In 2001, the CIA disclosed Operation Acoustic Kitty launched by
the Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Science & Technology during
the height of the Cold War. It started when the CIA noticed that Russians
assigned to almost every Soviet Embassy in the world, would often gather in
small circles outside the embassy build and hold hushed conversations. Whatever
they were discussing, it was more than probably some sort of dissent, could be
valuable information. The problem was, for the US, getting an earful of the
discussion.
At the time, the CIA was testing methods of audio surveillance
by inserting miniature microphones (developed by hearing aid manufacturers)
into bullets strong enough to withstand the force of a gunshot and still keep
recording. These tests yielded smaller, rugged microphones, but no
“spy-bullet,” since microphones would pick up all sounds, relevant or not,
making most recordings largely useless. So in 1961, the CIA had been conducting
successful research in radio equipment and animal training and had worked on
creating surgically altered cats (Cats were selected because, like humans,
their cochlear anatomy allows them to filter and focus sound.) who were
implanted with state of the art acoustic and radio transmission technology.
The concept was that the cats would be free to wander the ground
of the Soviet properties around DC, recording conversions. At a cost of a
remarkable $100 million, a prototype cat had been trained to wander around
building and people. In an hour-long procedure a veterinary surgeon implanted a
microphone in the cat's ear canal, a small radio transmitter at the base of its
skull and a thin wire into its fur, allowing the cat to innocuously record and
transmit sound from its surroundings.
CIA officer Victor Marchetti wrote; “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” (It should be noted that Marchetti was a prominent critic of the CIA)
A heavily redacted memo on the project was declassified in 2001,
implying the CIA was too embarrassed to disclose all the details of the project
so there are two versions of what happened next. Robert Wallace, a former
Director of the CIA's Office of Technical Service, said that the project was
abandoned due to the difficulty of training the cat to behave as required, “The
cat” he said “wanted to do what the cat wanted to do, and not what we wanted it
to do” and that “the implant could not affect any of the natural movements of
the cat, nor could the cat experience any sense of irritation or the presence
of the device, lest it induce rubbing or clawing to dislodge components or
disturb performance……. the equipment was taken out of the cat; the cat was
re-sewn for a second time and lived a long and happy life afterward".
The second version is that the cat was driven in a van loaded
with equipment to the Soviet Embassy’s communal residence building on upper
Wisconsin Avenue in D.C. (The Soviets somehow managed to get a property located
at the highest point in the city) The cat was let out of the van and when it
walked across the street was run over and killed by a taxi. The project was
canceled in 1967.