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CIA Manual Thought Lost In 1973 Available On Amazon

Posted by samzenpus on from the there-is-no-manual-nor-has-there-ever-been-a-manual dept.

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."

3 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. The original article? by Sara+Chan · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!!!

  2. Re:wow by SpaghettiPattern · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --

    I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
  3. Ironic by hallux.sinister · · Score: 5, Informative
    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