This clandestine pistol is modified to:
-be electrically fired
-be extremely quiet
-shoot a deadly poison that emulates a heart attack and doesn’t show up on autopsies
-be capable of shooting a target without them realizing they’ve been shot
-work at 100 yards
Video of the hearing: [3:57] https://youtu.be/4m6dldvNECI?si=
Is this something that’s actually been demonstrated as real and functional or is this just what they said while waving around a prop?
How did they keep the dart from melting? A 100m range for a frozen dart? I’m not an expert and welcome correction, but this seems very implausible to me. This is the sort of problem the Mythbusters would be great at tackling.
I just have trouble believing anything the CIA claims. This seems like the sort of item you trot out to justify your obscene budget.
I don’t think there is any video of it firing, I’d be interested if anyone does find some. I suppose you could have a cooler that contains frozen ammo which an agent would carry to their firing location.
They sound like extraordinary claims but I don’t think it was in the CIA’s interest to announce they had something that poisons people and makes it look like a heart attack.
This was well after the theory that they killed JFK and that information could be used to support claims that they’ve killed other people (truly or not) which might put negative political pressure on the agency.
At the time congress was trying to reign in the CIA which had been operating under effectively zero supervision for three decades.
You don’t need a cooler, just a vial of liquid nitrogen or dry ice. If the gun was air powered rather than fired with gunpowder the heat issue would be substantially reduced. Also the dirt didn’t need to be fully solid at time of impact to effectively poison the target, as all that was needed was liquid contact with the skin.
Also everyone here seems to be pretending that flachette rounds aren’t a thing and weren’t proposed to replace bullets as the primary rounds for the standard issue rifle for the us military as recently as the Advanced Combat Rifle program to replace the M16. AAI’s flachette rifle went all the way to final testing and consideration, and was easily accurate at 100m and beyond. This weapon shot single darts aka flachettes and would have no problem with achieving accuracy at 30m with a shorter barrel.
