In all the documentaries I have watched on the Cold War, I have been intrigued by these strange operations and projects various governments would approve. Recently, however, I realized that there were some Cold War projects that took place in secret, and when I started reading about them in depth, I was fully flabbergasted. I cannot even imagine how it must have felt when the public first found out about them. If you are not aware, then allow me to shed some light on these Cold War operations.
Here are 11 Cold War operations and projects that will absolutely change the way you look at history:
Disclaimer: The following content has mentions of war, death, drugs, sensitive historical events, and other sensitive subjects. Reader discretion is advised.
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1. The Stargate Project was a secret United States army unit that was established in 1977. Located in Fort Meade, Maryland, it was led by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). The purpose of this project was to investigate the potential for psychic phenomena in military and domestic intelligence applications. The unit comprised of 15-20 individuals, and was created by the CIA as a response to reports of the Soviets researching parapsychology and using remote viewing in order to "sense unknown information about places or events." The physicists, Russell Targ and Harold E. Puthoff, began testing psychics for SRI in 1972. One of the psychics included Uri Geller, who would later go on to become an international celebrity.
One of the project's successes was helmed by Rosemary Smith, a young administrative assistant, who found the location of a lost Soviet spy plane in 1976. In 1995, the program was transferred from the DIA to the CIA, and the CIA commissioned a report that stated that remote viewing had not been proven to work through a psychic mechanism. And so, the CIA canceled and declassified the program.
2.Project Gabriel and Project SUNSHINE, which began in 1953, studied the impact of radioactive material on human skeletons, especially those of infants. The purpose was to examine the long-term effects of nuclear radiation on the biosphere in the case of repeated nuclear detonations. The conclusion of Project Gabriel—which examined the impact of nuclear fallout—was that the radioactive isotope Strontium-90 posed the most serious threat to human health. This report pushed scientists to examine how Sr-90 would disperse globally, and the process of doing so would involve measuring its concentration in the tissues and bones of the dead. However, this study drew a lot of criticism, as the samples of the bones were used without permission from the families.
Dr. Willard Libby had said in 1955 that there was insufficient data regarding the effects of the fallout due to a lack of human samples, especially samples from children. There were over 1,500 samples that were gathered, out of which only 500 were analyzed. Most of the sample cadavers were babies and young children from Australia to Europe, and most were used without their parents' consent or knowledge. According to an investigation by a British newspaper, British scientists had obtained children's bodies from various hospitals and had shipped their body parts to the U.S. Project SUNSHINE lasted from 1949 to 1961.
3.Project Iceworm was a top-secret U.S. Army program during the tense years of the Cold War. This new military installation site was called "Camp Century." This project was known in the public as a nuclear-powered Arctic research center, but in reality, the purpose of this project was to build and maintain a network of tunnels and missile silos underneath the icy surface of Greenland. During the Cold War, the tension between the nuclear powers of the U.S. and the Soviet Union grew to a point where leaders of both countries were trying to outfox the other. Officials in the Pentagon thought that the idea of sending as many as 600 nuclear-tipped "Iceman" missiles to Greenland and keep them underneath the snow would keep the Soviet Union on their toes.
These tunnels, where the missiles would remain, stretched across roughly 52,000 square miles of Northern Greenland. From 1959 to 1961, a team of military engineers and technicians dug into the compacted snow and ice, ultimately carving out an underground city that had sleeping quarters, offices, laundry rooms, a barber shop, and warm showers for around 200 soldiers. This entire operation went unknown until a Danish Parliament investigation published documents about Project Iceworm in 1997. People might not have known the real reason behind this facility, but they did know of Camp Century as television crews and journalists visited the camp, curious about daily life in this freezing place. However, Project Iceworm was unsuccessful, as the frozen walls of snow underground kept moving and squeezing the tracks that carried the missile trains.
And problems with the nuclear reactor forced the operation to remove it in 1964, and by the mid-1960s, the Army had abandoned Camp Century altogether. What also could have led to this mission's failure is that Danish officials had a policy forbidding nuclear weapons on Danish soil.
Another worrying fact about Camp Century is that in 2016, scientists reported that the rapid warming and melting of the Greenland ice sheets could lead to the exposure of radioactive, toxic and human waste remains to the main streams that lead to the ocean—which would cause contamination and subsequent serious health and biological impact.
Keystone / Getty Images4. The Edgewood Arsenal human experiments were a classified human subject research conducted by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps at the Edgewood Arsenal facility in Maryland from 1955 to 1975. The purpose of these studies was to evaluate the impact of low-dose chemical warfare agents on military personnel, as well as to test protective clothing. After World War II, U.S. military researchers found the formula for three nerve gases that were developed by the Nazis. In 1948, the U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center began conducting research on these nerve gases, which were then tested on human subjects. The U.S. military had heard rumors that the Soviet Union was experimenting with chemical warfare, and hence, wanted to get ahead of them with these experiments.
The experiments involved using at least 254 chemical substances, but the researchers mostly focused on LSD, THC, derivatives, and benzodiazepines.
Denver Post / Denver Post via Getty ImagesAround 7,000 U.S. military personnel and 1,000 civilians were tested with these chemicals. This entire research study was spearheaded by Dr. James Ketchum, an army psychiatrist. He was a passionate believer in nonlethal chemical warfare and joined this program to see its impact. During his tenure at Edgewood, 5,000 soldiers were tested for drugs, and no one had died or been seriously injured. He had recorded in his memoir that while on low doses of the drugs, some of the soldiers would smash furniture or start imagining they were running from hordes of rats or killers. While the findings on how LSD impacted people were intriguing at the time, the entire project was shut down in the 1970s as it was concluded that using chemical agents to incapacitate enemy forces was impractical.
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5.Operation Paperclip was a secret U.S. intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment. In 1945, when the Allied forces were closing in on Nazi Germany, officials started to make plans for what the post-war world would look like. This plan included securing some of Germany's best scientific minds to support American technological advancement. After hearing reports of fearsome and fatal German weapons like the V-1 cruise missile and V-2 rockets, the U.S. worried that France or the Soviet Union would poach the best German scientists, especially as the Cold War intensified. Thus, the U.S. kept the German scientists in America. Operation Paperclip was overseen by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency.
The purpose was to harness the technological expertise of these German scientists and engineers to develop America's aeronautics, military, and space programs. Most of the 1,500 scientists from Germany and Austria became citizens of the U.S.
Most of the scientists were Nazi party members or belonged to prohibited Nazi organizations like the SS. The U.S. officials used a list of 15,000 scientists curated by German engineer Werner Osenberg to recruit the scientists they wanted.
Donaldson Collection / Getty ImagesWhile this operation was highly controversial due to the scientists’ Nazi affiliations, these scientists still played a role in America’s space race. Scientist Wernher von Braun, who was an officer in the SS, had created the V-2 rocket. His team developed rockets and missiles for the American military in Fort Bliss, Texas, before being transferred to NASA in 1960. Other ex-Nazis involved in the space program included Kurt Debus, another former SS member, who became the first director of the Kennedy Space Center. Hubertus Strughold pioneered research related to space medicine but was scrutinized for his role in conducting medical experiments on concentration camp victims during the war, after his death.
This operation rewarded hundreds of devout Nazis with U.S. citizenship, jobs, and public acclaim. This controversial move by the government raised concerns among experts and scientists, questioning the program and national security.
Donaldson Collection / Contributor via Gett Images6. The Acoustic Kitty project was a CIA operation launched in the 1960s to use cats to spy on the Kremlin and Soviet embassies. The project was developed by the Directorate of Science and Technology. A surgeon implanted a microphone in the cat’s ear and a radio transmitter at the base of its skull. An antenna was also inserted into the cat’s fur. CIA operatives hoped they could train the cats to sit near foreign officials and secretly transmit private conversations back to CIA agents. Victor Marchetti, a former CIA officer, stated that the project cost about $20 million. However, the first mission itself led to the project’s cancellation. The cat’s first mission was to eavesdrop on two men in a park outside the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. The cat was released nearby but was almost immediately hit and allegedly killed by a taxi.
Others said that the project was abandoned due to difficulties around training cats. The project was considered a failure, and was cancelled in 1967.
Janet Fries / Getty Images7.Project Artichoke (earlier known as Project Bluebird) was developed by the CIA to research methods of interrogation. This project would eventually lead to the infamous Project MKUltra, which began in 1953. Project Artichoke was a mind control program that gathered information in collaboration with the intelligence divisions of the army, navy, air force, and FBI. In 1950, CIA Director Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter outlined the project’s goals, which included plans for interrogation teams to use polygraphs, drugs, and hypnotism. There were also mentions of devices like the “hypospray” or “tear gas pencil” being used by interrogation teams. The project carried out both domestic and overseas experiments using LSD, hypnosis, and total isolation as forms of physiological harassment during special interrogations conducted on human subjects.
According to CIA records, an interrogation team was composed of three people: a doctor (psychiatrist), a hypnotist, and a technician.
The first experiments were conducted on North Korean prisoners of war. In 1952, unknowing CIA agents were secretly drugged to determine the effects of the drug on unsuspecting individuals. One record even states that an agent was kept on LSD for 77 days.
The overseas experiments took place in locations throughout Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, and the Philippines.
Archive Photos / Gtty Images8. Soviet Russia's Dead Hand, also known as Perimeter, is a Cold War-era automatic or semi-automatic nuclear weapons control system constructed by the Soviet Union. The system was designed as an automatic Soviet response to an American nuclear strike. It could initiate the launch of Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles by sending a pre-entered, highest-authority order from the General Staff of the Armed Forces and Strategic Missile Force command to command posts and individual silos if a nuclear strike were detected by seismic, light, and pressure sensors. It is essentially a functioning doomsday device that remains in the system and is reportedly still functional. By most accounts, the system is said to remain switched off and only activated during times of crisis; however, as of 2009, it was reported to be fully operational.
This device was a closely guarded secret, but as the USSR fell, word of this device leaked. The Russian government will not discuss this device; American officials are not entirely aware of it.
This device came online in 1985, after the most tense and dangerous years of the Cold War. It was built as the USSR's biggest show of nuclear power.
Laski Diffusion / Getty Images9.Project West Ford was a project by the Air Force and Department of Defense to ultimately protect the nation's long-range communications in the event of an attack by the Soviet Union. During the late 1950s, long-range communications relied on undersea cables or over-the-horizon radios. They were strong but not invulnerable; should there have been an attack, the U.S. would only have been able to rely on radio broadcasts to communicate. However, the U.S. military had identified another problem: the ionosphere—the layer of the atmosphere that makes long-range radio broadcasts possible—is routinely disrupted by solar storms. To fix this problem and to secure the long-range communications of the U.S., a potential solution was discovered.
Originally known as Project Needles, Walter E. Morrow suggested that if Earth possessed a permanent radio reflector in the form of an orbiting ring of copper threads, America’s long-range communications could be protected from solar storms and kept out of reach of the Soviet Union. These copper antennas would boost long-range radio broadcasts without depending on the ionosphere. As the project developed, radio astronomers raised alarms that the ring of metal could hinder their ability to observe the stars, while concerns about space junk increased. In 1961, the White House ensured that the West Ford needles would be placed in low orbit and that the wires would re-enter Earth’s atmosphere within two years. On October 21, 1961, NASA launched the first batch of West Ford dipoles into space; however, the first payload failed to deploy from the spacecraft. The second launch in 1963 was successful, as the cargo dispersed along the orbit.
While the fate of these needles remains uncertain, most believe that the needles from both the failed and successful launches re-entered the atmosphere and are now likely buried beneath the snow at the poles.
Gerald G Gantar / Getty Images/iStockphoto10.The Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar was a VTOL (vertical and/or short takeoff and landing) aircraft developed by Avro Canada. It was part of a secret U.S. military project carried out during the early years of the Cold War. The aircraft was designed to develop a supersonic vertical takeoff and landing fighter-bomber jet, giving it the appearance of a “flying saucer.” The aircraft used exhaust from turbojet engines to produce thrust. This thrust was directed downward, and the “turborotor” created a cushion of air on which the aircraft could float at low altitude. The Canadian government provided the initial funding in 1952; however, it later dropped the project as it became too expensive. In 1958, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force took over the project.
The army wanted to use this aircraft to transport troops and, more specifically, to hover below enemy radar before accelerating to supersonic speeds.
The designers believed they could make the aircraft capable of fulfilling both roles, but the requirements differed too greatly. Further tests with models revealed that the Avrocar became unstable just a few feet off the ground and was incapable of reaching supersonic speeds. After the second prototype also failed, and the Avrocar could only reach a maximum speed of 35 mph, the project was finally canceled in December 1961.
Smith Collection/Gado / Getty Images11.Project Azorian was a CIA project to recover the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 from the floor of the Pacific Ocean in 1974. In March 1968, the K-129 had succumbed to a probable snorkel system failure that rapidly flooded the boat, causing the submarine to sink. The U.S. Navy located the wreck in August 1968, and after months of debate, the White House gave the CIA the green light to raise it. In 1971, construction of the Hughes Glomar Explorer, a one-of-a-kind ship, began. To the public, the ship was intended to be used by Howard Hughes to mine manganese nodules from the ocean floor, but of course, its real purpose was much different. CIA engineers determined that the only way to raise the wreck was by using a large mechanical claw to grasp the hull of the submarine and lift it.
On 4 July 1974, the ship arrived on-site, and operations began, continuing for more than two months. While the operation was conducted under total secrecy, nearby Soviet ships monitored the mission. During this time, the crew encountered many problems, but they quickly overcame them.
However, while lifting the submarine, it broke apart, and a portion of it plunged back to the ocean floor. The Glomar crew successfully hauled up the section that had remained in their capture vehicle. They found the bodies of six Soviet submariners, who were given a formal military burial at sea. After this recovery, planning to retrieve the lost portion began immediately. However, after the secret plan came to light and journalists made the connection between Howard Hughes, the CIA, and the recovery, the cover was blown. The Soviets assigned a ship to monitor and guard the recovery site, and afterward, the White House canceled further recovery operations.
Bettmann / Bettmann ArchiveI'm at a loss for words after reading these. The fact that Russia still has the Dead Hand device is quite terrifying. If there are any other Cold War secret operations or projects we missed, let us know in the comments!
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