Wormwood is a documentary and dramatization of the incidents around the 1953 death of a U.S. military scientist working in conjunction with the CIA. This review contains spoilers that are unwound in the six parts of the Netflix series by Errol Morris. Consider that before reading further. Ultimately I give Wormwood a thumbs down. There is some great filmmaking technique but Morris is too self indulgent. He gets carried away with drama technique and what could be told in two hours gets spread out over 4 1/2 hours. He uses drama to set the mood and tone but ultimately much of it it adds nothing. The film is expertly shot and the performances, especially Peter Saarsgard, are top notch. Frank Olson was a U.S. Army scientist working at the intersection of intelligence and germ warfare. He dies after a fall from the 13th floor of New York hotel in 1953. The family is told he jumped or fell. But things don't add up. Then in 1975 the story comes out that the government slipped Olson LSD during an experiment to test secret keeping on personnel, with the implication being he committed suicide during a flashback several days later. The show spends a lot of time in New York trying to recreate Olson's last days. But this is much speculation. They have only sparse details. The protagonist is Olson's son Eric, who led efforts to investigate his father's death. Wormwood is as much about him as his father. Largely through Eric's narration we learn about the family 's trip to the White House to get an apology from President Ford and also about a visit to CIA Director Colby. Later, Eric finds the CIA assassination manual that said falls were the preferred method of hiding murder. Eric also has contact with his father's former coworker who told him his father was a dissident on germ warfare and CIA interrogation techniques. So as Morris unpeels the onion Eric says it wasn't a bad acid trip that killed his father but rather it was a CIA execution. The circumstantial evidence is compelling. One of the CIA guys orbiting Olson was an assassination expert. Plus the government story is just BS. And to wrap everything up is Seymour Hersch, the veteran investigative reporter who says he knows something but can't share it. The 79-year-old Hersh is lucid on camera but his reputation has taken a beating since he wrote the Obama administration lied about the capture and execution of Bin Laden. The New Yorker wouldn't print the story. Plus I have other problems with the story as told by Morris. They exhume Olson after 40 years and a family friend does another autopsy that contradicts the official version. The new examination finds no cuts indicating he crashed through glass. There is one type of death symptom that disappears after two weeks. How are clues supposed to stick around for 40 years? I am not saying Olson wasn't killed by the CIA. But I wish the execution story had more scrutiny.
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