‘Psst, what’s a spy fact that sounds fake but is 100% true?’ – 17 eye-opening tales from the world of espionage

‘The CIA spent years and reportedly millions turning a cat into a surveillance device. They put a microphone in its ear and an antenna in its tail. It was called Acoustic Kitty, and on its first mission it got hit by a taxi.’
-Interesting_Ear3982

‘In WWII, British intelligence dressed a dead guy up as a military officer, gave him a fake girlfriend, love letters, and a briefcase full of bogus invasion plans, then dumped him off the coast of Spain hoping the Nazis would find him.

‘They did, believed every word, and moved troops away from the Allies’ actual target. The operation was called Mincemeat. They literally catfished Hitler with a corpse.’
-DonWon1543

‘A KGB agent defected to the UK because of his erectile dysfunction. He thought Western medicine could help him.

‘He later made a life as an acupuncturist under a new name in the UK. One of his clients was Alec Guiness’
-Darmok47

‘The CIA once stole a sunken Russian submarine off the bottom of the ocean using an enormous claw. Project Azorian.’
-firestorm734

‘The CIA gave 300,000 micrograms of LSD to an elephant to see what would happen.’
-Significant_Jump9887

‘Tabasco Rats!

‘During the Cold War the Moscow Station needed something they could hide information in that wasn’t likely to be disturbed or stolen. They realized that their dead drops weren’t effective in part because people will investigate anything that seems out of place in their environment.

‘Through trial and error they discovered that the human sense of disgust will override curiosity. So, CIA operatives gutted rats and put things inside of them. Who would touch a dead rat, right? Predators would. So then, they glued their info to the inside of the rats, covered their rats with hot sauce, and threw them out car windows or dropped them on walks. The CIA gave the world Tabasco Rats.’
-NotLucasDavenport

‘Spy agencies around the world routinely try to collect the poop of presidents, prime ministers, and other top leadership. Poop can be analyzed to discover any number of health issues, meal contents, and even stress levels.

‘As a result, most leaders have different security protocols to collect and contain the poop to prevent foreign intelligence services from getting it.’
-BobbyBobRoberts

‘They had to teach American spies not to lean on things while standing around. Apparently other cultures don’t do that and it could be an easy tell.’
-IronC_Love

‘During the Cold War, spies could shrink an entire page of secret information down to the size of a full stop in a letter. They called them microdots. That’s honestly insane.’
-Neither-Practice3655