The CIA’s Hilariously Genius Escape Trick: How Inflatable Sex Dolls Fooled the KGB
If you ever thought Hollywood and the CIA had nothing in common, think again. During the Cold War, the agency turned to Hollywood makeup legend John Chambers — yes, the same guy who gave Spock his pointy ears — to solve a rather unusual problem: how to shake relentless KGB surveillance in Moscow. His solution? Inflatable sex dolls. Yeah, you read that right.
Back in the day, being a CIA officer in Russia meant having a full-time KGB tail. Every American spy had someone following them, making secret meetings with Soviet informants nearly impossible. Walter McIntosh, the head of the CIA’s disguise department, needed a way for his operatives to disappear without their watchers catching on. That’s when he called in Chambers, who had already helped the CIA pull off one of the greatest deceptions in espionage history — faking an entire sci-fi movie to smuggle Americans out of Iran (which later inspired Argo). This time, the mission was a little different, but the solution was just as outlandish.
The idea was simple but brilliant. A CIA officer would ride in a car’s passenger seat, casually holding a suitcase on his lap. At just the right moment — say, after making a sharp turn onto a side street — the officer would slip out of the car and disappear into the night. But here’s the kicker: the suitcase he left behind would spring open like a jack-in-the-box, inflating a human-shaped dummy in his place. From a distance, it would look like the officer was still in the car, fooling the KGB long enough for him to vanish.
McIntosh himself had the rather embarrassing job of acquiring these dolls. “My secretary was a very nice, prim and proper lady of high religious upbringing,” he later recalled. “I just couldn’t bring myself to send her out to buy sex dolls.” So he took matters into his own hands, venturing into a local adult bookstore. One purchase turned into multiple trips, and pretty soon, he was buying them in bulk. “As I was buying four or five at a time, often over a few weeks, I’m sure I got quite a reputation,” he admitted.
The prototypes, dubbed Jack-in-the-Box (JIB) dummies, worked surprisingly well. In fact, during a 1982 operation in Moscow, one of them successfully popped out of a fake birthday cake box without rousing any suspicion from the trailing KGB.
Fast forward to today, and this kind of spycraft hasn’t disappeared — it’s just evolved. Take the Corey Pearson — CIA Spymaster Short Story Series, where Corey Pearson and his elite CIA team take the old Jack-in-the-Box trick to the next level, using dummy passengers that they can attach in seconds before bailing out of their car mid-chase. These aren’t just inflatable dolls anymore; they’re weighted, designed to move naturally with the car, and can fool even the most watchful adversaries. It’s all about misdirection — making the enemy think you’re still right in front of them while you’re already two blocks away.
If reading about these kinds of high-stakes maneuvers gets your adrenaline pumping, you’ll love the Corey Pearson — CIA Spymaster Short Story Series. Each vignette takes just 20–30 minutes to read, delivering a perfect dose of espionage without the commitment of a full novel. It’s like getting your own mini spy mission, minus the risk of being tailed by foreign intelligence operatives.
The Jack-in-the-Box trick may have started with a bunch of sex dolls and an uncomfortable CIA officer standing at a checkout counter, but its impact on espionage was real. Whether in Cold War Moscow or a modern-day covert op, one thing remains the same: in the spy world, the best tricks are the ones your enemy never sees coming.
Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and an accomplished author. He writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster Short Story, blending his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His work offers readers an insider’s glimpse into the world of espionage, inspired by the complexities and high-stakes realities of the intelligence community.