Resist Tyranny with the Secret CIA Manual for Simple Sabotage

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/BbQdq9AaA0s

Have you ever wanted to be a spy when you grow up? Well now’s your chance. A formerly classified CIA field guide is going viral right now. It’s called the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, and it’s been used in genuine resistance campaigns against authoritarian regimes in the darkest moments of global conflict. So take this opportunity to absorb some hard-earned lessons from the American intelligence operations that directly led to the fall of the worst adversaries who ever did prance upon the world stage. Because we may or may not have some of them right at home now.

I’m Kevin Lankes, and I’m your host for doing some f*cking good taking down dictators.

First thing’s first, I’m obliged to remind everyone that this is for historical and educational purposes only, and not to be taken as anything other than that. I don’t condone a lot of the acts presented in the manual and I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to test out how well they hold up today. I’m simply providing a fun overview of a widely available resource from the days when we fought Nazis instead of electing them president.

Now a little history lesson to gather some context about the manual before we just start breaking stuff with our newfound spy powers. I’m just kidding -- again, don’t go breaking anything. (wink, shake head, wink).

The Simple Sabotage Field Manual was published on January 17th, 1944. As you may be able to predict from the date alone, it was meant to combat the existential threat of Nazi Germany. This was the height of World War II, before the Normandy Invasion, and before the Nazis pulled out of Leningrad. So when the Office of Strategic Services wrote this field guide, they were anticipating that it would be used to directly take down Hitler.

The OSS was a precursor agency to the CIA. It was America’s first central intelligence collective. It began in 1941 as the Office of the Coordinator of Information. FDR had been eager to secure more eyes around the world in an escalating global conflict, and he didn’t like what he saw, or rather, what he couldn’t see. Counterespionage had so far been under the purview of the FBI since its establishment in 1909, but it was stretched thin and the agency had just barely muddled through World War I. It was time, FDR thought, to go full sneaky sneaky.

So President Roosevelt appointed General William “Wild Bill” Donovan to forge a new agency filled with professional secret agents, all coordinated in a single office. Before this, there had been intelligence gathering happening in separate agencies and branches, but it was scattershot and sometimes amateur, and very much noncollaborative. Now there would be one spy lounge with everybody using the same coffee pot, with a singular focus and a singular mandate.

Donovan had met with a number of parties in the British intelligence community to gather as much inspiration as he could, one of whom would go on a write a book that would become an endless movie series that will just never ever leave our summers alone. This man’s name was Ian Flemming, and the series is about a lowly sneak artist you may not have heard of called Jimmy, Jimmy Bond.

Donovan made a couple of changes right away to the Office of the Coordinator of Information, including renaming it in 1942 to the Office of Strategic Services. He also moved it out of the White House and into the purview of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Sadly, the new agency didn’t get up to speed fast enough to prevent the bombing of Pearl Harbor just six months after it opened its doors. But it would go on to do really great things. Throughout the war, it gathered the necessary intelligence to launch effective operations throughout the European bombing campaigns, the Nazi invasion of Norway, and it prepared the U.S. military leadership for the eventual occupation of Germany. OSS Operational Groups, as they were called, were sent all over the world and possessed a wide breadth of skills including foreign language fluency, parachuting, skiing, scuba diving, and espionage. And they did all this with plenty of makeshift devices and clandestine equipment that would have made Q very happy.

One major achievement of the time was the Research and Analysis branch of the OSS. It was vital to the core operations of the agency, and most importantly, it proved that intelligence could be gathered in a new way. Instead of trekking through enemy territory and being all Assassin’s Creed about it, one could just literally read stuff. It was a mindblowing idea at the time, but it forced U.S. intelligence into a whole new trajectory. Research and Analysis in the OSS centered around gathering knowledge and information from newspapers, journals, maps, cables, pictures, and other primary sources and hard evidence. Even people who hated the OSS or were in direct competition with it were stunned by the effectiveness of the Research and Analysis branch’s new strategy of, well, reading. Keep reading books, kids, you may just revolutionize an industry or two.

All this takes us to the formation and deployment of the Simple Sabotage Field Manual. In 1944, OSS operational groups called “Jed” teams, made up of just four personnel from a combined force of American, British, French, and sometimes Canadian military members, parachuted behind enemy lines in occupied France to set up equipment drops and other preparations necessary to successfully launch the key operations of the European front of World War II: Operation Overlord and Operation Neptune, also know as the Battle of Normandy, and the Normandy Invasion, respectively. Somewhere over 90 Jed teams operated within enemy territory to ensure the Allied success at Normandy.

And how did these Jed teams operate, exactly? I’m glad you asked. At least in part, they used this manual that had been painstakingly written at the very beginning of 1944.

When the Simple Sabotage Field Manual was published, the plan was to get agents into opposition territory where, yes, they could do some damage themselves, but much more importantly, so that they could instruct regular citizens on the rules of Simple Sabotage. Those citizens would then go on to enact the principles of the field guide in their daily lives and even on the job. The field guide was designed to be used by regular people just going about their business. It’s a tool for the populace to fight back against an oppressive force.

So how does it work?

The whole point of simple sabotage is to get ideas into the heads of everyday citizens and workers who live inside a territory that’s under authoritarian rule. You don’t need to take down the enemy through the force of an all-out military campaign. Everyday people can help. Simple sabotage is meant to be performed mainly by the citizen-saboteur who isn’t connected to a larger organization or movement, but is rather alone in the field just by virtue of living in the right place at the right time, and it’s designed to be very safe and to put the citizen-saboteur in as little danger as possible.

The introduction to the manual includes instructions for agents to split up tactics from different sections into brochures and leaflets, to be handed out carefully to targeted recipients only. This would allow for training in simple sabotage to be done for key members of society who could do damage to specific things in specific ways. So for, example, agents could hand out brochures on sabotaging key building infrastructure to facility maintenance workers.

Specific tactics that are taught within the purview of simple sabotage include amateur hit-and-run guerrilla operations, destroying key infrastructure, sowing rumors, conducting rescues, taking out installations, and doing any of this ahead of main military operations, though not too obviously, because then the enemy will know where the operations are going to be. There’s a balance of subtlety and surprise, and of straightforward demoralization. Ideally, the enemy won’t even know the sabotage tactics are happening intentionally, and also ideally, enough citizen saboteurs are active that the malfunctions will be too haphazard and random to pin down any specific intent.

Without further ado, let’s dive into the manual and pick out some of the most fun suggestions it has to offer. Keep in mind that all of these things were expressly designed for regular people to implement without calling attention to themselves or getting caught. You weren’t supposed to do too much too soon, and you definitely weren’t supposed to take on anything you felt was over your head.

Okay, here we go.

One section of the guide includes instructions on how to cause fires in various buildings and even inside specific machines. One entry takes someone through how to rig a makeshift fuse to start a fire using a candle, and suggests targets like an office filled with documentation that would hurt the enemy if lost. It states that a clean facility isn't susceptible to fire, but a dirty one is, so workers should be careless with their trash and maintenance staff shouldn't clean too carefully. The guide is filled with tips for this kind of purposeful negligence. It assures the agents using it that basically anything can be sabotaged by regular citizens if looked at from a certain angle.

But it’s not all about big damage or exploding things, because we’re talking about regular people who want to stay away from anything highly risky. In the spirit of this, and in one of my favorite entries by far, the manual suggests that you forget to stock toilet paper in the bathroom. I just love that. And if you do bring the tp the very next entry in the manual suggests that you stuff it down the pipes until everything is good and jammed up. There’s actually instructions on making a really effective plumbing obstruction by using a sponge, a sugar solution, and some string. If Nazis can’t poop, they can’t invade Poland (or Greenland), it’s very simple.

Other easy and simple ideas are things like squeezing everyday objects like wood or hairpins into door locks. Deliberately dulling tools so they don’t work as well. Gumming up any lubricated machinery or tool by not just getting them dirty, but by using harmful substances like metal dust or ground glass that will actually cause damage to the smooth parts, which will then have to be fully replaced. Or just dilute the lubricant while it sits in storage. Throw some sugar in a gas tank, or use rubber dust, like from a pencil eraser. Also suggested is to just pee in it.

Now, a lot of the particulars of the material sabotage is specific to the era. You’re probably not going to need to know how to disable a telegraph. I’m not super mechanically inclined, but sabotaging manufacturing and mining operations and the like is probably not super viable these days either unless you live in specific areas of the world. But there are a few things about turbines, electric engines, and water cooling systems that might still be relevant today. I just don’t know because I took extra English classes and music electives and shit and never learned how engines worked. And the only transformer I’ve ever cared about is this guy (optimus prime picture).

Come to think of it, if you end up working the mines in the new gulags being formed right now, you might want to know how to sabotage your pneumatic pick, so you might want to look that one up.

There’s a very specific warning in the intro of the manual that alerts the citizen-saboteur to stay away from food production. It might be possible to take out vital infrastructure and even eliminate livestock and produce, but you might just end up starving yourself and your family. So the expression “don’t shit where you eat,” really applies to simple sabatoge, because you’re also gonna be off peeing and pooping in gas tanks.

If you work with cargo or packages, simply be careless so that whatever’s inside will be damaged. Put the heaviest things on top when stacking and leave the lightest on the bottom. Fail to secure any weatherproofing that protects packages in transport.

If you work in transportation and can get away with it, you can do the really fun thing of making travel really hard for particular people or just any people to really sow some chaos in an authoritarian state. Issue more than one ticket for the same seat. Do everything you can to cause delays. Switch labels on baggage. Write tickets out by hand and do it slowly. Put the wrong information up on the departure and arrival displays. Puzzling through the details on those screens is difficult enough as it is, so imagine everyone getting the wrong gate number for a flight. It would be a full-on impromptu Karen flash mob popping up all over the airport.

One of the suggestions for train conductors is to call all stations very loudly during the night.

More transportation ideas that anybody can do and don’t involve you actually working in the sector. Change out signposts. Give people the wrong directions when they ask, with the bonus goal of directing them right into heavy traffic. Tell people that public transportation isn’t running even though it probably is. Or just slash their tires. Classic.

Some of the simple sabotage playbook is literally just turning into your everyday bumbling office worker. Tons of people you work with right now are already doing a lot of these things. So conveniently, you can just take notes from them. Of course, you also have to go to work now with the full understanding that the people you work with are literally gumming things up so successfully the American intelligence community took note and wrote down their tactics in a manual about how to sabotage entire societies.

It’s like that dumb joke, you know, “if you look up the definition of ugly in the dictionary, your face is next to it.” Except in our case it’s, “if you look up the CIA tactics for being so horribly stupid that things don’t work and the world collapses, your face is next to it. Now stop using all the toilet paper, Carl.”

Okay, so what are the suggestions that you’re immediately going to recognize everyone around you already doing? Work really slowly. Take long bathroom breaks. Misfile and mislabel key information. Spread gossip and rumors, and anything else that’ll lower office morale. Handwrite forms poorly so that they’re unreadable. Here’s a good one that everyone should be very familiar with. Be super long-winded in impromptu speeches in meetings. For bonus points. belabor ideas by narrating meandering anecdotes that have nothing to do with anything. I have personally experienced all of these things at work. But there’s more.

Reopen discussions from prior meetings that were already resolved. Bring up total nonsequiturs as often as you can. Argue about who has responsibility for certain tasks and processes. When a decision is finally made about something, make sure to refer it to a committee for further analysis before it can be implemented, and make sure that committee is really big and contains people from different departments who don’t understand the subject matter. If you’re on the phones, put people on hold forever, delay transferring calls, give out wrong numbers, or accidentally disconnect calls altogether.

There’s a section for management, too, for those of us in the workplace who have some pull or authority and have direct reports looking to them for guidance. So if you’re a manager, you can screw things up by doing things like assigning all the least important work first, and then deliberately give all the most vital operations to the most incompetent workers. Train new hires wrong. Promote the absolute worst people to make things run poorly and get everyone else upset. Call more meetings, especially when there’s important work that should be focused on instead. Add more stakeholders to everything so that more people have to approve work in order for it to be finished. Don’t allow anyone to deviate from the official process or take shortcuts, insist on doing everything through “channels.” I love that the word channels is actually in quotation marks in the manual. Last but not lead, and I’m going to quote this one right from the book because it’s just so delicious: “Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when requested.”

And you can see what I mean; a lot of these things are just already things that people do, especially in a work environment. The Simple Sabotage Field Manual calls for them to be accomplished en masse, while recruiting more and more everyday people to do them. You could see how a lot of these tactics would break down society pretty quick, or at least disable a lot of key functions for prolonged periods of time.

Alright, one more that I’m going to leave you with that I absolutely love. This one is an entry that instructs movie-goers how to sabotage viewings of propaganda films. There are a few different methods listed, but the absolute best one is to capture moths and put them in a paper bag and then set that paper bag down in an empty part of the theater. The moths will escape and get attracted to the projector beam and start fluttering around it, which will create so many distortions and shadows on the screen that the movie becomes unwatchable.

What’s amazing is that this stuff was really used to take down tyrannical governments. It was sent behind enemy lines in the form of agents who instructed citizen saboteurs or in the form of pamphlets and radio messages designed for specific people in specific industries and sectors. And it worked. Simple sabotage helped greatly in taking down some of the most inhumane regimes in the history of human existence.

The OSS was disbanded altogether in October of 1945. It was not long-lasting. The agency was split up and sold for parts and those parts ended up in various other agencies, the Strategic Service Unit, the War Department, until eventually a successor organization was founded. The Central Intelligence Group, or CIG, opened its doors in 1946, and tried to maintain cohesion with all the different intelligence gathering efforts and their separate organizations. Just under two years later at the tail end of 1947, everyone got really tired of that arrangement and the CIA was formed. It housed a ton of former OSS personnel, and officers of the defunct agency would serve as CIA directors all the way up until 1980. The legacy and impact of the OSS was instrumental to American intelligence and still is up until this very day.

Fun trivia fact to wrap things up here; some famous members of the OSS include the Ringling brothers and Julia Child. Don’t forget, you gotta put a whole stick of butter in everything you cook or else the Nazis win. To be honest, that’s also a great way to enact simple sabotage, put Julia Child levels of butter in the food so every Nazi just drops dead of a heart attack.

Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time. For now, let’s all do some f*cking good sneaking around and breaking stuff for freedom and democracy.