Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Covert kitties? What a catastrophe.
CIA proposals for spy planes and satellites to peer on America’s adversaries from above became resounding successes, but cats wired as mobile eavesdropping platforms didn’t work out so well, according to recently declassified papers.
The documents, released Monday by the National Security Archive, detail some of the successful — and silly — research of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology.
One project, known as "Acoustic Kitty," involved wiring a cat with transmitting and control devices, allowing it to serve as a mobile listening post.
A heavily censored 1967 government memo released by the archive Monday suggests that cats can be altered and trained, but concludes the program wouldn’t work.
"The program would not lend itself in a practical sense to our highly specialized needs," it says. "The environmental and security factors in using this technique in a real foreign situation force us to conclude that, for our … purposes, it would not be practical."
In the first test of feline surveillance, the cat was run over by a taxi, said Jeffrey Richelson, a researcher with the archive and author of "The Wizards of Langley," a book detailing the directorate’s efforts.
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