The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception

The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception
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
Notes

Selected Bibliography
About the Authors
Other Books by H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher

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.