The CIA and other US spy agencies occasionally unveil once-secret documents, offering a glimpse into their concealed operations. But even in your wildest dreams, could you have conjured up these ideas?

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1. The Cold War Condom Drop ‍

Condoms were considered Psyop (psychological operation) weapons in the 1950s when the CIA drew up a plan to have packages of extra-large condoms, labeled ‘small’ or ‘medium’, dropped by weather balloons into Soviet-controlled Europe. The idea was to lower their morale by implying the Yanks were incredibly well-endowed but the operation never made it off the runway.

2. Osama bin Laden ‘Devil Doll’‍

It may sound far-fetched, but the CIA has declassified a document about a Washington Post report that reveals plans for a bin Laden ‘devil doll’ meant to diminish support for al-Qaeda: “In about 2005, the CIA began secretly developing a custom-made Osama bin Laden action figure,” the Post writes. “The faces of the figures were painted with a heat-dissolving material designed to peel off and reveal a red-faced bin Laden who looked like a demon, with piercing green eyes and black facial markings.” The plan was ditched but it seems at least one devilish prototype survives.

3. Sabotage Behind Enemy Lines - At Work!

The WWII Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Simple Sabotage Field Manual for workers offers 15 tips to sabotage your job - an intriguing guide to navigating behind enemy lines at the office. Desk jockeys are given a blueprint for devastating company morale and productivity that may sound all too familiar. For starters, the OSS advises agents to routinely refer all matters to committees - ensuring their membership is maximized - and make speeches as often as possible using long anecdotes to illustrate points.

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4. Mind-control experiments

Project MK-Ultra was an illegal CIA mind-control program that involved experimenting on humans using psychoactive drugs, electroshock, and deprivation. The death of US scientist Frank Olson on Thanksgiving weekend in 1953 is one of the most enduring mysteries of the CIA mind-control project.

5. Adult Movies for Cold War Propaganda

The CIA wanted to undermine Indonesian President Sukarno because of his ties to the USSR, so they planned to leak a film of the “president” (an actor in a Sukarno mask) in a compromising situation with a beautiful blonde. Accounts vary on how the movie was made, but the film was apparently never distributed. It seems Sukarno would have shrugged it off in any event!

6. The CIA Pulls the strings of Hollywood and the Arts‍

During the 1950s, the CIA backed a British animation studio to create a movie about George Orwell’s Animal Farm that would help allies win the Cold War. The CIA ensured the movie ending was twisted so that the animals rose up against their corrupt leadership and showed revolt against totalitarian regimes is possible and justifiable. Over the years, spies have also infiltrated publishing, comic books, music, and modern art, using subliminal seduction and other methods to deliver their pro-West propaganda message. Nothing, it seems, is sacred.
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7. The Gateway Experience

In the '80s, the CIA delved into the mind-bending Gateway Experience, aiming to transcend time and space. A once-classified 1983 report explores brainwave training, Hemi-Sync techniques, and human potential. The complex journey ranged from hypnosis to resonant humming and Focus 15 to achieve spacetime transcendence. The report theorizes a universal hologram, a torus of energy, where human consciousness, in an altered state, taps into past, present, and future. The quest for cosmic understanding and human potential can be considered alongside once-secret papers describing ‘astral projections’ where psychics were brought in to view Mars and the USSR, among other places. And yes, we are serious.

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8. More than 600 failed Fidel Castro Assassination Attempts‍

Cuban counterintelligence said there were 638 failed plans to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro including poisoning his ice cream. Unfortunately, the poison pills stuck to the freezer and couldn’t be scraped off when El Comandante demanded his dessert. There was also the contaminated scuba suit plot, and the explosive sea shell idea. Instead, Castro died in 2016. He was 90 years old.

9. Operation Sea Spray‍

In 1950, the US Navy conducted a secret biological warfare experiment in California’s San Francisco Bay Area to determine how vulnerable the city might be to a bioweapon attack. It seems there is nothing like the real thing. They sprayed Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii bacteria, open-air testing of biological agents, more than 200 times. In 80 of those Operation Sea Spray experiments, the Army said it used live bacteria considered ‘harmless’ at the time. 
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10. Operation Northwoods‍

During the Cold War, the Department of Defense proposed that CIA operatives plant bombs around the US to commit staged terrorist acts and then blame them on Cuba. President Kennedy vetoed Operation Northwoods - and it would appear not a moment too soon. He died the following year, killed by a bullet (or bullets) while visiting Texas.