Episode 1: Project Acoustic Kitty — The CIA’s Most PURR-Posterous Idea

In 1966, the CIA spent five years and roughly $20 million (in today's money) turning a house cat into a surveillance device — implanting a microphone in its ear canal, a transmitter at the base of its skull, a battery in its abdomen, and threading an antenna wire down its spine and out through its tail. The mission to eavesdrop on Soviet agents outside their embassy in Washington, D.C. lasted less than 30 seconds before it ended in the street. This week on Actually..., we dig into the real, declassified story behind Project Acoustic Kitty — the surgeries, the training that never stood a chance, the conflicting insider accounts of what actually happened when those van doors opened, and how one of the strangest chapters in Cold War espionage still echoes in intelligence work today.