Unassuming Chemist Was the CIA’s Poisoner in Chief

Thirteen miles above the Ural Mountains, an orange flash lit the sky one spring morning in 1960. A Soviet anti-aircraft missile had found its target, an aircraft that began tumbling wildly. Both wings blew off. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, managed to eject and open his parachute. Powers was on one of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s most secret missions. He was flying the U-2, a plane that almost no one knew existed. Floating down, he later wrote, he imagined the “tortures and unknown horrors” that might await him in captivity. Fortunately, Powers had a way out. Around his neck, like a good luck charm, hung a silver dollar he had been given. Hidden inside was a pin coated with poison. The coin was a gift from Sidney Gottlieb and friends. https://www.historynet.com/