Recent Featured Videos and Articles | Eastern “Orthodoxy” Refuted | How To Avoid Sin | The Antichrist Identified! | What Fake Christians Get Wrong About Ephesians | Why So Many Can't Believe | “Magicians” Prove A Spiritual World Exists | Amazing Evidence For God | News Links |
Vatican II “Catholic” Church Exposed | Steps To Convert | Outside The Church There Is No Salvation | E-Exchanges | The Holy Rosary | Padre Pio | Traditional Catholic Issues And Groups | Help Save Souls: Donate |
That Time The CIA Bugged A Cat To Spy On The Soviets
theatlantic.com
At the height of the Cold War, the story goes, officials in the United States hatched a covert plan to keep tabs on Russians in Washington, D.C. They would, they decided, deploy surveillance cats—yes, actual cats surgically implanted with microphones and radio transmitters—to slip by security and eavesdrop on activity at the Soviet Embassy. The project went by the thinly disguised code name “Acoustic Kitty.”
“They slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up,” said Victor Marchetti, who was an executive assistant to the director of the CIA in the 1960s, according to an account in Jeffrey Richelson's 2001 book, The Wizards of Langley. “The tail was used as an antenna. They made a monstrosity.”
A whiskered, yowling, unbelievably expensive monstrosity. The agency poured some $10 million into designing, operating on, and training the first Acoustic Kitty, according to several accounts...
The CIA eventually scrapped the project, concluding—according to partially redacted documents in George Washington University's archives—that despite the “energy and imagination” of those involved, it “would not be practical” to continue to try to train cats as spies.
Sign up for our free e-mail list to see future vaticancatholic.com videos and articles.
Recent Content
^