Six CIA plans that are stranger than fiction

Current

By Stephanie Whiteside

August 9, 2012

"The Bourne Legacy" premieres this weekend, continuing the franchise's tale of genetically modified assassins created by a top-secret government agency. But although the Bourne tales may be fiction, they're not so far off from some of the plans hatched by the CIA.

Here are six real CIA ideas that are stranger than fiction:

1. Pigeon-guided missiles
During World War II, behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner experimented with training pigeons to steer missiles. The pigeons would be strapped into the nose cone and trained to peck the image of a target on a screen, which would keep the bomb on path.

Incredibly enough, there was initial support for the idea, but it was ultimately dismissed as impractical.

2. Project: Acoustic Kitty
The problem with bugging a room is that someone has to get inside to install the bug. During the Cold War, the CIA attempted to infiltrate the Kremlin by turning a cat into a walking bug. The cat was wired up as an eavesdropping device, with implanted batteries and the tail serving an antenna.

Aside from the fact that the cats had a tendency to wander off the job when hungry, the CIA’s live trial failed when the test subject was hit by a car.

3. False-flag attacks
In the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA seriously considered a false-flag operation to gather support for military action in Cuba. Known as Operation Northwoods, the plan called for creating fake attacks on Cuban defectors, U.S. military installations and civilians, all apparently perpetrated by Cuba.

Despite being circulated at the highest levels, including Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Operation Northwoods never made it out of the planning phase. The details of the plan, however, continue to fan the flames of conspiracy theorists today.

4. Operation Midnight Climax
Going to a party and finding out you’ve been drugged without your knowledge sounds like a cautionary tale of the dangers of hedonism. But it’s exactly what happened to subjects in San Francisco, who were dosed with LSD as part of the CIA’s experiments with the effects of drugs during the Cold War.

Even more alarming, many of the victims were never notified that they were subjects of CIA experiments, even after the experiments were investigated, since little data survived CIA paper-shredding efforts.

5. Operation Stargate
Yet another plan hatched during the Cold War (what was it about the 1960s?), Operation Stargate was the CIA’s experiment with “remote viewing” psychics who would attempt to visualize intelligence information ranging from the identity of KGB agents to predicting attacks on officials.

Unlike other plans, Stargate made it out of the planning stage, and the CIA employed psychics for two decades.

6. Mind control and MK-ULTRA
MK-ULTRA was the CIA’s attempt to utilize mind-altering drugs and create CIA agents who were immune to similar efforts from Cold War–era enemies. The program even hoped to create a programmable assassin. In addition to experimenting with drugs on unsuspecting victims (Operation Midnight Climax was part of MK-ULTRA), the CIA also experimented with hypnosis, electroshock therapy and isolation in an attempt to create “super agents.”

Although MK-ULTRA was discontinued, the CIA has remained reluctant to disclose information, including information on those who were victims of CIA experiments.

Source: Current.com