Here are some of the weirdest government backed operations ever!
8 - Underground Ice City Sometimes history is just a little bit weirder
than science fiction.
Here's a fact: The US used to have a small underground city in the North Pole called
Camp Century.
The code name for this top secret Army program was Project Iceworm and the goal was to build
a network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet during
the Cold War.
The ultimate objective was to place medium-range missiles under the ice, close enough to strike
targets within the Soviet Union.
This was kept secret from the Danish government.
Camp Century began life in 1959 as a scientific outpost located hundreds of feet beneath a
Greenland iceberg.
The city in the camp became an incredible network of tunnels that ran underground that
stretched out more than one and a half miles!
The camp provided accommodation for more than 200 soldiers and they had everything at their
disposal that a traditional city would in order for them to live self-sufficiently.
The camp had shops, laboratories, a hospital and a movie theater!
What was more astonishing was the fact that the entire city was powered by what was the
first portable nuclear generator in the world.
Unsteady ice conditions within the ice sheet caused the project to be canceled in 1966.
Details of the missile base project were secret for decades, but it first came to light in
January 1995 during an enquiry by the Danish government into the history of the use and
storage of nuclear weapons in Greenland.
7 - Acoustic Kitty If you guys have cats, have any of you guys
trained them to do anything?!
Our guess is no!
Cats are notoriously disobedient, but the CIA believed that with the right training,
cats could become spies.
Yeahhhhh, we’re skeptical over here too.
The story of Acoustic Kitty basically involved creating a FrankenKitty.
Although the file is still heavily redacted, it seems that American taxpayers in the 1960s
forked out over $10 million to fun Acoustic Kitty.
Despite all this funding, the project ended with catastrophic results.
Here was the CIA’s thought process.
Cats are quiet, small, able to go almost anywhere, and they don’t attract suspicion.
Why not use them to spy on the Soviets?
Simply attach a power source, microphone, antenna, and transmitter and boom!
You got a cat spy!
Maybe the CIA should have really thought this through.
The equipment required to be tiny enough not to attract attention and it needed to withstand
being rubbed or licked.
Yeah, sounds about right.
Putting this equipment into a collar wouldn’t work, given the extent of the technology back
then.
The solution?
Put that equipment into a cat’s body instead.
After many tries, they finally succeeded with one cat and they even trained her to focus
on her target without distractions.
However, when they sent her on her first mission from a parked van to go across the street
to the Soviet Embassy, she sadly got hit by a cab as she was crossing the street!
The project was over before it could even begin!
End of story?
Not quite.
In 2013 the CIA director claimed she didn’t die.
They picked her up to avoid her falling into the wrong hands.
Her equipment was removed, and the would-be spy cat supposedly went on to live a long
and happy life.
6 - LSD Fun You guys ever feel like you’re all trippy
but don’t know why?
Well let’s talk about Operation Midnight Climax.
This involved government-employed workers conducting business in "safe houses" as agents
secretly watched.
The premise of this program was to explore the use of “mind-control” hugs after alleged
use by Communist Leadership such as the Soviets, Chinese and North Koreans on US POWs.
Lead researcher Dr. Sidney Gottlieb oversaw many experiments exploring the use of LSD
on unknowing U.S. citizens.
Gottlieb first started with volunteers for his experiments.
Gottlieb was known to lock his subjects in sensory deprivation chambers while dosed on
LSD.
He also would make recordings of psychiatric patients’ therapy sessions, and then play
a loop of the patient’s most self-degrading statement over and over through headphones,
after the patient had been restrained in a straitjacket and dosed with LSD!
Just wow.
Gottlieb himself took LSD frequently, locking himself in his office and taking notes.
After it became increasingly difficult to find volunteers for these programs, the direction
of this operation went to the dark side.
They decided to test it on the public.
They employed the use of local ladies of the night in the San Francisco area to lure unwilling
subjects to serve them alcohol containing large doses of LSD!
The operation expanded and CIA operatives began dosing people in restaurants, bars and
beaches too!
It’s just insane to think that any government would do this, let alone the US government.
LSD was eventually dismissed by the researchers as too unpredictable in its effects.
Although these acts were blatantly illegal, several significant operational techniques
were developed from the experiment, including surveillance technology and the possible use
of mind-altering chemicals in field operations.
We’re still amazed over here by what the government did back then…….
5 - Disguised Cell Phone Towers The cell phone industry is still a rapidly
expanding market, which may seem odd because it seems like everyone already has a cell
phone right?
Anyways, to keep up with increased use, they need to build cell towers.
Big, ugly, eyesore cell towers.
But if that's the case, where are they?
Have you seen new ones being built recently?
No?
That's because they're all over the place; you just can't see them.
They're disguising them.
They're tall and they're everywhere.
San Bernardino County in California alone has over 500 cloaked cell antennas.
The trend started small at first, only in upscale communities with tight zoning regulations,
but now these towers are everywhere, secretly shaping our cities.
There's a history of governments concealing infrastructure that goes way further back
than cell phone towers.
In the 1950s and '60s, for example, Canadian electric utilities built hundreds of entirely
fake houses throughout Toronto to conceal substations.
In the 1980s, soon after cell phone companies started building antennas in the United States,
they looked to hide antennas as well, often in response to complaints from local residents.
Essentially, they’re disguised to look like trees.
These fake trees, known as “interceptors,” allow the police and NSA to keep tabs on people
of interest to them.
There's no good data on how many of these "trees" now exist, for obvious reasons.
Maybe the Facebook trial is just a show for the people from the government?!
4 - The Stargate Project Metaphysical and psychic phenomena have long
existed on the fringe of conventional science and academia.
ESP, Clairvoyance, Telekinesis and Astral traveling have all been relegated to the back
seat of accepted belief systems in spite of extensive mention of these practices throughout
the history of many cultures.
So what’d the CIA decide to do?
They decided to test if any of it were real!
In 1995 the CIA declassified a top secret program which had been training individuals
in the science of quote “Remote Viewing”.
Supposedly, it trained people to be able to envision ongoing activities in distant places
and future events!
The Stargate Project created a set of protocols designed to make the research of clairvoyance
and out-of-body experiences more scientific.
The term "remote viewing" emerged as shorthand to describe this more structured approach
to clairvoyance.
Project Stargate would only get to be deployed after all other intelligence attempts, methods,
or approaches had already failed.
Remote viewing was tested and deployed under scientific conditions to obtain data about
foreign espionage activities, counter terrorism efforts, secret military bases abroad and
hidden missiles.
It recognized the psychic potential in humans and attempted to harness these special ummmm
'powers' for the purposes of intelligence gathering.
However, the project was eventually terminated and declassified in 1995, because the CIA
concluded that these quote powers were never useful in any intelligence operation!
3 - MK-ULTRA While we’re on the subject of psychic phenomena,
we might as well get into mind control.
Project MK Ultra was the code name for a series of investigations into mind control substances,
techniques, and medical procedures.
The goal was to develop an actual truth serum to be used for espionage.
The experiments started in 1953 and were slowly reduced over the next 20 years before finally
being stopped in 1973.
A variety of experiments were done to understand the effects of powerful chemicals on unsuspecting
subjects.
Remember when we talked about project Midnight Climax?
That fell under MK Ultra.
These test were often done in conjunction with hospitals and universities who claimed
later they weren’t told what the goal of the experimentation was.
Subjects included student volunteers, patients at mental hospitals, prisoners who both did
and didn’t volunteer, hug addicts who were paid in more hugs, and the occasional random
person.
And oh yeah, it even happened to unlucky CIA agents!
The big question is, did any of it work?
While some of the chemicals were found to make the test subjects more suggestible or
pliable, none of them became a truth serum that the CIA wanted.
Complicating matters, the research was highly unscientific at times, and a great deal of
the data was of limited use.
However, some elements of the program have gone on to be used on some unlucky people
who had information the US government wanted…….
2 - Project Pigeon Many of mankind’s greatest innovations were
products of war.
And interestingly enough, pigeon-guided missiles had a chance to be one of them.
Yes.
We’re talking missiles guided by pigeons.
In World War II, American inventor B.F. Skinner hatched a plan for the military’s missile-aiming
problem.
He suggested pigeons.
Thank goodness technology has advanced since back then!
By building a nose-cone for the front of a missile with three bird-sized cockpits fitted
with tiny screens, he predicted that unfortunate pigeon pilots would be able to successfully
guide the weapon to its target.
The screens would display an image of the oncoming target which the pigeons would be
trained to peck at, and cables attached to their heads would steer the missile in the
right direction.
Skinner already had experience training pigeons to push levers for food, so this was of course
the next logical step.
Despite being skeptical of the idea, the National Research Defense Committee went ahead with
"Project Pigeon."
Skinner chose pigeons for both their excellent vision and ability to keep cool in chaotic
situations.
The latter was especially important, considering that the birds wouldn’t have a chance to
eject and were essentially hurtling toward their demise.
However, minimal pigeon lives were sacrificed in the line of duty because even after seeing
a successful test run, the military decided to cancel the project.
But who knows?
If officials had further funded Skinner's venture, perhaps pigeons would have been best-known
for being war heroes, and not just ruining paint jobs in New York City!
1 - Surveillance Dolphins This one may seem like it’s from a Hollywood
movie, but it’s true!
The US has trained bottlenose dolphins to carry out a range of military tasks, from
locating underwater mines to flagging the presence of enemy swimmers for harbor defense.
The US Navy has has 75 trained dolphins at its naval base in San Diego.
Obviously, this has nothing to do with Dolphins’ normal behavior, but their ability to learn
and their intelligence apparently make dolphins perfect animals to use!
That is, if they can lay off the pufferfish!
Anyways, the US and Russia are the countries that have made dolphins soldiers, in addition
to the Ukraine, but the US has the longest history with military dolphin training.
In the 1960s, the Navy first implemented the Marine Mammal Program to investigate dolphin’s
abilities.
Dolphins’ sense of echolocation make them perfect for locating objects underwater, one
of the main tasks they performed for the military.
Their responsibilities are varied, but each dolphin has a particular job.
For example, while some dolphins are trained to detect underwater mines, other dolphins
learn how to patrol specific areas.
So what do the dolphins get out of this?
Fish!
And maybe pufferfish…..we hope.
Here’s what’s next!