Teacher spy assassin, p.12
Teacher, Spy, Assassin, page 12
I re-learned that shooting a pistol is inaccurate. You really can’t rely on it much beyond about 10 feet.
We went to an outdoor range. This range was designed for using a sniper rifle. There was a huge dirt mound behind the targets. The mound was hundreds of yards away. Five glass bottles were barely visible downrange. This was an extremely lightweight sniper rifle that was built to be disassembled and packed in a small case. It was silenced. Kirk assembled it in about 10 seconds and walked me through adjusting the sight for the wind and distance. I was able to break three out of five bottles at 800+ meters. The sound of the weapon could probably not be heard at the target.
I had not achieved mastery of any of these weapons. But I knew more than I did before.
We went back to the small judo gym where I was taught how to hold and use a knife. Different knives were presented. I was told to select a type that I would be given to take back with me as a defensive weapon. I chose a sailor’s locking knife with a serrated and aggressive blade designed to slash nylon line from ensnared sailors at risk of going overboard amid a tangle. It came with a marlinspike used to untie difficult knots. It could be used as a weapon in a pinch. An armorer arrived we talked for a bit and then left with the knife to submit it to aging. He would put a small presentation plaque on it from the Rochester Yacht Club. The apparent nostalgia value of this knife might save it from being taken by customs or other authorities.
Finally, that morning we worked with clubs ranging from homemade blackjacks to baseball bats. How should you hold each of them? How to use the longer ones to fend off an attack? And how to swing each of them to give you the most power while not allowing your opponent to prepare to fend it off? Just before lunch, we tried to extend these essentially offensive skills to found objects that could, in a pinch be used in an assault.
“This afternoon we will learn how to defend against an enemy armed with three classes of weapons. At the close of the day, my colleagues will return to test you again. Are you ready for lunch?” Kirk asked.
“I think I am still running on empty from last night.”
Today there was a steak sandwich and french-fries featured. I decided that would be perfect. Kirk made the same selection.
“Take a seat we will bring that out to you. What would you like on it?” the woman behind the counter asked.
“Make it the way you like it, and I will be fine,” I said.
I grabbed two bottles of Perrier from the cooler. I picked up my silverware and napkins and took my seat. Soon the sandwich arrived. The hoagie-style bun had been toasted in garlic butter, A ten-ounce rib eye steak was laid on top of a thin piece of provolone and an ample portion of sautéed mushrooms and onions. Oh my God! This CIA life wasn’t that bad. The potatoes had been freshly sliced that day and cooked in fresh hot oil and kissed with salt.
In the afternoon, we worked with three situations. The first was a person entering the room you were in, armed with any one of the three weapon groups we were studying, firearms, knives, and clubs. The second was someone in the room where you are who pulls a weapon out. The third occurred when they reach for a weapon during combat.
“First there are a few general principles,” Kirk said. “If your opponent is armed, and you cannot disarm them, bad things are likely to happen. Unlike the movies, once they have a weapon, and you don’t, the situation is rarely resolved with negotiations.”
“Secondly, if you are not armed and there is no quick escape, you need to step in, not back off. You cannot disarm someone from a distance. Your instinct will be to back away. There are a few instances where that could work with a knife or a club. This is especially true if there are objects in the room you can use as a weapon yourself. You cannot disarm a gunman from across the room. Finally, on this point, your instincts, and the assailant will expect that you will retreat. If you step in, there are risks, but there will be a second of surprise. That is all you will have to disarm him. Do you understand?”
“I do,” I replied. This was getting very real.
“OK, let’s start with the knife,” He began. “Many of the techniques we use with knife training will help with the other weapons. Most people using a knife or a club will use a bit of a backswing before a thrust or a slash, like this.” He showed a couple of methods that people used to pull back before thrusting or slashing to increase the force of the attack.
“You have to anticipate that and step in as the arm is swung back.”
He put a rubber knife in my hand and he fended off the attack by kicking my knee, using his forearm to block the attack. He grabbed my wrist and used a pressure point. He had shown these moves to me earlier in my training. He said you use pressure points to cause the assailant to drop the knife. It was my favorite, and probably what I would do. He urged me to consider simply tackling the aggressor. This has the advantage of surprise. Most assailants do not think about using a knife without pulling their arm back first; so, if you can keep it away while you subdue them, you can use your speed to take it away. If so, you can prevail.
We later practiced with the club. This was the one I was most comfortable with. I was certain that I could disable a man with a club by charging him if I was close when the attack occurred. The only risk occurred if I let him complete the backswing before I attacked.
This club is useless without a backswing. So charge the assailant keeping the club caught up between the two of you. He will instinctively fight to hold the weapon. That gives you two available hands to his one, for a moment. You should use that advantage to prevail with a kick, fists or karate chops, or a palm thrust into his nose. That is always a game-winner. It can result in death, but will certainly momentarily disable your opponent while they reach instinctively for their nose with both hands, at which point you may seize the weapon.
A man with a firearm presents a more serious threat. There was no backswing required. You need to be very close to act. He only needed to twitch a finger while you need to swing an arm or kick. The only way I could succeed, if attacked would be if the man with the gun needed to think twice before pulling the trigger. Otherwise, I was not fast enough to disarm him.
Multiple trials with an unloaded pistol proved this point as I heard the click before I got the gun away nearly 75% of the time. Perhaps this one was best left to the movies unless there was no other option. However, Long guns not presently aimed at me provided less threat. if you were close, the very length of the weapon works to your advantage. Rifles require more time to aim. The very length of the weapon can cause the barrel to be used as a lever. You never grab the long gun near the trigger. You grab it near the end where you control where it points. You use your less dominant hand for this. You have his strong arm tied up with the trigger, and you go after him with your strongest arm.
I had the opportunity to practice all of these with the assailant in the room, and with the assailant entering. Then the heavily built instructor and the thin and wiry instructor arrived for the simulated trials. When we were done, I was whipped. I hoped I would never have to use these skills, and adventure movies would never be the same.
At the close of the day, Kirk reviewed the day’s lessons and told me what would happen on my last day.
“Tomorrow, we will take a short look at assassination, as a topic. Then you will get on one of our planes to Teterboro. You will be met by someone from our New York office and be taken to JFK for your flight on Pan Am for your trip back to Belgrade. You need to be out of here by 11:00 a.m. to make your flight. Dress in your street clothes. We will not run in the morning but I will take you to the cafeteria before we begin. I will be here at 6:30 a.m. The cafeteria will be serving dinner tonight between 6:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.”
“Good night, and thanks,” I offered.
“Put your luggage outside the door in the morning. Someone will load it on your plane. Have your Pan Am tickets with you when you come to class tomorrow. Good night.”
Chapter 24: Assassination Training
This time I made it to dinner. When I got back to the barracks, I packed, laid out my clothes for the morning, and put out a coat for my return trip. I read a bit before turning in. Six a.m. came early and I needed to be ready to head right to the plane after our last session in the morning.
I was putting my luggage out when I noticed that it had gotten quite cold. I put on my gloves and coat and heard the now familiar rap on the door.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Good Morning, are you ready for breakfast?” Kirk asked.
“Always,” I replied.
“Are you ready to go home?” he asked.
“I am. I have been away now for over a week and I am truly ready. I am looking forward to time with my wife and son. I am even looking forward to getting back to work.”
I chose a toasted bagel with smoked salmon, cream cheese, tomato, onion, and capers, heavy on the capers. Kirk chose an omelet. We brought our coffee. The meals were brought to us with an additional pot of coffee.
Alexander, the director, stopped in to say goodbye.
“Kirk tells me you did very well. Jim Shultz is certainly high on your analytic skills. If you ever wish to expand your role with the agency, I am sure there would be wonderful opportunities,” Alexander said.
He asked for my plane tickets. I gave them to him. He returned a second set for first-class seats all the way. “This is a little gesture of thanks,” he said.
Kirk gave me the inscribed and aged sailor's knife that the armorer had worked up.
“It is I who am grateful,” I said. “This has been a great experience. I hope I never have to use anything I have learned.”
We went to a real classroom with ten seats. Kirk used an overhead projector to present about assassination.
“The origin of the word assassin comes from the Arabic word ‘Hashishin’ which means hashish eater. It was used to describe the young men who killed other people for Hassan ibn-al Sabbbah, as members of his private army. The legend suggests that they were recruited into this dark art through the lure of hashish.”
His lecture was thorough and littered with anecdotes. There were bloody photographs of assassinations and attempted assassinations. When the history was done there was a section on why this tool was sometimes useful to our national interest.
Then it shifted to the practical. This was the section I was waiting for. How did skillful assassins work? How did they escape detection?
Just then he was saying, “The American protester and founder of the ‘Yippee Party’, Abbie Hoffman, who was arrested as a member of the Chicago Seven said, ‘the first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.’ This is an unconventional source for this lecture but is important.
“Much of what the CIA does is designed and executed in secret. This is why we are called ‘America’s clandestine force’. But assassinations are the hot center of that darkness. If even once we are caught violently removing a threat to our national interests, we might be disbanded and the nation would suffer a huge national embarrassment.
“To think the agency has not ever assassinated an enemy would be hopelessly naïve. But you will not hear today nor will you ever hear from any agent any reference to these events. It is a powerful tool in situations where no other option will work. The probability that you will ever be called to exercise this option is nil. But the fact that we can and will use this tool in a way that eludes discovery is why no CIA operations can be conducted in the US. It is in our charter. To assassinate an American on our soil would violate our founding documents.
“Today will explore how to conduct an assassination and leave no trace. It will not be a skills workshop. In the unlikely event, an agent is called to assassinate, there would be extensive skills training before the mission.
“The general options for not being caught are based on one principle. That principle is to leave nothing behind. That principle is more important than the success of the mission. If that cannot be achieved, the mission should be aborted. Always.
“There are three approaches to mission anonymity:
Destroy all of the evidence at the time that the target is destroyed.
Attack from sufficient distance with a safe exit plan to allow for both escape and obliteration of the assassination tools.
Use an undetectable poison or injection, destroying any residue.”
We spent some time on the first option. This, in practice, led to building bombs that either left no inspectable debris or used a method of bomb construction commonly used by an enemy with no prior history of known US use. This bomb-making could use no materials thought to be available in this country.
Kirk mentioned the agent who was under-cover in a terrorist group. He was assigned by the terrorist leader to detonate a bomb built by their bomb maker to kill a head of state. Provided with the weapon by the bomb maker, our undercover agent, used that very bomb on the head of the group instead. Since it had the earmarks of a bomb built by the terrorist group’s bomb maker, it was assumed to be an attack by their own.
“A thorough, internationally sourced investigation led the terror group to believe, based on the evidence, that it was the bomb maker who had killed the terror group leader. Our guy stayed on. The bomb maker was rubbed out and our guy took his leave. The mission to kill the leader of the terrorist group was accomplished and a very skilled bomb-maker was killed in the same effort. We did this with absolutely no suspicion on ourselves,” he recounted
There was something about the way Kirk told this that made me think he was the operator in this story.
He advised me never to trust fire, alone, to obliterate the evidence of an assassination. First, fires were difficult to set without an accelerant, and all accelerants were detectable and would cause a larger investigation. They might violate the first principle, “leave nothing behind.”
We moved on to weapons and focused on the sniper rifle, as a tool in assassination. This is a choice that would leave proof that an assassination had occurred. The trick would be to obscure who did it. As often as it is used in the movies, as a CIA tool, it requires great planning not to be caught. But the bullet choice and the pattern of damage to the bullet would reveal that it was a sniper to even the least able police force. A weapon of that size is hard to move and hide without a chance of detection. Again, we run the risk of leaving something behind.
The famous faked pistol suicide was a possibility. I was shown photograph after photograph of what a real pistol suicide looked like, so I could understand where the handgun ended up after the shooting. The recoil did not leave it where people think it would be left, and that is a giveaway to an investigator. The problem of making sure that gun residue was found on the suicide victim's hand was also reviewed.
One of the real problems of this method was standing up to a psychological autopsy. There needed to be some evidence of severe depression or a sudden life crisis. Typically, if the victim was a problem for our nation, they were not depressed. Severely depressed people typically have a hard time focusing long enough to cause serious problems for a nation-state. We would not typically find that people with mopey personalities would be worth eliminating. Manufacturing evidence to the contrary was a problem.
Our time was growing short as Kirk moved on to poisons. He began with whole-house poisons. Very small quantities of highly enriched plutonium could be placed anywhere in the house where it would not be likely to be vacuumed or cleaned, like under a rug. One of the problems with this approach was that the material would continue to kill the residents of the house, or workplace for more than two thousand years. The evidence of the crime was easily detected by a Geiger counter.
“Someone probably killed Karen Silkwood this way; although the killer was never found, the crime was widely suspected,” Kirk said.
I had remembered the case of Karen Silkwood who protested America’s nuclear industry and its poor record of safety. She was found to be ill of radiation exposure before she died and they found minute amounts of enriched plutonium in her home.
Carbon monoxide was a reasonable choice but usually affected the whole building and all its residents. Turning a car on in the garage, or blocking a chimney with, for example, a dead bird were possibilities. But were easy to detect.
Poisoning food sometimes worked. Kirk spoke a lot about poisons and their detectability. The only really good ones seemed to be highly volatile, and fairly hard to obtain but were easily disguised in alcoholic beverages. Although many choices from this class of chemicals could decompose in the body within hours. Other more commonly imagined poisons like rat poisoning were found in even the most cursory of post mortems.
The injected poisons had great promise, some of the volatile poisons mentioned earlier, and only available from the Agency worked very well and were nearly undetectable after a few hours.
Old fashioned potassium salts dissolved in the solution also worked well. They had the advantage of being able to be sourced at any pharmacy in the form of a potassium supplement. In sufficient concentration, potassium could seize the heart almost immediately after injection in a major artery. But would take a few seconds during which time the victim might scream and bring attention to the deed.
“And with all injections, a needle mark could bleed a bit and the wound would need to be continuously cleaned until the heart had stopped for at least 60 seconds, then it would be largely undetectable, “Dirk added.
“So, this kind of work is not the kind of work a person should ever attempt without an agency planning team. There are simply too many risks. If the agency were to conduct an assassination all options would be reviewed. The victim would be tailed for days. Behavior patterns would be logged. Floor plans of the buildings the target routinely visited. Depending on the mission, a mockup of the buildings might need to be built. His security operations would be monitored, vulnerabilities would be noted, and a second-by-second plan would be developed and rehearsed, perhaps in a simulated site, maybe here on this campus, and a specially trained assassin would be engaged. As we say, don’t try this at home.
