Psyops

The Psyops Manual The CIA Gave To Nicaragua’s Contras Is Totally Bonkers

During the U.S. government’s decade-long support of the Contra rebels who waged an armed campaign against Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista regime in the 1980s, the CIA funneled all manner of assistance to the anti-socialist “freedom fighters,” from training and financial assistance to covert operations. The original “advise and assist” mission was a disaster in retrospect, spurring all manner of human rights violations as well as the modern crack cocaine scourge. But the CIA aid program’s most fascinating product might be the batshit crazy psychological warfare manual cooked up for the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries. 

First described to the Associated Press by the House Intelligence Committee in October 1984, the guide to “psychological operations in guerrilla warfare” was whittled down to 38 pages and released on Dec. 16 in responseto a Freedom of Information Act request from Muckrock national security reporter Emma Best. The guide covers all sorts of weird topics, from the development of “armed propaganda teams” to engaging would-be socialists in an impromptu game of Model UN.