The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception

By: H. Keith Melton, Robert Wallace

Narrated by: Perry Daniels

A top-secret manual for training CIA field agents in deception and sleight-of-hand was thought to be a rumor…until a single surviving copy was discovered in the agency’s archives.

In 1953, a top-secret manual teaching agents sleight-of-hand and other deception techniques was written for the CIA by America’s then most famous magician. All copies were believed destroyed by the CIA’s purge of the infamous MKULTRA documents in 1973, and there was no proof of the manual’s existence . . . until a copy was discovered among the CIA’s recently declassified archives.

The manual in this work is thought to represent the only surviving copy of magician John Mulholland’s instructions:

Handling Tablets (preparing pills and tablets; hiding pills in hand, matchbook, wallet, and money)

Handling Powders (creating containers for holding powders; using duplicate pencils to make drops)

Handling Liquids (making containers to drop or spray liquids; using matchbooks, coins, wallets, cigarettes, and bare hands; creating distracting stories that are both rational and simple)

Removing Objects (mastering preparatory actions, timing, body position, and the art of distraction; making secret pockets; picking up and secretly folding paper)

Special Notes for Women (modifying earlier techniques for women’s use; using pocket mirrors, jewelry, cosmetics, handkerchiefs, and evening bags)

Working as a Team (Setting the roles of trickster and assistant; notes on the proper use of signals)

Along with the original text, espionage historian H. Keith Melton and longtime CIA gadgeteer Robert Wallace provides an introduction illuminating the history of CIA agent deception and dirty tricks, and the role of this secret manual in that highly controversial program.

Tricks for Magicians

This is a good training manual, with abundant detail for those intending to enter the true “spy” arena or become a magician. I was hoping for a bit more insight into actual CIA history, although there is some of that in the book.

Interesting history

The material was rather dry. While the reader did as well as he could with the material, the later chapters demonstrating how tricks were done were hard to follow...these were things that needed to be seen, not described.