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.

No targeted individuals are mentioned in references to the assassination weapon in the government documents.

The decades-old records were released recently, heavily censored by the government to remove specifics about radiological warfare agents and other details. The censorship reflects concern of the potential for using radioactive poisons as a weapon is more than a historic footnote; it is believed to be sought by present-day terrorists bent on attacking US targets.

The documents give no indication whether a radiological weapon for targeting high-ranking individuals was ever used or even developed by the US. They leave unclear how far the army project went. One memo from December 1948 outlined the project and another memo that month indicated it was under way. The main sections of several subsequent progress reports in 1949 were removed by censors before release.

The broader effort on offensive uses of radiological warfare apparently died by about 1954, at least in part because of the Defence Department’s conviction that nuclear weapons were a better bet. Whether the work migrated to another agency such as the CIA is unclear.

The project was given final approval in November 1948 and began the following month, just one year after the CIA’s creation in 1947.

In a July 1948 memo outlining the programme’s intent, before specifics had received final approval, a key focus was on long-lasting contamination of large land areas where residents would be told that unless the areas were abandoned they probably would die from radiation within one to 10 years.

Assassination of foreign figures by agents of the US government was not explicitly outlawed until President Gerald R Ford signed an executive order in 1976 in response to revelations that the CIA had plotted in the 1960s to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro, including by poisoning.