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Expanding on Colby's testimony, Charles Senseney, an engineer for the Defense Department, told the Senators that he had devised dart launchers that were disguised as walking canes and umbrellas. In addition, he developed a device that fitted into a fluorescent bulb and spread a biological poison when the light was turned on. Senseney also participated in a joint test by the CIA and Defense Department of the New York City subway system's vulnerability to a poison-gas attack in either 1966 or 1967. Without the knowledge of New York City officials, the scientists threw containers of a simulated poison on the tracks of two subway lines. Passing trains spread the harmless substance along more than two miles of track within minutes, leading the scientists to conclude that the system was defenseless against that kind of attack.
Colby said that, to his knowledge, none of these weapons and poisons had ever been used. Still, he could not rule out the possibility entirely because the agency maintained few records on the research program to preserve its secrecy from all but a handful of CIA officials. Church committee staffers are investigating reports that the CIA prepared detailed plans to poison Congolese Radical Leader Patrice Lumumba in 1960 and even shipped an undetermined quantity of poison, possibly the shellfish toxin, to the African nation. Richard Bissell, ex-director of covert operations for the CIA, told a reporter last week that the agency had investigated "the feasibility of an action of that kind" but abandoned the idea "for various operational reasons." He insisted the CIA was not involved in Lumumba's assassination by Congolese rivals in 1961.
At the hearing, Richard Helms recalled orally ordering the destruction of the CIA stockpile of shellfish toxin and venom, and an end to the M.K. Naomi program which by then had cost about $3 million. Asked why the poisons were saved, Colby replied: "I think that it was done by people who were so completely enmeshed in the subject and the difficulty of production [100 Ibs. of shellfish produces 1 gm. of toxin] that they simply couldn't bear to see the stuff destroyed." But Nathan Gordon, the stooped and bushy-browed ex-CIA chemist who was in charge of the toxin and cobra venom in 1970, maintained that he had never received an order to destroy them. That order apparently should have been relayed to him from Helms by Sidney Gottlieb, a chemist, who was then director of the agency's technical services. The committee has subpoenaed him to testify, but he has warned that he may invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination and refuse to answer questions.