Top 5 Facts About Being A Spy
The wonderful world of espionage is about more than hot double agents and taking down deadly laser satellites. Welcome to WatchMojo's Top 5 Facts. In this installment, we'll be looking at the five most interesting and surprising facts from both the past and the present about being a spy.
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Top 5 Facts About Being A Spy
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The wonderful world of espionage is about more than hot double agents and taking down deadly laser satellites. Welcome to WatchMojo’s Top 5 Facts. In this installment, we’ll be looking at the five most interesting and surprising facts from both the past and the present about being a spy.
#5: The CIA Used a Cat to Spy on the Soviets
Operation Acoustic Kitty: no, it’s not the name of the latest viral video. Acoustic Kitty is actually a real life CIA project that was initiated to equip cats with eavesdropping devices to spy on the Soviets. The cat had a tiny microphone surgically implanted into his ear canal along with a small radio transmitter at the base of his skull. Oh, sure, it’s easy to condemn the US for mistreating a poor defenseless creature, but remember, the Russians strapped a dog into a space vessel. These were times of war, people. Anyway, the cat was sent on its first mission and promptly dispatched by a speeding taxi. $20 million was lost under that taxi’s wheels, so then CIA quietly shut down its ill-fated project. Or did they? Did your cat disappear one night never to be found? Maybe he was hired by the CIA and sent on a deadly mission to stop ex-KGB agents…
#4: Spy Satellites Used to Drop Film from Space
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In the 60s, before we had phones with 12 megapixel cameras that we could use to send pictures to people across the world, photography was still in its infancy. Spy planes would fly over the USSR in hopes of retrieving sensitive imagery of their military installations. But this was dangerous, because as we all know, the only thing the USSR hated more than capitalism and freedom was being spied on, and they would often shoot down spy planes. The solution? We had to go higher. But what’s higher than the sky you ask? Silly viewer, it’s space, of course! Satellites were sent into the atmosphere with state of the art cameras that produced only the highest detailed fuzzy grey images of who knows what. But how to get those images back? It’s simple: eject the film into the earth’s atmosphere, send a high altitude plane to snatch it as it plummets through the sky and voila.
#3: Becoming a CIA Agent Is a Gruelling Process
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So, you’ve watched a lot of James Bond movies and you think to yourself: “Yeah, I can probably do most of this stuff.” Well, if you want to bea double agent and betray your own country, that’s for another day, but if you want to work for the CIA, and have nothing to hide, then go ahead and apply. The application and hiring process can take as long as two years, so expect to be asked everything and anything regarding your character, background, reliability, judgment, potential to be coerced… and a whole lot more. You get round after round of interviews, and that’s just assuming they haven’t found anything suspect in your personal history. You also need to be able to pass the physical tests, be below 35 years old, have a bachelor’s degree and a college GPA of at least 3.0. Even with all of that, they might not hire you. Or did they already hire you and you just don’t know it? You just got Espionaged.
#2: Roald Dahl Was a British Spy
As children, we might remember enjoying such literary classics as “James and the Giant Peach” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Well, did you know that the same author who brought us these charming gems was also ploughing his way across the United States for the sake of Queen and Country? That’s right, after Roald Dahl’s successful time with the Royal Air Force, he was drafted as a spy for the British embassy in 1942. His mission? Seduce rich, high-society American hotties and pump them for information. The writer of The BFG was apparently so successful at his mission that droves of women were lining up to get a taste of the good stuff. Dahl eventually requested achange of mission from his superiors, but they sent him right back in.
#1: Spies Spread Lies to their Enemies
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Disinformation, not to be confused with its slower cousin Misinformation, is the act of spreading lies to an enemy in order to compromise their information network. Not all spies are jet-setting super studs with a penchant for bedding hot ladies and stopping balding baddies. Some of them are more like that weird kid you knew in the 4th grade who liked to make up extravagant lies for no reason. Well, that kid is just as important to the world of super spies as any 007 because sometimes winning a war means making your opponent believe outrageous lies about your own military. A classic example, Operation Fortitude, occurred during World War II when the invasion of Normandy took place. The German government was made to believe that allied forces were going to land in a completely different place which caused them to divide their military and which ultimately made them weaker. So, what do you think? Now that you’ve had a gander at the real world of espionage with all of its high-tech equipment and flattened kitties, are you itching to jump on the old spy band-wagon? For more mysterious top 10s and uninformative top 5s, be sure to subscribe to Watchmojo.com!
