- [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,