Skepticblog

I just finished reading “The Official C.I.A. Manual of Trickery click here and Deception.” What a delightful read! Authors H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace have taken a newly declassified document and made it into a fascinating collector’s item. The manuscript was lost for 50 years and only recently discovered. Now a precious few of those gadgets and subterfuges that kept me enthralled back in the 60’s when James Bond had his “Q” and Maxwell Smart had his shoe phone are out in the open. And as I suspected as a kid – many of those fantastic gadgets and weapons were real and quite a few were based on a magician’s guidebook. As part of her Geek Week, Rachel Maddow did an excellent piece on her show about this book.  Rachel even had magician John Born demonstrate a couple of the techniques.  Good job Mr. Born!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#37347041

I knew about magician John Mullholland when I first started looking at magic books back in the 1950’s. Later, when I became interested in mentalism and fake psychic phenomena, I purchased his classic “Beware Familiar Spirits,” which tore the front off the spook business and started me on my way to mediumship. Mullholland was never a huge magic super star, but as I read his books I saw that he had a devious mind that was different from all the rest of the trickters I had read up until then. What I didn’t know (because it was classified up until 2007) was that while he plied his trade as a stage magician, he was working with the C.I.A. to teach spies how to understand misdirection, build odd devices to deliver pills, powders and liquids into drinks and devise covert operations using principles of illusion. This book is indeed a lost piece of magic history that every skeptic should have on their bookshelf. We may not want to learn how to poison an enemy or make exploding cigars, (real big bang dangerous exploding cigars) but the concepts and plans that were laid out during the Cold War era for how and where to use one hand while the other “takes care of business” are an important aspect of how we can so easily be fooled with the simplest of maneuvers. Important aspects of the conjuror’s craft like sight lines, surreptitious removal of objects and my favorite section: “Special Aspects of Deception for Women” are covered with a textbook style that is powerful enough to make any spy into a Houdini. Apparently, that’s exactly what it did.

The Original "Smart Phone"

And speaking of Houdini: As it turns out, some of the most secretive devices the C.I.A. copied came directly out of Houdini’s own notebooks and methods he made use of by learning the tricks of the trade from The Davenport Brothers. History repeats itself. Many of the things we have seen in James Bond came from Houdini. No wonder I always liked Bond’s gadgets. The hollow heel we saw in “Goldfinger” was based on an actual shoe cobbled together by a shoemaker named Mokana for Houdini as a concealment for escape tools. Didn’t we all really want to believe that television shows like “Secret Agent,” “Mission Impossible,” “I Spy” and “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” had some basis in fact? How could Hollywood writers have thought up such baloney right? Most of the tricks and gadgets we may have thought ridiculous were already in common use by the time we saw it in our living rooms. Even Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone wasn’t too far off the mark.

Like Mullholland, some of Hollywood’s best writers and make-up people were also drafted into service to help develop sceanrios and provide disguises. As a kid growing up watching mystery television, I remember watching in awe several episodes of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”and thinking to myself, if writers like Stanley Ellin, Davis Grubb and Robert Bloch could think up such nefarious clandestine devices, motifs and plot twists, what could the obviously much higher paid spies and government people be doing with their ideas? My magic training made me an early conspiracy thinker. As it was with John Mullholland, it turns out I was right: in most cases the bureaucracy of the C.I.A. was dreadfully inept in creative thinking and turned to Hollywood for ideas. After make-up man John Chambers received an honorary award from The Academy Awards in 1968 for “Planet of the Apes, ” one of his masks that was used as a prosthetic device in a disguise operation was loaned to the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. I must make it over there one day. It sounds like my kind of place.

John Mullholland: The Spy Who Came In from the Magic Shop

The whole mind control, MKULTRA  episode that was loosely fashioned into “Men Who Stare at Goats” is described in detail. It’s a nasty chapter in our history and not the laughing matter it was portrayed as in the film. When the US government found out about LSD and figured it would be the perfect weapon to control the minds of our enemies, they foolishly experimented on random citizens and even their own unsuspecting employees, some of whom committed suicide as a result. To be able to get these doses into the right places, slight of hand and misdirection was taught as an undercover technique.

In 1973 , virtually all documents related to MKULTRA were destroyed. Mullholland’s manuals were thought to be among them – until a single surviving copy of each, complete with illustrations, was discovered in the agency’s archives. The manual reprinted in this book is taken directly from the only known complete copy of Mullholland’s instructions. It’s not fiction, but it reads like it. The first part of the book describes the history and the shenaningans that went on trying to get rid of Castro and is followed by an actual (?) facsimile of the manuscript, blackouts and all. Inside the manual itself, you will find hidden gems of magical thinking that because of their applications in modern day espionage, are not available in any other magic book. It’s good stuff.  If you are looking for intrigue, secrets laid bare and the inside track on the C.I.A.’s early toy chest, get this book. You won’t be disappointed.

Operator: “What number are you calling?”
Smart: “I’m calling Control, Operator…”
Operator: “You have dialed incorrectly. Give me your name and address and your dime will be refunded.”
Smart: “Operator, I’m calling from my shoe!”
Operator: “What is the number of your shoe?”
Smart: “It’s an unlisted shoe, Operator!”

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