CIA in 2024 published Smoke and Mirrors: The Magic of Spycraft, an essay on CIA’s
use of magic techniques in its intelligence operations.
Texas School Book Depository building owner D. Harold Byrd wrote in his
autobiography about his hunting trips with General Jimmy Doolittle,
“… it is possible that he (Doolittle) has an exaggerated admiration for my
skill with tricks of magic. On one of our tiger hunting trips in
Sumatra I astonished the natives with card tricks and prestidigitations
with coins and other objects. What I didn’t tell Jim was that in my
younger days in Dallas I had joined a magicians club which in turn had
affiliations with professional magicians who met in Chicago. We
exchanged trade secrets and vied with each other, using both prepared
tricks and dexterity. With the advantage of being an “insider”, it was
easy for me to confound the General along with the gullible Sumatrans.”
~ Page 40, “I’m an Endangered Species: The Autobiography of a Free
Enterpriser” (1978).
In 1954, at the request of President Eisenhower, General Doolittle chaired
a commission to evaluate and strengthen the covert functions of CIA.
Gen. Doolittle served on both Eisenhower and Kennedy’s President’s Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) and chaired its CIA panel. In the summer
of 1963 Doolittle was tasked with finding out why CIA had not implemented
JFK’s reforms of that agency, and this question was pending at the time
JFK was assassinated.
Dan Alcorn
AARC President
