A Bookstore Caters to the Imagination of Would-Be Spies

With the holiday season approaching, mail-order houses are packing Americans’ mailboxes with glossy catalogues of gift ideas for the person who has everything or wants something that can’t be found on the mall stores’ shelves.

But one brochure arriving last week has a market all to itself. It has just the thing for the man who needs a new identity, has to disappear or just plans to cheat on his wife.

The 55-page catalogue comes from Washington’s National Intelligence Book Center, the nation’s foremost collection of how-to manuals for spooks, spies, moles or aspiring double-agents on your list.

The bookstore, two rooms (or is it three?) on the sixth floor of a nondescript downtown office building, caters to a clandestine clientele.

The phone and intercom are answered simply, “Book Center.” One gains entrance with a magnetic-stripe card (or by visual identification through a window next to the door). And the phones all have bright orange stickers, reading “This telephone is not secure.”

A Code Specialist

The shop is run by Elizabeth Bancroft, a Harvard-educated code specialist who launched the operation two years ago as a mail-order service. Her partners and backers, whom she won’t name, are current or former employees of U.S. intelligence agencies.

This year’s catalogue contains the expected biographies of famous rogues and traitors, thrillers-on-tape and the ever-popular Dictionary of Espionage: Spookspeak Into English.

But the real meat of the autumn catalogue, which has its own code name, “Rangoon,” is its unrivaled selection of books on espionage tradecraft. It offers some unique gift ideas for the man or woman whose biggest thrill would be a new secret life.

“How to Create a New Identity” by Anonymous is described as “essential reading for anyone interested in getting ‘permanently’ lost.”

It’s followed by “How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found,” a 107-page compendium of the “basics of the who, why, where and how of personal deep-cover tradecraft worldwide. The do’s and don’ts on new identification, communicating through mail-drops, employment, transportation, passports and border crossings. Rules for coping and not breaking cover until assignment is over.”

Without turning the page, one can learn “How to Get Lost and Start All Over Again” (“provides detailed guidance on what you say to explain your circumstances”) and “How to Hide Anything” (“drawings and instructions on potential secret sites like TV antennas, false bottom pans, ordinary furniture and rooms”).

Eddie the Wire’s much-discussed “Complete Guide to Lock Picking” is also available, while no agent’s library would be complete without the Black Bag Owner’s Manual, Vols. 1 and 2.

And for youngsters, “The Big Book of Secret Hiding Places,” with 124 pages of photos and illustrations.

The spy bookstore is probably the only place outside of Langley, Va., where one can buy a rodium-plated brass CIA key ring (“Caution: The men who park your car will not forget you! And NEVER take on foreign travel. $20.”)

Also available, CIA and KGB coffee mugs and T-shirts (“Use discretion when wearing”) and a cassette of “The Intelligencers: Musical History of the Intelligence Corps” by the staff band of the Royal Engineers (“Yes, a collection of military intelligence music from Great Britain”).

On the more sinister side, “The Breaking of Bodies and Minds: Torture, Psychiatric Abuse and the Health Professions,” edited by Elena O. Nightingale, who, one hopes, is not a nurse.

For those facing domestic dilemmas, the store offers “The Art of Deception “ (described as “a bit Machiavellian”) and “Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics and Marriage “ (“The author brings vast experience with DOD, FBI and others to this book”).

Surveillance Techniques

With telephone and Mastercard in hand, one can soon learn “Shadowing and Surveillance,” “The Secret Science of Covert Inks,” “Covert Surveillance and Electronic Penetration” and “Physical Interrogation Techniques.”

For the professionally oriented, the store provides “Making Spies: A Talent Spotter’s Handbook, “ which details “how to train, manage, motivate, control and eliminate agents to get important goals accomplished . . . . Includes espionomics and, of course, sexpionage.”

Also, the CIA Flaps & Seals Manual, 56 pages of instruction on the fine art of reading other peoples’ mail. “With a reasonable investment of time and effort,” the blurb says, “the average person can become a good all-around F&S; (flaps and seals) operator in investigative work . . . a good beginner’s how-to”).

This is clearly a profit-making enterprise, however. The bookstore offers the 387-page Department of Defense telephone book for $18.50. The official Government Printing Office will sell the same volume to anyone for $9.