GUERRILLA EVOLUTION
The CIA Psyop Manual – US Central Intelligence Agency
This last Christmas, I was rotting in bed with food poisoning from a Mal Maison festive turkey sub while watching the Jim Henson movie Labyrinth. David Bowie makes my head hurt at the best of times, but receiving Kev’s Blackstar-wrapping-paper-covered gifts – including an official Blackstar bracelet – while ‘Magic Dance’ taunted my soul and psyche was quite the mindfuck. What in the world was Henson thinking casting David Bowie in a children’s film?! I resolved to put a stop to my ‘think yourself to death’ meta-hypnosis project and to instead make an appearance by the Christmas tree to receive the last of my presents.
“GO TO WAR!” read Kev’s gift tag as I tore away the black stars to reveal this, The CIA PSYOP Manual – the US Central Intelligence Agency’s guide to psychological operations in guerrilla warfare, which was unleashed in the press in 1984. I massaged my brow and went on to feign thankfulness for the bland gift soap sets that people send me now that I’m a man’s wife. Better that than thoughts of impending apocalypse, eh?!
I’m determined that Christmas 2024 will be markedly less vomit-inducing – irrespective of the continuing apocalyptic death wishes of The Men Who Run The World... as well as any ill-judged bar snack consumption on my part. And so: welcome to the Cosmic Pancakes! untimely-2024 festive special – my reflections on this CIA classic...
The CIA PSYOP Manual was created in support of the Nicaraguan Contras, a US-backed and -funded right-wing rebel group, active from 1979-1990, involved in a civil war with the Marxist Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction Government, which had come to power following the Nicaraguan Revolution. As we’ve come to expect from America’s official and unofficial fronts against Communism, the first version of the manual was extreme; it called for the use of violence, encouraging the recruitment of professional criminals and the killing of comrades to create martyrs. The two offending pages were torn out the 2,000 printed copies, but, with 5,000 copies already in circulation, one wonders if the “sanitised” version was just a faux reputational hit to cover for the true and intended guidance.
What has this manual got to say about hypnosis, you ask? Well, ostensibly nothing. The content is very much focused on teamwork, leadership style, interaction with the civilian population, organisational/camp set up, and rules of engagement. Perhaps the present-day, gen-pop interest and value is in instead considering yourself a ‘merchant of suggestion and persuasion’ working as part of a wider team/ecosystem.
For instance, having spent the past decade of my career somewhat involved in speechwriting and prep for those in leadership positions, the appendix on oratorical techniques remains vital reading among those influencing and infecting such things. It is sadly amusing to me that people still credit ‘leaders’ (there are so few who warrant the use of the word without inverted commas) as great ‘hypnotists’ when the words and sentiments they speak are so rarely their own.
Ultimately, and with that in mind, I suppose the manual is proof that the CIA and equivalent global entities simply had, and have, no need for ‘hypnotism’ as either a broad frame or granular technique, despite the early hype. Being a ‘corporate insurgent’ – or whatever subversive label you prefer in your sphere of influence – is, IMHO, a cause greater than becoming a frivolous, vainglorious, lone ‘hypnotist’ (or, worse, ‘NLP Master Practitioner’). And if the greatest mind-controllers on the planet – the CIA – dispensed with hypnosis long ago, then isn’t it about time we did, too.
Here’s to 2025, pancake-people! Vive la revolution!
PS – Thanks to our friends in Langley, you can read the manual for free here.
