Narrator: Eavesdropping, poison,
secret devices,
and murder.
As technology advances,
the tools of spycraft grow more sophisticated...
The beauty of this device is it's basically invisible to detection techniques.
Narrator: ...and more deadly.
Does this pistol fire the dart?
The CIA has an unlimited budget and no oversight.
Narrator: Espionage reaches peak intensity during the Cold War.
It enters the human body and then melts, leaving no trace.
Powers: It was a very ingenious way to deliver a poison.
Narrator: From killer toxins to flying robots...
O'Donnell: They have basically created a cyborg cat.
Gary Powers: This device was ahead of its time.
...the world of clandestine intelligence has few limits...
O'Donnell: They are engaged in efforts
to assassinate foreign officials,
and this causes a firestorm.
...and many dark secrets.
Not all inventions are made with good intentions.
Unlock the twisted history
behind the world's darkest marvels.
For millennia, humans have relied on devious methods
to protect state secrets.
Jackson: As long as there have been governments,
or the need to procure information
that is otherwise not accessible,
espionage has been there.
Espionage shows up in the Old Testament.
You know, the story of Moses
leading the Israelites out of Egypt,
they get to the doorstep of the Promised Land,
and he decides to send 12 spies in
to see are the people there strong or weak?
Are they friendly or foe?
So this was an early example
of that kind of-- the need for intel,
the need for spies in order to protect oneself.
Sun Tzu's classic book written in 400 B.C.,
"The Art of War,"
basically says what any good general
or great leader needs is foreknowledge,
and that foreknowledge, of course, comes from spies.
Narrator: The best spies were often those you'd least expect.
Powers: During the Middle Ages, there would be clergy involved
in espionage activities.
They could read, write multiple languages,
and they could blend in to society.
They were a trusted figure.
Narrator: Some even go on to inspire popular culture,
like Queen Elizabeth I's favorite spy, John Dee.
O'Donnell: John Dee is a magician in the court of Queen Elizabeth.
He travels on her behalf and sends back letters
that are marked for her eyes only.
Whitaker: Queen Elizabeth knew that in order to retain power,
she was gonna have to keep a tight grip on things.
One of the ways she did that
was a very sophisticated espionage structure,
and that's to say that she sees all
and she hears all.
And if there is any inkling of treason,
she will find it out.
Jackson: John Dee is sending correspondence
in which he signs with two O's,
a double O, and then a seven.
The reason for that is the two O's
are meant to indicate
that it's for the Queen's eyes only.
Seven has a connotation with magic.
And of course, that 007 may very well have been
the inspiration for James Bond.
Narrator: In time, spies start using specialty tools
to help them win wars.
Powers: George Washington was our first spymaster.
During the Revolutionary War,
General Washington needed to get information
about the strengths and weaknesses of the British.
O'Donnell: They develop a unique form of invisible ink
which they would write messages,
and then the receiver would have a chemical
that they could spread on it which would then reveal the message.
Narrator: But there's also a much darker side.
Spies who are captured pay the ultimate price.
Young: The Tower of London, originally it was built
to keep potential enemies away,
but it quickly developed into a prison
to hold people in.
Narrator: Including 11 enemy spies
caught during World War I
who are tortured
and finally executed by firing squad.
As the Cold War launches after World War II,
espionage hits a whole new level of intensity
and subterfuge.
August, 1945.
Victorious allies, the U.S. and the Soviet Union,
are allegedly working together to rebuild Europe,
but that's just the cover story.
Powers: Students from the Vladimir Lennon Academy in Moscow
present this great seal to Ambassador William Harriman
at the embassy-- a token of appreciation,
little school children coming in with flowers,
and press, and a nice, wonderful way
to promote the friendship between our two countries.
O'Donnell: And so they placed the great seal on the wall
behind Harriman's desk in the U.S. embassy.
He doesn't know, but inside that beautiful carving
is an ingenious listening device.
Narrator: The device traces back to programs
created by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
His brutal political purges
see an estimated 18 million people either killed
or imprisoned in forced labor camps called gulags.
Anybody that was seen as suspicious,
you could just be snatched up off of the street
and sent to one of the gulags.
O'Donnell: For many people this is just
a slow motion death sentence.
They die in two, three, four, five years
because the conditions are so harsh.
Food is poor, they're worked to death.
I think it goes without saying
that they weren't particularly pleasant places to be.
Narrator: But forced labor means different things
for different prisoners.
O'Donnell: A certain subset of people that had specialized knowledge
that could be useful to the state,
he sequestered them in a specialized laboratories
where they could do work on behalf of the Soviets.
Powers: Now this is under duress.
They're not like, "Okay, you can live here for a year
develop for the scientific community,
and then we'll let you go."
This is the Soviet Union.
It's a gulag.
If they don't perform, they'll be executed.
They are under a lot of stress
to make sure that they develop cutting edge technology.
Narrator: Among those arrested
and shipped off to a gulag,
is inventor Leon Theremin.
Leon Theremin was born in Russia
and grew up to be a brilliant young budding scientist.
And he studies how radio waves work.
He develops what turns out to be one of the most unique musical instruments of all time.
It bears his name. The theremin.
( theremin warbling )
Narrator: As the inventor of the world's first electronic instrument,
Theremin's expertise makes him the perfect choice
to engineer a state of the art listening device,
one that the Soviets ultimately plant inside the great seal
presented to Ambassador Harriman.
It's a passive listening device
because it doesn't have a power source.
Hammond: There was no battery.
There was nothing there that would be picked up
by conventional anti-surveillance,
anti-bugging machines, or inventions.
Well, it means that it can stay there for an indefinite period of time.
It gets its power from radio waves that are transmitted from outside.
Those radio waves come in,
they energize the circuit inside the listening device,
allow it to record,
and then also transmit what it hears
back to a receiver that's also outside.
The beauty of this device
is it's basically invisible to detection techniques.
Narrator: The entire unit weighs just 1.1 ounces,
about the same as a single slice of bread.
Its devious design allows the device to stay hidden
inside the ambassador's office until 1951.
O'Donnell: A member of the British military is listening in on Soviet air traffic,
and suddenly he hears English language being spoken,
and he reports that to the United States officials.
They do a massive bug sweep in the embassy,
Can't find anything. It happens a second time.
Another radio operator also picks up conversations
coming from the U.S. embassy,
and they do another thorough bug sweep.
They don't find it.
They know that something's happening
inside the embassy, but where is it?
O'Donnell: American officials are puzzled
because they know there's bugs operating
in the embassy, but they cannot find them.
So they bring in some of their best people,
and they realize that maybe the way to catch this bug
is not just to sniff around for electric interference,
but to simulate something that the Soviets would want to record.
Narrator: The new American ambassador,
George F. Kennan, is eager to help.
Powers: They have George Kennan sit down at his office desk
and dictate an important sounding memo to his secretary.
The CIA guys are inside doing a sweep
to find out where the bugs are hidden.
At first, before he's talking, there's nothing there.
As soon as he starts to talk,
and this device is pinged with a radio signal,
they're able to determine that the bug is located
in the great seal of the United States.
They pull it off the wall, they peel it open,
and lo and behold, inside is this tiny,
1.1 ounce, very small, passive listening device.
Basically, the Soviets have had an ear in that room
for seven years without the U.S. knowing it.
Powers: They were listening to every conversation
that took place within the ambassador's office.
I am sure that very important information
was able to be gained during that time period.
Once the Americans discover this listening device in the great seal,
they do not announce it publically.
They sit on it.
Narrator: July, 1955.
Leaders from the U.S., Britain, and France
and the USSR gather in Geneva.
Powers: We have these two new world leaders,
Eisenhower in America,
Khrushchev in the Soviet Union.
At the meeting in Geneva,
they want to see what they can do to work together
so they can peacefully coexist.
O'Donnell: The United States in the mid-1950s
is building a huge nuclear arsenal,
building up its military
to fend off a potential Soviet invasion.
At the same time, the Eisenhower administration
is also trying to not have to use it.
And so one gesture that Eisenhower comes up with
in 1955 is called the Open Skies initiative.
Powers: Eisenhower says to Khrushchev,
let us overfly your territory taking photos.
You can overfly our territory taking photos.
That way each side will know that the other
is not preparing for a surprise attack.
But Khrushchev says, no, nyet.
I do not want you pesky Americans overflying my country.
Narrator: This rejection is met with suspicion.
Powers: Back in Washington DC,
the Eisenhower administration is worried.
What is he hiding?
He must be building up for a surprise attack.
So as a result, Eisenhower authorizes the development
of a U-2 spy plane in 1955.
They need to find out a place to build it in secret.
So the American government purchases Area 51
in the Nevada desert
to develop the U-2 spy plane.
Dickrell: The U-2 spy plane was initially developed
by Lockheed to be a high-altitude reconnaissance plane
flying at 70,000 feet.
And the idea would be it's so high,
it's undetectable by radar and can't be hit by missiles.
Powers: In addition, in the belly of the aircraft,
they have a camera.
This camera is so advanced
it can take photographs of the tanks, the missiles,
the bombers in these foreign countries.
Hammond: And just like the great seal bug
the U-2 spy plane was the first of its kind.
So going up there to 70,000 feet,
about twice the height that you and I fly when we fly,
it was something that had never been done before.
Narrator: It's also a risky endeavor for the pilots.
Dickrell: The pilots that are operating the U-2
are basically at the edge of space.
They're half astronauts, half pilots,
so it's quite a physically demanding and dangerous environment.
The pilots have to wear special pressurized suits
to keep their blood from boiling because they're at such great altitude.
Narrator: In 1956,
the new U-2 spy planes hit the skies.
O'Donnell: The U.S. believes flying at that height
and at that speed that it is an undetectable aircraft.
Turns out, the Soviets do detect it.
They file a formal protest at the United Nations.
But the Americans go, "What plane?
We don't have a plane over your country. Prove it."
Narrator: Over the next four years,
the U.S. continues their covert missions.
Powers: My father Francis Gary Powers was employed by the CIA.
He was a spy pilot. He would fly the U-2 spy plane
over foreign hostile countries taking photographs.
So between 1956 and 1960,
my dad does 27 successful missions.
Hammond: But at the same time,
the Soviets knew about the U-2 spy plane.
They're developing the equipment and the technology
and the planning to take down a U-2.
Powers: On May 1st, 1960,
my father's on his 28th mission
over the Soviet Union.
Eight missiles were fired at the airplane.
One of them hits my dad's plane.
Dad goes into a dive, the wings break off,
goes into an inverted spin, tumbling out of the sky.
When Powers' plane is struck, he has one important thing to do
which is to hit a button that is going to destroy
the important secret stuff in that plane.
Powers: My father was about to hit the destruct button,
but then he realized he couldn't get in
the proper position to use the ejection seat.
If he had hit the switch and then ejected,
he would have severed his legs on the way out.
So instead, he opens up the canopy
which floats off into space,
falls free of the airplane,
parachute opens automatically at 15,000 feet.
He parachutes down to the ground.
Narrator: Powers lands safely,
but he's in Soviet territory and knows he'll be captured.
Powers has the option of suicide.
He has with him a coin, a special fake coin,
that is loaded with poison and has a needle,
and he can inject himself with that.
So my father decided to take this device with him
on May 1st of 1960,
a hollowed out silver dollar worn on a bevel.
Once you take the bevel off,
out pops a small pin.
The pin was dipped in shellfish toxin.
One prick of the skin would bring death within minutes.
Pilots are told it's an optional device
to use in the event of torture,
not in the event of capture.
So he looks at the pin, looks at the dollar,
takes the pin out.
He contemplates using it.
Instead, he puts it in his flight suit pocket,
throws the dollar away.
Narrator: Powers is picked up by Soviet military
and transported to Lubyanka Prison in Moscow.
Powers: Khrushchev holds a press conference.
Very gleefully announces to the world,
"Ah, comrades, not only did we shoot down the plane,
but we also have captured the pilot, Francis Gary Powers,
who's confessed to spying for the CIA."
And while all this was unfolding,
my dad's been stuck in a Russian prison cell
going through the interrogations.
16 hour days, bright spotlight,
grueling questions, threats of death.
No physical torture, but a lot of mental anguish.
Narrator: With the spy pilot and his plane in their clutches,
the Soviets call a meeting of the U.N. Security Council,
demanding an apology and concessions from the U.S.
O'Donnell: And this event takes place over four days,
where the Soviets rail and rail and lay out their evidence.
And then things take a dramatic turn
that they do not expect on the fourth day.
Narrator: That's when America's U.N. ambassador
Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. reveals a surprise.
Lodge says, "Well, actually the Soviets have been engaged in spying themselves.
And as evidence, we're going to show you."
And they pull out the wood carving of the great seal...
...and explains that this thing has been sitting
in the U.S. embassy for seven years
listening in on delicate secret conversations,
and the Soviets are just as guilty as we are.
And therefore, there's no cause for condemnation of the United States.
And the security council votes seven to two
to not condemn the United States.
Narrator: In 1962,
Francis Gary Powers comes home
as part of a prisoner exchange.
But the U-2 incident only escalates the battle
for new spy technology, including some methods
that feel ripped from the pages of a spy thriller.
Narrator: After the infamous mo U-2 spy plane debacle,...
the CIA is determined to create
less conspicuous devices.
It's important to point out at this point that the CIA
has basically an unlimited budget and no oversight.
So there's a lot of really smart, somewhat quirky people
in these labs coming up with ideas like,
"How about we do this? How about we do that?"
They at one point in time in World War II,
had put cameras on pigeons
to overfly territories to take photos.
They're now stepping up the game.
Somebody in the CIA technology division
comes up with the idea of using a cat,
figuring the cat is innocuous,
no one's gonna pay attention to it.
If they can somehow attach, or in this case embed
a listening device, that might really be
the success they're looking for.
So, they take a cat, and they surgically implant
a listening device in the ear canal.
They put a transmitter at the base of the skull,
and then they put a wire antenna
sort of through the length of the body into the tail
underneath the skin.
And so they basically have created a cyborg cat,
or, you know, some people called it a "Frankenkitty."
Narrator: The project becomes officially known as the Acoustic Kitty.
O'Donnell: Once they have figured out the technology,
the big challenge, they found out,
was training the cat.
Training a cat to go to a particular target
and then linger around that target
long enough to capture enough audio.
And they find out what most people
who have been around cats learn pretty quickly,
is that it's almost impossible to train a cat.
Powers: For five years, the CIA hires these trainers
to train the cat to do what they want.
To walk ten feet and stop.
To lay down and sleep near to two people talking.
Now, in the laboratory it works,
but they finally want to do a real-life operation.
O'Donnell: They pull up in a van outside of a park in Washington DC
where they know that two men are sitting on a bench near the Soviet embassy
and they are Soviet embassy officials.
And they want to send the cat across the street
to listen in on their conversation.
They let the cat go.
He's supposed to walk over
to this bench and sit down
near these two people talking.
Instead, he runs across the street,
gets hit by a car.
The CIA spends $20 million to develop this acoustic kitty.
$20 million down the drain.
Narrator: But as with many top secret spy projects,
not everyone tells the same story.
There's a second version of this story
which is the cat just simply proved untrainable,
the project seemed to be going nowhere.
They decommission the cat.
They perform sort of reverse surgery on the cat,
pulled out the surveillance equipment.
The cat recovered and lived a happy long life.
If you believe that.
Dickrell: With the failure of the Acoustic Kitty,
the CIA decided they want to use this idea,
but in a more controlled fashion.
Live animals probably aren't the way to go.
But biomimetic design, a way of mimicking nature,
is a pretty good idea.
So the thinking turns to
if you want to make a listening device or a bug,
let's model it after an actual bug.
Narrator: In 1970, the CIA tasks technologist Charles Adkins
with creating a far-fetched new spy--
a flying robotic insect
designed to place listening devices near targets.
The CIA was developing new technologies to employ the same idea
that the Theremin great seal bug used-- passive listening.
Now they've developed it into a way
that it could be used with laser beams
as opposed to radio waves.
Narrator: This recording device works
by using tiny mirrors called retroreflectors.
If you attach a retroreflector to a window,
what's going on inside the room will cause it to vibrate.
Lasers can listen passively
by basically bouncing a laser off the retroreflector.
That retroreflected laser light is sensitive enough
to reconstruct the speech
not by listening with a microphone,
by listening with light.
Narrator: Adkins' team then looks
for just the right robo-insect to mount it on.
Powers: First, they looked at bumblebees.
But bumblebees were too erratic. They were too small.
So they settled on the dragonfly,
a little bit bigger,
and dragonflies, with their four wings,
could glide, could fly, could go backwards, forwards.
It's gonna be more maneuverable, more controllable.
Dickrell: The ultimate purpose of the dragonfly
is to crash into the window connected to the room
that you want to listen to, therefore depositing
the retroreflector, sticking it to that window.
So, the bug itself, the dragonfly, is not the listening device.
It's really just the delivery mechanism.
Narrator: With their bug of choice selected,
they must figure out how to replicate the wings of a dragonfly,
which flap up to 1,800 times per minute.
The wing actuation technology of this dragonfly bug
uses fluidic oscillators.
These would be small fluid pistons
that vibrate very, very quickly.
But the wings of the dragonfly themselves
weren't sufficient to propel the dragonfly forward.
The CIA had to add basically jet nozzles
that would exhaust gas backwards,
making the dragonfly move at sufficient speed
to get it where it needed to go.
Narrator: They dub this miniature marvel
the Insectothopter.
But at a weight of just one gram,
it ultimately proves to have a fatal flaw.
O'Donnell: In the laboratory the Insectothopter worked wonderfully,
and they had great confidence in it.
But like the Acoustic Kitty
and other devices they came up with,
when they put them in the field,
the results were quite different.
Powers: In a laboratory, there's no wind.
Outside in the real world, when they have to deploy this
to fly to an embassy window,
and there's a gust of wind,
all of a sudden the dragonfly is useless.
Anything over seven miles per hour of wind,
the dragonfly was not controllable.
Narrator: The CIA scraps the robotic dragonfly project
after investing $140,000,
the equivalent of over a million dollars today.
However, the project is still considered a success
because it spawned an entire industry of unmanned aerial vehicles.
Powers: I think there are 900,000 licenses for drones
right now in the United States.
But back in the 1970s, this was the very first drone
that was ever developed for these type of applications.
Dickrell: As an engineer, thinking about the dragonfly bug
in the 1970s is an extremely impressive feat,
because micro-robotics today are hard to do,
much less back in the 1970s.
Powers: This device, this dragonfly,
it was ahead of its time.
Narrator: But some believe recent evidence points to other
darker potential uses for the miniature drone.
O'Donnell: The CIA does not publicize its failures,
so it was many years before we learned the truth about the dragonfly program.
And that was due to the work of John Greenwald
who's an anti-secrecy activist.
He obtained the files and then released them to the public,
where we learned of this rather elaborate dragonfly or Insectothopter Program.
Powers: It was discovered through
the Freedom of Information Act
request from the CIA that they were also
looking to use this technology
as a potential weapon for assassination attempts,
possibly with Fidel Castro or other world leaders.
Narrator: The initial failure of the drone project
doesn't stop the CIA from continuing
to dangerously push boundaries.
Narrator: In the early 1970s,
allegations of nefarious criminal activity
on the part of the CIA start to appear in the press.
Americans realize that governments,
leaders of both parties,
have been deceiving them for a long period of time.
I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
O'Donnell: By that point, the Watergate scandal is beginning to unfold,
and so there's a lot of things coming together
to make the average American quite suspicious of what its government is doing.
Narrator: In December of 1974,
"The New York Times" publishes an explosive article
that opens up the floodgates.
O'Donnell: Seymour Hersh publishes an article in "The New York Times"
exposing CIA activity that shows that they are engaged
in efforts to destabilize
and to overthrow foreign governments,
to assassinate foreign officials,
and this causes a firestorm.
O'Donnell: Congress reacts by forming a committee
and putting Senator Frank Church of Idaho in charge of it.
And that's where it gets its nickname, the Church Committee.
Powers: Senator Church thought that the CIA
had too much unregulated power
because for the first 25 years of the CIA's operation,
they had little to no oversight.
He wanted to have an investigation
to find out what they were doing.
Were they actually spying on American citizens?
Were they actually trying to do
assassination attempts of world leaders?
What's true, what's not? How much power do they have?
O'Donnell: The Church Committee turns its attention
not just on the CIA, but also the NSA, the FBI,
the entire U.S. intelligence community.
Narrator: The committee peers into the darkest
corners of Cold War operations,
and the secrets they discover shock the public.
It was discovered that the CIA was doing LSD experiments
through a program called MK-Ultra.
O'Donnell: Many of the people in MK-Ultra were dosed with LSD
without their knowledge and without their consent.
In some cases they were used on prisoners,
members of the military, pretty dark stuff.
Powers: There was a CIA employee
who was given a dose of LSD in a hotel room.
He ends up having a very bad trip,
jumping out the seven-story window to his death.
That was revealed during the Church Committee hearings.
O'Donnell: One of the shocking things
that the Church Committee reveals
is that the CIA has been engaged in assassination attempts
against Fidel Castro in Cuba
and Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, among others.
Powers: The project was called MK-Naomi,
and this was a program in which they were trying
to find biological weapons, chemicals, or agents
that would cause a subject to die, assassinate, without leaving any trace.
Narrator: One of these deadly stealth weapons is the notorious
and aptly named "heart attack gun".
Does this pistol fire the dart?
Man: Yes, it does, Mr. Chairman.
It's practically a normal .45, although it's special.
Narrator: This modified Colt pistol
fires a poison-filled dart into the victim,
producing symptoms that mimic a heart attack.
The evil genius behind the weapon is an unlikely figure.
O'Donnell: Mary Embree.
She is unlike almost anybody
in the CIA for two reasons.
One, she's a woman. Almost everybody in the CIA is male.
And she also doesn't have a fancy degree
from a top American university like Yale or Stanford.
In fact, she doesn't even have a college degree.
Powers: She started working for the CIA at 18 years old.
She worked her way up through the ranks,
and after a few years, she was tasked to develop a device
that would allow assassinations to happen
without any evidence of it happening.
Narrator: Embree works with CIA scientists
to choose the perfect poison.
They settle on a neurotoxin called saxitoxin, or STX.
STX, or saxitoxin, is a neurotoxin
that typically builds up in shellfish.
It's called a shellfish poison.
The neurotoxin basically inhibits your ability to breathe.
So the heart attack gun actually causes cardiac arrest.
Narrator: Next, Embree enlists the help
of CIA chemist Dr. Nathan Gordon
to create an effective delivery system.
O'Donnell: Gordon successfully develops a popsicle-like dart
loaded with shellfish toxin.
The dart would be carried in a frozen state,
basically in a cooler, until it would be time to deploy.
So it would be cold until the moment of use,
and then it would be loaded and then fired.
O'Donnell: The ingenious feature of the frozen dart
is that it enters the human body and then melts,
releasing the toxin into the body, leaving no trace.
And then on the outside of the body, it only leaves
a little red mark like a bee sting or mosquito bite.
Dickrell: Therefore, the person would simply just die of a heart attack
with no indication that it was actually an assassination.
Wagner: So the likelihood that a coroner
would be able to identify
what actually caused an individual to die
from this toxin, it's probably pretty low,
because your suspicion of this would be so low
and there's no real specific test for this either.
Narrator: Fortunately, the heart attack gun project was shut down
before the weapon could be deployed in the field.
Or so the records claim.
It's debated as to whether or not the heart attack gun
was ever used in an official capacity.
Dr. Nathan Gordon allegedly took 5.9 grams
of this shellfish toxin with him.
Nobody knows what happened to this 5.9 grams of toxin,
which begs the question, was it ever used in other applications?
The heart attack gun supposedly was taken away
to a super-secret storage facility.
Now, whether or not that's true, we're not sure.
We regard the assassination plots as aberrations.
The United States must not adopt the tactics of the enemy.
Narrator: In 1976, U.S. President Gerald Ford
sees the Church Committee hearings as an opportunity
to reign in America's intelligence services.
While President Ford banned the CIA
from carrying out assassinations,
in the Soviet Union, there was no such ban.
And we know about this because of a rather bizarre assassination
that took place in 1978.
Narrator: September 7th, 1978, London, England.
Bulgarian writer and broadcast journalist Georgi Markov
crosses the Waterloo Bridge over the River Thames
to catch a bus to his office at the BBC.
Powers: He's walking across this bridge in London.
He feels a sharp pain in his leg.
He sees this guy pick up an umbrella
that he had dropped by accident.
"Excuse me, I didn't mean to bump into you."
They go their own way.
And so Markov, of course, thinks this is a rather strange incident,
but gets on the bus, feels the sting in the back of his leg.
He actually checks his skin and notices
that there's actually a red mark there which looks like a mosquito bite.
He gets to work and the pain seems to be getting worse.
Middle of the day, he starts to feel ill,
and eventually heads home
where he develops a terrible fever,
which means he needs to be rushed to St. James Hospital,
and the doctors there are utterly perplexed
as to what is afflicting this man.
Narrator: Markov, on the other hand, has a strong suspicion
as to what's causing his symptoms.
O'Donnell: Georgi Markov is Bulgarian dissident.
He's a writer, a playwright,
who in the 1960s increasingly runs afoul
of the communist Bulgarian government,
that does not like his writings.
They find them critical and, you know,
satirical, and making fun of the government.
And so Markov is forced to seek exile in London in 1970.
While in exile, Markov became increasingly critical
of the Bulgarian communist government led by Todor Zhivkov.
Hammond: There is a culture in Bulgaria
of taking out people that are critical of the regime.
The Bulgarian regime don't tolerate people speaking out of line.
If you do, you better look over your shoulder
for the rest of your life.
O'Donnell: While he's in the hospital,
Markov told people he believed he had been poisoned,
and that he believed that he had been tailed
and targeted for assassination by the KGB
and Bulgarian government officials.
He told me the most extraordinary story,
that he'd been jabbed with an umbrella tip.
It was almost as if he didn't want to believe it himself.
Jackson: The rumor is that General Dimatar Stoinoff,
the interior minister of Bulgaria,
went to Russia and sought assistance
in liquidating vocal anti-communists like Markov.
The head of the KGB at the time, Yuri Andropov--
actually the future leader of the USSR in fact--
he agreed to help, but only on the condition
that it could not be traced back to Russia.
Stoinoff then organizes the mission,
and it's carried out on September 7th.
The reason for this date is that it was the birthday
of communist leader Todor Zhikov,
and this is meant as basically a gift to the Bulgarian leader.
( EKG monitor beeping )
Narrator: Sadly, four days after checking into the hospital,
Markov dies.
After Markov dies, they conduct an autopsy,
and doctors find a small metal pellet in the back of his thigh
less than two millimeters in size,
and begin to examine this thing very, very closely
to see what exactly it was.
Narrator: But the investigation takes a strange turn
when new evidence emerges.
Powers: Another dissident comes forward, Vladimir Kostov.
He says that something similar happened to him.
O'Donnell: Ten days before Markov had been shot,
Kostov is leaving the Paris metro.
He hears a pop go off, and then feels a stinging sensation in his back.
And he turns around and sees a rather large man
stooping to pick up an umbrella.
The man walks away
and gets into a cab and speeds off.
Kostov begins to feel ill,
gets very, very sick.
Actually checks into a hospital,
but unlike Markov, he does not die.
Doctors then remove from his back an identical pellet of two millimeters in size
and begin also to examine it closely
to see what the links are between it and Markov's death.
Narrator: They notice one very small but crucial difference
between the two pellets.
O'Donnell: When they examine the pellet taken out of Kostov,
they discover that it had a waxy coating on it.
With Markov, an identical pellet
had no waxy substance on the outside.
Powers: The experts who examined the pellet
think that the wax around it is meant to melt
once it enters the body's system,
thereby releasing the poison into the bloodstream.
Narrator: In the fall of 1978,
investigators are stumped after they find
nearly identical pellets in the bodies
of two different
Bulgarian anti-communists.
O'Donnell: The pellets that were shot into Kostov and Markov
were smaller than the head of a pin.
The poison apparently was carried in holes
that were bored into the sides of the pellet,
meaning only a tiny portion
was designated for holding the poison.
Powers: People at first aren't sure what type of poison it is.
After the autopsy of Markov, they discover that it's ricin.
O'Donnell: Ricin is one of the most deadly poisons known in the world.
A single bite of a cobra delivers enough venom
to kill 20 people,
and ricin is twice as deadly.
Ricin is actually a byproduct
of the processing of a castor bean.
Ricin poison in itself is a horrible way to die.
If it's injected into the body,
you can have a site redness.
Then you can start getting headaches,
you can get some confusion, disorientation.
But ultimately it's going to lead to liver failure,
splenic injury, and kidney failure.
And you actually don't need that much ricin to cause death.
We're talking about 0.1 milligrams
to one milligram of ricin to actually kill somebody.
Powers: Ricin is a very good poison to use
if you want to try to kill someone
because there's no known antidote to ricin poisoning.
Once you're poisoned, you're dead.
Narrator: If ricin is so deadly, how does Kostov survive?
O'Donnell: There are many factors that might explain
why Markov died and Kostov didn't,
but what we know from the evidence
is that the waxy coating on the pellet
that entered Kostov did not melt.
We don't know why, but for some reason
his body temperature didn't melt the wax,
and therefore most of the toxin did not get delivered.
Narrator: After putting together all the clues,
investigators find a common thread
between the two men's stories,
one they believe reveals the weapon of choice.
If anybody's ever spent any time in London, it rains a lot.
Having an umbrella, you wouldn't stand out,
and a lot of intelligence and espionage
is hiding in plain sight.
They used this umbrella to administer a pellet into Markov's leg.
That's how it was delivered.
Narrator: Dubbed the Bulgarian Umbrella,
the devious device is modified with an air gun
that fires a poison-laden pellet into the victim.
Dickrell: The Bulgarian Umbrella's operation is relatively simple.
A hollow barrel is loaded with a ricin pellet
and then charged with a gas canister.
Powers: In order for the Bulgarian Umbrella
to work with its gas cartridge,
you can't shoot it from afar.
We have to get up close to the subject,
and basically put the tip of the umbrella on a body part.
Dickrell: The person doing the killing
presses the end of the umbrella against the victim and fires it.
The gas canister then shoots the pellet into the victim,
releasing the ricin and poisoning the victim.
Powers: It was a very ingenious way to deliver a poison
into a subject that you wanted to assassinate.
Narrator: Before settling on the Bulgarian Umbrella,
some reports claim that Markov's assassins
had an arsenal of poison delivery methods at the ready.
The KGB gave three options for how to kill Markov.
Either, one, poison that's applied to his skin, kind of rubbed on;
two, poison that's administered and digested;
or using the umbrella gun.
The Bulgarians tried the first two,
but when the poison failed on both accounts,
that's when they turned to the umbrella gun.
Narrator: Despite several lengthy investigations,
no one is ever brought to justice for the death of Georgi Markov.
We're not sure who the assassin was,
but his code name was Piccadilly.
We think it was the KGB working in conjunction
with the Bulgarian secret service.
But once investigations started to happen,
the documents, the misinformation,
the paper trail ended, so they were never able
to conclusively determine who did it or why.
Narrator: The Bulgarian Umbrella is not the first
deadly spy weapon of its kind.
It is believed that the first umbrella gun
was invented in the 19th century,
and was a variation of the cane gun.
Hammond: One thing that we see through the whole Cold War
is all manner of everyday items that get used for espionage.
For example, a cane that actually fires a bullet.
Lipstick that actually is a gun.
A shoe that secretly has a dagger.
Just like you see in the Bond movies.
Narrator: But this isn't fiction.
Real-world spies continue
to innovate their devices
and their sinister methods
of covertly gathering intelligence
and silencing enemy targets.
The dark stories of espionage,
poisonings, and murders
that make the news are just a fraction
of what goes on in the shadows.