- [Mike] Hi, everyone, I'm Mike.
- [Thespi] And I'm Thespi.
- [Mike] And today, we're going to talk to you
about bizarre but completely true part of history.
- [Thespi] Spy cats.
- [Mike] Yes, the true story of how the CIA
tried using cats to spy on foreign leaders
during the height of the Cold War.
- [Thespi] This is going to be exhilarating.
- [Mike] The story goes that in the mid-1960s,
the CIA's directorate of science and technology
was looking for a way to conduct surveillance
on a foreign head of state.
They were inspired by the fact that cats
were allowed to come and go as they pleased
during this specific head of state's strategy meetings.
Cats were not paid much attention
as there were a bunch of feral cats in the region.
- [Thespi] Cats are elusive.
They're slinky.
They can get wherever they want.
But you notice a cat.
You see it walking around, you're like,
what is this cat doing here?
- [Mike] Have you ever been suspicious of a cat, Thespi?
- [Thespi] Every time my cat and I connect eyes,
I know there are secrets of the universe
trapped in his tiny little skull.
Not many, but they're there.
- [Mike] I don't think I would be as suspicious of a dog.
- [Thespi] Dogs are there to make people happy.
Cats are there to plug away at your insecurities over time.
I genuinely do think that cats have ulterior motives,
which is why I wouldn't trust a cat to be a spy.
- [Mike] Right, and we'll get to that
'cause that is relevant.
(Thespi laughing)
It's unclear who came up with the idea of spy cats,
but from those observations mentioned earlier,
the idea was born and became known as Acoustic Kitty.
- [Thespi] Bum, bum, bum, or should we say,
meow, meow, meow. (laughing)
- [Mike] Hate you. (laughing)
Since it was the 1960s, recording technology
didn't allow them to isolate certain sounds.
So, recordings contained ambient noise
that made it difficult to hear conversations.
The theory, according to one source,
was that because cats have cochlea like humans,
they would be able to filter out the unnecessary noise
and focus on the voices they were targeting,
and it seemed like they were actually able
to condition the cats to listen to human voices.
- [Thespi] When my cat and I lock eyes
and we're holding them,
and I'm seeing the vast emptiness,
there's something going on in there,
but I as a human cannot get there,
how could you look at lots of cats and go,
"Oh, we're on the same page"?
- [Mike] I think there's a lot of, dare I say,
misplaced confidence?
- [Thespi] Were all these people men
who were running this program?
- [Mike] You know, it was the '60s.
- [Thespi] Most likely.
Interesting, interesting.
- [Mike] Once the CIA had the idea,
they had to execute it.
However, designing an implant that contained a microphone,
antennae, transmitter, and power source,
and that was virtually undetectable by the animal,
and would not impact its movement would be difficult.
(meows)
- [Thespi] I am so terrified about where we're going.
If we're like, look, kitties can't have little robot collars
that clearly look like walkie-talkies
where they're communicating with intelligence.
- [Mike] How cute would that be, though?
- [Thespi] I can see a cat,
I can see a thick collar,
I can see it looking industrial,
I can see like, Austin Powers' Dr. Evil lair vibe,
but that's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about secret hidden spaces,
which means they're gonna have to do stuff to the cat
to get the things inside of the cat.
- [Mike] So this is where it gets a little dicey.
(Thespi groans) The people aren't gonna
like this very much.
- [Thespi] Okay, warning to all the kitty lovers out there.
Know that we don't agree with this.
- [Mike] Eventually, they figured out placement
throughout the body.
The microphone was positioned in the ear canal.
A 3/4-inch transmitter was placed
at the base of the cat's skull
where its scruff provided ample space.
And a very thin wire antennae
ran from the transmitter through the cat's fur.
The placement of the batteries
to use as the power source is not apparent,
but obviously had to be small,
which restricted the length of recordings.
According to a trainer, ultrasonic sound,
not audible to humans,
was used to guide the cats' movements.
- [Thespi] As someone who tries to walk their cats,
putting my cat in a harness is already
a dangerous enough excursion.
- [Mike] Both dummies and real cats
tested out the equipment before the team
was ready to use it for real.
Officials weighed the potential bad press
for using animals for this sort of project
if word were to get out against the potential benefit,
and they decided to proceed with the project.
- [Thespi] The dummies, little cat shapes,
they're like, "Okay, this is what it would look like
"on the kitty model."
Someone else was like, "Hey Bob, you think this looks
"a little sketchy?"
And then, the other guys was like, "Actually Bob,
"I think it looks good."
So they're doing, essentially, a Venn diagram.
And on one side is stopping Cold War,
and the other side is people who like animals.
And they're trying to find an intersection
for what would be okay, and is this worth it?
And clearly, they were like, "We're okay with this."
- [Mike] Finally, the day came
for the official implantation of the recording device.
The procedure itself took an hour,
as a group of onlookers watched a vet
open up a female cat with gray and white fur.
The cat was asleep, by the way.
- [Thespi] I would be horrified if the cat wasn't asleep.
- [Mike] It said that one audio engineer
asked to sit after seeing the animal cut open.
- [Thespi] I'm surprised nobody fainted.
Wonder what the cat's name was.
- Me too! - Like, are they
cutting up Mimi?
- [Mike] It is a female cat, so.
According to Victor Marchetti,
the executive assistant to the deputy director of the CIA,
the implantation went as follows.
They cut the cat open, put in batteries and wires,
and used the tail as an antennae.
He said, quote, "They made a monstrosity."
(thunder crackles)
- [Thespi] So you see here, what you do
is you cut the cat open, you put the batteries and wire in,
and you just use the tail as an antennae.
It's just as easy as that.
And then in the meanwhile,
like there's the Dr. Frankenstein onlookers
in the background going,
(gasps) "We've made a monstrosity."
And like, imagine poor little Mimi,
she's getting sewed back up on the table.
Imagine her coming out of it and just being like,
"What the God green earth
"have these (beeps) other giant cats done to me?"
- [Mike] As she recovered, the system proved to work.
But some tech they had placed
to control the cat's movements,
which had previously succeeded,
didn't work with any reliability.
After she recovered, tests proved disappointing.
While the cat could be directed small distances
or in places it was accustomed to,
it did not overall work well outside in the real world.
As we'll soon see, ultimately the risks
of a rogue spy kitty overruled the possible benefits.
- [Thespi] What was that Hilary Duff movie?
"Agent Cody Banks."
- [Mike] Right!
- [Thespi] That scene where he's getting all the spy toys,
and he's running around, and they're like,
"Okay, here's your cool skateboard.
"Here's all your things."
I like to think of little Mimi running around the CIA,
and they're just like, "Mimi, come back,"
and she's just trying to pick up signals.
But she's also a goddamn cat,
so she's like, "What am I even doing here?
"I'm so confused."
So, poor Mimi is just trying to bust out of there
and find a new life.
So of course it's not working.
- [Mike] The hubris is wild here.
- [Thespi] They should've taken a moment,
predicted the future.
And they should've been like, "In 2019,
"the world's most important movie will be released,
"'Cats,' where humans will be designed to look like cats."
And they should've held out.
And they should've controlled Rebel Wilson as a cat
as a rogue operative spy.
- [Mike] This is brilliant. (dinging sound)
- [Thespi] This is what dreams are made of.
Not to keep going back to Hilary Duff, but like,
anything is possible.
This is possible.
It's wrong.
- [Mike] However, the implantation of the recording device
was still considered a win as it was operative.
The cat just wasn't as controllable as once thought.
- [Thespi] I can totally imagine going to a meeting,
and be like, "Look guys, can we not control the cats?
"Yeah, but we're getting signal,
"so we at least implanted something correctly."
- [Mike] Managers like to spin things.
- [Thespi] I would do the same thing.
I'd be like, "Guys, guys, guys,
"we're missing out on the silver lining,
"which is we could put wires in anything."
- [Mike] Marchetti also observed that the cat
would walk off the job when hungry.
So, they put in another wire to try to override that.
Finally, they decided to deploy the spy kitty for real.
They took it out to a park bench and said,
"Listen to those two guys.
"Don't listen to anything else,
"not the birds, no cat or dog, just those two guys."
- [Thespi] Is it like when parents talk to kids
and they squat down real low, and they're like, "Okay Mimi,"
and they hold up the two pictures, and they're like,
"You see these two guys?
"That's who you're gonna listen to."
Again, knowing that cats understand no English.
- [Mike] According to Marchetti,
they took the cat out of a van,
and a taxi comes and runs the cat over.
There they were, sitting in a van with all those dials,
and the cat was dead.
- [Thespi] Oh my god.
Did Mimi just die?
- [Mike] It's very abrupt.
- [Thespi] That's a lot.
Like poor little Mimi finally outside,
finally trying to break free,
finally trying to do something, and then just like that.
Can you imagine how much time and money they have invested
in Mimi and her brethren to make this happen?
- [Mike] However, in a lecture given
at the International Spy Museum,
CIA historical advisor Keith Melton
discussed the mission of Acoustic Kitty.
He claims that the cat was, in fact,
not run over while crossing the road,
and lived a long, healthy, and natural life.
- [Thespi] Keith is 100% lying out of his bum.
Again, this is like Victor going in there and being like,
"Look guys, this didn't work, but this did."
And Keith is in a lecture being like,
"I don't know, guys.
"Look at this happy gray and white fur cat."
And they just like, deepfaked Mimi's face
onto the other cat.
- [Mike] Oh, it's like when a goldfish dies,
and the parents buy another goldfish.
- [Thespi] Yeah.
- [Mike] I don't believe this.
I wanna believe it.
- [Thespi] Yeah, but like, this is the CIA,
just acting like nothing's wrong.
- [Mike] According to Victor Marchetti,
this project took five years to design.
- [Thespi] Can you imagine sinking five years
of your life into this?
I know there wasn't LinkedIn in the '60s,
but how were you plugging in your resume?
- [Mike] And according to an interview with Marchetti
in the British newspaper, The Telegraph,
the project cost over 10 million pounds.
- [Thespi] That's a lot of money in US dollars today.
- [Mike] Correct.
I mean, it still is--
- [Thespi] It's still a lot of money.
- [Mike] It's so much money.
- [Thespi] To spend on doing terrible things to cats.
Victor must be schwitzen.
- [Mike] So, what have we learned today, Thespi?
- [Thespi] Justice for Mimi, a true American hero.
- [Mike] Gosh, I wish the CIA had watched
"Don't (beeps) With Cats."
- [Thespi] Seriously.
- You don't (beeps) with cats. - You don't.
Clearly, none of them had ever seen
or spent time with cats.
Not enough cat ladies in the CIA.
- [Mike] That was their problem.
- [Thespi] Could've solved all of this.
- [Mike] They weren't thinking of Mimi.
We know that's probably not her real name,
but like, it might've been.
- She could've been. - I will say
this has kept me very entertained.
I've been horrified, I've been entertained.
And I hope you, as the viewer, have been too.
So, let us know in the comments
what weird things from history we should talk about next.
- [Thespi] Also, tell us if you've ever trained your cat
to do literally anything.
Well thanks, Mike.
- [Mike] Well thanks, Thespi, this was fun.
Until next time, and #JusticeForMimi.
(bright music)