Stalin 'used secret laboratory to analyse Mao's excrement'

Thumbnail Image - By U.S. Signal Corps photo. - http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a33351, Public Domain, By Zhang Zhenshi (1914–1992). Mao Zedong portrait attributed to Zhang Zhenshi and a committee of artists (see [1]). - Intermediate source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardfisher/3451116326/, CC BY 2.0

By the sound of things, it was a top secret and rather smelly experiment.

According to Russian newspaper reports, in the 1940s Stalin's secret police had set up a special department to get its hands on people's faeces.

The ambitious aim: to analyse samples of foreign leaders' stools.

In other words, espionage via excrement.