Unmasking CIA: 50 Little-Known Facts About the Agency – Part 2

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1 CIA Operative Posture Training

CIA Operative Posture Training

The CIA trains American operatives to correct their distinctive lean, which can reveal their identity. Americans often stand on one foot with the other foot slightly out, while Europeans typically stand upright and balanced on both feet. This difference in posture is one of the first things the CIA addresses to help operatives blend in better abroad.


2. The CIA has used songs like “Hit Me Baby One More Time” and “Bye Bye Bye” as part of their torture methods.


3. The night before Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the CIA set a record for late-night pizza orders, with 21 pizzas delivered to their headquarters in Langley, Virginia. This surge in orders was part of a broader pattern in Washington, D.C., where increased pizza deliveries often hint at significant global events unfolding.


4. Project Stargate was a CIA initiative from the 1970s to the 1990s that aimed to use psychic powers, including remote viewing, for intelligence gathering. Despite three decades of research and a $20 million investment, the project closed in 1995 without any verified success, even though it employed three full-time psychics with a $500,000 annual budget at its peak.


5. Operation Artichoke, a 1954 CIA plan, aimed to make an unwitting individual attempt to assassinate an American public official, who would then be taken into custody and &”disposed of”. The program’s unethical methods and inhumane goals raise serious questions about the lengths to which the CIA was willing to go in its pursuit of mind control and interrogation techniques.


6 1944 OSS Sabotage Manual

1944 OSS Sabotage Manual

In 1944, the OSS, a precursor to the CIA, released a field manual for simple sabotage that was intended for use by the average person. The manual included tips like misplacing tools, starting small fires, and even slowing down work by bringing up irrelevant issues during meetings.


7. In 2016, the CIA in Loudoun County, Virginia, accidentally left explosives in a school bus engine after a training exercise. Mechanics discovered the explosives after the bus had carried children for two days. The training program, which included realistic scenarios like placing explosives in schools and buses, was immediately suspended after this incident.


8. Marlon Brando tried to purchase the rights to a movie about the Iran-Contra scandal using a former CIA connection. However, the CIA derailed this by creating a front company to outbid Brando for the rights. They put Col. Oliver North in charge of this operation.


9. Operation Ajax, the 1953 CIA plan to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected government, included CIA agents bombing the house of a prominent Muslim while posing as pro-government supporters. The overthrow plan succeeded, resulting in 200-300 deaths.


10. During the Cold War, the CIA proposed dropping enormous condoms labeled “medium” over the Soviet Union as a psychological tactic to demoralize the Soviet male population and exacerbate insecurities.


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11 CIA’s Domestic Spying Restrictions

CIA's Domestic Spying Restrictions

By law, the CIA cannot collect information on the U.S. government, U.S. citizens, resident aliens, legal immigrants, or U.S. corporations, regardless of their location.


12. The CIA created the “Glomar response” (the “neither confirm nor deny” response) in response to media inquiries about a covert agency program. Notably, when the CIA launched its Twitter account, its first tweet humorously stated, “We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet.”


13. During the 1990s, the CIA developed a robotic catfish named “Charlie.” The CIA designed this unmanned underwater vehicle to covertly collect water samples using a line-of-sight radio handset. However, the details of its missions remain classified.


14. Gary Webb, the journalist who exposed the CIA’s involvement in the Contra-Crack scandal, tragically died by suicide under suspicious circumstances, with two gunshot wounds to the head.


15. In 1954, the CIA ordered Carcano rifle ammunition for anti-communist forces. Eventually, Lee Harvey Oswald, who used the leftover ammunition and rifles to assassinate President John F. Kennedy, reimported and sold them wholesale to the public.


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16 CIA Accessed Soviet Lunar Probe

CIA Accessed Soviet Lunar Probe

In 1959, the CIA covertly accessed, disassembled, photographed, and reassembled a fully operational Soviet lunar probe, which they obtained from a Soviet exhibit touring several countries. The team of CIA officers had 24 hours of unrestricted access to the probe, allowing them to gather invaluable intelligence on its design and capabilities before returning it undetected.


17. During the 1960s, CIA field agents would often prank each other by secretly slipping LSD into each other’s drinks.


18. CIA Director Allen Dulles and other top officials masterminded Project Fat Fucker, which aimed to pressure King Farouk of Egypt into making political reforms to prevent a communist takeover. When Farouk refused to change, the CIA shifted its support to the Free Officers Movement, which ultimately overthrew the king in a coup on July 23, 1952, establishing a government more amenable to American interests.


19. When crack cocaine usage rose exponentially in the U.S., the CIA investigated itself after accusations surfaced that CIA officers were involved with drug traffickers. After concluding the investigation, the agency stated in its report that it found no link between itself and crack trade.


20. The term “conspiracy theory” is itself the subject of a conspiracy theory. Some believe the CIA intentionally popularized the term after the Kennedy assassination to discredit and ridicule those who believed in conspiracies.


15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History


21 CIA Analyst Uncovers Soviet Plants

CIA Analyst Uncovers Soviet Plants

In 1958, Charles V. Reeves, a CIA analyst, deduced the locations and power consumption of Soviet nuclear enrichment plants by analyzing a censored cover of a magazine. He examined a photograph from the July issue of the Soviet magazine Ogonëk, which depicted the Sverdlovsk Central Despatching Office. By comparing the image to his experience with Boston Edison Company control stations and cross-referencing Soviet technical publications, Reeves identified key elements of the Urals’ electric power network, leading to precise estimates of power usage at major Soviet atomic facilities.


22. The CIA operates a venture capital fund to identify and finance technologies deemed to be important to “national security.”


23. In 1957, the KGB photographed journalist Joseph Alsop in a Moscow hotel room engaging in sexual activity with a Soviet agent. Despite Soviet attempts at blackmail, he refused to cooperate and reported the incident to the CIA. When the Soviets sent the photos to prominent journalists, they all refused to expose him.


24. The CIA developed a gun that could shoot darts causing a heart attack. The dart left only a tiny red dot upon skin penetration, and the poison denatured quickly. Congressional testimony from 1975 revealed this weapon.


25. In 2003, the CIA mistakenly captured a German citizen with a name similar to that of a terrorist. They tortured and raped him while he was in detention.


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23 COMMENTS

  1. RE: Fact #11 (CIA’s Domestic Spying Restrictions) – They’re not supposed to deal cocaine or give weapons to those groups in South America, but here we are.

    68
  2. RE: Fact #44 (Crypto AG’s CIA-Backed Espionage) – This guy’s life turned into a total disaster. The Iranian government arrested the top guy at Crypto AG, Hans Buehler, in Tehran back in 1992. They accused him of spilling their encryption codes to Western spies. Buehler was grilled for nine months, but since he had no clue there was anything wrong with their machines, they finally let him go in January 1993 after Crypto AG paid a $1 million bail to Iran. Not long after Buehler was released, Crypto AG fired him and tried to get the $1 million bail money back from him personally. Swiss media and the German magazine Der Spiegel jumped on his story in 1994 and talked to former employees. They all concluded that Crypto’s machines had been secretly tampered with.

    65
  3. RE: Fact #33 (Australian PM’s CIA Connections) – I’d say all the leaders of those Five Eyes countries are basically puppets for the CIA, whether they know it or not.

    74
  4. RE: Fact #8 (Brando Outbid by CIA Front) – So, that was a good use of our money, huh? Why is he still walking around free?

    68
      • They wanted to take control of Nicaragua’s oil and use the money to help poor people.

        Could the Republicans just let that happen, right next door to the US?

        Imagine if Americans had learned way back then that socialism might actually be a good thing.

        (sarcastic)

        21
  5. RE: Fact #7 (CIA’s School Bus Explosives Error) – So the KGB, the FBI, and the CIA are all trying to be the best at catching criminals, right? The UN Secretary General decides to give them a test. He releases a rabbit into a forest and tells them to find it.

    The CIA goes in. They use their network of spies to get information and try to control the forest. After months of investigation, they decide that rabbits don’t exist!

    The FBI goes in. They can’t find anything, so they just burn down the forest and kill everything in it. They don’t even apologize. They say the rabbit deserved it.

    The KGB goes in and comes back two hours later with a beaten-up bear. The bear kneels down in front of the UN Secretary General and says, “I’m a rabbit. I’ve always been a rabbit.”

    79
  6. RE: Fact #10 (CIA’s Condom Propaganda Plan) – So, the story goes, the Soviets asked the US to make 10,000 condoms that were, like, a foot long and three inches wide. They were going to give them to their soldiers. The US did it, but they labeled them “SMALL” just for a laugh.

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    • This whole thing reminds me of that time the Air Force tried to make a bomb that would make enemy soldiers gay. The idea was to release hormones that would make them attracted to their fellow soldiers.

      22
      • Yeah, it was invented, but it only works in tiny rooms with no air flow.

        It’s a joke, guys. From 30 Rock. If you haven’t seen it, you should check it out.

        11
    • I think I saw an anime where Russia made condoms for the US, and they were super huge. Russia was like, “We’ve never made them that big before.” Then when they gave them to the US, they were labeled Small.

      22
  7. RE: Fact #28 (Aswang Myth Used by CIA) – Aswangs are more than just vampire-like creatures, they’re a whole bunch of different monsters and beings from Philippine folklore. You’ve got the kapre, giant tobacco-smoking guys who live in trees and fall head over heels for humans. Then there’s the tiktik, a creature that eats unborn babies with its long, creepy mouth. And don’t forget the tiyanak, a monster baby that cries to lure people in. The manananggal is a woman who can split in half and fly, with some stories saying they’re the same as tiktiks. Legend says they were brides who were stood up, so they sometimes attack men before their weddings. Some stories also say they were women who lost their babies, so they take other women’s babies instead. Then there’s the tikbalang, a half-horse, half-man creature that gets married when it rains on a sunny day. The mangkukulam is basically a witch, and if you want to curse someone, you can find them for a fee. There are also the duwendes, which are like dwarves. My family says they’re cool as long as you don’t mess with their homes. If you’re walking through the woods or on a dirt road and see a mound, say “tabi-tabi po” so they know you’re there. If you don’t, and you step on it, they’ll make you sick or make some part of your body swell up. It’s a wild world of weird, creepy creatures.

    37
  8. RE: Fact #29 (CIA Manual Sent by Balloon) – Why does the CIA need to overthrow so many governments before people realize socialism isn’t the answer?

    63
  9. RE: Fact #17 (CIA Agents’ LSD Pranks) – That MK Ultra article just scratches the surface, and it’s pretty messed up stuff. I mean, it’s one thing to think it’s funny to give your coworkers LSD, but this is a whole other level.

    Apparently, they gave LSD to CIA employees, military folks, doctors, even regular people! And they didn’t even tell them what they were doing. Can you believe that? Talk about a violation!

    Then there’s this other technique they tried, where they’d put a barbiturate in one arm and an amphetamine in the other. They’d knock the person out with the barbiturate, then give them the amphetamine. And they’d just start babbling, and the CIA would try to get information out of them. It’s insane.

    They even took MK Ultra to Canada, and the Canadian government was in on it!

    Then there’s this guy, Cameron, who was doing some really messed up experiments with shock therapy and paralytic drugs. He’d put people in comas for weeks on end, just playing them the same noises or phrases over and over. And he was doing this to people with pretty minor problems, like anxiety or postpartum depression. A lot of them ended up permanently damaged, losing their memories, their ability to talk, even their parents!

    The worst part is that this Cameron guy ended up becoming a big deal in the medical community. He was president of all these big organizations.

    Eventually, the truth came out, and there were lawsuits. In Canada, it took forever to get the information out, but finally, in 1984, it was revealed that the CIA had funded Cameron’s work and the Canadian government knew about it all along. And they even gave him more money to keep doing his experiments! The victims finally got a settlement, but Cameron’s records were all destroyed, so there’s no way to know exactly what happened to those people.

    The whole MK Ultra program is just a sickening example of how far people will go to experiment on others, no matter the cost. It’s crazy to think they thought they could find the perfect mind control drug by making people suffer like that.

    There’s this great book about MK Ultra called “The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”: The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences.” You should check it out if you’re really interested in learning more.

    There’s also a bunch of documentaries about MK Ultra. One is called “The Sleep Room” and it’s about the victims in Canada. And there’s another one called “Hofmann’s Potion” that talks about LSD and how it was used in Canadian psychiatric institutions.

    45
  10. RE: Fact #19 (CIA’s Self-Investigation on Crack Trade) – The investigation got shut down quick when people started reporting the high-ups’ addresses.

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  11. RE: Fact #40 (CIA’s Lost Himalayan Spy Devices) – Back in 1965, the CIA and the IB got together to keep an eye on China. Things were pretty crazy over there – they had nukes, split with the Soviets, fought a war with India, and were in the middle of some big changes. So, they decided to plant some listening devices on Nanda Devi, this super high mountain, to pick up radio signals from Chinese missiles. It was a huge operation, involving some of the best Indian and American climbers, plus local guides.

    They called it Operation Hat. At the start, only a handful of climbers had ever reached the top of Nanda Devi, and a few of them didn’t make it back.

    One of the devices they planted, called Model 19C, was a real piece of work. It had seven plutonium rods, packed with a pretty potent mix of plutonium-238 and -239. They expected it to keep working for a couple of years, but the mission was called off when the climbers couldn’t go any higher. And no one has found it since.

    By the way, the plutonium in that device isn’t the kind that blows up. It’s not like something out of a movie. It can’t explode, and it’s hard to spread around. It’s only dangerous if it gets into the air as fine dust.

    They also planted a second device on a nearby mountain, Nanda Kot, but that one was retrieved later. It didn’t turn up much useful information.

    57
  12. RE: Fact #31 (‘The Wall’ Policy and 9/11 Failures) – “The Looming Tower” on Hulu is a really good drama series, it’s got eight parts and it does a great job of showing how things led up to 9/11. Plus, they handle the whole “no sharing” thing well.

    65
    • Lawrence Wright wrote a book with the same name, but it’s based on real events. It’s a really good read, you should check it out.

      24
  13. RE: Fact #17 (CIA Agents’ LSD Pranks) – It’s not really possible to slip someone LSD without them knowing. People are pretty aware of what they’re doing.

    44
  14. RE: Fact #37 (Profiting from CIA Coup Knowledge) – Did you know Americans overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy?

    It’s crazy, but United Fruit Company’s main rival was Guatemala, and they were exporting a ton of fruit. To get rid of them, United lied to the US government, saying Guatemala was Pro-Soviet. The US ended up staging a coup, which led to the Guatemalan civil war that lasted for 36 years.

    47
  15. RE: Fact #21 (CIA Analyst Uncovers Soviet Plants) – The CIA figured out there were a lot of Soviets in Cuba before the Missile Crisis because they saw tons of soccer fields popping up on spy photos. Cubans don’t even play soccer, they play baseball.

    38
  16. RE: Fact #41 (CIA’s Failed Bribe of Singapore PM) – The CIA? That’s mostly for doing stuff on the sly, like spying and all that. The I doesn’t really stand for intelligence, more like “incognito.”

    51
  17. RE: Fact #33 (Australian PM’s CIA Connections) – The governor general who kicked out the last Labor prime minister was also working for the CIA. Australian politics in the late 20th century was all about the US getting more and more powerful.

    48
    • I was gonna say there should be a show about spies and all their crazy antics… then I realized there already is, it’s called Archer, and I’m an idiot.

      24
  18. RE: Fact #22 (CIA’s National Security Venture Fund) – It’s kinda weird how DARPA’s lifelog program got axed the same day Facebook popped up. You know the government loves to stick its nose in everything. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were behind pushing social media as a way to keep tabs on us without us even realizing.

    60
  19. RE: Fact #36 (CIA Concealed Mayak Nuclear Disaster) – So, like, wasn’t that a nuclear weapon fuel reactor, not a power plant? And they keep saying it was built in a rush, without any regard for safety or the environment, and with physicists who didn’t know what they were doing.

    64
  20. RE: Fact #49 (CIA Officer Tortured by Hezbollah) – He was a total mess after seven months, I can’t even imagine how bad things were after fifteen months.

    65
  21. RE: Fact #12 (Creation of the Glomar Response) – The Glomar Explorer story is seriously cool. I just worked on a docudrama about it and learned so much. The CIA actually brought up a Russian sub from the bottom of the ocean. Project Azorian, that’s the name.

    47
    • “Glomar”? You mean the Glomar Explorer, right? That’s like saying “The Exxon” instead of “The Exxon Valdez.”

      The book Blind Man’s Bluff is amazing – it tells this story, plus tons of other secret submarine missions.

      22
    • I saw this weird thing parked near the mothball fleet for ages, always wondering what it was. Definitely wasn’t a cargo ship. Then one day it was gone. Never saw it again.

      18
  22. RE: Fact #1 (CIA Operative Posture Training) – Americans tend to lean on stuff when they’re just standing around, and they often stand on one foot with the other one kind of hanging out.

    31
  23. RE: Fact #11 (CIA’s Domestic Spying Restrictions) – American Citizen: “Hey, stop stealing! Stop it! Stop it!”

    CIA Agent: “Aw, come on!”

    64
  24. RE: Fact #27 (CIA’s Bin Laden Doll Influence) – I had this Ghostbusters toy, it was the same except instead of Bin Laden it was a librarian. I didn’t suddenly hate libraries, though.

    45
  25. RE: Fact #48 (CIA’s Covert Soviet Helicopter Extraction) – Man, I’m bummed that the first thing I thought when I read that was “who’s Chad?”

    49
  26. RE: Fact #2 (CIA’s Music-Based Torture) – It’s crazy how the US has been running a torture program for ages and nobody seems to care.

    55
    • Most people thought torture was messed up. But then the Bush administration started doing it, and a bunch of people started making excuses because it was their team. They started calling it stuff like “enhanced interrogation” instead of torture.

      I always wondered what it’s like to have parents who backed the torture programs back then. Do you still see them the same way?

      12
    • It’s like they get a ton of money every year, and if they don’t spend it all, they lose it. So they just come up with crazy ideas to waste it.

      I wish I had a bigger budget!

      20
  27. RE: Fact #48 (CIA’s Covert Soviet Helicopter Extraction) – Libya’s military was, well, let’s just say they weren’t very good. They started a war with Chad, just to grab some land. Chad’s a big country, but not a lot of people live there and their military was small. A few countries helped them out with some money, and Chad put it to good use – they bought some Toyota pickups and anti-tank missiles. They mounted those missiles on the back of the trucks, and then, let’s just say, they really gave Libya a beatdown. They destroyed Libya’s tanks, took over their bases and airfields, and drove them right out of the country. What’s even crazier is that they captured over a billion dollars worth of Libyan military equipment. All this from a country that only spent a few tens of millions of dollars on its military every year. Qaddafi had to pull his troops back into Libya and never tried anything like that again. Chad – you guys rock!

    59
    • Project Artichoke was the CIA’s top-secret plan for using crazy stuff like LSD, hypnosis, and complete isolation to mess with people. They wanted to use these things for interrogation. At first, they used things like cocaine, weed, heroin, peyote, and mescaline, but they really liked LSD the best. The people who came out of these experiments couldn’t remember much about what happened, they were kind of like zombies. In 1952, they even gave LSD to CIA agents without them knowing to see what it did. One record says they had one agent on LSD for a whopping 77 days straight!

      28
      • It’s just awful, the things they did back then. But hey, maybe in 50 years we’ll see some crazy stuff about their programs today too.

        23
    • Yeah, it was about the same time. Operation Artichoke, that was kind of the starting point for Project MK-Ultra, which was all about mind control and started in the ’50s. Both of them show how the CIA was really into messing with people’s minds during the Cold War.

      32
  28. RE: Fact #49 (CIA Officer Tortured by Hezbollah) – The CIA messed up, they should have pulled all their agents right after he was captured.

    46
    • Most of the agents were just people from the area who knew what was going on. It’s tough, but usually, countries aren’t very good at helping the people who helped them out, like all the Iraqis and Afghans who worked with the US and then got stuck when we left.

      21
  29. RE: Fact #30 (CIA Agents’ Secret Shoe Codes) – That would freak me out! Imagine waking up late, scrambling to get dressed, and then getting shipped off to Guantanamo Bay because you tied your shoes wrong.

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  30. RE: Fact #18 (CIA Coup Against Egypt’s King) – It could be argued that it backfired for the US, since Nasser ended up making Egypt a Soviet ally during the Cold War.

    48
  31. RE: Fact #36 (CIA Concealed Mayak Nuclear Disaster) – It’s a shame, but a lot of people are really scared of nuclear power, even though it’s actually super safe and good for the environment. It’s like that everywhere.

    48
  32. RE: Fact #5 (Operation Artichoke Assassination Plan) – And that’s just from the stuff they actually released, not what they destroyed!

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  33. RE: Fact #3 (Pizza Surge Before Kuwait Invasion) – Even the lowest-ranking soldiers know something’s up if the base has pizza. It means something big is about to go down.

    34
    • We’d get surprise steak and lobster in the Navy when we were out at sea. It was always a good sign, but it meant we were stuck out there longer.

      25
      • Yeah, same in the Army. If we got steak in the field, we knew it was gonna be bad. We’d say if you had steak for breakfast, it was gonna be a bad day. ‘Cause we’d always have steak for dinner the night before something bad happened, and then we’d start the next day off with leftover steaks for breakfast. If we were having a bad day, someone would sometimes jokingly say “Damn, did someone eat steak for breakfast?”

        15
  34. RE: Fact #41 (CIA’s Failed Bribe of Singapore PM) – America points fingers at other countries for being corrupt, but then turns around and does the same thing.

    38
  35. RE: Fact #25 (CIA Tortures Wrongful Detention Victim) – It’s messed up that a country like the US can screw up so badly and completely disregard someone’s basic rights.

    38
  36. RE: Fact #9 (1953 Iranian Coup Plot) – You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, wait till you hear about what the CIA did in South America.

    40
    • The School of the Americas is a total mess, even though it’s got a new name now. Our governments have done some seriously bad things in South America. Let’s be real, we’re not the good guys here. It’s hard to find any good guys, to be honest.

      20
      • You’re right, there’s no such thing as “good guys” when it comes to countries. Everyone’s just looking out for themselves. Russia messed things up in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, the US did the same in Asia, South America, and the Middle East, and the UK has screwed over just about everyone.

        13
  37. RE: Fact #45 (CIA Bombs Chinese Embassy by Mistake) – I always bring this up when we’re talking about possible conspiracies. I have no idea why we bombed that embassy, but it definitely wasn’t because of some old maps. Whatever it was, China didn’t seem too bothered. They probably knew we caught them doing something sneaky.

    50
    • It seems like a real mess-up. Apparently, a CIA guy used the wrong way to figure out the location from an address, and ended up with the Chinese embassy. They checked it against old maps, so nobody caught the mistake. The US paid a bunch of money, and the CIA reportedly fired one guy and gave six bosses a talking to. I think it was a total blunder, and China didn’t want to make a big deal out of it because they didn’t want to admit the US is too good to make mistakes.

      11
  38. RE: Fact #12 (Creation of the Glomar Response) – I’m not saying I’m responding to this, but I’m not saying I’m not.

    50
  39. RE: Fact #50 (Teen Hacks CIA Director’s Email) – My Verizon account is such a pain to log into, I have to do 3FA and reset my password every time!

    38
  40. RE: Fact #19 (CIA’s Self-Investigation on Crack Trade) – People were saying the CIA was selling coke on the Lower East Side in the 80s. They said it was always the best stuff and really cheap. And the cops never bothered them – no one got stopped or searched nearby.

    52
  41. RE: Fact #13 (CIA’s Robotic Catfish “Charlie”) – During Covid, health departments were checking sewage plants to see how much virus was floating around in different places. They also test for regular drugs like meth, you know, the usual stuff. You could tell a lot about a community or even a whole embassy just by looking at what’s in the waste water.

    46
  42. RE: Fact #40 (CIA’s Lost Himalayan Spy Devices) – There’s this book, I think it was called “The Eye at the Top of the World.” It talks about how the Sherpas carrying these nuclear-powered radios were totally blown away by them. They even called one of them Shiva because it was so hot! They even slept with it in their tents. Apparently, one of the radios got stuck in a crevasse because the weather was so bad, and then when they went back a year later, it was gone! The rocks around it were gone too!

    The book says maybe the glacier crushed the radio, and now the Ganges is gonna be full of plutonium from it. Yikes!

    55
  43. RE: Fact #42 (Cuban Double Agents in the CIA) – The CIA really struggles with getting people to spy for them. I think it’s because Americans are super confident that everyone wants to be like them, so they just assume people are the same. That makes it hard to figure out what others are really like and what they want.

    16
  44. RE: Fact #3 (Pizza Surge Before Kuwait Invasion) – Remember that training video we watched in the Navy back in the 90s about OPSEC? They called it PIZZINT! Hilarious, right? They were dead serious though, it was all official.

    33
    • A former naval intelligence officer told me they used that video way back when, either before the invasion of Afghanistan or the Iraq War in 2003.

      12
  45. RE: Fact #43 (SR-71 Testing Exposed by Satellite) – How can you tell the exact shape? A shadow’s just a blurry thing when it’s at an angle, right? And what about the heat it gives off? The sun moves, so the shadow changes. It’s hard to get a good reading from something like that. It all sounds a little made up, like that old story that got passed around. I hope I’m wrong though.

    I didn’t mean to say that the speed check story is fake. It’s just that people like to add stuff to make it sound better. Like imagine a square heat signature. Everyone thinks it’s a square box, but it’s actually just a bunch of bumps on a round thing making a square shadow. How do you know what the shape of the real thing is from that? You could see anything.

    40
    • That sounds totally made up.

      They might have gotten the size about right.

      I mean, if they actually flew a plane over, the Soviets might have been able to spot it with binoculars, right? Way easier than trying to find a heat signature on a satellite picture of the desert.

      28
  46. RE: Fact #36 (CIA Concealed Mayak Nuclear Disaster) – Those six reactors were right on Lake Kyzyltash, using a system that just dumped the hot, radioactive water straight back into the lake.

    42
    • My buddy used to swim in the stream that flowed into the Moscow River from the Kurchatov Nuclear Institute when he was a teenager back in the early 80s. It was warm enough to swim in, even in the dead of winter.

      21
  47. RE: Fact #39 (James Bond Gadgets in the CIA) – CIA boss: “So, where’s the invisible car I asked for? I’m not seeing it.”

    Scientist: “Exactly.”

    CIA boss: ⊙0⊙

    38
  48. RE: Fact #38 (Al-Qaeda’s CIA-Linked Origins) – Al Qaeda isn’t about what some people think. It was actually named by its founders to mean a new group of leaders, like bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri.

    Some people who joined Al Qaeda later on were originally mujahideen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. The CIA supported them, but the CIA didn’t start Al Qaeda. Later on, some of those same Afghan mujahideen formed the Taliban. But the CIA didn’t start that group either. Lots of those mujahideen didn’t join the Taliban, and some formed the Northern Alliance which fought against the Taliban.

    It was good to help Afghans fight the Soviets, but that doesn’t mean the US was responsible for starting Islamic extremist groups.

    39
    • No way, Qaeda means “base,” not “vanguard.” The only Arabic word for vanguard is “طليعة.”

      Qaeda is used for all kinds of bases: a database, a military base, whatever. You just add “al” in front to make it “the base.” Like, in my city, the nearest base is an airbase, so we call it “alqaeda” or “the base.”

      It’s also used for the base layer of things, basic rules, and even the cornerstone of something.

      12
  49. RE: Fact #2 (CIA’s Music-Based Torture) – It doesn’t really matter what the song is. Blasting anything that loud at someone who’s been up for over 40 hours is straight up torture.

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  50. RE: Fact #6 (1944 OSS Sabotage Manual) – So, during World War II, Citroën had to build trucks for the Germans. But the company’s boss, Pierre-Jules Boulanger, wasn’t exactly thrilled about it. He got sneaky and changed the markings on the oil dipsticks. It made it look like the trucks were full of oil, but they were actually almost empty. The trucks would run fine for a while, but then their engines would seize up because they were out of oil. Clever guy, that Boulanger.

    34
  51. RE: Fact #23 (Journalist Resists KGB Blackmail) – Heinlein said it best, “A person who won’t be blackmailed, can’t be blackmailed.” This guy was a total legend.

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  52. RE: Fact #34 (Project Azorian Submarine Recovery Failure) – They’ve got a ton of information stashed away in that suitcase.

    34
  53. RE: Fact #31 (‘The Wall’ Policy and 9/11 Failures) – This article’s a bit more down to earth. It’s always human error, you know?

    19
      • If you’re looking for quick info, maybe check out a header. It might be interesting, but I don’t have time for a long read right now.

        14
      • The New Yorker is awesome, but their articles are known for being really long and detailed. You won’t get a quick answer from them, you’ll get a whole dissertation on the topic. They’re considered some of the best nonfiction writing out there, with amazing writers. So you could end up reading 15 pages on the history of how bananas are grown for sale and you’d love it.

        14
  54. RE: Fact #13 (CIA’s Robotic Catfish “Charlie”) – Let’s say you’re curious about a certain group and want the inside scoop. You could send Charlie into a river. He’d swim upstream, grab a water sample, bring it back, and our scientists could check it for things like nuclear waste or chemical weapons. With Charlie’s help, you’d have a clearer picture of what’s happening in that area.

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    • Nuclear waste and toxic chemicals show up in the river near the bad guys, but not a little further down where the CIA is monitoring the fish? That’s a bit fishy, don’t you think? I wonder which company or special interest group got a billion dollars to come up with that one?

      10
      • So, my guess is:

        They’ve used it, but they’re keeping it quiet.
        Or maybe they haven’t used it because they found a better way to get the info they need.
        Or maybe the info it could get just wasn’t that important.
        But they’ve got teams of people ready to go at any time. They can set it up anywhere in the world in six hours. Probably like a dozen teams of six guys, all trained and ready, with all the gear they need. They’ve been doing this for 30 years, just waiting for the call.

        8
      • Some CIA big shot probably has it sitting on their mantle. They probably even rigged it to sing like Big Mouth Billy Bass whenever you ask for a taste.

        6
  55. RE: Fact #20 (Origins of ‘Conspiracy Theory’ Term) – It’s a bit of a stretch, I gotta say. It’s been used in a bad way since the 1800s, and the main evidence is the New York Times using the word five times in articles, and a CIA document mentioning the plural form.

    But really, what am I even doing arguing this? I’d have better luck convincing people that handling venomous snakes is a terrible idea. Either you don’t get bitten and your faith in God is proven, or you get bitten and die, and that’s apparently also God’s will. It’s just a never-ending loop of believing your own thing.

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  56. RE: Fact #45 (CIA Bombs Chinese Embassy by Mistake) – The last time I read about this, I remember two different reasons why the embassy was bombed on purpose. This was the only time the CIA bombed something during the whole conflict, which is pretty wild.

    The first reason was that the embassy was helping Arkan, the Serbian leader, by providing signals. His headquarters was just a few hundred yards away.

    The second reason was that the Chinese had gotten their hands on some important parts from an F-117A stealth bomber that got shot down outside of Belgrade a few weeks before the bombing. They were storing these parts at the embassy before they could ship them back to China for research.

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  57. RE: Fact #24 (CIA’s Heart Attack Dart Gun) – It’s crazy to think what would’ve happened if they had that back then, right?

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  58. RE: Fact #6 (1944 OSS Sabotage Manual) – You can totally mess up an enemy propaganda movie by just tossing a bunch of moths into the theater! Just put ’em in a paper bag, take it in, and leave it open near the projector. The moths will fly out and mess up the projection with all their fluttering.

    It’s practically a cartoon!

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