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Comment by areoform | Hacker News Reader

Truth is stranger than fiction. After the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was dissolved, the CIA transformed the lethal pill, or "L-pill," that the OSS had developed into a suicide silver dollar,

https://www.spymuseum.org/press/press-archive/2019-press-rel....

It had a tiny needle that delivered saxitoxin and/or botulinum toxin to the agent, giving them a fast and very painful death.

AFAICT, there's no public record of how many of these were given out and how many people used them. But we do know of one famous case where someone didn't use it — Gary Powers. He had one of these silver dollars and he refused to use it. He chose capture and torture instead.

This is what his suicide dollar probably looked like, https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/a...

For me, personally, there's something very funny about the CIA turning one of the country's most recognisable symbols, the dollar, into a suicide pact.

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I just looked up Gary Powers and it feels ridiculous that the CIA would ask or expect him to kill himself because his photography machine was shot down. He lived another 17 years and may have had a full life if he didn’t die of a helicopter accident.

I believe Powers said that the decision of whether to take the pill was up to him, though the public did apparently think he should have killed himself to avoid the diplomatic incident.

> the public did apparently think he should have killed himself

this makes me feel again that there's a recurring phenomenon with humanity, where spending the assets (life, in this case) of others is seen as selfishly strategic

One game theory result I remember is the hypothetical situation of two people dropped onto a grid with radios who must rendezvous. Apparently the game theoretical optimal strategy is to establish contact, inform the other person of one's location and the fact that one is destroying one's radio, then actually destroy the radio...

A different version has them needing to meet with no possibility of communication, only knowledge that each has the same map.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)

I suspect that the game theory aspect of the u2 spying wasn't as well thought out. At least, they probably didn't think that anyone would actually survive being shot down from that height. Forget about how the pilot might act when captured.

I’m missing some details here. Why destroy the radio?

I imagine to force the other person to have to come find you. If they think they can still talk to you, they might delay going to your location in the hopes that they can convince you not to make them do all the work.

This seems short sighted. Maybe the other person didn't understand you properly, and even if they're motivated enough to go to you, they won't find you, because you were not clear about your location on that single radio call.

worse than short sighted, it may be technically optimal but is hardly fair.

I believe it's also occasionally brought up that the public was generally on the side of the National Guard re: the Kent State Shootings.

The public sucks sometimes.

If you throw rocks at a military unit and then chase them as they try to retreat, you’re fair game. Throwing rocks is no small matter. A single blow from a rock can kill a man. Not to mention that this was part of a series of demonstrations that had already devolved into outright rioting.

Well geez, really glad that killing a few students defused that series of demonstrations!

Err, wait, it didn't accomplish that at all.

> Some Kent residents raised four fingers when they passed each other in the street, a silent signal that meant, “At least we got four of them.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/04/19/girl-kent...

That's funny you say that. You're literally describing the Boston Massacre which I think most Americans would side with the colonists on.

Most Americans have absolutely no idea about what happened during the Boston Massacre except "British Bad", which is exactly what the propaganda wanted.

The Boston Massacre was bullshit. John Adams defended the soldiers in court and had them acquitted.

I think their acquittal says more about the court system than of the incident that led to the trial. With a good lawyer, you have always been able to get away with murder.

I'm an American citizen, and ever since I learned about the Boston Massacre in high school I've thought the British troops were unjustly maligned.

Of course, I also don't think the Revolution was a morally-justified war, so I guess I'm an outlier.

It's surprising how far the "American" version of the revolutionary war has spread, but it's probably because the British didn't care that much and afterwards not pissing off a friendly partner was more important.

Much of what is "taught" about the revolutionary war is obviously one-sided bullshit.

I was talking to some American friends the other day about the Boston Tea Party. It was recently propped up by the ACLU as a proud heritage moment of American protest. But my understanding is that it was a riot involving theft and destruction of property. I don’t think the seizure and destruction of the contents of, say, an Amazon Delivery Van would be seen the same way.

As a non-American with no real motivation to see any specific narrative be promoted, it feels like American history often leans heavily on “the ends justify the means.”

Would the contents of the Amazon delivery van end up in the Boston Harbor or on ebay?

I personally wouldn't shed a tear over the seizure and destruction of the contents of an Amazon Delivery Van.

There is a difference between targeted violence and destruction of property as a means to exert economic pressure on a trading entity, and untargeted violence and destruction of property as a means to express your displeasure with current life. The historical claim of the Boston Tea Party rioters is that they broke a padlock and paid for a new one, as the padlock was personal property; the rest of the cargo was dumped into the harbor and ruined deliberately.

If someone was protesting Amazon, or the government's protection of Amazon, and as part of their protest they seized and destroyed the contents of an Amazon delivery van, they would be demonstrating a viable and possibly effective method of hurting Amazon (although you'd have to destroy a lot of delivery vans.)

The fact of the matter is that there are no governments that exist by the full consent of the governed. The only way for a "fully justified" government to exist is for no government to exist. The American revolution was no more or less justified than the formation of the Ottoman empire, or of Egypt during the time of the pharaohs.

However, no less than future President John Adams defended the British soldiers in court! And of the eight British soldiers charged with manslaughter, Adams got six acquitted and two got the minor (for the time) punishment of branding their thumbs.

As long as they're walking yes, but if they're inside tanks or sufficient armored vehicles then they shouldn't respond with lethal force or at all.

It's not that Powers was obliged to kill himself. Powers had a choice, either take the suicide pill, or don't talk if you're captured. He chose option 3, he talked.

Having to make such a choice is certainly not an enviable position to be in, but Powers never had to take this job. I certainly never would have accepted it, I think most people wouldn't.

So how does the poison work exactly? Why would it cause pain? (Genuinely curious and some quick searching doesn't lead to anything)

It causes paralysis and death by suffocation.

For botulinum, it's the toxin that causes botulism which can be viewed here: https://www.cdc.gov/botulism/symptoms.html

For saxitoxin, it's the toxin that's best known for causing paralytic shellfish poisoning.

TL;DR: it attacks the bodies nerves and leads to muscle paralysis and can result in paralysis of the muscles needed to breath.

cyanide is an enzyme poison - it stops all sorts of enzyme chains reactions from operating. as to why is it painful? well, that comes back to the question of why anything is painful.

> why is it painful? well, that comes back to the question of why anything is painful.

This is such a jordan peterson style non-answer x 'what does it really mean to order a pizza"

Not really. Pain is caused by things going wrong in your body. Poison causes things to go wrong. It’s not surprising most of them are painful.

This is totally meaningless - carbon monoxide poisoning causes things to go wrong, and is painless death. Countless other examples.

No it’s mostly just that oxygen deprivation is an uncommon edge case for a painless death.

We evolved different pain receptors to understand when we're being harmed.

Carbon monoxide poisoning wasn't common enough to warrant one.

It's painful if it's not fast.

All kinds of things can fail in the body without causing pain. What a non-answer.

most kinds of things that fail in the body cause pain, especially if the failure is being caused by an outside agent.

Why? Well one popular just-so story is that pain exists to let us know something is wrong so we will do our best to stop the pain, if the thing that is damaging the body is some sort of external agent then it seems reasonable under this explanation that there should be pain to get you to stop that external agent in some way.

I think the more reasonable question is why did they develop a poison that was really painful?!?

I expect this is less a case of them "developing" the specific poisons as much as looking at the pharmacopeia, and choosing something that was readily available, well understood, and efficacious/unrecoverable.

maybe this is the spycraft version of designed by a developer! hmm, yes we need to make a poison that people will take to keep from being captured and tortured for years before potential release.

Ok, well I reused these components and it is cheap and easy to make! Also unimaginably painful but hey, there's always a tradeoff.

some years later, huh, research shows nobody wants to use our unimaginably painful poison to escape being tortured. Users are stupid and incomprehensible.

We can be more specific here, though.

Cyanide inhibits cellular respiration. It prevents your body's cells from using the oxygen in your blood to produce energy.

My understanding (I am not an expert, please feel free to correct me) is that this produces neurological signals that you're not getting enough air. So you feel like you're choking or drowning; you're gasping for breath, your whole body is screaming at you that you need to breathe, but you are breathing and it doesn't help. That's not a pleasant way to go.

According to my biology teacher, the urge to breathe is from receptors that detect a higher concentration of carbon dioxide (in blood I suppose), not an absence of oxygen. She also said if you placed cyanide in your mouth, it would kill on contact with the tongue, before you managed to swallow it.

Your biology teacher might have been correct, but I had a science teacher confidently tell my class (in an affluent, otherwise science-respecting school) that humans don't land on the dark side of the moon because they would float away due to gravity working the other direction (hence the name).

Cyanide blocks both the mitochondrial ability to take in pyruvate and its ability to generate power, which means the cell can still attempt to use the excess pyruvate to generate energy by fermentation, resulting in lactic acid which stimulates pain receptors.

Carbon monoxide poisoning on the other hand only interferes with oxygen delivery, which shuts down the mitochondrial ability to generate power but critically does NOT stop it from taking in pyruvate. Since there would be no excess pyruvate in the cell outside the mitochondria to undergo fermentation, there would be less lactic acid, and less pain.

That's just my guess.

> For me, personally, there's something very funny about the CIA turning one of the country's most recognisable symbols, the dollar, into a suicide pact.

An additional bit of funny is that the silver dollar in that photo is known as a Peace Dollar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_dollar

Good grief, there wasn't a way to give them a fast and painless death? Or even moderately painful?

I guess you don't want that, because it may give people too much of an easy way out, giving up too soon when survival was still preferable for mission success.

That would not be my guess. From the state point of view keeping secrets might be much more important than one life.

Plus, the last thing the State would want is for their asset to have second thoughts about taking the suicide pill─“They may torture me soon and it will probably be extremely painful... but the pill will certainly be extremely painful! Maybe I should risk it”

Were the agents told that the death will be painful? I believe that organization such as the CIA would rather lie to its own agents to make sure they would poison themselves.

I am sorry this thread is ridiculous.

First, if they are detained, they will be strip searched long before any torture takes place. You either take it early or not at all - odds are everything will be taken away.

Second, the last thing you want in such situation is ambiguity - people don't just commit suicide willy-nilly. Instructions must be very clear.

Thirdly, either the agent has secret information that cannot be divulged, or they don't. This is known upfront before the mission. Any agent at high risk of capture is kept away from sensitive information, to minimise possible damage. Every spy and reconnaissance organisation work like that. As soon as agent is captured, damage control is put in place.

Lastly, orders to commit suicide are not legally possible.

> Lastly, orders to commit suicide are not legally possible.

You do realize that we're talking about the CIA here, right?

What are you gonna do, threaten the guy with Death? :)

"If you do not comply with our request for your suicide, we cannot guarantee the safety of your children, Samantha, currently in 3rd grade in Glaveston Primary, and John, named after your father, who is a star quarterback on Washington High's team. We trust you do what is necessary."

This is over the top even for the CIA, but they were definitely capable of being monsters. In the case of Gary Powers the agency fought hard to avoid a prisoner exchange and even internally claimed he had defected intentionally. His wife was even committed to a psychiatric institution: not so much to threaten Powers, but just to keep her from embarrassing the agency with her drinking. Ultimately they went ahead with the exchange partly out of fear that Powers would learn what they’d done to his wife.

If they did so, who would ever agree to go on a mission like that or join CIA at all?

We are talking about US citizens for whom this is a job, they are not like foreign prisoners. CIA -agents are 'one of their own'.

This is like Taliban-level stuff

> If they did so, who would ever agree to go on a mission like that or join CIA at all?

This assumes the others would know that it happened. Who would tell them? Certainly not the guy who complied with the request for suicide.

Imagine joining a government agency to protect your country and your family... And the government not only betrays you personally but also threatens your wife and children.

Surely even the CIA has limits on the atrocities they are willing to commit?

>First, if they are detained, they will be strip searched long before any torture takes place. You either take it early or not at all - odds are everything will be taken away.

Aleksandr Ogorodnik was able to get the KGB to give him his pen, which had a suicide pill in it, to write his confession.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dmitrievich_Ogorodni...

> Lastly, orders to commit suicide are not legally possible.

Obviously you don’t order it. You play up the cruelty of the enemy tortourers. This probably is not hard, every secret service probably have enough nightmare fuel on hand to do if they want to. And then you provide the means and let your agent know they can use it uppon capture.

I assume the suicide option is an option for the prospective torturee - not for the agency.

If the pill causes pain, that's an unwanted side-effect. It's unlikely to be as painful as the actions of your torturer, whose goal is to cause as much pain as possible, and who may also want to stretch it out for weeks. And there's a good chance your torturer will kill you anyway.

Sometimes torture is used for punishment or repression, not to obtain information. Arguably that's always the purpose; "information" obtained through torture isn't very reliable.

The psychological pain (weight) of even carrying such a suicide pill/coin as part of your mission pack-out. Perhaps the person has a strong Judeo-Christian belief that God finds suicide and self-harm abhorrent. Or "Dr. Ellie Arroway"-non religious beliefs of the same. Maybe it's a big question mark how those beliefs are tested in the moment of being tortured. Maybe nobody involved likes the option, but it's there because we do not know about that moment, or what happens after we die, but we do know how utterly horrifyingly people can behave in war.

Suicide mechanisms are used after the mission has failed, either they are captured or about to be captured. Agents aren't going to use a suicide option while still able to operate. (Although an actor free to operate but for which there isn't a survival option may choose a suicide attack. There was an American kamikaze in WWII, he wasn't going to make it back to the carrier, the only possible rescue was the very fleet he was attacking.)

When it comes down to a quick death by a suicide agent vs being tortured and then likely an unmarked grave it can be a reasonable option. Agents which aren't so likely to be put through the wringer and might be exchanged are another matter--Gary Powers had little reason to use his suicide option. He didn't have great secrets to be tortured for.

I suspect it's a matter of "fast, painless, compact, reliable - choose three".

if it's agonising death, agent won't take it, so it is no longer reliable. They folled themselves. Too clever by half

It is not like the agents will know if it is agonising or not.

You just tell them it is painless. It is not like they are going to test it on themselves.

If someone somehow ends up whitnessing a usage and they complain you tell them “this is very concerning, we are going to investigate. Maybe a bad batch? Or enemy action?” and then you classify the whole thing for 150 years.

If there is such a widespread leak that you can’t do the above (for example one of your agents swallows poison direct on camera broadcast publicly) then you say to your agents: “Turns out it is not working as painlessly as we thought. Obviously we are not monsters, we couldn’t test it on live subjects. Discontinue old formulation, new painless formulation is being distributed.” And then you give them new pills with the same or nearly the same poison and visibly new packaging/concealment. But that is a last resort, only if there is too much grumbling amomg the rank and file.

sounds like your main strategy is 'assume everyone working as a CIA agent is an idiot' and they don't catch on after working for many years?

"I work for an agency that routinely gains people's trust in order to betray it, but I trust them and they would never betray me" seems to be the default belief for this lot, so maybe it isn't so far fetched.

No. I’m assuming 3 things:

- the actual use of poison pills is very rare. If our agents need to pop them all the time we suck and our organisation is hemourhaging valuable resources and we need to improve our trade craft.

- things done in missions are murky, especially murky when the mission went so horribly wrong our agents commited suicide. Most often the agency notices that something went this wrong by an agent failing to report in. It is not like the agent who died a painfull/painless death will complain about it at the “illegal undercover agents anual ball”. Information spreads slowly by default under these circumstances and through unreliable narrators.

- the business of inteligence agencies is to keep information compartmented and on a need to know basis. They have processes with teeth to enforce this. Keeping information available to one part of the organisation away from other parts of the organisation is their bread and butter. Keeping the truth about a possibly painfull poison pill is not a special case there, you can use the same aparatus to keep this info locked down you use to keep other information within the agency.

If someone tells my not-so-voluntary suicide is going to be painless my default stance is going to be doubt.

In either case, the actual information on whether it is painless is immaterial to the choice. The only thing that can factor into an agent's decision is the information that he learns about the suicide agent, and the agency has a lot of control over that information.

It would be pretty easy to tell a plausible lie, though, especially if you can think of a plausible less-painful poison to pretend you used. Tell them it's something moderately painful, so you can still tell them, "look, it's still better than torture". Just don't remind them about the edge-case scenarios where it really has to be fast and reliable, and they probably won't question it too hard...

So tell them it's a blissful death. Who's going to say different?

"He said it was like going home."

That's wonderfully creepy.

Here's a couple more.

Like taking off a tight shoe

Like sinking into a warm bath

Painless, compact, reliable? Doesn’t need to be that fast.

Painless, reliable: that'll be barbiturates like Nembutal. But it takes about half an hour, and you need about 10g. So not compact or fast.

Maybe ricin?

Carfentanil, maybe?

Opiate overdoses are easily reversible with naloxone. I suppose it’s possible that carfentanyl is strong enough that it would take an unreasonable amount of naloxone to reverse.

Why not both carfentanyl plus insert fast but awful poison and hope nobody gives your spy naloxone in time.

Cyanide?

AFAIK cyanide is unpleasant; you die struggling to breathe because your muscles don't work - not because you became unconscious.

Thanks. I never knew that. I always assumed from movies that it was a quick and easy (hence painless) way to go.

Doesn't ricin take days to kill, during which the agent can still be interrogated and rewarded with quick execution?

Ah, yes: "anywhere from hours to days", says Wikipedia.

> Painless, compact, reliable? Doesn’t need to be that fast.

I thought the point was to remove you from enemy torture and questioning. If you're dying slowly, then the enemy is just going to torture and question you while the poison acts slowly, or possibly even find a way to ‘cure’ you well enough that the torture can go on for a long time … which defeats the point, doesn't it?

Assuming:

1) There is no antidote 2) It induces quick unconsciousness so you can't be tortured while it's working.

Probably still less painful than torture

In the 1980s, I read that the GRU issued an injector they called "blissful death". The source was unreliable, but that's a starting point for research.

Riffing on another comment, perhaps the poisons used have no known antidotes and that is why they are chosen even though they are painful. Otherwise they would probably be pointless since you could be revived.

Now there exist drugs like carfentanyl. A very small amount is enough to kill.. It also even looks like a pleasant way to die.

Bad idea. Opioids are way too easy to reverse.

For things like etorphine, you need special antagonists since Narcan won’t displace it from receptors.

And with a really big overdose they may not have enough Narcan on hand to reverse it. I’m talking 100x the LD50.

L-pill:

>… Ogorodnik offered to write a full confession and asked for his pen. When the interrogator handed him the pen with a cleverly hidden cyanide pill in the cap, Ogorodnik bit on it and died soon after. He was said to have died before he hit the floor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dmitrievich_Ogorodni...

>and how many people used them

none?

Now, people give good money to aestheticians to inject them with botox. The 20th c was wack.

Was Gary Powers tortured?

He was an American Air Force Pilot arrested and tried as a spy in the Soviet Union so I think it's safe to say he wasn't treated as an honored guest.

According to his son he wasn't physically tortured, but subjected to psychological torture that we'd probably call 'enhanced interrogation' these days.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/gary-...

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