I have to admit when I first read about the topic of today’s blog it had everything I am interested in: cats, cold war intrigue, government conspiracies, did I say, cats? The cold war era was filled with the oddest attempts at trying to find out what the enemy (this of course, was dependent upon which side of the wall you lived on both metaphorically and literally) was doing and topping their achievements with even more crazy innovations into listening, watching and just trying to screw with the other guy.
There were cameras hidden in shoes and ties; microdot cameras – where the film was about the size of the period at the end of this sentence; The Bulgarian Umbrella – An umbrella with a hidden pneumatic mechanism that injected a small poisonous dart containing ricin that was used , allegedly a number of times in the 1970s. If you know anything about ricin you know it can take days to die from being poisoned with it so it becomes quite difficult to track down exactly where you might have picked it up; Sedgeley OSS .38 Glove Pistol – exactly what the name describes a glove with a single shot pistol built into it; Dragonfly Insectocopter – a miniature unmanned aerial vehicle with a camera designed to look like a dragonfly; Photo Overdrive – an car door that could take infrared photographs at night with none the wiser about its function; and so many different satellite surveillance systems.
There were spies on each side and hidden agents within government agencies and you have to wonder how many more were never discovered. Then, of course, there was MK-Ultra. This CIA-led (and/or funded) mind control project that is attributed to causing the deaths of two Americans, experimenting on unsuspecting Canadians in Montreal, and (allegedly) creating the Unabomber. What a fun time to be in the spy game.
One of the more interesting and downright nutty espionage tool was the cat. The cat is a notoriously difficult animal at the best of times but the CIA believed could be trained to be spies. The curiosity of a cat is well known and it was thought that this tendency could be exploited. They believed that they could wire poor ole puss up, give it some audio cues, and he would be able to sit in on the most secret of meetings. You have to realize that this program was no flash-in-the-pan; it took five years to complete and only those that participated would know the number of animals.
This was not a matter of imbedding listening devices in the cat’s collar and telling him what they wanted him to do. They made monstrosities out of these animals. A ¾-inch lone transmitter was embedded at the base of his skull; the microphone was in the ear canal, with an antenna made out of fine wire wound around his tail. The cat’s fur was long enough to conceal it. Then there was the question of where to put the batteries. This was a time when a computer with the memory of a modern smart phone would take up a whole room.
After years of tests and trials, the first Acoustic Kitty was ready to be sent out on his assignment. One big problem: cats are jerks without any knowledge or care of geopolitical conflicts and basically do not like to take directions from anyone. It would wander off when it got bored or distracted or if it got hungry. After a few of these details were fine-tuned with more surgery and training, Feline 007 was sent out on his assignment and was immediately struck and killed by a taxi cab while crossing the street. (You couldn’t make this stuff up.) It is unknown if the cat would’ve even survived for very long considering the cruel surgical adjustments it had endured. The price tag for this project? A mere $20 million dollars at a time when an average home cost $26,400. The take-away from this project was that it wasn’t a total disaster. Cats could to be trained to cover shorter distances but were not useful in the CIA’s very specialized needs. I think they would’ve better spent their money making more of those dragonfly listening robots than ever try to get a cat to do what they wanted. (I am speaking as a person who shares an apartment with two of them and of course, my husband; who I also wouldn’t send into a meeting wired up with listening devices.)
–Janice Willson
References:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-government-gag-order-mk-ultra-1.4448933
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cia-experimented-animals-1960s-too-just-ask-acoustic-kitty-180964313/
Photo Source: the author
