

Iranian security forces have apprehended a pair of "spy pigeons," not far from one of the country's nuclear processing plants. If local media reports are to be believed, that is.

One of the pigeons was caught near a rose water production plant in the city of Kashan, down the road from the Natanz uranium enrichment facility. It had "a wired rod" and "invisible threads... fixed to its body," an unnamed source tells the *Etemad Melli *newspaper. A second, black pigeon was nabbed earlier in the month.

In 2007, homing pigeons were accused of collecting ransoms in a Baghdad kidnapping plot.

Late last year, Seymour Hersh alleges, the Bush administration approved $400 million to begin covert operations against Iran. There was no mention of pigeons in Hersh's report.

UPDATE: "Lockheed Martin has been in the pigeon business for a while - maybe the Skunk Works were the source of the black pigeon..."

In the early 1980's Lockheed engineers transmitted daily a dozen drawings from a Computer Aided Design (CAD) system in their Sunnyvale, California, plant to a test station in Santa Cruz.

Although the facilities were just 25 miles apart, an automobile courier service took over an hour (due to traffic jams and mountain roads) and cost a hundred dollars per day. The computers at the two facilities were linked by microwave, but printing the drawings at the test base would have required a printer that was very expensive at the time. The team therefore drew the pictures at the main plant, photographed them, and sent 35mm film to the test station by carrier pigeon, where it was enlarged and printed photographically. The pigeon's 45-minute flight took half the time of the car, and cost only a few dollars per day.

During the 16 months of the project the pigeons transmitted several hundred rolls of film, and only two were lost (hawks inhabit the area; no classified data was carried).

[Photo: About.com]