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1. Do your own research on the information provided and then come up with your own conclusions.

2. This article contains many names and other information that can be researched.

3. Trust your gut feeling on information provided as this post may contain slanted information.

4. The question of the day is how these toxins were used in vaccines?

Dr. Nathan Gordon was a CIA biologist and chemist who became publicly known during the Senate Church Committee hearings of September 1975. The documentary record identifies him as the official who approved the removal of a supply of shellfish toxin from the Army’s Fort Detrick laboratory and concealed its continued existence from senior CIA management.

The surviving records reveal considerably more than a simple failure to dispose of a few laboratory samples. Gordon and his small staff knowingly retained an extraordinarily lethal substance for possible future CIA “operational” requirements, including suicide devices. At the same time, some modern stories attribute toxin weapons research directly to Gordon without sufficient documentary support.

Gordon’s CIA career

In sworn testimony, Gordon provided this employment history:

• He joined the CIA’s Technical Services Division,
  or TSD, in October 1967 as deputy chief of its Biology Branch.
• In February 1968, after his predecessor retired,
  he became chief of the Biology Branch.
• The Biology Branch was a very small operation
  consisting principally of Gordon, project officer David Boston, and
  consulting scientist Dr. Alex Batlin.
• In February 1969, the Biology Branch was merged
  into the Chemistry Branch. Gordon became chief of the combined Chemistry
  Branch.
• He remained branch chief until April 1970.
• At the same time, he served as the CIA’s “program
  manager for behavioral activities.” He did not explain all those
  activities during the toxin hearing, but the title placed him within the
  technical organization associated with the CIA’s drug and behavior-modification
  research.
• After April 1970, he continued full time as
  behavioral-activities program manager.
• He retired from the CIA on September 30, 1972.

His chain of command ran upward through a deputy director of TSD to Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, head of the Technical Services Division; then to Deputy Director for Plans Thomas Karamessines; and ultimately to CIA Director Richard Helms. These details come directly from Gordon’s complete Church Committee testimony.

Gordon was therefore more accurately described as a CIA branch chief and program manager—not merely a laboratory chemist, but also not one of the CIA’s highest policymakers. CIA Director William Colby described the responsible officer as a GS-15, a substantial mid-level managerial position.

The larger CIA–Fort Detrick program

Beginning in the 1950s, the CIA’s Technical Services Division maintained a clandestine relationship with the Army’s Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The program eventually carried the designation MKNAOMI.

Fort Detrick researchers investigated biological agents, biologically derived toxins, delivery mechanisms, and ways of detecting or defending against hostile biological operations. CIA interest also included possible clandestine applications that were different from conventional battlefield warfare.

Among the materials reportedly held at different times for possible CIA use were:

• Anthrax organisms
• Brucellosis organisms
• Tuberculosis bacteria
• Encephalitis viruses
• Smallpox virus
• Salmonella
• Botulinum toxin
• Shellfish toxin
• Cobra venom
• Incapacitating agents
• Animal and crop diseases

These larger biological stocks should not all be attributed personally to Gordon. Most had been accumulated or researched before he entered the CIA in 1967. Gordon inherited responsibility for programs, records, and materials established by his predecessors.

The National Security Archive provides an important document collection on the American biological-warfare program and the 1975 hearings.

Nixon’s orders to end biological-warfare work

On November 25, 1969, President Richard Nixon announced that the United States was renouncing the use of lethal biological agents and weapons. Because toxins such as shellfish poison occupy a gray area—they are chemicals, but they are produced by living organisms—the White House issued a second policy decision in February 1970.

National Security Decision Memorandum 44 declared that the United States would renounce the production for operational purposes, stockpiling, and use of toxins, whether produced biologically or through chemical synthesis. Only limited research for defensive purposes, such as detection, protection, therapy, and immunization, would be permitted.

CIA Director Richard Helms testified that he told Karamessines and Gottlieb that the CIA should get out of the biological-warfare business and that CIA materials at Fort Detrick were to be relinquished for destruction.

The later Senate investigation concluded that Gottlieb passed that instruction to Gordon. Gordon disputed receiving an explicit destruction order and emphasized that nothing in writing instructed him personally to search his Washington laboratory or destroy every toxin.

Gordon’s February 1970 decision

According to Gordon, a Fort Detrick employee—whom he remembered as project officer Charles Senseney—telephoned him while the Army was preparing to destroy its biological stocks. Senseney reportedly asked whether the CIA wanted to take back approximately five grams of shellfish toxin that Fort Detrick had been holding for the Agency.

Gordon consulted:

• Project officer David Boston
• Technical consultant Dr. Alex Batlin
• Possibly other members of his small branch-level
  staff

Gordon and the group decided to accept the toxin. He admitted under oath that they did not inform Gottlieb, Karamessines, Helms, or another superior that they had done so.

The toxin was hand-carried from Fort Detrick to the CIA laboratory in Washington and placed in its original containers inside a freezer in a secure vault.

Gordon believed he was receiving only the CIA’s approximately five-gram supply. Investigators later determined that the containers held approximately 11 grams, meaning that additional material apparently belonging to the Army had also been transported.

Why Gordon said he preserved it

Gordon offered several overlapping explanations.

1. It had been extremely difficult and costly to produce

Producing purified shellfish toxin required processing a tremendous amount of contaminated shellfish. CIA Director Colby told the Senate that approximately 100 pounds of shellfish could be required to produce one gram of purified toxin.

Gordon said many years of expensive research and development had gone into producing the material. He believed destroying it would eliminate a scarce technical capability that might be impossible to recreate.

2. He classified it as a chemical

Gordon insisted that he and his colleagues regarded purified shellfish toxin as a highly lethal chemical substance rather than a biological organism or bacteriological weapon. Because it did not reproduce inside the victim like bacteria or viruses, they thought it belonged in the chemical category.

This defense was sharply challenged by Senators Frank Church, Walter Mondale, Walter Huddleston, Gary Hart, and others. The February 1970 presidential decision specifically covered toxins regardless of whether they were produced biologically or chemically.

3. He believed Nixon’s instructions applied principally to the military

Gordon repeatedly argued that the implementing language was directed to the secretary of defense and the Defense Department. Because the CIA was not a military organization, he claimed that he did not understand the order as an explicit command to his branch.

Mondale questioned this reasoning aggressively. The senator observed that, according to Gordon’s interpretation, the only way a President could make the CIA comply would have been to summon Gordon personally and plead with him.

4. Possible defensive or medical research

Gordon suggested that a sizable amount might eventually be useful in research on immunization, therapy, or possibly diseases such as cancer. This was a speculative explanation, however. He did not identify a specific approved medical project for which the retained stock was required.

5. Suicide devices and other “operational” uses

This was the most consequential admission. Gordon testified that the material might be needed for:

• Suicide pills or devices for CIA personnel at
  risk of capture
• Replacing cyanide with a faster or more effective
  agent
• Other future CIA operational requirements
  authorized by higher officials

He acknowledged that no such requirement existed during his tenure. His branch kept the toxin as a hedge against the possibility that senior CIA officials might someday ask for it.

Gordon said the toxin had been used in the suicide device issued to U-2 pilots. Francis Gary Powers reportedly carried such a device concealed in a hollowed silver dollar when his aircraft was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, although he did not use it.

What happened to the cobra venom?

The discovery included approximately eight milligrams of cobra venom, although a few documents or newspaper accounts give a figure closer to six milligrams.

The public testimony concentrated overwhelmingly on the shellfish toxin. The record is less clear about whether Gordon personally made a separate decision specifically concerning the cobra venom or whether it arrived within the containers transferred from Fort Detrick.

TIME reported that Gordon was “in charge of the toxin and cobra venom in 1970” and that he eventually transferred both from Fort Detrick to Washington. CIA records, however, more firmly document Gordon’s affirmative deliberation and decision concerning the shellfish toxin.

Therefore:

• Gordon’s responsibility for retaining the
  shellfish toxin is firmly documented by his own testimony.
• His organizational responsibility for the cobra
  venom is also supported.
• The available public evidence is less explicit
  about a separate conversation or decision by Gordon devoted specifically
  to preserving the cobra venom.

Discovery of the concealed stockpile

The existence of the toxin became known during the CIA investigations of 1975.

On May 20, 1975, investigators searched a secure CIA laboratory vault and found:

• Approximately 11 grams of material labeled
  shellfish toxin
• Approximately eight milligrams of cobra venom
• Various other chemicals, drugs, incapacitating
  agents, irritants, and delivery devices accumulated from earlier CIA
  programs

The vault was reportedly only about eight feet by ten feet. This was not a warehouse containing tons of poison, but the biological potency of the shellfish toxin made the small physical quantity exceptionally significant.

Initially, the official then responsible for the laboratory could not explain how the material had arrived there. On June 30, investigators interviewed Gordon, who acknowledged that he had approved its removal from Fort Detrick and storage in Washington.

CIA Director Colby stated that Gordon and the other middle-level officer involved agreed that no superior had been told. Colby’s contemporary statement is available in the CIA Reading Room.

How dangerous was the shellfish toxin?

The toxin was generally identified as the substance now known as saxitoxin, which causes paralytic shellfish poisoning. It interferes with nerve transmission and can paralyze the respiratory system.

Contemporary accounts frequently stated that the 11-gram supply was theoretically sufficient to kill tens or even hundreds of thousands of people. These figures were estimates derived by dividing the total quantity by an assumed lethal dose. They did not mean that the CIA possessed a practical device capable of killing that many people simultaneously.

Actual casualties would depend on:

• Purity and degradation of the stored material
• Dose delivered to each victim
• Method of administration
• Successful absorption into the body
• Environmental losses
• Availability of respiratory support and medical
  treatment

Gordon admitted that when the containers arrived, he did not know their exact purity. He said the description communicated to him was essentially that it was “good stuff.”

The poison-dart weapon

During the hearings, CIA Director Colby displayed a modified pistol capable of firing an extremely small poison dart. Chairman Frank Church called it an efficient “murder instrument.”

Contemporary testimony established that the CIA and Fort Detrick developed:

• A nearly silent dart-firing pistol
• Small darts capable of carrying toxin
• Fountain-pen dart devices
• Cane and umbrella delivery devices
• Aerosol and contamination mechanisms
• A device concealed in a fluorescent-light fixture
• An automobile component that could release a
  toxic substance when heated

The dart was described as very difficult to detect, and the toxin could produce death resembling natural paralysis or cardiac failure.

Some modern websites call this the CIA’s “heart-attack gun” and specifically claim that Gordon mixed shellfish toxin with water, froze it into tiny pellets, and personally developed the ammunition. That specific narrative appears repeatedly online, but it is not clearly established in Gordon’s 1975 public testimony.

The primary record more securely establishes that:

• Gordon headed the CIA branch connected to
  biological and chemical research.
• Fort Detrick developed toxins and delivery
  mechanisms for the CIA.
• Gordon retained the shellfish toxin.
• Charles Senseney and other Fort Detrick engineers
  worked on delivery systems.
• Gordon acknowledged that the toxin could be part
  of a weapon system.

It is reasonable to connect Gordon organizationally to the capability, but it would be an overstatement to assert as proven that he personally invented or built the poison-dart pistol.

Gordon’s relationship to MKNAOMI and MKULTRA

Gordon’s toxin responsibilities fell principally within the CIA–Fort Detrick program known as MKNAOMI. His additional title as behavioral-activities program manager, however, placed him in the same Technical Services Division that managed MKULTRA and related drug research.

A later Senate report used the Gordon episode as an example of how secrecy undermined normal CIA controls. The report stated that there were no reliable written records of transfers involving agents such as anthrax and shellfish toxin because officials wanted any operational use to remain unrecorded.

The report concluded that the Agency consequently could not determine with confidence:

• What agents it possessed
• What had been destroyed
• Whether toxins had been issued to field personnel
• Whether dart guns or other delivery systems had
  been deployed
• Who had authorized particular projects

The 1977 Senate MKULTRA report characterized Gordon’s retention of the shellfish toxin as unauthorized and contrary to a presidential directive. It also found that the retention had not been approved by senior CIA officials. See the official Senate MKULTRA hearing and report.

What Gordon admitted—and what he denied

Gordon admitted that:

• He participated in the decision to retain the
  shellfish toxin.
• The decision was made by his small branch-level
  group.
• He did not tell his CIA superiors.
• He knew the Army was conducting a destruction
  program.
• He knew the toxin could be used in suicide
  devices.
• He preserved it partly in anticipation of a
  possible future operational need.
• The vault suffered from loose control inherited
  from his predecessors.
• If he had received a clear written order directed
  through CIA channels, he would have disclosed and destroyed the stock.

Gordon denied or disputed that:

• He had received an explicit order requiring him
  to destroy the toxin.
• He knowingly accepted Army-owned toxin in
  addition to the CIA’s five grams.
• His branch viewed the toxin as a prohibited
  biological weapon.
• He believed the presidential directive clearly
  applied to the CIA.
• He concealed the material pursuant to an order
  from senior officials.
• He knew of operational use of the retained stock
  during his tenure.

What the investigations concluded

The Church Committee and later Senate investigators did not accept Gordon’s legal and technical interpretation.

Their central conclusions were:

• The retention was unauthorized.
• It conflicted with the presidential directive.
• Senior CIA leadership had not approved it.
• Gordon’s small group failed to report the
  decision upward.
• The absence of written instructions contributed
  to the episode but did not justify it.
• CIA compartmentation and deliberately minimal
  recordkeeping made accountability extremely difficult.
• Gordon’s case demonstrated the danger of allowing
  individual technical officials to preserve lethal capabilities without
  written authorization or independent oversight.

The broader investigation found no documented evidence that Gordon’s preserved toxin was actually used to kill anyone.

Contemporary newspaper, magazine, and television coverage

September 16, 1975 — Associated Press newspaper reports

An Associated Press story appearing under headlines such as “CIA Officer Decided to Keep Deadly Poisons” reported before or during Gordon’s appearance that he was expected to be the central witness. It stated that he claimed never to have received explicit destruction instructions.

The story appeared in numerous local newspapers, including:

• Golden Transcript, September 16, 1975
• Valparaiso Vidette-Messenger, September 16, 1975
• Portsmouth Times
• Lincoln Star
• Other newspapers receiving the national
  Associated Press service

Because these were syndicated reports, they should not be counted as separate independent investigations. Most repeated substantially the same AP material.

September 17, 1975 — reports following Gordon’s testimony

Newspaper reports emphasized that Gordon admitted directing the preservation of the poisons while claiming that the President’s order had never been transmitted to him as a specific CIA instruction.

The Columbia Missourian’s September 17 edition reported that Gordon said the two poisons were moved and retained at his direction.

CQ Almanac

Congressional Quarterly summarized the episode under “CIA Official’s Admission.” It reported that Gordon acknowledged responsibility for hiding the shellfish toxin but said he had never received instructions from senior CIA officials to destroy it. The CQ Almanac account is valuable because it places Gordon’s testimony within the entire 1975 intelligence investigation.

TIME magazine — September 28, 1975

TIME’s article, “Of Dart Guns and Poisons,” provided one of the most detailed contemporary magazine accounts.

TIME reported that:

• Gordon was responsible for the toxin and cobra
  venom in 1970.
• He maintained that he had never received a
  destruction order.
• The instruction apparently should have passed
  from Helms through Gottlieb to Gordon.
• Gordon moved the venom and toxin from Fort
  Detrick to the Washington storeroom.
• The CIA possessed extremely sophisticated
  poison-delivery devices.
• Colby could not categorically rule out past
  operational use because records were deliberately sparse.

TIME also described Gordon physically as a “stooped and bushy-browed ex-CIA chemist,” an example of the sometimes theatrical tone contemporary magazines used in covering the hearings.

NBC Evening News — September 16, 1975

NBC reported that the CIA and Army had spent approximately 18 years developing and stockpiling lethal poisons. Its broadcast summary records Gordon’s appearance and notes that television cameras were turned off during his testimony at his request. See the Vanderbilt Television News Archive entry.

CIA collection of press reports

A CIA Reading Room file titled “Deadly Toxins Cached by CIA, Church Says” preserves contemporary press coverage. Reports emphasized Gordon’s admission that he stored the toxin and the laughter or disbelief produced by his statement that its quality had been described simply as “good stuff.”

Important corrections to modern accounts

Several distinctions are necessary when writing about Gordon:

1. He was not Sidney Gottlieb. Gottlieb was the senior Technical Services Division official. Gordon was a subordinate branch chief.

2. He did not originate the entire CIA toxin program. The CIA–Fort Detrick relationship and much of the toxin research predated his 1967 arrival.

3. His decision concerning the shellfish toxin is documented. He admitted making it with his small staff and withholding it from higher management.

4. The exact cobra-venom figure varies. Most official testimony says eight milligrams; some later records say approximately six milligrams.

5. The shellfish amount also appears in different forms. Gordon thought he was accepting five grams. The containers were reported as holding approximately 11 grams in 1975. Later technical descriptions sometimes give a measured quantity around 5.9 or six grams, possibly referring to a particular container, tested usable material, or revised assay.

6. The “heart-attack gun” existed as a demonstrated poison-dart device, but Gordon’s personal role in engineering it is uncertain. Later popular accounts go beyond the publicly documented testimony.

7. There is no demonstrated connection between Gordon’s retained toxin and vaccines. Gordon speculated about immunization research, but the records do not show that the secret stockpile was put into ordinary vaccines or administered through a vaccination program.

Overall assessment

Nathan Gordon was the operationally important middle-level CIA official who preserved a clandestine toxin capability when the United States was publicly dismantling its biological and toxin weapons program. He was neither the creator of the entire enterprise nor a passive custodian.

His own testimony establishes that he made a conscious decision to keep the shellfish toxin, considered its possible use in suicide and other operational devices, and withheld the decision from senior management. His stated defenses—cost, scientific value, classification as a chemical, uncertainty over the scope of Nixon’s order, and lack of a written CIA directive—were not accepted by the Senate investigators.

The strongest evidence against Gordon is not speculation or a later book. It is his own sworn testimony, together with CIA Director Colby’s statement and the Senate’s subsequent finding that the retention was unauthorized and contrary to presidential policy.