Stuff They Don't Want You To KnowIn tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel travel back to the chaotic days of World War II. The newly-minted Office of Strategic Services, which would later evolve into the CIA, conspired to pull off something as brilliant as it was evil: they created the "Simple Sabotage Field Manual," a secret textbook aimed to turn the average civilian into an active saboteur. The guys read the book, and give it rave reviews.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Andrew the try Force Howard. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Friends and neighbors, conspiracy realist workers of the world unite. We can all agree on this at some point in your life. Good question. Have you ever met someone who seems almost purposely bad at their job, like not just over their head, but like beyond the point of incompetence.
I mean, I guess the old cliche is associated with like government jobs and people that are like unfirable, but that seems to no longer be the case.
Just running the clock on the pension.
One percent or you know, there's a certain level of potentially entitlement that comes along with people who have been in a job for a really, really long time and they just start to kind of get bitter and resentful and maybe kind of just give up.
You know, I've been in some restaurants where I'm pretty sure there's at least someone in the managerial level that is specifically attempting to sabotage their own business. The way the restrooms look, because of how unclean everything is. Sure, you're just going who is run this place?
Not even phoning it in, right, just like not even making the call.
I also love to that point the this happens at a few restaurants in Atlanta, I'm sure it's throughout the world. Where you look at a menu. Menus, by the way, one of my favorite forms of literature. You look at a menu and instead of you know, immediately the pricing or the list of dishes available, or like a cutesy little paragraph about the origin story, you see a full half page of the menu dedicated to rules and warnings and regulations.
You're talking about what I've been in there? What is that place?
There are a couple places. I'm thinking of the Vortex that's one.
But there are a bar no children allowed.
It's like a giant It looks like a ride at an amusement park, carnival or something.
They're very very strict about. No kids allowed.
It's a bar, but they could let kids in if they wanted to, because.
They serve food.
It's a restaurant there though.
That yeah, there is, and they do have a comedy brand that actually I think just got bought out. Laughing skull skull no longer associated with that.
I think that makes sense.
I think it was bought by This is sorry too much inside baseball.
But Taco Mac, which is like a regional chain.
Of like their Decatur locations, don't particularly care for there Mac.
They're moving their stuff around. Yeah. Also that that's a great observation I would agree with it. Don't have a giant, cartoonish, super fascinating looking skull that seems like it belongs on a Putt putt course and then make people disappoint their children driving by. Anyway, So if you are if you have had the dubious experience of meeting someone, perhaps in a position of authority, who seems almost like almost purposely purpusly bad at their job, then you will be interested in tonight's episode. This is a long waited fun when for us folks, tonight's episode is about an instruction manual, a short book, a novelette. Unlike other manuals or self help guides. I don't know if you guys read self help books. Wait, let's posit there the secret, right, do you read the secret?
I'm always your people referencing the secret. I guess I don't know the secret, and no one shared it with.
The secret argues popularized by talk show host in billionaire Oprah Winfrey. The Secret argues that one must adjust one's thoughts to manifest real world results.
Ah.
Yes, diplomatically put The issue with that is it essentially, on some level, argues that people just aren't praying hard enough.
Oh okay, But it also is like sort of like a self actualization power of positive thinking.
If you wanted to keep it secular.
Right, there's some validity to that. Yeah, I think so. But you know this, look, self help guides, instruction manuals. We've all dealt with, at least the manuals. The manual we're talking about tonight is not about how to do something well. It's got great instructions, for sure, about how to assemble certain devices, and there's real mcguiver to it. It has phenomenal hacks for the workplace and social dynamics that all well, most of which still work and are applicable in the modern day. But each and every piece of this guide is meant to break a thing. It's it's a SITH instruction manual. Back in the day, the US government made a literal instruction book on sabotage, and folks, we read it spoiler, it is an absolute banger. Like it's not just well written, but for the time, it's accurate and there's there's unexpected poetic snark throughout it.
Oh for sure.
Yeah, it's super useful if you're trying to be useless.
Well yeah, or destroy something from within by coercing pieces of like cogs in that machine sometimes use act.
Against its own long game, right, Like, it's like its own sabotage.
It's crazy.
So listen, all of you all, it's a sabotage. Here are the facts, all right. This is called the Simple Sabotage Manual, or we'll use that phrase here. To understand what it is, we have to understand the folks who created it, the OSS, or the Office of Strategic Services. The OSS is the direct antecedent or predecessor of the CIA, and it was formed. We talked about this in our two part episode on the CIA hiring magicians. It was formed as a reaction to the disastrous Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, because before then, all of what we would consider US intelligence apparatus it was kind of ad hoc. You know, you might have some guys in the navies, some guys in the army, you might have a loose confederation of professors and diplomats. But when the US absolutely got waxed at Pearl Harbor, they said, this is a massive intelligence failure. Other catastrophes are on the horizon. We have to create an organization that just does intelligence.
Would you say that maybe, prior to Pearl Harbor there was sort of a sense of this gentlemanly understanding of war and rules of engagement, and then that event sort of just tossed that all out the window, and it's like, nah, we got to play really dirty.
Moving forward to.
A degree, yeah, I would say in that historically intelligence and trade craft was going to be largely or significantly orbiting the upper end shalons of society.
Right.
You need people who can travel, you need people who can speak multiple languages. You need people who can go into any room and seem as though they belong in that room, So the demographic is pretty limited.
Yeah, we're going to talk about this a little more, but I just want to put out there that a lot of the intelligence that we're talking about here is stuff that we've discussed in many other episodes on many other topics when it comes to counter what counter propaganda is what they would call it, and disinformation campaigns and all kinds of stuff that is undermining the enemy without weapons or even explosives. And then what we're talking about today is where you bring in the explosives and you know, other things like rickety machines.
Right listen, and sabotage. Yeah. So after Pearl Harbor, all right, it's nineteen forty one, there's a president of the US. His name's Rosa Belt, and he appoints a absolute larger than life cartoonish pill, a very clever man named William Donovan wild Bill to his friends. And wild Bill is originally helming this thing we talked about in our CI episode. They originally call it the Coordinator of Information and this becomes the OSS Office of Strategic Services goes It goes a fish on June thirteenth, nineteen forty two, and it's a very short lived organization. This escapes a lot of the fiction and film about this group. Its career is very limited. It's sort of like how the historical time span of the quote unquote wild West is itself just a very brief period of American history. But during its very short existence, the OSS was powerful, it was radical, and it was is super controversial. I mean, there's no arguing that the OSS was anything but instrumental to Allied victory in World War Two. But and this is the fun this is the funny part about upper echelons and spying. At first, I'm sure we all saw this. Other branches of the military and the US government did not care for the OSS because wild Bill was getting the majority of his initial recruits from upper krusty silver spoon types, krusty yeah yeah, upper krusty Krembrulai krusty types, wealthy East Coast elites. And as the organization grew, that became a problem for a moment because people in those circles, the blue bloods, right, they saw joining the OSS, or at least being affiliated, as a kind of social flex It gave you social cachet. You know who, Not only am I vander Bildt, but I'm aiding in the war effort.
Yeah, well, well it seems to me maybe I'm wrong, correct me if I'm roud here, guys, but it seems like a lot of the activities the OSS was getting into required creativity, maybe a level of education that wouldn't that you wouldn't find in a lot of places, you know, specifically in the in the types of military operations that were being carried out during World War Two. It's a different type of thinking and a different type of creativity. I think that maybe somebody who comes from those worlds, like those Ivy League schools, might flourish in at least when it comes to the planning and the conceptualization of how to undermine the enemy.
Being able to move with in those circles too, is a big deal to what Ben was saying earlier, Like in terms of the higher echelon circles.
Yeah, like that when the Reynolds impersonate what Brian lefev and go into the box seats at that sports game and one of them start stealing batteries and the other one says, damn it, act like you belong here. That's a reference for maybe twelve people, but for this reason, for the demographic prevalence of the upper crust. Critics in the government and detractors of this plan, they started calling this organization ohso social right, because now are you really serving the war effort or do you just want to have something nice to say at the next gala. So, as with some of his other projects, your boy wild Bill Donovan does have a sort of logic here. The effective agents. They have two types, two rough categories of agents in the OSS. The first are loosely called choir boys, and these are men and women. They're your desk folks, your analysts, your linguistic experts, your intelligence coalators. The other category would be the cowboys. These are the field guys. They're predominantly young. They're predominantly from well to do families in the US, mostly the East Coast. We're talking like nineteen to twenty five years old. And all of these agents go through this process that evaluates a pretty high bar of admittance. To your earlier points, Nolan, that things like fluency in other languages, which a lot of Americans don't have at that point, frequent and believable excuses for international travel, which very few Americans have at that point, and then again to the point we've made earlier connections to decision makers elites around the world. You have to be familiar with the international set. You need to move and look as though you belong in those environments. And quite simply, you know, class divides and all those problems of that time and now set aside. Those are attributes that wealthy people are just far more likely to possess. You know, you can find the smartest guy from rural Appalachia, but you're gonna have to teach him Mandarin. He's not just gonna know it from grad school, you know what I mean.
And then but I mean, like you know, you've mentioned multiple times been what a tall order it is to learn that language as an adult. So who really do have to have some acumen you know, for picking up new languages already, because it's already an uphill climb for such a difficult language like that.
Yeah, yeah, And they're I think also they're looking for Japanese in this context, right, Japanese and then Central and Eastern European languages, with German of course being a clear favorite. There's a ton of fascinating history out there about the oss Uh and ore pal Robert Evans over on behind the Bastards did a fantastic deep dive into the history of wild Bill. But for our purposes tonight, the main thing to remember is this, due to the skills required to be a recruit, the OSS always knew it could not accomplish its mission through its own internal numbers. So first problem, to use a modern phrase, they need to outsource.
Yeah, which means another really important thing that you need to have in your arsenal when you become an OSS recruiter someone who's going out there to outsource people, is you've got to be able to communicate in very specific ways and have phrases and concepts at the ready that can manipulate and influence other human beings on the ground level.
Yeah. The OSS operatives and their allies, particularly the British, at this point, they sought to do just what you're describing, Matt, to establish communication with people civilian and military alike behind denity lines in German occupied parts of Europe. And then we could say turn them. I would say it's more diplomatic to argue they are convincing that person to help with a given task or mission, or in many cases to find someone who's already up to some hijinks and say, let's teach you out a hijinks you know exactly, Let's teach you like high level hijinks.
For sure, And this was not necessarily the most straightforward of tasks.
There are some.
Challenges involved, one being that making contact and successfully you know, flipping somebody to whatever the cause may be, in this case, the cause of the United States, that's not easy. It's a challenging thing. It requires a lot of foresight, a lot of planning, and a lot of a certain set of skills. The second challenge being that you couldn't just jump in right away with a new asset after turning them. There is a lot of training involved. Throwing them out into deep water, as you would say, ben could potentially be very very dangerous and would blow their cover and make them absolutely useless to you, and all the hard work that you put into turning them would be for not. So you'd really need to give them some way to you know, make them know kung fu, like like like Keanu in the in the Matrix, some kind of very crash course level amount of training that could get them the skills they need, but then put them in the field as quickly as possible.
Yeah, yeah, that's well said. You can't. You can't find the guy who makes the most important rotor in the factory and then kidnap them for a month and teach them to be a spy. You know what I mean? You have to, as you were saying, you have to give them the basics vicariously indirectly. And the third issue is you want to make sure you establish reasonable limits on behavior, because otherwise the asset may get overwhelmed, frightened off, they may snitched enemy forces, they might accidentally bite off more than they can chew. And what if they screw up? What if they get caught, you know, trying to sabotage some munitions factory right for sure?
And and maybe just to backcheck with what I was saying, I think the biggest thing right away is not removing them from that situation where they are expected to be for too long, because that in and of itself is the whole point for them to be able to use that situation to their and our advantage.
Let's get into something really quickly here, and it's about why would somebody who makes machines for an access power. Let's say in Italy, decide to work with some stranger that comes up to them, right who speaks Italian, But you don't know this person, and they're just talking to you, trying to convince you of something to work against the people you're making the weapons for. Why on earth would you do that? And we're going to get into the specifics as we get into the manual, but one of the main things that these OSS people were looking for were a reason, a concrete, specific reason for an individual to fight against the powers that they're working for. So it's literally like, well, we'll talk about specifics, but if you think about it in the real world right now, and just to take it a little bit, just for a moment to California, you would have something that enough people or an individual is angry about, upset about, and have reason to fight back against something, then you can if you can use that anger, you can maybe flip them and turn them to working against the system that controls them.
I mean, it's not super different than assets.
Say, you know that the FBI might recruit from say organized crime, you know, if you've seen it in the movies or whatever. There usually has to be some beef that they know about and that they are able to use to their advantage and give the person a reason or they've got some really bad dirt on them that I guess could also potentially be an option here.
And so part of this again we have these three issues. We will discuss the unrest in Los Angeles, which I think we're all tuned into as we're recording on Monday, June ninth. We'll have that coming up in our listener mail segment as well. See, we do see some parallels with the OSS here. Again we see the first issue making contact, the second issue keeping people relatively unextraordinary for management and enemy forces. And third, we want to establish reasonable limits of behavior. Someone biting off more than they can chew could spell disaster for the mission entire So how do we navigate these issues? Says the OSS, Especially with a ticking clock where every little ding against the opponent could change the course of the war, especially if they operate over time, The solution quickly became obvious. What was the solution? Will tell you after word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy. They wrote a book.
There's a book club.
They wrote a book.
Sort of the like Bizarrow evil version of how to win friends and influence people.
It's definitely about influencing people, and those parts are personally just the way it's written, those are personally some of my favorite parts. That's where I could I could clearly hear a repressed stand up comic at the end of the manual, But all right, it's a forty four and the OSS distributes a literal book on sabotage to OSS officers in multiple foreign countries. Outside of a relatively brief preface, this thing, the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, which you can freely read online or hear an audiobook of it, was not solely written for the officers. Instead, it's like a teacher's textbook, and it's meant for you, as an officer to give this information to citizen saboteurs throughout areas of Europe occupied by Germany. These guys that are the intended audience of this instruction, they are not the upper crust of their society, right, These are not the landed lords and ladies. Unlike the original OSS hires. They're much more likely to be blue collar workers and middle management. You know, are guys on the production line. They're mid tier bosses who do admin and set meetings. I can't wait until we get to the art of sabotaging meetings. But it's essentially a textbook right as the title says, it's a textbook for simple sabotage, tons of weird, at times darkly hilarious stuff. The CIA will later go on to call this surprisingly relevant because get this, guys, I don't think they were certain it would work. I don't you know what I mean, Even back then, I think they were a bit skeptical about how much of this instruction could translate to real world action.
Yeah, I could see that. I don't know. I honestly don't know, but it does seem like the first major foray into this stuff. Although we have talked about how the spy game goes way way way back, so there's been little versions of this, but never maybe a wide scale at least what it says in the introduction to the manual, like a wide scale attempt to proliferate sabotage amongst like civilians in I think, on three or at least three fronts throughout the Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's get to that. Let's dive into what it taught people to do. So the preface of the manual, it's gonna directly let's say all of us, the three of us and try force and you listening at home, thank you for joining us. Let's say we're all oss agents. We get this book, this manual, and the front of it directly addresses us. And most of what it's trying to do is establish the context in which citizen saboteurs, as the manual calls them, reside. It's saying like, hey, look, these are not you know what I mean, These are not the James Bond types. These guys are not black block protesters, a phrase that didn't exist at the time. We want them to do simple, easy stuff, and we want them to be safe, and you have to understand that most of them are not going to want to do this. So how do you how do you finesse that?
Why am I picturing this like some sort of like I don't know, boy scout manual with like an intro sort of meant to like puff you up and make you feel like welcome to the team, and sort of like these are our goals and you know what it means to be part of the part of the club.
Mm hmm, yeah, Oh, actually, let's do that for fun. Here is a boy Scout handbook.
Let's just had it within our series that was not coordinated.
Oh, you nailed it, nol uh. Page one, Welcome to the Adventure of Scouting.
There you go.
That's what scouting is.
Exactly.
What's the This is the adventure of sabotage.
Right right, right right They the manual defines simple sabotage with a quote that I believe is worth us just reading in full.
Simple sabotage does not require specially prepared tools or equipment. It is executed by an ordinary citizen who may or may not act individually and without the necessity for active connection with an organized group, and it is carried out in such a way as to involve a minimum danger of injury, detection, and reprisal.
You too, can do simple sabotage exactly, exactly. Hey, you don't have to be a nuclear physicist. You can just realize you don't need to turn the screws all the way and then let that pony roll off the line.
Dude, well, just can we can just move on the next line. There in the thing you spoke to the poetic nature of this, but also the sith lord like overtones.
Just because it is pleasant like a manual in this but it's not dry like a manual.
I don't know.
Oh yeah, no, no, it's clearly someone from a nice school in the East Coast in the US wrote this. All right, you want to, let's do it. Okay, I want to do a transatlantic voice, but we're going to give it some respect. Where destruction is involved, the weapons of the citizen saboteur are salt, nails, candles, pebbles, thread, or any other materials he might normally be expected to possess as a householder or as a worker in his particular occupation. His arsenal is the kitchen shelf, the trash pile, his old usual kit of tools and supplies. The targets of his sabotage are usually objects to which he has normal and in conspicuous access in everyday life stuff.
Yeah, it's a really nice picture.
Siver each one, each one, you know what I mean? A poor man's empty hand is a weapon. Yeah, this is dope, honestly, the way it's written. They go on to describe two categories of sabotage physical destruction. Right, everybody is familiar with that, and interpersonal disruption, which is where it gets very severence in off of Spacey and like Dilbert comics. Also Scott Adams is a bad person.
Swing the seeds of discord, you know, among other things.
Well, and speaking of chords and even discords, there's a thing they mentioned in here right at the end of the introduction, the human element. That's what they call it. The type of activity that just kind of slows down the works, slows down the gears of the machine. And I wonder if you guys remember the ad campaign from the early maybe is the mid Oughts, I don't know, it's in the two thousands where they would put the human element, the hu human Element. Do you remember this ad campaign at all? They were on posters.
I do remember it, but I don't remember the specificity of what they were what they were trying to incite.
It was Dow Chemical and they were they were saying that the thing that makes us different as a chemical company is the human human.
Familiar with the periodic table.
It made me think of what a globocm like in Mister Show and their original logo was people selling people to people.
Yeah, yeah, so this is also I mean, this is a people first enterprise.
Right.
You cannot you cannot closely supervise the citizen saboteur. You cannot be assured of their acumen. Right. And you know that if you are creating an agent of chaos, even in the best of circumstances, it is chaos that will result.
Right.
So we see a lot of lessons about motivating this saboteur. How do you get in the head of this potential asset. And we have to remember that a lot of this is meant for people who are in Nazi ok areas of Europe. They're already probably pissed at the invading regime. The manual cleverly notes that some civilians there's a non zero chance that they're already engaged in covert disruptive acts, but they are likely untrained. They likely have a personal axe to grind, and the fact that they are added to this lowers their odds of success over time, while also increasing the likelihood that they will be caught. They are subject matter experts right at the factory or what have you. They know how to screw stuff up, they may not know the best way to screw it up, and they may not know how to cover their tracks and the OSS therefore is attempting to teach those lessons.
Oh yeah, do you think you had to take a little test, a little quiz to show that they that they did this?
Unfortunately the unfortunately the tests were all live.
Got it? Okay, that makes sense, dude.
Like, does the fuse work? Did you get caught? If yes, and then no, congrats you passed. Now onto the next one.
Yeah.
Yes. This is the section that gets into the whole like, how do you motivate somebody to even do this kind of thing? Because it even states quote, the ordinary citizen very probably has no immediate personal motive for committing simple sabotage, right, Like, so no, it's just somebody's not going to just start doing this stuff, so he must be made to anticipate indirect personal gain.
Yeah, yeah, that's that's the issue. Yeah, let's go to that. Like, okay, so imply, but do not promise. Yes, indirect personal gain the pursuit of happiness, very american. Yeah, and so you're as SS officers in this scenario, we are instructed to check in on our recruits when we can with suggestions, reassurance, and pressure. Right, that's our stick to our carrot as well as specific task and we want to eliminate feeling discouraged. We want to motivate through ideology. That's that indirect personal gain, but we have to bridge a cultural gap to do so. You want people to feel like there's something they are part of, something bigger than themselves and their individual act. You want to make sure that they are personally safe and as incognito as possible, so you can keep the grift running over a window of time. But this is so precient here. The manual also warns OSS officers. They say, look, if you are trying to motivate people through abstract cultural concepts, may come up with buppkis. You know, you're in a communist country. You're talking about freedom of the press, and they're saying, oh yeah, but also I don't want to get shot, you know what I mean. From their perspective, that's a that's a weak argument. So you have to point out specific policies in that land that suck, right, Like.
Specific officers that are like local to their area.
Right, right sub aldermen whomever, right assistant deputy to the assistant deputy of blah blah blah. That guy's food rationing policy is whack. Dude, wouldn't it be awesome if that was no longer there and you could have three times as much bread. You have to meet people where they're at if you want to take them somewhere, you know, And that's the argument, and it is brilliant the CIA. We will see multiple other intelligence agencies replicate that tactic. But they also they also acknowledge this is one of my favorite life of the whole thing. They also there's this stroke of casual brilliance. The writers of this are amazing. They acknowledge almost as a throwaway, that what is being asked of these civilians fundamentally goes against everyone's idea of being competent no matter where you go, whether it's a good person, an evil person, or like the majority of people and in between, they want to be good at what they do. And the manual says, quote, purposeful stupidity is contrary to human nature.
Boom, But is it? It's interesting?
Right?
Like they like classifying it that way, purposeful stupidity. It's not really stupidity incompetence, right, I mean, if you're being intentional about it right to an end, it's actually kind of smart.
You got to cover it up.
Yeah, it's pretending to be just bad at what you do. So let's go back to let's just right here, jump back to number two. I think the heading number twoossible effects because they describe some of the things that would be like purposefully being stupid or you know whoop sees and just making things bad, slashing tires, draining fuel, tanks, starting fires, starting arguments, acting stupidly, short circuiting electric systems, upbraiding machine parts, wasting materials, manpower and time. Yes, so like doing these little things like again we're saying acting stupidly, Like you're a machine worker, right, and you accidentally do something that screws up the machine that makes that fabricates the parts for like three days.
Oh that's the wrong oil in the engine. Yep, oh geez, it's too late now.
But it also doesn't serve the mission if you get pegged as an incompetent employee that it canned, right, So you guys really tread that line.
There's a tight rope to walk, which they discuss as well, you know, because now you're asking people to endanger themselves if you go too hard and paying as an incompetent worker. Then you will be of fire. You will meet that reprisal you're trying to avoid. So it's best for the mistakes to be untraceable, attributed to organizational dynamics or to the roaring horde of coworkers. The golden goose, obviously, is to not just persuade someone that the risk to their livelihood and their family is worth it, but to convince them that in this case it is superbly rational to take irrational action. And the absolute holy grail of it is to motivate a civilian saboteur such that they themselves believe in the mission to the point where they recruit and educate other civilians. Right, Take a little celluloid from an old comb, Take a candle and some paper, Light some stuff up. That's the idea.
It's viral in nature. Is designed to be viral in nature because the own manual states it only really works if you've got thousands of people in an occupied place doing this kind.
Of stuff, right right, paper cuts.
Exactly, So you kind of have to you have to reach that if it's going to be effective. Just two little extra things to add to this, because I think it's a great point and it's a great place to end this section here, but just to point out that they even state one of the main things that's going to motivate people in this realm is to have the sense that they are working for some unseen organization, basically, like some unknown group like the rebels, the Rebel Alliance. We're working for them, and we're just one cog in that machine now that's working against this bigger thing. Because if they ever had that internal realization of oh, well, I'm just like or well, no, the internal maybe, but the for me, the internal realization of oh, I'm just like one little person standing up against this giant machine, demoralizing, Yeah, you wouldn't probably take the action that's sary.
But if you feel like you're part of a network, this unseen, vast network of people just like you, and you're working in lockstep, than you are greater than the star.
But like we said, cultivate the perception that the civilian is part of something bigger than themselves.
Oh yeah, but specifically this unseen, unknown thing, right is the way to keep them there and then and then to get them over that line. It says, quote a reasonable amount of humor in the presentation of suggestions for simple sabotage will relax tensions of fear. Just this idea of that go in with some humor about it, hey like, and I've just I could see that character in my mind.
Yeah, you gotta you gotta work the cultural type rope of humor there as well. Right, they're asking a lot of the civilian saboteurs, but of the OSS ambassadors in addition, Right, and they're asking them to traverse some cultural chasms. But when you get past those cultural chasms, which are again the most interesting part, I'm not going to stop teasing that. We're getting to that at the end. When you move on through this the motivations, the context and so on, the behavioral manipulation, you get to tactics, tools, targets, and timing and specifically what they call it. These are divided into three categories, and they're time based, situational based categories. General conditions, how to screw things up during general day to day things, and then prior to an imminent military offensive that's the second category, and then during a military offensive that's the third category. And every section attempts to instruct civilian assets on how to behave like Grimlins in wartime folklore, right, we all remember, I don't want to make assumptions, all right, So during the days of wartime aviation, back in the day, there was this great lore that grew up around the idea of gremlins. It's probably most well known in the West through the Fantastic Twilight Zone episode with William Shatner.
There's also a great Looney Tunes episode where Bugs Bunny literally does battle with a gremlin.
And it's really red and stimpy, level fed up, like tortured by that guy.
And usually it's bugs doing the torturing, but in this one, this little gremlin runs him through the ringer.
Yeah, gremlins in this milieu are largely invisible, untraceable pest that bedevil enemy capabilities. And they don't do it through grand cinematic acts of destruction, but they do it instead via a constant, unending barrage of tiny inconvenient Oh this is the wrong wrench. Where's the right wrench? Oh crap, we're running out of time to assemble this and things just break down. Oh now we have to stop everything and figure out how how this breakdown occurred. And all these small acts accumulate, they aggregate, they create a domino effect of logistical chaos. At least that's the idea, right. It's like, for anybody familiar with StarCraft StarCraft two, I want to say you you have the thing called like the Zerg swarm. Do you guys remember that an individual Zerg is not itself extraordinary, but they mob you. They move in a huge swarm.
The little teeny tiny guys that are on land. When you've got a specific amount of them that is too many. Just if you just imagine too many tiny little characters, then your your space is going to get overrun.
Yeah, it's like how many year olds can you fight?
Yeah? You know how many you got those pylons? You know, those pilons will get taken out real quick, and then once you don't have power, you're there to get out of luck.
It is funny though, the way Gremlin's been personified as these little green monsters. I mean, when the lore was coming up, was was that how they were described? And obviously it's a joke. You don't be believed in this. It was more of a personification of the concept of this kind of chaos, right.
But it was real things right there. There were pilots that would report like that all of a sudden, the mechanical stuff on one of the wings is like not working right all of a sudden while we're mid flight, mid mission or something.
So they believed in little green fellas that were at fing their stuff up.
Well, base, we've got a food fighter.
But that was real too.
I guess I'm just wondering the specifics around, like true belief in gremlins as a real entity rather than just this concept of this is the personification of chaos and sabotage.
It's like full Cole's pendulum. Right. People can create a conspiracy knowing that they created it, but then over time other people don't know it was purposely made up. You know, so someone and especially you know wartime, when you're always about to die, like playing sports for a living, it encourages superstition. So there probably there's a non zero amount of airplane mechanics of World War Two who are like, I don't believe in God, but there might be something to this gremlin story.
Well, yes, because in this manual where we're talking about, they split it up as we're about to get to like a regular time when there's it's not wartime, right before some kind of mobilization, and then during a mobilization of war, right, so you imagine that we our side is encouraging other people to sabotage in all of those times, can't we probably imagine that this type of sabotage is also happening on American soil and British soil, oil, on the Allied powers soil. So in the hangars where the planes are being built, maybe there's one or two people, ten people, maybe dozens of people who are doing these little things like not tightening the bolts quite as much as they need to be. I don't know.
And also there's a very effective I like that point. There's a very effective weaponization of misogyny too in the factory line, like ah, I'm just the woman. That's why, that's why these bombs keep exploded at the wrong time. And this is a it's a grand manipulation of human prejudices and assumptions. And the manual here is suggesting that in this juncture, it's suggesting how you prioritize what to hit you want to hit industrial manufacturing, any transportation facilities, roads, railroads, automobiles, trucks, motorcycles, bicycle even bicycles, screw up the bikes, right, and especially trains. And then they say, you also want to hit anything that could be a communication vector or facility for enemy comms or propaganda, which plays a big role in World War Two. They do this was interesting to me. They do have a strong asterisk or caveat on direct attacks toward what they call developing military factors. They were saying this because if you are a civilian and you happen to let's say, work at a very high value emergent military facility or to a military base, attacking them greatly increases the risk of discovery, which means they're going to find you and they will learn everything that you know, which is why you know. The USS officers are also limiting the civilian saboteur's understanding of the large or lay of the land. But if the enemy gains that intelligence, then they could establish a predictive pattern for destruction and could say, hey, things go wrong when the following factors coincide with US spinning up a military initiative, right, or things die down when something is of a lesser priority, and then you give away the whole game. You got to keep it simple, keep it small, and as we'll see after a word from our sponsors.
Keep it stupid, keep it so stupid.
We returned, all right, This is where we get to the good stuff. Specific suggestions for simple sabotage. It's an exhaustively numbered list. It explores monopoly of various Sith Macguiver level ways of destroyed stuff, destroying building by fire, destroying them by or destroying things by water. I don't know how about this. This is our primary source, so I argue we should share at least a few quotations directly from the Sabotage Field Manual so you can see how specific they get, especially with like this improvised fuse stuff is great. It's up there with bag of moths at the propaganda film for sure.
Yeah, let's just jump right in whenever possible, arrange to have the fire start after you've gone away. Okay, jacky, use a candle and paper combination, setting it as close as possible to the inflammable material you want to burn. From a sheet of paper, tear a strip three or four centimeters wide and wrap it around the base of the candle. Two or three times. Twist more sheets of paper into loose ropes and place them around the base of the candle. When the candle flame reaches the encircling strip, it will be ignited and in turn will ignite the surrounding paper. The size, heat, and duration of the resulting flame will depend on how much paper you use and how much of it you can cramp in a small space.
Hey, now, let's talk about the conditions that might even help that fire go further. This is number six on their list here. A clean factory is not susceptible to fire, but a dirty one is. Workers should be careless with refuse, and janitors should be inefficient in cleaning if enough dirt and trash can be accumulated in an otherwise fireproof building will become inflammable.
And the manual list that as one of the circumstances. After it lists several more types of improvised fuses. And we got to tell you, folks, it's a little dicey with our HR and legal department. We don't recommend trying these at home, but you do need to know they are easy to create and replicate, and trust us, they do work, especially in a dirty factory, you know what I mean? Like, Hey, I'm middle management. It all the let's put all the oily rags paint. Yeah, over by, over by the furnace, because that's our new policy. We have a committee on that. There are six people on the committee, and after four weeks we agreed. Yeah, that's a nice teaser, guy.
I think one of the most clever like improvised fused situations I've ever seen was I believe it was in Better Call Saul, where Gus Fring is trying to burn down his own business and he takes a frozen turkey and sits it on like a pan, like a govern pan that's sort of tilted down towards a fryar, and so as the heat from the friars starts to defrost the turkey, it slides down until it goes in the.
Fryer and causes a massive grease explosion.
Isn't that incredible?
Yeah, that's not in the manual, but that's good.
It would it would work there, especially, I remember what you're describing their no, because look, the manual does spend time on attacks, on livestock attacks, but because of food scarcity, they probably wouldn't have pulled off a turkey. You simply couldn't trust. You couldn't trust the civilian saboteur at this time to not take the turkey.
Oh yeah, of course, you know what I mean. Well, while they're actively encouraging, you know, folks to target food supplies right like it is. It is crazy, like fuel, food, water, any of the basic supplies. This this thing says, go after those. You gotta prioritize these things.
Yeah, let's cut to that one feed crop. They say, crops and livestock will probably be destroyed only in areas where there are large food surpluses or where the enemy is known to be stealing food from the people. I'm paraphrasing there, But they say, let crops harvest you early to late, spoil stores of grains, fruit and vegs, soak them in water, feed crops, the livestock, leaf stuff in the sun. This is sabotage not just by direct action, but by neglect. And sabotage by neglect and negligence is quite clever, and I would argue occurs with great success today. This is the thing. They also say, Look, you can compromise any water system. You can attack it. You can you can flood the pipes in a way that no one will catch because you might have Look, we've all been there. You could if you get caught, you could just say sorry, I had a bad bem. I had a war crime in the bathroom. I'm not working for anybody. I just ate the wrong you know, the wrong block.
Is well, I love your death by one thousand paper cuts analogy, Ben, because you never want to overplay your hand on any of these. And I think that's the key and the sort of ideology that this manual communicates.
It really is sort of like a way of life, you know.
I mean it's got to bed. Yeah.
Well, the stuff Ben is describing is it's one of those things that if you're a commanding officer and you just get word that something like that happening, like oh dang it, what the hell, Hell gods, come on, we gotta do better.
There'll bevich over here. Oh yeah, my gosh, this guy is like a serial killer of kmmodes.
Well yeah, exactly. But then there's a random warehouse fire, right, you know, like, oh crap, we really needed those things. Well, they and they also describe, you know, if you're not gonna use fire, use water, as Ben is saying, make the sprinkler system go off and ruin the stuff that's stored in a in a specific area of a warehouse doesn't have to be the whole thing. Hit one sprinkler with a hammer, and you've ruined a bunch of important stuff.
Well, and if we know anything about like things like insurance fraud, like this stuff is hard to pull off because investigations are going to determine that there was some foul play or that there was, you know, something going on behind the scenes. So it's really important to not tip your hand in that way, right.
Yeah, Yeah, but whom is the responsible?
So a lot of times they maybe would know something was funky, but they couldn't really figure out because you can't fire everybody right right.
Well, the authority wherever they are in these situations are planning attacks and military movements and large scale stuff. So who is gonna waste resources figuring out how the fire got set?
Feels like a demotion, yeah, because there's a bigger mission. And don't you don't you want to move up to colonel then why don't you make one of your underleans look at this, and that underlean is going to make another underly and look at this. You know, for anybody who's worked in manufacturing, you know, if you've been on an assembly line, that there are tons of ways machinery can go wrong accidentally, right, and that that means there are tons of ways to sabotage machinery. Fun fact for our fellow etymology nerds, the word sabotage comes from the French word saboteur, which means to bungle, to screw up, to wreck. It originally did refer to the act of damaging and employer's property, but I love it.
Initially it was like unintentional, it's it's referring to being care being sort of a dumb dumb but then it's sort of co opted and there is this layer of intent that's built in. When people say sabotage or even self sabotage, they're talking about kind of knowingly doing something even though you know it's bad or you know it's bad.
This is going to be a bad result.
Yeah, And the idea is to earlier point Noel, the manual is communicating acts of sabotage committed in a way that reduces overall recognition of a problem until it is past the point of fixing, and several of the acts are structured. We mentioned this earlier as a such that you could have a form of temporary cover by getting caught and shrugging and saying, my bad, I didn't know that was the wrong oil for this engine. Right. That's an extreme example, because anybody at that level of a line would know the correct oil. But then you can blame it on someone else and say, you know, obviously you want to blame another department, not another individual. So you say, whomever is wreck wasditioning the fuel, sent us the wrong thing. They sent us the wrong lubricant. And this explanation can only work a finite number of times before the employee is fired unless is why recruitment is a golden goose, unless their boss is also on the grift, at which point the bad employee gets promoted.
Yeah, and it also kind of capitalizes or takes advantage of the inherent inefficiency of large operations. Right, and like there, we're going to get to you in a minute. Some of the ways that that discord from within can be so and also just kind of creating confusion, not by doing the acts, but by messing with the communication and messing with the way all the pieces fit together to further obscure what's actually going on. This is where it really gets fascinating and almost satirical.
This is my favorite part as well. Let's play the groundwork for that. So the section about specific industrial sabotage, it is clearly the result of fascinating, intense research. And I strongly suspect that OSS analysts visited manufacturing facilities in the United States and they asked what the most common or troublesome malfunctions can be. Right, So, like we're talking to the you know, the head of widget making, what's the worst thing that could happen to the widget line? And the Supervisor's like, well, you know Mac in thirty four, blah blah blah, that was a whole pickle, that was a bag of badgers. And they go, great, thank you for the information. They get back to their HQ, their layer, and they reverse engineer that issue and they figure out the easiest, most cost effective way to create that issue. It is brilliant. It is fucking evil, and I am so impressed with their acumen. But yeah, Rail systems, that's where we start to see in the manual, the behavioral tampering, the inter personal sabotage. The wildest stuff is at the very end. We'll save you the time folks. It's called quote general interference with organizations and production. This is the film office space. You know. The protagonist says he doesn't love his job, he stops trying. It's a weaponized version of the same principles. Insist on doing everything through official channels. Never have shortcuts. Always make speeches, talk as frequently as possible, at great length. Illustrate your points with long anecdotes.
Some of this just sounds like the way people act on company calls, like yeah, really, yeah.
None of this.
That's why I'm refer to it as almost being satirical, because you're describing here just some of the obnoxious parts of working in a bureaucracy or working for a big company.
Yeah. To finish that part, illustrate your points by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate patriotic comments.
It sounds we're as we continue. It is describing Congress, it is describing government. It is describing every every slow timing thing that you've ever been a part of.
And Rand Corporation also goes on piggybacking from this research or this manual to weaponize some research when possible, refer all matters.
To committees congress.
Even before emails, people were thinking this could have been a letter. Say that you're say that you're doing this for further study considerations.
Not how it's supposed to work. This is the bad way.
Make sure the committees are as large as possible. There should never be fewer than five members. Hurt feelings, Always bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible, Haggle over precise wording of communications, ad minutes and resolutions. And when you start a meeting, always refer to matters decided upon at the last meet and try to relitigate them, reopen the question of the whether or not that's.
A good decision.
Waste time. And that's that's on the large scale stuff. Now, what if you're just a manager and you're getting orders then from all these committees to do stuff?
What do you do?
Then?
I'm not sure I understand you.
For clarification, that's literally, that's literally been said. The first thing that it says to do in there, just misunderstand everything that comes your way as a manager.
Right, and the best, the ideal version the OSS wants is not just to say I misunderstood you, but to say right on that sounds great. I'm referring to this to this subcommittee that submits questions to the committee upon clarification policies, and once we get our clarification policies signed off, then we can reopen this conversation according to those policies, which will help us refer this to the correct committee for that decision.
It's that moment when you realize that these type of operations are inefficient by design.
Oh yeah, yeah, but that's what's making me so upset or to frustrated. What we're describing here is meant to be something that you do to tear down an organization or to disassemble it from within. And yet all of these things could read like a manual how to manual of how to conduct parliamentary procedure.
One hundred percent. Yeah, it's weaponized parliamentary procedure. And you don't have to be a saboteur to do that. To those excellent points earlier, we see elected members of Congress enacting these things specifically to advance their agendas and stymy progress of their enemies or arguably the American public.
Boom agree do everything.
Possible to delay the delivery of orders. They already just straight up said filibuster, you guys, filibuster about everything. If there are parts of an order for manufacturing and assembly that are ready beforehand, just don't send them through. Just hold off. Take forever to write train tickets, right.
Yeah you know, Oh no, there they are. Oh my mistake.
Don't order stuff until well after you needed it.
Yes, a bad job.
Just do a bad job.
In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs. First, see that the important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers of poor machines. Yes. When training new workers, give incomplete and misleading instructions.
Yes, yeah yeah, and also insist on perfect work with stuff that doesn't matter, and with important stuff, approve the heck out of it. Also screw up morale overall by promoting and praising visibly praising inefficient and bad workers. And then do your best to discribt inminate against the competent ones. Never do paperwork on time, Always spread rumors. This is great, man. This is like the necronomicon for middle office management. But this okay, this sounds familiar, unfortunately to a lot of us. The final section is real, sith lord. It's for an employee non management, screwing up the workplace, things like always complain and never teach other people, never pass on your skill or experience. If someone asks you for help, tell them the wrong way to do it. God dude, it's so petty. It feels like it's asking a lot too. Because these these folks practicing this simple sabotage, especially on an interpersonal level, they are going to get caught. I mean, there will be consequences unless it's like a Cambridge five thing where the you know, the compromise goes all the way.
Up and then the subterfusion of it all just the like dishonesty, like if this one, if possible, join or help organize a group for presenting employee problems to management.
Why so that you can then be.
Like the spokesperson of the wrong thing, see that the procedures adopted are as inconvenient as possible for the management involving the presence of a large number of employees at each presentation.
We're talking about community meetings here. We're talking about, oh my.
God, a little meeting that we have like every week, even like where can stit?
You you know, town halls and things.
Like that too, you know, Yeah, I've got more of a comment than a question. Yes, yeah. And also make sure that each grievance gets its own separate meeting, and need all the people there for every meeting bring up problems that are largely imaginary and then misunderstand as employee everything. Maybe we'ven ended on this one of the final and weirdest instructions for employees.
Can I give you mind bripe off? Or that is my favorite one of the whole manual. Just before we jump to these last two, uh, jam paper, bits of wood, hairpins, and anything else that will fit into the locks of all unguarded entrances to all public buildings. Somebody going around put.
Gum into the payphones, you know, like yeah, it's a little anarchist cookbook at that level. Here's my favorite line, which is strange. This is towards the end quote cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerk.
I'm about to do that thing.
So what says soon says why are you always making us have all these crazy meetings? You immediately fucking break down. I'd say, why are you guys bullying me?
You know that's a rhetorical device, a manipulation that is often employed by folks, even in relationships where someone calls you on something and then you immediately cry and say, why are you so mean to me?
Or I'm just I'm just such a bad person.
I can't you know, like I mean, it's just a way of deflecting the actual thing of value and kicking the can down the road because now you have this new problem to deal with, and it kicks that important thing right out of your mind because you're being presented with a person literally losing it.
The histrionics.
Yeah, I do feel like you can see a lot of this at work, not just in government, but just in society in general.
In five yeah, like how Jonathan Strickland keeps calling those meetings and then he cries, oh, well, we can't make it.
He misunderstands everything, everything, folks.
This is just a rough overview of the Simple Sabotage Manual. It is short. We encourage you to read it. You can check it out now for yourself in audio or print form anywhere online. It was not declassified until two thousand and eight, and due to the circumstances surrounding the publication, the dissemination, we'll never know how many copies were made. We don't know to what degree these instructions were enacted in the field, but we do know this, and this is troubling. The concept had to have worked to some extent, because we can assume this because the OSS's later form, the CIA, went on to publish more sketchy subversive manuals, The Assassination Manual in the nineteen fifties. You can read a version of that online and the Freedom Fighter's Manual in the nineteen eighties, dropped by air throughout Nicaragua. So it's got to work, and it makes us wonder what else is out there, what has yet to be declassified, What manuals are being used now for tonight. That's the stuff they don't want you to know. We can't wait to hear your thoughts. Find us online, give us a call on the phone, or drop us a note on our good old fashioned email. But for the Internet while we still have it.
Jeez, oh man, we didn't even talk about how this stuff can be applied to sewing chaos and disinformation and general you know, just awfulness on the Internet. Yeah, it all is applicable, and yeah, let us know. You can find us all over the Internet as long as it's still there. Like Ben was saying at the handle conspiracy stuffhere, we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy, on xfka, Twitter, and on YouTube where we have video content color for you to enjoy. On Instagram and TikTok where conspiracy Stuff show.
If you want to call us, our number is one eight three three std WYTK. Call us. Let us know your thoughts on the mayhem machine that is outlined in this manual. Do give yourself a cool nickname and let us know within the message if we can use your name and message on the air. If you'd like to send us an email, we are.
The entities that read each piece of correspondence we receive. Don't need for a committee. Be well aware, yet unafree. Sometimes the void writes back. Tell us your favorite weaponized sabotage attempts in your line of work, in your neck of the global woods. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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