10 CIA Operations You've Never Heard Of
#10: The Tacana Project
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The Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union was in no shortage of wacky espionage ideas, but The Tacana Project was on another level of strange. The idea behind this declassified project was to use pigeons, having already excelled in carrying wartime messages on the battlefield, for a new frontier: espionage. A BBC article from 2019 detailed some of the specifics behind Operation Tacana, specifically how the U.S. was attaching tiny cameras to the birds and conducting tests as to their efficiency. These tests actually came back with half-decent results, and a full-fledged pigeon mission was written on the books in September of 1976. The rest of the story, unfortunately, remains classified.
#9: Operation Gladio
There is a lot to unpack with the multi-national and organizational collaboration known as Operation Gladio. In short, efforts were made to offset a potential Soviet Invasion of Europe under the Warsaw Pact via the development of “stay behind” resistance groups in countries like Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland. The latter country’s neutral status makes Operation Gladio of particular interest. There’s also the operation’s debated influence within Italy’s “Years of Lead,” a period of far-right and left terrorist attacks throughout the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. Operation Gladio was a joint venture between the CIA, NATO, and others, although explicit details weren’t revealed about its execution until declassification hearings in 1990 and 2006.
#8: Operation CHAOS
Does the CIA conduct their intelligence-gathering efforts domestically? The short answer is “yes,” and it doesn’t begin and end with Operation CHAOS. This specific project, however, focused its efforts between the years of 1967 and 1974, in part as a reaction to the growing anti-war movement at home. The wheels of Operation CHAOS were initially put into motion by President Lyndon B. Johnson after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but it was under President Nixon where CHAOS truly reigned. CIA spying efforts focused, but weren’t limited to, targets such as the Black Panthers and the B'nai B'rith, developing case files on over seven thousand American citizens.
#7: The CIA Makes an Adult Film
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Indonesia’s President Sukarno was its first elected official after gaining independence from Dutch colonialism in 1945. Unfortunately, Sukarno’s sympathy for Communist interests in the region didn’t sit well with organizations like the CIA, MI6, or the KGB, and numerous efforts were put into place to unseat Sukarno from power. Some of these leaned into the President’s immense sexual appetite, such as when the KGB filmed agents (posing as flight attendants) engaging in explicit acts with Sukarno. Additionally, the CIA actually produced an adult film domestically, involving a full-face replica of Sukarno. Neither plan went well, as Sukarno never saw the CIA’s sleazy movie, and he supposedly requested extra copies of the sex tape from the KGB.
#6: The Lunik Kidnapping
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It sounds like something out of a 1960s spy film. It was The Lunik Kidnapping, a bold operation by the CIA to steal and study a Soviet spacecraft, during the Cold War. The Lunik was being lauded by the Soviet Union as an important step forward in studying the moon, and it was part of a traveling exhibition at the time. This wasn’t a fully-operational version of the Lunik, but its outer shell was still seen as a valuable informational asset to the CIA. Agents were able to intercept, open up and study the Lunik at a rail yard, and discovered that some of the internal mechanisms were left behind. These were confiscated and brought back to the U.S. for study.
#5: The Stargate Project
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If you’ve seen the 2009 film “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” then you might be familiar with the next CIA-sponsored project on this list. The Stargate Project was developed by the U.S. Army with the intent of studying whether or not psychic abilities could be harnessed and developed within ordinary soldiers or intelligence agents. These “psychotronic” studies, a term used by the States’ KGB contemporaries, didn’t end up amounting to much and were not overseen by a large group. Indeed, the sum of The Stargate Project never exceeded twenty participants and was largely seen as a failure. You know, because humans can’t be harvested as psychic weapons against other governments.
#4: Operation Mongoose
It was the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 that directly influenced the implementation of Operation Mongoose shortly thereafter, a direct assault by the CIA against Communist Cuba. CIA cells collaborated with, of all things, the American Mafia, throughout some of these operations. These included, but were not limited to, arms deals and industrial sabotage efforts, all with the intention of removing Fidel Castro from power in Cuba by 1962. The escalating tensions between Cuba and the United States, specifically the Cuban Missile Crisis, reportedly put a halt to Operation Mongoose, although some academics, such as author Noam Chomsky, maintain the terrorist efforts continued throughout and after the crisis.
#3: Operation Midnight Climax
The title of this next operation may sound like it was designed to coincide with our aforementioned CIA sex tape, but Operation Midnight Climax actually has more in common with the paranormal studies of The Stargate Project. This was a subdivision of the comparatively more well-known Project MK-Ultra, a domestic terrorist drug study conducted by the CIA between the 1950s and ‘70s. Operation Midnight Climax employed local sex workers in the San Francisco area, who would then dose their clients with drugs and engage them in conversation. These conversations were monitored by the CIA via one-way glass partitions, in order to see which chemicals might be helpful when interrogating foreign enemies.
#2: Operation Gold
Fears and anxiety over potential nuclear war served as the impetus for Operation Gold in 1954, thanks in part to aggressive nuclear testing by the Soviet Union. Operation Gold was a joint venture between the CIA and MI6 in the U.K., and consisted of a tunnel dug beneath occupied Soviet territory in Germany. Agents from both countries were able to tap into conversations conducted by the Soviet Union, although the latter admittedly were made aware of the Operation Gold tunnel almost immediately. This was due to a mole planted within MI6’s ranks, a Communist and double agent named George Blake. He was discovered and imprisoned in 1961, but escaped to Moscow, living as a Soviet hero until his death on December 26th, 2020.
#1: The Phoenix Program
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The Phoenix Program was just one of the stories to come out of The Vietnam War, an operation initially kicked off by the CIA (in collaboration with Australia and South Vietnam) in 1967. Although U.S. involvement was abandoned only two years after being implemented, The Phoenix Program is remembered today for its laser-focused mission statement: to destroy the Viet Cong. Targeted killings, torture, terrorism, and more were all on the table during The Phoenix Program, and the project faced intense criticism, once details of its implantation were finally made public. It was “officially” shut down in 1972, but continued under a new name, Plan F-6, by the South Vietnamese government.
