About 60 years ago, in 1964, 5 dolphins were hunted and trained to become champions for three consecutive seasons on an American television show called "Flipper." The program was very popular, and dolphins became loved by American children. Around the same time, the dolphin, a marine creature that was played in a friendly, fun and entertaining way during the Flipper program, became the hero of another, more exciting adventure in the CIA labs.

The CIA did its best to get the dolphin part of its Cold War weapons system. This is revealed by a partially declassified 1976 document on the training of sea dolphins for military and intelligence targets for the purposes of gathering information from coastal areas, and perhaps even more.1

Non-human creatures, whether living on land, sea or air, have not been spared attempts to exploit international intelligence services, which have used these creatures to achieve personal interests or to spy on their enemies or even allies.

"Cats" are agents of the CIA

The CIA believed that with proper training, cats could turn with some effort into "spies." The "curiosity" attribute can be exploited for this. (Shutterstock)

In fact, the CIA was known for its desperate attempts at espionage creativity in the sixties, not only the "control of the human mind" project, which had a very bad reputation, but also the brutality and cruelty of these attempts during an operation known as "Acoustic Kitty." As Tom Vanderbilt, an American writer, wrote for Smithsonianmag at the time, "To spy on Cold War adversaries, the U.S. government deployed non-human agents, such as crows, pigeons, and even cats."

The magazine notes that this project was never the subject of a congressional hearing, but some documents and sources from within the intelligence corridors indicate that the project was real.[3] The CIA believed that with proper training, cats could turn with some effort into "spies." The agency also wanted to exploit the "curiosity" trait in cats, which would not make anyone suspect that there was a cat somewhere.

The plan was built on the assumption that a cat wired to record sound would easily be able to come and go unnoticed or suspected, and using audio signals, it could be controlled to move and reach a place where it could record the desired sounds, such as conversations between Soviet leaders.

Creating a high-tech cat was not a simple or easy task in the age of primitive sound recording and computers that were the size of a room, and what makes it even more difficult here is that cats should still look like normal cats without strange bumps or scars that raise suspicions. To achieve this, the CIA has created a 3/4-inch transmitter to surgically place it at the base of the cat's skull, and when the cats sneak in, the devices implanted in the cat's body will be able to eavesdrop on the activities to be monitored.2)(4)

"The Wizards of Langley" is the first book to chronicle the CIA's intensified efforts to exploit science and technology for espionage purposes. (Social Media)

The project itself was referenced by Jeffrey T. Richelson, an American author and academic scholar who specialized in studying how intelligence is gathered, in his book The Wizards of Langley, the first book to chronicle the CIA's extensive efforts to exploit science and technology for espionage.[5] The agency is estimated to have poured about $10 million into designing, operating and training the first cats into the project, but the biggest problem officials faced here was that there was no way to control or restrict the cats' movement as desired, as the cats roamed when they were bored, distracted or hungry.

The cat's hunger problems have been treated with other surgeries. It is estimated that additional surgery and training expenses raised the total cost to $20 million. All these costs, training, and efforts made officials think the cat was finally ready to start carrying out its mission in the real world, and when it was time to start the mission, CIA agents released their agent from the back of a truck and watched him eagerly set sail on his mission. The cat rushed towards the embassy, but what happened would not have occurred to the intelligence men, as before the cat reached the embassy, it collided with a passing taxi and died before it could start carrying out its desired mission.

The CIA eventually canceled the project, and according to partially redacted documents in the George Washington University Archives, the agency concluded that despite the effort and imagination of the proponents of the idea of using cats for espionage, it would not be practical to continue trying to train cats for espionage purposes due to its difficulty and high cost, as well as its ultimately unguaranteed returns.

Dolphin recruitment

According to Palestinian reports, the Israeli occupation recruited a pet aquatic animal, the dolphin, and installed camera equipment and spy devices on its back. (Shutterstock)

In August 2015, CNN reported that the Palestinian Hamas group had discovered that Israelis had used dolphins to spy on them. According to Palestinian sources, the movement seized Israel's most advanced surveillance technology, a dolphin on a spy mission.

According to Palestinian reports, the Israeli occupation recruited a pet aquatic animal, the dolphin, and installed camera and spy equipment on its back.[7] This was not the first time dolphins had been used for espionage; in the sixties, documents showed that the CIA looked into the use of dolphins to "penetrate ports" and spy on their opponents. Surprisingly, dolphins' missions were not limited to espionage; the U.S. Navy had previously used them for demining operations.

What's more, U.S. officials have attempted to use bottlenose dolphins to launch underwater attacks against enemy ships. There have also been tests on whether dolphins can carry sensors to detect Soviet nuclear submarines or search for traces of radioactive or biological weapons from nearby installations.8

As is well known, the agency and the Navy have spent a great deal of time and money developing systems that enable swimmers to achieve these purposes, but their successes have been "marginal" at best. For example, the cost of delivering swimmers and specialized equipment alone per year may exceed about $5 million, and the result is not satisfactory enough. However, the document stressed that "the progress of the operation [OXYCAS] (the name chosen for the dolphin training program) encourages more attention to this project. Although it cannot be expected that the dolphin will completely replace man in water, the dolphin may have been able to provide a large part of our human efforts".8

Dolphins have "echo positioning" capabilities, which allow them to detect the locations of mines buried underwater. Sea lions have excellent eyesight and have helped the U.S. military find some missing equipment. (Shutterstock)

By 1967, the CIA was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on three intelligence programs, including training and using dolphins, birds, cats, and dogs to become agents.[9] Similarly, the US Navy has trained dolphins and sea lions since the Vietnam War, as part of the marine mammal use program, training nearly 70 bottlenose dolphins and 30 lions at a naval base in San Diego, California. Dolphins and sea lions are intelligent, able to learn and keep up with training, and their natural senses have surpassed those of any human-created machine or computer.

In addition to their ability to dive deeply, dolphins have "echo positioning" capabilities, which allow them to detect the locations of mines buried underwater. Sea lions have excellent eyesight and have helped the U.S. military find some missing equipment. The Guardian report, for example, explains that dolphins were already used to help clear mines in the Persian Gulf during the Gulf Wars and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.10

Despite significant and rapid technological advances, the natural capabilities of marine animals still surpass any robots in terms of water exploration. According to the U.S. Navy's website, "One day it may be possible to complete these missions with underwater drones, but for now, the capabilities of marine animals outweigh technology."

According to a report published by NPR radio in April 2022, the Russian military uses specially trained dolphins to defend an important naval base off Crimea. The report added that satellite images show the presence of dolphins at the entrance to the port of Sevastopol, which hosts the Russian Navy's "most important" naval base in the Black Sea.

This was not precedent anyway, as it is known that the Soviet Navy ran several marine mammal use programs during the Cold War, including dolphin training near Sevastopol. The NPR report adds that this particular unit passed to the Ukrainian army when the Soviet Union collapsed, but, despite attempts to continue operating, it barely remained open until Russia took control of the unit after annexing Crimea in 2014, reviving the program again.[11]

Even the bathroom was not delivered!

(Shutterstock)

There are many stories and narratives explaining why pigeons were chosen as a symbol of peace, but perhaps they were not convincing enough for military officials and intelligence personnel, who decided to involve the peaceful bird in wars, conflicts and espionage operations. The use of pigeons in communications dates back thousands of years, before even the advent of telegraph lines, the pigeon was here, able to deliver messages from one place to another, no matter how long the distance between them.

After delivering his message, the pigeon has a special ability that enables it to find its way back to the first point from which it set off with the response of the other party. But the pigeon's mission to help humans communicate was not limited to "peaceful" communication; in World War I pigeons began to be used to gather intelligence.

By World War II, a secret branch of British intelligence ran the "secret pigeon service", the task of which was to drop birds in a container with a parachute over Europe. More than 1000,<> pigeons returned with messages detailing German rocket launch sites and radar stations. After the war, the British intelligence subcommittee of pigeons ceased, while the CIA continued to exploit the power of pigeons.

The documents revealed that the CIA had also trained a crow to deliver and recover small items up to 40 grams from the window sill of inaccessible buildings. (Shutterstock)

The documents reveal how the CIA trained pigeons for covert missions to photograph sensitive locations within the Soviet Union. According to the BBC website, the process of using pigeons for espionage during the seventies was called "Tacana", during which the pigeons were equipped with small cameras to take pictures automatically, the CIA tried here to take advantage of the crucial feature of the bathroom, which is that it has an amazing ability to find a way home no matter how far it goes.

The documents revealed that the CIA had also trained a crow to deliver and recover small items up to 40 grams from the window sill of inaccessible buildings, and the agency also tried to train Canadian falcons and parrots, but of all these species, pigeons alone, unfortunately, proved to be the most effective.

By the mid-seventies, the agency began a series of experimental missions, one over a prison and the other over a naval headquarters in Washington, D.C. Equipped with cameras costing $2,000 and weighing just 35 grams, photos taken by the pigeons have already shown remarkably clear details of people walking and cars parked in the Navy yard in Washington, D.C.

Experts found that the quality of the images was higher than that produced by spy satellites operating at the time. The intended mission was to use the bathroom against "priority" intelligence targets within the Soviet Union. The documents indicated that the birds were to be secretly shipped to Moscow, but no further details about this mission were known.9

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Sources:

  • 1- The CIA's Most Highly-Trained Spies Weren't Even Human
  • 2- That Time the CIA Bugged a Cat to Spy on the Soviets
  • 3- The CIA Experimented On Animals in the 1960s Too. Just Ask 'Acoustic Kitty'
  • 4- The CIA Plan to Use Cats as Spies
  • 5- Spy Tech
  • 6- The Wizards Of Langley: Inside The Cia's Directorate Of Science And Technology
  • 7- Report: Hamas says Israelis used dolphin as spy
  • 8- PROJECT OXYGAS
  • 9- CIA unveils Cold War spy-pigeon missions
  • 10- Licence to krill: why the US navy trains whales, dolphins and sea lions
  • 11- A Russian naval base is defended by dolphins
  • 12-How do pigeons, crows, cats and dolphins spy for America?