Operation Acoustic Kitty

rockville writes: "Remember the Cold War, when intelligence agencies had no oversight and a blank check? Now that those days are back, here's a good object lesson: the Chicago Sun-Times has details about Operation Acoustic Kitty, a CIA program to wire a cat to spy on the Soviet Union. Feel free to be either shocked at the depravity or shocked at the stupidity. The first prototype is also a nominee for Worst Presentation Ever." Hmmm. Last time I posted a story about cats, I got angry email from cat-lovers. Let's see what happens this time.

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Declassified documents on Acoustic Kitty

[Black Acid]

Guardian Unlimited has an article, Project: Acoustic Kitty, which says:

A fresh batch of newly declassified CIA documents, however, provides a more nuanced picture of the CIA's directorate of science and technology. The documents - requested under the Freedom of Information Act by Jeffrey Richelson, a senior fellow at the national security archive in Washington - chart the development of the extraordinary US spy satellites as well as the U-2 and A-12 spy planes. But they also record some of the gaffes and wrong turns along the way, which reveal the CIA's boffins to be as accident-prone as any government institution.

The "Acoustic Kitty" is one of the CIA's many failures. You can download the declassified documents at George Washington University. Most relevent is Document 27: Views on Trained Cat Use. Interesting read straight from the horse's mouth.