What do the names Forrestal, Olsen, Kokal and Weiss have in common?

[Minstrel Boy]

Need a hint? Here's a clue from the CIA's declassified assassination manual:

2. Accidents
For secret assassination, either simple or chase, the contrived accident is the most effective technique. When successfully executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually investigated.

The most efficient accident, in simple assassination, is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator shafts, stair wells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve. Bridge falls into water are not reliable. In simple cases a private meeting with the subject may be arranged at a properly-cased location. The act may be executed by sudden, vigorous >excised< of the ankles, tipping the subject over the edge. If the assassin immediately sets up an outcry, playing the "horrified witness", no alibi or surreptitious withdrawal is necessary. In chase cases it will usually be necessary to stun or drug the subject before dropping him. Care is required to insure that no wound or condition not attributable to the fall is discernible after death.
http://www.frankolsonproject.org/Documents/Assassination%20Manual.html


1. James Forrestal, 1949: "jumped from window"



At around 2 a.m. on the morning of May 22, 1949, America’s first Secretary of Defense, James Vincent Forrestal, fell to his death from a small window of the 16th floor of the Bethesda Naval Hospital.

...

Throughout Forrestal’s hospitalization, access to him was severely restricted. One-time visitors were his wife, his two sons, Sidney Souers (a former DCI, NSC executive secretary, and alleged MJ-12 member), Louis Johnson, Truman, and Congressman Lyndon Johnson. Menninger visited twice. Although Forrestal was presumably glad to see his sons, he was not close to any of these visitors, and had a political antipathy to his government colleagues who came by. However, Forrestal was not permitted to see the several people he continually asked to see: his brother, a friend, and two priests.

...

Father Sheehy had reason to suspect murder. When he arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital after learning of Forrestal’s death, an experienced-looking hospital corpsman approached him through the crowd. In a low, tense voice he said: "Father, you know Mr. Forrestal didn’t kill himself, don’t you?" Before Sheehy could respond or ask his name, others in the crowd pressed close, and the man quickly departed.

...

Later inspection found heavy scuff marks outside the window sill and cement work. Proponents of the suicide theory claim these were made by Forrestal’s feet while he was hanging by the neck from the radiator, and perhaps that he belatedly changed his mind and tried to climb back in. But the scuff marks confirm no such thing. They could just as easily have been made by his struggle with someone pushing him out the window.
http://keyholepublishing.com/Death%20of%20James%20Forrestal.htm


2. Frank Olson, 1953: "jumped from window"



Frank Olson and Kurt Blome (who had become a protegé of the Americans) later met at Camp King in Germany in the early 1950s when Olson made several visits there to participate in "Operation Artichoke", in which the U.S. Army and the CIA experimented with the use of drugs (including LSD) in interrogation. Olson was present during brutal interrogations by the Americans of Soviet prisoners and suspected double agents, some of whom died under torture. Olson was deeply disturbed by what he had seen.

...

In November 1953 Olson attended a meeting of a group of CIA agents at a country retreat where they discussed their work. Olson was suspected by the CIA of being a security risk. He was given a drink laced with LSD and when well under the influence of the drug he was subjected to interrogation using Artichoke techniques, probably a very unpleasant experience.

A week later Olson was staying in Room 1018A at the Hotel Statler in New York City under the supervision of a CIA doctor, Richard Lashbrook. The manager of the hotel, Armond Pastore, heard a thump outside and went out to find Olson dying on the pavement, having fallen from the 13th floor. The manager later found that a phone call had been made from Room 1018A to a number in Long Island and the caller had said only, "Olson's gone."

The CIA maintained that Olson had leapt through the closed window to his death. However, an autopsy conducted forty years later on the exhumed corpse revealed an injury to the skull most likely caused by a blow to the head and no evidence of any cuts to the body from broken glass. It seems that Olson, exactly as recommended in a CIA assassination manual, was struck on the head (possibly while drugged) and thrown from the window to his death thirteen floors below.
http://www.serendipity.li/cia/olson2.htm

Statement from the Olson family, 2002:

1. The death of Frank Olson on November 28, 1953 was a murder, not a suicide.

2. This is not an LSD drug-experiment story, as it was represented in 1975. This is a biological warfare story. Frank Olson did not die because he was an experimental guinea pig who experienced a "bad trip." He died because of concern that he would divulge information concerning a highly classified CIA interrogation program called "ARTICHOKE" in the early 1950's, and concerning the use of biological weapons by the United States in the Korean War.

3. The truth concerning the death of Frank Olson was concealed from the Olson family as well as from the public in 1953. In 1975 a cover story regarding Frank Olson's death was disseminated. At the same time a renewed coverup of the truth concerning this story was being carried out at the highest levels of government, including the White House. The new coverup involved the participation of persons serving in the current Administration.
http://www.frankolsonproject.org/Statements/FamilyStatement2002.html


3. John Kokal, 2003: "jumped from roof"



WASHINGTON — A State Department (search) employee was found dead outside the agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., Friday around 5 p.m., Fox News has confirmed.

State Department sources told The Washington Post that John Kokal (search) worked in a unit that dealt with intelligence and research. Sources said he handled classified documents regularly....

....

the man, a white male, was wearing a dress shirt, tie and slacks, but was not wearing shoes....
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102563,00.html

Mystery Surrounds Death of State Dept. Official, by Wayne Madsen

In a case eerily reminiscent of the death of British Ministry of Defense bio-weapons expert, Dr. David Kelly, an official of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research Near East and South Asian division (INR/NESA), John J. Kokal, 58, was found dead in the late afternoon of November 7. Police indicated he may have jumped from the roof of the State Department. Kokal's body was found at the bottom of a 20 foot window well, 8 floors below the roof of the State Department headquarters near the 23rd and D Street location. Kokal's death was briefly mentioned in a FOX News website story on November 8 but has been virtually overlooked by the major media.

...

Kokal's INR bureau was at the forefront of confronting claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Washington police have not ruled out homicide as the cause of his death. Kokal was not wearing either a jacket or shoes when his body was found. He lived in Arlington, Virginia.

...

It would have been impossible for Kokal to have gained entry to the roof on his own. INR occupies both a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) on the sixth floor that has no windows and a windowless structure on the roof that has neither windows nor access to the roof, according to the former official. The other windows at the State Department have been engineered to be shatter proof from terrorist bomb attacks and cannot be opened.

INR and other State Department officials report that a "chill" has set in at the State Department following Kokal's defenestration. A number of employees are afraid to talk about the suspicious death. It also unusual that The Northern Virginia Journal, a local Arlington newspaper, has not published an obituary notice on Kokal.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/112003_kokal.html


4. Gus Weiss, 2003: "jumped from window"



Nashville native Gus Weiss, adviser to 4 presidents, dies

Gus Weiss, a Nashville native who advised four presidents, served on the National Security Council for 16 years and won numerous awards for his foreign policy and intelligence-gathering skills, has died. He was 72.

Mr. Weiss died Tuesday in Washington, D.C. The circumstances surrounding his death could not be confirmed last night.

Friends of Mr. Weiss expressed shock at his death.

...

"He was wired into the intelligence community, and there were a lot of mystical secrets we weren't privy to," said Harris Gilbert, a Nashville attorney who had been friends with Mr. Weiss since childhood. "He was very interested in diplomatic strategy and was very, very opposed to the Iraq war. It was the first military action he ever opposed, but he believed we shouldn't go to war in the Middle East without knowing what we were getting into."
http://www.tennessean.com/obits/archives/03/11/43368774.shtml?Element_ID=43368774


Gus W. Weiss, 72; White House Adviser

Gus W. Weiss, 72, a former White House policy adviser on technology, intelligence and economic affairs, died Nov. 25 of a fall from the Watergate East residential building in the District. The DC medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.

A spokesman for the D.C. police said that officers found his body at a service entrance to the apartment cooperative. Dr. Weiss lived in the building.

...

Much of his government work centered on national security, intelligence organizations and concerns over technology transfers to communist countries. As an adviser to the Central Intelligence Agency, he served on the Pentagon's Defense Science Board and the Signals Intelligence Committee of the U.S. Intelligence Board.

During the Carter administration, Dr. Weiss was assistant for space policy to the secretary of defense.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A42132-2003Dec6¬Found=true
http://rense.com/general45/violnt.htm

Suicide? Don't fall for it. And don't try this at home, kids! Here's a disclaimer, again from the good folks at the CIA:

Assassination is an extreme measure not normally used in clandestine operations. It should be assumed that it will never be ordered or authorized by any US Headquarters, though the latter may in rare instances agree to its execution by members of an associated foreign service. This reticence is partly due to the necessity of committing communications to paper. No assassination instructions should ever be written or recorded. Consequently, the decision to employ this technique must nearly always be reached in the field, at the area where the act will take place. Decision and instructions should be confined to an absolute minimum of persons. Ideally, only one person will be involved. No report may be made, but usually the act will be properly covered by normal news services, whose output is available to all concerned.