MKNAOMI

Opening

MKNAOMI was a joint programme between the CIA and the Army's Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, Maryland, running from the early 1950s to about 1970. It developed and stored biological agents and toxins for covert use, along with ways of delivering them, including a dart gun built to fire toxin darts silently. In 1969 President Nixon ended the US offensive biological weapons program and ordered stockpiles destroyed. In 1975 the Church Committee found that the CIA had kept a supply of shellfish toxin anyway.

Timeline

1952The CIA and the Army's Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick agree on MKNAOMI, to develop biological and chemical materials and delivery systems for CIA use.

1950s and 1960sThe program stockpiles agents that can incapacitate or kill, and develops devices to deliver them, including a gas-powered dart gun.

November 1969Nixon announces the end of the US offensive biological weapons program. In early 1970 the ban is extended to toxins, and stocks are ordered destroyed.

1970CIA officials don't hand over all their material. About 11 grams of saxitoxin, a shellfish toxin, and a small amount of cobra venom stay in a CIA storeroom in Washington.

1975The retained toxins are found. The Church Committee holds public hearings in September. CIA Director William Colby appears, and the committee is shown the dart gun.

Key figures

Sidney Gottlieb's Technical Services Division was the CIA side of the program.

Fort Detrick's Special Operations Division developed and stored the agents.

William Colby answered for the retained toxins in 1975 and said agency leadership hadn't known they were kept.

Senator Frank Church chaired the committee that made the program public.

Physical and documentary trail

The trail: the Church Committee's hearings and report, CIA documents released to the committee, and the dart gun itself, shown at the hearings.

The saxitoxin was real: about 11 grams, which is enough to kill thousands of people. What the CIA planned to do with it isn't in the public record.

Things you might not know

• The dart gun had a tongue-twister name. It was called the "nondiscernible microbioinoculator", designed to fire a tiny toxin-coated dart that would leave almost no trace.
• A senator held it up at the hearing. The photograph of Senator Frank Church displaying the gun in September 1975 became one of the defining images of the inquiry.
• Crops were targets too. The programme was also tasked with studying biological attacks on animals and crops.
• Poisoning harvests was field-tested. A 1967 CIA memo found by the Church Committee described at least three covert ways of attacking crops, tried under field conditions.
• It was a supply line. MKNAOMI fed the CIA's Technical Services Division, which was meant to keep an arsenal of lethal and incapacitating materials.
• The toxin ban came in February 1970. A presidential order on 14 February outlawed stockpiles of toxins as well as germs.

Competing explanations

Bureaucratic hoarding. Mid-level officials kept expensive, hard-to-make toxins they didn't want to lose, without higher approval. This is how the CIA explained it.

Deliberate retention for covert use. Officials wanted to keep assassination tools and ignored a presidential order to destroy them. The committee didn't find proof of intent, and it didn't rule it out.

Later life of the case

The dart gun photo from the 1975 hearings is one of the most widely shared images of CIA excess. MKNAOMI is often mentioned alongside MKUltra, and the two are sometimes confused.

Finding

A real program that built biological and toxin weapons for covert use. After a presidential order to destroy them, the CIA kept enough shellfish toxin to kill thousands, and this was discovered five years later. Why it was kept, and whether any was used, the record doesn't show.

What still will not resolve: the full record of MKNAOMI's operations, much of which, like MKUltra's, was never released.