There was once a curious instrument that was owned by the CIA called the “Heart Attack Gun” and this was one weapon that was truly something to behold…
Sound suppressors for guns are nothing new, but the “heart attack gun” manufactured by the CIA in the 1970s took covertness to a whole new level. Indeed, you could think of it as a poison dart gun simply because it would quickly enter the victim’s bloodstream.
The “Heart Attack Gun” can allegedly pierce through clothing and it will leave almost no signs of impact other than a small red dot on the victim’s skin. That is because this CIA weapon is basically a modified Colt 1911 that was shown off during the Church Committee Probe into the CIA in 1975.
Several sources claim that the weapon has a maximum effective range of 328 feet, which is just over one hundred yards and thus the length of your local high school football field. If you need to do long-range shots, you could have attached a scope to the gun.
Apparently, after the Watergate fiasco had derailed the administration of Richard Nixon, there was mounting pressure to investigate the CIA for their alleged unscrupulous activity.
Thus, it was in 1975 that agency director William Colby was brought in before Congress to testify. He not only mentioned this weapon, but claimed that it contained a shellfish toxin that would not appear in an autopsy, and therefore there was no way of perceiving that it had entered the target.
How did they accomplish this? Well, for starters they would freeze the poison into some sort of dart and shoot it at an extremely high speed into the person. After the dart reached the victim, it would quickly melt inside of them, leading to a “heart attack” and the tiny red dot on their body, hence the name, “Heart Attack Gun.”
“There wouldn’t be a needle or anything like that left in the person,” whistleblower Mary Embree said.
There is no question that Mary Embree had an interesting role at the CIA in the 1970s. She went to work for the firm as an 18-year-old high school graduate, but it wasn’t long before she developed her own fair share of gravitas.
Embree was the secretary in a division of the CIA that was tasked with devising hidden microphones and other types of audio surveillance equipment. This was BEFORE she was promoted to her main position at the Office of Technical Services.
This is when the CIA ordered her to find an undetectable poison, and she ultimately decided upon shellfish toxins as the ideal choice.
Unbeknownst to her, Embree had been made a part of Project MKNAOMI, a highly secretive program designed to craft biological weapons for the United States’ Cold War arsenal.
While other MKNAOMI projects were dedicated to poisoning livestock and crops in a foreign country, Embree’s findings were ultimately used to determine just how to kill someone and get away with it.
When a prototype of the “Heart Attack Gun” was finally designed, there were several potential targets that the CIA had in mind. Even though he would ultimately die of natural causes, perhaps the most notable target was Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
