. It's the only unsolved skyjacking case in commercial aviation history. MAN: He was able to get away with the perfect crime. MAN: I think he was just a sleazy, rotten criminal. NARRATOR: But to the public he is a lasting legend. CROWD: D.B. Cooper! NARRATOR: Who was D.B. Cooper? Did he survive? MAN: And I still get emails from people telling me they know exactly who D.B. Cooper is.

0:49 NARRATOR: Now, more than 45 years later, newly uncovered evidence could finally help unravel the mystery of D.B. Cooper. (typewriter keys clacking) It's the eve of Thanksgiving and people around the country are traveling to get home. AGENT: Good afternoon, sir, how are you? NARRATOR: In Portland, Oregon, a man under the name of Dan Cooper pays $20 for the 2:45 flight to Seattle-Tacoma. Flight 305 is one of the shortest journeys on Northwest Orient's schedules;

1:36 just half an hour in normal conditions. There are no security or identity checks on domestic flights. JOHN DETLOR: So in 1971, it was possible to board an airplane carrying a gun, carrying a bomb, carrying knives, carrying weapons; nobody checked. You could just get on and go, as Dan Cooper did. NARRATOR: The slim man in his mid 40s is wearing mirrored sunglasses and dressed like a typical businessman. FLORENCE SCHAFFNER: You all settled in? Welcome aboard, sir. Good afternoon. NARRATOR: He takes his seat at the back of the plane. Stewardess Florence Schaffner takes his drink order.

2:24 DAN COOPER: Bourbon and soda on the rocks, please. FLORENCE: Okay. (engines powering up) COPILOT: Copy, uh, Portland departure, Northwest Orient 305 en route for 18.5. NARRATOR: On takeoff, the man hands Florence an envelope. COOPER: Miss, this is for you. NARRATOR: At first she thinks he's flirting. But his insistent gaze persuades her to open the envelope. The note reads, "Miss, I have a bomb here and would like you to sit by me." The shocked stewardess asks the man if he's serious. COOPER: I'm deadly serious. NARRATOR: She calls her colleague, Tina Mucklow.

3:10 FLORENCE: Tina. NARRATOR: Inside the hijacker's briefcase he reveals what appears to be a bomb. He holds the bare ends of two wires, threatening to blow up the plane unless his demands are met. FLORENCE: There's a man, he's sitting in the back, and he has a bomb. PILOT: We're en route to Seattle. NARRATOR: The hijacking is relayed to the control tower. Northwest Orient and the FBI are alerted. CONTROLLER: I have emergency for landing. RALPH HIMMELSBACH: The dispatcher told me that there had been a hijacking of a Northwest airliner

3:56 at Portland airport, and to get there pronto. NARRATOR: Meanwhile, Cooper makes his demands. COOPER: I want $200,000 in cash. NARRATOR: He wants $200,000 placed in a knapsack. COOPER: I want four. NARRATOR: He also wants four parachutes, two main back chutes and two safety front chutes. COOPER: You gotta make sure they don't do that. NARRATOR: The terrified attendant takes both notes forward to the captain. Later Cooper will demand these notes back. COPILOT: Be advised we have a passenger that's hijacking... NARRATOR: The description of the bomb makes the FBI conclude that the man is a serious threat.

4:44 Agent Himmelsbach advises Northwest Orient to cooperate. HIMMELSBACH: Here's an airplane full of innocent people, they're hostages being held at a threat of their lives. So I said, "Well, whatever it takes, you do it if you can." CONTROLLER: Long-EZ, 1-7-8... NARRATOR: Northwest Orient quickly agrees to the demands. FBI agents contact Seafirst Bank in Seattle. The bank provides money with prerecorded serial numbers. The man calling himself Dan Cooper seems calm, sipping his bourbon, while smoking his way through nearly half a pack of Raleigh cigarettes.

5:32 Later Florence Schaffner would even say that the man seemed "rather nice." (typewriter keys clacking) CONTROLLER: Northwest 305... NARRATOR: Finally, the ransom money and parachutes arrive at the airport. PILOT: Copy. Orient 305. NARRATOR: Cooper insists that they taxi to a remote part of the runway. Cooper failed to specify the denomination of the ransom money, and the $200,000 is made up of $20 bills. It weighs 23 pounds.

6:21 The passengers, still unaware of the threat, are released along with two attendants, including Florence Schaffner. The rest of flight crew remains captive. The plane is refueled and cleared for takeoff. CONTROLLER: Long-EZ, left base to runway 3-4. (thunder) CONTROLLER: Northwest 305, runway 3-4 cleared for takeoff. (engines powering up) (typewriter keys clacking) (thunder)

7:09 COOPER: Gear down. NARRATOR: The hijacker demands that they fly at 10,000 feet with landing gear and flaps down. (thunder) The plane's speed will be limited to around 200 miles per hour. He wants to fly to Mexico City. PILOT: Tina, we cannot make it to Mexico. NARRATOR: But there's not enough fuel on board. TINA: We can't make it to Mexico City, it's too far. NARRATOR: The captain offers Reno or Phoenix. COOPER: Reno's nice, let's go to Reno. COPILOT: Seattle Center, Northwest... NARRATOR: The autopilot is set on flight path Victor 23, which allows for low-altitude flying. Meanwhile, two Air Force jets shadow the plane.

7:57 But they can't maintain such a low speed and have to circle around the hijacked plane. (typewriter keys clacking) Cooper orders Tina Mucklow to join her colleagues in the cockpit. Tina notices that Cooper is tying something around his waist. She thinks he is attaching the bag of money to himself. (typewriter keys clacking) (ding)

8:42 COPILOT: Captain, I have an indication of the aft stairway door has been opened. PILOT: Stairway door. NARRATOR: The warning light indicates that the rear door and stairs have been deployed. PILOT: ...jump out. NARRATOR: A Boeing 727 is one of the only commercial planes with rear stairs. In 1971 there's nothing to stop them being deployed during flight. The crew are terrified that Cooper will jump, then detonate the bomb still on board. COPILOT: Pressure. (typewriter keys clacking) COPILOT: Uh, captain, we are losing pressure, we are losing cabin pressure. NARRATOR: Exactly what happens next has been in debate

9:29 for over 45 years. The only clear fact is that Dan Cooper was never seen or heard from again. (thunder) For years the FBI recruits the public to help catch the thief; applying new technology to old evidence, and even recreating the jump, in the hope of finally discovering the fate of D.B. Cooper. NARRATOR: In the Seattle office of the FBI,

10:16 Special Agent Larry Carr is taking a new look at the case of D.B. Cooper. LARRY CARR: This is the only hijacking in the United States that has been unsolved. We have very long memories in the FBI, and we like to be 100% successful. So we're determined to do the best we can to solve the case. NARRATOR: Agent Carr is, for the first time in FBI history, recruiting the help of the public. These citizen sleuths have offered their services for free in the hope of finally solving the mystery of D.B. Cooper. Paleontologist Tom Kaye is interested in Cooper's tie left on board.

11:06 Microscopic fibers might prove where he lived. TOM KAYE: We're hoping this will put us on the trail for where Cooper came from. NARRATOR: But first, the team scrutinizes every detail of the original investigation. (siren) By the time the hijacked plane lands in Reno, dozens of agents are already on the case. DETLOR: Nobody believed that he was gonna jump. And the fact that the plane arrived in Reno and he was not on it was surprising to everybody. NARRATOR: All that was recovered from the plane was a black tie and tiepin,

11:53 a sports parachute and an opened safety chute, plus Cooper's cigarette butts. The glass he'd handled is mixed up with others and never identified. Everything else, it seems, Dan Cooper has taken with him. The ransom notes, the homemade bomb and the money have all disappeared. Overnight an FBI composite sketch is drawn from witness statements. Boeing aviation experts calculate Dan Cooper's drop zone. The plane was on autopilot, so the exact flight path is known.

12:38 But exactly when did Dan Cooper jump? Agents pore over the captain's report. The most likely moment is when the pressure change was reported at around 8:10. Factoring in the strong westerly winds creates a huge search area of 28 square miles. At first light on Thanksgiving 1971, just outside Ariel, Washington, one of the biggest manhunts in U.S. history begins. (indistinct talking)

13:27 Helicopters and spotter planes assist scores of FBI agents and National Guardsmen. DETLOR: The military got involved with a number of troops, and the FBI had 30 to 40 agents involved in the search. NARRATOR: For weeks the team combs the forest and farmlands around Ariel... but find nothing. Dead or alive, Dan Cooper has seemingly vanished. WALTER CRONKITE: When he got on a plane in Portland, Oregon, last night, he was just another passenger who gave his name as D.A. Cooper. But today after hijacking a Northwest Airlines jet,

14:12 ransoming the passengers in Seattle, then making a getaway by parachute somewhere between there and Reno, Nevada, the description on one wire service: master criminal. NARRATOR: In one newspaper the hijacker is mistakenly named D.B. Cooper. HIMMELSBACH: We corrected him and told him the guy's name was Dan Cooper, but D.B. is catchier than Dan, so the name stuck with him forever. NARRATOR: Initially the FBI concludes that the hijacker was probably an experienced parachutist. DETLOR: The fact that he did jump certainly says that he is someone who is much more familiar with aircraft and with parachuting

14:59 than the average person. NARRATOR: Agents check records of hundreds of ex-paratroopers and pilots in the hope of finding their man. Then, a breakthrough. Just months later, a second, almost identical skyjacking. Did D.B. Cooper strike again? (typewriter keys clacking) NARRATOR: On April 7, 1972, a man under the alias James Johnson hijacks a United Airlines Boeing 727. He demands half a million dollars, four parachutes,

15:46 and leaps out from the rear exit stairs somewhere over Utah. The hijacker might have gotten away with it, had he not previously boasted to an acquaintance. He claimed that he could have done the D.B. Cooper heist, but would have asked for half a million dollars. On a tip, the FBI storms the home of Richard McCoy. AGENT: We have a warrant to search the property. Step back. NARRATOR: An ex-Vietnam pilot, married with two small children. In a cupboard they find a jumpsuit and a duffle bag filled with half a million dollars. WIFE: No. NARRATOR: McCoy is arrested on suspicion of both hijackings.

16:34 But the FBI finds no evidence to connect McCoy with the Cooper crime. CARR: McCoy's picture was shown to the witnesses that had interaction with D.B. Cooper, and said, "No, that's not him." NARRATOR: McCoy is found guilty of the United hijacking and sentenced to 45 years in state penitentiary. But the fact that he survived the leap from a commercial plane adds to growing opinion that D.B. Cooper also lived on. Then in 1980, after almost a decade of dead ends, a major breakthrough.

17:19 (typewriter keys clacking) On February 7th, Brian Ingram and his father Dwayne collect firewood on the banks of the Columbia River. Suddenly, Brian feels something buried in the sand. BRIAN INGRAM: Right when I come across the edge of it, it was like, you know, let me get this out of the way, what is this, this is junk, you know. Pulled it up out of there, and then it was like, wait a minute, what the heck do we have here? NARRATOR: The young boy uncovers three bundles of moldy cash, with the rubber bands still intact. The father and son turn it in to the FBI. Some of the bills are impossible to identify.

18:04 But most in the middle of the bundle are legible. The serial numbers are checked against the money stolen by Dan Cooper. It's a match. $5,800 from the original $200,000 ransom money. But the new find confuses the FBI. DETLOR: The money was outside of the area that we felt was the search area. So how it got there was something that we puzzled a little bit over, and of course didn't have an answer to. NARRATOR: The money is found more than 20 miles outside Dan Cooper's drop zone,

18:51 and in the opposite direction from where the wind was blowing. AGENT: That pinpoint right there. NARRATOR: To add to the confusion, geologists determine that the money is sitting above an area dredged in 1974. It means that the bundles of cash arrived at least three years after the hijacking in 1971. The chances of it taking so long to travel via river seem implausible. Many people jump to the conclusion that Cooper returned to bury the money, perhaps to provoke the FBI. After digging up a huge area,

19:38 the FBI finds no more money and no further clues. Nine years after the hijacking, the case remains unsolved. Over the years the FBI have interviewed more than 1,000 suspects. But finding the infamous skyjacker has always eluded them. (typewriter keys clacking) Then in 2007, a new suspect emerges that seems particularly credible. The source is a New York private investigator,

20:24 Skipp Porteous. Porteous has been contacted by a man claiming to know the identity of D.B. Cooper. SKIPP PORTEOUS: I ask him, "What's this all about?" And he said, "I know who D.B. Cooper was." And I said, "How do you know that?" And he said, "Well, I grew up with him. He was my brother." NARRATOR: Porteous finds a number of parallels between new suspect Kenneth Christiansen and D.B. Cooper. PORTEOUS: At the time of the Cooper hijacking, Kenneth Christiansen was a flight attendant for Northwest Orient Airlines. He knew the planes, and he knew the schedules.

21:11 NARRATOR: In the early '70s Christiansen has some grievance over redundancies and pay cuts. At the time he is making around $150 a week. Just a year after the 1971 skyjack, Christiansen purchases a large south Washington house... in cash. It's a huge amount to have saved from his modest paycheck. Christiansen, like Cooper, is a bourbon drinker and a regular smoker. There's also a resemblance to the sketch of Dan Cooper. Florence Schaffner is shown Christiansen's photograph.

21:58 PORTEOUS: She said it looks more like D.B. Cooper than any other photo she's ever seen. NARRATOR: But this evidence has not convinced the FBI. CARR: He never admitted that he was Dan Cooper, it's just a relative saying, "I think he's Dan Cooper," with nothing to show that he possibly is Dan Cooper. NARRATOR: Stories like Christiansen's keep the D.B. Cooper legend alive and the FBI on their toes. NARRATOR: Retired FBI agent Frank Montoya, Jr., led the D.B. Cooper investigation for several years. FRANK MONTOYA, JR.: In the course of an investigation, you keep pulling on threads, you keep following leads, you talk to people.

22:43 NARRATOR: But every lead eventually reaches a dead end. MONTOYA: One by one, there would be information that basically said that there's no way that this could be the person. (typewriter keys clacking) NARRATOR: All the evidence from the legendary D.B. Cooper case fits into this small box. The opened parachute and pack. The tie and tiepin. The plane ticket and samples of the recovered money are all that remains. The case is being reexamined in the hope that modern police methods can reveal new clues.

23:35 (typewriter keys clacking) Paleontologist Tom Kaye is lending his services to the investigation and has become the lead citizen scientist. His examination of the tie reveals a new secret: small particles of pollen. KAYE: The pollen means that this is where this tie was in the spring, not in November when he jumped. If we could track the species of pollen and these species are rare enough, it could tell us where he came from. NARRATOR: There are thousands of varieties of pollen. If the right one is identified,

24:20 it could add a vital piece to a complex puzzle. But the most promising evidence remains the three bundles of ransom money found on the riverbank. CARR: It's the only piece of the puzzle we have of what might have happened after he left the plane, so it tells its own story. NARRATOR: If Carr and his team determine how the money got there and when, it could help answer the most important question: Did Cooper survive? (thunder) In 1980, the FBI concluded that the money was sitting above a dredge layer and must have arrived after 1974.

25:10 It led many to believe that Dan Cooper returned to bury the money. But Tom Kaye is convinced that the money came out of the river and wasn't buried by human hands. KAYE: We examined the money found on the sandbar, and we noticed that it degraded the way a bar of soap would and rounded all the edges. NARRATOR: If the money was dry before being buried, it would have decayed in the same rectangular shape. KAYE: So it's pretty obvious to us that it was in the water before it became stranded on the sandbar. NARRATOR: If Tom is right, it means that Cooper couldn't have buried the money. (typewriter keys clacking)

26:02 Tom and his team visit the banks of the Columbia River, where the bundles of cash were found. Agent Carr joins them. KAYE: See where your fingers are right there? NARRATOR: Using land measurements... KAYE: 9.5. NARRATOR: GPS... KAYE: 45. NARRATOR: ...satellite, and archive photographs, the team make a major new discovery. KAYE: Nine degrees. NARRATOR: They find the dredging of 1974 stopped 150 feet away from where the money was found. KAYE: It's nine degrees again. So we believe now that the dredging sands did not interfere with the original burial of the money, and that the money got buried there within a few months after Cooper's daring jump.

26:48 ...height, measuring angle 65. NARRATOR: If the money was not buried by Cooper and came out of the river within a few months, how did it travel over 20 miles from the drop zone? The new evidence points to one conclusion. KAYE: The only transport method that makes any sense is via water. NARRATOR: Did the bag of money land in a nearby river? Was it still attached to Dan Cooper? Did the hijacker have the skills to complete his mission?

27:34 Back in 1971, the FBI spent thousands of man-hours looking for a suspect with aviation and skydiving expertise, but found nothing. Now Larry Carr thinks they might have got it wrong. CARR: When we started breaking down the actual events of the night, the choices he made, it started defining someone different than that picture. NARRATOR: Dan Cooper had brought no specialist clothing to make the daring night jump. And because he failed to specify the denomination of the ransom money, he carried extra weight.

28:21 CARR: That's 20 pounds of money attached to him. If he had asked for hundreds, he would've had around five pounds of money; a huge difference. But yet he didn't make those requests. NARRATOR: The man who packed the two main parachutes in 1971 is convinced that Dan Cooper was not a skydiver. COSS: On that night, I provided two parachutes, one of them being an NB-8, which is the one I'm wearing, and the other was a Pioneer sport parachute. He chose the NB-8, and I don't know why. The NB-8 is very uncomfortable, will open much harder, the ripcord is very flat; it's mixed in with the harness,

29:06 so he couldn't probably even find the ripcord. NARRATOR: Cooper's choice of the NB-8 military parachute remains a hot subject of debate. Journalist Geoffrey Gray has been researching the Cooper case for years. GEOFFREY GRAY: When I asked military experts and also FBI agents about the parachute, the consensus was that the military chute would have been the better choice, because the airplane was going so fast that if you have a civilian chute, it would have shredded up in the air. And so Cooper actually choose the one he couldn't control, but he knew that would give him the best chance of survival, which was that old, army green, rugged, conical chute.

29:53 NARRATOR: Much was against Cooper that November night. Visibility was poor. The wind factor was well below freezing, and Cooper had no goggles or gloves. These treacherous conditions didn't stop Cooper. But did he survive the jump? NARRATOR: It was cold, windy and dark on November 24, 1971. On board the hijacked plane, the parachutes were delivered with a set of instructions. Dan Cooper told Tina Mucklow he wouldn't need them. COSS: Why in the world would a guy jump with an NB-8 at night,

30:40 going out of a 727, not knowing where he's getting out? Didn't make any sense to me. NARRATOR: This detail convinced many that Cooper was an experienced parachutist. (wind whistling) (typewriter keys clacking) MAN: Then, yes. MAN: To rig over that. NARRATOR: Professional skydiver Troy Hartman is recreating Cooper's great escape. He is dressed as witnesses described Dan Cooper.

31:37 A 23-pound weight is added in a front pack, and he is asked to tumble to simulate the disorientation that Cooper might have felt in the dark. But Cooper's worst enemy can't be simulated: the cold. TROY HARTMAN: Numerous times I've had the problem of not being able to get a good grip on the handle because it's cold. You start to panic, you start to do things faster than you would in normal conditions. NARRATOR: Troy remains convinced that Cooper knew enough to open his chute. TROY: In its absolute simplest form, you need to pull a handle,

32:24 and that old gear was designed to allow the parachute to come out even if you're tumbling. So I definitely think he got a parachute open. NARRATOR: But even if Dan Cooper deployed his chute, did he survive the landing? Scientist Tom Kaye believes the three bundles of ransom money provide the best clue to solving Cooper's fate. Apart from the $5,800 found on the riverbank, none of the other bills were ever found in circulation.

33:14 Tom is convinced that the bag of money, worth $1.2 million today, must have traveled by river to where the three stacks of money were found. KAYE: The three bundles couldn't have traveled independently, yet ended up in the same place on the sandbar. This tells us that the bank bag was involved in the transport. It could have split open close to the sandbar, thereby increasing the odds that three out of the hundred bundles of cash would have ended up together in the same place. NARRATOR: If the bank bag ended up in the river, the money he risked his life to steal was never spent.

34:03 But how exactly did the bag of money end up in the water? Tom examines the flight path and timing of the jump, recorded at approximately 8:10. KAYE: At this point he's directly over the Lewis River. If the bank bag, which was being flailed by 200-mile-an-hour winds, detached from Cooper, it would have fallen directly below into the Lewis River. NARRATOR: The Lewis River is around 300 feet wide with a fast current and rapids. It's possible that the money bag

34:49 could make its way downstream. But Dan Cooper was protecting the money with his life. And with 30 feet of parachute cord, could have secured the bag. If Cooper did secure the bag and managed to deploy his chute, where would he have landed? NARRATOR: D.B. Cooper requested four parachutes the night he highjacked a plane. His chosen parachute, the NB-8, unlike the sports chute, is not maneuverable. It would take him wherever the winds blew.

35:37 Tom Kaye believes that whatever altitude Cooper deployed, the westerly winds would carry him directly to his worst nightmare: water. KAYE: From our calculations, we can determine that if Cooper pulled his parachute right away, he would have had a long drift and likely ended up in Lake Merwin. If he waited and pulled a couple thousand feet above the ground, he would have ended up in the Lewis River. NARRATOR: Lake Merwin is a huge dam, which spills directly into the Lewis River. The low cloud cover and the non-maneuverable parachute would have given Cooper little, if any, chance of changing course.

36:25 With near-freezing temperatures, the water would have been cold; cold enough to kill. KAYE: When D.B. Cooper hit the water, like we believe he did, he would have only had a matter of minutes in that type of cold water to get off on shore at that point. Remember, he was laden with 20 pounds of money, he had a harness and he had a long parachute attached to him at this point. So we think that his odds of survival would have been very low. CARR: He used the poorer choice of equipment. The conditions were horrible. And the fact that we haven't found anything really leads me to believe that he died that night.

37:17 NARRATOR: The semi-buoyant body would have moved down the fast-running river, some 20 miles to the Columbia. The three bundles of ransom cash were found just a few miles from where the Lewis and Columbia Rivers meet. But there's a catch. These few miles are upriver, against its natural flow. Tom Kaye offers a rational explanation. At the time, the Columbia River was one of the busiest shipping lanes in North America. KAYE: We believe it's possible that Cooper's body and the money

38:03 became snagged up on one of these ship's propellers and moved upstream with the ship. At some point, the violence of this ripped open the bank bag and spilled out the money. NARRATOR: Three of the hundred bundles subsequently found their way onto the shore before being covered by the shifting sands. But if this is true, what happened to Cooper's body? After nearly five decades, Tom Kaye offers a comprehensive theory of what might have happened to Dan Cooper. KAYE: We've looked at the currents, and these tell us that within a few days,

38:49 the Columbia River is gonna suck up your body and spit it out into the ocean. So D.B. Cooper may be at the bottom of the ocean at this point, and we would never, ever be able to come up with his body. NARRATOR: But, dead or alive, the identity of the hijacker is still a mystery. The answer may be buried in the sparse evidence removed from the plane. GRAY: The best chance we have to solve the D.B. Cooper case is to find the seven Raleigh filter-tip cigarette butts that the hijacker smoked throughout the hijacking. Embedded in the cotton fibers of the filters, there's a chance that Cooper's saliva could be there. And from that saliva, we could potentially have

39:36 a genetic profile, and finally close the case for good. MONTOYA: Just because somebody smoked a cigarette doesn't mean you're always gonna pick up DNA. NARRATOR: The smoking gun for the FBI would be items that disappeared with Cooper that night. MONTOYA: And this is why we settled on the parachute and the money. Those things are tangible. And that really is what separates a very good investigation from something where we're just spinning our wheels is what is tangible, what can we prove versus information that is just somebody's private fantasy. NARRATOR: Tom Kaye believes he knows what evidence is needed to convince people that the legendary Dan Cooper

40:23 died that night. KAYE: Well, really what it's gonna take to solve the D.B. Cooper case is D.B. Cooper's body. It's kind of like bigfoot, you know, you can come up with lots of evidence, but until you have a dead body, you really haven't solved the case. NARRATOR: While probability now points to D.B. Cooper's death, without hard evidence, many people today still believe that he survived. DETLOR: I say there's a good possibility that Dan Cooper survived the jump and is out there. GRAY: I do think that the hijacker survived the jump. And I think that whatever happened from that moment

41:11 is probably really an awesome story. NARRATOR: After an exhaustive 45-year examination, the FBI suspended active investigation of the D.B. Cooper skyjacking case on July 8, 2016. MONTOYA: Given the time, 45 years or so, given the nature of the investigation, the kinds of leads that we were seeing essentially being recycled, unless somebody could come out of history with that parachute and that money, we recognized that there just was gonna have to be an end. And so we decided to end it. I decided to end it. NARRATOR: But sometimes even closed FBI cases aren't abandoned forever.

41:59 Fresh evidence could bust the case wide open. In August 2017, the FBI accepted new evidence found by a volunteer group of cold case detectives in the Pacific Northwest. A piece of foam suspected to have been a part of Cooper's parachute. The discovery came after a tip-off from an unidentified source claiming to have details about Cooper's escape. Citizen sleuths continue to play an important role in unraveling the mysteries of the D.B. Cooper case. GRAY: The Cooper case is now nearly 50 years old, and as we approach this 50-year mile marker,

42:47 I think it's crucial for people to know and be able to separate what the facts are and to have them look at the files themselves and help us. NARRATOR: The legend of D.B. Cooper paints him as a gentleman thief. That he stole $200,000 without hurting anyone, and leapt into the darkness and into history. GRAY: Dan Cooper, or D.B. Cooper, he did something that allows us, in a way, to vicariously live through him. You know, we always... He was able to get away with the perfect crime, and that sort of appeals to us in a way, because if he can get away with the perfect crime, then we can get away with it, too.

43:37 NARRATOR: Whatever the truth, this is not the end of the story. With new leads constantly unfolding, it's more like a new beginning to solving the mystery of D.B. Cooper. (explosion) NARRATOR: It's the height of the Cold War. In New York, a man mysteriously falls from a hotel window. In Kentucky, a secret experiment feeds prisoners LSD for two and a half months. In Montreal, a doctor delivers hundreds of electroshocks to his psychiatric patients.

44:27 How far did the Central Intelligence Agency go to fight the new Communist threat? Germ warfare, brainwashing, even murder? Will families of the victims ever know the truth? What's the real story behind the CIA's secret experiments? (theme music plays) Manhattan, 1953. 2:00am on a chilly Thanksgiving weekend... the Statler Hotel on 7th Avenue.

45:16 (glass shattering) A man plunges to his death from the 13th floor. Night manager Armand Pastore is first to the scene. -I rushed out and there I see a body lying next to this partition. I never expected him to be alive, but he was laying there looking at me, trying to speak to me, very earnest look in his eyes, wide open. NARRATOR: Was it suicide or something more sinister? The man is 43-year-old Frank Olson, a biological weapons researcher for the

46:04 Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland. What few yet know is that Frank Olson also worked for the CIA. Olson's subsequent death is just one mysterious piece in a far greater puzzle... one that would shock the average American had they only known. In the wake of World War II, the U.S. government is engaged in a large number of secret medical experiments designed to help win the Cold War... exposing unknowing members of the public to biological and chemical agents... developing techniques for mind control to create a so-called Manchurian Candidate...

46:52 even planning assassinations on powerful Third World leaders. What was the extent of these brainwashing experiments? How did the CIA become involved in such far-reaching and disturbing research? D-Day. The end of World War II reveals the full extent of Nazi atrocities. In the concentration camps, medical research on captives includes experiments with their minds as well as their bodies. JOHN: The Germans were doing an experiment at Dachua on things like hypnosis and the use of drugs for interrogation to try and find out ways of controlling people,

47:40 of making people tell against their will. NARRATOR: An attempt to master the art of mind control. In the years that follow, the Cold War escalates at an alarming rate, with the Superpowers competing for military and scientific supremacy. Espionage is the name of the game. The CIA embarks upon a multi-million dollar highly classified research program into the covert use of biological and chemical materials, an innocuous term for a frightening variety of unorthodox weapons: Bacteria to infect the enemy, poisons for assassinations, truth drugs for interrogations.

48:25 Spearheading these undercover efforts is Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, head of the CIA's top secret Chemical Division. Gottlieb works closely with Army scientists at Fort Detrick, Maryland, developing biological weapons for the Agency's use. JOHN: Included in the medicine chest of Fort Detrick would have been anthrax, the plague, brucellosis... all the major diseases. NARRATOR: In 1953 these "special operations" at Fort Detrick are headed up by Frank Olson. The week of Thanksgiving, Olson is in New York on a doctor's visit, but details are unclear.

49:11 He never makes it home. His family learns of his death early Saturday morning. Olson's son, Eric, is nine at the time. -And they basically said, you know, we have something we have to tell you and proceeded to say that my father had fallen or jumped out of a window in New York City. NARRATOR: The story is as mystifying as it is devastating. -There were no details. Absolutely none. NARRATOR: According to the medical report, Olson's neck and face are badly lacerated. At the funeral, the casket remains closed. -And the explanation there was that they said he was too badly injured to be seen.

50:01 NARRATOR: Unbeknownst to the family, present at the funeral are two men from the CIA: Dr. Sidney Gottlieb and his deputy, Dr. Robert Lashbrook. There's something Olson's family doesn't yet know... Agent Lashbrook was in the New York hotel room when Olson fell out the window and died. The mysterious circumstances of Olson's death raise many questions. Some answers lie buried in his secret life working for the CIA. Olson's specialty is aerosol delivery systems. But by 1953, his career has evolved into top secret research into germ warfare, and more.

50:48 Together, the CIA and the Army's special operations plan experiments on the dispersal of their new biological weapons. More than once, they simulate an attack on an entire city: One target... the nation's most populous metropolis, New York. The intention... to evaluate how easy it is to poison a city by releasing bacteria into the subway system. Staff from Fort Detrick, posing as industrial contractors, position themselves over the subway vents. They surreptitiously drop harmless bacteria onto the tracks, while monitoring agents wait to take samples throughout the network.

51:36 Turbulence from the trains quickly carries the germs through the tunnels, infecting the entire subway system in a matter of minutes. With a more lethal substance, a similar attack on an enemy city could be efficient and deadly. The CIA is not alone in its effort to develop new weapons against the Communists. America forms a tripartite agreement with Canada and Great Britain... the three nations working together to win the Cold War. British research into biochemical warfare is carried out at the army base in Porton Down, Southwest England. -Porton Down led the world in biochemical research during the '30s and '40s. Porton Down knew about the attempt to infiltrate the subway system in New York.

52:27 It was a constant exchange of information. It was very normal on any given day to find one or more American scientists at Porton Down. NARRATOR: In May, 1953, scientists at Porton Down are researching one of the most lethal nerve agents known to man... sarin. The experiments are conducted on military volunteers. But the young servicemen have no idea what they are letting themselves in for. -On the board there was a separate notice, typed, which said in so many words, volunteers wanted to help find a cure for the common cold. Those taking part will receive extra pay.

53:12 NARRATOR: By volunteering, Ken Earl becomes an unsuspecting guinea pig in the war against the Soviets. On May 4 at Porton Down, he and five other Air Force men are led into a small room by two technicians. KEN: We were told by the two men to roll up the left sleeve, so the left arm was exposed. These two men then took two pieces of material and they taped them to our forearm. They then gave us each a respirator and that we were not under any circumstances to take off the respirator. And the door was sealed behind us.

54:00 It was very, very poky... small building, and I found out since it was a gas chamber, which puts the fear of death into you, of course. And this technician, with a vial and a pipette, went round to each of us. And he dripped onto these pieces of material 20 drops in two rows. And it was a colorless liquid. And I didn't know what it was. I didn't question it. NARRATOR: The clear liquid is sarin nerve agent. It is quickly absorbed into the arm through the skin. The effects are immediate. KEN: I became absolutely claustrophobic. I didn't know what sheer terror there is in being trapped and not being able to

54:49 breathe properly or feel you can't breathe. I was sweating profusely. And I was just, I felt so ill and I now, even today, have nightmares about it. After half an hour, we were released gasping and spluttering and sweating into the open air, beautiful sunny May morning. Absolute bliss! What a wonderful thing to be alive! NARRATOR: The corresponding paperwork clearly states the purpose of the experiment is to determine the lethal dose of sarin. They quickly get their answer. KEN: Two days later another group of six had exactly the same thing done to them, but sitting in my seat was a young 20-year-old called Ronald Maddison.

55:39 And quite frankly he was dead within 45 minutes, the most hideous death anybody can ever have. Foaming at the mouth. An ambulance driver described it as like frog spawn coming out of his mouth, terrible death. NARRATOR: Based on the dates in his passport and known previous visits to Porton Down, there is a good chance that Frank Olson witnesses this fatal experiment. According to investigative reporter Gordon Thomas, Olson voices his concerns to a man named William Sargant. -Dr. Sargant was the most eminent psychiatrist in Britain. He ran the Department of Psychological Medicine in St. Thomas' Hospital. During the Cold War, Sargant's expertise is sought by both

56:25 British and American intelligence. Gordon: He would decide whether one of our agents, one of the MI5 or 6 agents was okay, whether he would blow the whistle or not. Frank Olson tells Sargant what he's seen at Porton Down. -And he told him, "I've seen things that shouldn't be going on." NARRATOR: Sargant apparently has doubts about Olson. Can the American still be trusted with top secret research of the Cold War? NARRATOR: Concerns that highly-sensitive information would be leaked to US enemies permeates the CIA. JOHN: There was a real fear in the CIA that the Communists had ways of doing things, of interrogating people, of making people act against their will that could be

57:13 break-throughs. NARRATOR: To combat the new threat, the CIA launches its own quest to master the art of mind control. JOHN: They were looking for ways to manipulate and control human behavior. They looked at chemical substances. They looked at things like electroshock. NARRATOR: One drug in particular catches their attention... lysergic acid diethylamide... better know as, LSD. DR. ROSS: The hope was you could use these drugs to soften up somebody for interrogation. Or you could use them offensively for mind control programming and getting somebody set up for operations. NARRATOR: Ten years before its recreational heyday, LSD becomes the focus of the CIA's quest for the perfect truth drug.

58:01 There's just one hitch... how to find suitable subjects. JOHN: So, they found street people... they found prostitutes, they found prisoners, they found minorities to whom the CIA at the time did not put as much value on their lives as other people. NARRATOR: At the Federal Addiction Research Center in Lexington, Kentucky, Dr. Harris Isbell is contracted by the CIA to study the effects of prolonged exposure to LSD. His subjects are incarcerated heroin addicts, mostly African American.

58:50 JOHN: The deal down there was unbelievably gauche. They had prisoner volunteers who came in and they would be given LSD as part of the experimentation and then as a reward given heroin. NARRATOR: In one experiment, prisoners are kept on increasing doses of LSD for 77 straight days. Even Doctor Isbell himself is amazed that such high quantities of narcotic can be tolerated for so long. -A lot of these things just violate any kind of common sense and basic medical ethics that you would think it would be impossible that doctors would do experiments on drug addicts giving them hallucinogens and then as a reward for participation they would get more drugs of addiction.

59:36 But these things actually happened. They're absolutely documented. NARRATOR: These tests use incarcerated volunteers who know they are taking a drug. The CIA has a different mission in mind... to test the drugs covertly. JOHN: You might give it to a Russian diplomat at a cocktail party and you wanted to see how he would react. Could you recruit him after he had been given LSD? So unwitting testing was the name of the game. NARRATOR: The CIA establishes safe houses in Manhattan and San Francisco. They enlist prostitutes to lure in possible suspects and slip them LSD. Local gangsters are used as guinea pigs to represent enemy agents with secrets to share.

1:00:27 The Agency listens in, hoping the combination of girls and drugs will get the men to talk. Narcotics agent Ira Feldman is responsible for finding those unwitting subjects. =We got prostitutes to come in and speak to these guys and these prostitutes would put something, which I found out later on was LSD, into their drink and make them talk. And 10, 15 minutes later, they'd be spilling their guts, whether it be state secrets or narcotics or murder. NARRATOR: But at the height of the Cold War, interrogating domestic gangsters is just a practice run. The real challenge lies in field operations overseas, on the fringe

1:01:15 of the Iron Curtain. In occupied Germany, the CIA hones its techniques for getting at the truth. The potential victims for interrogation are endless: defecting scientists with valuable information to share... suspected double agents selling secrets to the Communists, all are fair game for the CIA. DR. ROSS: A person would be taken to a safe house in a secure location. They would be kept there for a period of at least days. They might have sleep and food deprivation. They would have possibly alcohol, barbiturates, hallucinogens and other medications administered, and then a variety of interrogation techniques would

1:02:00 be applied. NARRATOR: In order to fully test these techniques, the agency must pursue the interrogations to the bitter end. -There was an expression the CIA was using called "terminal experiments," which were experiments that would lead to death or vast injury to the person. NARRATOR: Among those who witness these experiments is Fort Detrick scientist, Frank Olson. His passport shows several trips to Germany, including summer, 1953. He is deeply disturbed by what he sees. On his way home through England, Olson visits once more with intelligence consultant William Sargant.

1:02:48 -Frank was very different when he came back that time. He was quite aroused in a sense, angry, upset. NARRATOR: William Sargant is convinced the CIA now has a serious problem. He believes secrets from the Cold War are no longer safe in the hands of Frank Olson. NARRATOR: Summer, 1953: Cold War paranoia grips America. In Europe, Frank Olson witnesses extreme interrogations at the hands of the CIA. His British confidant, William Sargant, no longer thinks Olson can be trusted. -Frank Olson had an incredible store house of knowledge about top,

1:03:36 top secret matters concerning biological weapons and substances and as such he would have been a person who there would have been great concern if he had started to talk publicly. NARRATOR: As head of mind control research, Sidney Gottlieb is the one man who knows the full extent of Olson's knowledge. If Olson's been sharing state secrets, Gottlieb needs to know. He decides to conduct a little experiment of his own. Deep Creek Lodge in Maryland. Wednesday, November 18, 1953. Frank Olson and six colleagues from Special Operations at Fort Detrick attend a clandestine meeting.

1:04:23 They are joined by counterparts from the CIA, including Sidney Gottlieb and his deputy, Robert Lashbrook. According to CIA documents, after dinner on Thursday night, Gottlieb slips a small amount of LSD into a bottle of Cointreau. ERIC: According to Gottlieb when I met him, they were concerned that what if a scientist was kidnapped by the Communists, and what if the enemy drugged that scientist, you know, would he be forthcoming? And they were going to test this by staging a scientific meeting and drugging the participants. And that my father was just one of a number who got this drug.

1:05:17 NARRATOR: Allegedly, all but two of the scientists present are drugged unwittingly. Twenty minutes later, Gottlieb tells them what he's done and the meeting gradually deteriorates as the narcotic takes effect. But what happens after that remains disputed. Some believe Olson is interrogated. When Olson returns home, he is profoundly affected. -He wasn't hallucinating or anything remotely like that. He was simply somber and was upset. He used that phrase that he had made a terrible mistake. And he had decided he wanted to quit his job. NARRATOR: Instead of accepting Olson's resignation, his boss sends him to New York for

1:06:05 psychiatric counseling. He's accompanied by Robert Lashbrook from the CIA. But The attending doctor, Harold Abramson, is not a psychiatrist... he's an allergist. He's been experimenting with LSD for the CIA's mind control research. The doctor's notes show several meetings with Olson over the course of the week. On the Friday evening, Olson calls home to his wife, Alice. ERIC: He said he was feeling much better. He just wanted to reassure her and said he looked forward to seeing her the next day. NARRATOR: But at 2:00 on Saturday morning, Frank Olson falls from the 13th floor of the hotel to the sidewalk below.

1:06:52 The CIA claims it is suicide. They offer no explanation to the family, but secretly conclude it was triggered by the LSD given nine days previously. If William Sargant was right and Frank Olson was a security threat to the Agency, his death silences him forever. The secrets of the CIA's experiments remain safe, for the time being. After the Korean War, disturbing new intelligence reaches Washington. Hundreds of American troops are still being held captive, subjected to brainwashing experiments and then killed. Mind control research back home intensifies.

1:07:40 The new goal is to cause, "an individual to become subservient to an imposed control" to the point where he will "perform acts against his will" and then have "no memory of the act." The search for a real life Manchurian Candidate begins. NARRATOR: In the 1962 Hollywood classic, The Machurian Candidate directed by John Frankenheimer, a hypnotized soldier is programmed to assassinate a presidential candidate. Like a clip from the movie, the CIA attempts to create its own Manchurian assassins using hypnosis and drugs. -You create this new identity inside that's hidden from the main part of the person by an amnesia barrier. Then using an access code you can call up this new identify for whatever mission purpose.

1:08:30 NARRATOR: To produce such an assassin, the CIA faces two main challenges: how to induce amnesia and how to program in new behavior. In 1957, Dr. Ewen Cameron, an eminent psychiatrist in Montreal, believes he has the answers. -The agency sought him out because they had noticed his work, in particular with two techniques... the intensive electroshock and what he called psychic driving. NARRATOR: Cameron applies his techniques under the guise of normal therapy. JAMES: It's hard to say just how awful and horrendous what Cameron proposed and what our

1:09:16 government financed was. It was a three part technique which started with an effort to wipe out past patterns of behavior and this was accomplished through the use of particularly intensive repeated high level electroshocks until no more convulsions could be elicited from a patient. NARRATOR: Cameron then plays tape-recorded messages through helmets that are locked to his patients' heads. This forces them to listen to repetitive statements for weeks on end to program in new behavior. -Now the final phase was to try to wipe out all recollection of what had happened and that was accomplished by putting people to sleep for, 30, 40 days accompanied by different kinds of cocktails of drugs.

1:10:06 Now that's not any kind of therapy. That's a brainwashing experiment. NARRATOR: For four years the CIA fully funds Cameron's work... hoping to use his techniques to create a Manchurian Candidate. Psychiatrists throughout the nation... at hospitals, prisons and some of the top universities... are similarly on the agency's payroll. Every possible brainwashing technique is explored. One in particular consumes the Agency for years... hypnosis. -One of the things the CIA was looking for was, "Could you give a person an order under hypnosis to assassinate someone else?" That would have been a Manchurian Candidate.

1:10:51 NARRATOR: But the assassin must not remember his act. -You can take an ordinary person off the street, put them through basic training and get them to go out in the field and shoot the enemy. The purpose of hypnosis is not to get the person to go pull the trigger. It's so that they don't remember so that if they are captured or interrogated, they can't talk about it. NARRATOR: In 1968, an assassination takes place that seems to resemble a Manchurian operation, according to some, it is the work of a programmed assassin, hypnotized by the CIA. Kennedy: My thanks to all of you. And now it's on to Chicago and let's win there. NARRATOR: June 4, 1968. Election night in the California Democratic Primary.

1:11:39 It's midnight, and Senator Robert Kennedy delivers his victory speech in the Ambassador Hotel. He's ushered out through the crowded pantry. Suddenly, shots are fired. 26 hours later, Kennedy is pronounced dead. As the gunman, 24-year-old Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, is led away, several witnesses notice his trance-like demeanor. WILLIAM: He seemed to be in a daze. He didn't recollect any of the details of what he had just performed and he couldn't explain it. He was told what he had done and he was bewildered.

1:12:28 NARRATOR: Conspiracy theorists latch on to Sirhan's alleged memory loss. They are convinced Sirhan's a Manchurian Candidate, hypnotized by the CIA to assassinate Kennedy, the culmination of two decades of mind control research. But why would the CIA want Robert Kennedy dead? Sirhan's attorney believes there are three motives. Number one, Vietnam. WILLIAM: Bob Kennedy was diametrically opposed to the war in Vietnam. The ending of the war in Vietnam would have gone adversely to the bottom lines of some of the major corporate entities in the United States who were making fortunes on that war.

1:13:14 NARRATOR: Reason number two, Cuba. WILLIAM: Bob Kennedy himself had come to the conclusion that the time was right for a deal to be done with Castro in Cuba. And that was not making him very popular. NARRATOR: And finally, his own brother's death. -He was going to reopen the investigation of the assassination of his brother. That was making a lot of people edgy. NARRATOR: Was Sirhan's mind hacked? Had he been hypno-programmed by the CIA? NARRATOR: Before Sirhan's trial, psychiatrist Bernard Diamond examines him many times and believes he was being controlled by the CIA, through hypnosis.

1:14:08 WILLIAM: And Diamond was convinced that he was programmed. And this programming was very intensive and very, very deep into his psyche and it has remained with him to this day. To this day, he doesn't know what happened. NARRATOR: Programmed amnesia is the key ingredient to a Manchurian operation. Sirhan also claims he's been hypnotized before. He'd recently been studying the rosicrucians, an ancient mystical order, devoted to self improvement. Hypnosis is one of the tools they teach for focusing the mind inward. DR. ROSS: Sirhan Sirhan described some self-hypnosis meditation type exercises and

1:14:54 his journals have a lot of repetition, repetition, repetition: "RFK must die, RFK must die," which looks to me like trance state repetition, focusing on the mission, focusing on the mission, focusing on the mission. NARRATOR: The hypnotized Sirhan allegedly pulls out his gun on cue, but does not fire the fatal shot. WILLIAM: You have to understand, there was so much pandemonium. It's almost as though Sirhan was programmed to distract the entire group that was there allowing someone to do what had to be done in terms of actually killing Kennedy by shooting him in the back of the head. NARRATOR: Ballistics evidence seems to support this claim. Kennedy is struck by three bullets, all fired from the rear.

1:15:42 The fatal shot is fired within inches of his skull, but Sirhan never gets that close. -There is no account that pushes him any closer than three or four feet away from Bob Kennedy, in the front of him. NARRATOR: Adding to the alleged evidence for a conspiracy is the number of bullets fired. Kennedy is struck three times. Five bystanders are also hit. But several more bullet holes are identified in the doors and ceiling, suggesting at least ten shots are fired. Sirhan's pistol, a 22 caliber, only holds eight rounds. More than eight bullets would require a second gun.

1:16:34 Historian Mel Ayton has spent years investigating the assassination. He believes that Sirhan could have shot Kennedy at close proximity from behind, even while standing three feet in front of the senator. -When Kennedy was moving through with the crowd, through the pantry, he turned to his left to shake hands with the kitchen workers. NARRATOR: Kennedy reaches across with his right arm, presenting Sirhan with the right side of his body as a target. -And then Robert Kennedy was shot under the armpit, because obviously his arm was, his right arm was being raised as a defensive reaction and then the arc of the gun was pursuing Kennedy's head as Kennedy was going down.

1:17:25 NARRATOR: To determine the number of bullets fired, Ayton sends acoustics expert Steve Barber a copy of the only complete audio recording to exist of the assassination. STEVE: And all of sudden I hear, "Pop, pop, pop." And then a blood curdling high-pitched female scream just after the shots. NARRATOR: Two unidentified thumps occur just three seconds before the first pop. -I ruled thump number one completely out. It sounds like the microphone has bumped into something. Thump number two I think is either a door banging into a wall or a balloon exploding.

1:18:10 NARRATOR: A graph of the recording clearly shows a spike each time the gun is fired. STEVE: Distinctly eight bullets were fired. If the conspiracists believe there are more than eight gun shots, then they are going to have to explain the lack of those gun shots being captured on this recording. NARRATOR: There is no doubt in Ayton's mind that Sirhan was the lone assassin and the CIA had nothing to do with it. By 1968, after investing millions of dollars, the Agency abandons its research into programming a hypnotized assassin, concluding it can never work. DR. LYNN: You do not relinquish your will. You do not become a dupe, a patsy or a mindless automaton, despite some public beliefs

1:18:59 that this may be the case. NARRATOR: In 1972, Sidney Gottlieb terminates the Agency's research into the biological and chemical control of human behavior, citing its decreasing relevance to covert operations. The American public remains oblivious that the CIA's mind control program ever existed. But that is about to change. NARRATOR: On June 11, 1975, The Washington Post reports on a civilian scientist who was unwittingly given LSD and jumped from a Manhattan hotel window. No names are mentioned, but the Olsons immediately recognize the story of their father's death 22 years before.

1:19:50 The source for the article describing Frank Olson's death is the Rockefeller Commission Report. Triggered by Watergate, it's a presidential inquiry into illegal domestic activities by the CIA. The Olson's decide to sue the Agency for their father's wrongful death. -And within ten days, we were sitting in the Oval Office of the White House getting an apology from Gerald Ford himself. NARRATOR: The family receives $750,000 for Frank Olson's death. Spurred by the media reports, Congress launches its own investigation into the CIA, chaired by Senator Frank Church. Sidney Gottlieb and Robert Lashbrook are summoned to testify.

1:20:35 -We had a hypnotist do some experiments primarily to see what the limitations of hypnosis might be: Can you make a person do something under hypnosis that he would not ordinarily do? NARRATOR: The revelations are staggering. 80 institutions have been contracted by the CIA for mind control research, costing tax payers the equivalent of nearly $40 million today. The committee concludes the Agency demonstrated a "fundamental disregard for the value of human life." Former CIA Director Richard Helms reveals that in 1973 he instructed Sidney Gottlieb to destroy all records pertaining to the mind control experiments.

1:21:22 But some documents manage to escape the shredder. -You can be sure in any government agency there's always an accountant somewhere who has got an extra set of the documents and financial records including program descriptions and project proposals. NARRATOR: Among the files released by the Agency are several internal memos written immediately after Frank Olson's death. The documents describe the incident at Deep Creek Lodge as a mild experiment using a very small dose of LSD, targeting all but two of the men at the meeting. Apparently, no one had an abnormal reaction to the drug. But there's also a memo from CIA consultant Harold Abramson, who saw Olson the following week.

1:22:09 According to him, the experiment had in fact been designed specifically to "trap" Frank Olson. The contradictions plague Eric Olson for many years. He is convinced there was foul play at hand. In his quest for answers, he finally turns to the one man he knows he can trust... his father. ERIC: When the back hoe started digging, it was an early June morning 1994, I thought, yes, finally we're going to open this thing up. NARRATOR: Supervising the exhumation is forensics expert, Professor James Starrs. -The body was, as I would say, in unusually well-preserved condition.

1:23:03 NARRATOR: One thing is immediately apparent... JAMES: There were no lacerations evident on his face and head. NARRATOR: This is in direct contrast to the medical report and the story told to the Olsons. There was something else the CIA didn't want the family to see. What is present but not mentioned in the medical report is a large bruise above the left eye. But Olson hit the ground feet first and then fell backwards. -It could have been that someone did as we anticipated, initially cush him or hit him on the head, rendering him unable to protect himself and then did the inevitable,

1:23:50 threw him out the window. NARRATOR: If true, then Frank Olson was murdered. During his investigation, Eric Olson makes an alarming discovery. The same year Frank Olson dies, the CIA publishes its first assassination manual. ERIC: And that assassination manual specified the ideal way in which you murder somebody but you make it look like an accident, and the best way they said to do this was from a fall from a high window, at least 75 feet. And they said you should stun the subject, that's the verb, stun the subject before dropping them with a blow to the temple above one of the eyes.

1:24:40 JAMES: The pattern was identical in every respect to what we found and what we interpreted from the remains of Dr. Olson. I think that Frank Olson was intentionally, deliberately, with malice and forethought, thrown out that window. NARRATOR: But investigative reporter John Marks disagrees. JOHN: I spent an incredible amount of time researching this question. I never found any evidence at all that Olson was pushed out that window. ERIC: I think you have to face the facts here that when you are doing this kind of government illegal, immoral, top secret work, you have to be prepared to face the consequences, which include disposal of problematic people.

1:25:28 Well, what other cover story can you tell besides suicide? -Frank Olsen's children say that when they learned LSD had led him to his death, they were relieved that suicide was not really his idea. Then they became angry. They are still, angry. NARRATOR: Over sixty years after Frank Olson's death, his sons Eric and Nils Olson continue to seek justice for their father. -We intend to sue the Central Intelligence Agency for the wrongful death of my father. In so doing we hope the full story of Frank Olson's death will emerge. NARRATOR: The court case, filed in November 2012, accused the CIA of concealing the truth about their father's death in 1953.

1:26:14 If the court challenged the CIA to open its files, the Olsons might find the missing pieces to the puzzle. The Olson family argued that their prior settlement was received under a false assumption... that the CIA had provided all relevant documents surrounding Frank Olson's death. But after months in deliberation, in 2013 US

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