The CIA's Magician

An interesting article by Noah Shachtman on Wired.com (CIA’s Lost Magic Manual Resurfaces) describes the contributions of magician John Mulholland to U.S. intelligence efforts during the Cold War. The agency paid him $3,000 to write the manual now available as The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception
This is not the only book of Mulholland's still in print. Mulholland's Book of Magic is published by Dover.