{"id":259,"date":"2015-02-23T17:57:22","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T17:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/?p=259"},"modified":"2020-07-07T14:02:56","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T14:02:56","slug":"operation-acoustic-kitty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/operation-acoustic-kitty\/","title":{"rendered":"Operation Acoustic Kitty"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Background<\/h3>\n<p>Acoustic Kitty was a CIA project launched by the Directorate of Science &amp; Technology in the 1960s attempting to use cats in spy missions, intended to spy on the Kremlin and Soviet embassies, recording the links between the buildings in the area. A battery and a microphone were implanted into a cat and an antenna into its tail. This would allow the cats to innocuously record and transmit sound from their surroundings. Due to problems with distraction, the cat&#8217;s sense of hunger had to be addressed in another operation. Surgical and training expenses are thought to have amounted to over $25 million.<\/p>\n<p>The first Acoustic Kitty mission was to eavesdrop on two men in a park outside the Soviet compound on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, D.C. The cat was released nearby, but was hit and killed by a taxi almost immediately. However, this is disputed by former Director of the CIA&#8217;s Office of Technical Service Robert Wallace in the Weapons Of The Superspies episode of the TV series The World&#8217;s Weirdest Weapons: Wallace states that the project was abandoned due to the difficulty of training the cat to behave as required, and &#8220;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&#8221;. Subsequent tests also failed. Shortly thereafter the project was considered a failure and declared to be a total loss. The project was cancelled in 1967.<\/p>\n<h3>Document Archive<\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/images\/pdf.gif\" alt=\"\" \/>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/documents.theblackvault.com\/documents\/cia\/acoustickitty-cia.pdf\">CIA Documents on Animal Training \/ Acoustic Kitty<\/a> [ 15 Pages, 0.7MB ]<\/p>\n<div class=\"ead-preview\"><div class=\"ead-document\" style=\"position: relative;padding-top: 90%;\"><div class=\"ead-iframe-wrapper\"><iframe src=\"\/\/docs.google.com\/viewer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdocuments.theblackvault.com%2Fdocuments%2Fcia%2Facoustickitty-cia.pdf&amp;embedded=true&amp;hl=en\" title=\"Embedded Document\" class=\"ead-iframe\" style=\"width: 100%;height: 100%;border: none;position: absolute;left: 0;top: 0;visibility: hidden;\"><\/iframe><\/div>\t\t\t<div class=\"ead-document-loading\" style=\"width:100%;height:100%;position:absolute;left:0;top:0;z-index:10;\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"ead-loading-wrap\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"ead-loading-main\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"ead-loading\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-content\/plugins\/embed-any-document\/images\/loading.svg\" width=\"55\" height=\"55\" alt=\"Loader\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span>Loading...<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"ead-loading-foot\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"ead-loading-foot-title\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-content\/plugins\/embed-any-document\/images\/EAD-logo.svg\" alt=\"EAD Logo\" width=\"36\" height=\"23\"\/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span>Taking too long?<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"ead-document-btn ead-reload-btn\" role=\"button\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-content\/plugins\/embed-any-document\/images\/reload.svg\" alt=\"Reload\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\"\/> Reload document\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span>|<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/documents.theblackvault.com\/documents\/cia\/acoustickitty-cia.pdf\" class=\"ead-document-btn\" target=\"_blank\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-content\/plugins\/embed-any-document\/images\/open.svg\" alt=\"Open\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\"\/> Open in new tab\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><p class=\"embed_download\"><a href=\"https:\/\/documents.theblackvault.com\/documents\/cia\/acoustickitty-cia.pdf\" download>Download [638.67 KB] <\/a><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Background Acoustic Kitty was a CIA project launched by the Directorate of Science &amp; Technology in the 1960s attempting to use cats in spy missions, intended to spy on the Kremlin and Soviet embassies, recording the links between the buildings in the area. A battery and a microphone were implanted into a cat and an<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":260,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","transcript_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,33,4],"tags":[129,128,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cold-war-era","8":"category-fbi-files-domestic-foreign-intelligence","9":"category-intelligence","10":"tag-acoustic-kitty","11":"tag-cold-war","12":"tag-espionage","13":"tag-spying"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Spy-cat-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}