We’re in St Petersburg at the height of the Cold
War, and a deeply embedded CIA Agent has just been rumbled. He runs as fast as he can as a pair of
Soviet soldiers wielding Kalashnikovs follow him, trying to get a bead.
If they catch him, he might end up filled with more bullets than
a firing range. But he’s got an ace up his sleeve - Something that nobody would expect.
The Agent runs around a sharp corner and flees into an alley, drawing on his adrenaline
stores to put more distance between himself and the soldiers. He weaves from narrow street
to narrow street, always staying just one step ahead of his pursuers.
Until they find him. He’s standing deathly still - perhaps luring
them in to strike? The soldiers don’t want to take the chance. One raises his weapon
and fires a shot through the agent’s leg. There’s no scream. No blood. Just a
strange hissing noise as the agent seems to deflate before their very eyes. Baffled
by what they’re seeing, they step forward, only to see that what they thought was their
target was actually a flimsy load of plastic spilling out of a pocket-sized box.
Is… That a blow-up doll!? We know you can’t get enough of the absurd,
exciting, and sometimes downright evil antics of the Central Intelligence Agency. For
the several decades since their humble beginnings as the Office of Strategic Services,
gathering intelligence behind enemy lines during the Second World War, the CIA has become a
monolithic force, conducting questionable activities across the world, with operations
ranging from controversial to outright illegal. While they might claim to only act within the
Constitution and laws of the United States, as well as adhering to international treaties,
things like legality, morality, and general human decency are considered to be entirely
optional for the CIA. From torturing detainees at off-the-books black sites, planning and attempting
assassinations, and backing paramilitary forces to topple governments that the US feels threatened
by, the CIA is no stranger to getting a whole host of human rights violations under their belts.
Don’t believe us? Well, at the risk of landing ourselves on an
Agency watchlist, here are just ten of the most insane covert CIA operations we were able to find.
Most of their secrets are buried from the public, so bear in mind: these are the things they’re
comfortable with people knowing about. Let’s start with one that’s practically
become an open secret: black sites. The public has known about the existence of these
secret CIA-run prisons for nearly two decades, ever since President George W. Bush acknowledged
them in a speech. But it’s almost a certainty that these sites existed for a good while before he
told us about them – most likely being established around 2001, shortly after 9/11, to capture
suspected terrorists. To call these ‘prisons’ is a misnomer since they weren’t just places
where people were detained… but also tortured. ‘Enhanced interrogation’ is the euphemistic
name for a program that the Bush administration approved following the September 11 attacks,
one that permitted operatives of the CIA to violate the Geneva Convention and torture the
suspects they detained at black sites. So, you must be thinking, ‘How could they get
away with something like that? Surely they’d never be allowed to do something like that in
America!’ Well, loving your optimism there, champ. But the CIA isn’t authorized to conduct
its operations on United States soil, so there’s your answer: that’s how they got away with it.
There were black sites confirmed to have existed in countries like Afghanistan, Lithuania,
Morocco, Romania, Thailand, and Poland, where the CIA was free to use objectionably
cruel methods of ‘enhanced interrogation.’ These included beating suspects, waterboarding,
threatening the families of those who had been detained, subjecting them to extended periods
of sleep deprivation, and even torment of a far more unpleasant, “private” nature.
On one black site, codenamed ‘Salt Pit’ or ‘Cobalt’ but known as the ‘Dark Prison’ by
those held there, prisoners were blasted with loud music while left in total darkness. In the
same location, one detainee died of hypothermia after being left naked and chained to a concrete
floor for days. And if you thought the torture was the worst of it, then brace yourself: not only
were a number of the detainees at these black sites completely innocent, but the CIA barely
received any actionable intelligence from all this. Most prisoners gave fabricated stories
just to make the torture stop for a moment, and a Senate committee even ended up ruling that
enhanced interrogation methods were ineffective. What’s darker: torturing innocent people at black
sites or working directly with Nazis? Tough call, right? But the boys at Langley aren’t
here to split hairs over, which is worse: they’re asking, ‘Why not both?’
By now, you’re probably familiar with Operation Paperclip, a US intelligence
program that relocated over a thousand former Nazi scientists and technicians
to the United States. After all, their knowledge would help develop technological
advancements for military and industrial purposes and even partly helped put mankind on
the Moon. All it took was looking the other way about what that scientific expertise
might have been used for during World War Two. But it may surprise you to learn that Operation
Paperclip wasn’t the only post-war operation that saw the CIA, or their precursor, the Office
of Strategic Services, turning to Nazis for help. The ominously codenamed Operation Bloodstone
involved the Agency tracking down Nazis and their collaborators living in hiding in the wake of the
Second World War – not to make them stand trial, but to enlist them as operatives. Yes,
that’s right, many of those who were hired as a part of Operation Bloodstone
had been former Nazi intelligence agents, many of whom were guilty of committing war crimes.
After all, the CIA indulges in violating human rights all the time. Naturally, they’d look to
hire operatives with relevant work experience. Proposed by the US State Department and approved
in 1948 by a committee consisting of consultants from the United States Army, Navy, and Air Force
– yes, someone approved this idea – Bloodstone’s purpose was to seek out any former Nazis living
in areas that were controlled or influenced by the Soviet Union. You see, right around the end of the
Second World War, the US started getting really paranoid about the spread of communism in other
countries. Lucky for the CIA, this meant they were ideologically aligned with Nazi agents who were
hiding out in countries within the Soviet Union, Latin America, and Canada and who also happened
to share the US’ intense dislike for communism. In the early stages of Operation Bloodstone, the
CIA was able to identify several anti-communist elements in countries both within and outside
of the Soviet Union’s orbit. They were deemed to be potentially valuable assets to the Agency
thanks to their ability to counter pro-Soviet propaganda. Through Bloodstone, the CIA sought
to provide these individuals with funding to make them a more coordinated international network.
The operation was expanded not long after approval, with the CIA then permitted to mobilize
these ‘friendly’ forces – pretty sure Nazis are notoriously unfriendly – into taking covert
actions within Soviet-controlled areas. These were said to include enacting psychological
warfare, sabotage, as well as the rescue of any airmen from the Allied forces held in Soviet
countries. Some of these Nazis turned CIA stooges were even permitted to capture targets of
value to the US… and assassinate others. Remember only a few minutes ago when we pointed
out that the CIA isn’t authorized to conduct its operations domestically within the USA?
That’s what we in the entertainment biz call foreshadowing because it turns out that nobody
thought to tell Tricky Dick not to allow the CIA to spy on US citizens. Well, it’s not like anyone
at the CIA really objected, even if it’s a direct violation of their own charter – oops! Let’s
talk about the very aptly named Operation CHAOS. During Richard Nixon’s run as President, there
was widespread disapproval of the Vietnam War among the American public, so much so that
over a quarter of a million people in the US alone were involved in anti-war demonstrations.
Nixon was not happy about that and quickly came to resent the anti-war movement, not only because
people objecting to the conflict helped lower the morale of the US troops fighting overseas but also
because he had suspicions that there might have been other forces behind it. Specifically…
wait for the dramatic organ: communists! Another bit of foreshadowing from earlier is that
by the late forties, the US was starting to make its fear of communism known and trying to stop
its spread in other countries covertly. Then, by the late sixties, paranoia towards communism
was fully in vogue. It was practically a national pastime. And so, suspecting that foreign
powers might be backing the anti-war movement in the United States, Nixon ordered the CIA to
investigate the possibility of communist support for the demonstrations against the Vietnam
War. As a result, Operation CHAOS was born, and the part of the CIA’s charter mandating that
they focus their counterintelligence efforts on overseas targets was conveniently ignored.
CIA agents were sent to infiltrate universities across America, targeting various civil rights
and anti-war groups, learning the culture and even the different slang used by the groups they
targeted. These agents gathered the names of more than three hundred thousand American citizens and
organizations that were linked to the movement, with more detailed files being produced on over
seven thousand people. Details like their place of birth, complete lists of their family members, and
their affiliations with different organizations were contained within 201 files. Again, this is
a healthy reminder that the CIA charter usually prevents them from doing this because of a
principle from the US Constitution entitling American citizens to a high degree of privacy.
Any links to foreign communist influence in the anti-war movement were found to be tenuous at
best. The CIA reported back to Nixon in 1969, telling him that they couldn’t see much in the way
of communist funding or training, nor did there seem to be any outside direction or control over
the civil unrest groups the Agency had targeted. It turns out people had their own reasons for
not supporting the Vietnam War that didn’t require the oh-so-terrifying lure of communism.
Many of those investigated by the CIA as part of CHAOS were students, and the then Director of
the Agency, Richard Helms, even acknowledged this in a cover letter to Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger. He pointed out that spying on American students wasn’t exactly in the
CIA’s purview, and “Should anyone learn of [Operation CHAOS’] existence, it would prove most
embarrassing for all concerned.” Again, oops. Jumping from one type of CHAOS to another,
let’s keep our focus on the Cold War era and some of the outright baffling espionage tactics
used by the CIA against their Russian rivals, the KGB. In the late seventies, CIA operatives
embedded within Moscow needed a way to keep nosy KGB counterspies off their tails, or at
least something to distract them long enough for these undercover CIA agents to slip away
unnoticed. Still, you’d think that even the CIA wouldn’t come up with an idea as baffling
as… well, using *ahem* an inflatable friend? Okay, while many retellings of this weird Russian
rubber doll ruse will describe the inflatables in question a certain way, they were intended
to be a lot closer to Otto the Autopilot from Airplane! They were referred to as the JIB, or
the jack in the box, and the principle for how they’d be deployed went something like this:
Say you’re a CIA operative with no qualms about spying on another country, and you’re
in Moscow and on your way to a secret meeting. Your contact within the Kremlin is about to
cough up some yummy intel on how terrifying and evil communism is. But what’s that in the
rearview mirror? Hmm, a suspicious unmarked car probably means some KGB agents have caught
on to what you’re up to. But don’t worry, stowed under your seat, you’ve got a secret
weapon, and it’s not a silenced handgun: it’s JIB! Usually kept contained in an inconspicuous
package in the car, once you’d created enough of a gap between you and your new KGB pals
on your tail, you’d pull up to a corner and quickly slip out before they noticed. By the time
they caught up to the car, you’d be long gone, but your inflatable fellow agent would have taken
your place in the car and given his last breath for liberty. You see, the JIBs were exactly what
you think: they were modified rubber dolls dressed up with a male likeness – since almost all CIA
agents were men during this decade. These dolls were then rigged to deploy by inflating out
of their container in order to act as a decoy, essentially using a primitive form of the
same technology that we now use for airbags. This wasn’t the only way the CIA intended to
use rubber to get one over on Russia either, as another plan they had involved air-dropping
shipments of US-brand… contraceptives into the USSR but with a demoralizing twist for Russian
troops. These extra large-sized sheaths would be incorrectly labeled as ‘medium.’ Talk about a
measuring contest. This plan never saw the light of day, but the JIBs certainly did, thanks in part
to the work of two Hollywood costume specialists enlisted to help out the CIA by the head of
their disguise department, Walter McIntosh. Les Smith and John Chambers loaned their expertise
to the Agency on more than one occasion. Famously, thanks to the 2012 hit Argo, Chambers had helped
create a fake sci-fi movie called Lord of Light to help the CIA rescue six Americans during the
Iranian Hostage Crisis. CIA agents pretended to be part of a production crew for this fake movie,
using a script and even concept art created by comic legend Jack Kirby to convince Iranian
officials, all so they could sneak US hostages out of the country. But that wouldn’t be the only
time the Central Intelligence Agency tried their hand at a bit of movie magic… However, their next
foray into filmmaking was a little more risqué. Unknowingly borrowing plot beats from the
underrated 2016 action comedy The Nice Guys, the CIA once made an ‘adult film’. Digging
information about what powerful people get up to privately behind closed doors has a long
history of being the go-to tactic for anyone looking to blackmail or discredit them. And sure
enough, the CIA isn’t above that either. However, they took it a step further and actually
had a specialty tape commissioned and allegedly filmed in Hollywood, of all places.
Indonesia’s first elected official was President Sukarno, the leader of the independence movement
against Dutch colonialism, and he entered office in 1945 as a national hero, with overwhelming
public support – from everyone except, it turned out, the CIA. Sukarno had a reputation for
being genuinely passionate about Indonesia, the rights of its citizens, and particularly of
women, eventually causing him to align himself closely with communist allies during the Cold
War. While not a communist himself, he shared some of the ideologies of the Soviet Union and
added to the fact that Indonesia was home to the largest communist party outside of the USSR. It
all combined to make President Sukarno unpopular with a certain powerful US intelligence agency.
You see, those in charge of US foreign policy at the time were big believers in the
‘domino theory’ that if communist revolutions happened in one country, then
they would spread to their neighbors. So, in order to try and curb this and sever
Indonesia’s ties with the Soviet Union and China, the CIA attempted to oust President Sukarno.
After wasting a million dollars trying to sway Indonesia’s 1955 elections, their usual method
of training local rebels to launch a paramilitary campaign against the leader of another country
just wasn’t quite working out. But reports had been circulating that President Sukarno
had allegedly had an affair with a flight attendant – who may have, as it turned out, been
a KGB spy, which potentially now meant that the Soviets had leverage against him. However, the
CIA saw this as an opportunity to undermine Sukarno’s reputation as Indonesia’s national hero
by painting him as a sleazy, promiscuous figure. Merely spreading rumors about Sukarno wasn’t
going to cut it, though. As it turned out, KGB had already tried to blackmail him by
having a group of women posing as flight attendants sent to a hotel room he was staying
at for some ‘group activities’ that they even allegedly filmed. But this did nothing to
damage the reputation of Sukarno, who had always openly supported and practiced polygamy.
When the CIA-backed rebel forces in Indonesia proved themselves to be ineffective at toppling
the Indonesian government, the Agency turned to some… spicier methods. Casting a body double
wearing a lifelike mask of Sukarno’s likeness, the CIA had an illicit tape made only to then run
into trouble actually circulating explicit images before the days of the Internet. The CIA had
ultimately bankrolled a ‘jazz movie’ for nothing, as they later worked with the British
intelligence agency MI6 to facilitate a coup that replaced Sukarno and his government
with a pro-Western dictator… who then embarked on a campaign of mass murder, having real and
suspected communists executed. Great job, CIA. Next up is Operation Midnight Climax, and we
know what you’re thinking; yes, that would have been a perfect name for the operation we were just
talking about. In actuality, it was a sub-project of the now infamous Project MK Ultra that – among
other things – involved experimenting with LSD and attempts to research the possibility
of developing mind control. Yes, this was a real thing, and regardless of what Stranger
Things might tell you, these experiments were horrific. Operation Midnight Climax came about
when the CIA decided to look into the potential use cases for a combination of drugs and ‘intimate
encounters’ to interrogate potential suspects. And much like Operation CHAOS, this was yet another
covert CIA operation that took place right here in America, in San Francisco, to be exact.
The CIA recruited local escorts to pick up completely unassuming men at bars and bring
them back to a brothel that the Agency had turned into its very own testing lab. Two-way
mirrors were everywhere so that agents could watch and film the reactions of their unwitting
and nonconsenting test subjects. At a price of a hundred dollars each to the ladies that
brought them in, each of these men was dosed with lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD, without
their knowledge. This was done to distort their senses and impair their normal sense of
judgment while the CIA agents in the next room over-monitored how they reacted to the drugs.
Once they were ‘alone’ and unaware of the CIA’s prying eyes, these men were then engaged in
conversations by the women who had brought them in. The goal was to see if combining the use
of LSD with some company for the night could trick these men into divulging any sensitive
information. All their conversations were being monitored through listening devices strategically
hidden around each of the bordello’s rooms, with some of the men being given other psychotropics
as well for the CIA to determine which chemicals would be better suited for interrogation.
Obviously, giving someone a dangerous and powerful hallucinogen, especially if they’re
unaware they’re being given it, is massively irresponsible. Even more so, since LSD can induce
symptoms that closely resemble psychosis, the men being used for these experiments were never told
what had been done to them and were given no information on what the potential side effects of
taking LSD could be; it was simply administered so the CIA could sit back and watch what happened.
Operation Midnight Climax even got a secondary branch up and running in a similar bordello
in Greenwich Village, New York. Perhaps the worst part of the whole operation is that
these inhumane experiments were allowed to continue for an entire decade, from 1953 to ’63.
Around the same time that Operation Midnight Climax was getting off the ground, another of
the CIA’s insane schemes was unfolding over in Europe – their first major covert action of
the Cold War. In 1954, there was growing anxiety surrounding the potential for a large-scale
nuclear conflict, which had only gotten worse since the culmination of the Second World War.
With two of the largest superpowers on the planet, the USA and USSR, both possessing nuclear
weapons and the latter doing a worrying amount of testing with those weapons, things
were understandably tense. How did the CIA plan to solve it? Well, they decided to dig a big hole…
Working hand in hand with Britain’s equally shady intelligence agency, MI6 – who are alleged to have
conducted their own fair share of overseas human rights abuses too – the Central Intelligence
Agency launched Operation Gold in 1954. Unlike its name suggests, this mission wasn’t
about digging for gold but a different kind of buried treasure: information. You see, a lot
of the espionage conducted by Western countries against the East, and vice versa, was done through
Berlin. As you may already know, in the wake of World War Two, the city was partitioned into
separate blocs controlled by the Allied nations that had won the war. So, the CIA planned to
establish a way to tap into communication lines running out of the Soviet Union and other parts
of Eastern Europe through Berlin’s Eastern Bloc, all the way into Germany’s neighboring France…
with the help of a tunnel underneath Berlin. The CIA’s joint effort with MI6 in this venture
wasn’t just because the US and UK had a shared interest in monitoring Soviet communications
but because the Brits had managed to pull off something similar a few years earlier.
In 1948, MI6’s Operation Silver – get it, it’s less valuable than gold? – had sought to
tap Austrian phone lines that linked the USSR’s military headquarters in Moscow to Austria’s
capital city of Vienna. Much like Berlin, Vienna was a hotbed of espionage operations
and had similarly been divided into four militarised zones controlled by Britain, the US,
France, and the Soviets. By buying a building in the city and creating a fake business to act as
cover, MI6 agents could dig a seventy-foot-long tunnel to the telephone lines used by the Soviets.
Not to be outdone, the CIA saw this and wanted in, so they worked alongside British intelligence to
dig a new tunnel beneath Berlin into the parts of Germany that were now considered to
be Soviet territory. Since the cables that ran deep beneath the city couldn’t be
monitored from listening posts above ground, digging down to where they were tapping them
directly avoided the risk of the Soviets detecting that their calls were being listened in on. So,
working under the cover story that the US was building an Air Force radar site and warehouse
in their part of Berlin, the CIA got digging. While the Soviets weren’t exactly content
to ignore the US’ activities in Berlin, they seemed to believe they were just building
another military installation. That is until the CIA decided to brief the British on what they were
doing – which proved to be a horrendous mistake. One of the MI6 intelligence officers briefed about
Operation Gold turned out to be a Soviet mole and double agent named George Blake. He took detailed
notes and passed them on to his USSR contacts, ultimately making the Soviets aware of Operation
Gold almost immediately. Blake would be discovered nearly a decade later in 1961 and imprisoned,
although he successfully escaped to Moscow and lived as a Soviet hero until he died in 2020.
Jumping back to the Vietnam War and the CIA’s… wait, are we reading this
right, their Phoenix Program? Well, as admittedly cool as it would be to
see a mythical flaming bird being unleashed, as with everything the CIA gets up to, the Phoenix
Project was deeply unethical and considered to be one of the most controversial aspects of the
US war in Vietnam. During the war, the South Vietnamese government had been making an organized
effort to root out members of the Viet Cong, the communist-backed insurgent fighters in
the north. They launched a counterinsurgency campaign against the Viet Cong. This program
was named Phuong Hoang, referencing a bird from traditional Vietnamese and Chinese culture,
often associated with royalty and power. So, when the CIA also got involved with these
counterinsurgency efforts, they referred to their operations under the closest analog in
more Western-recognized mythology: the Phoenix. As part of the Phoenix Programs, the Central
Intelligence Agency used paramilitary teams to seek out and eliminate communist operatives
who were stationed undercover in villages throughout South Vietnam. The reason for
Phoenix’s controversy was primarily due to the CIA’s routine use of these teams to carry
out assassinations, as well as, you guessed it, that CIA classic: torture. Oh, and this was all
while American officials denied any involvement in these activities in Vietnam. You see, given
that the paramilitary teams, including soldiers, analysts, and, of course, interrogators, working
under the CIA’s orders were Vietnamese, it allowed the US a degree of plausible deniability.
The mission statement of the Phoenix Program was to destroy the Viet Cong outright, to attack their
entire infrastructure by any means necessary, including not just targeted killings but acts
of terrorism. Part of the premise behind the program was the idea that the Viet Cong’s
influence had only spread in North Vietnam thanks to support from local civilians, who
weren’t necessarily joining up to fight but who had potentially allowed the Viet Cong
to operate in regional areas or even helped them to coordinate their insurgency efforts.
So, working under the assumption that many of these civilian noncombatants
were secretly Viet Cong members, the Phoenix Program ‘neutralized’ 81,740 people.
Over twenty-six thousand of these people were killed, with the remainder either surrendering
to Phoenix Program operatives or being captured. The very nature of the program was widely
criticized as being a ‘civilian assassination program,’ given the number of likely
neutral, innocent people killed either under the suspicion of Viet Cong involvement
or simply to leave the VC with fewer people to influence. That it certainly did, suppressing the
Viet Cong’s revolutionary insurgent activities. When details of the Phoenix Program were released
to the public, the CIA faced widespread criticism and was forced to shut it down. However,
that’s not to say that Phoenix or its methods stopped there, as a similar program, Plan F6,
continued under the government of South Vietnam. While it’s easy to focus on the brutality
and inhumanity of methods like torture or the insidious puppeteering of foreign forces to do the
US’ dirty work, one of the CIA’s most frightening weapons is its control over information. What the
public is allowed to know about and what remains withheld can massively influence people’s
opinions. That’s essentially how propaganda functions. In addition to controlling
access to publicly available information, art and literature have long had incredible
power to influence people’s perspectives. Case in point, during the fifties, the CIA
attempted to redistribute a classic Russian novel around the world as a weapon, a piece
of propaganda to turn global opinions against the Soviet Union and against communism as a whole.
Written by Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago follows its titular fictional character, a physician and
poet, through the historical events of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War.
So, why was this Russian book originally first published in Italy?
Well, Pasternak belonged to an older societal class within his home of Moscow,
a class that had fallen out of public favor since the country’s communist revolution. Given
that because of his background, Pasternak’s book conveyed his own very critical stance against
the October Revolution, the USSR refused to allow Doctor Zhivago to be published in Russia.
It was one of numerous books banned or censored for containing anti-revolutionary
sentiments. Had the manuscript not been smuggled to a publisher in Milan by
an Italian literary scout living in Moscow, it likely never would have seen the light of day.
Upon publication, Doctor Zhivago earned Pasternak the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 – which
enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, urging the Kremlin and the Italian Communist
Party to suppress the book’s publication. Now, a book that draws the ire of the Soviet Union
is a book that the CIA would be highly interested in reading themselves. So much so that when a
British intelligence officer sent the Agency two rolls of film containing photos of the book's
pages, the CIA saw potential for using Doctor Zhivago for their own ends. Upon reading the book,
they agreed with the Soviet Union’s assessment that Pasternak had created an anti-revolutionary
piece, but to the CIA, it could be a valuable tool as a piece of propaganda. So, they planned to have
Doctor Zhivago republished, this time in Russian, and then disseminate it among Soviet citizens to
sway their opinions against the Communist Party. The CIA was given the go-ahead to exploit
Pasternak’s novel as long as it was clear that the US government had ‘no hand’ in the process. Of
course, that just meant the US didn’t want it to be too obvious that they were involved. By seeking
out the help of Dutch intelligence and publishers, as well as diplomats from the Vatican, the CIA
was able to distribute around a thousand Russian copies of Doctor Zhivago to Soviet visitors
attending the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels. By July of the following year, at least nine
thousand pocket-sized editions of the book had been printed at the CIA headquarters.
They were among the ten million copies of anti-communist books and magazines that the
CIA was able to disseminate in the Soviet Union over the course of the Cold War.
Attempting to sway the opinion of adults through propaganda is one thing, but trying to
specifically influence children with a targeted fear campaign is arguably even more sinister.
This brings us to possibly the most insane and insidious of the covert CIA operations we’ve
talked about today: a project known only by the codename ‘Devil Eyes’. Between 2005 and 2006,
the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in a secretive psychological warfare program that
sought to terrify young children by distributing… action figures of Osama Bin Laden. Yes, you
heard that right, Bin Laden action figures. Naturally, during the mid-2000s, the US War
on Terror was still raging in direct response to 9/11, and Bin Laden, the founder of the
militant Islamist terrorist organization, had been identified as the mastermind behind the
attack on the World Trade Center. Within weeks of the attacks taking place, the United States
military had already responded with strikes against militants associated with al Qaeda
and fellow terrorist organization the Taliban, invading the country of Afghanistan
and killing or capturing thousands of al Qaeda supporters. This drove their
leadership, including Bin Laden, into hiding. However, rather than weakening al Qaeda, the US
invasion had encouraged them to evolve, conducting counterattacks against the American military
through smaller cells and other grassroots, independent groups that formed in support
of al Qaeda and in opposition to the US. So, the CIA came up with a strange strategy to scare
the children of Afghanistan and Pakistan – as well as their parents – out of accepting the
anti-American messaging of al Qaeda and Bin Laden by making them terrified that he was a demon.
The Agency enlisted the help of Donald Levine, a former executive from Hasbro who had
been considered the father of G.I. Joe, for his role in helping launch the massively
popular toy line – one that glorified the various branches of the US military to children.
Guess the CIA figured he had some relevant work experience for what they had planned, too.
The Agency had Levine design a doll, standing at about twelve inches, and made to resemble Osama
Bin Laden’s likeness. Three prototypes were made, and two even resurfaced in 2014 and 2015, selling
at auction for nearly twelve thousand dollars and over six thousand, respectively. The plan was
that the figure’s face would be painted with a material that would peel away when heated to
reveal a more frightening one underneath. This demon-faced Bin Laden had red skin, black
facial markings, and piercing green eyes, hence the project’s ‘Devil Eyes’ codename.
Donald Levine had business contacts in China who would assist with the manufacture and distribution
of the demonic dolls to Afghan and Pakistani children to scare them and their families and
turn public opinion against Bin Laden and al Qaeda. While the CIA acknowledged the existence of
the Devil Eyes program in 2014, it’s unknown how many were made beyond the three prototypes. The
remaining one is said to still be in possession of the CIA. However, there have long been rumors that
hundreds of the terrorist toys were manufactured and even shipped to Karachi, Pakistan, in 2006.
Now check out “50 Insane Declassified CIA Secrets You Aren't Supposed to Know.”
Or watch this video instead!
