During the U.S. government’s decade-long support of the Contra rebels who waged an armed campaign against Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista regime in the 1980s, the CIA funneled all manner of assistance to the anti-socialist “freedom fighters,” from training and financial assistance to covert operations. The original “advise and assist” mission was a disaster in retrospect, spurring all manner of human rights violations as well as the modern crack cocaine scourge. But the CIA aid program’s most fascinating product might be the batshit crazy psychological warfare manual cooked up for the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries.
First described to the Associated Press by the House Intelligence Committee in October 1984, the guide to “psychological operations in guerrilla warfare” was whittled down to 38 pages and released on Dec. 16 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Muckrock national security reporter Emma Best. The guide covers all sorts of weird topics, from the development of “armed propaganda teams” to engaging would-be socialists in an impromptu game of Model UN. The manual says it was designed specifically with “the Christian and democratic crusade being conducted in Nicaragua by the Freedom Commandos” in mind — and it is fucking bonkers. Here are some highlights:
Book-of-the-month clubs
The CIA manual emphasizes from the beginning that every successful warfighter “must be highly motivated to engage in propaganda face to face”: no Facebook ads or “Cuban Twitter” here. And that means it’s book-group time, y’all!
An excerpt from the psychological warfare manual produced by the CIA for Nicaraguan rebels in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Photo via MuckRock/FOIA.
Isn’t this wasting time that could be spent fighting down-and-dirty against the tenets of socialism? Probably, but who cares?
Make people comfortable with your brandished weapons
In any guerrilla conflict, especially in urban centers, the imminent nature of armed violence is always a pressing concern for civilian populations. For the CIA, this poses an interesting challenge: How do we make locals OK with our heavily-armed bandits, but wary of other heavily-armed bandits? Behold “armed propaganda,” which, according to the manual, “improves the behavior of the popular towards its author, and it is not achieved by force.”
An excerpt from the psychological warfare manual produced by the CIA for Nicaraguan rebels in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Photo via MuckRock/FOIA
The end goal is “to create an identification of the people with the weapons and with the guerrillas who carry them, so that the population feels that those weapons are, indirectly, the weapons that will protect them and help them in their struggle against an oppressive regime,” per the CIA manual. Translation: The only way to stop bad guys with guns is lots and lots of good guys with guns — even if that isn’t a totally true statement.