
Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944) - EiZei
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2012-featured-story-archive/CleanedUOSSSimpleSabotage_sm.pdf
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1337biz
I love the part on organizations & conferences. Seems like I have worked with
many agents in the past:

 _(1) Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts
to be taken in order to expedite decisions_

 _(5) When possible, refer all matters to ' committees, for "further study and
consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible - never
less than five._

I guess Dilbert might be working with the CIA after all.

~~~
dimitar
I've done some of the things in the list with good intentions, but it seems I
might have sabotaged myself. It wasn't deliberate sabotage, but I'm told it
looked that way. Is there a 'proper' way of proposing a counter-plan or making
a suggestion?

~~~
sillysaurus
The critical step is that your idea be good. So much indirect sabotage is
committed by people who cling to a bad idea simply because it's theirs.

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DanBC
Depressing that some people do this stuff and think they're good workers /
managers.

Stuff has unintended weird incentives, and that can quickly lead to
destructive working practices.

One quick example: Factory workers have to clock in. You want people to be on
time (8.00 am), so you say that if they clock in after 08:04 they lose 15
minutes wage.

But what (obviously happens) is the people who arrive at 08:04 don't start
work until 08:15 (which is, after all, when they're getting paid from). But
the people coming in on time mill around a bit before they start work - they
clock in at 07:55 and get to the bench at 08:01; or the clock in at 08:00 and
get to the bench at 08:03. So there's a bunch of people milling around, not
starting work and distracting other workers and etc etc, just because someone
invented a broken disincentive late arrivals instead of just being a better
manager and telling people to get to work.

I have _countless_ examples of inadvertent and deliberate sabotage in factory
work. (One more quick example. A guy turns up for interview. He has a friend
with him. The friend waits in reception, falls asleep; he's really scruffy.
The interviewee smells of alcohol. His hobby on his CV is "Enjoying Homebrew".
Employing that one semi-functional alcoholic destroyed hundreds of person-
hours of work, because people were less restrained when they went to the pub
at lunch time. (Also, some other alcoholics stopped being sober.))

I should start a blog, I guess.

~~~
flyinRyan
>just because someone invented a broken disincentive late arrivals instead of
just being a better manager and telling people to get to work.

Or even better: realize that work getting done is what counts, not the exact
time your butt hits your seat.

> Employing that one semi-functional alcoholic destroyed hundreds of person-
> hours of work, because people were less restrained when they went to the pub
> at lunch time.

What are you saying here? That hundreds of man hours were destroyed because
people became a little more laid back? Do you have any evidence to back up
that this is really what happened?

Or do you mean people came in totally trashed and actually destroyed
equipment? If that's the case I'd blame the manager(s) for letting that happen
more than once.

~~~
DanBC
People weren't laid back, they were drunk. This wasn't a pint at lunch; this
was three or four pints. Lost time was spread over several things:

1) Late return to work

2) Tipsy / drunk workers taking longer to get stuff done

3) tipsy / drunk workers doing stuff worse, thus needed it to be reworked

4) tipsy / drunk workers not inspecting properly leading to increased returns
from customers

5) the occasional broken / lost item (with JIT this can be a considerable
delay if it's the right item)

6) occasional broken tools

7) sober workers resentful at drunk workers and at bad management not doing
anything about it.

etc etc.

Yep, a lot of this is down to management, but the UK has a poor reputation for
the quality of middle management in industry.

~~~
flyinRyan
>1) Late return to work

I don't care about this one. Butt-in-seat time is an outdated measurement.

2-6) Pretty easy to deal with this: your workers are behaving irresponsibly by
coming in drunk and making mistakes. So you terminate them and get people who
can deal with alcohol responsibly (I don't mean you can't have a drink at
lunch, just be professional and don't get drunk when you're supposed to be
working).

> but the UK has a poor reputation for the quality of middle management in
> industry.

If you find a place that has _good_ middle management let me know and I'll
have a look! :)

~~~
mey
Dan was referencing specifically a factory setting, butt-in-seat time is not
an outdated measure in such a setting.

Drunk/tipsy employees are a safety hazard in such an environment etc.

Do these directly apply to other industries or settings? Depends :)

~~~
flyinRyan
Fair enough. I made a reasonable but wrong assumption about what kind of
business Dan would be talking about.

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dhx
To combat sabotage of productivity within an organisation it would likely be
necessary to employ techniques that ironically reduce creativity, increase
levels of distrust and breed a culture of caution and inaction.

From this perspective one could potentially read this document as being a
product of sabotage.

Related topics (within the national security space): polygraph testing at US
laboratories, overheads of Special Access Programs

------
merah
PDF context on cia.gov: "Timeless Tips for 'Simple Sabotage'"
[https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-
archive/...](https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-
archive/2012-featured-story-archive/simple-sabotage.html)

~~~
sigsergv
Much better quality: [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/page-
images/26184-image...](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/page-
images/26184-images.pdf)

~~~
ohashi
This should really be at the top, I couldn't stand reading the original
linked.

------
aptwebapps
This reminds of a chapter or section of an old management textbook I came
across once. The section dealt with office politics and the various strategies
and tactics one could use to come out on top. The whole thing was written
without a trace of embarrassment. I wish I could remember the name of the
book.

~~~
gadders
Gamesmanship? [1] As made famous in the old film School for Scoundrels? It's a
very funny book if you get hold of a copy.

[1] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Practice-Gamesmanship-Winning-
Actual...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Practice-Gamesmanship-Winning-Actually-
Cheating/dp/1607960192)

//edit// Wikipedia link: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamesmanship>

~~~
aptwebapps
No this was this very dry and boring management textbook from, I'm guessing,
the 70's. As far as I could tell it was meant as a college textbook and this
Machiavellian treatise on office politics in the middle was written just as
prosaically as the rest.

------
Karunamon
Reading through that guide makes it seem like my employer's company might be
full of CIA operatives. Very uncanny.

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runeb
(b) water and miscellaneous

    
    
      (2) Forget to provide paper in toilets

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jt2190
So which books will teach me how to combat "simple sabotage" in my
organization?

[edit] I'm referring only to chapter 5, section 11 "General interference with
organizations and production."

~~~
michaelt
Many of those items are things that can be performed in plain sight because
non-saboteurs could believably be doing them.

For example, if a developer at your organization complains they're held up
because their PC has 1 gigabyte of RAM instead of 8, that might be 5.11.c.5
sabotage ('do poor work and blame your tools') or it might be because they
legitimately need more RAM to run hefty modern IDEs.

Needless to say, treating requests for better equipment as sabotage when
they're legitimate probably isn't going to help your organization. The same
could probably be said for most of the activities listed in that section.

------
pointernil
Why exactly do Enterprisons tend to following this guidelines so precisely? Is
this some kind of self-destruction mechanism built into their "dna"?

~~~
tomjen3
More likely it is the other way around -- the OSS choose to use these
strategies because they were already prevalent in the organizations.

As for why they were prevalent? CYA. Surely you are not going to fire a
manager who insist on inclusivity and following security protocols?

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dalys
I feel like the points under (11) on page 28 and forward is like a character
description for Michael Scott/David Brent or any other office-working sitcom
character. This is truly comedy gold.

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stusmall
In the field manual they say "Finally, the very practice of simple sabotage by
natives in enemy or occupied territory may make these individuals identify
themselves actively with the United Nations war effort..." I thought this was
published before the UN was founded.

Did the term "United Nations" have a different meaning during WWII? Was it a
common term that latter was given to the official organization we know today?

~~~
cdcox
It appears the term was used to describe the Allied powers between 1939 and
1945.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations#History>

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richo
Amazing. Accurate, and that's tragic on so many levels.

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skyebook
Does anyone know if an 'official' entity is being referred to by the term
United Nations on page 2? I suppose it could've been close enough to the end
of the war that the wheels were already in motion for the UN..

------
synctext
Dated: 17 Jan 1944

Timeless sabotage-by-committee advise. Comments mention Arab Spring, etc. Am I
the only one who noticed this?

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giardini
C[ompendium] of I[ncompetence] A[ssembled] in one pdf - this volume is a
lifetime's collection of "what not to do's". Gives me the heebie-jeebies,
especially the note on how to ruin a file. Jeez.

It is so difficult to build things, but so easy to destroy them.

------
markus2012
<quote>... creating an unpleasant situation among one's fellow workers,
engaging in bickering, or displaying surliness or stupidity.</quote>

OMG... our company is under siege!

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diccyg
So much more with a pet robot...

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Mordor
they should air drop this on North Korea

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iooi
Really puts in context the arab spring.

~~~
Karunamon
What does this have to do with the Arab spring?

