Taxi flattend CIA's spy-cat project
Tuesday, September 18, 2001
The CIA trained 'spy-cats' to secretly gather information on suspects, declassified secret documents have revealed.

Project 'acoustic kitty' saw the pets fitted with hi-tech listening equipment and being trained to wander into secure areas.

But the project never went any further than the testing stage after the first spy-cat was run over by a taxi.

The information is from secret documents drawn up in 1967 by the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology that have only just been released.

At the time experts concluded the cats could be trained but decided the project just wouldn't work.

It reports: "The programme would not lend itself in a practical sense to our highly specialised needs."

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