US military history is replete with unusual experiments, resorting to ingenuity and unconventional methods to gain an edge.

Drugs, nukes and animal operatives: Project MK-Ultra, the CIA’s infamous human mind control project, wasn’t the only thing that was going on in the ‘60s. In that decade, writes Tom Vanderbilt for Smithsonian Magazine, “the U.S. government deployed nonhuman operatives–ravens, pigeons, even cats–to spy on Cold War adversaries. “ Unlike MK-Ultra, this project was never the subject of a Congressional hearing, but […]