Olson’s family says he wanted to leave his work after seeing what it involved, and that the CIA saw him as a security risk. The complaint in their 2012 lawsuit noted that his death matched a “secret assassination” technique in a CIA manual of the era: “the contrived accident is the most effective technique” because it “causes little excitement and is only casually investigated.” [1]
In 1994 his body was exhumed. Forensic scientist James Starrs found no cuts from window glass on the head and neck, though the 1953 autopsy reported them, and found a lump on the forehead that suggested a blow before the fall. Starrs called the evidence “rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide.” [2] In 2026 Kinzer told Congress that “evidence suggests that his death may not have been a suicide.” [3]
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