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Comment by lupusreal | Hacker News Reader

Besides the Church Committee testimony, is there any evidence for the heart attack gun existing? There's part of me that wonders if they made it up for the purpose of disclosing it to Congress, to make themselves seem like they were authentically participating in the overview and accountability proceedings.

Kind of like the way murder suspects in police interrogations might give unprompted and quite possibly fake confessions to minor crimes, to manipulate the police into believing the suspect is being open about everything and doesn't have anything to hide.

Part of my doubt stems from my confusion about how a traceless dart gun would actually work. The dart guns I know of fire darts with fletchings, they can't be discrete. If you removed the fletchings, the darts would almost certainly tumble. If they said it was a BB gun that fired poisoned BBs then I wouldn't think twice about it, but they say it shot darts..

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from previous reading up on this, it is my understanding this was most likely for show for the committee (this was public information after all) and was not a real device used, because it could not work

skimming this article is also seems based on a false premise…the church committee did not hold the CIA accountable. they openly destroyed documents, fairly openly murdered their own employees, broke laws, etc.

see “Legacy of Ashes”

This is a huge problem IMO.

You have to assume the CIA are the absolute masters of layered deception.

I just listened to Anna Paulina Luna on Joe Rogan drone on about the CIA and remote viewing. I just assume that is all some kind of booby trap nonsense to fall into. I actually think the whole interview was Anna telling the bullshit the CIA showed her to keep her from finding anything that matters.

Same way with classifying the JFK assassination docs for decades even though there is absolute nothing in them.

It is brilliant. Something far beyond gas lighting.

Objectively, I have no idea what to believe with the CIA and that obviously is the strategy.

The JFK documents were classified to protect methods, and are still classified to protect people. People who are still alive, were tangentially involved (e.g. clerical staff or random bystanders who might've been interviewed but reported nothing of note).

It's why releasing more documents never reveals anything: it's stuff that wasn't worth trying to declassify because it's irrelevant, but it might contain a bunch of random names of people who are still alive and did things like sign for lunch that day.

My basic assumption is that were a top-level CIA officer or several involved in the JFK assassination, they probably wouldn't leave behind mountains of documents in a clear paper trail.

Booby trap setup by who? Who are these mysterious master minds?

The CIA's dart gun likely used a compressed gas system with flechette-style projectiles that are stabilized by their center of gravity rather than fletchings, similar to technology developed for special operations where the projectile is designed to dissolve or fragment after delivery.

There's a zillion ways to kill people in slow ways. Put poison that is slow acting in restaurant food - that's harder than just a single shot with some gun. Cancer causing substances in their house water that you later remove the source of (let's not figure millions of people have unsafe drinking water just on the ordinary day in the us).

Probably much easier than using the heart attack gun! That thing did not have a very long range, and almost certainly did not have great accuracy, so its use would have been conspicuous. Sure, it's not easy to arrange to have an agent as a server or cook at some restaurant, but it surely is easier.

Another problem I have with the heart attack gun; why did they make it look like a gun? I agree that the assassin would have to be close to the target to use it, so making it look like an obvious gun risks somebody getting a glimpse of it and immediately raising an alarm. A more discrete shape would make infinitely more sense.

Indeed, why not make it more like a more discreet version of an epi pen? Like the ricin umbrella, but a bit more subtle.

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