Acoustic Kitty, an American Spy - The Atlantic
▻http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/06/acoustic-kitty-technological-history-of-american-espionage/396728
My favorite story about American spying is one I’ve never been able to verify with the Central Intelligence Agency, and not for lack of trying.
At the height of the Cold War, the story goes, officials in the United States hatched a covert plan to keep tabs on Russians in Washington, D.C. They would, they decided, deploy surveillance cats—yes, actual cats surgically implanted with microphones and radio transmitters—to slip by security and eavesdrop on activity at the Soviet Embassy. The project went by the thinly disguised code name “#Acoustic_Kitty.”
“They slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up,” said Victor Marchetti, who was an executive assistant to the director of the CIA in the 1960s, according to an account in Jeffrey Richelson’s 2001 book, The Wizards of Langley. “The tail was used as an antenna. They made a monstrosity.”
A whiskered, yowling, unbelievably expensive monstrosity. The agency poured some $10 million into designing, operating on, and training the first Acoustic Kitty, according to several accounts.
When it came time for the inaugural mission, CIA agents released their rookie agent from the back of a nondescript van and watched eagerly as he set out on his mission. Acoustic Kitty dashed off toward the embassy, making it all of 10 feet before he was unceremoniously struck by a passing taxi and killed.