Even though the CIA DID have a special type umbrella that could fire darts, it would have been an incredible shot to make with the wind gusts and the moving target , so That theory is a low probability at best.
M.K. Naomi
WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 —The Central Intelligence Agency operated an 18-year, $3-million super-secret project to develop poisons, biochemical, weapons and such devices as dart guns to administer them, the agency's director testified today.
William E. Colby, Director of Central Intelligence, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that pursuant to a Presidential order the project. code-named “M.K. Naomi,” was halted in February, 1970.
Mr. Colby showed the committee a dart gun patterned on the Army's Colt semi-automatic pistol but electrically fired. He said it could shoot a dart 100 meters and was “almost silent.”
The dart gun, brought before the committee at its request, was described in a C.I.A. memo as a “nondiscernible microbionoculator.”
The committee made public C.I.A. documents showing that the agency had a vast array of poisons, including many that would cause deadly diseases, and systems for destroying crops.
The documents also showed that the C.I.A. had used the New York City subway system as a “trial model” for a study on the vulnerability of subway riders to covert attack.
According to Congressional cources, C.I.A. officials have said they flooded the New York subways with a “harmless simulant” of a disease-carrying gas.
It was in the secret project that two poisons, one a toxin made from shellfish, the other a derivative of cobra venom, were stockpiled by the C.I.A. in violation of President Nixon's directive, Mr. Colby said.
Later in today's hearing—the Senate Committee's first public session — Dr. Nathan Gordon said that, at his direction, the two poisons were not destroyed in 1970. He said that he had received no specific order from the C.I.A. hierarchy to get rid of the material.
Dr. Gordon, a chemist who retired from the C.I.A. in 1973, said that he had been aware of the Presidential directive ordering the destruction of biological and chemical weapons. However, he said he felt that the shellfish toxin was not covered on the ground that the order was directed at use of chemical weapons by the military and that the C.I.A.'s shellfish toxin didn't fall into that category.
Explains Hiding of Poisons
He said hat he did not ask permission to save the materials rather than destroy them, nor did he tell his superiors that he had secreted the poisons in a vault at his Washington laboratory. He said that he and two members of his section planned to reveal that they had the poisons if “higher authority” at the C.I.A. had asked them for suggestions for an effective poison.
Much of what was told to the committee about C.I.A. operations at the public hearing today had been reported previously, based on information from sources familiar with testimony given to the committee in secret sessions.
Mr. Colby said that in May, 1952, the C.I.A. began a joint project with the special operations division of the Army Biological Laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md. During the course of this project, his testimony and documents disclosed, the C.I.A. stockpiled substances that would cause tuberculosis. anthrax, encephalitis (sleeping sickness), valley fever, salmonella food poisoning and smallpox.
Development of Darts
He said the C.I.A. had developed darts that could shoot poison into a person without an autopsy or physical examination of the victim easily discovering that a dart had been fired.
Mr. Colby said that the project had beer subject to a high degree of secrecy within the C.I.A. Only two or three officers at any given time were cleared for access to Fort Detrick activities, he said.
Though some C.I.A.-originated documents “have been found in the project files, it is clear only a very limited documentation of activities took place,” he added.
Mr. Colby acknowledged under questioning that because of the paucity of records on the project he could not rule out that the poisons had been used for a substantial number of aggressive operations. He said that a technical aide had once suggested to him that poison be used in a C.I.A. operation but that he had rejected the idea.
An October, 1967, memorandum on the Naomi project said that there were silent electrical delivery systems, mechanical launchers and anti-crop “dissemination kits.”
Situation Report
The memorandum was a standard end-of-year situation report on a project.
According to the memorandum, the purposes of the Naomi project were to “stockpile severely incapacitating and lethal materials for the specific use of TSD [Technical Services Division]” and to “maintain in operational readiness special and unique items for the dissemination of biological and chemical materials.”
Mr. Colby said that part of the operational use might have been to prepare fast-acting suicide pills for American agents and nonlethal incapacitating substances that would prevent a captive from taking his life or a terrorist from carrying out his intent. He also said that the agency had done substantial research on how to incapacitate guard dogs.
Mr. Colby acknowledged, that “these materials” had been prepared for one operation, but said “we are aware that that operation was not in fact completed.”
Sources familiar with the Senate investigation, however have told The New York Times that the committee has testimony of at least two incidents in which poisons were prepared in connection with a planned political assassination. In one case the agency contemplated doing away with Patrice Lumumba, a Communist-backed Congo leader who later died in an unrelated episode, according to these sources. The other case reportedly dealt with Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba.
The Naomi project operated in such secrecy, Mr. Colby said, that he learned of it only earlier this year when a former agency emploe brought to his attention that two poisons had been kept in defiance of a Presidential order. Mr. Colby ordered an investigation by Dr. Sayre Stevens, deputy director of the science and technology division.
The investigation discovered that an 8-by-10-foot, seldom used room in a C.I.A. laboratory building near the State Department in Washington con rained the shellfish toxin as well as the cobra venom.
A search of the room netted 19 other lethal substances in addition to the shellfish toxin and cobra venom. These included poisons such as strychnine and cyanide pills as well as a material that causes abortions in animals. There was also a wide range of “incapacitating” materials including those that lower blood pressure, cause temporary amnesia and impair kidney function.
Mr. Colby has asked permission from the Senate committee to destroy most of the substances after the investigation is completed.
Dr. Gordon testified that after the Presidential order was issued in 1970 for the destruction of biochemical warfare agents, he went to his superior, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, and suggested that the C.I.A. transfer its stock of such materials to a private laboratory in Baltimore.
He identified himself as the, author of a memorandum submitted in evidence that made this proposal to Thomas Karamessines, then chief of C.I.A.'s covert actions. The memorandum showed that the C.I.A. had some 5.9 grams of the deadly shellfish toxin at Fort Detrick. Mr. Karmessines has told committee staff members that he never received the memorandum.
Transfer Reported Vetoed
Dr. Gordon said that Dr. Gottlieb had overruled the idea of transferring the materials to a private laboratory and had told him to let the Army's laboratory at Fort Detrick have the C.I.A.'s stockpile. Instead, however, Dr. Gordon said that he and his staff had decided to store two of the poisons.
Senator Richard S. Schweiker, Republican of Pennsylvania, said that there was an apparent discrepancy concerning the amount of shellfish poison given to the C.I.A. The agency has said that it has some 11 grams of the poison, yet Dr. Gordon's 1970 memorandum said there were about 5.9 grams on hand.
Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho, chairman of the committee, said that the committee would ask Department of Defense officials if more tanh the C.I.A. portion of shellfish toxin was transferred to the C.I.A. in an effort by other agencies to subvert the intent of President Nixon's 1970 order.
The C.I.A. shellfish toxin about two teaspoons full, constitutes one-third of all shellfish poison ever produced, Mr. Church said. He said that administered in one manner it could kill 14,000 persons and if used in another fashion could be lethal to “hundreds of thousands.”
The original production of shellfish toxin was made by the Department of the Army. Portions were later used by the C.I.A. and the Food and Drug Administration.
Mr. Church said that the committee will ask Richard Helms, former Director of Central Intelligence, tomorrow why clear orders for the poison's destruction had not been issued.
http://www.nytimes.com/1975/09/17/archives/colby-describes-cia-poison-work-he-tells-senate-panel-of-secret.html?_r=0----------------------------------
Fletcher Prouty went into detail about the umbrella weapon he knew was in development through the CIA. Prouty & Lansdale were due to witness the mechanism for the umbrella gun in operation during a live fire demonstration. But their helicopter crashed on take off from the Pentagon. It crashed into a field of Harold Weisberg, whose farm neighbored the Pentagon. Weisberg later sued the Pentagon for damages to livestock. Prouty discussed this (helicopter crash) with Weisberg via letters. I've read them.
Here is from Prouty's email reply section on the very subject of the dart weapon.
To pick up your question that has to do with the explosive bullet of the JFK era, I shall open Leonard Moseley's fine book, DULLES. On page 459 it provides some good comments on this bullet, etc. by commenting ALLEN DULLES: Now he was interested in the more sinister Agency experiments in mind bending drugs, portable phials of lethal viruses and esoteric poisons that killed without trace. Allen's sense of humor was touched when he learned that the unit working on these noxious enterprises was called the Health Alteration Committee (directed by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb and Boris Pash), and he added to his collection of CIA curios a noiseless gun which the committee had produced for firing darts smeared with LSD, germs, or venom at enemy agents or foreign personalities whose existence the CIA was finding embarrassing."
You will note, in this opener, we have the names "Gottleib and Pash." It just happens that Gottlieb died on March 7, 1999 in Washington, DC. I worked rather closely with him and his staff, MKULTRA during certain years of my assignment in the Pentagon under Gen. Erskine and with Lansdale. This is where our story begins.
One day Lansdale came across the hall to my office with a man whom he addressed as the "Inventor" of a new small, and special weapon which he would like to have us study. The man remained in my office for an hour or more as he took that small weapon that was little more than a high-powered "dart" that was fired from a pipe-let about the size of a "milk-shake straw". The tip of this device could be loaded with a high explosive, and the whole thing could be fired through this "straw" from any small pipe, or barrel. In his eagerness, he inserted one into a straw section about 10 or 12" inches long. Then he lightly touched a small button and in a silent instant it flashed across my office, into the wall on the other side.
As he calmed me down he told me that this device could be fired from many devices...one of the best might be an ordinary umbrella modified to fired it through a "straw-like' tube at high and silent speed. It would be silent and would explode upon hitting its target...say another human being.
A week later Ed Lansdale and I took a helicopter ride from the Pentagon to a special laboratory that had been working with the inventor and some of their staff of specialists. In a short time they had adequately demonstrated this new, silent device. It killed a goat at a distance of about 30-40 feet.
Of the many devices these men had worked on was an umbrella. The handle contained the hand-activated, silent trigger. This fired the small rocket at the goat. The deadly part of this tiny weapon was a sight set at about the sight in the handle to be even with a tip of the umbrella rib. The sight and umbrella were designed to be in a perfectly straight and level line. The dart would hit the "target-animal" silently and at high speed. Then it would be exploded with a terrific burst inside the body of the target. Anyone could see that this weapon was lethal.
Lansdale and I returned to the Pentagon and as far as I recall this device was entered into the MKULTRA arsenal of special "toys."
I believe that this is the weapon you have described in your e-mail message. I have always believed that it would be uncovered in due time. Perhaps the timely death of Col Gottlieb. opened the door. Much can be said about this weapon and its possible utilization as the JFK assassination tool.
You may be interested to know that there is a new assassination book, "ASSASSINATION SCIENCE" on the market by a skilled team of doctors who are familiar with the JFK Assassinations and the medical work that has been studied since then. I suggest you get the book, and speak to these specialists.
Thank you for your note,
L. Fletcher Prouty
Colonel USAF (Ret'd)
formerly...Chief of Special Operations
from
http://www.prouty.org/email.htmlI believe there is a clip somewhere on youtube of Prouty discussing he and Lansdale's helicopter crash.
Another quote from Col. Prouty's website. below
"That [umbrella] system was quite remarkable. You could see the subject through the targeting mechanism just like he was right there in front of you--close up--and you'd track him by rotating the canopy. A shot like the one in Dealey Plaza wouldn't have been difficult. You see, the distance from Kennedy to that man with the umbrella looks a lot farther in the pictures and films, but it was quite close. An easy shot with a device like that. I've seen it done in testing from a much greater distance than that. Once they blew the hind leg clean off of a goat with one of those darts--loaded with a very high explosive--from about a hundred yards away."
Paul Kernanez is the name Col. Prouty gave to identify the person that made the umbrella gun mechanism for the CIA.
