Intriguing CIA Facts: 35 Things You Never Knew About the Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency used viagra to bribe Afghan tribal leaders. The Afghan chieftain offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes followed by a request for more pills.

27. Heinrich Müller, chief of the Gestapo, is the most senior Nazi unaccounted for. The CIA was unable to track him after World War 2 because of his incredibly generic name (which translates to Henry Miller) and the fact that, unlike Heydrich and Himmler, he had remained anonymous to the public.

28. During Project Bluebird (a CIA project) researchers dosed over 7,000 U.S. military personnel with LSD, without their knowledge or consent. Years after the experiment, more than 1000 of these soldiers suffered from several illnesses, including depression and epilepsy. Many of them committed suicide.

29. The Lun Ekranoplan was a 380-ton Russian super plane designed to fly low over the water at high speeds to destroy aircraft carriers. CIA analysts called it the Caspian Sea Monster.

30. In 2002, the CIA tortured Al-Qaeda terrorists by making them listen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Frank R Olson, a CIA biological warfare scientist was dosed with LSD by his CIA supervisor and then committed suicide by jumping off a hotel nine days later.

32. The KGB had a propaganda campaign to convince the third-world that the CIA created the AIDS virus.

33. The CIA offered Gamal Abdel Nasser, the president of Egypt, a $3 million bribe if he would join the proposed Middle East Defense Organization. Nasser took the money but then refused to join.

34. In the 60s, the CIA "kidnapped" a Soviet spacecraft (Lunik). Intercepted while en route to an exhibition, it was disassembled, photographed, and reassembled without a hitch.

35. Operation Merlin where the CIA carried out a plan to send Iran flawed blueprints to a nuclear bomb in order to delay their nuclear program. They sent the blueprints by way of a defected Russian nuclear scientist who noticed the flaws and included proposed corrections to Iran.