The CIA's Secret Experiments to Turn Cats Into Spies

io9

In the 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency recruited an unusual field agent: a cat. In an hour-long procedure, a veterinary surgeon transformed the furry feline into an elite spy, implanting a microphone in her ear canal and a small radio transmitter at the base of her skull, and weaving a thin wire antenna into her long gray-and-white fur.

This was Operation Acoustic Kitty, a top-secret plan to turn a cat into a living, walking surveillance machine. The leaders of the project hoped that by training the feline to go sit near foreign officials, they could eavesdrop on private conversations. The problem was that cats are not especially trainable—they don’t have the same deep-seated desire to please a human master that dogs do—and the agency’s robo-cat didn’t seem terribly interested in national security.

For its first official test, CIA staffers drove Acoustic Kitty to the park and tasked it with capturing the conversation of two men sitting on a bench. Instead, the cat wandered into the street, where it was promptly squashed by a taxi. The program was abandoned; as a heavily redacted CIA memo from the time delicately phrased it, “Our final examination of trained cats . . . convinced us that the program would not lend itself in a practical sense to our highly specialized needs.” (Those specialized needs, one assumes, include a decidedly unflattened feline.)

I ran across this article, found it very interesting, and had to share it with ATS. It reminded me of a thread we all got a kick out of back in 2011...

Cats are Alien Camcorders!

That thread was quickly moved to the Jokes, Puns, & Pranks forum, but this story is true and shows us all that sometimes truth is sometimes just as strange as fiction.

Enjoy

The government can try, but, the kittehs are already working for the Aliens.


Cats are alien camcorders
Cats as alien spies?
Did aliens creat dogs and cats to spy on us?

... and there's sundry more threads of similar vein.

I always suspected my cat was keeping tabs on me for some reason.

Cats would never betray their pets.

Yep. The government trying to train aliens.
It'll never work.
Soft and cuddly creatures, with Reptillian eyes
Almost snake like agility also.
I had a couple of those little aliens. They lasted almost 20 years.
Treat them good, or they'll report you....

Great for survelience, What next flys on the wall straped with transmitting devices or since this is 2013 how about some nano tech. If you can do art work only visible with an electron microsope than what would be the limit?

Originally posted by jvarga390
Great for survelience, What next flys on the wall straped with transmitting devices or since this is 2013 how about some nano tech. If you can do art work only visible with an electron microsope than what would be the limit?

Roaches. The next thing was roaches.

We had a project RFQ float by from them years ago concerning remote control rodents too. I wrote a proposal as a joke but we were formally declined (!?) because we lacked a veterinary facility. I didn't think they'd take it seriously.

i love my kitty cat no ones gonna be putting nothing in him lol thanks for posting good read.

Let em try that crap on my cat... this should serve as fair warning

The Flatulent Bandercat