Thursday, September 11, 2008

This Day in Cold War History (Eastern Bloc Defector Victim of Umbrella Assassination)


September 11, 1978 – Georgi Markov may have strongly suspected he was marked for death, but it’s doubtful if the Bulgarian dissident-turned-defector ever conceived it could come by means of an umbrella tip.

But that’s what happened on September 7 as he noticed a stranger nearby him fumbling with an umbrella as they waited at a bus stop in central London. The next thing he knew, Markov felt a sharp pain in his thigh.

After Markov’s death on the 11th, germ warfare scientists in the U.K. discovered, in their postmortem, a tiny pellet containing a 0.2mg dose of the poison ricin.

Waterloo Bridge gave its name to a classic 1940 Vivien Leigh-Robert Taylor weeper, but this incident that took place on the fabled London landmark sounds like something out of a James Bond movie. (You know, the amazing villainess Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love, attempting to kick 007 with a poisoned shoe.)

By itself, the discovery of the ricin alone might have been enough to arouse suspicion, but several other factors led investigators to believe that certain forces were responsible for it:

* A playwright and satirist before his defection, Markov had, as a BBC journalist, castigated life under the Czarist regime in his former homeland;
* Markov had already survived two assassination attempts, and had received a phone call as late as August predicting his death through a poison the West could not detect;
* The Bulgarian secret police had a well-deserved reputation as a lapdog of the Soviet Union. Three years later, when Pope John Paul II was targeted, his Turkish would-be killer was thought by many to be doing so at the behest of the Bulgarians, who were doing so, along with East Germany’s Stasi, on behalf of the KGB. That connection received some corroboration in 2005 with the opening of files on the case that hinted at this involvement.
* The umbrella was specially adapted by the purpose. The KGB had a reputation for this type of exotic death.

Markov’s murderer has never been brought to justice, and the case could have been one of those fascinating “how-about-that?” stories of the Cold War if not for two recent developments.


First, with Bulgaria’s 30-year statute of limitations about to expire, British allies have pushed hard to try to solve the case, asking specifically for access to files and permission to interview up to 40 witnesses. One suspect has come to light--Francisco Gulino, codename "Piccadilly," the only Bulgarian agent known to be in London around that time. Right after the Markov assassination, "Piccadilly" received quite a present from his government: two medals, two holidays and thousands of pounds from the government.


Second, the death of a dissident through exotic means miles from his homeland had an eerie echo last November, with the poisoning—in a first, through the “nuclear poison” of polonium 210—of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko.

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