Known As Operation Acoustic Kitty, The CIA Tried Turning Ordinary Cats Into Trained Spies To Snoop On Soviet Conversations During The Cold War
You would think that cats make the perfect spies. They’re stealthy, silent, and secretive, always sneaking off somewhere when you least expect it.
But let’s be real—while a cat might be agile and have the ability to go unseen, their independence and unpredictable nature prevents them from being good secret agents.
I could definitely see them abandoning a high-stakes mission in pursuit of a bird that happened to flutter past.
That’s what the CIA found out when they tried to use cats to snoop on Soviet conversations during the Cold War.
In 1964, the government agency launched a top-secret plan called “Operation Acoustic Kitty,” in which they would turn ordinary cats into trained spies.
However, the CIA was only ever able to produce one Acoustic Kitty before scrapping the project altogether in 1967.
The Acoustic Kitty involved surgically implanting a microphone in the cat’s ear and a radio transmitter at the base of the skull.
An antenna was also woven into the feline’s long fur. CIA operatives aimed to train the cat to sit near foreign officials so it could record private conversations.
They drove Acoustic Kitty to the park for its first test. The cat was supposed to capture the conversation of two men sitting on a bench, but it ended up wandering into the street and was run over by a taxi.
fantom_rd – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual cat
“Our final examination of trained cats…convinced us that the program would not lend itself in a practical sense to our highly specialized needs,” concluded the CIA in a memo.
Even though the project failed since cats were not very trainable, the CIA did not abandon this surveillance idea.
Instead, they moved on to other animals. During the Cold War, the CIA sent pigeons out with secret cameras to gather intelligence.
The cameras were small and lightweight. They were strapped to the birds’ chests, and then the birds would be released in an area the CIA wanted to know more about. Later, the pigeons flew back home with photographs.
In 2006, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) asked scientists to create cyborg insects to use as spy devices.
Researchers at the University of California Berkeley managed to successfully create a cyborg beetle. They could control the beetle’s movements and flight with a remote.
In the 1970s, the CIA’s Office of Research and Development created a similar listening device. It was the first unmanned aerial vehicle of its kind.
It was modeled after a dragonfly and had a tiny engine that made its wings flap. A laser beam guided its course.
Unfortunately, the dragonfly was not operational because it would get blown off course in crosswinds over five miles per hour.
Spy bugs created by the government might make you feel a little wary, but at least you can rest assured that cats are safe from being recruited by the CIA.
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