The Official C.I.A. Manual of Trickery and Deception [DECLASSIFIED]

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Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and behold the unparalleled fusion of espionage and enchantment! Dive deep into a world where the mystique of the CIA mingles with theatrical flair in this enthralling audiobook rendition of the 'CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception'. Beyond the limelight, the covert tactics of spycraft elegantly waltzed with the wonders of stage magic, drawing from the prowess of legends like Houdini. This grand performance offers insights into the very essence of 'The Art of Deception', the 'Surreptitious Removal of Objects', specialized techniques in the 'Art of Deception for Women', and the orchestrated dance of 'Working as a Team' alongside the subtle cues of 'Recognition Signals'.

Now, without any further distractions or sideshows, immerse yourself in this grand tent of secrets, and unveil the hidden intersections of magic and intelligence work!"

The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception
by: H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace

Contents:
Acknowledgments:
Foreword by John McLaughlin:
Introduction: The Legacy of MKULTRA and the Missing Magic Manuals:
Some Operational Applications of The Art of Deception:
I. Introduction and General Comments on The Art of Deception:
II. Handling of Tablets:
III. Handling of Powders:
IV. Handling of Liquids:
V. Surreptitious Removal of Objects:
VI. Special Aspects of Deception for Women:
VII. Surreptitious Removal of Objects by Women:
VIII. Working as a Team:
Recognition Signals:
About the Authors:

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is unlikely that either John Mulholland or Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA officer who authorized the creation of “Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception” and “Recognition Signals,” ever anticipated their manuals would become available to anyone without security clearances. Both men understood that their respective professions, as magician or CIA officer, required oaths of secrecy.
The magician’s oath states:
"As a magician I promise never to reveal the secret of any illusion to a non magician, unless that one swears to uphold the Magician’s Oath in turn. I promise never to perform any illusion for any non-magician without first practicing the effect until I can perform it well enough to maintain the illusion of magic.".
Members of the magic community disavow anyone seen as betraying this oath, but also recognize the necessity to expose secrets of their craft responsibly to students and others desirous of learning magic. In his 2003 book, Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear, illusionist and author Jim Steinmeyer addressed the conundrum faced by those seeking to write about magic, yet still preserve its mysteries:

In order to understand how Houdini hid his elephant, we’re going to have to explain a few secrets. We’ll have to violate that sacred magician’s oath. In the process, I promise that there will be a few disappointments and more than a few astonishments. But to appreciate magic as an art, you’ll have to understand not only the baldest deceptions, but also the subtlest techniques. You’ll have to learn to think like a magician. In his popular general market book of 1963, Mulholland on Magic, the skilled practitioner himself revealed many of the principles of magic that a decade earlier had been included in his operational manuscript for the CIA. The real secret that Gottlieb and Mulholland sought to preserve, however, was not of specific tricks, but that professional intelligence officers, not just performing magicians, would be acquiring the necessary knowledge to apply the craft to the world of espionage. In a sense, this book is the result of two historical accidents. The first “accident” is that of the thousands of pages of research conducted under the CIA’s decade-long MKULTRA program, to our knowledge, only two major research studies—Mulholland’s manuals—survived CIA Director Richard Helm’s order in 1973 to destroy all MKULTRA documents. Mulholland’s manuals are a rare piece of historical evidence that the CIA, in the 1950s, through MKULTRA, sought to understand and acquire unorthodox capabilities for potential use against the Soviet adversary and the worldwide Communist threat. The manuals and other declassified MKULTRA administrative materials further reveal that many of America’s leading scientists and private institutions willingly participated in secret programs they agreed were critical to the nation’s security. The second “accident” was the authors’ discovery of the long-lost CIA manuals while conducting unrelated research in 2007. Although portions of the manuals had been previously described, referenced, or printed in part, we were unaware of the existence of a copy of the complete declassified work along with the original drawings and illustrations. Notable public references to the Mulholland manuals were made by magician-historian Michael Edwards in a 2001 article, “The Sphinx & the Spy: The Clandestine World of John Mulholland,” in Genii: The Conjurors’ Magazine, April 2001, a partial reproduction of Mulholland’s first manual in Genii, vol. 66 no. 8, August 2003, and Ben Robinson’s MagiCIAn: John Mulholland’s Secret Life, Lybrary.com, 2008. Neither the CIA’s library, nor its Historical Intelligence Collection, contained a copy of Mulholland’s manuals. When retrieved by the authors, the manuals’ text was legible, but the poor quality of photocopied pages of Mulholland’s accompanying illustrations, drawings, and photographs required careful study to understand his original intent.

To enhance the manuals’ readability, corrections to grammar, punctuation, and related errors that do not alter the substance of the original material have been made. We are indebted to our HarperCollins editor, Stephanie Meyers, for recommending Phil Franke as the illustrator, who has re-created the style and precision of the original images. The reader will find Phil’s mastery of capturing human hand and arm movements, which are central to Mulholland’s explanation of his tricks, to be superb art. From the first day we mentioned this project, Daniel Mandel, our agent at Sanford J. Greenburger and Associates, was an enthusiastic promoter. We are deeply appreciative for the personal interest in the subject by Steve Ross, then at HarperCollins, and his actions in making the project possible. Stephanie Meyers provided excellent suggestions and guidance in constructing the overall work and seeing it through to publication. The HarperCollins graphic design team has created a distinctive cover that reflects the historical look and significance of the material. While researching, writing, and rewriting the book, we received the daily good spirited assistance of Mary Margaret Wallace in typing and editing drafts that bounced back and forth between the authors. Consistent encouragement and well-placed suggestions and criticisms from Hayden Peake and Peter Earnest substantially improved our initial drafts. Tony and Jonna Mendez offered perspectives from their experiences that enabled us to translate many of the elements of magic from theory to practice. Additional appreciation is owed to Jerry Richards, Dan Mulvenna, Nigel West, Michael Hasco, David Kahn, and Brian Latell, as well as Ben, Bill, and Paul for their insights and contributions. Susan Rowen served as our “hand model” and kept our spirits roused as the authors re-created each of Mulholland’s original photographs as references for artist Phil Franke. John McLaughlin, former deputy director and acting director of the CIA, reviewed the manuscript to validate our use of magic terminology, as well as contributing the book’s preface and administering the “magician’s oath” to the authors. John is an accomplished amateur magician and, by virtue of his distinguished career at the CIA, is uniquely qualified to understand the rich overlap between the tradecraft of the intelligence officer and the magician. As a senior research fellow and lecturer at Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., he often begins presentations on strategic deception with demonstrations from his repertoire of magic tricks.

FOREWORD:
by: John McLaughlin - Former Deputy Director, Central Intelligence:
This is a book about an extraordinary American magician and the way his life intersected with American intelligence at a pivotal moment in its early history. John Mulholland was never a household word, like the world famous escapologist Houdini or, more recently, the illusionist David Copperfield. But among professional magicians from the 1930s to the 1950s, he was seen as the very model of what a magician should be—urbane, highly skilled, inventive, and prolific. He was very successful professionally, entertaining mostly in New York City society circles. He published widely on magic, both for the general public and for the inner circle of magicians who subscribed to the professional journal he edited for decades, The Sphinx. His impact on the art of magic was enormous. Mulholland’s 1932 book, Quicker Than the Eye, was one of the first books I stumbled on as a magic-struck boy combing the public library in the 1950s. I fondly remember being transported by an author who seemed to have traveled the world and witnessed marvelous things I could only imagine. That’s what fascinated me about Mulholland then. As a lifelong amateur magician who spent a career in American intelligence, what fascinates me about Mulholland today is the way the story told here resonates with something I came to conclude in the course of my professional life: that magic and espionage are really kindred arts. The manual that Mulholland wrote for the Central Intelligence Agency and that is reproduced here sought to apply to some aspects of espionage the techniques of stealth and misdirection used by the professional conjuror. Many may ask what these two fields have to do with each other. But a cursory look at what intelligence officers do illustrates the convergence. Just as a magician’s methods must elude detection in front of a closely attentive audience, so an intelligence officer doing espionage work must elude close surveillance and pass messages and materiel without detection. In another part of the profession, analysts must be as familiar as magicians with methods of deception, because analysts are almost always working with incomplete information and in circumstances where an adversary is seeking to mislead them—or in the magician’s term, misdirect them. Counterintelligence officers—people who specialize in catching spies—work in a part of the profession so labyrinthine that it is often referred to as a “wilderness of mirrors”—a phrase, of course, with magical overtones. Finally, there are the covert-action specialists.
In any intelligence service, these are the officers who seek at the direction of their national leaders to affect events or perceptions overseas, especially during wartime. Principles of misdirection familiar to magicians were evident in many of the great British covert operations of World War II— such as deceiving Hitler into thinking the 1943 Allied invasion from North Africa would target Greece rather than its true target, Sicily. This was the conjuror’s stage management applied to a continent-sized theater. The manual Mulholland produced for the CIA does not read the way a book for experienced magicians would read. He is clearly addressing an amateur audience and takes care to explain things in the simplest of terms. Yet he draws on the underlying principles of magic to explain how intelligence officers could avoid detection in the midst of various clandestine acts. A case can be made that Mulholland’s instruction influenced the more mundane aspects of espionage tradecraft—how to surreptitiously acquire and conceal various materials, for example. As best we know, however, the methods he designed for more aggressive actions—clandestinely delivering pills and powders into an adversary’s drink, for example—were never actually used. The fact that he was asked to contemplate such things is emblematic of a unique moment in American history. American leaders during the early Cold War felt the nation existentially threatened by an adversary who appeared to have no scruples. Mulholland’s writing on delivery of pills, potions, and powders was just one example of research carried out back then in fields as diverse as brainwashing and paranormal psychology. Many such efforts that seem bizarre today are understandable only in the context of those times—the formative years of the Cold War. These were also the formative years for the American intelligence community. It is important to remember that this was a very new field for the United States. Most other countries had long before integrated espionage into the national security tool kit; the Chinese strategist Sun Tsu had written about it in sophisticated terms in the sixth century B.C., and older countries such as Britain, Russia, and France had been at it for centuries. While the United States had used intelligence episodically, it was not organized at a national-level effort until 1947, and our young country struggles still today with its proper place in our national security strategy. I doubt many intelligence officers today would recognize John Mulholland’s name. But the essence of his contribution had little to do with notoriety or fame. It was, in effect, to help the nation’s early intelligence officers think like magicians. Given the close kinship between these two ancient arts, that was a significant contribution indeed and one that continues—in stealthy ways that Mulholland would probably admire—to this very day.

INTRODUCTION:
The Legacy of MKULTRA and the Missing Magic Manuals
Magic and Intelligence are really kindred arts.
-JOHN MCLAUGHLIN,
FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE

In 2007, the authors discovered a long-lost CIA file, once classified top secret, which revealed extraordinary details of the agency’s connection to the world of magic decades earlier. The documents, part of project MKULTRA, shed light on a fascinating and littleknown operation—the employment of John Mulholland as the CIA’s first magician. An accomplished author and America’s most respected conjurer of his day, Mulholland authored two illustrated manuals for teaching CIA field officers how to integrate elements of the magician’s craft into clandestine operations. Due, in part, to the extraordinary levels of secrecy surrounding MKULTRA, the manuals were considered too
sensitive to be distributed widely and all copies were believed to have been destroyed in 1973.
Nearly fifty years after they were written, rumors of the existence of a long-lost copy of the “magic” manuals continued to fly through the corridors at Langley, but many intelligence officers thought they were a myth.2 To understand the CIA’s first magician, and how his remarkable manuals came to be, it is necessary to recall one of the most dangerous periods in U.S. history. With its establishment in July 1947, the CIA received two primary missions—prevent surprise foreign attacks against the United States and counter the advance of Soviet communism into Europe and third-world nations. Officers of “the Agency,” as the CIA became known, would be on the front lines of the Cold War for four tense decades fueled by nuclear stalemate, incompatible ideologies, and a Soviet government obsessed with secrecy. At home, the USSR’s security and intelligence organizations, the KGB and its predecessors, cowed the internal population, and abroad they attempted to undermine
foreign governments aligned with the West. The Soviet Union’s successful testing of a nuclear weapon in 1949 caught the United States by surprise and created two nuclear powers competing in an international atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. President Eisenhower received a startling top secret report in 1954 from a commission headed by retired general James H. Doolittle that concluded, “If the U.S. is to survive, long-standing American concepts of ‘fair play’ must be reconsidered. We must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by cleverer, more sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against us.
It may become necessary that the American people become acquainted with, understand, and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.” The report affirmed a threat to the Western democracies from Soviet-sponsored aggression and called for an American offensive and defensive intelligence posture unlike anything previously authorized in peacetime. As a result, the CIA’s covert-action role expanded from Europe into the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and the Far East. Reflecting on those years more than half a century later, former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger asserted that during the decade of the 1950s only the United States stood between Soviet-led communism and world freedom. The CIA had been engaged in covert programs since its creation and in 1951 formed a special unit, the Technical Services Staff (TSS), to exploit advances in U.S. technology in support of espionage operations. One of TSS’s first employees was Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, whose degree in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology made him a logical choice to head the handful of chemists in the staff. Initially the chemistry branch created and tested formulas, or “special inks,” for secret writing that enabled CIA spies to embed invisible messages in otherwise innocuous correspondence.5 To conceal the liquid “disappearing inks,” TSS reformulated the liquids into a solid form that looked like aspirin tablets and repackaged the tablets in pill bottles that would pass unnoticed in an agent’s medicine cabinet. When a spy had information to convey, he would dissolve the tablet in water or alcohol to reconstitute the ink for his secret message. TSS supported other activities of the Agency as well: forging travel and identity documents for agents who worked under alias names, printing propaganda leaflets, installing clandestine microphones and cameras, and building concealments for spy equipment in furniture, briefcases, and clothing. To those uninitiated in the craft of espionage, the secretive work of the TSS scientists and engineers at times appeared to accomplish the impossible. In reality, this handful of CIA scientists was demonstrating the third law of prediction advanced by science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, Chief, CIA Technical Services Division, 1966–1973.

Dr. Gottlieb and his chemists expanded their research during 1953 to counter another unanticipated Soviet threat. The three-year-long Korean War had stalemated and the alliance of North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union seemed on the road to mastering the art of “mind control.” Such a capability could render soldiers, and possibly entire populations, vulnerable to Communist propaganda and influence. Reports reached the CIA about Soviet clandestine successes with mind control and newly discovered capabilities to brainwash, recruit, and operate agents with the aid of drugs. Mind control appeared to allow the Communists, using a combination of psychological techniques and newly developed pharmacological compounds, to remotely alter a subject’s mental capacities and control his “free will.”8 Despite limited research on similar topics during World War II and the early 1950s, the science underlying the reported Soviet successes remained a mystery. America needed to understand the scientific basis of mind control and develop safeguards and, if necessary, applications for its own use. In March 1953, Allen Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence, entrusted the thirtyfour-year-old Gottlieb with one of America’s most secret and sensitive Cold War programs, code-named MKULTRA. Dulles authorized TSS and Dr. Gottlieb’s chemical staff to begin work on multiple projects for “research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior.” MKULTRA eventually encompassed 149 subprojects and remained one of the CIA’s most carefully guarded secrets for over twenty years. Its projects aimed to understand how drugs and alcohol altered human behavior and to protect American assets from Soviet psychological or psychopharmaceutical manipulation. The research included clandestine acquisition of drugs, clinical testing on and experimentation with humans, some of whom were unaware of said testing, and grant proposals and contracts with hospitals, companies, and individuals. The scientists investigated topics ranging from concocting truth serums to developing a humane way to incapacitate guard dogs using a powerful tranquilizer mixed into ground beef. Several projects involved research on little-understood mind-altering drugs such as LSD and marijuana. In the end, the research produced an assortment of potential offensive capabilities involving incapacitating, lethal, and untraceable toxins. However, the absence of scientific data in the early 1950s about the effective and safe dosage levels of the new drugs, including LSD, presented a problem for the MKULTRA researchers. As a result, Gottlieb and members of his team performed experiments on themselves that included ingesting drugs and observing and recording their own reactions. In late 1953, an early LSD experiment involving several government scientists went horribly bad. “Hush puppy” pills contained a harmless tranquilizer, which was mixed with ground beef and fed to the dog. To avoid suspicion, adrenaline-filled syrettes would reawaken the dog when the mission was concluded.

Dr. Frank Olson was working at the U.S. Army Special Operations Division (SOD) biological weapons facility at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, and assisting the CIA on MKULTRA projects. Along with half a dozen other scientists, he volunteered to attend a retreat during mid-November 1953 at the remote Deep Creek Lodge in western Maryland, organized by Gottlieb. Together with seven other researchers from TSS and Ft. Detrick, Olson was served Cointreau liqueur that had secretly been spiked with seventy micrograms of LSD. After thirty minutes, the participants were told of the LSD and alerted to begin studying their reactions. Most reported little effect, but Olson had a “bad trip” that night. As his condition worsened in the following days, Gottlieb’s deputy, Dr. Robert Lashbrook, escorted him to New York City for psychiatric counseling. This attention and treatment seemed to calm Olson temporarily, but later that evening on November 24, 1953, he jumped to his death from a tenth-floor window of his New York hotel room. CIA executives, seeking to protect the secrecy of the MKULTRA program, did not fully reveal the circumstances of Olson’s death to his family. No other fatalities from the MKULTRA experiments occurred, but two decades passed before Olson’s widow received a delayed apology from President Gerald Ford and a financial settlement from the U.S.
government. Soviet intelligence in the 1950s, however, was less averse to death, either from accident or from assassination. Nikita Khrushchev, the successor to dictator Joseph Stalin, continued the existing policy of “special actions” as a central tool for dealing with the leaders of anti Soviet émigré groups. The first target of the post-Stalinist era, Ukrainian nationalist Georgi Okolovich, was spared when the assassin, KGB officer Nikolai Khokhlov, confessed the plot to his victim and defected to the CIA. On April 20, 1954, Khokhlov gave a dramatic press conference and revealed both the assassination plot and his exotic weapon to the world. The execution device was an electrically operated gun and silencer hidden inside a cigarette pack that shot cyanide-tipped bullets. This failure was followed soon thereafter by the successful assassinations of Ukrainian leaders Lev Rebet in 1957 and Stephen Bandera in 1959. Both were killed by KGB assassin Bogdan Stashinsky, who defected in 1961 and revealed that he had disposed of his weapon, a cyanide gas gun concealed in a rolled-up newspaper, in a canal near Bandera’s residence in Munich, Germany. An analysis of the KGB cigarette-pack gun and Stashinsky’s cyanide weapon, recovered from the canal, stimulated accelerated U.S. efforts to create comparable weaponry for the United States.

The Nondiscernible Bioinoculator.

From the beginning of MKULTRA, CIA scientists researched lethal chemical and biological substances, as well as “truth serums” and hallucinogens, as they continued work begun in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. Under a joint project code-named MKNAOMI, TSS and the SOD cooperated on development of ingenious weapons and exotic poisons. One Army-produced handgun, called the “nondiscernible bioinoculator,” resembled a .45-caliber Colt pistol that, fitted with a telescopic sight and detachable shoulder stock, fired a toxin-tipped dart silently and accurately up to 250 feet. The dart was so small—slightly wider than a human hair—it was nearly undetectable and left no traces in the target’s body during an autopsy. Other dart-firing launchers were developed and concealed inside fountain pens, walking canes, and umbrellas. A toothpaste tube used as concealment for the CIA STINGER, a small .22-caliber singleshot firing device.

Research was also conducted on a variety of exotic poisons including shellfish toxins, cobra venom, botulinium, and crocodile bile.21 Under the MKULTRA program, the CIA stockpiled eight different lethal substances and another twenty-seven temporary incapacitates either for specific operations or as on-the-shelf capabilities for possible future use. In one example, a tube of poison-laced toothpaste was prepared for insertion into the toiletry kit of President Patrice Lumumba in 1960. However, the CIA office chief in Leopoldville, Larry Devlin, rejected the plan and tossed the tube into the nearby river. About the same time, CIA treated a handkerchief with an incapacitating agent, brucellosis, to be sent to a targeted Iraqi colonel, 24 but the man was shot by a firing squad before the handkerchief ever arrived.

Illustration of original vials of lethal shellfish toxin created for MKULTRA.

Perhaps some of the most creative and almost whimsical CIA plots considered in the early 1960s were part of Operation Mongoose, meant to discredit or assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro using an assortment of incapacitating and deadly paraphernalia. The CIA considered modifying various devices for assassinating Castro.

HALLUCINOGENIC SPRAYS AND CIGARS:
One bioorganic chemist proposed spraying LSD inside Castro’s broadcasting studio in Havana to cause him to hallucinate. Since Castro famously smoked cigars, another idea suggested impregnating Castro’s cigars with a special chemical to produce temporary disorientation during his rambling speeches during their live broadcast to the Cuban people.
CONTAMINATED BOOTS:
When Castro traveled abroad, he often left his boots outside the hotel room door at night to be shined. CIA considered dusting the insides of the boots with thallium salts, a strong depilatory, which would cause his beard to fall out. The chemical was procured and tested successfully on animals, but the plan scrapped when Castro canceled the targeted trip.
DEPILATORY, POISONED, AND EXPLODING CIGARS:
Similar to the dusted-boot concept, Castro’s cigars could be treated with a powerful depilatory, causing loss of beard and corresponding damage to his “macho” image. A special box of cigars was to be provided for Castro during an appearance on David Susskind’s television talk show. However, after a senior CIA officer questioned how the operation could ensure that only Castro would smoke the cigars, the idea was abandoned. In another attempt, a Cuban double agent was recruited to offer Castro a cigar treated with botulin, a deadly toxin that would cause death within seconds. The cigars were passed to the agent in February 1961, but he failed to carry out the plan. Cuban security officials eventually created a private cigar brand, the Cohiba, exclusively for Castro, to safeguard his supply against future assassination attempts. A third concept involved planting a box of exploding cigars at a place where Castro would visit during a trip to the United Nations and “blow his head off.” The plan was not carried out. In addition to cigars, Castro enjoyed Cuba’s oceans and beaches, which offered an operational venue for:
EXPLODING SEASHELLS:
TSD was asked in 1963 to construct a seashell filled with explosives. This device was to be planted near Cuba’s Veradero Beach, a place where Castro commonly went skin diving. CIA discarded the idea as impractical when it failed an operational review.
CONTAMINATED DIVING SUIT:
A proposal was made for an intermediary to present Castro with a diving suit and breathing apparatus contaminated with tubercle bacillus (tuberculosis germ).34 CIA obtained a diving suit and dusted it to produce Madura foot, a chronic skin disease. The plan failed when the intermediary chose to present a different diving suit.
POISONED PEN:
About the same time that President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas—November 22, 1963—a CIA officer met secretly with Rolando Cubela, a Cuban agent in Paris, and offered a poisoned pen to kill Castro. The device, a Paper Mate ballpoint, was modified to conceal a small hypodermic syringe for injecting Blackleaf-40 poison. Even the slightest prick would result in a certain death, though the agent would have time to escape before the effects were noticed. After learning of Kennedy’s death, however, Cubela reconsidered the plan and disposed of the pen prior to returning to Cuba. A decade later, in 1976, American policy governing lethal actions against foreign leaders was formalized when President Ford issued Executive Order 11905 prohibiting political assassinations.
A hypodermic syringe was concealed inside this modified Paper Mate pen for an operation to assassinate Castro.

From the earliest days of MKULTRA, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb recognized that CIA’s drugs and chemicals, regardless of their ultimate purpose, would be operationally useless unless field officers and agents could covertly administer them. During the same month MKULTRA was authorized, April 1953, Gottlieb contacted John Mulholland, then fiftyfive years old and one of America’s most respected magicians. Mulholland was an expert in sleight of hand or “close-up” magic, a style of conjuring that appealed to Gottlieb because it was performed only a few feet from the audience. Further, sleight-of-hand illusions required no elaborate props for support. If Mulholland could deceive a suspecting audience who was studying his every move in close proximity, it should be possible to use similar tricks for secretly administering a pill or potion to an unsuspecting target. To do so, CIA field officers would need to be taught to perform their own tricks and John Mulholland, the author of several books about performing magic, appeared to be the ideal instructor. When approached, Mulholland soon agreed to develop a “spy manual” for Gottlieb describing “the various aspects of the magician’s art,” which might be useful in covert operations. The instructions would provide information enabling a field case officer “to develop the skills to surreptitiously place a pill or other substance in drink or food to be consumed by a target.” Mulholland accepted $3,000 to write the manual and the CIA approved the expense as MKULTRA Subproject Number 4 on May 4, 1953. John Mulholland—world-renowned magician, “Deception that is art.”

As part of the broader top-secret MKULTRA program, confidentiality regarding the CIA-Mulholland relationship and possible operational use of the techniques of magic was essential. Multiple layers of security included a formal secrecy agreement with Mulholland, “sterile” correspondence using alias names, cover companies, and nonattributable post office boxes. CIA used various covers for Dr. Gottlieb. Initially he communicated with Mulholland as Sherman C. Grifford of Chemrophyl Associates through a numbered post office box in Washington, D.C. Subsequently the P.O. box number changed, as did the cover name, to Samuel A. Granger, president of the notional Granger Research Company.
As an added measure, Mulholland’s writing contained no reference to the CIA or clandestine operations. Field case officers were called “performers” or “tricksters” and the covert acts referred to as “tricks.” Mulholland pledged never to divulge, publish, or reveal the information, methods, or persons involved.44 Information compartmentation practices at the time make it unlikely that Mulholland was told about any of the other MKULTRA subprojects and there is no evidence that Mulholland designed the sleight-of-hand tricks for any specific operation. By the winter of 1954, the manuscript, titled “Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception,” was complete.45 Gottlieb, apparently pleased with the effort, then saw another area for the magician’s skills: the CIA needed new methods for secret communication between officers and spies. Gottlieb invited Mulholland to suggest how the CIA might appropriate “techniques and principles employed by ‘magicians,’ ‘mind readers’ etc. to communicate information, and the development of new [nonelectrical communication] techniques.” For this new assignment, Mulholland produced another,
but much shorter manual titled “Recognition Signals.” John Mulholland’s stationery from 1953 to 1958.

In 1956, Gottlieb again expanded John Mulholland’s role as a consultant to consider “the application of the magician’s techniques to clandestine operations, such techniques to include surreptitious delivery of materials, deceptive movements and actions to cover normally prohibited activities, influencing choices and perceptions of other persons, various forms of disguise; covert signaling systems, etc.” Mulholland’s work for TSS continued until 1958, when his failing health from constant smoking and advancing arthritis limited his ability to travel and consult. Mulholland’s manuscripts, “Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception” and “Recognition Signals,” are among the few remaining documents to reveal MKULTRA’s research. Virtually all of the program’s reports and operational files on the “research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior” were ordered destroyed by DCI Richard Helms in 1973, ten years after most of the research had ended. According to a CIA officer in the 1970s, the Mulholland manual(s) “is the only product of MKULTRA known to have escaped destruction.”50 Gottlieb, MKULTRA’s principal officer, had written in 1964, “It has become increasingly obvious over the last several years that the general area [of biological and chemical control of human behavior] had less and less relevance to current complex operations. On the scientific side these materials and techniques are too unpredictable in their effect on individual human beings to be operationally useful.” But the destruction of the MKULTRA documents would itself become a problem for the Agency. In the wake of New York Times articles alleging CIA abuses and misconduct related to domestic spying in December 1974, a U.S. Senate Committee, headed by Senator Frank Church, launched an investigation. One sensational revelation from the hearings involved the discovery of nonoperational MKULTRA financial and administrative documents that had escaped destruction two years earlier. Senate scrutiny of the files revealed that drug experiments with provocative names such as Operation Midnight Climax had been run from CIA safe houses in California and New York. These experiments observed the effects of LSD on unwitting individuals or “clients” who were lured to the safe houses by prostitutes. Their reactions to drugs were surreptitiously monitored from behind one-way mirrors to judge the effectiveness of LSD, “truth serums,” and other mind-control substances. Although he had been retired for two years, Gottlieb was called as a witness by the Senate committee and questioned for four consecutive days in October 1975. The questioning concentrated on the drug experiments and Gottlieb apparently was not asked about the John Mulholland contract. Subsequently, following months of investigative work and thousands of hours of testimony, the Church Committee cited the CIA for a failure of “command and control” for only two drug experimentation projects including the 1953 event that had resulted in the death of Dr. Olson. The committee then concluded that none of the officers conducting MKULTRA had undertaken or participated in illegal or criminal activities. An Operation Midnight Climax researcher monitors the hotel room from behind a one-way mirror to secretly photograph and record events.

Keeping his promise of secrecy, Mulholland died in 1970 without revealing his clandestine role as “the CIA’s magician.” The public learned of his covert relationship with the CIA, and the Agency’s interest in drawing on the techniques of conjuring and magic for its espionage mission, only when the MKULTRA documents were declassified in 1977. For nearly twenty-five years, the story was nearly forgotten until a wellresearched article by magic historian Michael Edwards appeared in Genii magazine in 2001, a follow-up August 2003 piece by Richard Kaufman in Genii, and a biography of Mulholland by magician Ben Robinson was published in late 2008 under the title, MagiCIAn: John Mulholland’s Secret Life. Declassified CIA documents, the Genii articles, and Robinson’s book described an elusive, illustrated “manual” written by Mulholland detailing how to perform magic tricks for potential use by intelligence officers. The seven chapter titles of Mulholland’s first hundred-page manuscript were listed in the MKULTRA documents, but Edwards noted, “Today—five decades after it was written—the tricks and approaches set forth in this manual are still classified ‘top secret.’” Robinson, commenting about the secrecy surrounding Mulholland’s manual, stated: “Of a one-hundred-and-twenty-one-page manual comprised of eight chapters, the government has allowed only fifty-six pages to be made public. Of the fifty-six pages seen, roughly two-thirds of the pages are visible; the remaining third has been redacted [blacked out].” An internal history of the Technical Services Staff written by a CIA historian in 2000–2001 referred to the “top-secret” Mulholland manual and indicated that no known copies existed. We now know that under his CIA contracts Mulholland produced at least two illustrated manuals. The first described and illustrated numerous “tricks,” primarily sleight-of-hand and close-up deceptions for secretly hiding, transporting, and delivering small quantities of liquids, powders, or pills in the presence of unsuspecting targets. The second, much shorter manual revealed methods used by magicians and their assistants to pass information among one another without any appearance of communication. The manuals were written in the form of general training instructions rather than for support for specific operations. Only one copy of the original manuals is known to have survived. For Gottlieb and his successors, the techniques of deception used by performing magicians, when added to the “magic” of technology, presented an intriguing potential to enhance the clandestine delivery of materials and secret communications. Mulholland’s principles of magic were consistent with the CIA’s doctrine of tradecraft, and in the ensuing decades talented consultants from the world of magic provided the CIA with innovative illusions to mask and obscure clandestine operations. Multiple elements of the magician’s craft can be seen throughout the world of espionage, most notably in stage management, sleight of hand, disguise, identity transfer, escapology, and special concealment devices such as coins.

Stage Management and Misdirection:
The proper secret for a magician to use is the one indicated as best under the conditions and circumstances of the performance.
-JOHN MULHOLLAND

John Mulholland instructed officers that their success, as opposed to that of magicians, depended upon the fact that they are not known to be, or even suspected of being, tricksters. The deceptive techniques he taught for delivering CIA pills, powders, and potions were to be performed clandestinely, yet in full view of audiences that, if aware of the nature of the activity, would immediately confront and arrest the spy. Awareness and “management” of the potentially hostile environment, where audiences are culturally diverse, uncontrolled, and sometimes unseen, is as critical to a spy’s success as his special devices. Similarly, a successful stage magician understands that the execution of a trick may not produce an effective illusion unless the stage and audience are consciously managed. Mulholland, the master of “close magic,” instructed his CIA “tricksters” that “the more of the performer that can be seen, the less his chance of doing anything without detection. As an example, a performer on the stage would be seen were he to put his hand into his pocket, but that action can be made without being seen while standing close to a person so the hand is outside of his range of vision.” This style of magic was ideal for the CIA-intended actions that needed to be performed in close proximity to the target. Sight lines, limiting what the audience is allowed to see, are arranged so that the magician’s trick may be executed without exposing secret equipment or maneuvers. The placement of the magician’s scenery, props, lighting, and even a distractingly beautiful assistant further protect and safeguard the illusion. Sufficient time is allocated for preparing complex illusions and an unlimited number of rehearsals may be conducted to tweak and perfect the performance. In contrast to espionage, where a single mistake can be deadly for the spy, slip-ups by a magician during a “live show” carry little consequence beyond momentary embarrassment. To create an effective illusion, the spy and the magician employ similar craft and stage management techniques. Plausible reasons are substituted for reality to conceal true purposes, and spectator attention is lulled and diverted. For both spies and magicians to be successful, execution must be carefully planned, exhaustively practiced, and skillfully performed.
Magicians plan performances by asking themselves “what is my stage?” and “who is my audience?” Mulholland taught that these questions should be supplemented by asking “what is my goal for the operation?” and “how can I carry out the operation secretly?” Only after these questions have been sufficiently answered can the likely stage and audience be assessed. For the magician, the perfectly executed illusion is the ultimate goal. For the spy, illusion is only a means to divert attention from a clandestine act. To be successful, the espionage illusion must withstand both the direct observation of onlookers (casuals) and the scrutiny of professional counterintelligence officers (hostile surveillance), without exposing either the participation or identification of the agent. Typical clandestine acts of this type involve covert exchange of information, money, and supplies between the spy and intelligence officer. Proper stage management techniques provide reasons for the magician’s audience to believe their eyes instead of their reason. People have an almost infinite capability to selfrationalize and “know” that humans cannot levitate or survive being cut in half, yet both appear to occur on a well-managed stage.

The CIA learned to exploit such tendencies in operations where the spy needed the hostile surveillance team to ignore direct visual observations and rationalize events as nonalerting. For example, an intelligence officer may always park his car at the curb directly in front of his house. This is observed by surveillance. On the day a dead drop is left for an agent, the car is parked across the street from the house. The agent recognizes the different parking location as a signal, while surveillance sees no significance. Strategic misdirection becomes even more effective when combined with camouflage and illusion. During World War II, stage magician Jasper Maskelyne used his skills for “deceiving the eye” to support the British Camouflage Directorate. Inflatable rubber tanks were created to misdirect enemy attention away from real tanks that were disguised with plywood shells to appear as transport trucks. Operationally, an entire column of “trucks” could shed their artificial skins and reappear on the battlefield “out of thin air,” as if by magic! Such operations also had applications in naval deceptions. In 1915, “Q-boats,” apparently harmless, worn-out steamers appearing to be easy prey, lured German submarines close in to finish them off with their deck gun. The Q-boats had been fitted with concealed guns disguised in collapsible deckhouses or lifeboats. Naval uniforms for the crew were exchanged for old secondhand uniforms to disguise their crew and captain, who remained hidden to portray a lightly manned and vulnerable vessel. Only when the submarine drew close enough “for the kill” would the trap be sprung, and the superstructure pivoted away to reveal the Q-boat’s formidable weaponry. Reminiscent of the Q-boats’ successful deception, in 1961 CIA officers acquired standard Chinese junks in Hong Kong for conversion with high-speed craft equipped with marine diesel engines, fifty-caliber machine guns, and a battery of camouflaged 3.5-inch rockets. The boats, which appeared externally unmodified, would patrol covertly off the Vietnamese coast above the DMZ, and, if necessary, be able to quickly discard their camouflaged junk superstructure and hull “like magic” before disappearing at high speed. For agent operations, a retired CIA technical officer, Tony Mendez, has described the elaborate stage management techniques used in Moscow against elite surveillance teams of the KGB’s Seventh Directorate. By “lulling” the surveillance team with an unvarying pattern of daily commute in and around Moscow, the alertness of the watchers would eventually, and naturally, degrade. Then, after months of an unchanging travel pattern, the CIA officer would “disappear” during his “normal” commute for the brief time necessary for a clandestine act—usually filling a dead drop or posting a letter—before reappearing at his destination only minutes behind schedule.65 The watchers were not alarmed by the short gap in a routine schedule.

Mendez explains that when using misdirection, “a larger action covers a smaller action as long as the larger action itself does not attract suspicion.” A CIA officer stationed abroad once commented that having a dog was essential as a mask for secret communication with agents. Taking the dog out for long walks at night (the larger action) provided numerous opportunities to secretly mark signal sites and service dead drops (the smaller actions). Surveillance teams became used to the pattern of the late-night walks and were lulled into a false belief that no smaller-action clandestine activity would occur. Both magicians and spies must effectively manage the stage and sight lines to create an illusion. CIA officer Haviland Smith, the former senior CIA officer in Czechoslovakia during the late 1950s, developed new operational techniques to exploit weaknesses in the sight lines of the surveillance teams working against him in Prague. He discovered that when he was walking in urban areas, on routes he used frequently, the trailing surveillance team was always behind him, and when he made a right-hand turn, he would be “in the gap” or clear of surveillance for a few seconds. Rather than acting suspiciously to evade surveillance, he managed the sight lines to operate “before their very eyes” while “in the gap.” Smith repeated the technique during his next posting in East Berlin, and again it worked. By properly managing his stage, all of his operational activities could be conducted in these gaps, and out of sight. Smith continued to refine his techniques for working “in the gap” to covertly exchange information with spies and in 1965 consulted with a magician for tips on using misdirection. Smith initiated each operational sequence employing an orthogonal approach—right angles or right-hand turns—to ensure he would be free from trailing observation. In a personal demonstration set up at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel in front of his boss, the head of the East European Division, he added the new twist of misdirection. Smith had another officer—Ron Estes—make a right-hand turn into the hotel carrying a small package in his right hand beneath his raincoat. Smith, posing as the agent, was waiting inside the door, standing next to a bank of pay phones. As Estes approached, he shifted his raincoat from his right hand and shook it briefly before letting it flop into his left hand. In that same instant he handed the package unnoticed to Smith with his right hand. The movement of the raincoat successfully diverted attention to the left of Estes and away from the package. Smith received it without notice and moved quickly away and down a stairway. The CIA observers were unaware of the technique and inquired impatiently when the activity would take place. It worked. Misdirection had compounded the effectiveness of stage management. Performing theaters can be artfully arranged for illusions that provide the stage magician with distinct advantages. Stage lighting assures the audience focus is drawn to visible details intended to enhance the illusion, masking those that are unwanted. Props and paraphernalia are arranged in advance. Access to the stage is controlled and restricted to avoid exposing the magician’s secrets. The intelligence officer lacks such advantages, as the location or stage of his performance will be dictated by the requirements of the secret operation. As such, little assured control can be exercised over the audience, lighting, and sight lines. Regardless of how well designed and rehearsed clandestine “magic” may be, uncertainty always accompanies the real “performance.” For the field officer and agent, unseen as well as unanticipated spectators or hidden surveillance can expose a clandestine operation with disastrous consequences.

Thus special precautions are required. Robert Hanssen, a trained FBI counterintelligence officer who volunteered to spy for Soviet and Russian intelligence, selected the footbridges in the parks of northern Virginia for his stage. At night, he hid tightly wrapped and taped plastic trash bags crammed full of secret U.S. documents or retrieved sacks containing money or diamonds. Hanssen cleverly controlled the stage by choosing to “perform” when the parks were mostly unoccupied and at sites in heavily wooded and secluded park locations. He carefully selected each operational site to minimize his visibility to passersby while permitting him to detect possible surveillance prior to placing or removing bags from beneath the footbridge. Under these circumstances, Hanssen exploited an advantage over even the magician’s controlled stage since the absence of any audience virtually guaranteed his success. For the Central Intelligence Agency, few operations were more dangerous, or important, than the covert or “black” exfiltration of endangered officers, agents, and defectors from hostile countries or hostage situations. During the Cold War, the CIA and British intelligence, MI6, employed stage management techniques, frequently similar to those in the world of magic, for more than 150 secret operations to bring individuals and their extended families “out of the cold.” Stage management by the British intelligence service saved one of its most important spies from certain death in 1985. KGB colonel Oleg Gordievsky, the senior KGB intelligence officer and acting rezident in London, who was working secretly for the British intelligence, was betrayed by CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames and recalled to Moscow under suspicion. KGB investigators had circumstantial evidence from Ames that pointed to Gordievsky, but lacked the proof necessary to arrest the senior KGB officer. Each day he was subjected to lengthy interrogations as the investigators built their case against him, but allowed to return at night to his apartment, which was rigged with hidden listening devices. They hoped that overhearing a private confession to his wife, or an attempt to contact the British, would provide the final proof of his treason. However, Gordievsky secretly activated an emergency escape plan provided to him by MI6, and after eluding surveillance while on his daily jog traveled by train and bus to the Finnish border. Concurrent with Gordievsky’s secret travel, a pregnant British diplomat was driven from Moscow to Helsinki for medical attention. As her car and driver neared the Finnish border, they rendezvoused with Gordievsky and concealed him in the trunk of their diplomatic vehicle. At the border, while KGB Border Guard officers were examining papers, their German shepherd guard dog began to sniff suspiciously at the area of the car concealing Gordievsky. Thinking quickly, the pregnant diplomat took a meat sandwich from her bag and offered it to the curious dog as a distraction. Her impromptu stage management, employing misdirection, saved the agent’s life and Gordievsky became the only person known to have escaped Moscow while under the direct observation of the KGB’s Seventh Directorate. A classic CIA example demanding exacting stage management for a secret exfiltration is the rescue of six U.S. diplomats stranded outside of the American embassy in Iran after the compound was overrun and seized by Iranian “students” in November of 1979. Mendez, then chief of the disguise section of the CIA’s Office of Technical Service, adapted exfiltration techniques to the particular situation.

With the assistance of Academy Award winner and Hollywood makeup specialist John Chambers, he created the deception necessary for their rescue. Mendez and his associates formed a notional Hollywood film company, “Studio Six Productions,” to produce a science-fiction film titled Argo. Studio Six announced that the film would be shot in Iran and a team would be dispatched to scout potential locations outside Tehran. Fooled by this subterfuge, the Iranian government was expected to agree to cooperate with the Hollywood company as part of efforts to reverse the negative international publicity following the embassy takeover. To prepare the world stage, Mendez opened Studio Six production offices on the Columbia Studio lot in Hollywood and established credibility by running a full-page business advertisement in the industry’s most important trade paper, Variety. Mendez, posing as a European filmmaker, adopted an alias name, obtained visas from the Iranian embassy in Switzerland, and, accompanied by a colleague, traveled to Tehran in January of 1980. Once contact was established with the six diplomats hidden at the residence of a Canadian official, Mendez explained how their cover as filmmakers, combined with disguise and fabricated Canadian passports, could be used to exfiltrate them out of the Tehran airport. Mendez, a magic enthusiast as well as an accomplished “document validator” or forger, used a simple sleight-of-hand trick with wine-bottle corks to illustrate how deception and stage management would be used to overcome potential obstacles. His “magic and illusion” demonstration, called “The Impassable Corks,” instilled confidence for the plan among the diplomats. Mendez and his colleague worked through the weekend to create “new” Canadian passports and forge the necessary Iranian exit visas. Each of the six diplomats received cosmetic “makeovers” using disguise materials that restyled their looks to appear “Hollywood.” One conservative diplomat sported snow-white hair with a “mod” blow-dry. Mendez observed that after the transformation, “[the diplomat] was wearing tight trousers with no pockets and a blue silk shirt unbuttoned down the front with his chest hair cradling a gold chain and medallion. With his topcoat resting across his shoulders like a cape, he strolled around the room with the flair of a Hollywood dandy.” Seats for the escaping diplomats posing as the film’s “scouting team” were booked on a Swissair flight departing from Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport early on January 28, 1980. Mendez and his CIA colleague arrived at 5:30 A.M. to “manage the stage” at a time when the departure officials would be sleepy and most of the potentially troublesome Revolutionary Guards were still in bed. The escapees’ luggage was emblazoned with Canadian maple leaf stickers and Mendez hovered about his “stage,” the airport departure lounge, impressing onlookers with “Hollywood-talk.” The activity effectively supported the newly acquired manners and dress of the disguised diplomats, and by late afternoon, all reached Zurich, Switzerland, and freedom. Illusionist Jim Steinmeyer, when commenting on the techniques of the escape, noted: “Mendez’s improvisation was performed within carefully rehearsed scenes, meticulous paperwork, backstopped stories, and exhaustive research. If the six Americans seemed to saunter effortlessly through the Tehran airport, it was because the stage had been beautifully set and the scene masterfully presented. It was a demonstration of Kellar the Magician’s famous boast that, once he had an audience under his spell, he could ‘march an elephant across the stage and no one would notice.’” Dr. Gottlieb’s TSS staff later became the CIA’s Office of Technical Service and employed a new generation of magicians and illusionists.

Sleight of Hand:
As beginners, magicians love the colorful boxes they first saw on magic shop shelves—the trick props that seem able to do anything. As sophisticates, they learn that these mechanical props are no substitute for pure ability…sleight of hand.
—JIM STEINMEYER, HIDING THE ELEPHANT

A common and incorrect belief is that the hand is quicker than the eye. Quick movement does not explain an effective illusion by either magicians or spies. In fact, the hand is much slower than the eye, and for deceptive purposes, neither should ever move quickly. An illusion is primarily mental, not visual; when magicians and spies fool the minds of audiences, eyes observe only what the performer intends. Mulholland employed sleight of hand, the skilled manipulation of objects in a manner undetectable to the observer, in creating effective deceptions and illusions. He also recognized that such techniques could be learned by intelligence officers and applied in espionage. By replacing quick or clumsy movements that would attract the attention of hostile surveillance teams or an intended target, Mulholland described “sleights” that would appear to observers as natural and innocent, whether those be gestures, alterations in body posture, or changes in hand position. Effective sleight of hand employs psychology, misdirection, and a natural sequence of steps to create an illusion. Magicians and spies use misdirection so that their audiences will look toward an intended direction and away from the covert act. Since the human mind can only focus on a single thought at a time, controlling the target’s visual perception of events unfolding around him can implant a false image and memory. For example, Mulholland instructed officers that the flaming of a match rising in one hand to light a target’s cigarette would mask the discrete drop of a pill from the other hand. The target’s eyes, focusing, as intended, on the match, were incapable of also noticing the pill, the covert action. Mulholland realized that CIA officers needed small props to enhance their limited sleight-of-hand skills. He understood that spectators were less likely to suspect items with which they were already familiar. Commonly seen objects, such as cigarettes, matchbooks, pencils, and coins, appeared almost ubiquitous and inconsequential. Since most onlookers would not suspect that these items could be used as espionage devices, they could be concealments for hiding the pills, potions, and powders such as those produced by MKULTRA. Intelligence officers employed other sleight-of-hand techniques using conjuring paraphernalia. “Flash paper,” a staple for many magicians, was popular when cigarette smoking was common and acceptable. CIA officers employed it when taking secret notes in hostile and threatening environments; if the officer sensed danger or considered an operation compromised, touching the paper with a lit cigarette would result in its complete and instantaneous destruction. To the surveillance teams, none of the officer’s movements appeared unusual and only the ash residue remained if searched. In later years, as smoking became less acceptable, CIA officers preferred making written notes on water-soluble paper instead of flash paper. Covert communications and tasking instructions were printed on this special, water-soluble paper so they could be destroyed quickly and completely in a cup of coffee, splashed with water, or even swallowed.
Ryszard Kuklinski, the CIA’s most valuable Cold War agent in Poland in the 1970s, kept his secret escape plan on water-soluble paper taped beneath a kitchen cabinet so it could be quickly destroyed in a nearby pan of water. A principal skill of intelligence officers is taking photographs without being detected. In the 1960s, the CIA needed an effective way to make a Minox subminiature camera “disappear” quickly after taking a secret photo. The solution employed sleight of hand and a device from the magician’s repertoire of disappearing objects. In this case a “holdout,” a simple piece of elastic for making a coin disappear from an outstretched hand and up the performer’s sleeve, worked well. However, instead of elastic, CIA technicians used a retractable tape measure to fit the mechanism with thin black cord and mounted it on a leather armband. The cord attached to the end of the Minox, and after the photo was taken, the officer had only to release his grip to allow the camera to retract and “disappear” up his sleeve. Using sleight of hand can enhance a clandestine operation in other, less direct ways. For example, undercover officers often face difficulties infiltrating suspicious groups who are wary when approached by strangers. One solution was a simple trick, the “magic beer coaster,” to attract attention and have the target “come to him.”80 A folded U.S. fiftydollar bill was inserted into a Heineken beer coaster that had been sliced apart with a razor, then reglued and placed in a book press to flatten as it dried. The officer appeared several nights at the bar and drank alone while slowly tearing apart a stack of Heineken coasters. When the bartender eventually asked why he was doing this, the officer responded, “Heineken places fifty-dollar bills as a little-known promotion in unmarked beer coasters.” An hour later, the officer employed sleight of hand to introduce a gimmicked coaster into the stack in front of him. When he later tore apart the prepared coaster and “discovered” the fifty-dollar bill, he celebrated loudly and offered to buy a round of drinks. The onlookers came to him! Though the fifty-dollar coaster attracted attention, the full effectiveness of the illusion was dependent on the officer’s stage performance and his sleight of hand

Disguise and Identity Transfer:
Disguise is only a tool…. Before you use any tradecraft tool you have to set up the operation for the deception.
-TONY MENDEZ, FORMER CIA “MASTER OF DISGUISE”

Magicians regularly employ doubles, identical twins, full disguise, or disguise paraphernalia to create effective illusions.

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