From programs to build supersonic flying saucers to atomic bombs, here are the most fascinating declassified military and CIA secrets.
Government and military secrets can range from terrifying to amusing to downright absurd, but most are nothing short of intriguing. From a secret U.S. Air Force project to build a supersonic flying saucer to a now-famous World War II-era research program that produced the first atomic bombs to a plan to train domesticated cats to spy on the Soviet Union, here are 24 declassified military and CIA secrets.
Project IcewormIn the 1960s, the U.S. Army embarked on a secret mission to build a series of mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet. The objective was to house medium-range missiles close enough to strike targets within the Soviet Union. In 1973, then-CIA director Richard Helms ordered that all documents from Project MK-ULTRA be destroyed, but a formal investigation into the program was launched several years later. The project became the basis for several movies, such as"The Manchurian Candidate" and"The Men Who Stare at Goats."
Project GrudgeWhile Area 51 was not a top-secret base designed to study extraterrestrials, the U.S. Air Force did study the existence of UFOs. Project Grudge was a short-lived program launched in 1949 to study unidentified flying objects. The mission followed an earlier program, known as Project Sign, which published a report in early 1949 stating that while some UFOs seemed to be actual aircraft, there was not enough data to determine their origins.
Operation NorthwoodsThe tense relationship between the United States and Cuba during the Cold War led the Central Intelligence Agency to hatch a slew of bizarre schemes aimed at taking down the Castro regime. While the goal of most of these covert operations was to assassinate Fidel Castro himself, other plans aimed to incite an all-out war between the U.S. and Cuba, experts have said.
The first nuclear bomb was detonated at 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1945, during the so-called Trinity test at the Alamogordo Air Base, 120 miles south of Albuquerque, N.M. The explosion created a mushroom cloud that stretched 40,000 feet , and the bomb's explosive power was equivalent to more than 15,000 tons of TNT.
And these clandestine armies weren't just kept secret from the Soviet Union. High-ranking government officials in countries where the military forces operated were sometimes not aware of the armies' existence. Italian Prime Minister at the time, the late Giulio Andreotti divulged information about Italy's secret Cold War army in 1990, becoming the first leader of a NATO country to publicly acknowledge one of these forces.
Operation WashtubSecret armies also existed in the United States during the Cold War. In 2014, declassified documents from the U.S. Air Force and the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed a plan dreamed up in 1950 for a"covert intelligence and evasion and escape operation in Alaska." Acoustic KittyA report from 1967 shows that the CIA spent millions of dollars in an attempt to train domesticated cats to spy on the Soviet Union. Yes, you read that correctly. Nicknamed Acoustic Kitty, the program involved implanting electronic spying equipment into live cats and then training them to"eavesdrop" on unsuspecting Cold War rivals.
Project HorizonBefore the civilian space organization NASA put the first astronaut on the moon in 1969, at least two U.S. military organizations drew up plans for establishing strategic lunar military outposts. In 1959, the U.S. Army drew up a proposal for a"manned military" base on the moon.
Iran Flight 655In 1988, a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf shot down an Iranian civilian aircraft en route to Dubai, killing all 290 passengers on board. Navy personnel incorrectly identified the civilian plane as an Iranian fighter jet before launching the missile that took down the flight, according to declassified documents.
The so-called kidnapping occurred in the early 1960s, at the height of the U.S.-Soviet space race. To make it clear that they were winning this race, the Soviets launched a multinational exhibition of their Lunik satellite, the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Earth's moon. [Top 10 Soviet and Russian Space Missions]
FBI Surveillance Planes In 2015, the AP broke the news of an FBI surveillance program that uses small aircraft to spy on suspects on the ground. The planes carry video and cellphone surveillance technology and are registered to fictitious companies. When the AP released its report in June 2015, the planes had been observed above more than 30 cities in 11 U.S. states in a 30-day period.
Doctor ZhivagoDuring the Cold War, the CIA played a role in distributing the book"Doctor Zhivago" throughout the Soviet Union. The book by Russian writer Boris Pasternak was banned by the Soviets, according to a Washington Post article, because it displayed an open-minded view of the Bolshevik Revolution and its protagonist, a doctor-poet, was staunchly individualistic.
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