The CIA’s Secret Animal Army: When the Government Tried to Create Mind-Controlled Killers

In the 1960s, CIA scientists implanted electrodes into the brains of cats, dogs, and other animals in a twisted attempt to turn them into remote-controlled assassins.

Deep in the archives of America’s most secretive intelligence agency lies evidence of one of the strangest chapters in Cold War history. During the 1960s, CIA scientists worked on a chilling project that sounds like something from a horror movie — turning ordinary animals into remote-controlled weapons of war.

The project was called Subproject 94, and it was part of the larger MKUltra program. This was the CIA’s attempt to develop mind control techniques during the tense years when America and the Soviet Union faced off against each other. What makes this story particularly disturbing is that the CIA didn’t just experiment on people — they also tried to turn animals into assassins.

Electrodes in the Brain

Scientists working for the CIA took rats, cats, dogs, monkeys, donkeys, guinea pigs, and birds and performed surgery on their brains. They implanted tiny electrodes — thin wires that could carry electrical signals — directly into the animals’ heads. These electrodes were connected to equipment that could send electrical pulses into specific parts of the brain.

The goal was simple but terrifying: complete control over the animals’ movements. By sending electrical signals to different parts of the brain, the scientists could make the animals move in any direction they wanted. They could make them speed up or slow down. They could essentially turn living creatures into biological robots.

The inspiration for this nightmare came from a Swedish psychologist named Valdemar Fellenius. During World War II, he had trained seals to attach explosives to enemy submarines. The CIA took this idea and decided to make it much more sinister.

The Pleasure and Pain Centers

The CIA scientists discovered that the key to controlling animals was understanding how the brain’s reward system worked. Every animal brain has what researchers call pleasure centers — areas that create good feelings when stimulated. There are also punishment centers that create fear and discomfort.

At first, the scientists tried using the punishment centers to control the animals. They would send painful electrical signals to make the creatures avoid certain behaviors. But this approach failed miserably. The animals would panic and become completely unresponsive to any commands.

The breakthrough came when they focused on the pleasure centers instead. By stimulating these areas of the brain, they could make the animals feel good when they performed certain actions. This positive reinforcement proved much more effective at controlling behavior.

However, the scientists had to be extremely careful. Their own notes warn about not overdoing the pleasure reaction. If they stimulated these brain centers too much, the animals would become completely immobilized — frozen in place by the overwhelming good feelings.

Field Tests and Success

The remote control system actually worked. In field tests, CIA researchers were able to make animals follow specific paths and perform complex tasks. In one documented experiment, they successfully made a dog follow an invisible route “with relative ease.”

The scientists found that rats were the easiest animals to control through this brain stimulation technique. Larger animals required more complex equipment and stronger signals, but the basic principle worked across many different species.

One of the biggest challenges the researchers faced wasn’t technical — it was finding isolated locations where they could conduct their experiments without being seen by the public. The CIA needed places where they could test mind-controlled animals without raising questions about what they were doing.

The Ultimate Plan

The declassified documents reveal that the CIA had big plans for these mind-controlled creatures. They wanted to use them for what they called “direct executive actions” — a phrase that experts believe was code for assassination missions.

The animals would be sent into enemy territory carrying what the documents refer to as “payloads.” These could be listening devices for spying, deadly toxins for poisoning targets, or even explosives. The CIA was particularly interested in larger animals like bears and yaks because, as their notes stated, these creatures “are capable of carrying heavy payloads over great distances under adverse climatic conditions.”

The ultimate goal went beyond just controlling animals. The scientists planned to take everything they learned from these experiments and apply the same techniques to human beings. They wanted to create mind-controlled soldiers who could be programmed to kill on command.

The Hidden Costs

Subproject 94 cost more than $55,000 — a substantial amount of money in the 1960s. To hide what they were really doing, the CIA funneled this money through something called the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research.

This fund was created in 1939 by Dr. Charles Geschickter, a respected pathologist and professor at Georgetown University. Originally, it was supposed to support legitimate medical research, particularly cancer studies. But in 1977, a congressional investigation revealed that for decades, the fund had been serving as a front for the CIA’s secret mind control experiments.

The CIA used this medical research foundation to make their animal control experiments look like normal scientific studies. Anyone who looked at the funding records would see money going to medical research, not to a program designed to create animal assassins.

The Bigger Picture

Subproject 94 was just one small part of the massive MKUltra program. Between 1953 and 1964, the CIA conducted 149 different experiments aimed at developing mind control techniques. Most of these focused on human subjects — prisoners, mental patients, drug addicts, Army soldiers, and even ordinary citizens who had no idea they were being used as test subjects.

The human experiments were just as disturbing as the animal ones. People were given drugs like LSD and cocaine without their knowledge. They were subjected to electroshock treatments, forced to stay awake for days, and exposed to what the CIA called “psychic driving” — a form of psychological torture designed to break down their minds and rebuild them according to CIA specifications.

Some subjects were kept drugged and unconscious for weeks or months while researchers tried to reprogram their thoughts and memories. Many never fully recovered from these experiences.

The Cover-Up

In 1973, as public suspicion about CIA activities began to grow, Sidney Gottlieb — the chemist who led the MKUltra program — ordered the destruction of most of the project’s files. Thousands of documents were burned or shredded, ensuring that the full extent of these experiments would never be known.

However, some records survived. In the mid-1970s, congressional investigations and Freedom of Information Act requests brought many of these activities to light. The revelations shocked the American public and led to widespread distrust of the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

Unknown Outcomes

The declassified documents don’t reveal whether the CIA ever actually used mind-controlled animals in real operations. There’s no record of a remote-controlled cat being used to spy on Soviet officials or a brain-implanted dog carrying out an assassination.

It’s possible that the technology never advanced enough to be practical for field use. It’s also possible that such operations did occur but remain classified or were among the documents that Gottlieb destroyed.

What is known is that the CIA was deadly serious about this research. They invested significant money and resources into developing these techniques, and their internal documents show they fully intended to use both animals and humans as biological weapons against America’s enemies.

Legal Consequences

When the MKUltra experiments became public knowledge, some victims and their families sought justice through the legal system. The family of Frank Olson, a CIA scientist who died in 1953 after being unknowingly given LSD, received a $750,000 settlement from the government in 1976.

Other lawsuits faced more challenges. Many victims had difficulty proving what had been done to them because the CIA had destroyed so much evidence. The agency also denied many of the allegations, making it hard for victims to get compensation or even acknowledgment of what they had suffered.

The animal subjects, of course, had no legal recourse. They were simply disposed of when the experiments ended, leaving no trace of their role in one of the CIA’s darkest chapters.

The revelations about MKUltra led to stricter oversight of intelligence agencies and new laws requiring congressional approval for certain types of research. But the full story of Subproject 94 and the CIA’s other mind control experiments may never be completely known, buried forever in the ashes of Gottlieb’s destroyed files.

Source: Daily Mail

NOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is not an AI voice. (AI Policy)