ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Espionage, Intelligence, and Security Volume ...

Assassination Weapons, MechanicalThe .22 caliber revolver used by John Hinkley, Jr. in his 1981 assassination attempt against U.S. President Ronald Reagan, displayed at Hinkley’s trial in 1982. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS.of weapon to be discussed here: bludgeons, knives, guns,and other firing devices.To varying degrees, all of these use the mechanicalprinciples of force, pressure, and momentum, which arerelated through various ratios involving the fundamentalphysical interactions of mass, length, and time. Additionally,several are variations on the three classic “simplemachines” of classical mechanics: the inclined plane (knife),the lever (the firing mechanism of a pistol), and the hydraulicpress (some types of firing devices other thanpistols).Areas of overlap. There is often considerable overlapbetween mechanical and biochemical assassination weapons.At the simplest level, all ultimately kill by impactingsome aspect of the victim’s biochemistry, if only by causinghis brain or heart to shut down, thus bringing an end tothe functions of the body itself. Furthermore, firearmsemploy chemical properties. The gunpowder in a bulletundergoes a chemical, rather than a merely physicalchange. A physical change, such as the freezing of water,is reversible, but once gunpowder has chemically beenaltered by the addition of heat and the process of combustionbrought about by interaction with oxygen, it turns intoEncyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Securityfire, smoke, and ash—and a fraction of it becomes energy—such that it can never become gunpowder again.Another area of overlap is the use of firing devices todeploy the materials of biochemical assassination—thatis, poisons. A classic example is the poison pen, mosteffectively employed by the Soviet KGB. Disguised as anordinary writing pen, the device fired hydrocyanic acid inthe form of gas. Another KGB pen-cum-assassinationweapon fired pellets of ricin, a poison long favored byagents in the assassination squad known as SMERSH.SMERSH, poison pistols, and ricin. SMERSH used variationson this technique to eliminate several Bulgarian dissidentsliving abroad in the 1970s. The most famous example ofthis occurred in London, where SMERSH caught up withjournalist Georgi Markov in September 1978. As an unsuspectingMarkov stood waiting in a crowd for a bus atWaterloo Bridge, a man walked past him and accidentally—or so it seemed—jabbed him in the thigh with the pointedend of his umbrella. The man apologized and walked onpast. Within a few hours, Markov was dead. The man withthe umbrella was a SMERSH assassin, and the pointed tipof his umbrella had fired a platinum pellet containing ricin.63