The death of a spy is rarely newsworthy, due to the secrecy surrounding it. But when a white beluga whale suspected of spying for Moscow was found dead in Norwegian waters in September, the animal soon became a minor celebrity.
The whale had been uncovered as a spy in 2019, and is one in a long line of animals which have been used by the intelligence services. Among them was a Soviet programme to train marine animals as spies and assassins, which collapsed in 1991.
The US ran similar experiments with animals, some dating back to the 1960s. One of the CIA’s more unusual attempts to use animals as spies was Operation Acoustic Kitty.
The idea was to implant a microphone and antenna into the cat and use it to eavesdrop on potentially interesting conversations. The test of the “prototype” went horribly wrong when the cat wandered off and was run over by a taxi, leading to the programme being quickly abandoned.
Exploding rat carcasses
But effectiveness is not always best measured in the success of an unusual spy method.
A British second world war plan to use explosive-filled rat carcasses and distribute them to boiler rooms in German factories where they would then explode once shoved into a boiler appeared to be doomed when the first consignment of about 100 dead rats was intercepted by the Germans.
But the discovery of the rats, and the sheer ingenuity behind the plan, led to such paranoia that the “trouble caused to them was a much greater success … than if the rats had actually been used”.ARTICLE HERE