In the interests of protecting America, the Central Intelligence Agency has produced cigars that go bang and exploding molluscs and a script for an equally far-fetched science fiction film called Argo.
When it came to the propaganda war against Osama bin Laden, however, the agency went into dolls. Yesterday a spokesman for the CIA acknowledged the existence of a secret programme to undermine support for the al-Qaeda leader using bin Laden dolls whose features would turn demonic when handled by Afghan and Pakistani children.
“To our knowledge, there were only three individual action figures ever created and these were merely to show what a final product might look like,” said K.J Caldwell, a CIA spokesman.
He was responding to a report by the Washington