Saporin toxin was put on the tip of an umbrella and used to assassinate someone on a bridge in an act of international espionage.
"In our case, we used saporin toxin, which I think is most infamous because it was put on the tip of an umbrella and used to assassinate somebody on a bridge someplace in some sort of international spy warfare in the last 20 years or so." (said at 1:49:50)
The speaker confuses saporin with ricin. The famous 'umbrella assassination' occurred on September 7, 1978, on Waterloo Bridge in London, where Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated using a pellet suspected of containing ricin (a ribosome-inactivating protein derived from Ricinus communis), not saporin (a ribosome-inactivating protein derived from Saponaria officinalis / soapwort). Furthermore, the incident occurred in 1978 (over 40 years ago), not in the last 20 years.
- context: Passive and Active Vaccination Strategies to Prevent Ricin Poisoning (Toxins 2011)
"RT must be considered during any "white powder" incident and there have been documented cases of its use in espionage [2,3]." (abstract, results, passage verified)
openalexfull study (doi) - contradicts: Despite Popular Belief, Ricin Rarely Produces Fatal Outcome (Emergency Medicine News 2004)
"When the toxin ricin was discovered in the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in February, prompting three Senate office buildings to be closed, most of the coverage concerning the incident mentioned the strange case of Georgi Markov... On Sept. 7, 1978, he felt a jab in the back of his right thigh, apparently from an umbrella, while waiting for a bus on Waterloo Bridge." (abstract, results, passage verified)
openalexfull study (doi) - contradicts: Murder on Waterloo Bridge: placing the assassination of Georgi Markov in past and present … (Contemporary British History 2023)
"In 1978, Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov was murdered on Waterloo Bridge by an unknown assassin. The brazen attack in central London, Markov’s public profile and the alleged use of an exotic spy gadget (a poison umbrella) made the murder one of the Cold War’s most infamous cases of political assassination." (abstract, results, passage verified)
openalexfull study (doi)