Better Dead (43 page)

On June 2, 1994, in Frederick, Maryland, under the supervision of Dr. Starrs, a crane unearthed Frank Olson's concrete burial vault, from which the wooden coffin was removed and wrapped for transport to a nearby crime lab. The original autopsy report had described cuts and abrasions; the surprisingly well-preserved body showed none. But a major discovery soon followed: An unrecorded blow to Olson's left temple had caused major bleeding under otherwise unbroken skin.

Starrs and most of his team believed someone had sapped Olson and shoved him through the window—either in a struggle that got out of hand or as outright murder. The pathologist theorized either a hammer or the butt of a gun as the likely blunt object. Finally, he and his team concluded that the evidence from their examination—and a lengthy trip to the crime scene, utilizing computer reconstruction of the fall—was “rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide.”

The findings of the Starrs autopsy spurred a new investigation by the New York public prosecutor, and many depositions were taken, with key players like Lashbrook and Gottlieb generating new information. Ultimately, however, the investigation did not lead to a new trial; nor have civil efforts by Eric and Nils proven successful thus far.

But on August 8, 2002, again in the backyard of the tree-surrounded 1950s ranch-style house, Eric and Nils Olson held a well-attended press conference to share findings based on years of investigation by the brothers, who—like the sons of the Rosenbergs—had given so much of their lives to this effort.

The death of Frank Olson on November 28, 1953, they said, was a murder, not a suicide; LSD experimentation was just the cover story created to handle a security risk; and a 1975 cover-up of the full facts surrounding their father's death was set in motion at the highest levels of the Ford administration.

To date, no one from the United States government has stepped forward to contradict any of the claims put forth by the Olson brothers.

But as the participants all slip into history and into the ground—Frank Olson's examined remains now in a different resting place, next to Alice—any sense of closure for the Olson brothers, or the rest of us, seems less and less likely. Armand Pastore, the best witness, died in 1999; so did the most obvious villain of the piece, Sidney Gottlieb. And while I have finally come forward, in the form of this memoir, even Nate Heller can't live forever.

Looking back on all of it—from the father and mother who died in the electric chair to the father who fell thirteen stories to his death—I can see that Joe McCarthy was right in a way. There
were
dangerous foes of democracy in our government.

They just weren't Commies.

 

I OWE THEM ONE

Despite its extensive basis in history, this is a work of fiction, and liberties have been taken with the facts, though as few as possible—and any blame for historical inaccuracies is my own, mitigated by the limitations of conflicting source material.

Most of the characters in this novel are real and appear under their true names, although all depictions must be viewed as fictionalized. Whenever possible, interviews with subjects, or court and/or congressional committee appearances, have been used as the basis of dialogue scenes, although creative liberties have been taken.

Nathan Heller is, of course, fictional, as is his A-1 Detective Agency. In some cases, I have chosen not to use real names as an indication that either a surfeit of research is available on some minor historical figure or that significant fictionalization has occurred, such as a composite characterization. Natalie Ash is a fictional character with some basis in a number of female espionage agents involved in the Rosenberg case. Shep Shepherd is similarly fictional with roots in several real people.

For the most part, I have limited Heller to gathering information uncovered by investigators during the era depicted, although this has not been a hard-and-fast rule. Nonetheless, I at times omitted material that Heller could not have logically obtained in 1953. Nor did I attempt to cover every aspect and personality in the Rosenberg and Olson cases; part of my mission was reductive, to make complex events accessible, and perhaps encourage readers to sample some of the research material mentioned below.

As much as possible, I like to present Heller in a role occupied by a real person (or persons) in history. Joe McCarthy frequently hired private investigators in various parts of the country, and much of Heller's eleventh-hour inquiry into the Rosenberg case mirrors that of
National Guardian
reporters, including stumbling upon the missing console table.

The two intertwined cases examined in this novel are polar opposites in research terms. The fate of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg has been so much written about—and often from such biased extremes—that tackling the reading is daunting. I found indispensable two very different books,
The Rosenberg File
(second edition, 1983, 1997) by Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, and
Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case
(2010) by Walter and Miriam Schneir.

Radosh and Milton are dogged, thorough researchers who profess an objective viewpoint but are clearly in the anti-Rosenberg camp, if not rabidly so; in any case, their book is a treasure trove of data and detail. The second edition's introduction, however—which covers material updated since the first edition—absurdly assumes the reader is already familiar with the book being introduced. Read as an afterword, however, this poorly placed introduction is effective and illuminating.

Walter and Miriam Schneir—with their previous work,
Invitation to an Inquest
(1965, updated 1983)—became the premier advocates of the Rosenbergs as innocent victims of a government conspiracy. So striking was the difference between the Schneir view and the Radosh and Milton one that the two writing teams would appear together to debate the case in public.

The Schneirs, however, responded to post–Cold War revelations about the Rosenbergs by continuing their research and admitting in print that they'd been wrong. Their slender tome,
Final Verdict,
puts the pieces together in a convincing manner that is intelligently gray, as opposed to their own previous black-and-white reading of the case (and the opposing one of Radosh and Milton).

Also helpful was the very readable insider's look at the case,
Exoneration: The Trial of Julius & Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell
(2010) by Emily Arnow-Alman and David Alman, cofounders and leaders of the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case. Key, too, was
The Murder of the Rosenbergs
(1990) by Stanley Yalkowsky, which includes much of the trial transcript, annotated with the pro-Rosenberg slant its title indicates.

Other books consulted concentrate on individual figures in the case: the thoughtful, thorough
Ethel Rosenberg: Beyond the Myths
(1988) by Ilene Philipson; the first-rate
The Brother
(2001) by Sam Roberts, examining David Greenglass; the well-written if self-serving
On Doing Time
(1974, 2001), Morton Sobell's autobiography; and the well-researched, expertly crafted
The Invisible Harry Gold
(1982) by Allen M. Hornblum, which for all its merits is unconvincing in rehabilitating its subject's role in history.

Of the post–Cold War looks at Soviet espionage during the Stalin era, Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev's
The Haunted Wood
(1999), dealing with previously sealed KGB records, proved for me a dry and sleep-inducing read. Much better is
The Man Behind the Rosenbergs
(2001) by “KGB spymaster” Alexander Feklisov and Sergei Kostin, although the title is an exaggeration—Feklisov never met Ethel Rosenberg—and the book may be of questionable reliability.

The Frank Olson case has, to date, produced only one book, H. P. Albarelli Jr.'s painstakingly researched
A Terrible Mistake
(2009), a mammoth undertaking (for writer and reader alike) that covers not only the Olson death but CIA mind control efforts in general throughout the Cold War. Labeling
A Terrible Mistake
definitive is not premature, though it does suffer slightly from repetition and the lack of a sharp editorial hand. Nonetheless, I am indebted to the author for his scholarship and dedication, and this crucial book.

Other Olson research included chapters or major sections of
Dead Wrong
(2012), Richard Belzer and David Wayne;
The Magician,
(2008, 2010), Ben Robinson;
The Men Who Stare at Goats
(2004), Jon Ronson;
Raw Deal
(1998), Ken Smith;
The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”
(1979), John Marks; and
A Voice for the Dead
(2005), James E. Starrs with Katherine Ramsland. Also helpful was the documentary
Investigative Reports: Mind Control Murder
(1999), directed by David Presswell and written by JoAnn Milivojevic. Finally, the Olson family's Web site—the Frank Olson Legacy Project—brims with information and numerous links to related articles (
www.franksolsonproject.org
).

Among articles utilized are “The Olson File” (
London Mail
, 1998), Kevin Dowling and Phillip Knightly; “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (2000, Gentlemen's Quarterly), Mary A. Fischer; and “What Did the C.I.A. Do to Eric Olson's Father?” (2001,
New York Times
), Michael Ignatieff.

Dashiell Hammett is one of four writers who inspired me at an early age to write crime fiction, and who instructed me in how to do it, in their very different ways. The others are Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Mickey Spillane. But first came Hammett, whose
The Maltese Falcon
I consider the greatest private eye novel ever written, unlikely to be surpassed.

So I came to this project having already read a lot about Hammett—everything I could get my hands on, really—but I can't point to one book on his life as the definitive one. All of the following are worthwhile, and each provided material for my characterization of Hammett:
Dashiell Hammett: A Casebook
(1969), William F. Nolan;
Dashiell Hammett: A Life
(1983), Diane Johnson;
Dashiell Hammett: Man of Mystery
(2014), Sally Cline;
Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett
(1981), Richard Layman;
Hellman and Hammett
(1996), Joan Mellen; and
Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett
(2001), edited by Richard Layman with Julie M. Rivett.

Hammett never headed up a committee like the one that hires Heller here, but he was a vocal Rosenberg supporter, as were those I appointed to his fictional committee, and he was involved with many such leftist causes and groups—interesting, because if ever a man seemed more an individualist and less a joiner, Hammett was it.

Two strikingly different looks at the life of Roy Cohn are
The Autobiography of Roy Cohn
(1988) by Sidney Zion and
Citizen Cohn
(1988) by Nicholas von Hoffman. Drew Pearson references include
Confessions of a Muckraker
(1979) by Jack Anderson with James Boyd;
Drew Pearson: An Unauthorized Biography
(1973) by Oliver Pilat; and
Drew Pearson Diaries 1949–1959
(1974), edited by Tyler Abell. Also consulted were
Frank Costello: Prime Minister of the Underworld
(1974) by George Wolf with Joseph DiMona, and
Kefauver: A Political Biography
(1971) by Joseph Bruce Gorman.

Research on a certain iconic beauty of the fifties included
Bettie Page: The Life of a Pin-Up Legend
(1996, 1998), Karen Essex and James L. Swanson;
Bettie Page: Queen of Curves
(2014), Petra Mason and Bunny Yeager;
The Real Bettie Page
(1997), Richard Foster; and the documentary
Bettie Page Reveals All
(2012), written by Doug Miller and directed by Mark Mori. No disrespect to Miss Page's memory is meant by the fantasy of her sexual relationship with Nathan Heller—my enthusiasm for Bettie predates by decades her latter-day discovery.

Bobby Kennedy research included
American Journey: The Times of Robert Kennedy
(1970), Jean Stein and George Plimpton;
The Enemy Within
(1960), Robert F. Kennedy;
Robert Kennedy: His Life
(2000), Evan Thomas;
RFK: A Candid Biography of Robert Kennedy
(1998), C. David Heymann; and
RFK: The Man Who Would Be President
(1967), Ralph De Toledano.

Location reference came from
New York Confidential
(1953), Jack Lait & Lee Mortimer;
New York in the '50s
(1992), Dan Wakefield;
No Cover Charge
(1956), Robert Sylvester;
The Village
(2013), John Strausbaugh;
Stork Club
(2000), Ralph Blumenthal;
The Waldorf-Astoria
(1991), Ward Morehouse III; and
Washington Confidential
(1951), Jack Lait & Lee Mortimer. In addition, WPA guides to New York City, New York State, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C., were consulted, including
New York Panorama
(1938). Prison reference included
Sing Sing
(2005), Denis Brian; and
Sing Sing (Images of America)
, (2003), Guy Cheli. Also helpful was a Sing Sing Internet photo gallery by Karl R. Josker.

The Internet has become an indispensable research tool for the Heller memoirs, and that I once wrote these books without it now seems unimaginable. Small facts were checked dozens of times during a writing session—for example, the spelling of once common and now obscure products, the names of radio/TV shows and popular music of the era, and the point at which slang terms and phrases entered general usage. Information on everything from the Waldorf Cafeteria to the Senate Caucus Room came from searching the Net. Acknowledging each Web site that provided a scrap of two of research would expand this bibliographical essay to an unwieldy length; my thanks to all of them.