
The CIA’s 1944 Simple Sabotage Field Manual (2015) - HugoDaniel
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/simple-sabotage-field-manual.html
======
stygiansonic
Reminds me of Total Resistance[0], written for the Swiss population in case of
occupation by Warsaw Pact forces.

Besides the sections on guerrilla warfare tactics, there's also section civil
disobedience. Generally this involves workers acting as incompetently as
possible:

" _Employees in plants and shops

Work slowly. Turn out poor quality goods and produce many rejects. Take a
break often. Treat machinery, installations and engines carelessly. Cause
excessive waste. Use excessive quantities of water, power, fuel and grease.
Take excessive sick leave._"

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Resistance_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Resistance_\(book\))

~~~
abawany
The Czech people were already one step ahead of this manual. According to
Madeleine Albright's book Prague Winter, the Czech factory workers during the
WWII occupation by Nazi Germany worked hard at personal peril to ensure that
the goods they made for the German war effort were not up to their usually
excellent standards of workmanship (excerpt: Or the message found in the
casing of an unexploded bomb from Czech factory workers:“Don’t be afraid,” it
said, “The bombs we make will never explode.” [1]). Best book I have read in a
while albeit a very sad read.

[1] [http://www.aspeninstitute.cz/en/article/0-2012-like-a-
czech-...](http://www.aspeninstitute.cz/en/article/0-2012-like-a-czech-film/)

~~~
dTal
I can't help but find myself wondering - did they write that in every bomb?
Wouldn't that be incredibly risky? Also, how did they know that that
particular bomb was made by Czech factory workers (was the message in Czech?)
And why did they think to cut the case open? As far as I'm aware that was not
normal bomb disposal procedure.

I had a Google and found a few more facts:

    
    
      * This anecdote comes from Dagmar Simova, Albright's first cousin, who was 12
      * The bomb landed in London, during the Blitz
      * It is implied this particular bomb landed in their neighborhood
    

What are the odds, that this very singular message throwing the Czechs in a
good light, should be discovered through an unusual procedure on a perfectly
normal bomb (among thousands) that happened to land in the neighborhood of non
other than the cousin of future-famous Czech-American Madeline Albright?

------
dfsegoat
The CIA did not exist in 1944. It was still OSS:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services)

~~~
kylestlb
That's mentioned in the article.

~~~
theli0nheart
It would be clearer if the title were changed.

~~~
aklemm
Not really since nobody knows what OSS is.

~~~
theli0nheart
So something factually incorrect is preferable? And is it not possible to
simply expand the acronym? E.g.

"The Office of Strategic Services' 1944 Simple Sabotage Field Manual (2015)"

~~~
idrios
From the article:

"Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions."

Are you a secret CIA saboteur?

------
dr_hooo
Great, now I have to assume that my team has been infiltrated by a bunch of
CIA agents...

~~~
vibrio
...and we have to assume you are a master agent leading a crack team of
saboteurs.

------
Rifu
A copy of the whole manual on gutenberg.org[0]

[0][http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26184/pg26184-images.htm...](http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26184/pg26184-images.html)

~~~
jeroen
pdf: [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/page-
images/26184-image...](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/page-
images/26184-images.pdf)

~~~
finnn
>Don't use anonymizers, open proxies, VPNs, or TOR to access Project
Gutenberg. This includes the Google proxies that are used by Chrome.

>Don't access Project Gutenberg from hosted servers.

Wow, fuck that.

~~~
dredmorbius
The Tor restriction is pretty bad.

The hosted servers one I can rather understand and sympathise with, having
been woken out of a sound sleep at 3am one too many times result of some
hosted-space bot hammering our site and driving us offline.

A policy to institute CIDR-wide firewall rules on first sight tends to ensure
sound sleep. Fairness be fucked.

(Vastly better tools for dealing with DoS would be a huge benefit generally,
and much as I love Tor, it's really messing up with the Old Way of Resolving
Asshats. I haet haet haet Cloudflare's incompetence, but understand why they
do what they do. I'm not saying they've got the right answer though -- but
again, that problem is hard.)

------
imjustsaying
>Read the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless, Kafkaesque Guide to
Subverting Any Organization with “Purposeful Stupidity” (1944)

Looks like they took advantage of the theory that "Any sufficiently advanced
incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"

[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grey%27s%20La...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grey%27s%20Law)

~~~
clifanatic
The corollary being: if your boss doesn't understand what you do, he's always
going to assume you're deliberately sabotaging him. And for most of us, our
boss doesn't understand what we do.

------
revicon
Valeris: Four hundred years ago on the planet Earth, workers who felt their
livelihood threated by automation flung their wooden shoes called sabots into
the machines to stop them. Hence the word sabotage.

Uhura: We are experiencing technical malfunction. All backup systems
inoperative.

Chekov: Excellent-I mean, too bad.

~~~
ralfd
Wasn't Valeris the vulcan woman who turned out to be evil at the end?

~~~
aagha
Evil is subjective. She wasn't on the side of The Federation.

~~~
dragonwriter
> She wasn't on the side of The Federation

She wasn't on the side of peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire;
her and her co-conspirators within the Federation would surely see themselves
as on the side of the Federation, and the pro-peace group as not being on the
side of the Federation.

------
nxc18
I recently saw a great blog series about sabotage and how to defeat it in the
context of projects. Sabotage often happens for personal and political reasons
and he lays out clear ways to defeat it.

[https://coding.abel.nu/series/project-
saboteurs/](https://coding.abel.nu/series/project-saboteurs/)

It is a great read.

------
gonzo41
I remember a lot of this stuff on the Internet before the internet of books
turned into the internet of videos. Oh and 9/11 had an impact.

~~~
teh_klev
I agree, fortunately we still have:

[http://cryptome.org/](http://cryptome.org/)

~~~
iamjeff
This is a complete treasure trove. Going through a select few documents and it
is immediately clear to me that there is immense value (and insight) to be
extracted for this. Well, there goes the rest of my day.

~~~
toyg
Cryptome is one of those precious places that are so far from the mainstream,
they make institutional counter-culture types squeamish. Some of the material
is just paranoia, some is stuff that the mainstream (even the "alt" scene)
would rather go LALALACANTHEARYOU even though it's true, and some is hard
documentation of popular controversies... The owner IIRC is also a fervent
gun-lover (which makes sense, from an American anti-government point of view).

Cryptome is one of those places that continuously test the letter and the
spirit of freedom-of-expression laws, a canary of sort, but also a gateway to
the rabbit hole of crazy conspiracy theories, and a remnant of the anarchist
Internet that was. One day it will go away and we will miss it.

~~~
rhizome
Loompanics Unlimited[1] would have been obliterated well before Cryptome
existed if there was any risk at all.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loompanics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loompanics)

------
matteuan
Internet trolls are sometimes way more sophisticated than this

~~~
rhizome
You may be interested in this companion piece:
[https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-
spies.htm](https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm)

------
sigsergv
converted to plain text chapter "(11) General Interference with Organizations
and Production"

[https://gist.github.com/sigsergv/4ef7760bce859c67e298](https://gist.github.com/sigsergv/4ef7760bce859c67e298)

------
intAligned
Now I'm not sure but that would make a great videogame. Just to exorcise
reality.

~~~
willismichael
Ooh, I like that, something with a theme of being stuck in some soulless
bureaucracy with goals that you morally disagree with, kind of along the same
lines as Papers Please.

~~~
throwanem
Depending on how you choose to play it, Papers Please can be that game.

------
kelvin0
What to do when you realize your CEO is masterfully implementing the
"processes" described in the handbook? I left ... any similar experiences?

------
Tharkun
I'm amused by the CIA's use of the metric system in the manual. If only the
rest of the US would follow ...

~~~
kej
Even if they didn't otherwise use metric, it would make sense for them to use
it here since the ultimate goal was to have the metric-using citizens of Axis-
occupied countries carry out the sabotage.

------
woliveirajr
I can swear someone got a copy in 1945, changed the cover to disguise it using
some title like "Modern management", and since then it has been used as
inspiration tho many management books and guides.

It's incredible how those "tips" from the end of the article resemble some
public/private companies that I've worked on.

------
mentos
Is this document tongue in cheek?

~~~
DanBC
No.

Sabotage is a useful technique in wartime. The CIA (the the OSS) investigated
something like 15,000 supposed acts of sabotage in the US during WWII. (I
don't think they found any that were actual sabotage).

They'd want to promote sabotage in Axis countries, and to prevent sabotage-
like activity in allied countries, as much as possible.

~~~
cafard
The OSS would have been carrying out operations overseas. The FBI would have
been investigating sabotage or suspicions of sabotage in the US. The Germans
actually landed some agents in the US with plants to blow up this and that,
but they were all caught before they could do anything.

You could argue that perfectly loyal American tank and torpedo designers
accomplished a lot more than any Axis agent could have hoped for.

------
sbjustin
This sounds like an manager's handbook today.

~~~
RamshackleJ
_make sure you hold daily all hands on deck meetings where everyone is
required to listen to what everyone else was doing the last 24 hours._

 _require all work to be logged in the proper system so that any exceptional
productivity will be tempered by time spent updating tickets_

------
1_listerine_pls
The complete guide to success in government.

~~~
curried_haskell
You think it's just government? Have you worked much in the private sector?

~~~
1_listerine_pls
More efficient.

------
sickbeard
I'm not sure the CIA document supports this article. He seems to be talking
about incompetence while the article is about sabotage

~~~
nxzero
Plausible deniability is a huge factor in convert operations.

If the target can't prove something is intentional, it compounds the damage
done, manages risks, etc.

~~~
dredmorbius
Targeting trust is among the most disruptive attacks you can make.

Take movies with unreliable narrators (say, "Gur Hfhny Fhfcrpgf") as an
example. Who or what _can_ you trust?

