http://www.smh.com.au/world/cia-paid-magician-to-teach-spies-new-tricks-20091126-junt.html
CIA paid magician to teach spies new tricks November 27, 2009 WASHINGTON: The CIA hired America's most famous magician to write a manual on the arts of trickery, concealment and secret communication during the Cold War. John Mulholland was paid the then princely sum of $US3000 for tips on slipping a pill into the drink of the unsuspecting, tying shoelaces to give signals and on the ''surreptitious removal of objects by women''. Though it was believed every copy of his report had been destroyed in 1973, one survived and has been turned into a book, The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception, by Keith Melton, an espionage historian, and Bob Wallace, a former director of the CIA's office of technical services. Mulholland's guidance from the 1950s was part of a larger CIA effort, called MK-ULTRA, developed to counter Soviet mind-control and interrogation techniques. The scheme later involved dosing unsuspecting suspects with LSD, and wilder plots such as planting an explosive in Fidel Castro's cigar. Mulholland supplies instructions on making and concealing droppers for liquids, how to handle small items before pocketing the vital one, and how to pick up a document with a book by using wads of wax. John McLaughlin, a former CIA deputy director, writes in a foreword that the drink-spiking techniques ''were never actually used'', to the best of his knowledge. Telegraph, London [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
