The CIA, in its attempt to foil the spread of Communism during the Cold War, created a covert program called MKULTRA to test and develop techniques and gadgets to stop the Soviets in their tracks. Most evidence of MKULTRA’s activities were destroyed by CIA director Richard Helms, but a secret Magic Manual meant to train agents in the art of trickery and misdirection survived.
The US government believed that the Soviets were using drugs for mind control and assassinations. Afraid they’d fall behind, and interested to explore its potential, they created their own secret program, MKULTRA. Among its tasks were developing poisons ways of delivering them. Their arsenal had eight lethal substances and twenty seven incapacitating ones.Many were found in the nature, such as shellfish toxins, cobra venom, botulinum and crocodile bile. To deliver those toxins,
the CIA developed weapons like the Nondiscernible Bioinoculator, a .45 caliber Colt pistol that could fire a toxin-tipped dart filled with poison. If used with a sight and a shoulder stock, it could shoot a dart up to 250 feet and leave no traces.
Many plans were hatched to eliminate threats to the US. An example was President Patrice Lumumba of Congo, who appealed to the Soviets when the West turned on him. That alarmed the Eisenhower administration. In 1960, a tube of poison laced toothpaste was prepared for an agent to insert into Lumumba’s toiletry kit. Larry Devlin, CIA office chief in the capital city of Leopoldville is said to have tossed the tube into a river and the plan abandoned.
Another target was Iraqi general Abdel Karim Kassem. The agency sent him a poisoned handkerchief, laced with the incapacitating agent brucellosis. He was killed by a firing squad before the handkerchief arrived. One particular focus of intense CIA involvement was Operation Mongoose. Its purpose was to discredit or assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro.After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy’s brother, Robert, led the effort in conjunction with the CIA to “ develop new and imaginative approaches to the possibility of getting rid of the Castro regime.” To ruin Castro’s reputation, one chemist proposed spraying a compound similar to LSD in his recording studio. He would then hallucinate while giving one of his regular broadcasts and appear incoherent. That plan was aborted because the chemical was unreliable.
Other plans involved his trademark beard and depilatory agents. The idea was that losing the beard meant losing the “macho” image. In one plan, an agent would spray the depilatory chemical thallium in Castro’s boots when he left them outside his hotel room at night, to be shined. Castro cancelled the trip and the plan had to be scrapped.Plans to assassinate him using cigars were equally bizarre. In one attempt, a Cuban double agent would offer him a cigar laced with botulinum, one of the most poisonous biological substances and a neurotoxin that can kill in seconds. The ploy failed when the agent didn’t carry out the plan.
Another plan imagined Castro accepting and lighting exploding cigars during a trip to the UN to “blow his head off,” but that plan wasn’t carried out. Eventually Castro’s security forces created an exclusive brand of cigars, the Cohibas to safeguarded him against sabotage.
When cigars didn’t prove a fruitful assassination delivery system, the CIA focused on other activities Castro enjoyed, such as sea diving in Varadero Beach. Tests began on exploding seashells but they were unreliable and impractical and the idea was abandoned.Castro enjoyed diving, so the CIA entertained giving him a diving suit infected with the bacteria that causes tuberculosis. They dusted a diving suit with the biological agents that produce a skin disease called Madura Foot but the person tasked with giving him the suit backed out and gave him a different one instead.
The CIA even tinkered with the idea of using a Paper Mate ballpoint pen equipped with a small hypodermic needle that could inject a deadly poison, the Blackleaf-40. That substance has lethal amounts of nicotine sulfate and was used as a pesticide at the time. But once again, the agent tasked with carrying out the assassination never went through with it.The problem was best understood by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA’s Chief of Technical Services Division. He knew that agents needed to carry out their tasks with skill and without detection. He paid $3000 to magician John Mulholland to write a manual for agents, so they could learn “the tricks of the trade.” Mulholland was a master of “close up magic,” where the audience is fooled by the magician with theater, psychology and setup.Those are the skills Agents need to carry out their mission. Mulholland wrote two manuals. The first one is called “Some Operational Applications of The Art of Deception” and the second one is a manual on “Recognition Signals.” Both are among the few surviving MKULTRA documents.
The first manual dealt with the art of misdirection. Just like a magic act, the agent needs to “set the stage.” Mullholland emphasizes practice, repetition, assessment of all potential problems and understanding the audience as keys to a successful “performance.”
In order to fool someone, agents should be aware not to call attention to themselves. Outfits and attitudes have to blend. He or she must behave and look fitting to the setting and must seem at ease but not too rigid. Fidgeting is the enemy of the spy and simplicity is always best. The first part of the manual deals with sight lines, gathering information and switching identities.When managing your sight lines the hand isn’t really faster than the eye. The secret is in making the eye look elsewhere or tricking the mind into believing an alternative reality of your choice. Magicians and agents can redirect attention or blame.For instance, making a fuss with one hand while slipping a poison into a cup with the other. They can plant a seed of doubt in an audience’s minds by describing culprits with generic looks with one or two specific details. Using that, they can trigger false memories and confuse the facts.
The next part was about gathering information. Taking photographs in secret, for example, is a vital skill. In the 60’s, the CIA used the mechanism of a retractable tape measure, but instead of the metal tape it used a black cord attached to a subminiature Minox camera. The whole thing was mounted on an armband inside the spy’s sleeve. After taking the picture, the cord rolled into the tape, pulling the camera up the arm and out of sight.
But taking and hiding images is useless unless spies can effectively switch Identities and remain hidden. Magicians regularly use twins and disguises to create illusions and spies can do the same. The manual describes the identical trick illusion, where a person is at one place, disappears and seems to appear at another.The CIA called that “identity transfer.” Houdini used it in his solid brick wall illusion. He had craftsmen build a wall on stage, after which he would hide behind a screen and disappear from one side to the other, making it look like he disappeared through the wall. Though people suspected it was a trapdoor, it wasn’t really.He actually started out behind a screen on the left side of the wall, as himself. He changed into worker’s overalls, exited the screen disguised as a builder assistant, walked to the right side of the wall in plain sight of the audience. Meanwhile, behind the screen on the left, mechanical arms waved at the audience. He walked behind the screen on the right side of the wall, changed back into his own clothes and “re-appeared” as himself.
Intelligence officers used similar techniques. In one instance, an agent, agent A staged a meeting with a top spy. Agent A arrived with his wife to a party, dressed in a normal suit and tie. Agent B, not known by the Soviets and with a similar build to Agent A, arrived at the same party but dressed in loud, 1970 styled mod-clothing.A third agent, Agent C, who was known to have had a ski accident on the previous week, arrived with his wife wearing a leg cast, ski jacket and a cap. Inside the party, Agent A and Agent B exchanged outfits. Agent A left with Agent C and his wife.
Agent B, left at the party dressed in suit and tie, excused himself to avoid identification. After leaving, Agent A changed into regular clothes and met with the top spy. After the meeting, the group rejoined the party and the agents swapped clothes again.
But not all identity transfers required a person to person transfer. The CIA also used a big Saint Bernard dog to swap identities. An agent’s cover was owning the dog who sometimes needed to visit the veterinarian. When debriefing or meetings were needed, the person who needed the meetup would put on a Saint Bernard skin costume and enter a specially designed portable kennel.Speakers hidden inside played a recording of the dog, complete with sound effects. At the vet, the meeting would take place. Then the agent would return home, dressed as a dog in his kennel.
Sometimes, agents also need to use escapology. Operatives needed to extricate themselves from restraints or incarceration, and that is where the magic manual also proved invaluable. They would create and hide escape kits, which contain the tools needed to unlock or unchain themselves.One kit, originally created for Harry Houdini, was hidden in a hollow shoe heel. The heel opened through a hinged flap on the straight edge of the heel. CIA agents used that technique and hid inside maps, a compass and small tools. Houdini also used a Gigli saw that could pass as a shoelace which helped him to cut through one-inch bars.
Concealment of the escape kit was vital to agents and Houdini was a master. He had an egg-shaped container that held his tools, and he’d place it in the back of his throat while he was being searched. The CIA, never to be outdone, created a suppository concealment kit of nine tools, including “wire cutters, pry bar, saw blades, drill, and reamer packed into the four inch long by one inch diameter kit.” When the agent needed a tool, all he had to do to retrieve it.
Escape sometimes also meant exiting from a hostile location. To do that, the CIA transported people by hiding them in unexpected cavities. In one case, the fuel tank in a Mercedes Benz was divided to accommodate a person while remaining functional. People were smuggled across the Soviet border that way.The Magic Manual also mentioned the importance of signaling ideas, for helping agents to communicate without detection. For instance, a message can be transmitted by the type of knot a man wears on a tie. Another method uses gift packages. The color or pattern of the wrapping paper, the way the ribbons are tied, or how it is held together contains the message.
The same concept applies to carrying books. Wearing a cast, bandage, or band aid is another way to communicate through the color, position and location of those coverings. Messages can be seen at a distance, without interaction by the agents.
Anything that can have different designs or configurations can serve to signal. At a closer distance, shoelaces are excellent signaling devices. As long as they’re tied the same way on both feet, the way they’re tied or the material of the shoelaces can communicate messages such as “I have a message,” or “I will am waiting for instructions,”.
Those were only a small sample of the training contained in the CIA’s Magic Manual, one of the only documents that survived MKULTRA. It offers a small glimpse into the techniques used by the CIA and the US government in their fight against Communism. Even though President Ford and the Church Commission curtailed MKULTRA in 1976, its true the CIA’s secret programs and tricks left a deep legacy for the Agency.If you were amazed at these secret CIA spy tricks, you might want to read about incredible
secret spy devices in History. Thanks for reading.
