The Covert World: 25 Fascinating Facts About Government and Military Operations

Operation Tracer was a top-secret WW2 mission in which a British team consisting of 6 men were to be sealed in a cave inside the Rock of Gibraltar, incase Nazi's captured Gibraltar. They were to monitor enemy movements after the Rock’s capture. They would have supplies with them for several years as there was no way out and anyone who died within the chamber would have to be embalmed and cemented into the floor. After decades of rumors and searching, the cave was rediscovered in 1997.

Operation Berkshire is the name of a secret program started in the 1970s by seven of the world’s largest tobacco companies which was aimed at promoting “controversy” over the link between smoking and disease.

Operation Pastorius was a German World War 2 mission of sabotage inside the United States. It failed primarily due to defections but was in danger of being compromised right from the start as one of the agents, when drunk, announced to patrons at a bar in Paris that he was a secret agent.

As part of Operation Mongoose, CIA tried to kill Castro with exploding cigars and shells, poisoned wetsuits, milkshakes, a former lover; character assassination via thallium to make his beard fall out and LSD. Castro once said, “If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal.”

During the 1991's Operation Desert Storm, Syria fought alongside the US and coalition forces against Iraq, supplying the 6th largest manpower contingent.