Forensics

Nuts! The bizarre CIA 'fake scrotum' designed to enable downed pilots to conceal an escape radio - even if they were strip-searched

Spies have come up with countless bizarre and wacky devices to help them in their line of work.

But this one, designed by the CIA, really is nuts.

The 'scrotum concealment device' was designed to enable pilots to hide an escape radio in a place that would remain undiscovered even during a strip search.

It was created in the late 1960s by Tony Mendez, the former chief of disguise at the CIA, and is now on show at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC in its Tools of the Trade display in the Spies and Spymasters room.

According to the museum, the thinking behind the device was that male security guards would be less likely to 'thoroughly search the genital area', so it made for a good area to hide an escape radio.