Hey Guys! I just started re-reading this today. I first read it last summer, and I think I even posted something about it on the old page. Maybe not. But it is a phenomenal book. It’s called The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception, by H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace. It has quotes from Lance Burton and Jeff McBride on the covers. It’s about the training manuals that magician John Mullholland wrote in the 50’s and 60’s for the CIA’s MKUltra project. (Look up MKUltra, it’s fascinating. Basically, it was the US’s secret clandestine response to the Soviet threat in the late 50’s through early 70’s through experimenting with and using mind control techniques, brainwashing, hypnosis, even remote viewing and subliminal messaging. There were also a large amount of LSD tests, many of which were administered unknowingly and lead to deaths. It was the brainchild of CIA director Allen Dulles and advisor Sidney Gottlieb.) Anyhow, at the end of the project, most of the documents were destroyed, but magician Michael Edwards discovered the only two official documents that were saved: “Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception” and “Recognition Signals”, both written by then-popular magician John Mulholland. Edwards wrote and article in Genii in 2001.
It has a foreward from John McLaughlin, former Deputy Director and Director of the CIA- and an amateur magician.
So the book shows and talks about all the cool stuff Mulholland taught these CIA agents, and how magical techniques could be applied to the real world. It demonstrates all these techniques through actual stories and accounts of them being used in the field. It also shows illustrations and excerpts from the manuals themselves.
Bear in mind, he wrote it for people who would not just get “boo”-ed if they messed up, but killed. He shows them how to manage a single spectator (he calls them these quite often) and a whole crowd. How to use misdirection very effectively. How to apply sleight of hand in very unique ways. He also creates little gadgets for them from adaptations of magical devices, like an adaptation of several billet-loader designs from Corinda and elsewhere-m except instead of loading billets, they loaded communique or, more often, poison. he adapted several stage effects into ways to hide assests and transport agents secretly. One example was he showed how to use mirrors and certain surfaces to hide a person inside a crate the looked like it was just carrying jugs of water. Or adaptations of sawed in half woman and many other trapdoor and secret-backstage effects to hide agents in rooms or transport assets in cars and out of countries.
One of my favorite of these is when he adapts a Houdini stage illusion- the one where he walks through the wall- in two different ways. In one, he utilizes Houdini’s use of misrepresented identity (Houdini is dressed as an assistant in order to secret himself from the first side of the wall to the other.) Agents go into an enemy building and switch uniforms several times in order to get the access they need. In another, he uses Houdini’s fake arms as inspiration. (Houdini has a fake body on the first side of the wall, with fake arms being moved by ropes backstage so that people will think he’s still on that side of the wall when in reality he is dressed as a crewperson and is walking casually to the other side.) He has a contraption built that is a dummy head and shoulders. It sits in the passenger seat of a car and can move its head back and forth mechanically - without the drivers help. This allows for a getaway and a switch while being tailed: 2 agents are being tailed in a car. The headlights fo the car behind them illuminate their silhouettes. But there is one moment, they found, as they turn the corner, that they are out of the headlights. at this point the passenger rolls out of the car and the dummy head replaces him- identical in headlight silhouette.
He uses coins with shims to transport notes. Magnetic coins to hide pills and poison, etc. Now, all these are adapted by the CIA for their specific purposes of course. they are not just store bought gaffs- naturally. He also shows many different sleight of hand techniques that can be used to hide different objects as they are passed as notes or are discreetly poured into a person’s drink (there was a lot of that planned for… I don’t think it happened all that much though.) Also a few variations of mentalist billet folds. and he invents a really cool way of folding a full sheet of paper into a pocket sized one in mere seconds - as the paper is moved from the table (or wherever it was taken from) by the time it reaches the pocket, it is folded.
There are also some codes with an associate as we would say. Ways to secretly communicate across a room information gathered currently or information in advance. The way a person’s shoes were tied could say a lot. They way a button was sewn, the organization of pens in a pocket, rubber bands around a package, and, as it turns out, scratching the back of the neck,. He points out that it seems like a very common motion to people, but it is not actually very common and so it is easy to identify someone doing it when in a crowd.
There are also a few neat ways of reading information on documents right in front of you without the other person knowing. He adapts some spirit slate material, an example of which is how to use wax on the bottom of a book to pick a piece of paper up. And how to switch pieces of paper using spirit slate techniques, modifies quite a bit.
Also, he gives them a topit! CIA Agents were walking around with TOPITS sewn in their jackets during the cold war! (there are actually some REALLY clever ideas in there i hadn’t seen before.)
There is also a section about using women agents. The section title “Special Aspects of Deception for Women”. It’s not bigoted either. In fact, it is fascinating and incredibly complete thinking in a deceptive sense. I don’t know of ANY magician who would think this deeply about such minute but extremely important details. Things like how they hold things or extend their hands to pick things up to how men treat them in social gatherings to the size of their pockets and men not knowing much about their clothing. It’s absolutely brilliant.
I suggest you all read it, not only for magic knowledge, but for a really cool read in general.
It has a foreward from John McLaughlin, former Deputy Director and Director of the CIA- and an amateur magician.
So the book shows and talks about all the cool stuff Mulholland taught these CIA agents, and how magical techniques could be applied to the real world. It demonstrates all these techniques through actual stories and accounts of them being used in the field. It also shows illustrations and excerpts from the manuals themselves.
Bear in mind, he wrote it for people who would not just get “boo”-ed if they messed up, but killed. He shows them how to manage a single spectator (he calls them these quite often) and a whole crowd. How to use misdirection very effectively. How to apply sleight of hand in very unique ways. He also creates little gadgets for them from adaptations of magical devices, like an adaptation of several billet-loader designs from Corinda and elsewhere-m except instead of loading billets, they loaded communique or, more often, poison. he adapted several stage effects into ways to hide assests and transport agents secretly. One example was he showed how to use mirrors and certain surfaces to hide a person inside a crate the looked like it was just carrying jugs of water. Or adaptations of sawed in half woman and many other trapdoor and secret-backstage effects to hide agents in rooms or transport assets in cars and out of countries.
One of my favorite of these is when he adapts a Houdini stage illusion- the one where he walks through the wall- in two different ways. In one, he utilizes Houdini’s use of misrepresented identity (Houdini is dressed as an assistant in order to secret himself from the first side of the wall to the other.) Agents go into an enemy building and switch uniforms several times in order to get the access they need. In another, he uses Houdini’s fake arms as inspiration. (Houdini has a fake body on the first side of the wall, with fake arms being moved by ropes backstage so that people will think he’s still on that side of the wall when in reality he is dressed as a crewperson and is walking casually to the other side.) He has a contraption built that is a dummy head and shoulders. It sits in the passenger seat of a car and can move its head back and forth mechanically - without the drivers help. This allows for a getaway and a switch while being tailed: 2 agents are being tailed in a car. The headlights fo the car behind them illuminate their silhouettes. But there is one moment, they found, as they turn the corner, that they are out of the headlights. at this point the passenger rolls out of the car and the dummy head replaces him- identical in headlight silhouette.
He uses coins with shims to transport notes. Magnetic coins to hide pills and poison, etc. Now, all these are adapted by the CIA for their specific purposes of course. they are not just store bought gaffs- naturally. He also shows many different sleight of hand techniques that can be used to hide different objects as they are passed as notes or are discreetly poured into a person’s drink (there was a lot of that planned for… I don’t think it happened all that much though.) Also a few variations of mentalist billet folds. and he invents a really cool way of folding a full sheet of paper into a pocket sized one in mere seconds - as the paper is moved from the table (or wherever it was taken from) by the time it reaches the pocket, it is folded.
There are also some codes with an associate as we would say. Ways to secretly communicate across a room information gathered currently or information in advance. The way a person’s shoes were tied could say a lot. They way a button was sewn, the organization of pens in a pocket, rubber bands around a package, and, as it turns out, scratching the back of the neck,. He points out that it seems like a very common motion to people, but it is not actually very common and so it is easy to identify someone doing it when in a crowd.
There are also a few neat ways of reading information on documents right in front of you without the other person knowing. He adapts some spirit slate material, an example of which is how to use wax on the bottom of a book to pick a piece of paper up. And how to switch pieces of paper using spirit slate techniques, modifies quite a bit.
Also, he gives them a topit! CIA Agents were walking around with TOPITS sewn in their jackets during the cold war! (there are actually some REALLY clever ideas in there i hadn’t seen before.)
There is also a section about using women agents. The section title “Special Aspects of Deception for Women”. It’s not bigoted either. In fact, it is fascinating and incredibly complete thinking in a deceptive sense. I don’t know of ANY magician who would think this deeply about such minute but extremely important details. Things like how they hold things or extend their hands to pick things up to how men treat them in social gatherings to the size of their pockets and men not knowing much about their clothing. It’s absolutely brilliant.
I suggest you all read it, not only for magic knowledge, but for a really cool read in general.