17 Real Government Projects So Bizarre, Terrifying, and Ill-Conceived They Belong in a Movie

Image via How Stuff Works

‘Creative thinking’ and ‘total autonomy’ are critical to innovation in the workplace.

But, as it turns out, they also lead to a fair number of failures, both public and private.

Wasted funds, legal trouble, and deep, undying shame are just a few of the corners you can back yourself into when there’s no one around to tell you ‘no’.

With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that U.S. intelligence and defense agencies are among the worst offenders.

Difficult problems, big budgets, and total secrecy; if that’s not a recipe for the occasional fuck up, we don’t know what is. (Included under the ‘fuck up’ umbrella: creepfests, human rights violations, and further proof that there are, in fact, bad ideas).

So why should you care? Aside from the fact that you probably pay taxes, you probably also have a job of your own.

So next time you’re faced with a mind-bendingly difficult problem, and your boss is urging you to think outside the box, remember this. Sometimes, it’s better to give up than to execute on a criminally half-baked idea.

These 17 government projects represent the worst and the weirdest things  your tax dollars have ever funded – at least until something wilder gets marked ‘unclassified’.

 


1. Operation Acoustic Kitty

Image via Photobucket
Image via Photobucket

Today we use drones to spy on our enemies. But in the days of the Cold War, someone *cough cough* the CIA *cough*… thought that it would be a good idea to use cats.

Yes, cats. They spent $20 million ‘training’ and outfitting the first cat, which is a nice way of saying kitty went under the knife and came out stuffed it with surveillance equipment.

Needless to say, the sting – or should we say, scratch? – operation went terribly. Because as soon as they released it outside of the Kremlin, the poor cat was so hell-bent on escaping its tormentors (or so we imagine) that it ran out in front of a taxi and went splat.

The CIA claims they retrieved the cat, removed the equipment, stitched him up again, sent him on his way, and called the program quits right then and there. But doesn’t that sound just a little too neat and tidy?

 

2. Operation Mongoose

Image via Pinterest
Image via Pinterest

Seeing as he was persona non grata with the CIA pretty much from day one, Castro was the subject of more inane assassination plots than (probably) anyone else in history.

The US began by trying to tarnish his image – first with rumors that he was the Antichrist, and later by sneaking depilatories into his clothes to make his hair and beard fall out.

Apparently, the CIA is either a bunch of A) high school mean girls, or B) religious zealots.

For reasons we can’t fathom, that plan got them nowhere. So out of desperation, they resorted to even more unusual tactics.

In and of themselves, assassination attempts are a cornerstone of high-stakes espionage. But wait til you hear their methods:

“Among the dozens of extremely silly methods of assassination proposed: infecting Castro’s scuba gear with tuberculosis; planting exploding seashells at a favorite diving site; slipping him a poisoned fountain pen; and even even poisoning or slipping a bomb into one of his cigars.”

 

3. Operation Midnight Climax

Image via Cracked
Image via Cracked

What do you do when you need to test out the effects of new and possibly dangerous psychotropic drugs?

If you’re the CIA, you recruit a bunch of San Francisco prostitutes and get them to dose unsuspecting johns with astronomically-high levels of LCD. Then you sit back and watch from behind a two-way mirror.

Before you ask, yes. This was very, very illegal. They just weren’t too worried about getting caught, since their victims would probably be too embarrassed to go to the authorities, given the circumstances of the crime.

Written by Mary McCaw

Mary is a freelance writer and editor. She's based in San Francisco, but lately, home is wherever her suitcase is. If you really are what you eat, she is at least 50% pizza.