this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2026
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Full title: Operation Acoustic Kitty: The CIA spent about $15 million surgically implanting a microphone in a cat's ear, a transmitter under its skin, and an antenna through its tail to spy on Soviet conversations

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[–] Axiochus@lemmy.world 53 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Wasn't the cat immediately hit by a car or something?

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 49 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes.

Honestly though, this smells like embezzlement or moving funds to some clandestine project.

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Yeah, the money went to Katianna the cleaning lady at the embassy and the story about the $15m spy cat was to cover up how they got the information.

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'd be okay with that if true

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

The cleaning lady was actually a soviet honeypot named Nickloi who only slept with his targets with the lights off.

[–] MojoMcJojo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Where the cat? Oh, um, it got run over by a car.

[–] betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago

One was. What they don't know is that the taxi was being driven by a cat who had been assigned the mission to preserve the secrecy of their own clandestine meetings.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's the story. Which has to be at least partially bullshit.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

What I remember is they tried to do a test run of whether or not it could hear two people stting and talking at a park bench.

So, they released, from the safe house on the other side of the road from the park, it started to go toward the bench, and BLAM, hit by a car.

EDIT:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Kitty

The first Acoustic Kitty mission was to eavesdrop on two men in a park outside the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. The cat was released nearby, but was hit and allegedly killed by a taxi almost immediately.[4] 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".[5] Subsequent tests also failed.[1] Shortly thereafter the project was considered a failure and declared to be a total loss.[6] However, other accounts report more success for the project.[7]

... So... not exactly a high of certainty going on here.

[–] y0kai@anarchist.nexus 30 points 1 month ago

and I thought my vet bills were expensive.

poor Kitty

[–] lena 25 points 1 month ago

Poor cat :c

[–] 0ops@piefed.zip 21 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Well... That's the most evil thing I've ever heard of

[–] NewDark@lemmy.today 19 points 1 month ago

You must not have heard about much of the CIA's adventures huh?

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

well, that's just for spying. I still think ww2 was worse, when they would feed dogs under tanks, so that when deployed in the battlefield, the dogs with explosives strapped would get under enemy tanks and boom

[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 3 points 1 month ago

As far as I can remember it was the Soviets that tried this, but because they practiced this with their own tanks, in battle they would run to the Soviet tanks instead (and blow up there). But I can't vouch for how true the story is.

[–] ramenshaman@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Holy shit :(

[–] mobyduck648@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's a normal workday for the CIA at the peak of the Cold War. Apparently getting dosed with acid was something of an occupational hazard in the '50s if you worked for the CIA which might explain some of their more unusual operations.

[–] Nouvellalia@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Like the unibomber

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

Worse things are happening today with Neuralink.

[–] NihilsineNefas@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 month ago

I would advise not looking into the rest of the mkultra sub-projects then. They only get worse.

Saying that, the one where they built fake brothels with one way mirrors to dose politicians with LSD and then get secrets out of them was objectively kinda funny, in a looneytoons way.

[–] FatVegan@leminal.space 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How is this wose than putting a hole into a cow to release methane?

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

Isn't that done to help the cow? Their stomachs can rupture otherwise

[–] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

A cat? Gaurenteed they are going to fuck up whatever plan you have in mind. They can sense what you want them to do and the fuck you part of their brain is instantly activated. Whomever thought this up knew jack about cats.

[–] mobyduck648@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Yeah like not supporting this equipping animals with cybernetic enhancements nonsense, but did it not occur to any of them that dogs exist?

They did. Project got canceled because of problems with the training and that cats was killed by environmental stuff like cars.

[–] crystalmathadept@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Pretty sure the cat was immediately run over by a car and no intel was gained.

[–] TwodogsFighting@lemdro.id 4 points 1 month ago

That's OK, the mission to steal 14.99 million dollars was a rousing success.

[–] Nouvellalia@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

The cat immediately ran into traffic to stop the misery of its CIA induced horror life.

[–] No1@aussie.zone 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well, we tried training dolphins, and then sharks with frickin' laser beams, but we couldn't convince everyone to build a pool everywhere they were going....

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 points 1 month ago

or mind controlled giant squids.

[–] EisFrei@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

What did the dollar man cost ten years later? Just six million, despite inflation!

[–] ThePyroPython@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago