Governments have a long history of bad decision-making and turning wild ideas into extra official news while they should embody structure and good reasoning.
Behind close doors, officials have made plans that sound closer to bad movie scripts than an actual real life thing, craziest thing is we don’t usually get to find out until years later.
These are some moments when national strategy turned unbelievable, proving how thin the line can be between being smart and innovative and just being completely mad.
1
"Gay Bomb" proposal
Air Force researchers wanted to use chemicals to "make" enemy soldiers attracted to each other so they could be distracted and disrupt combat units.
2
COINTELPRO
The FBI spied on and tried to break up civil rights and activist groups it saw as threats to national security.
3
Operation Northwoods
The U.S. military once drafted a plan to stage fake terrorist attacks and blame them on Cuba to justify going to war.
4
Operation Gold
The CIA and British intelligence built a massive tunnel under East Berlin to mess with Soviet phone lines, only to be betrayed by a double agent.
5
Operation Chaos
The CIA illegally collected information on Americans involved in anti-war protests during the 1960s and 70s.
6
Operation Paperclip
After World War II, the U.S. brought former German scientists to work on rockets and weapons programs in secret.
7
Project Sunshine
Scientists secretly collected human remains, including children’s bones, to study nuclear fallout exposure without family consent.
8
Operation Mockingbird
The CIA built quiet relationships with journalists to influence what was reported in the media.
9
Operation Monopoly
The FBI secretly dug a tunnel under the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., hoping to tap into phone lines and steal intelligence but the project failed and was exposed later on.
10
Project MKUltra
Government scientists secretly tested LSD and other methods to control minds, often using people who didn’t know they were part of experiments.
