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Evidence suggest the CIA's "heart attack gun" was inspired by the KGB's spray gun: both weapons caused heart attacks in their victims.

A modified Colt 1911 like this one was used to make the CIA's "heart attack gun." (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Hmaag) Looking back, it could have all been a simple love story—had it happened at a different time, in different circumstances. But at the height of the Cold War, international love stories were rarely simple. This one includes two high-profile murders, several vicious twists, and an unlikely Capitol Hill ending, with Idaho Senator Frank Church confronting CIA director William Colby about a mysterious heart attack gun, in the Indian summer days of 1975. About two decades earlier, on the other side of the Iron Curtain, a 26-year-old Soviet spy by the name of Bohdan Stashynsky fell in love with Inge Pohl, an unassuming German hairdresser. One could argue, that’s how it all began. Bohdan Stashynsky, a fare dodger turned Soviet spy <img decoding="async" class="wp-image-8239" src="https://oddfeed.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Bohdan_Stashynsky-1-204x300.jpg" alt="Bohdan Stashynsky, one of his passport photos (Credit: Wikipedia)" width="230" height="338" srcset="https://oddfeed.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Bohdan_Stashynsky-1-204x300.jpg 204w, https://oddfeed.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Bohdan_Stashynsky-1.jpg 264w" sizes="(max-width: 230px) 100vw, 230px" />Bohdan Stashynsky, photographed in his student days (Credit: Wikipedia) Bohdan Nikolayevich Stashynsky, born 1931, was an unexceptional 19-year-old student at the Faculty of Mathematics in Lviv when he was caught fare-dodging on a train. A seemingly minor offense, it would soon take him down the darkest of paths. Under threats of arrest and imprisonment for his family’s connections to the Ukrainian nationalist underground, Stashynsky was forced to spy on the anti-Soviet movement in his hometown. After a few years, his handlers in the KGB saw potential in him and recruited him as a top-level spy. At the end of 1954, Stashynsky moved to Berlin-Karlshorst, where he assumed the identity of Josef Lehmann, a supposed refugee from Stargard, Poland. His Slavic accent, he explained, was a product of traumatic past experiences: his father and mother had died during the war, and he had to live as an orphan under Polish rule for nine years. Listed as “a displaced person,” Stashynsky got a job as a punch card operator at a state-owned enterprise (VEB) in Karl-Marx-Stadt (today’s Chemnitz). By the end of 1955, he shed most of his native accent. By the beginning of the following year, his training as a spy was complete, and he returned to East Berlin—as a KGB agent. The first non-Soviet wife of a KGB agent <img decoding="async" class="wp-image-8240" src="https://oddfeed.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Bogdan-Stashinsky-298x300.jpg" alt="Josef Lehmann/Bohdan Stashynsky" width="230" height="232" srcset="https://oddfeed.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Bogdan-Stashinsky-298x300.jpg 298w, https://oddfeed.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Bogdan-Stashinsky-150x150.jpg 150w, https://oddfeed.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Bogdan-Stashinsky.jpg 615w" sizes="(max-width: 230px) 100vw, 230px" />Bohdan Stashynsky as Josef Lehmann, c. 1960, East Berlin (© Getty; taken from the Mirror) In April 1957, while dancing at Friedrichstadt-Palast in East Berlin, Stashynsky (as Josef Lehmann) met Inge Pohl, an East German hairdresser. He was beguiled by her beauty, modesty, and ethereal presence; she, in turn, was impressed by his charming personality, good looks, and well-tailored clothes—not to mention the fact that, at 26, he was the owner of his own apartment. The two began dating and eventually fell in love. At the time, Stashynsky served as an instructor and courier for the KGB, carrying messages to other agents in West Germany, and emptying dead letter boxes. To maintain cover, he got a job as a car mechanic and, later, as an interpreter. In April 1959, two years to the day after meeting Pohl, he told her his real name and profession, and then boldly proposed. It was a long and painful discussion, soaked in sobs and tears, but Pohl eventually said yes. In March 1960, she became the first non-Soviet wife of a KGB agent. Even then, she didn’t know that she had just married one of the world’s most notorious assassins. Indeed, at the time, only the highest echelons of the KGB knew that Bohdan Stashynsky was the murderer of Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera, anti-communist émigrés living in Munich, the main organizers of the Ukrainian nationalist underground in exile. The murders that (never) happened <img decoding="async" class="wp-image-8241" src="https://oddfeed.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Rebet-214x300.jpg" alt="Lev Rebet, Ukrainian poet and nationalist, " width="230" height="323" srcset="https://oddfeed.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Rebet-214x300.jpg 214w, https://oddfeed.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Rebet.jpg 250w" sizes="(max-width: 230px) 100vw, 230px" />Ukrainian political writer Lev Rebet (1912—1957) (Credit: Wikipedia) Not long after Lev Rebet had collapsed, in the morning hou...

Exposed: The KGB's Role in CIA Heart Attack Gun