COMMENTS FROM STREET TALK NETWORK ABOUT THIS POST-

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. Our own Lionel Waldo DeCuir told us about this years ago, he posted an article that he cut out many years ago about the CIA stockpiling venom.

On September 16, 1975, The Dallas Morning News reported that a CIA official had secretly preserved a cache of exceptionally dangerous poisons despite presidential orders directing that America’s offensive biological and toxin weapons be destroyed.

The Dallas story appears to have been based on the same Associated Press report published that day in newspapers across the country under headlines such as “CIA Officer Decided to Keep Deadly Poisons.” A surviving copy in the Golden Transcript describes a “former middle-level CIA officer” retaining the materials despite the 1969 and 1970 presidential directives. Read the archived September 16 AP story.

The essential revelation was true and was subsequently explored under oath at the Senate’s Church Committee hearings. But several important distinctions became blurred in later retellings:

• The principal retained substance was saxitoxin,
  commonly called shellfish toxin—not cobra venom.
• The CIA also retained approximately eight
  milligrams of a toxin derived from cobra venom.
• The public hearing displayed a dart-firing pistol
  associated with toxin-delivery research, but the hearing did not establish
  that cobra venom was placed in ordinary vaccines.
• “Violation of a presidential order” is
  historically precise. Calling it “illegal” is reasonable in the broader
  sense of unauthorized government conduct, but no CIA employee was
  criminally convicted for retaining this stockpile.

What was discovered

On May 20, 1975, CIA personnel discovered the following in a secure storeroom or vault in a CIA building in Washington:

Senator Frank Church declared that the amount of toxin could kill “many thousands” of people. Some contemporary reports gave the more sensational estimate of “hundreds of thousands.” Those figures should be treated cautiously: lethality depends on the toxin’s purity, route of administration, dosage, storage condition, and whether every dose could actually be delivered.

Time reported 10.9 grams of saxitoxin and eight milligrams of cobra-venom toxin and described their retention as directly contrary to President Nixon’s order. Read Time, “CIA: Toxin Tocsin,” September 22, 1975.

Why Nixon had ordered the materials destroyed

On November 25, 1969, President Richard Nixon renounced the American use of lethal biological warfare and restricted biological research to peaceful and defensive purposes.

A further decision announced on February 14, 1970 applied the renunciation to toxins—poisonous substances produced by living organisms, including botulinum toxin and saxitoxin. The government consequently ordered its offensive biological and toxin stocks destroyed.

These decisions were connected to American participation in negotiations that produced the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. The CIA’s retained stock therefore conflicted with:

1. Nixon’s biological-warfare policy;

2. the later directive covering toxins;

3. orders that the CIA relinquish or destroy materials held through its cooperation with the Army; and

4. America’s developing international commitment to eliminate offensive biological and toxin weapons.

The problem was especially serious because this was not merely an overlooked vial in a university laboratory. The toxins were associated with CIA work on covert delivery devices and possible lethal operations.

Project MKNAOMI and Fort Detrick

The poison work grew out of a longstanding arrangement between the CIA and the Army’s biological-warfare establishment at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Beginning in the early 1950s, the CIA supported a program generally identified as MKNAOMI. Its purposes reportedly included:

• Studying biological and chemical agents that
  hostile intelligence services might employ.
• Producing small quantities of unusual poisons.
• Finding rapid suicide agents for captured
  American operatives.
• Developing ways to disable guard dogs during
  clandestine entries.
• Producing incapacitating or lethal substances for
  covert operations.
• Designing concealed delivery systems.
• Maintaining the capability to obtain biological
  agents from the Army for CIA operations.

CIA officials presented some of this as defensive research or as a response to Soviet assassination weapons. Nevertheless, the program also produced devices whose obvious purpose was secretly poisoning a person.

The later Senate investigation into MKULTRA concluded that CIA controls were so inadequate that the Agency could not be certain whether “dart guns” or substances such as cobra venom had been issued to field personnel. Read the Senate’s MKULTRA hearing record.

How the poisons escaped destruction

The testimony produced a complicated chain of responsibility.

Richard Helms

Richard Helms, then CIA director, testified that he orally ordered the CIA’s biological stockpile destroyed and the relevant program terminated. He said the retained toxins were an aberration.

The absence of a clear written directive became a central problem. In an organization built around compartmentalization and oral instructions, senior officials could say an order had been given while the responsible laboratory officer could say it had never reached him.

Sidney Gottlieb

Dr. Sidney Gottlieb headed the CIA’s Technical Services Division and was closely connected to MKULTRA, MKNAOMI, poison research and assassination planning.

The destruction instructions should have passed from Helms through Gottlieb to the personnel controlling the materials. Gottlieb’s role consequently became an important subject of congressional investigation. Much of the documentary trail was missing because Gottlieb and Helms had authorized destruction of MKULTRA records in 1973.

Newly released testimony illustrates how investigators struggled to reconstruct these programs after records had been destroyed. See the National Security Archive’s collection on Gottlieb’s Church Committee testimony.

Nathan Gordon

Dr. Nathan Gordon, a CIA chemist and mid-level official, was identified as the person responsible for preserving the toxins.

Gordon maintained that he did not receive a direct order to destroy them. Instead, he reportedly arranged for approximately 11 grams of shellfish toxin to be transferred from Army control at Fort Detrick to CIA custody. The eight milligrams of cobra-venom toxin were retained with it.

CIA Director William Colby offered an extraordinary explanation: the researchers had become so absorbed in the difficulty and expense of producing purified saxitoxin that they could not bear to destroy it. Contemporary accounts said approximately 100 pounds of contaminated shellfish might be required to produce a single gram.

Whether motivated by scientific value, a desire to preserve an operational capability or both, the result was that the materials remained hidden for approximately five years.

The “heart-attack gun” and poison darts

During the public hearing, Director William Colby handed Senator Church a modified pistol capable of firing a tiny dart.

Contemporary descriptions said that it:

• Resembled a Colt .45 with a large sight attached.
• Fired nearly silently.
• Had a reported effective range of approximately
  75–100 meters.
• Used an extremely small dart or flechette.
• Could penetrate clothing and skin.
• Could deliver a small amount of toxin.
• Was intended to make the resulting injury
  difficult to notice.

Church called it an exceptionally efficient “murder instrument.” An engineer, Charles Senseney, testified concerning additional delivery devices disguised as canes, umbrellas and other everyday objects.

A crucial correction is necessary: popular accounts now routinely call it a “heart-attack gun.” The 1975 hearing principally discussed shellfish toxin, which acts as a neurotoxin and can cause paralysis and respiratory failure. A victim could die suddenly, but that is not the same thing as proof that the weapon literally produced a medically indistinguishable heart attack.

Time reported that the CIA had developed three dart pistols, a dart-firing fountain pen and other concealed toxin mechanisms. Colby said that, to his knowledge, the devices had not been used against anyone—but he acknowledged that sparse records prevented an absolute assurance. Read Time, “Of Dart Guns and Poisons,” September 29, 1975.

Other poisons and devices mentioned in the 1975 investigations

Contemporary reporting and congressional investigations discussed a broader CIA poison inventory and history:

• Cyanide:
  Used in suicide capsules but considered slow and painful.
• Saxitoxin:
  Investigated as a faster alternative for captured agents and as a covert
  operational poison.
• Cobra-venom toxin: Retained in the Washington cache; the precise
  intended operational application was not publicly established.
• Botulinum toxin: Considered in assassination plots, including
  poisoned material proposed for Fidel Castro.
• Curare:
  A paralytic poison studied for covert delivery.
• Strychnine: Found among toxic chemicals available to CIA technicians.
• Thallium salts: Considered in a plan to make Castro’s beard fall out and damage
  his public image.
• Contaminated diving suit: A proposal to expose Castro to disease-producing
  organisms.
• Poisoned cigars and pills: Developed or considered in the Castro plots.
• Poison prepared for Patrice Lumumba: A lethal substance was sent to the Congo in
  1960, although the operation was not carried out by the CIA officer who
  received it.

The Church Committee later documented CIA participation in assassination planning involving Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba and other foreign leaders. The retained stockpile was alarming because it demonstrated that the technical capacity for such operations survived after the official termination order.

How newspapers and magazines covered it

The coverage unfolded in stages:

• Early September 1975: Reports began appearing that the CIA had
  discovered an unwanted or unauthorized poison cache.
• September 15–16: Associated Press coverage identified a former
  middle-level CIA official as responsible for saving the stock despite
  presidential orders. This is the version carried by The Dallas Morning
  News and other regional newspapers.
• September 16–18: The Church Committee held public proceedings
  featuring Colby, Helms, Gordon, Sayre Stevens and technical witnesses.
  Television cameras recorded Church holding the dart weapon.
• September 22: Time published “CIA: Toxin Tocsin,” emphasizing the
  presidential-order violation and the destructive potential of 10.9 grams
  of saxitoxin.
• September 29: Time followed with the more extensive “Of Dart Guns and
  Poisons,” covering MKNAOMI, Fort Detrick, delivery devices and the dispute
  over who failed to transmit the destruction order.
• Later 1975: Coverage increasingly connected the toxin cache with the Church
  Committee’s assassination investigation.

The contemporary press did not report that the CIA had placed cobra venom into the general vaccine supply.

The claim that venom was placed in vaccines

There are two very different subjects that are often merged.

What is medically real

Venom or selected venom components may be used in legitimate scientific work:

• Animals used to manufacture antivenom are
  immunized with carefully controlled quantities of venom.
• Researchers study altered or non-toxic venom
  proteins as possible vaccines against snakebite.
• Venom-derived molecules have been investigated
  for pain medicines, blood-pressure drugs, anticoagulants, cancer research
  and neurological research.
• “Cobra venom factor” is a laboratory research
  protein used to study the complement immune system.

That does not mean cobra venom is secretly included in ordinary human vaccines. Antivenom also is not the same thing as a vaccine: it contains antibodies that neutralize venom after an exposure.

The modern allegation

The widespread claim that cobra or krait venom was placed in COVID-19 vaccines came primarily from the April 2022 online film “Watch the Water,” featuring Bryan Ardis and distributed by Stew Peters.

The film alleged, among other things, that:

• COVID-19 was actually venom poisoning rather than
  a viral disease.
• Snake-venom-derived substances were being placed
  in drinking water.
• Venom-related proteins were being introduced
  through vaccines.
• Similarities between certain biological effects
  of venom and COVID-19 proved a common origin.

Those claims were circulated by millions of social-media users. Therefore, it is fair to say many people have repeated the allegation, but there is no defensible way to calculate precisely how many believed it. Millions of video views do not equal millions of people accepting the claim.

Independent scientific examination found no evidence supporting it. SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated, genetically sequenced and studied internationally. Published vaccine formulations do not list cobra venom, krait venom, saxitoxin or cobratoxin as ingredients. Reuters examined the specific venom-in-vaccines allegation and found no factual basis for it. Read the Reuters fact check. A detailed scientific review by FactCheck.org reached the same conclusion and traced the allegation to Watch the Water. Read the FactCheck.org analysis.

Why the vaccine allegation can sound persuasive

The theory draws power from several genuine facts but connects them without evidence:

1. The CIA really did retain cobra-venom toxin and saxitoxin.

2. The CIA really did develop concealed poison-delivery devices.

3. The CIA really did conduct unethical experiments on unwitting people.

4. Intelligence agencies have used medical cover: decades later, the CIA used a fake hepatitis-vaccination campaign in Pakistan to try to collect DNA during the search for Osama bin Laden.

5. Venom proteins and some human proteins can affect similar biological pathways.

None of those facts demonstrates that venom was placed into publicly distributed vaccines. The 1975 stockpile documents do not mention such a program, and no verified laboratory analysis, manufacturing record, whistleblower documentation or regulatory ingredient record establishes it.

Bottom line

The documented scandal is serious without adding an unsupported vaccine claim. The CIA:

• Maintained an unauthorized cache of approximately
  11 grams of shellfish toxin and eight milligrams of cobra-venom toxin.
• Kept the substances for roughly five years after
  Nixon ordered offensive biological and toxin materials destroyed.
• Developed covert dart-firing and toxin-delivery
  equipment.
• Operated through weak oversight, oral commands,
  compartmentalization and deliberately sparse records.
• Could not give Congress complete assurance that
  every device or poison had been accounted for.
• Had a documented history of considering poisons
  in assassination plots.

However, the historical record uncovered in 1975 does not show that the CIA put cobra venom into ordinary vaccines. That allegation emerged prominently in 2022 and remains unsupported by credible documentary, chemical or medical evidence.