The CIA's Spy Cat

During the Cold War, the CIA tried various methods to monitor Russians in Washington, D.C. One strange idea involved using a cat to eavesdrop on the Kremlin's private talks.The cat would eavesdrop.The cat listened to secret Kremlin conversations. They wired the cat with radio transmitters and microphones. The cat listened to secrets from window sills, park benches, or any unsuspecting spot. Maybe the CIA believed Russians, like Bond villains, shared all their evil secrets with their cats.

Cat owners rarely spend $10 on training a cat; they know it's a losing fight. But the CIA, using millions of your taxes, spent money on this.The CIA poured your taxes at their disposal into this scheme.They poured your taxes at their disposal into this scheme.The CIA spent a massive $10 million.These costs covered developing the equipment implanted in the cat, operations (vets cost money), and training the cat to work with them.

The Cold War cat needed technology to gather Russian secrets, so the CIA implanted this technology under its skin.The CIA implanted this technology under the cat's skin.. Victor Marchetti, a CIA officer during the Cold War, wrote a book detailing the costly program. In his book, The Wizards of Langley, Marchetti wrote, wroteThey slit the cat open. They put batteries in him. They wired him up. They used the tail as an antenna. They made a monstrosity.

This event would make a great movie today.

Cats live by instinct most of the time. During training, the cat wandered off when it got hungry (even spy kitties deserve a break). To stop this, they added more wires. How mechanizing the cat made it more cooperative is still a question only the CIA can answer. History, however, provides the answer: this project failed.

Marchetti toldThe TelegraphThey tested the cat. They found he walked off the job when hungry. So, they put another wire in to override that.

Tell the diet industry the CIA knows how to stop appetite!

The acoustic kitty went from a normal, playful house cat to a sleek CIA agent through an hour-long surgical procedure. As Emily Anthes outlined in Operation Acoustic KittyEmily Anthes described the procedure. They put a microphone into the cat's ear canal. They placed a radio transmitter at the base of its skull. An antenna wire stretched through the cat's fur. The tail helped the process, boosting the signal for recorded conversations.

The Cold War cat received millions in gear and training. The experiment failed when the first live trial started. Agents dropped the cat in a park. They planned for the cat to listen to two men talking on a bench. Agents sat in an unmarked van nearby. They pulled the cat from the van. She immediately ran toward the embassy and into the street. A taxi hit her. That mission cost $10 million for ten feet.

Ex-CIA agent Vincent Marchetti toldTthe Telegraph they were in disbelief. “There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead.

Cats do not care about national security. Dogs can sniff out bombs or recover bodies in a disaster, but cats will not stay in their yard. The CIA learned this only after wasting time training a cat that never planned to be a spy.

A CIA memo announced the program's end.read, "Our final examination of trained cats ... convinced us that the program would not suit our specialized needs."

You simply cannot train a cat.

If the government can train cats as spies, they can also fire them. Robert Wallace, former Director of the CIA's Office of Technical Service, said the Acoustic Kitty did not die by taxi as Marchetti's book states. Instead, she was fired after several failed tests. Wallace said the project stopped because cats are too hard to train, not because the spy cat got crushed.In the bookBeasts of War: The Militarization of Animals, Wallace gives his side of the story:

"The equipment was taken out of the cat; the cat was re-sewn for a second time, and lived a long and happy life afterwards." Hopefully, this statement is true and not just an attempt to please PETA.

Though Operation Acoustic Kitty failed, the U.S. military looks to nature for ideas. Their drone attempts drew inspiration from hummingbirds and other small, fluttering creatures. Drones need to be small enough to roll secretly, light enough to fly, and large enough to carry a camera and power.

According toPopular Science, the military made two solutions that worked (but not perfectly): the Nano Hummingbird, a 6.5-inch drone that flew for 11 minutes, and the DelFly Micro, which had less than four inches of wingspan but flew for only three minutes.

In 2006, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) opened an open call. Scientists submitted innovative proposals to develop technology for insect-cyborgs. Drones, such as the Nano Hummingbird and DelFly Micro, showed much lower success than actual flying insects.The CIA's Spy Cat list features 'The Government Is Still Trying To Turn Living Things Into Spy Cyborgs'.Popular Science, the DARPA pamphlet stated, "Proof-of-existence of small-scale flying machines... is abundant in nature in the form of insects."Scientists might transform insects into predictable devices. These devices could serve missions needing quiet entry into areas humans cannot reach or hostile.

Putting cyborg insects into action sounds like the plot of a bad science fiction movie.