Cold War memos reveal US explored using radioactive poison

IN ONE of the longest-held secrets of the Cold War, the US army explored the potential for using radioactive poisons to assassinate “important individuals” such as military or civilian leaders, according to newly declassified documents.

Approved at the highest levels of the army in 1948, the effort was a well-hidden part of the military’s pursuit of a “new concept of warfare” using radioactive materials from atomic bomb making to contaminate swathes of enemy land or to target military bases, factories or troop formations.

Targeting public figures in such attacks is not unheard of; just last year an unknown assailant used a tiny amount of radioactive polonium-210 to kill Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London.