Read the CIA’s Manual of Trickery and Deception, Written by a Professional Stage Magician

The idea of a young­ster vac­il­lat­ing between whether to become a magi­cian or join the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency may sound implau­si­ble, but those two work­ing envi­ron­ments have deep­er com­mon­al­i­ties than it would seem. So, in any case, believes John McLaugh­lin, whose more than 30 years at the CIA includ­ed peri­ods as its deputy direc­tor and act­ing direc­tor. He also describes him­self as a life­long ama­teur magi­cian, an avo­ca­tion that owes much to his boy­hood dis­cov­ery of Quick­er Than the Eye, a mag­ic man­u­al from 1932 by one John Mul­hol­land.

Around the same time the young McLaugh­lin came across that book in the library, Mul­hol­land was writ­ing the more spe­cial­ized guide­books Some Oper­a­tional Appli­ca­tions of the Art of Decep­tion and Recog­ni­tion Sig­nals — though nobody with­out a seri­ous secu­ri­ty clear­ance would have known it. In 1953, Mul­hol­land left his posi­tion as edi­tor of the magi­cians’ trade mag­a­zine The Sphinx, osten­si­bly for health rea­sons, but actu­al­ly to go to work for the CIA. Formed just six years before, the orga­ni­za­tion was still deter­min­ing what its mis­sion of pre­vent­ing sur­prise for­eign attacks against the U.S. and coun­ter­ing the glob­al advance of com­mu­nism would entail on the ground.

To any­one who’s made enough of a habit of nov­els and films deal­ing with Cold War espi­onage, it may come as no sur­prise that the arts of dis­guise, mis­di­rec­tion, and sleight of hand prac­ticed by mas­ter magi­cians would look use­ful indeed to the CIA. Com­mis­sioned in the time of the CIA’s human-exper­i­men­ta­tion pro­gram MKULTRA, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, Mul­hol­land’s man­u­als were long assumed offi­cial­ly destroyed along with many oth­er of its doc­u­ments in 1973. After they unex­pect­ed­ly resur­faced dur­ing declas­si­fi­ca­tion in the two-thou­sands, they were pub­lished in The Offi­cial CIA Man­u­al of Trick­ery and Decep­tion by Agency his­to­ri­ans H.

Kei­th Melton and Robert Wal­lace. You can find a copy over at the Inter­net Archive. At that time, the Boston Globe pub­lished illus­trat­ed expla­na­tions of some of Mul­hol­land’s tech­niques, such as trans­port­ing spies using a mech­a­nism sim­i­lar to the one that con­ceals an appar­ent­ly sawed-in-half stage­hand, or sur­rep­ti­tious­ly drop­ping into a drink a pill affixed to the back of a book of match­es.

Amid “the super­pow­er strug­gle for pow­er and influ­ence around the world,” writes Tom Scoc­ca, “both the ideas and tech­niques of secret war per­vad­ed the cul­ture — the cor­ro­sive belief in hid­den con­spir­a­cy and the nifty thrill of spy­craft itself, the codes and dis­guis­es and minia­ture cam­eras.” Today, “Mulholland’s account of real-world stage­craft amounts to an eti­quette man­u­al for a lost moment of his­to­ry. The match­book trick depends on peo­ple smok­ing and drink­ing. There is a sur­vey of the many pock­ets found in every man’s suit, and which ones are most nat­ur­al for casu­al­ly slip­ping objects into.” How­ev­er much of the romance has drained out of espi­onage — as it has from so much else since the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry — the best magi­cians know that old tricks can always be re-enchant­ed for a new world.

You can read The Offi­cial CIA Man­u­al of Trick­ery and Decep­tion here. 12 Mil­lion Declas­si­fied CIA Doc­u­ments Now Free Online: Secret Tun­nels, UFOs, Psy­chic Exper­i­ments & More Dis­cov­er the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944) The CIA’s For­mer Chief of Dis­guise Show How Spies Use Cos­tumes in Under­cov­er Oper­a­tions Inside MKUl­tra, the CIA’s Secret Pro­gram That Used LSD to Achieve Mind Con­trol (1953–1973) When the CIA Stud­ied Psy­chic Tech­niques to Alter Human Con­scious­ness & Unlock Time Trav­el: Dis­cov­er “The Gate­way Process” The CIA’s Rec­tal Tool Kit for Spies — Cre­at­ed for Tru­ly Des­per­ate Sit­u­a­tions Dur­ing The Cold War Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall. by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Comments (0) | We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads.