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How the CIA uses animals to spy | fern | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: How the CIA uses animals to spy
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[Music]
This pigeon is a CIA spy. It's wearing a
tiny high-tech camera and it's about to
gather intelligence on Soviet nuclear submarines.
submarines.
This is a dolphin right now. It's being
trained to carry bombs and attach them
to enemy vessels, possibly
miniaturaturized nuclear bombs. This
raven isn't just flying around. It's on
a mission. Currently, it's heading
towards the hotel room of a KGB agent to
plant a bug there. And this cat has been
sent to spy on a Chinese diplomat. It
had a microphone surgically implanted in
its ear, and there's an antenna in its tail.
tail.
This all sounds like science fiction.
But animal spies are very real.
Their stories have long been shrouded in
secrecy, myths, and legends. But in
2019, the CIA released a large trove of
previously classified documents. They
give us a glimpse into how the CIA tries
to weaponize animals. Today, we will
look at the four most spectacular
projects. They reveal a story of cold
war paranoia, unchecked hubris, absurd
waste, spectacular failures, and wild
Confirmed.
Most of this video is based on
declassified CIA documents. Of course,
the CIA wants to present itself in a
certain light, and it's careful about
what it reveals. Some parts are heavily
redacted, and sometimes other sources
give conflicting information. We can
only present what we know, and if we
don't know something, we'll be
transparent about it. As always, you can
find our sources in the description.
Humans weaponize animals to make use of
special capabilities they themselves
lack. A dog's sense of smell is up to
10,000 times stronger than ours. It's
perfect for sniffing out illegal drugs.
To cross the Alps and invade Italy, the
Carthaginian general Hannibal used war
elephants. During World War II, the
Polish army deployed a brown bear named
Deweek to the Italian front. In Iraq,
the US military worked with dolphins,
putting their unparalleled echolocation
skills to use, detecting underwater
mines, and some work with animals is
veiled in secrecy. By their nature, it's
hard to tell exactly how far these
programs have progressed.
In 2019, a beluga whale was discovered
in Norwegian waters wearing a camera
harness. A tag identified it as
belonging to St. Petersburg, Russia. It
was quickly accused of being a spy. In
2007, Iran apprehended 14 squirrels near
a nuclear enrichment plant. The animals
were arrested as spies.
In 2018, a senior military adviser told
journalists that Western nuclear spies
have been using lizards to collect
information about Iran's nuclear
program. Animals have an inherent
advantage that human spies lack. People
simply don't notice them. Unlike human
agents or advanced technology like
drones, animals can typically pass
undetected, even in secure areas. But
there's a problem. Animals are not
natural spies. They need training.
During the Cold War, the CIA faced a
mighty adversary, the Soviet Union. In
trying to claim the upper hand, the
agency explored all sorts of methods,
some of them highly unorthodox.
psychedelic drugs, mind control, silent
killer weapons, stealing Russian
submarines, and of course, animal agents.
In the mid1 1960s, the CIA launched
project Axiolite. The goal was to
provide reliable trained aven vehicles
for imp placement, transport, and or
recovery of reconnaissance surveillance
sensors to meet operational requirements
as defined by the sponsors. In other
words, the CIA was training birds to
transport things like recording devices.
But which birds were spy material?
There were several candidates, some
stronger than others. The cockatu seemed
to be a wild card. One memo states, "We
are completely in the dark as to what
the possibilities are in regard to this
critter. There were high hopes for the
hawks. Brandy and Gibbi are two of the
program's hawks. They were especially
reliable and determined. They could
locate specific objects or features in
strange territory. They could carry a
13oz package for more than a mile. They
could even remove objects from a harness
they themselves were wearing. But in
general, they were not considered strong flyers.
flyers.
Horned owls respond to a high frequency
whistle and can be recalled by trainers,
even in extreme lowlight situations. But
in daylight, their ability to discern
objects is much worse than that of other
birds. As time progresses, one unlikely
We now know that ravens are extremely
intelligent birds. They have excellent
memories, can plan for the future, and
are capable of using tools and solving
puzzles. Researchers have found that
4-month-old ravens can perform certain
cognitive tasks, as well as adult great
apes. CIA documents usually stick to dry
facts, but Duda was Project Axial Light
Superstar. In one memo, an agent
dedicates a whole page to the saga of Duda.
Duda.
Project Axial began at a Navy facility
at San Clementine Island off the coast
of California. There, the CIA tested the
strength of various birds. Their task,
fly from the island to a boat and back.
This might sound easy, but the distance
was challenging and the winds could be
strong. Most birds can manage to fly
between 50 yd and 1.5 m. Duda,
meanwhile, flew 3 and 1/2 m. A few
months later, he was almost doubling
that distance. He was also problem
solving. In every session, he would
figure out exactly the right altitude he
needed to fly for the unique wind
conditions. Aggressive native birds
posed a major threat to the CIA
trainees. Wild Gouls and ravens soon
figured out their training schedule.
Once they knew when the CIA birds would
show up, they would lie and wait and
then attack.
But Dudah solved this problem, too. To
avoid the goals, he'd keep to a higher
altitude and outfly them. The Wild
Ravens were another matter. They would
hide behind the bluffs, waiting for an
opportunity to attack. Duda's solution
was to engage in brief dog fights with
the ravens while leading them further
and further from shore. After about a
Ravens intelligence made them good at
more than flying. According to Navy
animal trainer Bob Bailey, they could be
taught to recognize specific desks, open
drawers, and carry heavy objects like
file folders. The CIA started training
ravens like Dudah extensively and
eventually use them in the field.
According to the CIA documents, this is
how they did it.
A CIA agent wants to record a secret
conversation between enemy agents. He
knows where and when it's taking place,
down to the building in the exact room.
Now he needs to get a recording device
close to the conversation as
inconspicuously as possible.
To do this, he goes to a nearby building
with a view of the targeted location, no
more than 300 ft away. With him, he has
a trained raven. At the appropriate
time, he aims a tiny flashing laser at
the window ledge outside the room where
the conversation is taking place. Then
he releases the raven from its cage. The
bird takes a disguise listening device
in its beak and flies to the spot
indicated by the laser to plant the
equipment. The agent then turns on a
special desk lamp to signal to the raven
that it's time to return. Later on, the
raven is sent to retrieve the recording
device by the same method.
At least this is how it's described in
the document operator's manual aven
delivery system. In real life, things
didn't go as smoothly. Training a wild
animal to be a spy takes time. It takes
planning. If the CIA is still training
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challenging than spy training. A raven.
When ravens were molting, they couldn't
fly comfortably. One put the listening
device on the wrong window sill. And
when a device made it to the right
window sill, the microphone picked up so
much ambient noise, the recording was
useless. The document suggests that this
whole technique was only used a single
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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