From the 70's... your imagination can just run wild with what they might be using today. It's both very cool and somewhat scary.

That's the recruiting pitch they use, but in all honesty, I think it's bogus. Things have changed. Researchers are now more likely to take a job elsewhere than volunteer to be locked away in the depths of Langley. We have no grand enemy and those capable of developing such technology are choosing to work for contractors instead

Background on this device: has been declassified for some time and it's main defect was that it can not function in over 2-3 knots, both from an acoustical recording quality and navigation standpoint.

From the 70's indeed. In fact, it looks like the CIA tried to implement a device from 70's juvenile Sci-fi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Dunn,_Invisible_Boy

I'm highly skeptical about that dragonfly from the 70s. I think it's a mock-up at best, there's no way they made something useful for surveillance etc the size of a large dragonfly. Not in the 70s. Researchers working on this for decades can barely do this today!

I'm guessing all it did was fly around loosely controlled if at all. The miniaturization is impressive, but they were not likely able to do much more than a small internal combustion engine in the 70s.

Today however I would not be surprised if such devices exist and are in practical use.

For those interested: http://www.delfly.nl/?site=DIII&menu=home&lang=en the smallest I've seen with camera!

The CIA can't even sniff out a double agent who kills a station chief and a hand full of others in AFG...doubtful they have robots smaller then this : http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Raven_UAV...

full article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_UAV

you guys watch too much movies

>Miniature auto differential created for tiny flying robots

http://www.gizmag.com/differential-micro-air-vehicles/16250/

>Harvard University's Micro-robotics Laboratory claims to have created the first tiny micro-robotic fly able to generate enough thrust to take off. It has a wingspan of 3 cm and only weighs 0.06 grams.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATZzzeipags

Neither of which are in use with the US gov't! If you fools haven't figured it out, the US gov't is not a futuristic entity with all gadgets 10 years before they come out. Leading up to and shortly after 9/11 you couldn't search for multi word strings on FBI computers, and you think they have nano bots? HAH!

What's disturbing to me about this is not the technology (which is awesome), but the fact that it's been buried in the government trenches for 40 years. That kind of knowledge hoarding seems highly antithetical to the "American spirit".

The CIA's always been antithetical to the "American spirit" - an intelligence organization is, by definition.

Agreed, though - it would be nice if this had seen the light of day before now, moreso given the fact that we still can't figure out how the damn thing works.

I remember an article perhaps 10 years ago about how these were displayed in the a (public?) CIA museum.

Wow, I wonder how many tiny spy cameras they have flying around disguised as insects right now...

From a 2007 story in the Washington Post, "Dragonfly or Insect Spy? Scientists at Work on Robobugs" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10... :

   Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in
   Lafayette Square last month.

  "I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college
  senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the
  hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little
  helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."

  Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.

  "I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer
  said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that
  mechanical, or is that alive?' "

  That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar
  sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some
  suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools,
  perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security.

is this a joke? seriously, who are these guys (either CIA, or this post's authors) kidding?

it all reminded me of all those Castro assassination attempts, each more perverse than previous, and of course all a complete failure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/638_Ways_to_Kill_Castro