Top 100 INSANE DECLASSIFIED Secrets They Didn't Want You To Know

Top 100 Insane Classified Secrets They Didn't Want You To Know

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 100 Insane Classified Secrets They Didn't Want You To Know. For this list, we’ll be looking at deep, dark government secrets that were declassified or leaked to the public. We’ll be laying them out in the order that the events in question occurred, regardless of when they were made public. Where do you stand on government transparency? How about whistleblowers? Let us know in the comments. #100: In 1917, during World War I, the German government sent a secret diplomatic message to the government of Mexico, proposing a military alliance if the U.S. declared war on Germany. Known as the Zimmerman Telegram after German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann, it was intercepted and decrypted by British intelligence. #99: In 2011, the CIA made public its six oldest classified documents, dating from 1918. Included are formulas for secret ink and techniques for opening sealed envelopes without leaving a trace. #98: In the The Tuskegee Syphilis Study from 1932-72, the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and CDC studied 400 Black men with syphilis. Wanting to observe the long-term effects, they didn’t inform the men of their diagnosis, or treat them, and over a quarter died. The study ended when a whistleblower within the PHS went to the press. #97: In 1933, 6,700 Russian prisoners were sent to Nazino Island in Siberia and told they were to cultivate the island and build a settlement. In reality, they were abandoned with almost no supplies, leading to violence and cannibalism. The Nazino Tragedy saw around 4,000 die of murder, starvation, and disease. #96: In 1936, Imperial Japan created a secret unit, Manshu Detachment 731, to research biological and chemical weapons. They conducted deadly human experiments and horrific war crimes in China, killing an estimated 200,000-300,000 people. At the end of WWII, the US gave captured researchers immunity in exchange for data. #95: In Project Pigeon, which ran from 1943-44, American behaviorist B. F. Skinner was contracted by the U.S. military to train a unit of pigeons that could guide missiles from inside them. Another program around the same time, dreamed up by a dental surgeon, looked into using bats as bombers. #94: During World War II, the Allies secretly housed their top codebreakers at the remote estate Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, England. The infamous Enigma and Lorenz ciphers were broken there. #93: The Second World War saw the British Security Service MI5 create the Double-Cross System, capturing Nazi spies and flipping them into double agents who sent disinformation back to Berlin. #92: Large swaths of Great Britain served as test grounds for germ warfare experiments by the British Ministry of Defence. From 1940-79, potentially dangerous chemicals and micro-organisms were released into local populations without their knowledge. #91: From 1941-45, American and British intelligence agencies enabled the escape of Allied POWs with the help of the United States Playing Card Company. They embedded detailed escape maps between layers of playing cards and sent them in Christmas packages to prison camps throughout Europe. #90: Declassified documents from 1942 reveal that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had no intention of putting Adolf Hitler on trial after the war. Instead, he argued for summary execution of all top Nazis. #89: Future cooking star Julia Child attempted to join the military during World War II but was rejected because of her height. In 1942, she was instead recruited into the Office of Strategic Services, where she helped create shark repellant to protect explosive devices and downed pilots. #88: 29 Navajo men were recruited as Code Talkers by the U.S. Marines during World War II. They created a code based on the unwritten Navajo language that allowed them to keep important military secrets from the Japanese. #87: From 1942-46, a team of military officers and physicists embarked on arguably the most significant R&D program in history: the Manhattan Project. It created the first nuclear bombs and changed the world forever. #86: In 1944 and 1946, the U.S. army and a defense contractor dumped over 37 million gallons of radioactive waste from atomic bomb testing in shallow wells in Tonawanda near Buffalo, New York. #85: Requested by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill after the end of World War II in 1945, Operation Unthinkable was a set of military plans in case of war with the USSR. One of the two plans envisioned a surprise attack with U.S. aid. The other prepared for a Soviet invasion of Scandinavia and U.S. withdrawal from Europe. #84: It took some time after Germany’s surrender in 1945 for the Allies to find evidence of Hitler’s demise. Allied Intelligence thought it possible that the German dictator may have escaped, so the FBI launched a secret investigation into his whereabouts. #83: In Operation Paperclip, which lasted from 1945-59, the U.S. recruited over 1,600 German scientists and engineers, many of whom had been members of the Nazi Party. They played a major role in the U.S. space program. #82: After the Soviet style East German secret police, the Stasi, disbanded in 1990, it was revealed that they’d spent decades conducting covert surveillance on civilians, amassing a trove of intelligence and blackmail files. #81: In 1950’s Operation Sea-Spray, the US Navy sprayed bacteria over the Bay Area in order to study San Francisco’s vulnerability to biological agents. While they deemed the bacteria harmless, it was correlated with an outbreak of infections that may or may not have been related. #80: Project Artichoke, the precursor to MKUltra, was a 1951 CIA program researching interrogation and mind control methods. They tested drug cocktails, hypnosis, forced addiction, and LSD. #79: After fighting the “Thousand Mile War” when Imperial Japan invaded the Aleutian Islands, the U.S. prepared contingencies for a Soviet paratrooper invasion of Alaska. In Operation Washtub from 1951-59, Alaskan fishermen and trappers were trained as spies to keep tabs on Soviet movements at sea. #78: The Church Committee of 1975 revealed a number of government secrets. One was the CIA’s heart attack gun: a weapon from the 1950s that shot untraceable poison projectiles that would give a victim a heart attack without any physical evidence. #77: In Operation Ajax, also known as Operation Boot, the CIA and MI6 orchestrated a coup against progressive Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Mosaddegh had led a movement to nationalize Iran’s oil industry. U.S.- backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi took power, until being overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. #76: The long-term effects of radiation were unknown in the aftermath of World War II. The U.S. government enacted Project SUNSHINE in 1953-58, stealing the remains or parts of deceased children from around the world for tissue tests. Parents were not informed. #75: From 1953-73, the CIA studied possible uses of psychotropic drugs in interrogation, torture, and mind control through Project MKUltra. While some participants volunteered willingly, many were experimented upon without their consent. #74: The mid 20th century saw the CIA facilitating the replacement of democratically elected leaders in foreign countries with right wing dictators. In 1954’s Operation PBSuccess, they organized a coup against Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz to aid the United Fruit Company, resulting in decades of atrocities. #73: In the 1950s, the U.S. military had a secret program to develop circular fighter jets, aka flying saucers, called Project 1794. The goal was to develop a fleet of supersonic planes that could easily take out Soviet bombers. #72: From 1956-71, the FBI infiltrated virtually every major organization bent on changing American society, part of a program called COINTELPRO. They went after socialists, civil rights organizations and leaders like MLK, Vietnam protesters, the Black power movement, and far-right groups like the KKK. #71: Project Gladio, which ran from 1956-90, involved NATO creating secret ‘stay-behind’ paramilitary organizations across Europe, in case of Soviet invasion. #70: In Operation LAC (Large Area Coverage) in 1957 and 1958, zinc cadmium sulfide was sprayed over large sections of the U.S. and Canada to track dispersal patterns. #69: To undermine Indonesian President Sukarno, the CIA created an adult film in 1958 starring a Sukarno lookalike or an actor wearing a mask. The Soviets had already taped Sukarno cavorting with operatives posing as flight attendants in Moscow. But the delighted Sukarno had just asked for more copies. Ultimately the CIA didn’t release their film, pursuing other covert operations until Indonesian General Suharto seized power. #68: During the Cold War, the CIA distributed over 10 million copies of banned books and magazines inside the Soviet Union. Books like Boris Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago” were spread to undermine the government. #67: In 1959’s Project Horizon, the Army, Navy, and Air Force joined forces to study the feasibility of a military research base on the moon. #66: Lunik and Sputnik were the crown jewels of the early Soviet satellite program. Unbeknownst to the Soviet Union, the CIA managed to steal, study, and return the Lunik from an exhibition in 1959. #65: The U.S.’s CORONA Spy Satellites managed to take photos of the Middle East and China between 1959 and 1972. Now declassified, the images are used by archaeologists, who can track changes over time to important historical sites. #64: The Greenbrier luxury resort in West Virginia is the site of a massive underground bunker built in 1959 named "Project Greek Island "that was meant to serve as an emergency shelter for Congress during the Cold War. However, it was decommissioned after The Washington Post blew the lid in 1992. #63: Francis Gary Powers, a pilot of the secret U-2 spy plane, was shot down and captured deep inside the Soviet Union in 1960. At first, American authorities said it had been a weather aircraft, but had to admit the truth just a few days later. #62: In 1959, Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro overthrew U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista and assumed power. The CIA tried to assassinate the communist leader hundreds of times. Many of the failures were so public that the Church Committee acknowledged eight that occurred between 1960 and 65. #61: Acoustic Kitty was an aptly named CIA project in the 1960s that involved implanting microphones into the ears of cats, who were to spy on the Soviets. Unfortunately, the CIA found it difficult to train the cats, wasting millions of dollars on the attempt. #60: Codenamed HERO, Oleg Penkovsky was a Soviet colonel and double agent for both MI6 and the CIA. It was Penkovsky’s key intel that clued the United States into the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Without that knowledge, they would likely have been successfully deployed. The Soviets cottoned on and executed him in 1963. #59: In the early 1960s, the U.S. built a nuclear-powered research facility in Greenland, called Camp Century. While it was not secret, it was part of a secret program - Project Iceworm, which aimed to dig 2,500 miles of tunnels beneath the tundra, allowing the military to secretly deploy nuclear missiles. #58: Authorized by JFK in 1961, Operation Mongoose was a secret CIA campaign of sabotage and terrorism in Cuba. The intent was to destabilize and depose the Cuban government. #57: In a far-fetched plan to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro in 1962, Department of Defense special operations expert Edward Lansdale suggested firing star shells from a submarine over Havana on All Souls’ Day to stir “Cuban superstitions”. #56: Operation Northwoods was a scrapped Department of Defense plan in 1962 for the CIA to conduct false-flag attacks against American military and civilian targets, in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. It was rejected by JFK. #55: President Kennedy, furious with a series of government leaks, greenlit a CIA program called Project Mockingbird in 1962 to wiretap and spy on American journalists. #54: In Project AQUILINE from 1965-71, the CIA attempted to create a fleet of small, bird-sized, nuclear-powered, remote-controlled aircraft. They could be used for spying or dropping covert packages to operatives in the field. The project was eventually scrapped. #53: Through the Indian ‘Health’ Services in the 1960s and 70s, the U.S. government sterilized up to 70,000 Native American women, often through coercion or without their knowledge. #52: Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran in 1979. Declassified documents reveal that he’d secretly tried to negotiate the transition with both the Kennedy and Carter Administrations. #51: While conducting covert maneuvers in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964, a U.S. destroyer came under attack. President Johnson used dubious reports of a second attack two days later as justification for deploying U.S. troops in Vietnam. But this second attack never happened. In 2005, the NSA admitted that it had skewed its intelligence report to Johnson. #50: Operation CHASE or “Cut Holes And Sink ‘Em” was a D.O.D. program from 1964-72 carried out by the U.S. Navy. For the better part of a decade, unused surplus munitions were loaded onto empty ships and scuttled around 250 miles off the American coast. On four occasions, chemical weapons were disposed of as a part of Operation CHASE. #49: In an attempt to spy on the Chinese nuclear program, the U.S. and India worked together to install sensors powered by plutonium in the Himalayas in 1965. Unfortunately, the mission was abandoned amidst bad weather, and the plutonium was lost. Locals accuse both governments of having inadvertently melted mountain snow with the sensors, causing deadly floods. #48: In the mid-1960s, Indonesian General Suharto oversaw the mass murder of between 500,000 to 1.2 million people. The U.S. was complicit in the killings, framed as a anti-communist ‘purge’, even providing names to Suharto’s death squads. With Western backing, Suharto became President. #47: In 1957, the Soviets had deployed new, effective surface-to-air missiles, known as S-75s. The CIA disguised ‘SAM Sniffer’ drones as U-2 planes, to collect data on the missiles as they were shot down. This strategy finally succeeded in 1966 over Vietnam; the data collected led to the development of a warning system. #46: In 2010, United States Army soldier Chelsea Manning leaked 250,000 diplomatic cables to Wikileaks. Dating from 1966 on, the cables contained unflattering assessments of world leaders, and revealed that the U.S. and Britain had spied on the UN in the lead up to their invasion of Iraq in 2003. #45: In 1967, during the Six-Day War between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, the Israeli Air Force and Navy accidentally attacked the USS Liberty. The spy ship was badly damaged, with 171 crew members wounded and 34 killed. #44: The CIA looked into a scientist’s method for guiding lighting onto targets using artificial leaders in 1967, but the program was scrapped as less practical than conventional weapons. #43: From 1967-72, the Air Force ran a covert cloud seeding project called Operation Popeye in Vietnam as an attempt to extend the monsoon season. Its intention was to disrupt North Vietnamese supply chains. #42: 40 years after the fact, the NSA declassified documents concerning Project MINARET, a secret surveillance program in the 1960s and 70s. During the Vietnam War, the NSA had wiretapped anti-war activists, civil rights leaders, journalists, and two U.S. Senators. #41: Operation CHAOS was another domestic espionage project during the Vietnam War years. Both Presidents Johnson and Nixon authorized surveillance of American citizens by the CIA, looking for foreign influence among left-wing movements. #40: Fearing for his campaign, Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon sabotaged peace talks between North and South Vietnam in 1968, promising South Vietnam a better deal once he was President. President Johnson’s declassified tapes reveal that he knew and considered Nixon’s actions “treason”. But he kept quiet rather than revealing FBI and NSA wiretaps. #39: The U.S. Army maintained a base in Thule, Greenland, for much of the Cold War. One of their B-52s, armed with nuclear weapons, went down near the base in 1968. It was later revealed that the Army lied about its payload recovery: one nuclear bomb was never found. #38: In 1968, American soldiers murdered hundreds of unarmed civilians, including children, in the small Vietnamese village of My Lai. At least 20 had also been sexually assaulted. A year later, photo journalist Ron Haeberle published photos of the event in a Cleveland newspaper, leading to global shock and outrage. #37: In the wake of the My Lai massacre, the Pentagon created the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group to look into other American war crimes in Vietnam. They compiled a secret archive of documents alleging 320 incidents, including seven massacres. #36: In Operation Condor, which ran from 1968-89, the U.S. backed a campaign of political repression, state terrorism, and coups in South America under right-wing dictatorships. Up to 60,000 people were killed. U.S. State Secretary Henry Kissinger was closely involved. #35: 30 years after Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969, a historian discovered a contingency speech written by Nixon’s speechwriter, William Safire, which had been prepared in case the astronauts were stranded on the moon. #34: A test rocket fired by the U.S. military in Utah, bound for New Mexico, went horribly off course in 1970. The rocket, containing radioactive isotopes that effectively made it a ‘salted bomb’, landed in Mexico’s Mapimi desert. #33: The CIA took the term ‘surveillance bug’ literally in the early 1970s: they created a robotic dragonfly or ‘Insectothopter’ for eavesdropping. However, crosswinds rendered the device impractical. #32: In a 25-year legal battle, journalist Jon Weiner wrested from the FBI documentation on federal efforts to investigate and surveil Beatle John Lennon. Fearing that Lennon’s anti-war activities could cost him re-election, Nixon had the Immigration and Naturalization Service issue a deportation order in 1972. #31: In 1968, the Soviet submarine K-129 sank 1,600 miles northwest of Hawaii. After six years and the equivalent of $4.7 billion in modern terms, the CIA built an explorer to recover the ship. Project Azorian was the most expensive operation of the Cold War. #30: Available within the FBIs archive of Freedom of Information Act materials, you can find the FBI file on Bigfoot from the late 1970s. They analyzed a hair sample, and concluded it came from a deer. #29: We already mentioned the CIA’s role in Operation Condor. Well, we also now know that people who ‘disappeared’ from 1976-83 during the reign of Argentina's military dictatorship were assassinated. The efforts were so organized that the state assassination squads filed time cards and expense reports. #28: In Project Constant Peg, a special squadron of U.S. fighter pilots trained on Soviet MiGs from 1977-88, in order to understand and develop combat tactics against them. #27: In the late 1970s, CIA operatives in Moscow would use sex dolls, nicknamed jack-in-the-boxes, to give KGB tails the slip. While the view of KGB agents in the car behind them was obscured, operatives would jump out of their own car’s passenger seat, leaving the decoy to inflate in their place. #26: The U.S. and U.S.S.R. had a psychic arms race throughout the Cold War. The U.S. Army created the Stargate Project, which ran from 1978-95, in an attempt to build a remote viewing psychic military unit. #25: Robert Hanssen was a high level agent within the FBI with a long and storied career that spanned the 1980s and 90s. He was also one of the highest placed Soviet and Russian spies in American history. #24: When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the CIA put together Operation Cyclone from 1979-92, funding and arming mujahideen Afghan fighters to resist the Russians. #23: CIA agents compiled jokes overhead in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. They were part of an assessment of Soviet morale. #22: A Soviet lieutenant colonel named Stanislav Petrov saved the world from nuclear holocaust in 1983. When a nuclear early-warning system reported incoming American missiles, he decided not to tell his superiors, believing (correctly as it turned out) that it was a false alarm. His superiors would likely have launched a retaliatory nuclear strike. #21: An expedition finally located the wreck of the Titanic in September 1985. But the expedition’s primary purpose was actually a secret mission to map out the wreckage of two American nuclear powered submarines that sank in the 1960s. #20: The American public was told that the astronauts aboard the ill-fated Space Shuttle Challenger, which exploded in 1986, had died instantly. We now know that they were quite possibly conscious until impact, 2 minutes and 45 seconds later. #19: Started in 1992, the NSA program RAMPART-A sucks communication data right out of the fiber-optic cables that form the backbone of the internet. It was revealed in 2013 when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked information about the mass surveillance programs of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S. #18: A U.S. Air Force laboratory produced a proposal to build a psychochemical weapon in the mid-1990s. The intent was to release sex pheromones on enemy troops, making them attracted to each other. #17: Spying between allies is generally considered bad form. But the NSA listened in on the phone calls of French officials, including at least three Presidents, according to top-secret documents released by Wikileaks in 2015. Other documents revealed that the NSA had also tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone. #16: In 2000, the Iranian military purchased a team of dolphins trained to attack boats from the Russians. #15: Under the Bush administration, the CIA established torture sites around the world in the wake of 9/11, where detainees - some innocent - were beaten, waterboarded, and sexually assaulted. In 2002, memoranda known as the “Torture Memos” advised the CIA on techniques that could be considered legal. One was leaked to the press in 2004. #14: The trove of documents leaked by U.S. soldier and whistleblower Chelsea Manning also included the Guantánamo Files, or Gitmo files. These documents revealed that more than 150 innocent farmers, chefs, and drivers, were held for years without charges inside Guantanamo Bay detention camp, established in 2002. #13: Also leaked by Chelsea Manning, the Iraq War Logs included U.S. army field reports from 2004-09 that recorded 66,081 civilian deaths out of 109,000 recorded deaths. It represented the biggest leak in U.S. military history, larger even than the Afghan War documents, which had revealed the deaths of hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents. #12: In a mid-2000s program called Devil Eyes, the CIA made figurines of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. When heated, the face peeled off to reveal a demonic visage. The intent was to distribute the doll in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but it’s unclear how many were actually shipped, if any. #11: A former engineer for Apple claims that in 2005 the company created a classified iPod for the Department of Energy that doubled as a Geiger counter. #10: From 2005-10, the U.S. and Israeli cyber intelligence services joined forces with Stuxnet, a virus sent to Iran to disrupt their nuclear program. #9: In 2007, two American Apache helicopters carried out a series of air-to-ground attacks in Baghdad, Iraq. They received global attention in 2010 when Chelsea Manning released gunsight footage to Wikileaks that revealed the crew laughing as they killed several men, all civilians, including two Reuters journalists. #8: Initiated in 2007, PRISM was another NSA program revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. It allows the NSA to collect communications matching court-approved search terms from companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Apple. #7: The Advanced Network Technologies department with the NSA has a classified catalog, the ANT catalog, listing hardware and software available for spy operations. A version written in 2008-09 was leaked and published by German magazine Der Spiegel in 2013. #6: Since at least 2009, the FBI has had a civilian air force surveilling U.S. cities from above, registered under fake companies, according to a 2015 report by the Associated Press. #5: Edward Snowden also revealed a program called Dishfire, run by the NSA and the U.K.’s GCHQ, that collects about 200 million text messages every day around the world. Another NSA program, MYSTIC, can record the metadata and content of phone calls from entire countries. #4: In a series of documents dating back to 2013, and released as ‘Vault 7’, Wikileaks revealed CIA capabilities to compromise various devices and software, including cars, smart TVs, web browsers, and the operating systems of smartphones and computers. #:3: U.S. Cyber Command launched Operation Glowing Symphony against ISIS in 2016. One of the largest cyber attacks in history on ISIS in 2016, it caused major disruption to the terrorist group. #2: After they were leaked, the Pentagon formally released three recordings of UFOs taken by United States Navy fighter jets in 2004, 2014, and 2015. #1: In 2022 and 2023, hundreds of classified foreign intelligence documents, primarily related to the Russo-Ukrainian War, were leaked on Discord. The culprit was allegedly 21-year old gamer and airman Jack Teixeira, of the Massachusetts Air National Guard.