CIA 'Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception' through 'Acoustic Kitty': ten covert U.S. programs

This transcript lists ten declassified or revealed U.S. projects that mix espionage, science and ethically fraught experiments. For each program I summarize the core claim, the principal actors, and key consequences.

1. CIA Magic Manual — John Mulholland was paid to write 'Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception', teaching sleight of hand for espionage (poisoning, concealing microfilm). The CIA ordered copies destroyed; one copy was found and declassified in 2007.

2. Project Starfish Prime (1962) — a U.S. nuclear test in space that caused a Hawaiian power relay failure, created an artificial radiation belt that damaged at least six satellites, and was judged a partial success.

3. Voice of God Weapon — research into directed ultrasonic beams that make a single person's skull act as a speaker; reportedly considered for the Gulf War; the same basic idea survives commercially as the audio spotlight.

4. Operation Ivy Bells — USS Halibut divers attached a six-ton tap to a Soviet undersea cable and recorded a decade of communications; Ronald Pelton sold the secret for $35,000 and was later imprisoned.

5. Project Azorian — using the Hughes Glomar Explorer to lift part of a 1968 Soviet submarine from three miles deep; the effort cost about $800 million in 1974 (~$4 billion today) and recovered the forward section and six bodies; many details remained secret until 2010.

6. Toxic Town (1950s St. Louis) — the U.S. Army sprayed zinc cadmium sulfide over predominantly Black, low-income neighborhoods (Pruitt-Igo), allegedly causing elevated cancer rates; some batches contained radioactive particles; lawsuits followed but no prosecutions.

7. OSAP at Skinwalker Ranch — the Defense Intelligence Agency funded the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program with roughly $22 million (2007–2012), contracting through Robert Bigelow to monitor Skinwalker Ranch; most findings remain classified and the program's existence was widely reported in 2017.

8. A119 (1958) — a shelved plan to detonate a nuclear device on the Moon after Sputnik; Carl Sagan was consulted; scientists abandoned it because a vacuum blast yields no mushroom cloud, risks lunar radioactivity, and would alarm the public; declassified in the 1990s.

9. Acoustic Kitty — a CIA project that spent about $20 million to surgically implant a microphone and transmitter into a cat for espionage. The first field test in Washington, D.C. ended when the cat was hit by a taxi and the program was closed as impractical.

The thread through these items is repeated tradeoffs: technical ingenuity, secrecy, questionable ethics, and long-delayed public disclosure. Many programs produced partial intelligence gains but left moral, legal, or environmental harms that persisted after declassification.