Mind control psychic ops, Cold War condom-drop, Acoustic kity, Fidel Castro assasination – 19 shockingly bizarre, real and declassified CIA operations

A morale-damaging psychological ops idea: drop extra-large condoms labelled “small” into the USSR to suggest physical inferiority.

Poisoned cigars, fungus-infested scuba suits, explosive sea shells, a fake lover to poison, and a ballpoint pen with a tiny poisonous needle were some of the attempts to kill the Cuban communist dictator. These schemes sound like slapstick spy comedy

The Hard Drive retrieved from Bin Laden’s safe house had a few licensed movies, anime, and games, all of which were uploaded on the CIA website for anyone who wants to see.

A toy figure of Osama Bin Laden, whose face, when heated, peeled away to reveal a demonic visage. The CIA made three prototypes of these toy; the intention was to scare children to dissuade support

A secret agent, a cat, was trained with a microphone and transmitter within it and then released towards the USSR embassy to spy on them. Tragically, the cat was hit by a car while crossing the road.

CIA brought former Nazi scientists like Wernher von Braun to beat Soviet Russia in the space race.

CIA tried to test the capability of the US against bioweapons by spraying live bacteria over Sanfrancisco without public consent

The US granted immunity to Japanese war criminals in exchange for Japanese human experimentation data.

Allen W. Dulles oversaw a CIA programme which involved mind control experiments using LSD, hypnosis, and sensory deprivation, without any consent, pioneering the psychological horror.

In the 1960s, the CIA started to notice that most of the artists were socialist, communists, and they started funding art galleries and purchasing art at exorbitant prices, thus to prevent them from poverty and romanticising communism/socialism.

The CIA started an operation to recover a Soviet submarine that sank in the North Pacific. Soviets continued to patrol that area, making it difficult. Henry Kissinger asked the CIA to collaborate with Howard Hughes via the Hughes Glomar Explorer, a deep-sea mining vessel. CIA and DoD believed that a salvage operation had the potential to retrieve nuclear submarine-launched ballistic missiles, nuclear torpedoes, code books, and cryptographic gear. But media leaks informed the Soviets of the operation only half was recovered.

This is not declassified, but leaked- including every government the United States has ever tried to replace via terror funding or coup, shaping our modern view of the CIA.

A chilling proposal to stage terrorist acts in the U.S. and blame Cuba, approved by military officials but not the President.

Covert prisons existed across the globe—used for the interrogation of terror suspects in extreme, undisclosed conditions.

In the 1950s CIA conducted research to find out the superstitions of the Philippines, and it was found to be the fear of the Vampire. A murder was staged to look like a vampire attack to terrify villagers and influence elections.

A WWII-era OSS guide describing how to bureaucratically sabotage enemy organisations, from delaying tasks to confusing managers.

Declassified doc from 1983 detailing the CIA's usage of 'harmonic resonance' to gain access to the astral plane and attempts to talk to God—blurring the lines between mysticism and intelligence.

A ‘psychic’ was brought in, and an envelope was given to him with coordinates and a timeframe on it. They asked him to describe what he saw. He described a dying planet where people had left to discover a new place they could populate. Straight from the DC Comics Superman plot.

In the Vietnam War, CIA helicopters broadcast ghostly voices and eerie sounds, including Buddhist chants, to terrify the Viet Cong.