Name: How The CIA Tried Using Cats As Spies
Uploaded: 2020-05-01T19:25:35.000Z
Duration: 10 min 47 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

- [Mike] And today, we're going to talk to you

about bizarre but completely true part of history.

- [Mike] Yes, the true story of how the CIA

tried using cats to spy on foreign leaders

- [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

were allowed to come and go as they pleased

during this specific head of state's strategy meetings.

as there were a bunch of feral cats in the region.

- [Mike] Have you ever been suspicious of a cat, Thespi?

- [Thespi] Every time my cat and I connect eyes,

- [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.

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,

Since it was the 1960s, recording technology

didn't allow them to isolate certain sounds.

that made it difficult to hear conversations.

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.

how could you look at lots of cats and go,

- [Mike] I think there's a lot of, dare I say,

However, designing an implant that contained a microphone,

and that was virtually undetectable by the animal,

and would not impact its movement would be difficult.

- [Thespi] I am so terrified about where we're going.

If we're like, look, kitties can't have little robot collars

where they're communicating with intelligence.

I can see like, Austin Powers' Dr. Evil lair vibe,

We're talking about secret hidden spaces,

which means they're gonna have to do stuff to the cat

- [Mike] So this is where it gets a little dicey.

- [Thespi] Okay, warning to all the kitty lovers out there.

- [Mike] Eventually, they figured out placement

The microphone was positioned in the ear canal.

ran from the transmitter through the cat's fur.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

How The CIA Tried Using Cats As Spies

potential

imagine

suspicious

surveillance