all cats are beautiful

  • quartz [she/her]
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    edit-2
    4 years ago

    The idea that "the cat got run over", or "the projects were cancelled because they were dumb haha" is part of a deliberate campaign of disinformation that you have fallen victim to. That was the agency's story, like it is for MKULTRA or any number of declassified programs. It's a load of bullshit.

    It came out a while ago that the project WAS a success, DID see operational use in embassies, and was CONTINUED into other projects. Back in the fucking eighties (sixties, actually; they continued the brain implant research in earnest after the successes of post-MKULTRA designer drugs later, in the eighties) they were funding this research into cybernetic cruelty, you think they stopped once it started getting results? No, they kept the spy kitties, they improved them, and oh, look at that, Assange adopted a random kitten in Ecuador's embassy! Very interesting, wow.

    They simply also expanded to direct control of "animals". Dogs, being induced to turn, walk, stop, run. All of this with the neurological technology of the fucking eighties sixties! By the people who also do human experimentation. All the time. And kill the witnesses. And burn the records.

    So, what do you think they've been up to since?

    I believe you can check the Black Vault's FOIA archive of Behavioral Research for sources and information.

      • quartz [she/her]
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        4 years ago

        Just the facts. That the project is or was a failure is, unfortunately, a part of the public zeitgeist now. It's always been a lie.

          • quartz [she/her]
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            4 years ago

            Haha, you could probably use one. Or a metal detector. I don't really know, and I don't know if their newer implants use enough metallic components to be picked up. Back then it was very crude.

            Here's a bit of a source, from Smithsonian Magazine, referencing the limited hangout and then conflicting reports from 'former' CIA.

            spoiler

            In what has come to be called the “acoustic kitty” project, the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology proposed using a cat as a listening device. In their book Spycraft, the CIA’s Wallace and co-author H. Keith Melton write that the agency was targeting an Asian head of state for surveillance, and that “during the target’s long strategy sessions with his aides, cats wandered in and out of the meeting area.” The theory, says Bailey, was that no one would pay attention to the animals’ comings and goings.

            “We found that we could condition the cat to listen to voices,” says Bailey. “We have no idea how we did it. But...we found that the cat would more and more listen to people’s voices, and listen less to other things.” Working with Robin Michelson, a California otolaryngologist and one of the inventors of the human cochlear implant, the team turned the cat into a transmitter—with, says Bailey, a wire running from the cat’s inner ear to a battery and instrument cluster implanted in its rib cage. The cat’s movements could be directed—left, right, straight ahead—with ultrasonic sound.

            The fate of this asset has become serio-comic lore, obscured by conflicting accounts and CIA classification. Jeffrey Richelson, in his book The Wizards of Langley, quotes ex-CIA official Victor Marchetti on the program’s demise during a field trial: “They put [the cat] out of the van, and a taxi comes and runs him over. There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead!”

            But Wallace disputes that. “It was a serious project,” he says. “The acoustic kitty was not killed by getting run over by a taxicab.” His source? “The guy who was a principal in the project.” Wallace says Bailey’s name is not familiar to him, though he adds that by the time he joined the agency, “the animal work was really historic.”

            Bailey says ABE’s records were destroyed in a 1989 fire

          • AlexisOhanian [he/him]
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            4 years ago

            Facts, you know, when I say bullshit on the internet without any source.

    • Septbear [love/loves]
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      4 years ago

      Good luck to them using an avatar of the divine feminine to keep the patriarchy and capitalism intact.