How to Neutralize the Enemy

A shocking CIA primer jolts the Administration

The 89-page booklet entitled Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare is a primer on insurgency, a how-to book in the struggle for hearts and minds. Some of the "techniques of persuasion" are benign: helping the peasants harvest crops, learn to read, improve hygiene. Others are decidedly brutal: assassination, kidnaping, blackmail, mob violence.

It could be a manual for the Viet Cong or the Cuban-backed rebels in El Salvador. If it were, the Administration would likely be waving it as proof of its thesis about the sources of insidious world terrorism. In fact, however, it is a publication...

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