Sometime in the mid-1960s, a van pulls up on a Washington street. A gray cat jumps out and heads for the Soviet diplomatic mission across the street. Inside the van are people wearing headphones, and the cat is equipped with a microphone in its ear canal, a radio transmitter under its skin, and an antenna woven into the fur on its back all the way to its tail.

Operation Acoustic Kitten is completely real and meticulously documented—declassified CIA archives confirm it with a bureaucratic seriousness that makes the story sound even more ridiculous. For this is not just a story about a pet, but a testament to an era in which the most powerful intelligence service in the world believed that everything could be subdued. Everything except cats, as it turns out.

The logic of intelligence is not devoid of reason—on paper. At the height of the Cold War, listening devices were placed everywhere: embassies, parks, garden benches, where Soviet diplomats whispered interesting things about Washington. Still, it was impossible to put “beetles” in all public spaces, and the technology was not yet advanced enough to be able to pick up voices in the street noise. But there was something walking past the benches that no one ever looked at with suspicion: cats.

Nobody was startled by a cat, nobody searched a cat, a cat could come within inches of the most confidential conversation and, in the worst case, could attract attention in order to be petted. There was only one thing left: to turn the cat into a carrier of equipment.

In the 1960s, when the CIA believed that science could do anything, this sounded like an engineering task, not a bad joke. The era is such: the same decade gave birth to attempts at mind control, plans to poison Castro’s beard, and dozens of other projects where the line between intelligence and science fiction was a matter of budget.

A surgical intervention followed, later described by a veteran of the administration in words that need no comment: “They cut the cat open and turned it into a monstrous apparatus.” The microphone, the miniature transmitter, and the thin wire antenna were implanted into the body of the unfortunate animal.

The battery was the most serious compromise: a large one could not be inserted, so the transmission would be short – every minute of eavesdropping was won with careful calculations of grams and millimeters. The animal recovered, moved naturally, looked like any cat in the world. Technically, the project was a success, and the team had reason to be proud. The shortcomings of the operation, as it turned out, were far from mechanical.

Anyone who has ever had a cat can guess the main problem: it does not work for anyone. The training is at odds with basic feline nature—the agent will head in the right direction if he has decided to go that way, will be distracted by birds, and if he gets hungry, will abandon the task and head for the nearest food source. The reports note these setbacks with clerical helplessness, and the team combats them with additional procedures and training.

The result is predictable to anyone outside CIA headquarters: you can implant a transmitter in a cat, but you can’t implant obedience. The irony is that the very quality for which the cat was chosen—the independence that makes it invisible and beyond suspicion—is the quality that makes it unfit for service. The perfect cover is its absolute unmanageability: two sides of the same feline trait that the bureaucracy misjudges.

The story ends in two versions. The first — the popular one — is told by a former CIA employee: during the first real field test, the cat was released from the van in front of the Soviet facility, took a few steps down the street, and was hit by a taxi. Millions of taxpayer dollars and the life of a kitten were wiped out by the tires of a yellow car in a matter of moments.

The second version, advocated by a former head of the CIA’s technical service, is more boring and probably true: there was no taxi, the project was simply closed because the cat was never successfully trained, the equipment was removed, and the agent “lived happily ever after.”

How exactly the situation developed on that street in Washington remains controversial. However, the end of the project is officially documented. The papers were declassified in 2001, including the 1967 final note—with many corrections, but readable enough to make clear the authorities’ cardinal conclusion: trained cats “are not suitable for practical application for our highly specialized needs.”

Last but not least, the report’s authors congratulate the team whose efforts to solve the problem “do credit to their energy and imagination.” Translated from the language of bureaucracy: we spent millions to discover something that every child with a cat at home knows—but we discovered it with enthusiasm.

The “acoustic kitten” is unfortunately not a solitary experiment, but part of a whole menagerie. The CIA is filming with miniature cameras tied to pigeons, builds a mechanical dragonfly with an engine — a precursor to today’s drones, which fails at the first crosswind — and trained ravens land on window sills to place listening devices under the windows of interesting people. Some of these ideas later really changed intelligence, but without the participation of animals: technologies are optimized to such an extent that they no longer need a living carrier. The story still has a favorable ending — the absurd projects of the 60s are the tax that one era pays to give birth to the next. And cats remain what they have always been: agents solely of their own interests.

Illustrative photo: pexels-alif-salman-2158219333-35454054

The Iron Pillar in Delhi

Every metal has its own shelf life. Iron, left exposed to the open air, quickly deteriorates: a few weeks of air and moisture are enough to cover it with rust. That is why the pillar in the courtyard of the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in Delhi looks like a mistake in the laws of nature.

The height of the pillar, from the top to the bottom of its base, is 7.21 m (23 ft 8 in), 1.12 m (3 ft 8 in) of which is below ground. Its bell pattern capital is 306 mm (12 in). It is estimated to weigh more than six tonnes (13,000 lb).

It was forged more than sixteen hundred years ago, when the Western Roman Empire still existed. Since then, it has stood under the monsoons of northern India, and its surface has remained almost unscathed. For centuries, no one could explain why. The answer, when it finally comes, turns out to be hidden in the metal itself – and in a skill that the world has forgotten.

The Banner of Vishnu

The pillar rises to a height of just over seven meters, part of it underground, and weighs nearly six tons. It is made of wrought iron, and at its top is an ornament that may once have carried the image of Garuda, the mythical bird on which the god Vishnu rides in Hindu tradition.

Who created it is told by the inscriptions on its surface. About two meters from the base, six lines of Sanskrit, composed in classical verse meter, are engraved in the iron.

The message is a eulogy of a ruler named Chandra, lists his victories and reports that he erected the column as a dhvaja — a banner, a standard-post — in honor of Vishnu, on a hill called Vishnupada, “the hill with the footstep of Vishnu.” One of the lines adds that the king has now “left this land”: the words were carved after his death.

Chandra’s identity has long remained controversial. The Indian scholar Bhau Daji was the first to decipher the name in the nineteenth century, and the British historian John Faithfull Fleet has linked the inscription to the Gupta dynasty. Today, historians believe that this is Chandragupta II Vikramaditya, who ruled from approximately 375 to 415 AD – the ruler under whom the Gupta Empire reached its peak.

The style of writing on the pillar points to this era, and the inscription testifies that the king was a devoted worshiper of Vishnu – which according to other texts Chandragupta II was. His gold coins are minted with the short name “Chandra”, just like the one on the pillar.

The secret that science cannot solve

The pillar is shrouded in mystery, giving rise to many speculations and legends – from a mysterious, long-lost craft to openly supernatural interpretations. The most famous of these is recorded in the medieval epic “Prithviraj Raso” by the poet Chand Bardai: the pillar was driven into the head of Vasuki, the king of snakes, and the rule of the Tomara clan would last as long as it stood still.

Suspicious, the ruler Anangpal ordered it to be dug up, and the base came out bloodied. Although it was put back into the ground, the pillar was now standing loose: “dhili” in the local language. According to tradition, it is from this word that the very name of the city comes – Dhilika, later Delhi.

In the early twentieth century, the British metallurgist Robert Hadfield subjected the metal to modern analysis for the first time. The results only deepened the mystery: the iron turned out to be surprisingly pure for its time, with no obvious impurities to explain its unusual resistance. If the analysis showed ordinary iron, why did it refuse to rust?

The column became yet another ancient mystery to modern science. And the mystery remained unsolved for almost a century.

One percent phosphorus

In 2000, R. Balasubramaniam published a detailed analysis of the thin layer on the surface of the pillar in the journal Corrosion Science — and showed that the explanation lies there.

The iron of the column contains an unusually high amount of phosphorus: according to his measurements, about one percent, compared to barely hundredths of a percent in modern steel. Today, this element is purposefully removed during production because it makes the metal brittle.

However, the ancient blacksmiths did not have this knowledge — their methods of treating iron with charcoal and the lack of modern additives that extract phosphorus are the reason for the atypical chemical composition.

It is this “flaw” that becomes armor. Balasubramaniam found that a passive film forms on the surface — a thin protective layer that blocks the path of oxygen and moisture to the metal below. At its core is a crystalline compound, ferric hydrogen phosphate hydrate, the formation of which is aided by the alternating rainy and dry periods in Delhi’s climate.

Century after century, the coating thickens. If the surface is scratched, the film repairs itself over the scratch.

Climate plays an important role: Delhi’s air humidity remains below seventy percent for most of the year—an environment that does not foster corrosion, but is moist enough during the rainy seasons to support the growth of the protective layer.

That is why Balasubramaniam’s clarification is important: the column is not stainless in the literal sense, but remarkably resistant to rust. The difference is subtle, the devil, as they say, is in the details — but it is precisely on such subtleties that science is built.

Skill before theory

The most interesting conclusion, however, is not chemical. The Gupta blacksmiths understood nothing of phosphate films — humanity arrived at these concepts fifteen hundred years later. They simply mastered their craft to the point where their work gave birth to metal that outlasted empires. Empirical skill outstripped theory by fifteen centuries.

However, the story of the pillar is not a closed page. Balasubramaniam warns that the fragile equilibrium that preserved the column for so long depends on the environment — and the increasing air pollution in Delhi may disrupt the balance that the ancient craftsmen unwittingly achieved.

Illustrative photo; pexels-simphotography-16063809

Will the lessons of totalitarianism be forgotten!?

On July 21, the budget committee took the first step towards closing the Commission for Disclosure of Documents and for Declaration of Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to the State Security and Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian People’s Army (KRDOPBGDSRSBNA) with arguments for savings. Despite the calls of dozens of scientists, journalists, lawyers, public figures and civil society organizations, the budget committee approved the texts in the State Budget Act for 2026 on second reading. These texts assign Deputy Prime Minister Ivo Hristov by September 15 to prepare legislative changes to close the Commission on Dossiers and transfer its functions to the State Archives Agency.

Finance Minister Galab Donev pointed out how this act will achieve savings of 6 million euros.

For almost a month, writers, university professors, artists, architects, priests wrote letters, held press conferences, and journalists published categorical resistance.

The KRDOPBGDSRSBNA itself has declared itself against the closure of the institution, calling for a broad public debate and consensus.

A significant number of checks on affiliation have not yet been completed – checks are also pending on the affiliation of individuals, members of management and control bodies of non-profit legal entities, as well as the founders of non-profit legal entities, owners and managers of advertising agencies, owners of public relations agencies and companies, participants in the privatization carried out by the Privatization Agency, etc.

The leadership of the Commission on Dossiers has sent its position to the Ministry of Finance. It is provoked by the public information that the closure of the Commission is planned in the new state budget.

“…we express our disagreement with §8 of the Draft Law of the State Budget of the Republic of Bulgaria for 2026, which provides that by September 15, 2026, the Deputy Chairman under Art. 5, para. 1, item 4 of the Organizational Regulations of the Council of Ministers shall develop a proposal for regulatory changes to close the KRDOBPGBDSRSBNA and transfer its activities to the State Agency “Archives””, the position states. The leadership of the Commission also presents its own arguments against this extreme measure.

The Commission on Files insists that “…the issue of the existence of the institution in its current form or its possible restructuring should be subject to broad public discussion and the final decision should be reached by consensus, as was the case with the Law on Access and Disclosure of Documents and on Declaration of Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to the State Security and Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian People’s Army in 2006.”

Here is the full text of the document:

TO

MRS. TANYA GEORGIEVA

GENERAL SECRETARY

OF THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE

DEAR MRS. GEORGIEVA,

In connection with the draft Decision of the Council of Ministers on the approval of the Draft Law on the State Budget of the Republic of Bulgaria for 2026 sent to us for coordination, we inform you that the Commission for Disclosure of Documents and for Declaration of Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to the State Security and Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian People’s Army (KRDOPBGDSRSBNA) has no comments regarding the draft decision and the proposed bill, in the part concerning the draft budget of KRDOPBGDSRSBNA for 2026, enshrined in Art. 28 of the bill.

At the same time, we express our disagreement with §8 of the Draft Law on the State Budget of the Republic of Bulgaria for 2026, which provides that by September 15, 2026, the Deputy Chairman under Art. 5, para. 1, item 4 of the Organizational Regulations of the Council of Ministers shall develop a proposal for regulatory changes to close the KRDOBPGSRSBNA and transfer its activities to the State Archives Agency. Some of our arguments are as follows:

The current Law on Access and Disclosure of Documents and on Declaration of Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to the State Security and Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian People’s Army, under which the Commission carries out its activities, is an expression of the consensus will of all parliamentaryly represented political parties in the 40th National Assembly to achieve, to the maximum extent, the opening of all documents and the disclosure of the affiliation of all persons who have held and hold public positions, as well as who have performed and are performing public activities within the meaning of this law. The law was also adopted in response to the recommendations in the Declaration of the Plenary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) of 8 July 1997, the recommendations in Resolution 1096(1996) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on measures to dismantle the legacy of the former communist totalitarian systems and those in Recommendation R/2000/13 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on a European policy on access to archives, adopted on 31 October 2000.

The collective state body established by the law was assigned three main tasks:

– to ensure the procedure for access to the documents of the State Security and the Security Service of the Bulgarian People’s Army as regulated by the law;

– to carry out a mandatory check for affiliation of the circle of persons under Art. 26, para. 1 of the law;

– to build a centralized archive of the documents of the State Security and the Security Service of the Bulgarian People’s Army, in which all documents of the bodies under Art. 1, for the period from September 9, 1944 to July 16, 1991, would be collected and stored.

Since the establishment of the Commission in April 2007, all three main tasks have been consistently and unwaveringly performed with full awareness of the importance of the archive of the State Security and the Security Service of the Bulgarian People’s Army in order to learn about this historical period and provide the public with all the information contained in the documents. The process of collecting the archival documents lasted for almost 15 years, and to this day has not been fully completed. A Centralized Archive of Documents under Art. 1 of the Act has been established, which the Commission’s foreign partners from related organizations define as one of the most modern in Europe. The Commission is part of the European Network of Official Bodies Responsible for the Storage of Secret Police Files in the Countries of the Former Socialist Camp. As of today, the organization unites institutions from eight member states – Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia – as well as five associated countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia and Ukraine.

In parallel, mandatory background checks provide the public with information about individuals who were part of the political and public life in the country and who belonged to the State Security and the Bulgarian People’s Army, thereby providing an opportunity for every Bulgarian citizen to be informed. Citizens and researchers are provided with the opportunity to access this archive – to be able to read about themselves, their relatives, the repressions, to examine the documents and, based on them, to publish their analyses.

Over the years, the activity of checking affiliation has been expanded several times by the legislator, with additional groups of persons included in its scope, specifically for the purpose of monitoring the existence of a connection between the communist past and modern socio-political life. The latest changes, effective from 22.10.2024, provide that the verification of affiliation should also cover managers, procurators, members of a management or control body, beneficial owners and persons who directly or indirectly exercise control, in accordance with the Anti-Money Laundering Measures Act, of companies with which contracts have been concluded under the Public Procurement Act worth over 500,000 leva – for each calendar year. That is, the public should understand what part of the persons who have concluded contracts as a result of a public procurement are connected to the former State Security Service, respectively. and to the spending of public funds.

At present, a significant number of verifications of affiliation have not yet been completed. The process of checking the affiliation of individuals, members of management and control bodies of non-profit legal entities, as well as the founders of non-profit legal entities, owners and managers of advertising agencies, owners of public relations agencies and companies, participants in the privatization carried out by the Privatization Agency, etc. has not been completed.

In addition, the affiliation check is part of the reliability check under the Classified Information Protection Act, as well as part of the requirements for candidates for jurors in various courts in the country. In recent years, the affiliation check has been consistently included as a requirement in the various procedural rules for the election of bodies elected by the National Assembly.

Given that affiliation checks are currently being carried out for the described categories of persons, the question arises whether, if for an unlimited number of people in responsible positions in the administration, the judiciary, the media and business, the affiliation checks remain incomplete, is there not unequal treatment?

In this sense, would not the proposal to close the Commission thus made constitute a serious blow to the right of Bulgarian society to know the historical truth and would it not be perceived as a betrayal of the victims of the totalitarian regime, their heirs and all Bulgarian citizens who have the right to expect an objective disclosure of the facts of our country’s communist past?

We draw particular attention to the consequences that the closure of the Commission and its transfer to the State Agency “Archives” would have on the rights of citizens to access the documents under Art. 1 of the law, currently stored in the Centralized Archive of the Commission. According to the current legislation, the Commission is the only body that provides effective, specialized and relatively fast access to citizens, researchers, historians, the media, to the documents of the former repressive structures. In the event of the closure and transfer of the archive stored in the Commission to the State Agency “Archives”, access to these documents will be practically blocked for years to come.

The reasons for this are well known: the need for inventory, preparation of new inventories, harmonization with general archival rules, as well as the peculiarities of processing such a specialized and sensitive fund. Inevitably, such processes will lead to long-term delays or even to the de facto unavailability of documents for citizens. In this way, basic constitutional and legal rights to access information of public interest would be violated. This would represent a significant setback in the long-standing, continuous striving for democracy in our country, incompatible with European standards for transparency and dealing with the totalitarian legacy.

We would also like to emphasize the fact that in no country of the former socialist bloc has the process of disclosure and access to archival documents ended with the closure of the body and the cessation of its activities.

Therefore, we believe that the issue of the existence of the Commission in its current form or its possible restructuring should be subject to broad public discussion and the final decision should be reached by consensus, as was the case with the Law on Access and Disclosure of Documents and on Declaration of Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to the State Security and Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian People’s Army adopted in 2006.

The Commission is ready to provide additional information and to participate in an equal and constructive dialogue on its future activities.

PLAMEN TONCHEV, CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMISSION ON DISCLOSURE OF DOCUMENTS AND ON DECLARATION OF BELONGING OF BULGARIAN CITIZENS TO THE STATE SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE SERVICES OF THE BULGARIAN PEOPLE’S ARMY

Illustration: A reconstruction in its original form of the infamous wooden portal that welcomed the camp inmates with Maxim Gorky’s quote “Yes, a man sounds proud”. However, the inscription on the inside of the portal is different and reads: “If the enemy does not surrender, he will be destroyed” / Photo: Mediapool. The Belene concentration camp (Persin Island, Danube River) was established by a confidential decision of the Bulgarian Communist Party government with Prime Minister Georgi Dimitrov on April 27, 1949. In 1953, it was closed, following Moscow’s policy of temporarily reducing repression in the camps of the Gulag penal system in the USSR. After the outbreak of the Hungarian People’s Uprising in the fall of 1956, the communist authorities reopened Belene. In 1959, the camp was closed again, after the then Prime Minister Anton Yugov stated in an interview with a Western publication that there were no more camps in Bulgaria. At the end of 1984, the communist regime reopened Belene, where it isolated 517 Bulgarian citizens of Turkish origin, opponents of the so-called revival process. The last camp inmates were released in 1987.

Eleven air-conditioned cinemas and the same number of libraries in Rome are opening their doors free of charge to residents of the Italian capital who are facing an intense heat wave, municipal authorities announced, quoted by AFP.

Eleven cinemas and the same number of libraries in Rome are participating in this initiative, which runs from July 23 to August 4.

“Climate change, unfortunately, is a reality. It affects people’s lives, their health, their social relationships and their ability to carry out their daily activities,” Massimiliano Smerillo, Rome’s deputy mayor for culture, told the media.

“These places, which can be defined as climate shelters, will provide an opportunity for some residents to break the isolation caused by the inability to spend time outdoors,” he added.

Ten Italian films, including a recent adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet,” will be shown in the 11 cinemas, with two screenings each afternoon, subject to availability.

Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri welcomed the initiative, which will allow people to enjoy a film while finding relief from the heat.

Average temperatures in Rome have risen by 3 degrees Celsius since the 1980s, compared with around 2 degrees Celsius in other European capitals, according to a report by the Italian statistics institute (Istat) published in June.

Illustration: pexels-jonathanborba-13061431