Acoustic Kitty: The CIA’s Twenty-Million-Dollar Feline Failure
During the Cold War, the CIA spent years and millions of dollars surgically transforming a cat into a mobile listening device. This is the story of how advanced engineering and high-stakes espionage collided with the unpredictable reality of animal behavior, ending in a quiet, costly abandonment.
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The CIA spent twenty million dollars surgically turning a cat into a mobile listening device.
Engineers hid a microphone in the ear canal and wove an antenna through the cat's tail.
The project failed when a taxi killed the cat during its first field test near the Soviet Embassy.
Surgeons installed a radio transmitter at the base of the skull to broadcast intercepted audio.
Declassified documents from two thousand and one confirmed the five-year project was a total loss.
The CIA concluded that animal instincts made cats too unreliable for high-stakes intelligence work.
- 01Intro1 min
- 02The Concept of the Living Bug2 min
- 03Engineering the Feline Cyborg2 min
- 04The Collision with Reality2 min
- 05Declassification and Legacy2 min
- 06Outro1 min
- That Time the CIA Bugged a Cat to Spy on the Soviets
- Natural Spies: Animals in Espionage
- 'Acoustic Kitty': The CIA's Not-so-purrfect Plan to Make a Cat a Spy
- The CIA spent millions trying to turn cats into Cold War spies; the bizarre secret experiment ended in the strangest possible way
- Operation Acoustic Kitty - Damn Interesting
- The Federal Government's $15 Million Cat | Boundary Stones
- Cold War Espionage Stories: Listening In
- Operation Acoustic Kitty-The Useless CIA Project
- The CIA Experimented On Animals in the 1960s Too. Just ...
- When the CIA Learned Cats Make Bad Spies | HISTORY
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