http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=103040
CIA's 'spy cat' goes splat

By James Morrison

04 November 2001

It should have been the perfect spy. But the CIA's attempt to use a surgically altered cat as a covert bugging device fell at the first hurdle – when it was run over by a taxi.

Nicknamed "Acoustic Kitty", the audacious scheme was one of a number of
bizarre projects dreamt up by military scientists in the latter days of the Cold
War, according to documents newly released by the US National Security
Archive. A domestic cat was wired up with control and transmission equipment
designed to turn it into a mobile "eavesdropper" capable of listening in on
conversations by using its tail as an antenna.

In an account related in a new book by US intelligence historian Dr Jeffrey
Richelson, a former CIA agent explains that the experiment was not an
unqualified success.

Victor Marchetti, an ex-officer with the agency, recalls: "They slit the cat open,
put batteries in him, wired him up. The tail was used as an antenna. They
made a monstrosity. They tested and tested him. They found he would walk off
the job when he got hungry, so they put another wire in to override that.

"Finally, they're ready. They took it to a park and said, 'listen to those two
guys. Don't listen to anyone else – not the birds, not cat or the dog – just
those two guys!'

"Then they put him out of the van, and a taxi comes and runs him over!"

Marchetti's testimony is one of several relating to the failed experiment quoted
in Dr Richelson's book, The Wizards of Langley: The CIA's Directorate of
Science and Technology.

"Acoustic Kitty" was by no means the biggest failure in the annals of CIA
espionage. Others chronicle the use of mind control drugs that led to the
suicide of an Army scientist, and futile attempts to use poison pens and
exploding seashells to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro.