Now You Don't: When Espionage Meets Magic

17 min read19 January Spies and magicians have plundered one another’s box of tricks throughout history but, as Alan White reports, these practised deceivers can’t be trusted to tell the truth about their co-operation. Illustrations by Tracy Worrall The way he tells it, the great magician was beginning to settle into his retirement when he got a letter he couldn’t ignore. In 1856, Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, aged 51, had finally packed up his act, and was to devote himself to his studies and experiments. A glorious future lay spread out before him – free from the stress of performing, he was, in his words, “about to devote myself to my peaceful studies, and enjoy the pleasantest existence man ever had on earth”.

The year before, he’d been approached by a Colonel François-Edouard de Neveu, the head of the political office at Algiers. The colonel had requested that he perform before the leaders of the Arab tribes there. Robert-Houdin turned down the invitation; he was tired of the stress involved in putting on a show, wishing instead to focus on winning awards as an inventor with his “new applications of electricity to mechanism”.

But de Neveu wasn’t to be dissuaded: he contacted Robert-Houdin for a second time and, this time, the magician decided to go. One reason, he said, was the “quasi political” nature of the visit, the notion he might be able to render his country a “service”. The mission involved undermining the Marabouts; Muslim religious leaders regarded by the local Arab population as “envoys of God”, sent to deliver them from the oppression of Christians.

These men, Robert-Houdin wrote, were “no more sorcerers than I am”, yet would “contrive to influence the fanaticism of their co-religionists”, through the use of tricks upon a populace he described as “primitive”. His task was simple: to show that their tricks were not magic but “child’s play”, so that the French could demonstrate they were “their superiors in everything”.

Robert-Houdin was raised in a family that owned a clock-making business. After moving to Paris in adulthood, he’d continued to develop his skills with gadgetry. To understand the man’s work, consider arguably his most beautiful trick, first shown in 1845 at the premiere of his theatre in Paris.

He takes a lady’s handkerchief and places it on a table, alongside an egg, a lemon and an orange. He picks up the handkerchief, rubs it in his hands, and it disappears.

He picks up the egg. The audience know what’s coming; it’s a corny old bit of legerdemain. He’ll crack it open and reveal the object is inside. But he does not do that – instead, he vanishes the egg. He announces that it has gone inside the lemon. He picks up the lemon. It, too, vanishes. Now he picks up the orange, rolling it from palm to palm, showing the audience that it is shrinking. Finally, it is reduced to just a powder. The powder is lit, giving off a blue flame.

Now a small orange tree is brought on stage. It is placed above the flame. Its leaves slowly begin to twist, and spread, and white flowers begin to blossom. With a wave of the magician’s wand, they disappear, replaced by oranges, ever growing in size, until Robert-Houdin can pick them from the tree, and hand them to the audience. The final orange remains on top of the tree. It opens, to reveal the lady’s handkerchief. Two butterflies appear behind the tree and lift the handkerchief by its corners, revealing it to the audience. The magician bows; the curtains close.

Nothing was new – not the sleight of hand, nor less the use of automata. But to blend the three with such elegance, to create a device so intricate: it elevated the art to a new level.

So, the colonel had called upon a man recognised as one of the great magicians of his age. Indeed, he was recognised as such, decades after his death, by the Hungarian-born American escape artist Ehrich Weiss, who borrowed his name to become The Great Houdini.

Robert-Houdin arrived in Algiers in mid-September, lodging with his wife in the palatial surroundings of the Hôtel d’Orient overlooking the Government Square, where he and his wife would sit under the magnificent orange trees, the cool sea breeze wafting over them, as they took in the salad of nationalities that was Algiers at this time. Soon enough, a “military summons” was sent to the chiefs of the tribes. Robert-Houdin described:

“The native camp, an inextricable pell-mell of huts for men and horses, offering a thousand contrasts, strange as they were fascinating; the brilliant cortège of the governor-general, in the midst of which the Arab chiefs, with their stern faces, attracted the eye by the luxury of their costumes, the beauty of their horses, and the brilliancy of their gold-broidered trappings”.

He was to perform at the small Algiers theatre. The Arab chiefs, unused to the setting surroundings, were seen “fidgeting about for some time, and trying to tuck their legs under [their seats], after the fashion of European tailors”.

The audience sat in stony silence. It unnerved Robert-Houdin, more used to the buzz of an audience expecting entertainment. Soon the audience came to life, after he produced cannonballs, then a bouquet of flowers from a hat. Next, a seemingly empty silver cup, which magically filled with sweetmeats, and then boiling coffee, which he poured into cups for the spectators.

These were the entrées. Now it was time for the main event. Robert-Houdin approached the Arabs and, speaking through a translator, said: “From what you have witnessed, you will attribute a supernatural power to me, and you are right. I will give you a new proof of my marvellous authority, by showing that I can deprive the most powerful man of his strength and restore it at my will. Anyone who thinks himself strong enough to try the experiment may draw near me.”

And so a muscular man approached the stage. Robert-Houdin asked him if he was strong. He said he was.

“Are you sure you will always remain so?”

“Quite sure.”

“You are mistaken, for in an instant I will rob you of your strength, and you shall become as a little child.”

Before him, there was a box.

Robert-Houdin told him to lift it up. He did. The Arab asked if that was it. Robert-Houdin made a magical gesture, and asked him to lift it again. He grabbed it again, and tugged at it. This time it wouldn’t budge an inch. He grew increasingly angry, and tired. Panting for breath, he broke away, and then returned to the box, the audience cheering him on.

Robert-Houdin described what happened next: “But, wonder of wonders! This Hercules, a moment since so strong and proud, now bows his head; his arms, riveted to the box, undergo a violent muscular contraction; his legs give way, and he falls on his knees with a yell of agony!”

The shocked participant sprinted out of the theatre, yelling “Allah! Allah!” There was no rapturous applause; instead there was silence from the assembled audience, punctuated by the odd murmur of words like “Shaitan” and “Djenoum!”

It is widely understood the trick was carried out through his characteristically cunning use of technology: a powerful electromagnet, hidden under the stage. Further tricks followed; a bullet catch, a disappearing assistant and more.

“The blow was struck,” wrote Robert-Houdin. “Henceforth the interpreters and all those who had dealings with the Arabs received orders to make them understand that my pretended miracles were only the result of skill, inspired and guided by an art called prestidigitation, in no way connected with sorcery.”

That’s how the story goes – pretty much as he told it – and as repeated in dozens of books about the history of magic. But, as is not unusual when it comes to magicians’ biographies, elements of it have been exaggerated. There doesn’t appear to have been any imminent uprising, and if his show had any effect on the politics of Algeria at the time, it wasn’t significant enough to be worth recounting in other historical accounts of the period. In the words of one historian: “He performed his show, and nothing happened.”

It doesn’t matter. Stories are what matter. And Robert-Houdin knew how to tell a story that would stick.

Over 150 years later, in mid-2013, Edward Snowden, an analyst working at the American National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, told his bosses he needed time off to deal with a health problem. He flew straight to Hong Kong, where he started to leak thousands of classified files that he’d taken from the NSA to a group of journalists.

The documents were a bombshell. Not only did they reveal the secrets of the NSA’s inner workings; Snowden had taken files belonging to Australian, British and Canadian agencies via the Five Eyes network. They revealed how secret treaties had enabled the agencies to intercept data, how data was being obtained from telecommunications companies; how diplomatic missions were spied on; how internet providers were conspiring with the intelligence agencies, and so on.

One series of slides revealed the existence of a unit in Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) called the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG). The unit, we learned, had initially existed to defend British networks but had, since 2012, gone on the offensive against Britain’s enemies, ranging from computer hackers to hostile nations. Much of JTRIG’s work involved cyber attacks – for example, we learned it had targeted the hacking group Anonymous with exactly the same kind of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack the group itself had popularised. In Afghanistan, it had disrupted Taliban communications by swamping them with texts, calls and faxes.

But the other strand of its work involved the aim “to manipulate online discourse”. The unit would use “online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world”, a practice known in GCHQ as ‘Online Covert Action’. One slide, for example, was headlined “discredit a company”. It said JTRIG would “leak confidential information to companies / the press via blogs etc”. The unit would “post negative information on appropriate forums”, and “stop deals/ruin business relationships”. Intelligence sources said they did this to stop weapons deals and nuclear proliferation.

The JTRIG could send mass emails, place information on compromised computers, fake text messages, change the results of online polls, change people’s social media photos, mount false flag operations, send unpleasant information about people to their family and friends, and so on – targeting individuals, governments, and everything in between.