1
00:00:01,320 --> 00:00:05,559
Speaker 1: During the days of the Cold War, few schemes rivaled

2
00:00:05,559 --> 00:00:10,080
the bizarre elegance of the CIA's poisoned handkerchief plot. In

3
00:00:10,119 --> 00:00:14,240
the early nineteen sixties, Washington grew increasingly uneasy with Iraqi

4
00:00:14,279 --> 00:00:18,519
Prime Minister Abdul Kareem Kassim, whose left leaning policies and

5
00:00:18,600 --> 00:00:23,079
growing ties with a Soviet Union threatened American influence. Determined

6
00:00:23,120 --> 00:00:26,399
to eliminate him, the CIA turned to science and subtlety.

7
00:00:26,879 --> 00:00:30,120
The plan he classify in nineteen seventy seven during Senate

8
00:00:30,199 --> 00:00:34,240
hearings on covert operations, was chilling in its simplicity. A

9
00:00:34,280 --> 00:00:39,079
monogramed handkerchief, outwardly refined and gentlemanly, was laced with one

10
00:00:39,079 --> 00:00:44,520
of the deadliest substances known to science, bachulim toxin, producing

11
00:00:44,520 --> 00:00:48,000
a covert us lab. The toxin could cause paralysis and

12
00:00:48,079 --> 00:00:52,560
death with only microscopic exposure. Unlike a bullet or a bomb,

13
00:00:52,600 --> 00:00:57,039
the handkerchief promised a genteel but lethal touch. In nineteen

14
00:00:57,159 --> 00:00:59,759
sixty the handkerchief was reportedly sent to bag death or

15
00:00:59,759 --> 00:01:02,719
a day diplomatic pouch and delivery method immune to inspection

16
00:01:03,399 --> 00:01:07,200
as deadly payload was intended to act to contact killing

17
00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:10,640
Cassim if he so much has dabbed his brow. Yet

18
00:01:10,840 --> 00:01:15,400
the operation collapsed in an anti climactic fashion. Cassim never

19
00:01:15,480 --> 00:01:18,719
used the handkerchief, or the toxin degraded before it could

20
00:01:18,760 --> 00:01:23,000
even work. Either way, that dictator lived on, internal lived

21
00:01:23,040 --> 00:01:26,319
on until nineteen sixty three, when a coup by nationalists

22
00:01:26,359 --> 00:01:30,760
officers ended his rule by the more traditional set use

23
00:01:30,799 --> 00:01:34,959
of violence. What remains, though striking, is the plot's surreal

24
00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:38,079
fusion of refinement and ruthlessness. In an era when superpowers

25
00:01:38,159 --> 00:01:40,879
raced to build nuclear arsenals and top of governments, the

26
00:01:40,920 --> 00:01:44,200
CIA imagined that a silken square of cloth could quietly

27
00:01:44,239 --> 00:01:48,319
alter the course of Middle Eastern politics and history. The

28
00:01:48,359 --> 00:01:52,239
poison Handkerchief, though both absurd and deadly, epitomizes the strange

29
00:01:52,239 --> 00:01:57,040
creativity of covert warfare, where charm and civility could mask

30
00:01:57,760 --> 00:01:58,519
lethal intent.