The CIA Program to Turn Cats Into Spies

In the 1960s, the CIA launched a project to turn ordinary house cats into living surveillance devices. They surgically implanted microphones and antennas into felines to covertly record Soviet officials.

This ambitious project aimed to bypass human detection by using cats as mobile listening posts. Engineers spent years developing ways to conceal audio equipment inside the animals while training them to move toward targets. Unfortunately, the cats proved difficult to control, and the first field test ended when a cat wandered into traffic. The program was eventually canceled after costing taxpayers millions of dollars.