When the CIA got away with building a heart attack gun
44 comments
·August 15, 2025dmix
AnotherGoodName
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_umbrella is basically the same thing and your linked article mentions the CIA stole the idea from the Russians.
chasil
They also used ricin injected by an umbrella.
lenerdenator
"got away with"
that's... that's what they're hired and paid to do.
Arturo525
The Church Committee investigated excesses at CIA. The article deals mainly with creating agitprop which the administration creates regularly on its own.
almostbasic
It really makes you wonder what other weapons they have that we don't know about.
culi
Almost certainly, Havana Syndrome. Caused by a (microwave-, possibly) weapon that can lead to permanent neurological symptoms. And the US is not the only country that has it but is expanding a lot of energy into making the media talk about it less. CHUPPL did a great investigation on it if you're interested
gosub100
In a purely technical ponderance, I wonder if it's possible to design a stun gun that would inflict death by either increasing the current and voltage, or if a specific signal could be sent to the heart that would induce an arrhythmia. Basically the opposite of a defibrillator. A biotech maintenance guy told me that if you receive a shock when your heart is in a critical phase of the complex, it can cause it to shut off. Maybe a heart attack stun gun could attempt to read the cardiac waves and deliver the shock at the worst possible point.
(I have to emphasize that no homicidal motive drew me towards wondering that. It's just the borderless free thought that causes random ideas to float through my mind. If I can think of it, certainly the people who design covert weapons also have)
RajT88
Totally possible. This is why stun guns and tasers are referred to as "less lethal" by some instead of non-lethal. Lots of electricity will occasionally stop someone's heart, and they die.
thejazzman
i have no idea if this is possible, but i have to point out that really smart people pondering out loud is heard/read by many people who may have much sinister intentions than the nerd simply pondering out loud.
1984 has become a playbook. be careful what ideas you share. the public internet is not a casual conversation among friends.
Qem
There was claims of a possible cancer "gun". See https://www.ibtimes.com/hugo-chavez-says-us-could-be-giving-...
dmix
There's a very silly article. The basis is old people in Latin America getting cancer and a paranoid dictator blaming the US.
krapp
Given the already verifiable history of the CIA in Latin America, I'd give any paranoid dictator the benefit of the doubt.
dyauspitr
That can’t even be that hard. Some sort of directed radiation beam will do that easily.
nradov
You should talk to a radiation oncologist. It is extremely hard to target a person with directed ionizing radiation at any distance in a way that would significantly increase the risk of cancer without causing very obvious surface effects.
ProAm
The CIA has done much worse than a heart attack gun. How about giving someone LSD everyday for 18 months for science.
zosima
I think tolerance builds up fast enough for that to be a rather boring experiment.
gentooflux
Yeah, it's exponential. You'd have to double the dose each day to achieve the same result as the day before. Otherwise they're just gonna have some mildly distorted thoughts and a nasty headache.
ProAm
This is also just one example of what the CIA does. They killed an elephant with a single dose of LSD. Used it on foreigners, US citizens, etc... The Rest Is Classified did a great series about it (1,2)
1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO0bQGf3uH8 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKnoZhbqTfM
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lupusreal
Besides the Church Committee testimony, is there any evidence for the heart attack gun existing? There's part of me that wonders if they made it up for the purpose of disclosing it to Congress, to make themselves seem like they were authentically participating in the overview and accountability proceedings.
Kind of like the way murder suspects in police interrogations might give unprompted and quite possibly fake confessions to minor crimes, to manipulate the police into believing the suspect is being open about everything and doesn't have anything to hide.
Part of my doubt stems from my confusion about how a traceless dart gun would actually work. The dart guns I know of fire darts with fletchings, they can't be discrete. If you removed the fletchings, the darts would almost certainly tumble. If they said it was a BB gun that fired poisoned BBs then I wouldn't think twice about it, but they say it shot darts..
dkdcio
from previous reading up on this, it is my understanding this was most likely for show for the committee (this was public information after all) and was not a real device used, because it could not work
skimming this article is also seems based on a false premise…the church committee did not hold the CIA accountable. they openly destroyed documents, fairly openly murdered their own employees, broke laws, etc.
see “Legacy of Ashes”
Alive-in-2025
There's a zillion ways to kill people in slow ways. Put poison that is slow acting in restaurant food - that's harder than just a single shot with some gun. Cancer causing substances in their house water that you later remove the source of (let's not figure millions of people have unsafe drinking water just on the ordinary day in the us).
slt2021
America is occupied and the most powerful entities are not accountable one bit to the people, but have been captured by the small circle of "elites"
hjuibflol
Like tuning frequencies on electronic devices...
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idiomat9000
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ChrisNorstrom
[flagged]
SR2Z
> Yet completely ignores how the Biden administration tried to force every American into getting experimental mRNA vaccines with no long term safety data, or else you lose your job. And you weren't allowed to sue the vaccine manufacturer. And now Americans just sort of forgot about all that.
This is because of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which provides compensation to people who are injured by vaccines in exactly the situation you're describing. I would encourage you to Google it. You don't sue the vaccine manufacturer, you file a claim and get a payout. RFK is trying to end this program, which would basically make it impossible to develop new vaccines.
Americans did not "forget" about that, because most Americans have no clue this program even exists.
They also lack the expertise to individually verify that a vaccine is safe, or even weight long-term potential health risks against the short term necessity of a vaccine.
By the time the vaccines were approved for public use, they were also no longer "experimental" because the FDA HAD experimented with them and deemed them safe.
hacknewslogin
Wasn't this only possible because Trump enacted "Operation Warp Speed?"
dfxm12
There's so much misplaced anger based on not knowing who was president in 2020 (and January 2021).
mikestew
Shh, quiet; those narratives aren’t going to support themselves. That’s an awful lot of whataboutism crammed into GP’s comment.
hydrogen7800
I also remember during the 2020 VP debate when Kamala was asked if she would take the Trump vaccine. That sure turned around when it became the Biden vaccine.
This article is about the Church Committee, if you're interested in the heart attack gun see: https://allthatsinteresting.com/heart-attack-gun
Also it's interesting to note how Russia doesn't use a gun like this, they spike drinks/food or spray it on surfaces like doorknobs.