CIA Declassifies Pages From Their Cookbook

AngryNick writes "The Washington Post reports today on the declassification of some of the CIA's oldest secrets: Do you want to open sealed envelopes without getting caught? According to one of the six oldest classified documents in possession of the Central Intelligence Agency: 'Mix 5 drams copper acetol arsenate. 3 ounces acetone and add 1 pint amyl alcohol (fusil-oil). Heat in water bath — steam rising will dissolve the sealing material of its mucilage, wax or oil.... Do not inhale fumes.'"

Comments

But...but...

[LordStormes]

what if I've got nasal congestion? This stuff ought to eat through that lickety-split if I inhale the fumes, right?

Useful for something

[antifoidulus]

While hardly anyone sends info via letters anymore, I bet a bunch of teenage amateur meth manufacturers are getting ideas for new drugs.

Re:Useful for something

[dmbasso]

Just yesterday I became aware that people drink (or inhale the vapor of) a infusion made of VHS videotapes to get high. It's been a long time since I laughed so much... with ideas like that we can confirm that there are no bounds on human stupidity.

[Warning: VHS tea may cause cancer or metal poisoning, take it only if you are completely retarded and want to kill that lonely neuron of yours.]

Re:Useful for something

[Anonymous Coward]

All teenagers are idiots. Most adults are, too. The ones who survive into adulthood are merely the lucky ones, and it's hit and miss as to which ones grow out of their stupidity.

Ideas of social Darwinism are for morons.

wow

[Charliemopps]

Wow, 6 documents from 100 years ago. We'll find out about Kennedy any day now!

Re:wow

[Spritzer]

Why? The CIA knew nothing about that.

Re:wow

[creat3d]

That's right, son. That's right.

Re:wow

[Bing Tsher E]

The only one who has figured it all out is Oliver Stone. Yep.

Invisible ink

[mangu]

That one I learned as a kid: either orange juice or sugar dissolved in water makes invisible ink. Heat the paper with a clothes iron to develop.

Re:Invisible ink

[vgerclover]

Real Agents use Semen.

Re:Invisible ink

[Farmer Tim]

Ah, so that's why people say "come again" when they didn't get the message the first time.

WWI documents are not CIA

[Anonymous Coward]

These documents predate the CIA. Therefore the recipes aren't CIA recipes.

Anarchist cookbook?

[vlm]

Mix 5 drams copper acetol arsenate. 3 ounces acetone and add 1 pint amyl alcohol (fusil-oil).

This is sounding like the "anarchist cookbook" which had made up recipes intended to blow up potential bombers rather than cooking up the real thing.
Right up there with "get high from banana peels"

You want a solvent for mucilage, try ethanol fumes. I have no idea how to test it because envelope manufacturers have not used biological mucilage for longer than I've been alive... Maybe a museum or an old relative has an envelope they'd let you mess with?

Re:Anarchist cookbook?

[TheCarp]

I dunno, I think you give the guy who put the cookbook together a bit too much credit. If anything it was a collection that was put together from book learning and inexperience. Sure, anybody can look up the reaction and figure out how to make nitroglycerin. Doing it safely on the other hand isn't something that a lot of people (even some who did it) can speak to.

Getting high from banana peels is a perfect example. It wasn't new in the cookbook. It was a hoax printed in a Princeton newspaper. The author of the book got ahold of it and included it in his book. Hardly some grand conspiracy, just, ignorance, inexperience, and lack of source checking.

Re:Anarchist cookbook?

[bmo]

The Anarchists' Cookbook had real recipes.

It's just that some stuff was left out, like... safety.

This was discussed here on Slashdot and if you read the packet of declassified docs relating to it, it was pretty well stated that sure, these are actual things you can do, but they might not quite work out as you plan.

"they" - meaning law enforcement, preferred you blow yourself up and draw attention to yourself instead of having to hunt down every PFY that downloaded the book off the local BBS at 1200 (or 300!) bps.

--
BMO

Re:Anarchist cookbook?

[hoggoth]

But huffing cat urine is real, right?

Re:Anarchist cookbook?

[Omestes]

"they" - meaning law enforcement, preferred you blow yourself up and draw attention to yourself instead of having to hunt down every PFY that downloaded the book off the local BBS at 1200 (or 300!) bps.

Many of the books called by the name "Anarchist's Cookbook" on old BBSs weren't the same as the print edition. Actually in the early-mid 90's I don't think I ever actually found a text version of the print edition on any local BBS (or Fido, or, later, telnet BBSs). If anything, most of the BBS versions were more dubious than the original. I remember reading how to make a "contact explosive" from iodine and ammonia, and pondering how the hell someone would do that without blowing themselves up or inhaling particularly nasty fumes. Some of them devoted tens of pages on stuffing match heads into tennis balls and calling it a "grenade"...

The 90's were a much simpler time. I supported myself through high school by selling print, and disk, copies of the BBS versions of the Anarchist Cookbook, and other "counterculture" literature to my fellow students. I think I charged like $10 for a print copy, and $5 for a floppy. These days I would have been expelled, arrested, and probably permanently black marked from ever having a successful life.

I also sold compilations of ways to extract drugs from ethnographic plants for awhile (most of which were probably completely innacurate and potentially harmful, in retrospect)...

I feel sorry for kids there days... Half the stuff I did in my youth would get someone into very deep water now.

Re:Anarchist cookbook?

[bernywork]

> I remember reading how to make a "contact explosive" from iodine and ammonia,

Made it, it worked. Had to play with the ratio a bit though to get the desired effect (I wanted throw downs, not sneeze and blow up...)

Please do inhale...

[Super Dave Osbourne]

If someone is opening my mail, by all means inhale drop dead.

CIA Cookbook?

[errxn]

Mix 5 drams copper acetol arsenate. 3 ounces acetone and add 1 pint amyl alcohol (fusil-oil). Heat in water bath — steam rising will dissolve the sealing material of its mucilage, wax or oil.... Do not inhale fumes.

This recipe is terrible, and tastes like shit. Conclusion: The CIA's cooking sucks.

Re:CIA Cookbook?

[mangu]

Mix 5 drams copper acetol arsenate. 3 ounces acetone and add 1 pint amyl alcohol (fusil-oil). Heat in water bath â" steam rising will dissolve the sealing material of its mucilage, wax or oil.... Do not inhale fumes.

This recipe is terrible, and tastes like shit.

I knew it tasted bad, but had no idea that this is how shit tastes.

Re:CIA Cookbook?

[LordStormes]

Serve with the C4 recipe on the next page, and BAM! Kick it up a notch!

CIA's Cooking

[wiredog]

Is awesome!

Re:If it's been declassified, it's not useful anym

[Nidi62]

A general rule of spooks . . . we'll tell you how we spied 100 years ago . . . but not how we do it today . . .

Except the principles of modern espionage go back hundreds if not thousands of years. Do you think brush-passes or dead drops were modern inventions? How about encryption and codes? While today's technology includes stuff spies could have only dreamed of 100 years ago, the fundamentals and basics are exactly the same.

Re:If it's been declassified, it's not useful anym

[Gnavpot]

A general rule of spooks . . . we'll tell you how we spied 100 years ago . . . but not how we do it today . . .

The joke is not that this is public today - but that it was still considered worth keeping secret yesterday.

Re:Chili?

[GodfatherofSoul]

Mix a democracy with a dash of pro-US dissenters
Bring to a boil
Remove president when flavor suited to taste
Add one whole dictator
Simmer for 30 years

Paging Michael Weston...

[mariox19]

Oh, come on! I'm a regular viewer of Burn Notice. What's the CIA going to tell me that I don't already know?

The English are notorious wankers.

[HornWumpus]

Give them credit for turning lemons into lemonade.

At least they weren't 'colonized by wankers'.