Hollywood spies often have a myriad of amazing devices at their disposal for getting rid
of bad guys in a clandestine way.
It turns out, occasionally so do real spies.
Exhibit A: the CIA’s “undetectable” poison dart gun that near silently shot frozen
darts comprised of an unspecified, undetectable poison.
The individual hit reportedly would at most just feel something like a mosquito bite as
the dart penetrated their skin.
It would then quickly melt and the poison would do its work, leaving the victim dead
of an apparent heart attack, with no detectable evidence of the poison remaining.
The weapon was revealed as part of a broader Senate investigation into intelligence and
covert action abuses by the Agency.
The disclosure of the full gamut of activities and devices caused Senator Frank Church (D-ID)
to conclude that the CIA had become a “rogue elephant rampaging out of control.”
Spurred by the publication of Seymour Hersh’s game-changing article in The New York Times
on December 22, 1974, which relayed assassination attempts and covert activities to subvert
both foreign governments as well as American antiwar and other dissidents, the Senate formed
the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities
in 1975.
Chaired by Senator Church, during its two years of hearings, the Church Committee, as
it came to be known, published 14 reports on a variety of abuses by the CIA, Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and National Security Agency (NSA), as well as others.
These included routinely opening (and resealing) US citizens’ mail since 1952, misusing tax
information to target domestic dissidents, and conducting domestic, electronic surveillance
of peace and black power activists.
In addition, for the CIA, this also included developing weapons such as “a pistol [that]
can fire a poison dart 328 feet, kill a man before he knows he has been hit, and leave
no clue as to what killed him.”
Part of a program named MK Naomi, established for conducting and managing bacteriological
warfare, the poison dart gun was just one of many experiments by the agency, which also
included pesticides to ravage crops and on one occasion, using the NYC subway to test
out a “trial model” of a biological warfare attack.
On September 16, 1975, then CIA Director William Colby testified before the committee, which
also included Senators Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), John Tower (R-TX), Walter Mondale (D-MN),
Gary Hart (D-CO), Howard Baker (R-TN), Philip Hart (D-MI), Charles Mathias (R-MD), Walter
Huddleston (D-KY), Richard Schweiker (R-PN) and Robert Morgan (D-NC).
The director gave remarkable testimony regarding the development of “toxic agents” at a
laboratory at Fort Detrick, MD.
Notably, Director Colby testified that only “limited records” remained of these activities,
even though the program spanned from 1952-1970.
Among the director’s many extraordinary statements were these from his prepared remarks:
The specific subject today concerns CIA’s involvement in the development of bacteriological
warfare materials . . . retention of an amount of shellfish toxin, and CIA’s use and investigation
of various chemicals and drugs The need for such capabilities was tied to
. . . the development of two different types of suicide pills to be used in the event of
capture [during WWII] and a successful operation using biological warfare materials to incapacitate
a Nazi leader temporarily A . . . memo of 1967 identified . . . [the
range of] project activity: maintenance of a stockpile of temporarily incapacitating
and lethal agents . . . assessment and maintenance of biological and chemical dissemination systems
. . . [and] adaptation and testing of a dart device for clandestine and imperceptible inoculation
with biological warfare or chemical warfare agents
The only application of this [shellfish] toxin was in the U-2 flight over the U.S.S.R in
May 1960 [Gary Powers flight] Various dissemination devices, such as a fountain
pen dart launcher and an engine head bolt designed to release a substance when heated
[were developed] A large amount of Agency attention was given
to the problem of incapacitating guard dogs Work was also done on temporary human incapacitation
techniques . . . to incapacitate captives before they could render themselves incapable
of talking, or . . . take retaliatory action Success was never achieved [for the temporarily
incapacitating dart system] since a larger amount of an incapacitating agent is required
to safely inactivate a human than of a lethal agent . . . to kill him
Though specific accounting for each agent . . . is not on hand, DOD records indicate
that the materials were, in fact, destroyed in 1970 by SOD personnel, except for the 11
grams [of shellfish toxin].
. . plus the 8 milligrams [of cobra venom, both found in a vault]
A complete inventory . . . was taken . . . consisted of . . . materials and delivery systems . . . lethal
materials, incapacitants, narcotics, hallucinogenic drugs, irritants and riot control agents,
herbicides, animal control materials and many common chemicals
Upon further questioning by the senators, Colby described how the poison dart gun worked:
The Chairman: Does this pistol fire the dart?
Mr. Colby: Yes . . . The round thing at the top is obviously the sight, the rest of it
is practically a normal .45 . . . However, it works by electricity.
There is a battery in the handle.
The Chairman: So that . . . it fires silently?
Mr. Colby: Almost silently.
. . . The Chairman: And the dart itself, when it
strikes the target, does the target know?
Mr. Colby: That depends . . . .There are different kinds of these flechettes [darts] . . . and
a special one was developed which potentially would . . . enter the target without perception.
. . . The Chairman: Is it not true . . that the
effort not only involved designing a gun . . . but also the toxin itself would not appear in
the autopsy?
Mr. Colby: Yes; so there was no way of perceiving that the target was hit . . . .
Senator Tower: Turning to the dart gun, was it ever employed for any purpose by the Agency?
Mr. Colby: I think merely experiments . . . I do not know of any actual use.
There is no record of any actual use.