{"id":4293,"date":"2009-12-01T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2009-12-01T17:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=4293"},"modified":"2009-12-01T12:00:12","modified_gmt":"2009-12-01T17:00:12","slug":"spilling-state-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/4293","title":{"rendered":"Spilling State Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had no idea that I could have let the proverbial cat out of the bag when I <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/4164\">linked to different ways of lacing\/tying your shoes<\/a>.  But it turns out that the CIA used lacing patterns as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/bostonglobe\/ideas\/CIA_illusion?pg=3\">ways to send messages<\/a> (slideshow).  It&#8217;s the visual part of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/bostonglobe\/ideas\/articles\/2009\/11\/01\/when_the_cia_tried_its_hand_at_magic\/\">Tinker, tailor, soldier&#8230; illusionist?<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe instant the performer sees the spectator take a cigarette, cigar, or pipe, he takes the packet of matches from his pocket, tears off one match, and holds packet and match ready to ignite the match,\u201d the magician John Mulholland wrote in a manual in the 1950s. \u201cHe does these things openly because what he does can only be looked upon as a friendly and courteous gesture.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mulholland\u2019s instructions were written not for stage magicians, but for the covert operatives of the CIA. At the height of the Cold War &#8211; in the era of nuclear missiles and submarines, amid the tangled cloak-and-dagger maneuverings of espionage and counterespionage &#8211; the agency was also secretly doing something else. It was trying to learn to do magic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fortunately it&#8217;s all been declassified.  Whew!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had no idea that I could have let the proverbial cat out of the bag when I linked to different ways of lacing\/tying your shoes. But it turns out that the CIA used lacing patterns as ways to send &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/4293\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}