Exploding Cigars and Psychic Spies:
A Curious History of the Government's Strangest and Most Secretive Projects (Quirk Books)
A darkly funny, fully documented history of America’s most bizarre declassified covert operations.
From inflatable tanks to weaponized goat dung and beyond, this hidden history for fans of The Men Who Stare at Goats takes you on a wild ride through stranger-than-fiction stories of declassified US government and military programs.
Booby-trapped seashells. Exploding pancake mix. Pigeon-guided missiles. These aren't fictional cartoon antics, but rather real top-secret projects commissioned by the US government and military—and that's just the tip of the iceberg. The most shocking, bizarre, and obscure secret programs in American history are compiled into an eye-popping compendium for the first time, including:
Military-grade stink spray: This stink spray was no gag, and was developed by the OSS for civilians to use against occupying Nazis during World War II.
Project Acoustic Kitty: The CIA wired a cat to spy on Soviet adversaries—then discovered cats don’t take orders.
Nuking the moon: Project A119 was an early space race plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the lunar surface as a show of American superiority over the Soviets.
MKUltra Subproject 4: As part of its mind control research, the CIA enlisted a famous magician to teach agents sleight-of-hand techniques to poison targets.
Facial hair assassination: The OSS and the CIA targeted both Adolph Hitler’s mustache and Fidel Castro’s beard in the hopes that eliminating their iconic facial hair would embarrass and humiliate the leaders.
Exploding Cigars and Psychic Spies will shock, infuriate, and entertain you with the often unbelievable antics of the FBI, CIA, and US military, revealing the dark side of operating in secrecy—and the human cost in the quest for national security.
January 12, 2027
What People Are Saying
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"Forget conspiracy theories—the truth is weirder, and infinitely more addictive. Marc Hartzman cracks open the declassified files on bat bombs, feline secret agents, CIA mind-control experiments, and trained psychic spies. The result is a rabbit hole of hidden history so outrageously real you won’t surface until the last page."
Lindsey Fitzharris, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Butchering Art and Sleuth-Hound
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"If you think you’ve heard it all, think again. Marc Hartzman reveals the real stories behind secret programs that blur the line between science, imagination, and something else entirely. Exploding Cigars and Psychic Spies is a journey into the unknown—where the truth is often stranger than anything we could invent."
George Noory, Host of national radio show Coast to Coast AM
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"A delightful journey into the bizarre. A fascinating and extensively researched deep dive into the history of the many weird, wild, and downright wacky things the US government has done — pigeon kamikazes, cyberpunk cats, telepathic reconnaissance — in the interest of defending national security. Marc Hartzman's book is jam-packed with eyebrow-raising information, helpfully arranged into bite-sized chunks. But it's more than just snack food — it is packed with substantial information, making it delicious and nutritious! It's satisfying the whole way through."
Sam Kelly, author of Human History on Drugs