This is the memory palace, I'm Nate de Mao.

In 1966, the United States government conscripted a kitty cat

to take down the Soviet Union.

There had been many cats before him.

Cats as guinea pigs and experiments by the CIA's Office

of Special Activities.

We don't know if they gave this specific cat a name,

so I will.

A column peanut.

The Office of Special Activities spent the 60s

mining the frontiers of science for any strategic

advantage in the Cold War.

They spent millions of taxpayer dollars entirely off the

books, inventing spy planes and satellites,

developing interrogation techniques that used sleep deprivation

and hypnosis and hallucinogens.

The Soviet Union had a compound in Washington DC.

Simply bugging it wasn't enough.

The Soviets just assumed their phones would be tapped.

They knew there were microphones in the light fixtures

behind the wallpaper or wherever.

They did the same to the Americans in Moscow,

...