The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk is an example of an American black project, with its existence being classified information throughout its design and manufacture, as well as for several years after its service commenced.

Flagship Series

Ghost Gear

Classified weapons, black-budget programs, and the technology that never made it into official history.

5 Entries

A domestic cat — the CIA's Operation Acoustic Kitty surgically implanted a listening device in a cat for espionage in the 1960s

Acoustic Kitty — The CIA's Feline Spy Program

In one of the intelligence world's most audacious and ill-fated experiments, the CIA surgically implanted microphones and radio transmitters into a cat, attempting to use the animal to conduct surveillance near Soviet diplomatic locations, a program that illustrates both the ingenuity and occasiona

Apr 19, 2026

The Minox B subminiature camera — the standard spy camera used by both CIA and KGB agents during the Cold War

The Minox Camera — The Spy's Pocket Photographer

Invented by a Baltic engineer and perfected over decades, the Minox camera became the gold standard of espionage tradecraft—a precision instrument small enough to hide in a closed fist, used by Soviet, American, and allied intelligence services to photograph classified documents without detection.

Apr 19, 2026

USS Halibut (SSGN-587) — the special operations submarine used in Operation Ivy Bells to tap Soviet undersea cables

Operation Ivy Bells — Wiretapping the Soviet Navy

From 1971 to 1981, the NSA, Navy, and CIA conducted a clandestine operation using nuclear submarines and saturation divers to tap Soviet military communications cables in the remote Sea of Okhotsk, an exploit that was betrayed and remains one of the most sensitive intelligence losses of the Cold Wa

Apr 19, 2026

Cold War Berlin — where the CIA and MI6 dug a tunnel beneath the Soviet sector to tap communications in Operation Gold

Operation Gold — The Berlin Tunnel

The CIA and MI6 executed an audacious 1,476-foot tunnel beneath Soviet-occupied Berlin to intercept KGB and military communications, unaware that a British intelligence officer had betrayed the operation before the first shovelful of earth was moved.

Apr 19, 2026

Leon Theremin demonstrating his theremin (etherphone) — he later built the Soviet passive listening device codenamed "The Thing"

The Thing — Leon Theremin's Soviet Listening Device

A passive resonant cavity microphone concealed inside a carved Great Seal hung in an American ambassador's office, the device operated without power for seven years before its discovery fundamentally changed espionage tradecraft.

Apr 19, 2026