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Government and military secrets can place from terrifying to amusing to downright idiotic , but most are nothing short of challenging . From a secret U.S. Air Force undertaking to build a ultrasonic flying dish to a now - renowned World War II - era research program that produced the first atomic turkey to a plan to train domesticate cat to spy on the Soviet Union , here are 24 declassified military and CIA secrets .
Project 1794
In belated 2012 , the U.S. Air Force declassified a trove of documents , including records of a hugger-mugger programme to build a flying saucer - eccentric aircraft designed to dash down Soviet bombers . The challenging programme , calledProject 1794 , was initiated in the 1950s , and a team of applied scientist was task with building a disc - anatomy vehicle open of move around at supersonic speeds at eminent altitude .
The declassified documents reveal plans for the airplane to make a top speed of Mach 4 ( four times the focal ratio of sound ) , and touch an altitude of 100,000 feet ( 30,480 meters ) . The project ’s count on cost was more than $ 3 million , which in today ’s dollars would be more than $ 26 million .
undertaking 1794 was canceled in December 1961 after tests suggest the flight disc design was aerodynamically unstable and would likely be irrepressible at high speeds ( let alonesupersonic speeds ) .
Avro Canada VZ-9AV Avrocar at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.
Project Iceworm
In the 1960s , the U.S. Army embarked on a private delegation to build a series of peregrine nuclear projectile launch sites under theGreenland ice sheet . The objective was to domiciliate medium - chain missile close enough to strike target within the Soviet Union .
The program was codenamed Project Iceworm , but to test its feasibility , the Army launch a top inquiry undertaking called " Camp Century " in 1960 . Under this pretext , engineers built a internet of belowground buildings and tunnels , let in living quarter , a kitchen , a recreation hall , infirmary , laboratories , supply rooms , a communication center and a nuclear mogul industrial plant .
The infrastructure , which was kept secret from the Danish government , function for seven years . The program was canceled in 1966 after reposition ice created unstable stipulation . Today , the crushed stiff of Project Iceworm are bury beneath Arctic snow .
Declassified designs show the U.S. Air Force’s attempts to build a flying saucer capable of both hovering and going supersonic.
Project MK-ULTRA
During the Cold War , the CIA initiated Project MK - ULTRA , a secret and illegal human research program to investigate possible mind - restraint systems . The program ’s operators try the effects of hypnosis , biological federal agent and drug , such as LSD and barbiturates , on human national . Some historians indicate the program was designed to develop a mind - control system that could be used to " programme " the brains of potential assassinator . [ The 10 Craziest Military Experiments ]
In 1973 , then - CIA director Richard Helms ordinate that all document from Project MK - ULTRA be destroyed , but a formal investigating into the political platform was launched several years later . The task became the fundament for several moving picture , such as " The Manchurian Candidate " and " The Men Who Stare at Goats . "
Area 51
Almost no other site has garner as much attention from cabal theorizer and UFO - enthusiasts asArea 51 , a distant desert parcel near Groom Lake in Nevada , roughly 83 miles ( 134 kilometers ) NW of Las Vegas . The intense secrecy hem in the substructure sparked people ' imagination , and Area 51 was normally connect to extrasensory activities , include pervasive theories that suggested Area 51 hide aliens andUFOs .
In July 2013 , declassify documents from the CIA acknowledged the existence of Area 51 for the first time , and substantiate that thetop - secret sitewas used to screen a diverseness of spy planes , include the well - bang U-2 reconnaissance aircraft .
While Area 51 , which control as a breakup of Edwards Air Force Base in neighboring California , has never been declared a covert theme , the inquiry and activeness take there were some of the res publica ’s most close guarded secrets .
In the 1960s, the U.S. Army launched a secret program to build mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet. The operation was codenamed “Project Iceworm,” but operated under a cover research project called “Camp Century."
Project Grudge
While Area 51 was not a top - secret base designed to study alien , the U.S. Air Force did study theexistence of unidentified flying object . Project Grudge was a short - lived syllabus launched in 1949 to study unnamed flight aim . The charge followed an early broadcast , known as Project Sign , which published a report in other 1949 tell that while some UFOs seemed to be actual aircraft , there was not enough data point to check their origination . [ Top 10 States for UFO Sightings ]
Critics of Project Grudge said the computer programme entirely set out to debunk UFO report , and very little actual inquiry was conducted . In his book on the matter , Edward J. Ruppelt , Air Force Captain and director of Project Grudge , wrote : " [ I]t does n’t take a big softwood of study of the old UFO files to see that standard intelligence function were not being followed by Project Grudge . Everything was being evaluated on the premise that flying saucer could n’t exist . No matter what you see or pick up , do n’t believe it . "
Operation Paperclip
In September 1946 , President Harry Truman authorize a program call Operation Paperclip , which aimed to entice scientist from Nazi Germany to the United States following World War II . official at the Office of Strategic Services ( the precursor to the CIA ) recruited German scientist to America to aid the nation ’s postwar campaign , which would also see that valuable scientific knowledge would not cease up in the hand of the Soviet Union or the divided East and West Germany .
Operation Paperclip ’s most famous military recruit was rocket scientistWernher von Braun , who would go on to mastermindNASA ’s Apollo moon missions .
Operation Northwoods
The tense relationship between the United States and Cuba during the Cold War led the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ) to hatch a sight of freaky schemes aimed at taking down the Castro regime . While the goal of most of these covert operations ( such asOperation Mongoose ) was to assassinate Fidel Castro himself , other plans aim to incite an all - out war between the U.S. and Cuba , expert have said .
In 1998 , the National Security Archive ( NSA ) — a non - governmental organization that publishes information made uncommitted through the Freedom of Information Act — posted declassify documents related to Operation Northwoods . The scheme , dream up in 1962 by the Joint Chiefs of Staff ( uniformed members of the U.S. Department of Defense who send word the President of the United States and others ) , involved charge acts of furiousness against U.S. and Cuban civilians and then blaming those acts on the Cuban government , according to the NSA document . These acts , which include faked terrorist flack in U.S. cities , the hijacking of plane and the sinking feeling of gravy boat full of Cuban émigrés en route to the U.S. , would then be used to vindicate a war with Cuba , harmonize tothe papers .
The Kennedy governance pick out the foolishness of Operation Northwoods and rejected it , according to news reports .
Manhattan Project
One of the most well - known secret research programme isthe Manhattan Project , which eventually produced the world ’s first atomic bombs . The task began in 1939 , and was clothe in secrecy as physicists investigated the possible power of atomic weapons . From 1942 to 1946 , Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lead the Manhattan Project .
Thefirst atomic bomb was detonatedat 5:30 a.m. on July 16 , 1945 , during the so - bid Trinity trial at the Alamogordo Air Base , 120 miles ( 193 klick ) south of Albuquerque , N.M. The detonation created a mushroom cloud that stretched 40,000 foot ( 12,200 m ) , and the bomb ’s explosive power was equivalent to more than 15,000 slews of TNT .
A month after the Trinity mental testing , two atomic bomb calorimeter were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in the wane point of World War II . To date , the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only the States of atomic weapons in war .
An aerial view of Area 51 and Groom Lake in Nevada.
Operation Gladio
During the Cold War , the North Atlantic Treaty Organization , or NATO , developed a classified plan for keeping Europe " safe " in the event of a Soviet invasion . The plan , known as Operation Gladio , called for the organisation of private armies or " stay - behind " organizations in many NATO commonwealth , including Italy , Belgium and France , according to declassify documents .
The mission of the surreptitious armies was simple : Prepare for a potential communist takeover and top an armed electrical resistance should such a takeover occur . In some countries , " preparing " for Soviet intrusion include espionage and the billboard of ammunitions .
And these clandestine armies were n’t just keep back secret from the Soviet Union . high up - ranking government official in land where the military military force mesh were sometimes not aware of the armies ' universe . Italian Prime Minister at the clip , the late Giulio Andreotti divulge data aboutItaly ’s secret Cold War army(known as Gladio ) in 1990 , becoming the first leader of a NATO country to publically acknowledge one of these forces . Declassified documents related to NATO ’s stay put - behind armies are accessiblevia The Black Vault , a website that makes declassified text file available to the public .
Illustration of a flying saucer.
My Lai Massacre
In March 1968 , American soldier murdered hundreds of unarmed civilians in the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai , according to account of the carnage that describe harrowing killings of at least 300 women , children and older people .
US Army officials deal to extend up the massacre for a class before an fact-finding journalist with the Associated Press ( AP ) play the atrocity to the attention of the American people in November 1969 . In brightness of news reports , an official inquiry was made into the event at My Lai and was concluded in March 1970 . The inquiry result in condemnable charges against 14 U.S. Army officers , all but one of whom were acquitted for their crimes . Declassified documentsassociated with the inquiry are available from the Library of Congress .
In the Wake Island of the My Lai butchery , the Pentagon established a labor force known as the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group , which investigated incidents like to the killings at My Lai . That group collect more than 9,000 pages of document detail crime by U.S. troops during the Vietnam War , many of which were declassify during the 1990s . These and other declassified documents regarding Vietnam War law-breaking can be accessedthrough the National Archives .
Dr. Wernher von Braun (center) describes the Saturn Launch System to President John F. Kennedy (right, pointing). NASA Deputy Administrator Robert Seamans stands to the left of von Braun.
Operation Washtub
Secret United States Army also be in the United States during the Cold War . In 2014,declassified documentsfrom the U.S. Air Force and the Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI ) reveal a plan dreamed up in 1950 for a " covert intelligence and evasion and escape operation in Alaska . "
Nicknamed " Operation Washtub , " the plan called for the training of ordinary Alaskans in coding , decoding and other espionage proficiency so that they could spy on the foe in the event of a Soviet encroachment of Alaska . While such an invasion never occur , a total of 89 " agents " were trained for this purpose , harmonize to news program reports .
Oleg Penkovsky
Oleg Penkovsky was a high - ranking Soviet military intelligence service officer who worked as a spy for the United States and Great Britain during the Cold War . well known for his part in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 , Penkovsky supply the U.S. government with valuable point about the capableness of Soviet missiles that had been installed in Cuba .
The spy was eventually sniffed out by his fellow Soviet intelligence service officers , charge with perfidy and executed in 1963 . However , there are some people who believe that Penkovsky was just a decoy who may have relayed sour entropy about Soviet munition capabilities to U.S. intelligence agents . Some item todeclassified documentsoutlining the word provided by Penkovsky as proof that the undercover agent ’s loyalty was really to the Soviet Union .
Acoustic Kitty
A report from 1967 evidence that the CIA pass millions of dollars in an attempt to train domesticated cats to spy on the Soviet Union . Yes , you read that correctly . nickname Acoustic Kitty , the programme necessitate implanting electronic spotting equipment into bouncy cats and then training them to " eavesdrop " on unsuspecting Cold War rivals .
If you do n’t believe this ridiculous program be , you may understand more about it inthis memorandumpublished by the National Security Archive .
Greenland’s Lost Bomb
In 1968 , a U.S. B-52 zep carry fourhydrogen bombson a everyday ( but secret ) mission crashed near Thule Air Base in Greenland . In the wake of the crash , American and Danish officials launched a project to clean up radioactive debris and collect the illogical pieces of the atomic bombs . However , for class afterwards , news report out of Denmark and the U.S. questioned whether all four bomb had really been settle . [ Photos : Top - Secret , Cold War - geological era Military Base in Greenland ]
In 2008,the BBCpublished an article based on declassified documents regarding the Thule accident , asserting that one of the four hydrogen bombs was never recover from the crash site . This title by a well-thought-of publication lead the Danish heyday minister to request a raw probe of the declassify document used for the BBC story . That investigating , led by Danish scholar Svend Aage Christensen , found that the BBC ’s report was not based on any raw declassify information ( it pull from data that had previously been declassified ) and that all four weapon had , in fact , been destroyed during the crash in 1968,according to the National Security Archive .
Project Horizon
Before the civilian space organizationNASAput the first spaceman on the synodic month in 1969 , at least two U.S. military organizations drew up plans for institute strategical lunar military outposts . In 1959 , the U.S. Army draw up a proposition for a " manned military " base on the moon . That proposal , which was submitted by the Army ’s honcho of research and development , was knight Project Horizon and would " make grow and protect likely United States interest on the moon,“according to declassify documents .
Another program , this one developed by the U.S. Air Force , sought to establish a " Lunar Based Earth Bombardment System " that met specific military essential . AnotherAir Force field , this one submitted in 1959 , involved explode a atomic weapon on the moon . The study was spearheaded by Leonard Reiffel , then a physicist at the Illinois Institute of Technology , and also included contributions from the astrophysicist Carl Sagan . In a 2010 interviewwith The New York Times , Reifell said that the " first aim [ of the nuclear detonation ] was to strike the world with the prowess of the United States . "
Mapimi Silent Zone
A declassified written document could help authorise up someurban legendsat one of Mexico ’s most bizarre tourist ambuscade . The so - called Mapimí Silent Zone is a small stretch of desert in Durango , Mexico , where , according to local legend , tuner waves can not be transmitted . Often compared tothe Bermuda Triangle , Mapimí is frequent by tourists look for a paranormal escapade .
But the real reason that Mapimí is an interesting placement has nothing to do with extraterrestrial or paranormal energy — it has to do with a heavy fault by the U.S. Air Force . In 1970 , an ATHENA V-123 - five hundred Eruca vesicaria sativa carrying two modest ampoule of cobalt 57 ( a radioactive isotope that is sometimes used in salted bombs ) crashed in the Durango desert . The skyrocket was hypothesise to set ashore in New Mexico , according todocuments declassify in 2013 . Local legend may have sprung up as a result of this Air Force floating-point operation .
Iran Flight 655
In 1988 , a U.S. combat ship in the Persian Gulf shot down an Iranian civilian aircraft en itinerary to Dubai , killing all 290 rider on board . Navy personnel incorrectly key out the civilian woodworking plane as an Iranian fighter jet before launch the projectile that took down the flight of steps , consort to declassified document .
The U.S. reacheda settlementwith Iran in 1996 in which it concord to pay $ 61.8 million to compensate family of the Persian victims . However , the U.S. government never issued an apologia . The Pentagon conducteda now - declassified official investigationinto the incident in 1988 and did not happen fault with the naval officers who brought down Flight 655 .
However , in the backwash of the investigation by the Department of Defense , severaljournalists point out discrepanciesbetween the prescribed report and late accounts of what hap . For example , the flight was originally enunciate to have divert from its standard route , but this was later found to be false . The report also put forward that the combat ship was lock in outside waters at the metre of the missile launching , when it was in fact operating in Iranian territorial amniotic fluid .
Fidel Castro arrives MATS Terminal, Washington, D.C.
Kidnapping of the Lunik
Sometimes , declassify documents say like a scene out of a James Bond movie . That ’s the typeface withthis document , style " The snatch of the Lunik . " It tells the tarradiddle of a CIA - led mission to " take over " a Soviet lunar satellite for just one Nox .
The so - squall kidnapping occurred in the other sixties , at the height of the U.S.-Soviet space wash . To make it unclouded that they were winning this race , the Soviets launched a multinational exhibition of their Lunik artificial satellite , the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Earth ’s moon . [ Top 10 Soviet and Russian Space Missions ]
One night , undercover CIA agents convinced the truck gadget driver who transported the orbiter from city to urban center to get some remainder at a nearby hotel and leave the satellite in their maintenance , the documents revealed . They then " borrowed " the Soviet satellite — taking it aside and photograph its components before position it back on the motortruck . There was no reading that the Soviets knew what had find that disastrous night , according to the declassify documents .
The only color photograph available for the Trinity blast, taken by Los Alamos scientist and amateur photographer Jack Aeby from near Base Camp. As Aeby later said, “It was there so I shot it."
USS Liberty
In 1967 , in the midst of the Six - Day War ( a battle between Israel and its neighboring Arab states ) , Israeli aircraft attacked the USS Liberty , a ship gathering intelligence for the U.S. National Security Agency ( NSA ) . Thirty - four Americans were killed in the approach and 171 more were wound . But was the flack intentional ?
Many the great unwashed believe that the Israeli government mean to open up fire on the so - called " spy ship " to preclude it from intercepting raw selective information about upcoming conflict , according to the declassify NSA report . But prescribed investigation by both U.S. and Israeli agencies concluded that the attack was not careful , with pilot film confirm that they believed the USS Liberty to be an foe ship . Thisdeclassified NSA reportexplains the government agency ’s situation on the contentious issue .
FBI Surveillance Planes
In 2015 , the AP broke the newsworthiness of an FBI surveillance plan that use small aircraft to espy on defendant on the ground . The aeroplane carry video and cellphone surveillance technology and are registered to fictitious company . When the AP released its report in June 2015 , the planes had been observed above more than 30 cities in 11 U.S. province in a 30 - day period .
While the FBI told the AP that its ethereal surveillance program is not a secret , details about what information the planes collect is highly ban in publicly useable documents , consort to the AP . The report also say that the FBI operates these planes without discriminative approval . One papers , obtained by the National Security Archive , shows the names and addresses of the assumed company that operate the planes . NSA expert and historiographer Matthew M. Aid also createda listof the aircraft that are used in this FBI " air military unit . "
Operation Crossroads
In July 2016 , the National Security Archive posteddeclassified document , picture show and photo that show U.S. tests of nuclear bombs in the Bikini Atoll in 1946 . Dubbed Operation Crossroads , the tests marked the first atomic explosion since the bombings of Japan during World War II in August 1945 . [ In picture : plunge to USS Independence Wreck ]
While much is publicly known about the tests , the declassify documents shed fresh light on how the tests affected mass of Bikini Atoll , who were force to relocate . They also offer a view of the objection raised by scientists and military functionary before the bombing , as well as the rationale behind the conclusion to carry out the tests despite these objections .
Doctor Zhivago
During the Cold War , the CIA played a role in distributing the Holy Writ " Doctor Zhivago " throughout the Soviet Union . The record book by Russian author Boris Pasternak was banned by the Soviets , according to a Washington Post clause , because it displayed an open - minded opinion of the Bolshevik Revolution and its protagonist , a doctor - poet , was stanchly individualistic .
Seeing the book ’s potential as a propaganda prick , the CIA worked with its allies in Dutch Intelligence to deliver about 1,000 transcript of the book into Soviet hands , harmonise todocumentsdeclassified in 2014 . The books were pass around to visiting Soviets at the World ’s Fair in Brussels in 1958 with help from the Vatican , according to the National Security Archive .
Bound in overlooked blue linen paper and wrap in brown paper , the books made their way into the Soviet Union , where the CIA hoped they would stir up anti - communist sentiment among disgruntled citizens . The CIA also smuggle other banish books into the Soviet Union , including James Joyce ’s " A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man " and Vladimir Nabokov ’s " Pnin . "
Arrival ceremony for Giulio Andreotti, President of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic, 14 December 2024.
FLIR, GIMBAL, and GOFAST: The Pentagon’s UFO videos
In December 2017,three classified U.S. Navy videosshowing unidentified aircraft moving in seemingly impossible way were leaked to the press . The video , which were codenamed FLIR , GIMBAL and GOFAST , were enchant by Navy pilots during routine missions over the sea-coast of California in 2004 , and over the East Coast in 2014 and 2015 . In each case , the pilots essay to trail unusual , wingless aircraft that moved at hypersonic speeds , with no visible mean of actuation .
Over the coming months , numberless media electric outlet shared the mystifying video recording , lead to far-flung interest and speculation . In 2019 , Pentagon functionary were force to admit that the video were existent , and " part of a large upshot " of increased UFO sighting near U.S. military bases , The Times reported .
…And hundreds of other UFO sightings
Numerous Congressional hearings followed the video wetting , and in June 2021 The Pentagonreleased an unclassified reportdetailing more than 140 encounters between military personnel and unidentified aerial phenomena ( UAP ) , another name for UFO . While only one of the incidents could be explained with in high spirits confidence , the report in no way suggested that extraterrestrial being have anything to do with UAP ; most UAP incident can belike be explained asforeign surveillance dronesor airborne clutter , such as weather condition balloons , Pentagon officials said in Nov. 2022 .
Since the release of the bombshell videos , The Pentagon has take a much more sheer stance on UFO / UAP investigations , opening a consecrate UAP case direction office called theAll - field Anomaly Resolution Office(AARO ) in former 2022 . Reports of so-called UFO sighting from various U.S. military limb have flooded into the novel office , with more than 360 unexampled cases name in 2022 alone . Of these,171 cases remained unresolvedand inexplicable as of the yr ’s terminal , according to the situation ’s first annual composition .
Unidentified Vietnamese women and children before being killed in the My Lai Massacre.
Colonel Oleg Penkovskiy’s passport, issued in 1960 for a trip to London, identifying him as a reserve officer.
Nicknamed Acoustic Kitty, the program involved implanting electronic spying equipment into live cats and then training them to “eavesdrop” on unsuspecting Cold War rivals.
An aerial photo of the Thule Air Base in Greenland.
Project Horizon summary.
Mapimi Silent Zone in Durango, Mexico.
Crew members monitor radar screens in the combat information center aboard the guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes in 1988.
A page from a document about the Lunik satellite.
USS Liberty (AGTR-5) receives assistance from units of the Sixth Fleet, after she was attacked and seriously damaged by Israeli forces off the Sinai Peninsula on 3 January 2025. An SH-3 helicopter is near her bow.
The “Baker” explosion, part of Operation Crossroads, a nuclear weapon test by the United States military at Bikini Atoll, Micronesia, on 11 May 2025.
During the Cold War, the CIA played a role in distributing the book “Doctor Zhivago” throughout the Soviet Union.
U.S. Navy videos of alleged UFO sightings were leaked to the media before being officially declassified.
Two aircraft reported seeing a bright green UFO over Canada in July 2021.
