CHAPTER 4 : Excerpts from US Army and CIA Training Manuals

On...some charming thoughts from the minds of the Good Guys

CIA, A Study of Assassination , written early 1950s1

For secret assassinations...the contrived accident is the most effective technique. When successfully executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually investigated. The most efficient accident...is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator shafts, stair wells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve...The act may be executed by sudden, vigorous grabbing of the ankles, tipping the subject over the edge. If the assassin immediately sets up an outcry, playing the horrified witness, no alibi or surreptitious withdrawal is necessary.

Drugs can be very effective. If the assassin is trained as a doctor or nurse and the subject is under medical care, this is an easy and sure method. An overdose of morphine administered as a sedative will cause death without disturbance and is difficult to detect. The size of the dose will depend upon whether the subject has been using narcotics regularly. If not, two grains will suffice. If the subject drinks heavily, morphine or a similar narcotic can be injected at the passing out stage, and the cause of death will often be held to be acute alcoholism.

Edge weapons: Any legally obtained edge device may be success-fully employed. A certain minimum of anatomical knowledge is needed for reliability. Puncture wounds of the body cavity may not be reliable unless the heart is reached. The heart is protected by the rib cage and is not always easy to locate...Absolute reliability is obtained by severing the spinal cord in the cervical region. This can be done with the point of a knife or a light blow of an axe or hatchet. Another reliable method is the severing of both jugular and carotid vessels on both sides of the windpipe.

Conference room technique: [Assassin] #1 Enters room quickly but quietly. #2 Stands in doorway. #2 Opens fire on first subject to react. Swings across group toward center of mass. Times burst to empty magazine at end of swing. #1 Covers group to prevent individual dangerous reactions; if necessary, fires individual bursts of 3 rounds. #1 Finishes burst. Commands Shift. Drops back through door. Replaces empty magazine. Covers corridor. #1 On command Shift, opens fire on opposite side of target. Swings one burst across group. Leaves propaganda [to implicate the opposition].

US Army, Terrorism and the Urban Guerilla , 1960s 2

Measures of Controlling the Population and Resources:

1. ID Cards. An effective system of identification is fundamental to the program...

2. Registration. A program of registering families is used to supplement the system of ID cards. This is the system of inventorying all families by house, making a list of all members of the family who live in the house along with the familys resources. One can also note the presence of insurgent tendencies and affiliations among the population.

3. Control by block. The purpose of blockbyblock control is to detect the individuals who are supporting or sympathizing with the insurgents and the type of support they are providing.

4. Police patrols. Their purpose is to detect sources of insurgent support, sympathizers, and routes used by the insurgent forces for intelligence, logistics, and routine activities...

Curfew. The purpose is to permit the authorities to identify violators and take actions based on the premise that anyone who violates the curfew is an insurgent or sympathizes with the insurgents until he can prove the contrary.

Checkpoints. It is of little use to establish a program of passes and ID cards unless there is a system of verifying these official papers. Therefore, establishing checkpoints in all travel routes is necessary once the use of passes has started.

US Army, Handling of Sources , 1960s 3

The CI [counterintelligence] agent should cause the arrest of the employees [paid government informants] parents, imprison the employee or give him a beating as part of the placement plan of said employee in the guerrilla organization. [Its not clear whether these things were to be done to force the person to be an informer or to give him credibility as such.]

The employees value could be increased by means of arrests, executions or pacification, taking care not to expose the employee as the information source.

To assure the promotion of an employee...eliminate a potential rival among the guerrillas.

[Employees are required because] the government is not able to depend only on the information provided voluntarily by faithful citizens or information obtained involuntarily from insurgents who have been captured.

The official Defense Department view of these manuals was that the objectionable material in them had simply fallen through the cracks. The DOD stated: There was no evidence that there was a deliberate attempt to violate Army or Defense Department policies in the preparation or use of these manuals. However, the office of Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D.-MA), which had followed the issue closely, said that at the School of the Americas, where the manuals had been used, at least two officers had raised questions about the objectionable material with their superiors in the early 1980s, but had been rebuffed. 4

CIA, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation-July 1963 5

The effectiveness of most of the non-coercive techniques depends on their unsettling effect. The interrogation situation is in itself disturbing to most people encountering it for the first time. The aim is to enhance this effect...[and to create] a traumatic or sub-traumatic experience which explodes, as it were, the world that is familiar to the subject as well as his image of himself in that world.

Usually his own clothes are taken away because familiar clothing reinforces identity and thus the capacity for resistance.

The following are the principal coercive techniques of inter-rogation: arrest, detention, deprivation of sensory stimuli through solitary confinement or similar methods, threats and fear, debility, pain, heightened suggestibility and hypnosis, narcosis, and induced regression.

CIA, Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual-1983 6

Control-The capacity to cause or change certain types of human behavior by implying or using physical or psychological means to induce compliance. Compliance may be voluntary or involuntary.

Subject is brought into the facility blindfolded and handcuffed and should remain so during the entire processing...Subject is completely stripped and told to take a shower. Blindfold remains in place while showering and guard watches throughout. Subject is given a thorough medical examination, including all body cavities.

Allowing a subject to receive carefully selected letters from home can help create an effect desired by the questioner; for example, the subject may get the idea that his relatives are under duress or suffering. A suggestion at the proper time that his cooperation or confession can help protect the innocent may be effective.

Bedding should be minimal-cot and blanket-no mattress. (The idea is to prevent the subject from relaxing and recovering from shock.) There should be no built-in toilet facilities. The subject should have to ask to relieve himself. Then he should either be given a bucket or escorted by a guard to the latrine. The guard stays at his side the entire time he is in the latrine.

Deprivation of sensory stimuli induces stress and anxiety. The more complete the deprivation, the more rapidly and deeply the subject is affected.

CIA, Freedom Fighters Manual , 1984 7