CIA Manual Thought Lost In 1973 Available On Amazon

An anonymous reader writes "At the height of the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency paid renowned magician John Mulholland $3,000 to write a manual on misdirection, concealment, and stagecraft. All known copies of the document were believed to be destroyed in 1973. Turns out one survived — and is now available on Amazon."

Comments

The original article?

[Sara Chan]

So the Slashdot summary links to an article in the Huffington Post. And the HuffPo article links to an article in Wired. And the Wired article links to the actual story in the Boston Globe.

Genius idea: have the Slashdot summary link to the actual story. YES!!!

Re:PDF Torrent?

[John Hasler]

> One of the questions raised on the Amazon page is: shouldn't this material
> be public domain? It is owned by the US Government...

If the author wrote thing as a US Government employee then the goverment is the author and is not permitted to enforce its copyright. If he was acting as a contractor he is the author in which case he may still own the copyright.

> ...and any copyright would seem to have expired at this point...

Not yet.

> ...it seems like we should be able to get a copy for free under the FOIA.

The FOIA does not work the way you think it does.

Re:PDF Torrent?

[John Hasler]

> And yes, unless its classified, it is in the American pubic domain on day
> one since it was paid for by US citizens.

Not true. The government cannot enforce its copyright on "works for hire" where the government is the employer but it can enforce copyrights it acquires. Contractors also often retain copyright is works produced while performing a contract (the government usually acquires a nonexclusive license). The mere fact that a work was paid for by tax money does not put it in the public domain.

Re:wow

[SpaghettiPattern]

Did you ever read the prince? It's the K+R C Programming Language for politics. The book in TFA is about being a spy. I wouldn't say the topics are unrelated but one is a practical handbook and the other is on concepts.

Ironic

[hallux.sinister]

Every time I see or hear of a reference to "The Prince", or a leader is referred to as Machiavellian, I smile at the irony. Machiavelli was being SARCASTIC when he wrote that. He was kidding! Machiavelli was ahead of his time in holding the ideals of personal freedom and responsibility, equality, and all that jazz which are diametric opposites of the views espoused in "The Prince". He worked hard as a politician to build Florence into a shining beacon of how a society should be run, and a family called the de' Medici came along, seized power, (using techniques from the, at the time, as-yet-unwritten book, "The Prince") and turned the shining beacon into a cesspool of corruption, with rampant nepotism, greed, etc.

Stripped of his position, and having been barred from holding any political office by the de' Medici, after a lifetime of public service, embittered, Machiavelli wrote "The Prince" basically saying: "if you want to grab, hold, and expand your political power," (adding under his breath, "like those de' Medici bastards,") he continued, "this is what you do..." (He could not insult them openly, he had already been imprisoned and tortured by them once, and I guess he wasn't "feeling strong" anymore.)

It was not meant literally! I guess the De Medici had the last laugh though, whether by their actions or not, Machiavelli's name is associated NOT with his own good and noble life's work, but with the behaviours and beliefs of those he most loathed and despised. For a better idea of what this great Renaissance figure really thought, try instead his "Discorsi sulla prima deca di Tito Livio", or "Discourses on the first ten books of Livy", (Titus Livius, Roman historian)

~ Hallux

Re:wow

[cheesybagel]

Sun Tzu's Art of War talks about spies and double spies. This is all older than dirt.

Re:wow

[DNS-and-BIND]

What would those points be, exactly? You've never read the book, you just saw the word "mercenary" and you're trying to insist something that isn't true. Blackwater are the equivalent of Renaissance mercenaries? That is simply uneducated, period. Do they rampage across the United States looting cities and holding wealthy citizens for ransom? Does the mayor of Detroit hire Executive Outcomes to invade Michigan, who then hires Blackwater in defense? Does the CEO of DynCorp hide out in South Jersey with his army, demanding to be hired by Bloomberg otherwise he'll invade the city? Ignorant, ignorant, ignorant. But typical of the contemporary style of argument that relies on assertion and "everyone knows that's true" as its only means.

You don't even know (of course, never having read the book) that Machiavelli, in his book The Prince which we are talking about now, STRONGLY RECOMMENDS AGAINST HIRING MERCENARIES. Machiavelli hated mercenaries, considered them a scourge, and advocated armies of citizens instead. Does "the draft" ring a bell?

Re:wow

[fosterNutrition]

You do know The Prince was meant as satire, right?

That's very much a minority view, and certainly not as obvious as your sarcastic tone implies. Most people do not subscribe to that view at all, and reading the book shows exactly why: it doesn't come across as a satire at all. The satirical interpretation is based largely on extrapolating from biographical details and making a lot of tenuous assumptions.