Operation -Acoustic Kitty

Operation -Acoustic Kitty
At the height of the Cold War, America’s master spy agency approved a bizarre yet audacious plan to get a leg up on the commies.  After conducting successful research in radio equipment and animal training, the CIA approved of “Operation Acoustic Kitty” with the plan of infiltrating Soviet targets with secret “spy cats”.  The spy kitties of the Operation Acoustic kitty were not your normal felines, but surgically altered cats implanted with state of the art acoustic and radio transmission technology.  The idea was that the cats could wander into sensitive areas while recording important conversions between Soviet diplomats, politicians, and military officials. The project seemed bold in theory, after all who would suspect that a wandering stray cat near the Kremlin could be a top secret CIA spy kitty?

Work on the project began in 1961 with a prototype cat that was trained to hang around people and buildings.   Former CIA officer Victor Marchetti recounts the bizarre creation of the Acoustic Kitty,

“They slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. The tail was used as an antenna. They made a monstrosity. They tested him and tested him. They found he would walk off the job when he got hungry, so they put another wire in to override that. Finally, they’re ready. They took it out to a park bench and said, “Listen to those two guys. Don’t listen to anything else – not the birds, no cat or dog – just those two guys!”

After five years of work and $15 million (over $100 million today) the spy kitty was ready for a field test.  The cat was driven to the Soviet Embassy on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, D.C. and let loose across the street.  The cat quickly attempted to cross the street toward the embassy, but was immediately hit by a taxi.  Moments later agents returned to the site in order to scrape up the remains of the roadkill so that the technology did not fall into the paws of the Soviets.  No other attempt to create an acoustic kitty was made, and the project was scrapped in 1967.

Reference:
http://news.discovery.com/animals/pets/cat-spies-fail-130510.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Kitty