Lethal Action - Understanding Poison with Neil Bradbury
Erin Dietrick: Welcome to "SpyCast," the official podcast of the International Spy Museum. I'm Erin Dietrick, and your host is Dr. Andrew Hammond, the Museum's historian and curator. Each week, we explore some aspect of the past, present, or future of intelligence and espionage. If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving us a five-star review. Coming up next on "SpyCast".
Neil Bradbury: And as they're talking about this, they pour a cup of tea for Litvinenko. Litvinenko did not know that into the teapot had been placed polonium-210, which is a highly radioactive chemical. [ Music ]
Erin Dietrick: Poison. We've all read a book or two or seen a movie where the main character sips a cup of tea and then suspiciously dies moments later. But how much do you actually know about poisons and the very real stories of how they've been used by spies and on spies? This week, Andrew was joined in the studio by Dr. Neil Bradbury, author of the book "A Taste for Poison, Eleven Deadly Substances and the Killers Who Used Them." Neil is an author, a researcher, and a professor of physiology and biophysics at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. I really can't think of a better person to give us a lesson on this fascinating and quite scary method of lethal action. In this episode, Andrew and Neil discuss how different poisons affect the human body, the usage of poisons as an assassination method, including the deaths of Alexander Litvinenko and Georgi Markov, and the Soviet Union's famous Lab X and the production and research of poisons on the state level. The original podcast on intelligence since 2006, we are "SpyCast." Now sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.
Andrew Hammond: Okay. Well, I think it would be good to start off, just to put in a disclaimer, your book, "A Taste for Poison, Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers who Use Them." This is an educational tool, an excavation of the way these things have been used, were definitely not -- there's no product endorsements.
Neil Bradbury: It is definitely not a how-to book.
Andrew Hammond: So, I think it would be interesting just at the very top level like when we talk about a poison like what exactly are we talking about? I know you're a physiologist like for people that are not part of this world like is there something that makes all of them cohere like what's --?
Neil Bradbury: It's actually not that complicated. So, a poison is any chemical that disrupts the normal function of the body. It's really not that complicated. The other word that you may come across sometimes is toxin. It's essentially the same thing. The only difference is we generally think of toxins as poisons that are made by living things. So probably Botulinum or Botox would be the most famous. Poisons can be anything man-made, nerve agents, things like that. But essentially, toxins, poisons are really just chemicals that alter the normal function of the body.
Andrew Hammond: And when we say the normal function of the body, your first chapter's called "Biomolecules of Death". So can you just tie that onto what you just said? When you say the normal functioning of the body, are we talking about altering the biomolecules and what are those?
Neil Bradbury: It really depends upon the poison you're talking about. Not all poisons work in the same way. They all interact with different components of the body. One of the things I think is really interesting to appreciate is that many of the chemicals in the book, when used properly, are used routinely for healing people. Insulin is a good example. Obviously, there are millions of people who take insulin every day, and without it, they can't live. But if you take too much insulin or are given too much insulin, then it clears the body, clears all the blood of sugar and the body shuts down and doesn't function, the brain shuts down and the heart shuts down and it will lead to death. So many of these chemicals are not really inherently good or bad in themselves. It's just how they're used. So insulin is one example. Digoxin is another example, a very important drug used medicinally to treat heart problems. If you use too much of it, it is problematic and lethal, in fact. So, it's not really the chemicals as such, it's how it's used and who's using it, and for what purpose.
Andrew Hammond: And even something as obviously benign as water, like if you drink too much water, you can die from that as well. I remember back in the day when ecstasy was on the scene, there were reports of people going to raves and drinking too much water because they were paranoid about dehydration and they'd die because of that.
Neil Bradbury: Absolutely true. In fact, there's a very famous case of a radio station in California that held a competition for a computer game console. And in order to win the competition you had to see how much water you could drink without going to the bathroom. And they started out with small 500 mil bottles of water and then gradually built up to, you know, pint bottles of water. And that is very dangerous. People called in to say, "This is not a good idea for a competition." And in fact, one of the women who was in the competition suffered massive brain damage as she was driving home and died after taking nothing but water. So enough of anything will be bad for you.
Andrew Hammond: And I think just before we dive into some of the stories that concern the poisons in your book, I think it would be interesting to just briefly discuss, I guess, the evolution of poison. So I'm thinking about, you know, for a lot of human history, we think about scientific progress. I guess a lot of it was very word of mouth, or we know that Socrates drank hemlock, or, you know, Cleopatra, the story goes, was killed by the poison from a deadly asp and all these types of things. But then as we get the scientific revolution and we begin to understand things like atoms and molecules on a deeper level, then I'm guessing that our understanding of the chemical world deepens, and therefore, our understandings of poison gets deeper with it. So, I'm just trying to get the more hand-me-down low-level scientific understandings versus like modernity.
Neil Bradbury: I mean obviously, there have been people that have been committing murder with poison for many, many years. But as we started to get more in a society governed by laws, people started to ask the question, "Well, how do we detect these poisons? We need to be able to have some way to show that an individual has been murdered with a poison." And so a lot of chemists and forensic science started to be developed. Probably a classic example of this would be arsenic, which has been used for many, many years as a poison. And unfortunately, many of the symptoms of arsenic are very similar to food poisoning, vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, and so there was a big concern that many people were dying from arsenic poisoning, but the perpetrators were not being caught until a chap called James Marsh invented a test that was definitive, could be used in a court of law to prove that samples from the body were indeed containing arsenic. And as a consequence of that, the number of people being poisoned with arsenic dropped dramatically. And it still occurred, but because you could now detect it easily, people decided this was probably not the poison of choice. And so, many other people went on to use plant-based poisons. And as we became more technologically and scientifically advanced and able to detect those poisons easier and easier, those gradually fell out of favor. And so it's been a continuous cat-and-mouse game between the poisoners and the people responsible for detecting it. And obviously, since we're at the Spy Museum, the famous Laboratory 10 in Moscow, part of the Russian government, was dedicated exclusively to designing poisons that couldn't be detected. And we now know that obviously we can actually detect them, but it's been a continuous cat-and-mouse game of people developing new poisons that they think are undetectable, and then scientists and law enforcement trying to come up with new ways to detect them.
Andrew Hammond: Okay. Wow, that's fascinating. And just before we dive into the stories we're going to discuss which feature things like Novichok, I'm just trying to get an understanding of some of the more classic ones that all of our listeners will have heard of. So let's say arsenic and cyanide, like, where did they come from? Like, how do they work? Like, just give us an overview and what's the difference between both of them?
Neil Bradbury: Cyanide is something that probably many people have been exposed to. You know, we know that there's actually small amounts of cyanide in apple pips, apple seeds, and cherry seeds. And fortunately, our bodies do actually have a way of breaking down very small amounts of cyanide. So if you were to ingest three or four apple seeds by accident, you're not going to die. There are many trees, including laurel trees, that when we think of military warfare and we think of binary weapons where you have two chemicals that are fairly inert on themselves, but when you combine them, they make a toxic agent. The same is true in yew leaves and laurel leaves, that they have two compounds which are inert, but when you break the leaves, they actually start releasing cyanide. And there have been some examples of people who have been cutting their trees and hedges and bundling the leaves into the back of their car and driving them off to a dump site who have been rendered unconscious. So cyanide is a very quick-acting poison. And obviously in terms of spies that the classic is the spy who's given a capsule of cyanide to ingest if they're ever captured. It acts very quickly and what it essentially does is shut down every cell in the body. So we're thinking about the brain gets shut down, the heart gets shut down, the ability to breathe gets shut down. And it happens very rapidly, within minutes, and is very effective in actually killing an individual because it stops all the energy production in the body pretty quickly. So it is actually a very effective poison for killing people.
Andrew Hammond: Is it painful to die of cyanide poisoning?
Neil Bradbury: It is painful in the sense that a lot of the time the lungs fill with fluid, probably familiar with the concept of the frothing at the mouth, typical of cyanide. And that's due to the fact that the lungs fill with fluid and people just cough that up. Fortunately, it is very quick. So someone exposed to cyanide can really be dead literally within two or three minutes.
Andrew Hammond: And this is like what Hitler and Eva Brown and Goebbels and all that took in the bunker?
Neil Bradbury: All the top Nazis when Russia came into Berlin at the end of the Second World War, yes, a lot of the senior Nazi officials took cyanide rather than being captured by the Russians. So arsenic is interesting in that it really depends how much you get. You can either give somebody a large dose of arsenic at one time and that will be lethal. But you can also give them small amounts of arsenic over time. It's a cumulative poison. So once it's in the body, the body really can't get rid of it. And so if you just keep adding little bits every day, little bits every day. And it works slightly differently in that arsenic mimics natural chemicals in the body. So it's a little bit of a Trojan horse. The body really doesn't recognize it as something foreign, but it really doesn't quite work. So if you think of something like a key that will actually fit in a lock okay, but it really can't open the lock. That's essentially what arsenic does. It can go in and pretend to be a natural chemical, but it doesn't work and the body will eventually shut down.
Andrew Hammond: Wow. That's pretty incredible. Well, let's jump on to ricin. So I'm thinking specifically with the case of Georgi Markov. So here at the Spy Museum, we have an exhibit where we look at this. So this is a chapter in your book as well, which is really, really fascinating. Tell our listeners a little bit more about that case and about how it all shook out.
Neil Bradbury: So Markov was originally fairly high up in the communist regime in Bulgaria. But he eventually got disillusioned with how things were going on in Bulgaria and defected to the West, and actually ended up working for the BBC and the American government broadcasting radio programs propaganda into the then-Soviet bloc, essentially telling people that life was much better under a Western concept than communism. And obviously that the leadership in Bulgaria were not happy with this and decided that Markov had to be taken out, assassinated. The weapon that they chose was intriguingly, an umbrella, which contained a very small pellet of ricin. Ricin is a natural chemical. It comes from the ricin plant. Many older people will be familiar with something else that comes from the ricin plant, which is castor oil that a lot of us were given by our mothers when we were children. That's completely safe. It's not toxic at all. But ricin is one of the other things that's made by the castor bean and is very, very toxic, incredibly toxic. And one day when Markov was catching a bus to go to the BBC to do his broadcast, he felt a little sting at the back of his leg, turned round to see someone picking up an umbrella from the floor who muttered, "Sorry," got into a taxi and disappeared. Markov thought nothing of it until he got home later that night and started feeling unwell. A doctor was called in, and essentially you just have the flu. Call me in the morning if you're not doing any better. Markov ended up being very ill, was taken to hospital. They couldn't really figure out what was wrong with Markov until someone was looking at an X-ray and saw a little fleck on the X-ray and saw that there was a very small pellet, smaller than a fingernail that had been lodged in his leg. And this contained ricin. Ricin is an interesting chemical. It has to get into the cell. And every cell in the body has a complex called a ribosome. And what the ribosome does is essentially it's the protein factory. So all your components of your blood, everything that you need that's a protein is made on a ribosome. And what ricin does is completely wipes that out. It will not only wipe out one molecule, it can actually go on and take out every other ribosome. And interestingly, what's referred to in terms of ricin is what's called a ribosome inhibiting protein, which if you take the initials, is RIP, which essentially is --
Andrew Hammond: What happens.
Neil Bradbury: What happens. They weren't sure exactly that this was the poison that was used until they gave the same amount of ricin to a pig and the pig developed the exact same symptoms as Markov and died a few days later. And I guess the person responsible was never caught. Certainly, when the Berlin Wall fell and East Germany and Bulgaria opened up, there were some suggestions that it was an antiques dealer from Scandinavia who was responsible for this, but he died, never went to court. The other thing that's interesting is that there are two components to ricin, two parts, there's an A part and a B part. And pretty much all of us have eaten the B part. It's present in wheat and corn. And just the B part on its own, perfectly fine. But if you have the A part with it, then you're going to die.
Andrew Hammond: Okay. And this is something that you can remember watching on the news as a young kid.
Neil Bradbury: As a young kid, you know, I was, you know, fascinated as every young kid is with James Bond, and hearing this on the news just seemed to be, you know, out of a James Bond movie completely.
Andrew Hammond: And like just out of interest, why ricin? I'm assuming they've got, you know, Lab 10 you mentioned. I'm assuming there's lots of different things in the toolkit. Like, why ricin, is there some utility in using that?
Neil Bradbury: The utility is that you need very, very, very small amounts. And initially, the pellet that was used to inject the ricin was thought to be just an artifact on the X-ray film. It wasn't until someone went back and looked closely. And so, it's really just the fact that you needed incredibly tiny amounts of it that are lethal. That's really why ricin was used.
Andrew Hammond: And is the death from ricin always relatively similar? Like Markov, it's like flu-like symptoms, a couple of days and then --
Neil Bradbury: It starts off with flu-like symptoms, but because it really shuts down every cell in the body. And once enough cells in a tissue start dying, so your liver's going to shut down, eventually your heart's going to shut down, your intestines are going to shut down, your whole body slowly shuts down, and it's a very slow, painful death. [ Music ]
Erin Dietrick: We've just discussed the famous case of the assassination of Georgi Markov with an unusual weapon, an umbrella. Did you know that you can see this umbrella right here at the International Spy Museum? It's true. In the exhibit that inspired this podcast episode, we've got dozens of weapons used by spies and on spies for the purpose of lethal action. Alongside the famous Bulgarian umbrella sits the Trotsky axe, an ice pick used to assassinate Leon Trotsky in 1940. No poison involved. To see these artifacts and more, visit us right here in Washington, DC, I promise you won't be disappointed.
Andrew Hammond: For this Georgi Markov one, like what's the theory behind this antiques dealer? So the KGB, Bulgarian intelligence, an antiques dealer, how does the plot all come together?
Neil Bradbury: The plot probably comes together because at the time, obviously Bulgaria was part of the Soviet Union. And they solicited help and input from the KGB. KGB had Laboratory 10 which was responsible for developing a lot of the agents that could be used and also delivery systems, walking sticks, guns hidden in newspapers, all of which could be used to potentially assassinate. So there was a good collaboration between the Bulgarian Secret Service and the KGB. At the time, the KGB probably had an agent who was working in the West, a sleeper agent, who provided the umbrella containing the ricin, that was essentially an air pistol disguised in an umbrella that was used to inject the ricin particle into the body. He was really unidentified until the Soviet Union fell apart, and the documents started to flow out, and it became somewhat easy to figure out who was involved. And there were strong evidence that it was this antiques dealer. But the smoking gun, as it were, to definitively nail it down as Agent Piccadilly, really just didn't occur.
Andrew Hammond: Okay. And tell us a little bit more about Lab 10, because that's really fascinating.
Neil Bradbury: Yeah, Lab 10 is part of the Soviet Union's KGB for dealing with assassinations, coming up with different chemicals. One of the really nasty things about Lab 10 that was originally founded by Beria, one of the head guys in the Soviet government, the head of Lab 10 came up to Beria and said, "We're having a hard time testing our chemicals on people." And Beria said, "Well, we've got plenty of people who are in our jails. You're more than welcome to use them." And so, unfortunately, a lot of the chemicals were tested on prisoners, both Soviet prisoners, and also to some extent it turns out now, Western people who had been captured as spies and were imprisoned in Russia, all got used by Lab 10 for testing out their poisons. Now, it's argued that with the fall of the Soviet Union that Lab 10 was closed down, but I think there's probably good evidence, particularly when we think about more recent events associated with people like Sasha Litvinenko, Sergei Skripal, who also were poisoned, that maybe Lab 10 never really was closed down.
Andrew Hammond: So let's go on to Litvinenko. So we've spoke about Lab 10, this, I guess, cultural tradition within Soviet and Russian intelligence of taking certain people out, especially people who were part of the tribe and who have since left it, and so forth. So we've got Georgi Markov, a senior communist in Bulgaria, then we've got Alexander Litvinenko. So he dies too. Tell us a little bit more about that case.
Neil Bradbury: Well, so maybe we could start a few days after he's been poisoned. So, a gentleman goes into hospital, into the emergency room, checks himself in as Edwin Carter and is treated for gastroenteritis, stomach bugs, but doesn't seem to be recovering, given the standard treatment, until he calls the doctor in and says, "My name's not really Edward Carter, my name's Alexander Litvinenko. I work for British intelligence. Here's the phone number of my handler. Call him and let him know that I've been assassinated." Now, you can imagine what the doctor thought of that. But given the fact that Litvinenko was not doing very well, called up the phone number and it turned out that he really was working for British intelligence. He originally worked for the KGB. He was fairly high up in the KGB, working for anti-terrorism units in the KGB, became a very outspoken critic of Putin, and was imprisoned for that, maybe on trumped-up charges, maybe on real charges. But he eventually came to the West and started working for British intelligence, providing information on Russian gangs and Russian government intelligence. He was invited to the Millennium Hotel in London, and at the hotel, he met with two other people who were ex-KGB agents. They were sitting at a table, they'd ordered a pot of tea and a couple of gin and tonics.
Andrew Hammond: It doesn't get any more British than that.
Neil Bradbury: It doesn't get any more British than that. And so they're talking about possible commercial enterprises that they may collaborate on. And as they're talking about this, they pour a cup of tea for Litvinenko. Litvinenko did not know that into the teapot had been placed polonium-210, which is a highly radioactive chemical. He became very ill. Went to the hospital, initially as Edwin Carter, but finally confessed that he actually was a British agent. Initially, they couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. All the normal detection methods for radiation are not sensitive enough to detect what's called alpha radiation, which is given off by polonium. Eventually, they had to send samples off to Aldermaston, which is the British intelligence section for dealing with spies and chemicals and weapon creation. They finally figured out that it was polonium. Polonium, again, works in a completely different way. It's actually, in one sense, not dangerous at all. So if you were to put some polonium on your skin, it wouldn't kill you at all. The radiation can't even get through your skin. But if you ingest it and it gets into your body, then it essentially works as a wrecking ball. It goes through the cell, like a wrecking ball, smashing everything up. It goes through the nucleus, smashing up all the DNA in the cell, and without any DNA, the cell can't live. So again, it will kill, but in a completely different way. It took Litvinenko probably around about three weeks to die, a very agonizing death, just slowly, all his organs essentially turning to liquid as things were falling apart. What's interesting is that there's only one place on the planet that you can get polonium-210. And that's a nuclear reactor in Siberia, which coincidentally also turned out to be the nuclear reactor that Gary Powers was flying over when he was shot down and photographing that. So there's kind of an interesting coincidental connection between those two stories. It was clear who had poisoned Litvinenko. It was two Russians, Lugovoi and Kovtun. Everybody knew who they were. They were what you might think of as typical Russian gangsters, that they had velour, tracksuits, and gold jewelry. And they were probably not told exactly what the poison was because they were so cavalier about it. They even had their children with them.
Andrew Hammond: It was found everywhere, right, on the plane --
Neil Bradbury: It was found everywhere on the plane. They could tell which seats on the plane that they'd flown on. The men's washroom at the hotel was just completely contaminated. The teapot was very heavily contaminated. The rooms that they were staying in essentially had to be ripped out and sealed in concrete. So, very nasty. They just were very cavalier about it and just really didn't think anything about it, probably because they weren't told exactly how dangerous it was.
Andrew Hammond: And Litvinenko wouldn't have tasted it. It's tasteless.
Neil Bradbury: It is tasteless. And again, it was just a few drops. He did report that the tea tasted a little off and a little bitter. But it would just be a very few drops that's necessary to kill. It doesn't take much. But it is incredibly hard to get hold of. It's not something that an individual could buy. It was just too expensive. And so the amount that was used really does need a country to sponsor it because it's too expensive for any individual to buy the amount that was necessary.
Andrew Hammond: So the fact that it can only come from this place in Siberia, is that just because that's the only place that sets out to make it or could the United States theoretically make it if they wanted to?
Neil Bradbury: The US could theoretically make it if they wanted. It has to be made in a nuclear reactor. It does actually have some uses. It's very useful in reducing static electricity. So very expensive machines. Think about space shuttles that have to be very carefully constructed and making sure that none of the electronics are exposed to static electricity. So it does actually have some normal uses. It was originally used as part of the detonation system for nuclear weapons, but that is now a completely different mechanism. But for reducing static electricity, there are still some uses for polonium.
Andrew Hammond: And polonium, just tell us a little bit more about that. Like, is that a nuclear element, or like what's its deal?
Neil Bradbury: So, polonium is an element. It's one of the very heavy elements down at the bottom of the periodic table. It's taken into the body in an interesting way by a transport process called the divalent metal transporter, you know, which sounds very complicated. And the body uses this for taking in essential things like calcium, magnesium, iron, things like that. But it's not very discriminatory. It can't tell the difference between the metals it needs to bring in and things like lead, cadmium, and polonium. And it was actually probably polonium chloride. So, not only was the polonium given to Litvinenko, unfortunately, his body actually actively absorbed it. And a few years ago, you probably remember that the Flint lead problem with the water. It was the exact same process that took the lead up into the body of people that were exposed to that excess lead. And it just turns out that that transport process of absorbing these metals just goes on indiscriminately. So it's a heavy metal, not really found in nature now. It is exclusively made in nuclear reactors.
Andrew Hammond: Okay. Wow. And like for the poisons that we've discussed thus far, are there, say, one of these things poisons us and we go to the hospital and for some fluke of nature a specialist happens to be the first person that sees us, like are these -- can all of these things be dealt with and remedied or are some of these like it doesn't matter what happens, you're probably going to die? Like, for example, if arsenic is caught, then there's some magic pill that you take that means that it's going to be okay versus another one where nothing is going to stop the fact that this is going to kill you.
Neil Bradbury: It depends on what the poison is. Things like arsenic, if it's caught early enough, can be dealt with. You're essentially injected with a chemical that acts as a sponge to soak up the arsenic. Cyanide also can be dealt with fairly easily. It turns out that cyanide is one of the few things that reacts with gold, and it's used extensively in gold mining. So obviously there's a potential for the workers to be exposed to cyanide. And there is a very good antidote for cyanide poisoning. And given quickly enough, there'll be a full recovery. Other things like the ricin and polonium, there's no treatment for that whatsoever. What is also interesting is that some poisons are actually antidotes to other poisons. So, for example, atropine on its own, given in sufficient doses, will kill you. But it's also pretty much the only antidote to nerve agents. So, they have -- some of these have a dual life in that, on their own will kill you. There also -- one of the other uses of atropine several years ago in 1995 in Tokyo when the subway trains were attacked with sarin. The people that released the sarin had previously injected themselves with atropine, which is an antidote to sarin. So they escaped any harm from the sarin that was released in the Tokyo subway. So there are some things that can be treated. Other things, no, there's no known treatment. [ Music ]
Erin Dietrick: Neil just mentioned sarin, the nerve agent used by the perpetrators of the Tokyo subway attack. In case your history is a bit rusty, here's a little more information on what happened that morning in 1995. On March 20th, during rush hour on the Tokyo metro system, a subway with millions of daily users, five men each boarded different subway lines all headed towards downtown Tokyo. They were carrying bags tainted with liquid sarin, disguised as your average work commuter's lunchbox or coffee cup. Around the same time, the perpetrators punctured the bags, dropped them on the floor of the trains, and exited at the nearest metro stop. Saran was now seeping out of these bags in gas form, exposing thousands of people. The fumes spread fast, with affected passengers now carrying the gas through the metro stations on their clothes, bags, and shoes after getting off of the trains. The result was, to say the least, horrific. The attack left 13 people dead and thousands injured, with many still recovering or affected to this day. Authorities quickly connected the attack to the religious group Aum Shinrikyo, translating to "Supreme Truth", a doomsday cult that at its peak had tens of thousands of followers worldwide. In 2018, Aum Shinrikyo's leader Shoko Asahara, along with six others, were executed for their crimes, perpetrating what is considered to be the deadliest terror attack on Japanese soil.
Neil Bradbury: These are really nasty things and they work, again, in a completely different way. They work by interfering with the transmission of nerves throughout the body. And they alter the way in which the nerves interact with muscles. They interact with the way in which nerves regulate the beating of the heart. They regulate the way in which nerves -- pretty much regulate everything that goes on in the body. And they can increase the activity of some things. So in the lungs, for example, although we know that the lungs are not filled with water, otherwise you couldn't breathe, there actually is a very small amount of fluid to prevent the lungs from drying out and not being able to breathe properly. With nerve agents, one of the things that happens is that the release of fluid into the lungs goes into overdrive. And so essentially a person will just drown in their own fluids. There's so much fluid that's present in the lungs, it eventually gets coughed up and also appears as froth on the mouth. It will eventually cause the heart to slow down and stop beating altogether. So completely different from cyanide, arsenic. Nerve gases, by their very name, attack the nerves in the body and completely alter their normal function.
Andrew Hammond: And for -- so Novichok, that's an example of a nerve agent.
Neil Bradbury: Novichok is an example of a nerve agent that was used to -- it was hoped that it was used to assassinate Skripal. It also affected his daughter who was visiting him. That is one example of where the symptoms were so suspicious that it actually did move up the chain until people figured out that it actually was a nerve agent. And so, they were treated and eventually did recover. Probably the saddest aspect of that story in one sense is that the Novichok was actually brought into the UK disguised in a bottle of Nina Ricci perfume. And after the Soviet -- the Russian agents had sprayed the front door handle of Skripal's house. They just threw the perfume away. Someone came up, saw a new full bottle of perfume, just been thrown away, picked it up, and gave it to his girlfriend who just sprayed it on herself right onto her skin directly. She did die because she just received a massive dose of the poison and did not get to the hospital in time. Whether she could have been saved given the massive amount that she'd been exposed to, maybe not. But that is probably, I think the saddest aspect of that, even though, yes, trying to assassinate the Skripals was not good. They nonetheless did recover. But she was also an innocent bystander. Had nothing to do with the Skripals. Had nothing to do with the Russian government. But just nonetheless was caught up in all that espionage story.
Andrew Hammond: And the Skripals, just to clarify for our listeners, they were -- this is similar to Litvinenko.
Neil Bradbury: This is similar to Litvinenko. So Sergei Skripal was also high up in Russian military intelligence and worked for many years as a double agent within the Russian military intelligence, working for Western intelligence, giving information about troop movements and Russian policies. He was eventually caught and tried and sent to prison in Russia and was there for many years. He was eventually released as part of a spy swap. They met in Berlin. There were spies that had been captured in America. And there were spies from Russia, they flew into an airbase in Germany, walked across the tarmac to the other's plane and Sergei eventually settled in England, in South of England, in Salisbury, and was there for several years until the Russian government decided that they needed an example. They couldn't just have these double agents living happily ever after. And so the notice went out that we need to get rid of Sergei. But fortunately, he did recover, and both him and his daughter, who were very seriously ill for quite a long time, in comas for a couple of weeks, did finally survive given the fact that they were treated with the known antidote for nerve agent, which was atropine.
Andrew Hammond: And so the Novichok can enter through the skin, but you mentioned the polonium, you could rub that on your skin and nothing would happen. So this is another difference in the ways they can work.
Neil Bradbury: Another difference. Novichok, yes, absolutely can be absorbed through the skin. In this case, it was sprayed on the front door handle of the Skripal's house. So when they closed the front door, went out for lunch, it just got absorbed through their hands.
Andrew Hammond: Something as simple as that.
Neil Bradbury: Something as simple as that, yeah.
Andrew Hammond: So we've spoken about Lab 10 and the Russians. Can we maybe speak about the UK and about the United States as well? Are there similar types of places? Tell us a little bit more about Porton Down. Is that more --?
Neil Bradbury: There are -- yes, undoubtedly, Western intelligence is also coming up with their own chemicals and potential for assassination. Obviously, during the '50s and '60s, the CIA was heavily involved in trying to come up with ways to get rid of Fidel Castro. One of the things that they came up with -- a lot of the thoughts that they had really were bizarre. One of the concepts that they came up with was giving Castro another heavy element. We talked about polonium, but there's another one that's similar on the periodic table called thallium, which is also very nasty. But one of the key things that it does is cause your hair to fall out, I mean, in clumps. You can go to bed one night and wake up the next morning with all your hair on the pillow. And because Castro was so famous for his beard, the CIA decided that if his beard fell out overnight, that he would be an object of ridicule and the Cubans would no longer follow him. That obviously never came to fruition. And they also came up with several bizarre things of putting bacteria in his diving suit to try and kill him. So it is clear that these places have come up with various chemicals, sort of Proton Down and the British were very instrumental, particularly after World War I, where gases were used, chlorine gas was used in trench warfare. The British were very conscious of the fact that if there was another war that gases may be used again and so they wanted to come up with their own chemical weapons. But you also want to make sure that you have an antidote because you don't want those chemical weapons coming back on your own troops. And so, yeah, the British came up with a chemical weapon called lewisite. And they also developed an antidote to that called British anti-lewisite. So undoubtedly, there is chemical warfare and poisons that are being developed. So I don't mean to give the impression that it's only the Russians and the Western countries are completely benign and have no notion of this. That's obviously very naive. But in order to counteract lots of the poisons, you have to know how they work and you have to be able to develop your own. So yes, undoubtedly Western governments are just as actively involved in creating these chemicals and also the antidotes to them.
Andrew Hammond: And creating them and creating the antidotes, but by and large, not using them in the way that the Russians have?
Neil Bradbury: That is one difference, yes. Clearly, the Russians have decided that these are viable tools for political purposes. For the most part, I think as far as we know, they've not been used by Western governments.
Andrew Hammond: Okay. And out of all of the things that you've studied, what's the one that you would least like to be in the receiving end of?
Neil Bradbury: If I'm going to be poisoned, I would definitely go with cyanide.
Andrew Hammond: Okay.
Neil Bradbury: No question. It's very quick. Polonium, probably not. It's very nasty. There is no antidote. Probably the thing I would least like to be exposed to is another chemical called strychnine, which also comes from a plant. Strychnine also affects the nerves, particularly the nerves that work by contracting muscles. So all our muscles when we move, our legs, arms, all have nerves that go into them telling the muscles to work. Strychnine essentially sends those nerves into overdrive and causes every muscle in the body to contract very strongly all at once. And when I say strongly, what I mean by that is so strong that it will actually rip the tendons away from bones. It's very excruciatingly painful. It can take upwards of two or three days to die from this. People are wracked in agonizing pain. It comes and goes, so at one point, the whole body will just relax and you think it's over, and then it starts all over again. One of the nasty things about it is it also increases your awareness and senses so that you become acutely aware that something very nasty is going on. And again, this is one of those things that there really is no antidote for. So, strychnine, very nasty, very painful, will cause you to have a really agonizing death over a couple of days.
Andrew Hammond: Okay. And just to wrap up, do you know if China's developing these types of things as far as you know?
Neil Bradbury: It would not surprise me. China specifically, I don't know. I mean, there was the case just recently of Kim Jong who tried to kill his brother by having two women come up to him at the airport and spray him with VX, which is another nerve agent. His bodyguards carried atropine. So he did have access to antidotes. So, yes, North Korea certainly is -- we have clear evidence that North Korea is working on that. I would be very surprised if China's not. It would seem not sensible to think that China's not developing their own chemical weapons.
Andrew Hammond: Wow. Well, I really enjoyed reading your book. It's really fascinating and it's incredibly well written too. So thanks for sharing your expertise with me, Neil.
Neil Bradbury: Well, thank you for the invitation. It's been a delight to chat with you. I appreciate it.
Andrew Hammond: Thank you. [ Music ]
Erin Dietrick: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of "SpyCast". Please follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, please tell your friends and loved ones. Please also consider leaving us a five-star review on your podcast player. Coming up next week on "SpyCast".
Unidentified Speaker: And then, you know, I couldn't believe my luck to become the Director-General. And it is genuinely a great privilege. I look after some of the smartest people in the country who are so, so incredibly dedicated to keeping Australia safe.
Erin Dietrick: If you have feedback, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org or on X at INTLSpyCast. If you go to our page, thecyberwire.com/ podcasts/spycast, you can find links to further resources, detailed show notes, and full transcripts. I'm Erin Dietrick, and your host is Dr. Andrew Hammond. The rest of the team involved in the show is Mike Mincey, Memphis Vaughan III, Emily Coletta, Emily Rens, Afua Anokwa, Ariel Samuel, Elliott Peltzman, Tré Hester, and Jen Eiben. This show is brought to you from the home of the world's preeminent collection of intelligence and espionage-related artifacts, the International Spy Museum. [ Music ]
