Read the CIA’s Manual of Trickery and Deception, Written by a Professional Stage Magician阅读中情局的《欺诈与伪装手册》，作者是一位职业舞台魔术师

The idea of a young­ster vac­il­lat­ing between whether to become a magi­cian or join the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency may sound implau­si­ble, but those two work­ing envi­ron­ments have deep­er com­mon­al­i­ties than it would seem. So, in any case, believes John McLaugh­lin, whose more than 30 years at the CIA includ­ed peri­ods as its deputy direc­tor and act­ing direc­tor. He also describes him­self as a life­long ama­teur magi­cian, an avo­ca­tion that owes much to his boy­hood dis­cov­ery of Quick­er Than the Eye, a mag­ic man­u­al from 1932 by one John Mul­hol­land. Around the same time the young McLaugh­lin came across that book in the library, Mul­hol­land was writ­ing the more spe­cial­ized guide­books Some Oper­a­tional Appli­ca­tions of the Art of Decep­tion and Recog­ni­tion Sig­nals — though nobody with­out a seri­ous secu­ri­ty clear­ance would have known it.一个年轻人徘徊在“成为魔术师”还是“加入中央情报局”之间的想法听起来可能不太可信，但这两个工作环境之间有着比表面看起来更深层的共同点。至少，约翰·麦克劳林（John McLaughlin）是这样认为的，他在中情局工作了三十多年，期间曾担任副局长和代理局长。他还称自己是一位终身业余魔术师，这一爱好很大程度上归功于他童年时发现的一本名为《比眼快》（Quicker Than the Eye）的魔术手册，该书由约翰·穆霍兰德（John Mulholland）于1932年编写。就在年轻的麦克劳林在图书馆偶然发现那本书的同一时期，穆霍兰德正在撰写更专业的指南《欺骗艺术的某些应用》（Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception）和《识别信号》（Recognition Signals）——尽管没有高级安全许可的人对此一无所知。

In 1953, Mul­hol­land left his posi­tion as edi­tor of the magi­cians’ trade mag­a­zine The Sphinx, osten­si­bly for health rea­sons, but actu­al­ly to go to work for the CIA. Formed just six years before, the orga­ni­za­tion was still deter­min­ing what its mis­sion of pre­vent­ing sur­prise for­eign attacks against the U.S. and coun­ter­ing the glob­al advance of com­mu­nism would entail on the ground. To any­one who’s made enough of a habit of nov­els and films deal­ing with Cold War espi­onage, it may come as no sur­prise that the arts of dis­guise, mis­di­rec­tion, and sleight of hand prac­ticed by mas­ter magi­cians would look use­ful indeed to the CIA. “Just as a magician’s meth­ods must elude detec­tion in front of a close­ly atten­tive audi­ence,” writes McLaugh­lin, “so an intel­li­gence offi­cer doing espi­onage work must elude close sur­veil­lance and pass mes­sages and materiel with­out detec­tion.”1953年，穆霍兰德辞去了魔术师行业杂志《斯芬克斯》（The Sphinx）编辑的职务，表面上是因为健康原因，但实际上是为了去中情局工作。该组织成立于六年前，当时还在摸索其“防止美国遭受突发外国袭击”和“对抗全球共产主义扩张”的使命在实地操作中意味着什么。对于那些习惯了冷战间谍小说和电影的人来说，大师级魔术师所运用的伪装、误导和手法技巧对中情局来说确实有用，这并不令人惊讶。麦克劳林写道：“正如魔术师的方法必须在全神贯注的观众面前避开察觉一样，从事间谍活动的情报官员也必须避开严密的监视，并在不被发现的情况下传递信息和物资。”

Addi­tion­al­ly, “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 Com­pa­ny’s spe­cial­ists in coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence described their sub­field as a “wilder­ness of mir­rors,” an expres­sion pro­fes­sion­al illu­sion­ists must find espe­cial­ly evoca­tive. Com­mis­sioned in the time of the CIA’s human-exper­i­men­ta­tion pro­gram MKULTRA, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, Mul­hol­land’s man­u­als were long assumed offi­cial­ly destroyed along with many oth­er of its doc­u­ments in 1973. After they unex­pect­ed­ly resur­faced dur­ing declas­si­fi­ca­tion in the two-thou­sands, they were pub­lished in The Offi­cial CIA Man­u­al of Trick­ery and Decep­tion by Agency his­to­ri­ans H. Kei­th Melton and Robert Wal­lace. You can find a copy over at the Inter­net Archive.此外，“分析师必须像魔术师一样熟悉欺骗手段，因为分析师几乎总是在信息不全的情况下工作，而且是在对手试图误导他们——或者用魔术师的术语来说，是‘误导’（misdirect）他们——的情况下工作。”中情局的反间谍专家将他们的细分领域描述为“镜子荒原”（a wilderness of mirrors），职业幻术师一定会觉得这个表达格外传神。穆霍兰德的手册编写于中情局人体实验项目“MKULTRA”时期（Open Culture此前曾报道过），长期以来人们一直认为它与该机构的其他许多文件一起在1973年被正式销毁。在21世纪解密过程中，这些手册意外重现，随后由中情局历史学家H·基思·梅尔顿（H. Keith Melton）和罗伯特·华莱士（Robert Wallace）整理出版为《中情局官方欺诈与伪装手册》（The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception）。你可以在互联网档案馆（Internet Archive）找到副本。

At that time, the Boston Globe pub­lished illus­trat­ed expla­na­tions of some of Mul­hol­land’s tech­niques, such as trans­port­ing spies using a mech­a­nism sim­i­lar to the one that con­ceals an appar­ent­ly sawed-in-half stage­hand, or sur­rep­ti­tious­ly drop­ping into a drink a pill affixed to the back of a book of match­es. Amid “the super­pow­er strug­gle for pow­er and influ­ence around the world,” writes Tom Scoc­ca, “both the ideas and tech­niques of secret war per­vad­ed the cul­ture — the cor­ro­sive belief in hid­den con­spir­a­cy and the nifty thrill of spy­craft itself, the codes and dis­guis­es and minia­ture cam­eras.” Today, “Mulholland’s account of real-world stage­craft amounts to an eti­quette man­u­al for a lost moment of his­to­ry. The match­book trick depends on peo­ple smok­ing and drink­ing. There is a sur­vey of the many pock­ets found in every man’s suit, and which ones are most nat­ur­al for casu­al­ly slip­ping objects into.” How­ev­er much of the romance has drained out of espi­onage — as it has from so much else since the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry — the best magi­cians know that old tricks can always be re-enchant­ed for a new world. You can read The Offi­cial CIA Man­u­al of Trick­ery and Decep­tion here.当时，《波士顿环球报》刊登了穆霍兰德部分技术的图解说明，例如使用类似于隐藏舞台上“被锯成两半的助手”的装置来运送间谍，或者不动声色地将贴在火柴盒背面的药丸掉进饮料里。汤姆·斯科卡（Tom Scocca）写道，在“全球争夺权力和影响力的超级大国斗争”中，“秘密战争的理念和技术渗透到了文化之中——对隐藏阴谋的腐蚀性信仰，以及间谍活动本身带来的巧妙快感，包括密码、伪装和微型相机。”如今，“穆霍兰德对现实世界舞台技巧的描述，相当于一段逝去历史的礼仪手册。火柴盒戏法依赖于人们抽烟喝酒的习惯。书中还调查了每件男士西装上都有的许多口袋，以及哪些口袋最适合随手塞入物品。”尽管间谍活动中的浪漫色彩已像20世纪中期以来的许多事物一样消退，但最优秀的魔术师知道，古老的戏法总能为新世界重新焕发魅力。你可以在此处阅读《中情局官方欺诈与伪装手册》。

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Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.科林·马歇尔（Colin Marshall）常驻首尔，从事有关城市、语言和文化的写作与广播。他是时事通讯《城市书籍》（Books on Cities）的作者，也著有《韩国摘要禁止》（한국 요약 금지）和《韩国新复古》（Korean Newtro）等书。请在曾被称为Twitter的社交网络上关注他：@colinmarshall。