A CIA HANDBOOK ON POLITICAL ASSASSINATION.

A CIA HANDBOOK ON POLITICAL ASSASSINATION. Tom Stevenson has an article in the TLS (January 11, 2019) in connection with the Skripal poisoning which reports on “a CIA handbook for covert political murder written in 1953 and declassified in 1997.”
The handbook has some interesting research on assassinations. The handbook considered a gun “overrated in its effectiveness”. The handbook considered that a pistol is worse than other kinds of guns. Pistol assassinations “fail as often as they succeed.” Stevenson cites research by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2007 which looked at assassination attempts on national leaders since 1875. Firearms had a success rate of 30 per cent and explosives of 7 per cent. These rates suggest there may be more reason to employ exotic weaponry than simply a desire to achieve publicity.