Secrets Declassified with David Duchovny 1x4

1. - Throughout time, governments and the people

2. who work for them have done strange

3. and even terrible things in the name of national interest.

4. Tonight, strange weapons intended to kill.

5. From a weapon fired on the moon...

6. - Scientists have to now start figuring out

7. how to make a gun that will work as it does on Earth

8. but on the moon.

9. - To an experimental nuclear weapon

10. that needs unusual helpers to make it work...

11. - So some genius decides to enlist an animal

12. to live inside a nuclear bomb.

13. The safety of the entire Western world

14. depends on these barnyard animals.

15. - And even a plot to defeat Hitler using hormones..

16. - This would constitute a sneak attack

17. against Adolf Hitler's masculine health,

18. and he wouldn't even know it was happening.

19. - Dangerous threats sometimes inspire strange weapons.

20. It's time to bring these stories to light.

21. At the height of the Cold War,

22. the U.S. and Russia raced to create weapons

23. to give them an edge.

24. In the late 1950s, the Soviets come up

25. with what could be a game changer—

26. a handgun that kills without a trace.

27. - In August 1961, a KGB hitman walks

28. into a West German police station and defects.

29. Bohdan Stashynsky is interrogated by the CIA.

30. And he spills the beans

31. on a high-level hit he just carried out

32. using a top secret gun that induces

33. a heart attack on the victim.

34. - He claims to have poisoned two Ukrainian exiles,

35. both very much enemies of the Soviet state.

36. Stashynsky claims to have used a modified pistol

37. that, instead of firing a bullet,

38. sprays a little bit of a spray of hydrogen cyanide vapor

39. right into somebody's face.

40. - The CIA have never heard of a heart-attack gun,

41. but it inspires the agency to create

42. its own untraceable weapon.

43. And in 1968, a highly classified science unit,

44. code name Project MKNAOMI, gets to work.

45. - When CIA finds out that the Soviets have a poison gun,

46. they set out on a mission to create something even better.

47. They want a toxin that's fatal, untraceable, undetectable,

48. and would look like natural causes

49. in the case of the victim, if they were ever discovered.

50. - Toxins are basically nature's poisons.

51. They are things that are highly poisonous

52. that exist out there in the natural world.

53. They land on something called saxitoxin.

54. - Saxitoxin is found in contaminated clams,

55. and it is 1,000 times more deadly than cyanide.

56. It works very quickly

57. to disrupt your nervous system,

58. interfering with your ability to breathe,

59. causing heart failure, leading to a heart attack.

60. - The toxin breaks down quickly

61. and is likely to have disappeared

62. before an autopsy is carried out.

63. It's the perfect poison.

64. The only problem is, how to deliver it?

65. - The Soviet cyanide gun has a lot of drawbacks.

66. You have to be very close to use it.

67. - You really had to get in somebody's face,

68. and you had to kind of hope

69. that the breeze wasn't blowing towards you.

70. - A change in the wind

71. could make the person shooting the weapon the victim.

72. Plus, you never know whether or not somebody else

73. is going to be exposed to the cyanide.

74. - The obvious solution is to use a bullet, not a spray.

75. But bullets create their own problems.

76. - If they use a bullet or pellet,

77. it will leave a physical trace, even if the poison doesn't.

78. So the MKNAOMI unit develops the only way

79. to covertly shoot a target with saxitoxin.

80. They freeze the poison into a hair-thin dart

81. that will leave nothing but the tiniest little pinprick.

82. - But does this strange weapon

83. ever get off the drawing board?

84. In 1975, accusations against the CIA

85. lead to a congressional investigation,

86. and the agency must answer questions

87. regarding alleged criminal activity.

88. - CIA Director William Colby must bring out

89. some skeletons from the closet,

90. and he reveals Project MKNAOMI.

91. - Congress gets to see more

92. than just documents.

93. - Have you brought with you

94. some of those devices which would have enabled the CIA

95. to use this poison for—

96. - We have indeed. - For killing people?

97. Don't point it at me.

98. - It's the kind of thing that would make James Bond jealous.

99. - Does this pistol fire the dart?

100. - Yes, it does.

101. - CIA takes a Colt M1911 gun and actually adjusts it

102. so that it can be fired from an electronic chamber

103. so it's silent,

104. and it fires frozen darts instead of firing bullets.

105. - So that when it fires, it fires silently?

106. - Almost silently, yes.

107. Very little, very little— - What range does it have?

108. - About 100 yards, 100 meters. - About 100 meters' range?

109. - Right.

110. - The heart-attack gun is, in many ways, the perfect weapon.

111. If you're the victim, you may not even know you were hit.

112. You may only feel a sting, a pinch,

113. or maybe just an itch

114. before you have a heart attack and die.

115. For the coroner or investigator

116. trying to determine the cause of death,

117. everything is going to look like natural causes.

118. It's going to look like a natural heart attack.

119. - It's now clear that the gun not only exists, but it works.

120. But who were the intended targets?

121. - In the wake of the Select Committee,

122. the CIA is forced to release

123. the largest-ever cache of declassified CIA projects.

124. Detailed within are covert assassination plans

125. to poison Congolese President Patrice Lumumba

126. and Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

127. - There's no direct connection

128. between Project MKNAOMI

129. and subsequent assassination attempts.

130. And the CIA continues to deny

131. that its heart-attack gun was ever used in the field.

132. But during World War II, there is a secret weapon

133. that is fully deployed in American skies.

134. - A silent winter's night is suddenly broken

135. by the sound of an explosion.

136. Locals rush out to see what has happened.

137. They find debris

138. and what looks like parts of a balloon

139. and bomb shrapnel.

140. - Could it be a homemade attempt at bomb building

141. or a stray military test?

142. Within days, there are reports of similar events

143. coming in from all over the country.

144. - Same sort of debris is found off the coast of Hawaii,

145. in Kalispell, Montana, Marshall, Alaska, and Oregon.

146. - Is the United States under attack?

147. The Army's Military Intelligence Department

148. investigates.

149. - What they find is that these

150. are hydrogen-filled paper balloons.

151. While they look pretty, these are not party balloons.

152. - The lanterns carry a deadly cargo—

153. four incendiary devices and one 30-pound bomb.

154. - The Air Force is told,

155. if you see these balloons while you're flying your plane,

156. shoot them down with extreme prejudice.

157. - But one mystery remains.

158. Who is making these weapons?

159. - The Army's Military Intelligence Department

160. starts looking at the balloons

161. to try to figure out where they came from.

162. And they realize something incredible.

163. They're not made of plastic.

164. They're made of paper that derives from the kozo tree,

165. and that tree is native to Asia.

166. - But there's more, because they're able to analyze

167. the sand inside the ballast bags

168. and determine that they come from a very specific place—

169. the beaches of southeastern Japan.

170. - It's clear Japan is attacking the U.S.

171. with a very strange weapon—

172. paper balloons carrying bombs

173. that can travel across the Pacific.

174. - The Japanese discover that air currents

175. at high altitudes travel from west to east.

176. The deadly balloons, named Fu-Go,

177. can ride the jet stream on a four-day journey,

178. all the way across the ocean.

179. It's an ingenious use of natural resources.

180. - One of the key features of the balloon bomb

181. is that it doesn't have a pilot on board.

182. And so you can deploy military force against the United States

183. without risking your vital military personnel.

184. The trouble is, you can't guide it,

185. and so you don't know where it's going to drop.

186. It's indiscriminate.

187. - The bomb's explosive power

188. isn't enough to do huge damage.

189. Its real threat is starting fires.

190. - The state of California is especially vulnerable

191. to forest fires.

192. And the Japanese were hoping that the balloon-bomb campaign

193. would trigger forest fires across the state.

194. The U.S. military reacts to that

195. by keeping aircraft on standby to douse any part of California

196. that might be affected by a balloon bomb

197. that triggers a forest fire.

198. - The government keeps the bombs secret

199. and out of the press because they want the Japanese

200. to think their campaign is failing.

201. Then disaster strikes.

202. - In May of 1945, a minister and his wife

203. were taking five Sunday-school children out for a picnic.

204. While the minister was parking the car,

205. his wife took the kids into the forest.

206. - They find a strange object— a large balloon.

207. When they approach to get a closer look...

208. They accidentally trigger the balloon's deadly 30-pound bomb.

209. The blast kills everybody—

210. the five children and the minister's wife—

211. and they become the only mainland American casualties

212. of World War II.

213. - A Sunday-school picnic getting ripped apart

214. is bad news that's going to spread fast.

215. So the government has no choice

216. but to come clean with the public.

217. - In May 1945, secret intelligence

218. on Japanese balloon bombs is finally released to the press.

219. In the final reckoning,

220. the balloons are more ingenious than effective.

221. Of an estimated 9,000 Fu-Go bombs

222. released by the Japanese,

223. only 285 are officially recorded

224. as hitting their target.

225. - In 1954, the British decide to develop

226. a new kind of nuclear weapon—

227. one that can be buried underground, like a land mine.

228. Not surprisingly, the project runs into problems

229. right from the start.

230. - In the aftermath of World War II,

231. Britain has a very real fear

232. that the Soviet Union

233. might launch an assault on Western Europe.

234. And if so, it will involve the Soviet hordes,

235. thousands of tanks and other armored vehicles,

236. millions of troops marching through Germany

237. on their way to the conquest of Europe.

238. - To boost their defenses, the military decide

239. they need a new kind of weapon.

240. - The British have been using land mines

241. for defensive positions for hundreds of years.

242. And they understand that a single anti-tank mine

243. might destroy a tank.

244. But what if you could destroy 1,000 tanks

245. with a single land mine?

246. - Strategically placed nuclear land mines

247. could wipe out an entire invading force.

248. Plus, the area will be contaminated with fallout,

249. forcing the invaders to retreat.

250. This could be a game changer—

251. a weapon the world has never seen before.

252. - The British code-name the project Blue Peacock.

253. - 30 miles outside London,

254. engineers at a British Army research site

255. begin developing a nuclear land mine.

256. To save money, they adapt a warhead

257. that's already in service called the Blue Danube.

258. - But there's a challenge.

259. If you plant a 10-kiloton nuke in the ground,

260. it can't be as sensitive as a regular land mine.

261. - Land mines used during World War II

262. are triggered through contact by the enemy

263. and, unfortunately, civilians as well sometimes.

264. But you can't have a nuclear bomb going off

265. because somebody steps on it.

266. A dog walker straying into the wrong field

267. could accidentally trigger a 10-kiloton explosion.

268. - They decide to give the mine an off setting,

269. rendering it perfectly safe.

270. It will basically be sleeping underground.

271. When called into action, it can be triggered,

272. either by setting a timer or remotely

273. by way of a three-mile cable.

274. Problem solved.

275. - British experts soon realize something else.

276. A buried nuclear bomb needs more safeguards.

277. It needs to be waterproof, weatherproof,

278. and tamper-proof.

279. - You'll have to encase this weapon

280. in a massive steel shell,

281. and that makes it both large and extremely heavy.

282. You're looking at 7 tons of weight

283. in this monster.

284. - In 1957, the British Army ordered ten

285. of these nuclear land mines.

286. - They have a plan to plant them

287. along the West German border as a method of repelling

288. a potential Soviet ground invasion.

289. - It soon becomes clear

290. there's an additional challenge they've overlooked.

291. - The components to trigger a Blue Peacock weapon

292. are very sensitive to temperature.

293. They have to be kept above freezing temperatures.

294. But putting them in the ground,

295. underneath the frozen soil of a European winter,

296. makes them very vulnerable to not functioning on command.

297. - So much has been invested in this weapon.

298. They need to make it work.

299. So no solution is off the table.

300. And they come up with something just so far outside of the box,

301. you have to really wonder how on Earth they even got there.

302. - To make this weapon work, they must keep it warm.

303. - Perhaps there's a way to use

304. some kind of a biological heating system—

305. a living organism that might generate enough body heat

306. to keep everything above freezing temperature.

307. - Obviously, it can't be a human.

308. No one's going to sign up for that type of job.

309. So they figure it has to be an animal that can maintain

310. its own body heat

311. and tolerate being kept in a confined space

312. for days on end.

313. - There's one obvious candidate for the job—

314. chickens.

315. - After all, factory-farmed chickens

316. are already kept alive in minimal light and space—

317. similar conditions to the underground bomb.

318. - In the event that you have to basically set a timer

319. on this atomic device,

320. you could put chickens inside the bomb casing

321. with enough food and water to sustain them

322. in these tight quarters in the darkness.

323. Their body heat will ensure that the timer functions

324. up to a week in the future.

325. If the blast occurs,

326. it will create a crater 640 feet in diameter.

327. The chickens will be incinerated instantly,

328. but they will die British heroes.

329. - Before any chickens are roasted,

330. another solution is found—

331. fiberglass pillows to keep the nuke warm.

332. - The Blue Peacocks are good to go

333. until one more problem comes up.

334. The only way to transport them to their final location

335. is by truck.

336. But once that truck,

337. loaded with a 71/2-ton steel cylinder, drives off-road,

338. it will inevitably get weighed down and stuck.

339. The mines are so heavy that transporting them

340. is hugely impractical and almost impossible

341. to do in any covert way.

342. - After so many setbacks,

343. the project is finally canceled in 1958,

344. and the British nuclear land mine is buried forever.

345. With the passage of time, even the British Civil Service

346. comes to appreciate the absurdity

347. of Project Blue Peacock.

348. The files are finally declassified in 2004

349. on April Fool's Day.

350. - Strange weapons come in all shapes and sizes.

351. In 1961, the Soviet Union decides to create

352. the biggest one the world has ever seen—

353. whatever it takes.

354. - Nikita Khrushchev is absolutely paranoid

355. that the rest of the world might think the Americans

356. are getting the upper hand in the Cold War.

357. - According to his reports,

358. America has five times the nuclear weapons

359. as the Soviet Union.

360. So he plans a big event so the world knows Soviet power

361. is still here and it's real.

362. - The U.S. has already tested

363. powerful 15-million-ton hydrogen bombs.

364. - The blast radius of this weapon is a fireball

365. 41/2 miles in diameter.

366. - But Soviet leader Khrushchev is unimpressed.

367. - Khrushchev wants a bomb ten times the size

368. of the largest American hydrogen bomb in history.

369. He demands that Soviet scientists

370. devise a 100-million-ton bomb.

371. - The bomb could kill close to a million people.

372. Khrushchev makes no secret of his intentions.

373. He publicly boasts about it.

374. Soviet scientists race to meet his demands.

375. - Scaling a nuclear bomb to this level had never occurred.

376. Khrushchev is demanding the impossible,

377. and Khrushchev expects results.

378. - Eventually, the lead scientist,

379. Andrei Sakharov, succeeds.

380. - They named it Project 602,

381. but it was nicknamed Tsar Bomba.

382. - Tsar Bomba— Russian for "king of bombs."

383. Now Khrushchev is determined to test it.

384. - When Sakharov hears that they're planning to test

385. this 100-megaton nuclear bomb,

386. he has massive concerns.

387. - There's no way you can set this bomb off

388. without creating an enormous region

389. of radioactive fallout.

390. Just the act of testing this bomb

391. is going to render enormous areas of the Soviet Union

392. uninhabitable for 1,000 years.

393. - So he takes action.

394. He goes, and he replaces half the uranium with lead.

395. - Even Sakharov's massively scaled down Tsar Bomba

396. is three times larger than anything

397. the Americans had ever detonated.

398. - The bomb prepped, it's time to see what it can do.

399. But how do you detonate a bomb this size

400. without killing the pilot of the delivery plane?

401. - The plan is to release the bomb from an airplane

402. and have it explode 21/2 miles above the Earth's surface,

403. which means that whatever plane drops it,

404. it's going to be incinerated.

405. So this is a suicide mission.

406. - Now, to give the pilot a fighting chance,

407. they coat the plane with a special paint

408. that will deflect some of the blast's searing heat.

409. - They attach a 17,000-square-foot parachute

410. to the bomb to slow its descent

411. to give the pilot time to get the plane away.

412. But even after doing all of that,

413. at best, they have a 50/50 chance of survival.

414. - Even under test conditions,

415. the devastation on the ground will be immense.

416. So the Tsar bomb is taken to the Arctic wastes,

417. one and half thousand miles north of Moscow.

418. Preparations almost complete,

419. the team hit another stumbling block.

420. The Tsar bomb is too big to fit inside the plane.

421. - Normally, if a bomb is dropping

422. from underneath a plane, it's loaded into the bomb bay

423. and released when the doors open.

424. But this bomb is way too big,

425. so they just have to strap it to the outside.

426. - With a makeshift solution in place,

427. it's time to drop the bomb.

428. - It's going to take about 30 minutes

429. to get up to altitude

430. with this enormous bomb

431. hanging from the fuselage of the airplane.

432. - Once the pilot is at launch altitude,

433. he releases the bomb.

434. - This thing is a manmade natural disaster.

435. - The blast from the Tsar bomb

436. is so big that it creates a mushroom cloud

437. that's 60 miles wide.

438. That's twice the size of New York City.

439. - It's an absolute catastrophe,

440. the damage that this single bomb does.

441. - It collapses houses in an evacuated town

442. 60 miles away.

443. - 500 miles away,

444. the blast wave was still breaking windows.

445. - The pilot is 30 miles away, but it's not far enough.

446. - The delivery aircraft was like a leaf

447. caught in a tornado.

448. - The shock wave is so big, it hits the plane,

449. and he actually falls an entire kilometer

450. before regaining control of the aircraft.

451. - Shockwaves from the blast register

452. across much of Northern Europe,

453. letting the rest of the world know

454. that Khrushchev's superbomb works.

455. Shock waves of outrage come next.

456. - It turns out that exploding a giant nuke in the atmosphere

457. doesn't make you popular.

458. - The test is denounced widely, not only in America

459. but also by one of Khrushchev's key men—

460. the bomb's designer, Andrei Sakharov.

461. - In fact, he was influential

462. in a 1963 aboveground test ban treaty

463. that went into effect and was signed by the Soviet Union

464. and the other nuclear powers, including the United States.

465. - In 1942, the U.S. created

466. the Office of Strategic Services—

467. a secretive agency designed to help win World War II

468. through both espionage and sabotage.

469. The OSS hatches many bold plans,

470. none stranger than a plot against Adolf Hitler.

471. - Officers at the OSS believe that they can bring the war

472. to a swift end by eliminating the leader of the Nazis.

473. So they draw up these plans

474. to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

475. - One option to take out the Fuehrer is poison.

476. Undercover agents in Nazi Germany

477. could spike Hitler's food.

478. But how?

479. - It's not easy to simply slip something

480. into Adolf Hitler's food.

481. There are levels of protection all around the Fuehrer,

482. and he even has a food taster.

483. - The OSS next turn to an idea

484. that's the brainchild

485. of lead scientist Stanley Lovell...

486. and it's a little more outside the box...

487. Spike Hitler's food with sex hormones.

488. - Lovell's team conducts studies

489. of Hitler's public behavior,

490. particularly his violent outbursts.

491. And they come to a problematic conclusion

492. that this is a character trait associated with females

493. and the emotional instability of women.

494. - Lovell is convinced that Adolf Hitler is falling

495. right in the middle of this gender spectrum,

496. and that if you just dose him with a little bit of estrogen,

497. he would be less inclined

498. toward violent "confrontationalism"

499. and more inclined toward engagement.

500. You could get a peace treaty out of somebody like that.

501. - Lovell lands on estrogen as his secret weapon.

502. - Estrogen is the female reproductive hormone.

503. If taken by men,

504. it actually reduces the male hormone, testosterone,

505. leading to the man taking on more female characteristics.

506. - And it makes the perfect poison.

507. - Odorless, it's colorless, and in the right amounts,

508. it cannot be detected.

509. This would constitute a sneak attack

510. against Adolf Hitler's masculine health,

511. and he wouldn't even know it was happening.

512. - The only problem—

513. getting the hormone into Hitler's food.

514. - Hitler is a well-known vegetarian,

515. and he's a paranoiac about his food supply,

516. which means he will only eat vegetables grown in gardens

517. under the direct control of the Nazi regime.

518. The idea is that an operative

519. might be able to infiltrate the gardens

520. and either intercept the produce

521. or inject it in the ground with hypodermic needles

522. filled with estrogen

523. that will then be conveyed via the vegetables

524. to the Fuehrer's plate.

525. - But the effects of sex hormones are gradual.

526. So we're not talking Fuehrer to Fraulein in one single hit.

527. - We're talking about months before the effects

528. will even be seen.

529. - Lovell claims to have put his plan in action,

530. sending female hormones to agents behind enemy lines.

531. But Hitler remained aggressively confrontational

532. until the war's end.

533. The plan may have failed,

534. but that doesn't stop Stanley Lovell.

535. In 1943, he comes up with another way to win victory,

536. this time with a stink bomb so powerful,

537. it will derail enemy attacks.

538. - They're looking for the ultimate stink bomb—

539. one that's so disgusting,

540. the enemy is just humiliated and left incapable of fighting.

541. - A substance or device that is just so pungent

542. and eye-watering that it clears the room out...

543. is not any different philosophically

544. than a grenade full of tear gas that clears the room out

545. because your eyes are burning.

546. It's the same kind of principle.

547. - The OSS affectionately names the bomb "Who, Me?"

548. because if a smell erupts

549. in a room of people and someone is blamed,

550. they typically respond, "Who, me?"

551. as if they're innocent.

552. - There's an entire industry—

553. a hundreds-of-year-old industry—

554. with a lot of science and engineering behind it

555. for spreading smells—

556. isolating particular compounds, blending particular compounds,

557. storing them, dispensing them.

558. It's the perfume industry.

559. - To concoct a stink bomb suitable for combat,

560. they seek out the best nose in the business.

561. - The OSS bring in chemical engineer Ernest Crocker.

562. Now, Crocker has spent years

563. developing an almost encyclopedic study of smells

564. for the perfume industry.

565. His challenge is simple—

566. produce a noxious anti-perfume

567. that agents can deploy behind enemy lines.

568. And he conducts months of tests to create the perfect stench.

569. Crocker ends up settling on just a cocktail of chemicals

570. that assaults the senses.

571. We're talking about the smell of vomit,

572. just rancid butter, urine, rotten eggs,

573. foot odor, and excrement.

574. - Confident his concoction will repulse German forces...

575. Crocker turns his attention to the Japanese.

576. - There's this prevailing notion that Asians

577. might actually be more accepting of filthy smells,

578. indicative of the deeply racist ideas

579. that are prevalent at the time.

580. And this leads Crocker to brew up a second smell

581. for use in the Far East, with notes of rotting flesh.

582. - The stinking potions are made,

583. but how do you transport a smell to the front line?

584. - Now they're faced with another dilemma.

585. They need a suitable container to package the noxious weapon.

586. But this proves much harder than brewing the smell.

587. - It isn't enough to just come up with this anti-perfume.

588. You also need to come up with something that can carry

589. this rancid liquid behind enemy lines.

590. So they spend months working on a suitable container—

591. one that doesn't leak but one that can also be easily opened.

592. - Crocker's team ultimately comes up with the design,

593. which is a small tube.

594. And it's mobile and can fit into a soldier's kit.

595. - The stink bomb goes into production

596. with a test run of 600 tubes.

597. - According to Stanley Lovell, they use Chinese rebels.

598. The rebels spray it on the uniforms of Japanese soldiers,

599. but the war ends before they can actually get

600. a full-scale assault on the senses.

601. - In 1959, Vice President Nixon

602. visits Moscow on a goodwill mission.

603. But the Soviets don't care about goodwill.

604. - Vice President Richard Nixon

605. is prepping for a trip behind the Iron Curtain.

606. He will become the first high-ranking American

607. to visit Moscow in 14 years.

608. And he is due to officially open an exhibition

609. of American science and culture in Moscow.

610. - After a recent scare at the U.S. Embassy,

611. Nixon's security team is on high alert.

612. - The U.S. Embassy in Moscow is reporting high levels

613. of radiation happening in specific rooms

614. throughout the embassy building itself.

615. - When you scan for radiation levels,

616. there's a certain level that's "acceptable,"

617. that's just going to exist within any room or place.

618. Those readings were slightly above acceptable.

619. - Nixon's security team

620. are afraid he's walking into a trap.

621. They suggest taking Geiger counters to Moscow

622. to monitor the radiation levels in his living quarters.

623. - Nixon wants to avoid any displays of paranoia.

624. He says no to Geiger counters,

625. but he suggests the team bring these measuring devices

626. called dosimeters.

627. These are pocket-sized instruments

628. that measure radiation exposure.

629. - The Secret Service team travels out to Russia

630. ahead of the vice president,

631. taking their dosimeters with them.

632. - White House Special Agent James Golden

633. is tasked with scoping out Nixon's Moscow residence

634. ahead of the vice president's trip.

635. - And one of the things that he does

636. is he starts to look for radioactive detection

637. within where the vice president was staying.

638. - But their dosimeter devices don't pick up anything unusual.

639. Everything's normal, and there's no sign of danger.

640. - On July 23rd, Nixon lands at Moscow Airport.

641. What happens next is kept under wraps

642. and classified for 63 years.

643. - The Nixons arrive. The ambassador arrives.

644. All of the sort of formalities are starting to take place.

645. And as a result of that slightly elevated reading,

646. Agent Golden decides to do basically a second pass,

647. a second scan to look for radioactivity.

648. I think he was not expecting to find any.

649. - When they reached Nixon's sleeping quarters,

650. something alarming happens.

651. James Golden's dosimeter

652. soars up to a reading of 35 roentgens.

653. - A roentgen is a unit of measure

654. for counting your exposure to radiation.

655. And in the workplace,

656. a permissible exposure to radiation

657. is just 1/10 of a roentgen per week.

658. - 35 roentgens will have a physical effect on the body

659. by attacking its immune system.

660. It's not immediately fatal,

661. but prolonged exposure to radiation

662. can lead to long-term illnesses, such as cancer.

663. - The Americans suspect the radiation

664. is caused by microwaves aimed at the building.

665. - At the time, microwave weapons,

666. or directed-energy weapons,

667. don't officially exist.

668. The American government is only just starting to develop them.

669. - A directed-energy weapon

670. is a weapon that can take focused energy

671. and drive it through an antenna

672. at a target a great distance away.

673. It's silent, it's invisible,

674. and people don't even know they're being attacked

675. until it's too late.

676. - It's terrifying.

677. If the Soviets are shooting microwaves,

678. they could target the vice president.

679. - The team runs checks on the rest of the house,

680. and the readings drop to a normal level.

681. This is weird.

682. - Nixon's security team can't find the source

683. of the radiation,

684. and they don't want to cause a panic

685. that will disrupt the vice president's trip.

686. - The next morning,

687. the readings are still dramatically high.

688. So Golden and his partner take a gamble.

689. - Because he knows that that room is bugged—

690. As a CIA officer, we always assume

691. everyone's listening at all times.

692. As a result, he does what we call talking to the room,

693. and he says, wow,

694. these radiation levels are so high!

695. I can't believe it!

696. - And then they wait to see if the message had any impact.

697. At 3:30 p.m...

698. The dosimeter suddenly calmed down.

699. - What that tells us is someone is always listening.

700. There's no question.

701. And also what that tells us

702. is this was something that the Russians purposely did.

703. Now, what their motive was, I don't know.

704. Was it to kill? Was it to hurt? Was it to frustrate?

705. We don't know the answer to that question.

706. - Nixon completes his visit without further issues.

707. Afterwards, the agents report their findings.

708. But their superiors don't want to derail

709. Nixon's peace initiative

710. by accusing the Soviets of a plot.

711. So James Gordon keeps his silence...

712. until 1976,

713. when a scandal hits the newspapers.

714. - 1976, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow,

715. a man named Walter Stoessel, started reporting symptoms.

716. He was reporting nausea and bleeding from the eyes.

717. These are classic symptoms of radiation poisoning.

718. - There's a real fear that the Soviet microwaves

719. are silently attacking Americans

720. and could be doing fatal harm.

721. The State Department is called in to conduct a health study

722. into whether U.S. diplomatic staff in Moscow

723. has been affected by radiation poisoning.

724. - With talk of Russian microwaves all over the press,

725. James Golden tells the inquiry what he believes

726. happened during Nixon's visit to Moscow.

727. - Golden believes that there's

728. a diabolical directed-energy weapon

729. being used to irradiate Nixon's room specifically.

730. - But the State Department's health study

731. finds no strong evidence linking Moscow radiation

732. to subsequent health problems.

733. - With that, the trail runs cold.

734. And the Russians have never been brought to book

735. for directing microwaves at American politicians.

736. - In the 1960s,

737. the U.S. and Soviet Union vied to put a man on the moon.

738. But what if they both succeed?

739. Could the Cold War come to a head with a lunar shootout?

740. - Engineers at Rock Island army base

741. specialize in designing weapons for combat on Earth.

742. But regular guns may not do the job

743. if war breaks out in space.

744. So the Army set up a Future Weapons Office

745. to design weapons for astronauts.

746. We can't go anywhere without taking a gun,

747. even the moon.

748. - The moon is a new environment,

749. and scientists have to now start figuring out

750. how to make a gun or how to make artillery

751. that will work as it does on Earth but on the moon.

752. - First of all, the moon has a very thin atmosphere.

753. Regular firearms need liquid lubricants

754. to keep them in working order.

755. But in a vacuum, lubricants are liable to evaporate.

756. And so the gun's sliding mechanisms will jam.

757. - What's more, guns have recoil—

758. the force that throws a gun back after it shoots a bullet.

759. But in the moon's low gravity,

760. the recoil from a regular firearm

761. could throw the soldier back so violently

762. that they could leave the lunar surface

763. and just float off into space.

764. - A radical design is needed

765. for a reliable firearm to protect astronauts.

766. Enter the spring-propelled spherical projectile.

767. - By replacing the conventional firing mechanisms

768. with a compressed spring,

769. there are none of the traditional sliding parts.

770. So it's less reliant on lubrication

771. and less liable to jam or freeze

772. in essentially a zero-atmosphere environment.

773. A spring-propulsion system like this

774. also is likely to have less recoil,

775. ensuring that the lunar soldier

776. doesn't get thrown back into space

777. after they pull the trigger.

778. - Another hazard that could disarm a space soldier

779. is the moon's extreme temperatures.

780. - During the day, it gets up to 250 degrees Fahrenheit

781. and plummets at night to minus-250 degrees.

782. So the Army's regular M14 rifle could freeze

783. or explode under these extreme temperature conditions.

784. - There's also the risk of the gun's metal parts

785. fusing together in extreme subzero temperatures.

786. It's a reaction called "cold welding."

787. It would render the weapon immediately unusable.

788. - This is where the spin-stabilized micro gun

789. would come in handy.

790. - The gun does away with many of the complex mechanics

791. of the standard firearm,

792. so there are fewer parts that are vulnerable to freezing

793. or exploding through excess heat.

794. And it can be assembled

795. using a variety of nonmetal materials,

796. like ceramics or plastics,

797. which is perfect to avoid cold welding.

798. - It would shoot a 4-pound projectile.

799. And it could travel at over 3,000 feet per second.

800. This could go very far, very fast,

801. with pretty good accuracy.

802. - But firing off a few rounds on the moon

803. does come with a caveat.

804. If you fire a bullet and it misses its target,

805. that bullet could potentially travel

806. through outer space forever.

807. - In 1965, the Future Weapons Office

808. publishes their report,

809. illustrating a space gun for every occasion.

810. But none of the designs make it off the drawing board,

811. because in 1967,

812. the U.S. signs the Outer Space Treaty,

813. banning weapons on the moon.

814. As long as there's conflict between nations,

815. governments will continue to develop strange weapons—

816. some that simply defy belief,

817. others we hope will never be deployed.

818. I'm David Duchovny.

819. Thanks for watching "Secrets Declassified."