1074Operation Acoustic Kitty

posted by Chris on July 16th, 2007

I was flipping through the channels the other day and saw a grainy video of a cat slowly wandering around a field. I though this warranted me to investigate further by stopping on that channel.

It was the History Channel….talking about Cold War era CIA projects, most importantly one code named “Acoustic Kitty“. This project was meant to use regular cats, like those that you have around your house or in your pork fried rice, to eavesdrop on Russians around the country.

They developed the technology to implant a cochlear implant into the cat which would then transmit to a listening station, like in the back of a child molester van, or in some shady office building. The transmitter obviously required power, so they would charge the battery that they had implanted into the cat each night. The idea was that the cat would be inconspicuous enough to be able to wander about while providing covert listening services to the CIA.

I never thought that this sort of stuff occurred, but it kind of makes me laugh.

The thing is that during the first field test while eavesdropping on some Russians in a park, the kitty got nailed by a cab, leading to the decision to cancel the project altogether.

Taxpayer money at work.