Acoustic Kitty was a

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

(CIA) project launched by their

Directorate of Science & Technology The Directorate of Science & Technology (DS&T) is the branch of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tasked with collecting and analyzing information through technological means and develop technical systems in order to advance the ...

in the 1960s, which intended to use

cat The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of ...

s to spy on the

Kremlin The Kremlin ( rus, Московский Кремль, r=Moskovskiy Kreml', p=ˈmɐˈskofskʲɪj krʲemlʲ, t=Moscow Kremlin) is a fortified complex in the center of Moscow founded by the Rurik dynasty, Rurik dynasty. It is the best known of th ...

and

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

embassies. In an hour-long procedure, a veterinary surgeon implanted a microphone in the cat's ear canal, a small

radio transmitter In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which is applied to the ...

at the base of its skull, and a thin wire into its fur. This would allow the cat to innocuously record and transmit sound from its surroundings. Due to problems with distraction, the cat's sense of hunger had to be addressed in another operation.

Victor Marchetti Victor Leo Marchetti Jr. (December 23, 1929 – October 19, 2018) was a special assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency who later became a prominent critic of the United States Intelligence Community and the Israel l ...

, a former CIA officer, said Project Acoustic Kitty cost about $20 million. The first Acoustic Kitty mission was to

eavesdrop Eavesdropping is the act of secretly or stealthily listening to the private conversation or communications of others without their consent in order to gather information. Etymology The verb ''eavesdrop'' is a back-formation from the noun ''eaves ...

on two men in a park outside the

Soviet embassy This is a list of diplomatic missions of Russia. These missions are subordinate to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Russian Federation has one of the largest networks of embassies and consulates of any country. Russia has significant ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

The cat was released nearby, but was hit and allegedly killed by a taxi almost immediately.Curtis, Adam, "You Have Used Me as a Fish Long Enough", '' The Living Dead'', BBC television documentary, 1995, interview with

at 28:10 However, this was disputed in 2013 by Robert Wallace, a former director of the Office of Technical Service, who said that the project was abandoned due to the difficulty of training the cat to behave as required, and "the equipment was taken out of the cat; the cat was re-sewn for a second time, and lived a long and happy life afterwards". Subsequent tests also failed. Shortly thereafter the project was considered a failure and declared to be a total loss. However, other accounts report more success for the project. The project was cancelled in 1967. A closing memorandum said that the CIA researchers believed that they could train cats to move short distances, but that "the environmental and security factors in using this technique in a real foreign situation force us to conclude that for our (intelligence) purposes, it would not be practical." The project was disclosed in 2001, when some CIA documents were declassified.

References

{{Reflist, 30em

External links

* The Memory Palace podcast episode about Acoustic Kitt
episode-16-secret-kitty
Espionage projects Central Intelligence Agency operations Cold War intelligence operations 1960s in the United States Military animals Cats in the United States

References

Further reading

External links