Mulholland apparently had a minor obsession with shoelaces. you know, read this article about some of the manual’s most ridiculous and incredible suggestions for spies. A few copies survived the culling, and now you can actually buy one on Amazon.
In the early 1970s, the CIA destroyed every known copy of the manual - or so they thought. Instead, what they got was a book that walks the fine line between useful and ridiculous, with some of his ideas being brilliant enough to make it onto the field while other ideas probably resulted in a loss of life as CIA agents died laughing while reading. Agents weren’t handed a standard issue magic wand and spell book (that we know of). If after reading that title, you’re imagining the CIA as a real life version of the Ministry of Magic from Harry Potter, pump the brakes. The resulting book was called The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception. In 1953, with the Cold War at a fevered pitch, the CIA paid Mulholland $3,000 (a king’s ransom at the time) to adapt his years of experience in the field of trickery, deception and concealment into a manual loaded with suggestions on how American intelligence agents could apply the basic principles of stage magic to their spy work.