H. Keith Melton

Question: Are the tricks and deceptions described by John Mulholland in his CIA manual of magic for spies more James Bondesque or Maxwell Smartish? Answer: Definitely the latter.

Many of the hocus-pocus methods described in this CIA manual require sleight-of-hand. I say "hocus-pocus" lovingly, speaking from my vantage as an amateur magician who enjoys reading books about trickery and deception, always on the lookout for tricks that I can add to a future act.

In this book you will find show more descriptions of skills that require practice and lots of it. It will take more than a careful reading of this manual to teach a novice, spy or not, how to master deceptive moves that will fool an audience. Magic is a performing art, not a science.

For example, Mulholland devotes 22 pages to the handling of tablets -- poison pills ranging in size from one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter to a pill as large as three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, bigger pills requiring different handling described elsewhere in the manual. Here the CIA agent-in-training will find detailed instructions for concealing, stealing, palming, and surreptitiously dropping a poison pill into an enemy's drink under her nose. Method One, where the tablet is concealed in a matchbook, works with smokers. Method Two, where the tablet is concealed by a piece of paper, works with smokers and non-smokers alike. Both methods require patter, a smooth and plausible line of gab designed to misdirect the victim's attention to something other than your real intentions.

Without the necessary commitment to oft-repeated dry runs, this trick along with many other tricks in this manual are arrant setups for flubs, goofs, and pratfalls in the manner of Maxwell Smart. I will go out on a limb and say that very few people, CIA agents or not, would possess the digital dexterity and showmanship to master the performance skills required by the magic described in this book in the manner of James Bond.

One of the maxims of magic is practice, practice, practice. Master magicians, whether professional or amateur, will spend hundreds of hours practicing to become proficient at a sleight that will take only seconds to perform. Neglect practice and these performance skills will rapidly decline. I cannot imagine a CIA agent, for whom magic is not his first love, practicing these skills day after day and week after week (as a magician would) to be ready for a performance that may never materialize. I repeat -- preparation, patter, and performance are not quickly learned nor long maintained without rehearsal, and lots of it.

Bottom Line: I really like this book. John Mulholland is my all-time favorite writer of magic books. I recommend this book without reservation for magicians, including aspiring magicians, but not for wishful spies. show less

3.5 stars. The Cold War spycraft history is absolutely what I was hoping to read about. The post-9/11 segments, though, are understandably thin.

Disability tag due to an anecdote about disability fail. A tech was making a super-secret puzzle box for a field asset to keep secret things in. These boxes involved pressing one piece and sliding another, etc. Turns out the asset had severely limited use of his hands due to severe arthritis & the handler had never mentioned it to the tech. show more Which...yeah. Way to pay attention.

I wish quite a lot that there had been more discussion of women in the service, and now and then they specify "the men and women of ___ dept", but very few of the women get any page time. It's especially annoying because those who do sound completely fascinating. show less

This is a fascinating artifact of the Bush administration and its now famous effort to disseminate fear as a political expedient.
The simplistic line art illustrations, reminiscent of an airline emergency procedures card, are a tragicomic indication of the governments estimation of our docility, our incapacity to think critically and absorb information, and our feelings of vulnerability. My favorite is an illustration of a two dimensional figure with trance-like vision lines, permanently cast show more from his eyes to his automobile with a caption: "Unless your vehicle is under constant guard, there is a danger of it being rigged with a bomb."

What is even more stimulating than contemplating the scale of the manipulation that this implies, is to ponder what the process of creating such a work must have been. I mean, some civil servant actually got paid to sit around and dream this stuff up! show less

Due back at the library today and I'm a little more than halfway done, but that's okay. This is a really fascinating book, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys learning about spies or covert operations. The first half gives examples of how the US government used magicians' tricks, especially during the Cold War. The second half is the manual itself, which is kind of hard to read (dude needed to be schooled on commas)and a little confusing if you're not actually practicing the tricks while show more reading. But seriously, they planned to kill Castro how many times and they still didn't manage it? Really? Maybe they need a book on follow-through. show less