Nerve War
This CIA guide to conducting "nerve war against individuals" was prepared in the
summer of 1954, as the agency was preparing to overthrow the government of
Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz. Harassment
operations such as these were added to the CIA's huge, and ultimately
successful, psychological warfare campaign against Arbenz. The document is
undated, but a cover note indicates it was forwarded to the CIA station in
Guatemala City on June 9, 1954.
[document begins]
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PURPOSE
7. Your most natural objective will be to draw the person whom you attack over
to your side. This, however, will not always be possible -- because the man
might be such a dyed-in-the-wool militant of the enemy cause or may be so
utterly opposed to you that it would be unrealistic to expect that you can win
him as a friend or an ally. Moreover, there are undoubtedly certain persons in
the enemy camp whom you would not even want to have on your side, even if you
could manage to recruit them -- persons who are guilty of crimes or of shameful
political or personal acts, persons whose names have become so closely
indentified with your enemy that it would compromise and embarrass you if they
were to join your side.
8. In the latter cases, you shall try to destroy that man's usefulness for the
enemy side. By "destroy", we do not mean to kill the man -- since physical
violence is not discussed in the present paper, but we mean either to make the
man leave the enemy (without joining you), for instance, by withdrawing from all
public activity, or by emigrating -- or to make the enemy oust the man, because
of suspicions which you might have aroused against him. --As a temporary result,
you may at least send the man out of harm's way in the critical moment (for
instance, through a phony emergency call from a relative in a far-away town or
through a phony order from a superior, sending him in the wrong direction.)
TECHNIQUES
9. The methods which you could or should use to achieve the objectives defined
above will naturally vary according to whether you want to recruit the man or to
destroy him (or rather his usefulness to the enemy). Furthermore, these methods
will differ according to the area in which you operate and the circumstances
existing there at the time at which you undertake such a campaign. Finally, much
will depend upon the person whom you have made your target. Do not consider,
therefore, the following suggestions as a firmly established set of rules,
equally applicable to all cases: examine rather every case on its own merits and
find out which of the following bits of advice may suit your immediate problem.
You will undoubtedly also discover ways and means of your own of which we did
not think when preparing this paper.
10. If you want to win a man away from the enemy, over to your own side, you
have to convince him that the enemy has evil intentions against him (whether
against him as a person or as member of a given social class, or the like). For
instance, if your target is a retired army officer and you can manage to
convince him that the enemy party to which he belongs plans to oust all retired
officers, he may leave the party rather than wait until he is ousted. Or, if you
happen to know about a past legal offense of which your target has been guilty,
but which went undetected (for instance, embezzlement of public funds) and you
can convince him that his competitors have assembled evidence against him, he
may resign his public office rather than await indictment.
11. On the other hand, if you intend to destroy a man, aim your efforts not so
much at him personally, but at his colleagues or his superiors: furnish them (in
a roundabout, devious way, of course) with material which indicates that the man
is a traitor, that he is plotting to gain more power for himself, that he
collaborates with their enemies, that he accepts money from a foreign power --
or that his private sins will cause a big public scandal soon so that it will be
better for them (for their party, government, business corporation) to get rid
of him immediately in order not to be affected by that scandal.
12. The most common techniques to be used for either purpose are rumors,
anonymous letters, telegrams and telephone calls as well as visual symbols.
Telephone calls should be made preferably in the early hours of the morning, say
between 1 and 4 o'clock a.m., when a man's psychological resistance is usually
at its lowest ebb. "Visual symbols" may include depositing a coffin or a
hangman's noose in front of the man's house, painting threatening texts on the
wall ("Here lives a spy", "You have only 5 more days...", "Your secret life has
been discovered" or whatever may be appropriate), sending a phony bomb
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through the mails (include a cheap alarm clock, to suggest a time bomb, with a
note "This is only a warning. The next time it will be real"), or the like.
13. You may preferably choose for your operations moments when your target is
psychologically especially vulnerable. If, for instance, he is just celebrating
his birthday and in the midst of a gay party, a telegram or telephone call with
some ominous news (e.g., an imprending party purge) reaches him, this is likely
to affect him more -- because of the sharp contrast with his elated mood at the
moment -- than at ordinary times. On the other hand, if your messages reach him
when he is already very much depressed (whether for political, business or
family reasons), you may achieve a cumulative effect and thereby hit him harder
than you could otherwise. (This again indicated clearly that you must keep a
close watch over the persons against whom you wage such a campaign.)
14. "The kiss of death": If a man suddenly begins to be praised by his enemies,
this is likely to arouse suspicions among his friends. Assume, a political
leader makes a violent speech and the newspapers of the opposition commend him
for his moderation, emphasize that he is different from his colleagues, easier
to get along with etc., this is bound to embarrass him, especially if he belongs
to a party characterized by great inner distrust and permanent fear of
"deviationists and oppositionists", like the Communist Party. This effect can
also be obtained by writing to such a man a friendly letter from abroad, from a
hostile political group or the like, if one can be reasonably sure that the
letter will be censored and thus come to the attention of the man's superiors.
15. Legal harassment: if local conditions permit, one can denounce a man to the
proper authorities for any violation of the law of which he is either really
guilty or for which at least suspicious looking evidence can be prepared. Such
denunciations may range from treason to income tax evasion. Some times, an
apparently very insignificant law violation may have interesting political
consequences: assume you know that a man left secretly town one night to attend
a clandestine meeting; you go to the police and accuse him of having seen him
committing an immoral act (or, perhaps having parked his car, without lights,
endangering public traffic) on that same night. In court, the man will naturally
protest that he was not there at all: it will then be logical to ask him to
prove to the court where he was at the time -- which will be obviously
embarrassing to him.
16. Private harassment: If you want a man to leave the enemy camp, you might
achieve this by having rumors about enemy intentions reach his wife, his parents
or other close friends and relatives who may have much influence upon him. If
one year's training to the Soviet Union, implying that the prettiest Russian
girls are selected to keep these 'heroes from far-away lands' company, she may
well insist that her husband not only does not go away, but quits the party. You
may also make her suspect that the secret party meetings which he attends are
actually visits to a mistress, or the like. If she is not the jealous type, you
may make her fear for his life or indicate that he is going to lose his job
because of his political activities or any such suggestion which is likely to
make her interfere with his political work in the desired sense.
17. In certain cases, forged papers may greatly assist your campaign. For
instance, if you mail to a Communist Party official a letter on party
stationery, summoning him to appear before the party control commission to
answer questions concerning his private associations with enemy agents,
Trotskyites or the like, he may prefer to resign from the party rather than
undergo the threatening purge (even if his conscience should happen to be clean
-- but you will naturally choose a charge which has at least a small kernel of
possible truth in it.) If you don't have the necessary stationery or at least a
rubber stamp of the party, you'll have to try it by telephone call or by
telegram.
18. Whichever method you choose, you'll have to pursue your campaign
relentlessly and methodically, until your target either gives in -- or, on the
contrary, until you recognize that this is, for the time being at least, a
hopeless case and that you are wasting your effort. Repetition is one of the
strongest devices in all propaganda and the cumulative effect of various means
(as suggested in the foregoing paragraphs) increases with every additional step
you take. Don't give
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the man time to recover from the first shock: have him approached from different
sides, by different people, but all contributing to the theme which you have
chosen.
19. Never expose yourself in such a nerve war campaign: this is imperative not
only to protect you from counter-measures and from possible legal prosecution,
but also because an unknown, invisible enemy has a much greater harassing effect
upon most minds than attacks by a known adversary. Therefore tell your rumors
just to one or two gossipy persons of whom you can be sure that they will spread
the story until it reaches the people for whom you intended it. Have other
persons (i.e. people not known to the addressee) write anonymous letters, if the
man in question knows you. Never mail them from a place close to where you live,
but from another town or from another part of the city. Disguise your
handwriting. Do not use your own stationery but buy the necessary sheets and
envelopes separately. Make telephone calls only from public telephones and keep
them very short so that they cannot be traced back.
[document ends]