128 • Zips, Pipes, and Pens have his umbrella up and open, the only one in sight. Cutler's theory holds that the umbrella contained a modified dart-firing gun which used very high-pressure propellant to fire poisoned projectiles. When the motorcade approached his position near the curb, 'the umbrella man" opened his umbrella and held it aloft. After all the shooting, including his own silent shot, the man brought his umbrella down and melted into the confusion. The actions of this man with the umbrella may be clearly seen in several still photos taken that day, but most clearly in the famous Zapruder film, which documents the actual assassination. What Cutler proposes is both technically and realistically possible. As for the actions of the 'the umbrella man," these are already documented by film and by eye witnesses. Rather than fixate on the president's murder by triangulated ambush gunfire and the subsequent, continuing cover-up, let's examine the generic umbrella weapon developed for just such operations. Umbrella guns fall into the genre of improvised /modified weapons, and many have been produced professionally. An earlier book showed a working model of a firearm built into an umbrella. It's been documented that both the OSS and CIA conducted experiments with and actively used lethal air-powered weapons built into various disguises, such as an umbrella. Until former CIA director William Colby revealed that the Agency actually had used exotic poisons, paralyzing agents, and weapons systems like this for assassination missions, people thought the idea was a flight of fiction. In 1975, Colby and other CIA officials admitted to members of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that their R&D people had developed various disguised weapons — including an umbrella model — to fire a self-propelled rocket dart, which Colby called a flSchette. The CIA people said the darts could carry either a paralyzing agent or fatal poison. There is absolutely no doubt that the fl£chette-firing umbrella was designed for the CIA. Senior CIA officials