CIA CONTINUES TO USE MAXWELL SMART'S "CONE OF SILENCE"

It's a slow day. And this stuff fascinates me.

In the new book Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA’s Spytechs From Communism to Al-Qaeda, authors Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton detail more than 200 espionage devices that sound every bit as improbable.

Only they’re all real.

Exploding pastries. Inflatable rubber airplanes. A cigarette gun. Even a spy cat internally wired for sound called an Acousti-Kitty.

Another device that worked? The Secure Shielded Enclosure, a Plexiglas-like enclosure that functioned similarly to Get Smart’s famous Cone of Silence.

“It came about 10 years after the Cone of Silence was shown in the (original) ‘Get Smart’ TV series,” Wallace said.

So … the Cone of Silence was real?

“It was not only real, it continues in use today.”

Specifically, Wallace said, the Secure Shielded Enclosure is a transparent, Plexiglas-like box inside a room, usually in a foreign facility.

“It’s essentially a room within a room, constructed in such a way that nothing can get in or out. It was designed for exactly the same purpose that Max and the Chief used the Cone of Silence.”

The enclosure served a social purpose as well.

“In places such as Moscow where KGB surveillance extended to the private residence of U.S. officials, families could go into the box and have their discussions without anyone listening or videotaping them. It was a place of true privacy. Probably the only place in Moscow of assured privacy.”