time, and the attempt seems to have been unsuccessful.
unsuccessful.
Unfortunately, Duda's luck eventually
ran out. One day, he was attacked by a
pair of wild ravens he'd fought many
times before. All three birds
disappeared from sight, and Duda never
returned. He was presumed killed in action.
action.
The saga of Dudah mourns his loss. He
was in a class by himself, writes his
trainer. He had a very large bag of
tricks and was loved by all. In view of
these talents, I suppose I shouldn't
have been too surprised when he so
quickly became a star on this project.
In spite of our deep sense of loss,
writes the anonymous agent. We do
understand such tragedies are inevitable.
inevitable.
Ravens aren't the only birds the CIA use
as spies. In secret locations across the
United States, Project Axial Light was
also busy turning the humblest of birds
into covert eyes in the skies.
It's September 1976.
Aerial photographs show the Soviets
building nuclear submarines in
Lennengrad, but the CIA needs more
information. Spy planes fly tens of
thousands of feet above their target,
while satellites are restricted to
space. From these distances, it's
impossible to take detailed
highresolution photos.
Enter pigeons. A pigeon could fly about
100 ft over a target any time, day or
night, and regardless of the weather.
Most importantly, no one would notice
it, and they could clearly be trained.
Pigeons are no strangers to war. During
World War II, the British National
Pigeon Service would drop cases of the
birds over occupied Europe. People would
send them back with information about
daily life or even military details like
troop movements. The key was their
unique honing instinct. Anywhere you
release a pigeon, it can find its way
back home. Even today, this ability
still isn't fully understood.
To exploit pigeon's natural talents for
aerial photography, the CIA's Office of
Research and Development created special
16mm cameras and harnesses for the birds
to wear. The harnesses were made of
leather and attached to the birds with
adjustable Velcro tabs. They were
designed to allow the birds full freedom
of movement while holding the camera
steady during flight. The cameras were
lightweight and miniaturized. Each had a
small batterypowered motor that advanced
the film and cocked the shutter. Each
camera had its own timer. When it went
off, the camera would take pictures for
just a few minutes, resulting in 150 to
220 photos. Together, the camera and
harness weighed just 39.5 g. To produce
useful images, pigeons needed to fly
directly over their target at exactly
the right time. But this could be
difficult to arrange. Once they were
released, the pigeons would fly back
home in a more or less direct line. If
the target was located on that line,
there was a fairly good chance the
pigeons would fly over it. But in covert
situations, it wasn't always possible to
release pigeons in ideal locations. Some
areas were restricted, others were too exposed.
exposed.
To get around this problem, CIA handlers
tried to teach the birds ABC flight.
Point A is the point of release, point B
is the target, and point C is the
pigeon's home loft. To begin with,
temporary targets a short distance away
were established at point B. When they
flew to these targets, the pigeons were
rewarded. Over time, they were
conditioned to expect this reward. Next,
the reward at point B was eliminated.
But to receive a reward at point C, they
had to fly over point B first. And
that's how they trained a pigeon to move
Once the birds were conditioned, they
moved on to longer training flights.
Inflatable white raidoms 20 ft in
diameter were used as point B. The CIA
trained and tested birds in lofts in
Oregon, Virginia, Missouri, and Alaska.
Alaska, it was noted, shared certain
geographical features with areas of
interest in the Soviet Union. The
training yielded mixed results. Birds
were often lost along the way. Some
birds simply flew away. Some were killed
by wild birds. On the longer training
flights, many birds flew too low along
Birds sometimes disappeared while
wearing the special equipment that had
been developed for them. Losses were
time-conuming and expensive. Each time a
bird was lost, a new one had to be
purchased and trained. Some of the
photos taken were very high quality.
Some missed the target entirely. Even
when the birds were fully trained, they
could be relied on to complete their ABC
mission only about one out of four times.
times.
A sea flight still held potential
though. If the release point was chosen
carefully with the target area between
it and the home loft, CIA analysts felt
there was a high probability, the birds
would fly over the intended target and
obtain the highresolution photos required.
So the CIA knows that the Soviets are
building nuclear submarines in the
Admiral T and Pseudomech shipyards in
Leningrad, now known as St. Petersburg,
and it needs high resolution photos.
Time for the pigeons to shine.
An agent will have to release the
pigeons with the shipyards between
himself and the pigeon's home loft. To
do this without being detected will
require Clandiststein release
techniques. The documents mention three
that are considered as options. One is
releasing the birds from underneath a
large overcoat. The second option is
briefcases and shopping bags with trick
bottoms. The third option is this
Volkswagen Beetle. A hole is cut in the
floor. When the car is parked, pigeons
are released through the hole. They
waddle out from underneath the car and
immediately take flight. The operation
is to go ahead by August 1978, but here
the trail goes cold. It's unclear
whether the operation actually ever
While the CIA's birds may have gathered
invaluable aerial photo insights, other
agents were being trained to sabotage
This is James W. Fitzgerald. He's an
engineer and physicist. It's 1964 and
Fitzgerald has been thinking about
dolphins a lot. At a cocktail party, he
mentions that he believes the animals
could be used in warfare. The person
he's talking to happens to be an admiral
in the US Navy. He's intrigued enough to
introduce Fitzgerald to someone from the
CIA. Around the same time, the TV show
Flipper debuts. It's about a crime
fighting dolphin in a marine reserve in
the Florida Keys. Like most dolphins,
Flipper is smart and friendly to humans,
and he responds well to commands. We'll
never know whether Fitzgerald and the
CIA were inspired by Flipper, but it is
plausible. According to the Washington
Post, at this point, the CIA sends
Fitzgerald to Florida, where he
establishes a small laboratory. The same
year, the CIA begins its dolphin program.
program.
The aim of Project Oxyas is to show that
dolphins can be used in attacks against
enemy ships. To this end, harnesses and
nose cones are created to allow the
dolphins to carry items. Someone in the
CIA even produces this drawing. The
dolphins are happily towing the
explosive devices given to them by their
handlers on top of the submarine. The
program quickly passes its first test.
It demonstrates that a dolphin can place
a simulated explosive device against the
propeller of a PT boat anchored in the
open sea.
In November 1964, the deputy assistant
director of the office of research and
development writes that project Oxyas
has progressed more rapidly than we anticipated.
It's unclear exactly what sort of
simulated explosives these dolphins were
carrying. The sentence that specifies
this is partly redacted. The CIA
probably planned on using conventional
explosives, but if this was the case,
why the need for secrecy? A 2021 article
in Popular Mechanics suggests a haunting
possibility. In 1965, miniaturaturized
nuclear weapons might have seemed
achievable in the near future. The
magnitude of such an idea would
certainly explain the need for continued secrecy.
secrecy.
The program's first success unlocks
other goals. Trainers explore having
dolphins place listening devices on
enemy nuclear submarines. The hope is
that directly attaching the devices will
produce high-quality recordings that
allow the CIA to better understand how
the enemy subs work. But wild animals
are hard to train. One of the dolphin
strengths is how social they are.
They're willing to work, especially as
they bond with their trainers. But at
some point, this becomes a liability. If
the dolphins are performing tasks to
please their trainers, then in the
field, they'll need extra time to bond
with agents before they can be
considered reliable. There are also
questions about whether dolphins can
carry out operations over longer distances.
At some point, the CIA seems to realize
its limitations in understanding the
dolphin's capabilities, and it contacts
the Navy's Office of Naval Research to
help. In 1967, the program's focus
changed to intelligence gathering. The
dolphins were to be trained to travel
great distances, at least 12 m. They
would retrieve dead drops, items, or
information undercover agents had left
behind in the water to be picked up. A
memo from September 14th that year
suggests that Oxyas had become a joint
program with the CIA and the Department
of Defense. The CIA seemed unsure that
Project Oxyas would produce actionable
results and the program seemed to be
running out of steam. A make orb breakak
demonstration was scheduled for
December. At that time, it would be
decided whether Project Oxyas would
continue. The demonstration seems to
have been a failure. After that time,
there are no further mentions of the
program in the CIA documents. Surviving
Surviving
drawings and photographs gives us an
idea of what Project Oxy Gas might have
looked like. Glimpses of Project Kesho
are far more rare. But between the
redactions, a hazy picture emerges of
likely the oddest creature the CIA ever created.
created.
This is Acoustic.
Acoustic is the legendary project of
Project Ketall, the CIA's dog and cat
program. Of all the CIA's animal
projects, Acoustic Kitty might have been
the most controversial and the hardest
to corroborate depending on who you
believe. The saga of Acoustic Kitty goes
in fundamentally different directions.
Here's the CIA story.
In 1964, the agency wanted to be able to
explore conversations held out in the
open. Think two Soviet agents having a
conversation in a public park. That
required getting close and focusing in
on the conversation without attracting
attention. The solution is cats who can
often prowl around without people ever
noticing them. A microphone is
surgically placed inside a cat's ear
canal. A transmitter is placed
underneath a bunch of loose skin and an
antenna is woven into its fur. The whole
procedure is low-risk, humane, and
minimally invasive. But the cat is still
a cat. It can be trained only so far.
Eventually, it will do what it wants.
Acoustic was never deployed in the
field, and the listening devices were
carefully removed from its body.
But Victor Marchetti, who was special
assistant to the CIA's deputy director
in the 1960s, tells a very different
story. Here's his version. At some time
in the 1960s, the CIA puts a Chinese
diplomat in France under surveillance.
But their bugs don't just pick up his
conversations. They record all the noise
in the room, including the squeaking of
the couch. Individual voices are
inaudible. This is characteristic of the
microphones of the day, which tend to
record everything around them indiscriminately.
indiscriminately.
The anatomy of ears, on the other hand,
allows us to focus on certain sounds and
exclude others. This and your brain's
auditory processing abilities or where
you can have a conversation at a noisy
party without being overwhelmed by every
sound. When Acoustic Kitty turned its
head, it would direct the microphone
inside its ear. According to Marchetti,
to implant the equipment, they slit the
cat open, put batteries in him, wired
him up, including putting a power pack
in his abdominum. The tail was used as
an antenna. They made a monstrosity.
To focus on a single conversation,
Acoustic would need to be trained. His
handlers found that hunger or sexual
arousal would cause him to simply lose
interest and wander off. So, they
attached wires to his brain to monitor
and neutralize those impulses. Marchetti
claims the CIA did attempt to use
Acoustic Kitty in the field. The cat was
then put on a test, sent across the
street to eavesdrop on a conversation,
being monitored by a van loaded with
equipment. And as this poor little
monstrosity waddled across the street, a
So was $25 million down the drain. $25
million was a lot of money then. The CIA
disputes all this. On its website, it
claims that Marchett's comments were
meant to be a joke, and the unclassified
documents are no help. The single
document about Acoustic is heavily redacted.
The CIA didn't just train and transform
animals. It also recreated them. This
looks like a dragonfly, but look closer.
It's a machine, the Insectoopter. The
CIA created this tiny gas powered
listening device back in the 70s. It
contains a microphone, and it can flap
its wings rapidly and fly just over 600
ft in a minute, guided by a laser beam.
A remarkable technical achievement
with some serious limitations.
Even a light breeze can throw it off
course immediately.
It was never used operationally.
In a memo, the CIA's deputy director of
research and development wrote that
unfocused experimentation in the animal
programs represented the worst kind of
waste in terms of manpower and money.
The unclassified documents often suggest
that the CIA was simply exploring what
animals could do without having any real
objective in mind. And the results are
somewhat disappointing. Ravens were
trained for years just to be killed by
wild birds. Pigeons randomly disappeared
with gear worth thousands of dollars.
And depending on who you believe, an
expensive cyborg cat was at best useless
in the field and at worst immediately
hit by a car. The declassified documents
suggest that by the mid1 1970s, the
animal projects had fizzled out.
Despite this disappointment, the quest
to weaponize animals continues. The
United States Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, known as DARPA, has
been running programs aimed at
controlling insects for espionage. In
2012, a team at MIT announced that it
had developed a neural probe that
plugged into Mott's nervous systems,
allowing for their flight to be
controlled. Engineers at the University
of Washington have implanted Mott's
antenna into the smellithopter, a drone
that can actually pick up smells. And in
2018, DARPA announced the persistent
aquatic living sensors program. The
program explored the possibility of
using aquatic creatures as living alarm
systems. That includes bioluminescent
bacteria which light up when disturbed
by aquatic intruders. Another option was
to study the sounds produced by snapping
shrimp and Goliath grouper. In the case
of the shrimp, disturbances in the audio
could even indicate the size and shape
of an intruder. It remains to be seen
whether DARPA or the CIA can harness the
natural world for intelligence purposes
or whether wilderness will remain just
that. Maybe someday we'll discover
whether any real success stories lie
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