Todor Zhivkov to 1988, Bulgaria won an unprecedented 153 Olympic medals and numerous European and world competitions in sports as diverse as volleyball, rhythmic gymnastics and wrestling. Dissent was punished under Zhivkov's rule. The CSS was a feared tool of control, and overt opposition largely stayed underground until the late 1980s. In 1978, the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated in London by an agent who stabbed him with an umbrella tip which implanted a very small ricin ball. According to former KGB general Oleg Kalugin, this was requested by Zhivkov and either performed by the KGB or it assisted the CSS;
Umbrella man (JFK assassination) with a paralyzing agent at Kennedy to immobilize his muscles and make him a "sitting duck" for an assassination. After an appeal to the public by the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), Louie Steven Witt came forward in 1978 and claimed to be the "umbrella man". He claimed still to have the umbrella and did not know he had been the subject of controversy. He said that he brought the umbrella simply to heckle Kennedy whose father Joseph had been a supporter of the Nazi-appeasing British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. By waving a black umbrella, Chamberlain's trademark