From the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, October 31, 2024:
Smoke and Mirrors: The Magic of Spycraft
In magic, as in spycraft, nothing is quite as it seems. Deception and illusion are tricks of both trades.
Distracting the adversary, concealing intentions, donning disguises, making evidence disappear, and escaping unnoticed… CIA has been applying the magician’s craft to the world of espionage for decades.
The arts of misdirection, sleight-of-hand, and recognition signals are all conjurers’ tricks used for covert intelligence operations.
Just ask Tony Mendez, CIA’s former Chief of Disguise, who championed the use of illusions in a variety of intelligence operations during the Cold War. The most famous operation was probably ARGO, which was made into a Hollywood blockbuster. Mendez was played by Ben Affleck.
Mendez—along with his close associate Ed Johnson—snuck six Americans out of Iran by disguising them as a Hollywood film crew.
According to magician Jim Steinmeyer, the ruse worked because, “Mendez’s illusion came down to meticulous detail. He actually established a Hollywood production company, with a script, artwork, job descriptions, and trade ads announcing their upcoming project. This was matched, in detail, by the forged documents and disguises for the six Americans. It was an indulgence that was the dream of any magician. 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 Teheran 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.’”
Mendez, throughout his career, was a huge advocate of adopting the tricks and tools of magicians and applying them in intelligence work. He even sought out Hollywood disguise and special effects artists to better the Agency’s techniques and illusions.
But he wasn’t the first at CIA to take an interest in magic for intelligence purposes.“Magic and intelligence work would appear on the surface to be an unlikely combination, but as the partnership between the dark arts and the Agency evolved, the craft of magic and the CIA’s need for clandestine operations locked together like the last two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.”The Missing Magic Manuals of Langley
Former CIA Chief of Disguise
Tony Mendez
“Magic and espionage are really kindred arts,” or so wrote former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin, an amateur magician himself, in the forward to the book, The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception, by Keith Melton and Robert Wallace.
This book, created from two long-lost training guides designed to teach Agency officers how to integrate elements of the magician’s craft into clandestine operations, revealed that the CIA’s connection to the world of magic was decades old.
In the 1950s, the Agency hired magician John Mulholland to teach young officers techniques of deception suitable for the field, such as sleight-of-hand brush passes and smuggling assets out of East Germany during the Cold War in vehicles that resembled the magic boxes used in stage illusions.“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.”As part of his contract, Mulholland compiled his Houdini-like advice into two training manuals; “Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception” and “Recognition Signals.”
- The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception
The magic manuals were thought to be lost to history. However, in 2007, while going through some unrelated documents, Robert Wallace, a former director of the CIA’s Office of Technical Services, discovered references to the manuals and tracked down poor-quality copies of each that had miraculously escaped the shredder.
The manuals were no longer classified, so Wallace worked with intelligence historian and collector, Keith Melton, to publish them in their entirety.“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.”The tricks and tools of spycraft borrowed from the world of magic and illusion are vast. They include things like twinning and teaming—deploying look-a-likes as decoys and setting the roles of trickster and assistant—to using props and gimmicks such as invisible ink, hidden compartments, and forged documents.
Former Deputy Director of CIA
John McLaughlin
Tricks of the Trade
Creating believable and plausible stories are vital to many illusions, as are skills like timing, body position, and the art of distraction.
Here are some of the ways magic and intelligence mingle, creating illusions, deceptions, and trickery that could fool even the most skilled of spies....
....MUCH MORE
Previously:
October 2018 - "The CIA'a Former "Chief of Disguise" on How to Disappear Into the Crowd"
January 2019 - Tony Mendez, 'Argo' Spy Who Smuggled U.S Hostages Out of Iran During Crisis Died This Week
