- The CIA tried to uncover the Kremlin's deepest secrets
during the 1960s by turning cats into walking bugging devices, recently
declassified documents show.
-
- In one experiment during the Cold War a cat, dubbed
Acoustic
Kitty, was wired up for use as an eavesdropping platform. It was hoped
that the animal - which was surgically altered to accommodate transmitting
and control devices - could listen to secret conversations from window
sills, park benches or dustbins.
-
- Victor Marchetti, a former CIA officer, told The
Telegraph
that Project Acoustic Kitty was a gruesome creation. He said: "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."
-
- Mr Marchetti said that the first live trial was an
expensive
disaster. The technology is thought to have cost more than £10
million.
He said: "They took it out to a park and put him out of the van, and
a taxi comes and runs him over. There they were, sitting in the van with
all those dials, and the cat was dead."
-
- The document, which was one of 40 to be declassified
from the CIA's closely guarded Science and Technology Directorate - where
spying techniques are refined - is still partly censored. This implies
that the CIA was embarrassed about disclosing all the details of Acoustic
Kitty, which took five years to design.
-
- Dr Richelson, who is the a senior fellow at the National
Security Archive in Washington, said of the document: "I'm not sure
for how long after the operation the cat would have survived even if it
hadn't been run over."
-
- The memo ends by congratulating the team who worked on
the Acoustic Kitty project for its hard work. It says: "The work done
on this problem over the years reflects great credit on the personnel who
guided it . . . whose energy and imagination could be models for scientific
pioneers."
-
- By coincidence, in 1966, a British film called Spy With
a Cold Nose featured a dog wired up to eavesdrop on the Russians. It was
the same year as the Acoustic Kitty was tested.
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