The CIA seems to be sitting on some documents about their history of assassination wet-work. They’re hiding the documents from the public and refuse to even divulge the policy which they claim prevents FOIA release to the public. Some really spooky stuff is lurking out there but all the CIA wants to say is that murdering people isn’t legal, even when they do it, so of course they wouldn’t have any records. This isn’t going away though, because it has broader implications for other FOIA requests across the board.
CIA in the assassination business
If the CIA is in the assassination business they certainly aren’t about to admit it to the public. Even though the public already has a pretty good idea what they’ve been up to all along. Political journalist J.M. Porup had just one simple question for the CIA in the Freedom of Information Act Request he filed way back on May 1, 2015. He asked for “any and all documents relating to CIA use of poison for covert assassinations.”
Because of the Church Hearings in the 1970’s the public already knows that records exist. The CIA simply refuses to look for them. Playboy published more information in a late 1970’s interview than the CIA is ready to admit.
The agency officially quickly responded to Porup on May 21, 2015, making it crystal clear they didn’t even look for records because assassination illegal. They won’t have any documents about illegal activity.
Porup took them to court. Everyone with an interest in filing FOIA requests is watching closely. The CIA didn’t deny they whack people anytime they want they just note it’s not lawful. “Please refer to Executive Order 12333 which describes the conduct of intelligence activities, citation 2.11, which pertains to the prohibition on assassinations.”
“No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination,” the CIA insists. The problem is that everyone already knows they did it in the past. The agency developed poisons and killed people quietly with them for decades. In the 1970’s the Church Committee led by Rep. Frank Church (D-Idaho) produced images of Church “holding up a specially designed poison dart gun the CIA had developed.”
During those hearings the public learned that there were several attempts to take out Fidel Castro. The CIA “attempted to lace Castro’s shoes with thallium salts in an attempt to make his hair fall out, developed a special hallucinogen it planned to spray on him during a live broadcast, and created a pen that concealed a hypodermic needle full of poison.” That’s nothing compared to what Playboy revealed.
CIA Weapon designer tells all
At the heart of the CIA denial is an internal policy which says they don’t have to reveal their assassination secrets. The policy itself is secret so that’s what Porup is fighting. Meanwhile everyone already knows some of the sneaky tricks that the CIA as been accused of using in the past.
In the late 70’s Playboy’s Laurence Gonzilles interviewed a CIA weapons designer widely believed to be Barry Rothman. The things he says in the interview are unconfirmed but totally plausible and definitely fascinating. For instance, just a few of the highlights make the Church hearings look tame.
Starting in the early 50’s he worked with the CIA while officially working in a government sponsored research facility. The interviewer checked his credentials and the expert brought a couple of his toys to the interview.
“He also showed me several devices that he had built for the CIA, including a modified butane ‘cigarette lighter that fired a tiny poisoned dart capable of Penetrating a heavy coat, He brought out an explosive .22-caliber bullet, which I tested in the presence of a firearms expert. It did explode.” He was the go to assassination specialist.
As far as the gun from the Church hearings, “I must have seen half a dozen different dart guns at one time or another, because I was testing either ballistics or methods of applying poisons.” He worked with a lot of poisons.
“Basically, I was asked by the CIA to devise methods and devices for assassination. Almost everything I worked with was designed to kill people. The three major assassination techniques I dealt with were shooting, poisoning and explosive devices. There was a lot of emphasis in those days—say, from 1952 to the late Sixties—on low profile devices.”
Tools of the assassination trade
They wanted someone killed quietly on an airplane. “I was given a substance called [deleted] a liquid that penetrates, the skin and carries with it anything you mix in.” He mixed in some snake venom and invented the felt tip pen.
“There’s another snake called the boomslang that I finally settled on, because the symptoms are very subtle. It causes internal bleeding and can take days to finally kill you. It would be hard to tell what had happened to you. And I took a ball point pen, substituted a wick for the refill, soaked it with the liquid and mixed in some ink. I actually invented the felt tip pen, but it never occurred to me to patent it. Anyway, you could just touch. someone with this and that was it.” When his contact seemed happy with the assassination tools, he asked, “I trust you tested them in house. No reaction.”
Another target needed to die in exactly eight minutes behind the wheel of his jaguar. He mixed some poison up with the magic liquid and painted it on the guys steering wheel.
To get the assassination right, “I had to know a lot — body weight, was he right handed, that sort of thing. They eventually brought me the steering wheel from a Jaguar and a photograph of the man driving which was just his hands on the wheel.”
One of the nastiest assassination weapons the expert designed was insanely powerful. “Suppose you’re in a situation in which it is impossible to bring into a room any firearms or unconventional things that would be suspect. How would you take care of roomful of guys?” A moderate-sized room.
“I wound up with one of the nastiest nasties that I came up with. That, incidentally, was the jargon for those gadgets: Assorted Nasties. This one was a sub-miniature bomb, roughly the size of a .45-caliber cartridge. You, threw it and it exploded. It was loaded with hardened steel shot, like bird shot, which was coated with poison.” The interviewer asked “Wasn’t that a bit dangerous for the person throwing it?” That brought a laugh. “It certainly was. It would kill him outright.” To the query “didn’t the agency object to that drawback?” the expert replied, “no. And I found that interesting.”
