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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.'"
This recipe is terrible, and tastes like shit. Conclusion: The CIA's cooking sucks.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
That's right, son. That's right.
Grammar nazis are to this community what excrements are to gold.
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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.
"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.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Ah, so that's why people say "come again" when they didn't get the message the first time.
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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.