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Five top tips from the CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception

“The instant the performer sees the spectator take a cigarette, cigar, or pipe, he takes the packet of matches from his pocket, tears off one match, and holds packet and match ready to ignite the match.

"He does these things openly because what he does can only be looked upon as a friendly and courteous gesture.”

Instructions to an illusionist? Not exactly.

The words are lifted from a manual written by one of America's greatest magicians John Mulholland but, at the height of the cold war, they were commissioned for use by CIA agents.

All copies of “The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception” were thought to have been destroyed in 1973 but one recently resurfaced and it’s now been declassified and reprinted.

Mulholland isn’t the only magician to have advised security agencies.  A magician called Jasper Maskelyne is said to have made dummy submarines and light illusions to distract the enemy during World War II and Houdini once worked for Scotland Yard.

But Mulholland’s work with the CIA was part of the wider, covert CIA research progamme into mind control. Codenamed MK-ULTRA, it led to the secret service’s experiments with LSD and hypnosis.

There's a great slideshow of graphics illustrating seven of Mullholland's best tips to on Boston.com (see the shoelaces illustration above).

Here's CC's five favourite, starting with...

1) Sawing a lady in half

CIA operatives were smuggled in and out of Eastern Europe by concealing them within specially modified fuel tanks inspired by the “sawing the assistant in half” magic trick.

2) Lacing the message

The lacing of shoes could communicate vital information. One pattern of lacing meant “I have information”, another “follow me” and yet another “I have brought another person.”

3) Talking back (and neck)

Though it looks a natural enough gesture, people rarely rub the back of their necks. For this reason, and the fact that it can be spotted from some distance, it can serve as a useful covert signal.

4) Booking a meeting 

You’re in the office of an enemy official and you’ve spotted a vital document. You need to pinch it, but you’re being watched.

Carry a book with you, pre-prepared with small dabs of wax on one surface. When the moment comes, casually drop the book onto the table, and lift the document away, stuck to the wax.

5) Disappearing act

The document can then be subtly disposed of as follows:

Fold if against the thigh, using this method it can be reduced to 1/16th of its original size and slipped into a pocket.

Or: pass the document to a colleague by holding the book by its cover with thumb, third and little finger while your accomplice holds the book with both hands, finding the document with one and slipping it away.

It happens to the best political slogans...

On Conservative Home, Tim has a terrific idea going. He is asking for your favourite political slogan (although perhaps the two of us are forgetting that most people don't have one)

He makes a very interesting observation about a campaign I was involved in:

I hated 'New Labour, New Danger'... but it proved to be right.

I was having precisely this discussion the other day with the 1997 Labour adman Chris Powell.

The idea behind New Labour New Danger was that it was necessary to acknowledge that labour was new in order to avoid looking completely out of touch. The problem is that newness was associated with good things - freshness, change, improvement.

So we had the idea that we would make people ask themselves questions about newness. They would say that labour was new, but not improved in every respect. Some of the newness was actually bad.

And here's where we encountered the problem.

We couldn't decide what the badness was.

We couldn't quite put our finger on spin and failure to deliver and sofa government even though we sort of intuited that it was there. And we certainly couldn't persuade people that any potential problem they may encounter with Tony Blair was worse than what they had now.

In retrospect we were wasting our time even trying. We should have used all of our resources to promote ourselves rather than attack Labour.

But when Tim says he hated New Labour, New Danger but that it proved to be right, that was entirely its problem. 

Commons Christmas tree collapse

Hat tip to Paul Waugh for this photo of the 50ft Commons Christmas tree, looking sad in the aftermath of its collapse in last night's wind and rain.

A new, cheaper contractor was employed for the first time this year - apparently to take advantage of the superior quality of their service.

The world's worst photofits

And...

Both get well earned places amongst The Mirror's 'Top 10 worst photofits' today...

Bank charges: change the law

Ian King (as usual) puts it very well this morning. On the bank charges, it's a choice:

So — whose side were you on? Were you with the plucky campaigners standing up for their rights against the greedy, money-grabbing banks?

Or were you with the silent majority angry that free banking was being threatened by a vocal minority who wanted to have their cake and eat it by running up unauthorised overdrafts and spending other people’s money without being penalised?

And I know what my choice is.

I am with the plucky campaigners. Not because they're plucky, which can be annoying. Nor because I am one.

It's simply this - I don't believe that a small group of bank account holders should be subsidising everyone else by paying penal charges.

Providing banking services costs money and banks are entitled to charge for them. I do not think that it is reasonable for the entire charge to fall on those who from time to time exceed their overdraft.

I think the OFT was right to leap to their defence and if the law does not allow them, then the law should be changed so that it does. 

How to... build your very own Star Wars spaceship

Prefer to construct a Battlestar Galactica spacecraft in your garden shed? No problem. There's an immense archive of blueprints for all kinds of Science Fiction vehicles here.

Knock yourself out.

Live long and prosper. 

(Hat tip: Kottke)

Vote: word of the noughties?

Hot on the depressingly scuffed heels of the ‘Word of the Year’ (Unfriend? Really?) comes the announcement that the American Dialect Society is accepting nominations for the “Word of the Decade”

What is the word or phrase which best characterizes... the decade? What expression most reflects the ideas, events, and themes which have occupied the English-speaking world?

candidates will be:

—especially prominent or important throughout the years 2000-2009

—indicative of trends, fads, upheavals, groundswells, or sea changes which affected history, culture, or society throughout the years 2000-2009.

Compounds or phrases that act as single “lexical items” qualify for inclusion too, and the vote will be held in Baltimore on Friday, January 8, 2010.

A quick scan through the current suggestions on Twitter paints a sombre picture of the last ten years. Among the most frequently nominated: “war”, ‘”terrorism”, “fail”.

Have the noughties really been all bad?

I’m more inclined to back words that express the developments that have been made instead.

‘Googled’? Or maybe ‘blog’ would be the most appropriate use of CC’s vote?

Or should it be a tactical patriotic vote against the Americanisation of the English language? 'Bollocks' might fit the prevailing mood...

The Independent and that pesky 'Jewish lobby'

On 5 February, this item appeared in The Independent diary:

The former Southampton and England midfielder was to present an award to Tottenham Hotspur's manager Harry Redknapp, but not before an ill-judged wisecrack prompted collective jaw-dropping around the room.

"I always enjoyed playing at White Hart Lane," said Le Tissier of his time at Spurs, the London club whose Jewish fans make up a large proportion of its support. "It was the only place where I felt I didn't have a big nose."

The gag is unlikely to endear Le Tissier to the Jewish lobby.

The Jewish lobby?

On 1st August 2009 Richard Ingrams wrote this in The Independent on the Iraq Inquiry:

More than a few MPs had expressed doubts about the composition of the panel – no military or legal experts, two Jewish historians thought to have been in favour of the war and a token woman, Baroness Prashar, whom few people had hitherto heard of.

Not just historians, which would have been bad enough. Jewish historians.

And then on Sunday 22 November 2009, The Independent featured this article by Oliver Miles, also on the Iraq Inquiry:

Rather less attention has been paid to the curious appointment of two historians (which seems a lot, out of a total of five), both strong supporters of Tony Blair and/or the Iraq war...

Both Gilbert and Freedman are Jewish, and Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism. Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream British and American media, but The Jewish Chronicle and the Israeli media have no such inhibitions, and the Arabic media both in London and in the region are usually not far behind...

Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced.

In other words, he openly suggests that there should be a quota of Jews on a public inquiry panel.

I have a great respect for Independent journalists and the paper employs some of the best political journalists around. I hope they won't be upset if I ask that someone gets a grip.

(Hat tip: Norman Geras)

Roy Hattersley and proportional representation

I didn't understand Roy Hattersley's article in the Observer.

I understood well enough, of course I did, his dislike of hung parliaments and minority government. It's just that I, er, thought he changed his mind and was now in favour of proportional representation.

How do you have PR without a hung parliament?

The only thing I can think of is that he opposes minority governments, not hung parliaments. In other words he wants a coalition.

But that doesn't quite fit with his argument.

The least politically correct advert in the history of the world

My Times colleague Judith Evans has emailed to say that CC’s list of sexist ads reminded her of this… Possibly – what am I saying, definitely – the least politically correct advert ever:

 

'EACH DAY HUMBLE SUPPLIES ENOUGH ENERGY TO MELT 7 MILLION TONS OF GLACIER!'

Er... go Humble.

If you can beat that please send it in.