June 13, 2025 • 68 mins
In 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.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
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
(00:49):
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.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Just running the clock on the pension.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
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?
Speaker 5 (01:51):
Not even phoning it in, right, just like not even
making the call.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
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
(02:17):
little paragraph about the origin story, you see a full
half page of the menu dedicated to rules and warnings
and regulations.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
You're talking about what I've been in there? What is
that place?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
There are a couple places. I'm thinking of the Vortex
that's one.
Speaker 5 (02:34):
But there are a bar no children allowed.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
It's like a giant It looks like a ride at
an amusement park, carnival or something.
Speaker 5 (02:42):
They're very very strict about. No kids allowed.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
It's a bar, but they could let kids in if
they wanted to, because.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
They serve food.
Speaker 5 (02:49):
It's a restaurant there though.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I think that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
I think it was bought by This is sorry too
much inside baseball.
Speaker 5 (03:03):
But Taco Mac, which is like a regional chain.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Of like their Decatur locations, don't particularly care for there Mac.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
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
(03:35):
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
(03:57):
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?
Speaker 4 (04:05):
I'm always your people referencing the secret. I guess I
don't know the secret, and no one shared it with.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
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.
Speaker 5 (04:26):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Yes, diplomatically put The issue with that is it essentially,
on some level, argues that people just aren't praying hard enough.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Oh okay, But it also is like sort of like
a self actualization power of positive thinking.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
If you wanted to keep it secular.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
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
(05:03):
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
(05:26):
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.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
Yeah, it's super useful if you're trying to be useless.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Well yeah, or destroy something from within by coercing pieces
of like cogs in that machine sometimes use act.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Against its own long game, right, Like, it's like its
own sabotage.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It's crazy.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
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
(06:26):
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
(06:51):
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
(07:15):
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.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
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.
Speaker 5 (07:41):
Moving forward to.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
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.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
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
(08:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
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
(09:12):
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
(09:34):
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,
(09:59):
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
(10:21):
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
(10:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
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
(11:25):
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.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
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.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
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,
(12:12):
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,
(12:36):
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,
(12:58):
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
(13:20):
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
(13:42):
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
(14:04):
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.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
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.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
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
(14:59):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
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.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
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
(16:10):
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.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
For sure, And this was not necessarily the most straightforward
of tasks.
Speaker 5 (16:36):
There are some.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
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
(16:58):
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.
(17:19):
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.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
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
(17:58):
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?
Speaker 4 (18:21):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
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
(19:00):
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
(19:21):
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
(19:42):
them and turn them to working against the system that
controls them.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
I mean, it's not super different than assets.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
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
(20:33):
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
(20:54):
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
(21:15):
was the solution? Will tell you after word from our sponsors.
Here's where it gets crazy. They wrote a book.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
There's a book club.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
They wrote a book.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Sort of the like Bizarrow evil version of how to
win friends and influence people.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
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
(22:02):
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
(22:26):
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
(22:47):
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
(23:11):
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
(23:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
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
(24:06):
amongst like civilians in I think, on three or at
least three fronts throughout the Yes.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
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
(24:35):
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
(24:55):
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?
Speaker 4 (25:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Mm hmm, yeah, Oh, actually, let's do that for fun.
Here is a boy Scout handbook.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
Let's just had it within our series that was not coordinated.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Oh, you nailed it, nol uh. Page one, Welcome to
the Adventure of Scouting.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
That's what scouting is.
Speaker 5 (25:50):
Exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
What's the This is the adventure of sabotage.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Right right, right right They the manual defines simple sabotage
with a quote that I believe is worth us just
reading in full.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
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.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
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.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Just because it is pleasant like a manual in this
but it's not dry like a manual.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
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,
(27:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yeah, it's a really nice picture.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
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
(28:07):
it gets very severence in off of Spacey and like
Dilbert comics. Also Scott Adams is a bad person.
Speaker 5 (28:14):
Swing the seeds of discord, you know, among other things.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
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
(28:40):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
I do remember it, but I don't remember the specificity
of what they were what they were trying to incite.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
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.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Familiar with the periodic table.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
It made me think of what a globocm like in
Mister Show and their original logo was people selling people
to people.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Yeah, yeah, so this is also I mean, this is
a people first enterprise.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
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.
Speaker 5 (29:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
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.
(30:07):
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
(30:27):
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
(30:49):
and the OSS therefore is attempting to teach those lessons.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Oh yeah, do you think you had to take a
little test, a little quiz to show that they that
they did this?
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Unfortunately the unfortunately the tests were all live.
Speaker 5 (31:06):
Got it? Okay, that makes sense, dude.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Like, does the fuse work? Did you get caught? If yes,
and then no, congrats you passed. Now onto the next one.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
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
(31:38):
doing this stuff, so he must be made to anticipate
indirect personal gain.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
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
(32:06):
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,
(32:26):
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
(32:49):
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,
(33:11):
that's a that's a weak argument. So you have to
point out specific policies in that land that suck, right, Like.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Specific officers that are like local to their area.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
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,
(33:46):
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
(34:11):
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
(34:31):
is contrary to human nature.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
Boom, But is it? It's interesting?
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Right?
Speaker 4 (34:37):
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.
Speaker 5 (34:49):
You got to cover it up.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
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,
(35:11):
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
(35:32):
the parts for like three days.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Oh that's the wrong oil in the engine. Yep, oh geez,
it's too late now.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
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
(36:10):
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
(36:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
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.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Of stuff, right right, paper cuts.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
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
(37:30):
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
(37:53):
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.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
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.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
But like we said, cultivate the perception that the civilian
is part of something bigger than themselves.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
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
(38:39):
of that go in with some humor about it, hey like,
and I've just I could see that character in my mind.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
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
(39:07):
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
(39:27):
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
(39:52):
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
(40:17):
well known in the West through the Fantastic Twilight Zone
episode with William Shatner.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
There's also a great Looney Tunes episode where Bugs Bunny
literally does battle with a gremlin.
Speaker 5 (40:29):
And it's really red and stimpy, level fed up, like
tortured by that guy.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
And usually it's bugs doing the torturing, but in this one,
this little gremlin runs him through the ringer.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
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
(41:01):
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.
(41:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
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.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
Yeah, it's like how many year olds can you fight?
Speaker 2 (42:01):
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.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
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.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
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.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
So they believed in little green fellas that were at
fing their stuff up.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Well, base, we've got a food fighter.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
But that was real too.
Speaker 4 (42:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
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
(43:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
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,
(43:52):
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
(44:15):
as they need to be. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
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
(44:38):
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,
(44:59):
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
(45:25):
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
(45:46):
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
(46:08):
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.
Speaker 5 (46:30):
Keep it stupid, keep it so stupid.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
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
(47:02):
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
(47:22):
is great. It's up there with bag of moths at
the propaganda film for sure.
Speaker 4 (47:27):
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
(47:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
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
(48:26):
and trash can be accumulated in an otherwise fireproof building
will become inflammable.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
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
(48:53):
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
(49:15):
a nice teaser, guy.
Speaker 4 (49:17):
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
(49:40):
the turkey, it slides down until it goes in the.
Speaker 5 (49:42):
Fryer and causes a massive grease explosion.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
Isn't that incredible?
Speaker 5 (49:47):
Yeah, that's not in the manual, but that's good.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
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
(50:12):
time to not take the turkey.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
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.
Speaker 3 (50:31):
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
(50:54):
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
(51:17):
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.
Speaker 4 (51:34):
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.
Speaker 5 (51:47):
It really is sort of like a way of life,
you know.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
I mean it's got to bed. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
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.
Speaker 3 (52:02):
There'll bevich over here. Oh yeah, my gosh, this guy
is like a serial killer of kmmodes.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
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.
Speaker 4 (52:31):
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.
Speaker 3 (52:46):
Yeah, Yeah, but whom is the responsible?
Speaker 4 (52:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
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?
Speaker 3 (53:12):
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
(53:33):
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.
Speaker 4 (53:56):
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.
Speaker 5 (54:14):
This is going to be a bad result.
Speaker 3 (54:16):
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
(54:37):
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
(54:58):
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.
Speaker 4 (55:22):
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
(55:45):
further obscure what's actually going on. This is where it
really gets fascinating and almost satirical.
Speaker 3 (55:52):
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
(56:13):
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
(56:33):
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
(56:54):
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
(57:14):
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.
Speaker 4 (57:33):
Some of this just sounds like the way people act
on company calls, like yeah, really, yeah.
Speaker 5 (57:38):
None of this.
Speaker 4 (57:40):
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.
Speaker 3 (57:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
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.
Speaker 3 (58:15):
And Rand Corporation also goes on piggybacking from this research
or this manual to weaponize some research when possible, refer
all matters.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
To committees congress.
Speaker 3 (58:27):
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.
Speaker 5 (58:35):
Not how it's supposed to work. This is the bad way.
Speaker 3 (58:37):
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
(58:59):
at the last meet and try to relitigate them, reopen
the question of the whether or not that's.
Speaker 5 (59:05):
A good decision.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
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?
Speaker 5 (59:16):
What do you do?
Speaker 4 (59:16):
Then?
Speaker 3 (59:17):
I'm not sure I understand you.
Speaker 2 (59:20):
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.
Speaker 3 (59:32):
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,
(59:57):
which will help us refer this to the correct committee
for that decision.
Speaker 5 (01:00:00):
It's that moment when you realize that these type of
operations are inefficient by design.
Speaker 4 (01:00:06):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
Boom agree do everything.
Speaker 3 (01:00:52):
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.
Speaker 5 (01:01:13):
Yeah you know, Oh no, there they are. Oh my mistake.
Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
Don't order stuff until well after you needed it.
Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
Yes, a bad job.
Speaker 5 (01:01:22):
Just do a bad job.
Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
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.
(01:02:02):
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
(01:02:26):
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,
(01:02:49):
there will be consequences unless it's like a Cambridge five
thing where the you know, the compromise goes all the way.
Speaker 4 (01:02:55):
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.
Speaker 5 (01:03:05):
Why so that you can then be.
Speaker 4 (01:03:07):
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.
Speaker 5 (01:03:17):
We're talking about community meetings here. We're talking about, oh my.
Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
God, a little meeting that we have like every week,
even like where can stit?
Speaker 5 (01:03:28):
You you know, town halls and things.
Speaker 3 (01:03:29):
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.
(01:03:52):
Maybe we'ven ended on this one of the final and
weirdest instructions for employees.
Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
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.
Speaker 4 (01:04:21):
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.
Speaker 5 (01:04:39):
I'm about to do that thing.
Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
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?
Speaker 4 (01:04:53):
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?
Speaker 5 (01:05:03):
Or I'm just I'm just such a bad person.
Speaker 4 (01:05:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:05:19):
The histrionics.
Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Yeah, I do feel like you can see a lot
of this at work, not just in government, but just
in society in general.
Speaker 3 (01:05:28):
In five yeah, like how Jonathan Strickland keeps calling those
meetings and then he cries, oh, well, we can't make it.
Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
He misunderstands everything, everything, folks.
Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
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.
(01:06:02):
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
(01:06:25):
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
(01:06:46):
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.
Speaker 4 (01:06:56):
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
(01:07:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:07:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
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
(00:49):
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.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Just running the clock on the pension.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
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?
Speaker 5 (01:51):
Not even phoning it in, right, just like not even
making the call.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
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
(02:17):
little paragraph about the origin story, you see a full
half page of the menu dedicated to rules and warnings
and regulations.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
You're talking about what I've been in there? What is
that place?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
There are a couple places. I'm thinking of the Vortex
that's one.
Speaker 5 (02:34):
But there are a bar no children allowed.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
It's like a giant It looks like a ride at
an amusement park, carnival or something.
Speaker 5 (02:42):
They're very very strict about. No kids allowed.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
It's a bar, but they could let kids in if
they wanted to, because.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
They serve food.
Speaker 5 (02:49):
It's a restaurant there though.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I think that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
I think it was bought by This is sorry too
much inside baseball.
Speaker 5 (03:03):
But Taco Mac, which is like a regional chain.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Of like their Decatur locations, don't particularly care for there Mac.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
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
(03:35):
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
(03:57):
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?
Speaker 4 (04:05):
I'm always your people referencing the secret. I guess I
don't know the secret, and no one shared it with.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
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.
Speaker 5 (04:26):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Yes, diplomatically put The issue with that is it essentially,
on some level, argues that people just aren't praying hard enough.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Oh okay, But it also is like sort of like
a self actualization power of positive thinking.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
If you wanted to keep it secular.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
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
(05:03):
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
(05:26):
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.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
Yeah, it's super useful if you're trying to be useless.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Well yeah, or destroy something from within by coercing pieces
of like cogs in that machine sometimes use act.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Against its own long game, right, Like, it's like its
own sabotage.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It's crazy.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
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
(06:26):
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
(06:51):
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
(07:15):
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.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
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.
Speaker 5 (07:41):
Moving forward to.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
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.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
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
(08:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
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
(09:12):
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
(09:34):
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,
(09:59):
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
(10:21):
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
(10:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
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
(11:25):
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.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
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.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
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,
(12:12):
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,
(12:36):
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,
(12:58):
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
(13:20):
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
(13:42):
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
(14:04):
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.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
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.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
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
(14:59):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
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.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
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
(16:10):
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.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
For sure, And this was not necessarily the most straightforward
of tasks.
Speaker 5 (16:36):
There are some.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
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
(16:58):
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.
(17:19):
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.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
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
(17:58):
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?
Speaker 4 (18:21):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
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
(19:00):
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
(19:21):
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
(19:42):
them and turn them to working against the system that
controls them.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
I mean, it's not super different than assets.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
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
(20:33):
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
(20:54):
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
(21:15):
was the solution? Will tell you after word from our sponsors.
Here's where it gets crazy. They wrote a book.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
There's a book club.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
They wrote a book.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Sort of the like Bizarrow evil version of how to
win friends and influence people.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
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
(22:02):
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
(22:26):
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
(22:47):
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
(23:11):
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
(23:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
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
(24:06):
amongst like civilians in I think, on three or at
least three fronts throughout the Yes.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
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
(24:35):
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
(24:55):
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?
Speaker 4 (25:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Mm hmm, yeah, Oh, actually, let's do that for fun.
Here is a boy Scout handbook.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
Let's just had it within our series that was not coordinated.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Oh, you nailed it, nol uh. Page one, Welcome to
the Adventure of Scouting.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
That's what scouting is.
Speaker 5 (25:50):
Exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
What's the This is the adventure of sabotage.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Right right, right right They the manual defines simple sabotage
with a quote that I believe is worth us just
reading in full.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
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.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
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.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Just because it is pleasant like a manual in this
but it's not dry like a manual.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
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,
(27:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yeah, it's a really nice picture.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
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
(28:07):
it gets very severence in off of Spacey and like
Dilbert comics. Also Scott Adams is a bad person.
Speaker 5 (28:14):
Swing the seeds of discord, you know, among other things.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
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
(28:40):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
I do remember it, but I don't remember the specificity
of what they were what they were trying to incite.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
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.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Familiar with the periodic table.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
It made me think of what a globocm like in
Mister Show and their original logo was people selling people
to people.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Yeah, yeah, so this is also I mean, this is
a people first enterprise.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
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.
Speaker 5 (29:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
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.
(30:07):
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
(30:27):
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
(30:49):
and the OSS therefore is attempting to teach those lessons.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Oh yeah, do you think you had to take a
little test, a little quiz to show that they that
they did this?
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Unfortunately the unfortunately the tests were all live.
Speaker 5 (31:06):
Got it? Okay, that makes sense, dude.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Like, does the fuse work? Did you get caught? If yes,
and then no, congrats you passed. Now onto the next one.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
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
(31:38):
doing this stuff, so he must be made to anticipate
indirect personal gain.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
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
(32:06):
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,
(32:26):
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
(32:49):
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,
(33:11):
that's a that's a weak argument. So you have to
point out specific policies in that land that suck, right, Like.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Specific officers that are like local to their area.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
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,
(33:46):
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
(34:11):
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
(34:31):
is contrary to human nature.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
Boom, But is it? It's interesting?
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Right?
Speaker 4 (34:37):
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.
Speaker 5 (34:49):
You got to cover it up.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
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,
(35:11):
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
(35:32):
the parts for like three days.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Oh that's the wrong oil in the engine. Yep, oh geez,
it's too late now.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
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
(36:10):
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
(36:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
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.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Of stuff, right right, paper cuts.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
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
(37:30):
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
(37:53):
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.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
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.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
But like we said, cultivate the perception that the civilian
is part of something bigger than themselves.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
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
(38:39):
of that go in with some humor about it, hey like,
and I've just I could see that character in my mind.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
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
(39:07):
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
(39:27):
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
(39:52):
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
(40:17):
well known in the West through the Fantastic Twilight Zone
episode with William Shatner.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
There's also a great Looney Tunes episode where Bugs Bunny
literally does battle with a gremlin.
Speaker 5 (40:29):
And it's really red and stimpy, level fed up, like
tortured by that guy.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
And usually it's bugs doing the torturing, but in this one,
this little gremlin runs him through the ringer.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
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
(41:01):
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.
(41:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
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.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
Yeah, it's like how many year olds can you fight?
Speaker 2 (42:01):
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.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
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.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
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.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
So they believed in little green fellas that were at
fing their stuff up.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Well, base, we've got a food fighter.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
But that was real too.
Speaker 4 (42:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
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
(43:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
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,
(43:52):
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
(44:15):
as they need to be. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
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
(44:38):
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,
(44:59):
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
(45:25):
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
(45:46):
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
(46:08):
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.
Speaker 5 (46:30):
Keep it stupid, keep it so stupid.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
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
(47:02):
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
(47:22):
is great. It's up there with bag of moths at
the propaganda film for sure.
Speaker 4 (47:27):
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
(47:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
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
(48:26):
and trash can be accumulated in an otherwise fireproof building
will become inflammable.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
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
(48:53):
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
(49:15):
a nice teaser, guy.
Speaker 4 (49:17):
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
(49:40):
the turkey, it slides down until it goes in the.
Speaker 5 (49:42):
Fryer and causes a massive grease explosion.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
Isn't that incredible?
Speaker 5 (49:47):
Yeah, that's not in the manual, but that's good.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
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
(50:12):
time to not take the turkey.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
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.
Speaker 3 (50:31):
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
(50:54):
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
(51:17):
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.
Speaker 4 (51:34):
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.
Speaker 5 (51:47):
It really is sort of like a way of life,
you know.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
I mean it's got to bed. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
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.
Speaker 3 (52:02):
There'll bevich over here. Oh yeah, my gosh, this guy
is like a serial killer of kmmodes.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
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.
Speaker 4 (52:31):
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.
Speaker 3 (52:46):
Yeah, Yeah, but whom is the responsible?
Speaker 4 (52:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
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?
Speaker 3 (53:12):
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
(53:33):
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.
Speaker 4 (53:56):
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.
Speaker 5 (54:14):
This is going to be a bad result.
Speaker 3 (54:16):
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
(54:37):
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
(54:58):
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.
Speaker 4 (55:22):
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
(55:45):
further obscure what's actually going on. This is where it
really gets fascinating and almost satirical.
Speaker 3 (55:52):
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
(56:13):
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
(56:33):
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
(56:54):
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
(57:14):
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.
Speaker 4 (57:33):
Some of this just sounds like the way people act
on company calls, like yeah, really, yeah.
Speaker 5 (57:38):
None of this.
Speaker 4 (57:40):
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.
Speaker 3 (57:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
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.
Speaker 3 (58:15):
And Rand Corporation also goes on piggybacking from this research
or this manual to weaponize some research when possible, refer
all matters.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
To committees congress.
Speaker 3 (58:27):
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.
Speaker 5 (58:35):
Not how it's supposed to work. This is the bad way.
Speaker 3 (58:37):
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
(58:59):
at the last meet and try to relitigate them, reopen
the question of the whether or not that's.
Speaker 5 (59:05):
A good decision.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
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?
Speaker 5 (59:16):
What do you do?
Speaker 4 (59:16):
Then?
Speaker 3 (59:17):
I'm not sure I understand you.
Speaker 2 (59:20):
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.
Speaker 3 (59:32):
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,
(59:57):
which will help us refer this to the correct committee
for that decision.
Speaker 5 (01:00:00):
It's that moment when you realize that these type of
operations are inefficient by design.
Speaker 4 (01:00:06):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
Boom agree do everything.
Speaker 3 (01:00:52):
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.
Speaker 5 (01:01:13):
Yeah you know, Oh no, there they are. Oh my mistake.
Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
Don't order stuff until well after you needed it.
Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
Yes, a bad job.
Speaker 5 (01:01:22):
Just do a bad job.
Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
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.
(01:02:02):
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
(01:02:26):
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,
(01:02:49):
there will be consequences unless it's like a Cambridge five
thing where the you know, the compromise goes all the way.
Speaker 4 (01:02:55):
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.
Speaker 5 (01:03:05):
Why so that you can then be.
Speaker 4 (01:03:07):
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.
Speaker 5 (01:03:17):
We're talking about community meetings here. We're talking about, oh my.
Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
God, a little meeting that we have like every week,
even like where can stit?
Speaker 5 (01:03:28):
You you know, town halls and things.
Speaker 3 (01:03:29):
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.
(01:03:52):
Maybe we'ven ended on this one of the final and
weirdest instructions for employees.
Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
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.
Speaker 4 (01:04:21):
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.
Speaker 5 (01:04:39):
I'm about to do that thing.
Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
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?
Speaker 4 (01:04:53):
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?
Speaker 5 (01:05:03):
Or I'm just I'm just such a bad person.
Speaker 4 (01:05:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:05:19):
The histrionics.
Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Yeah, I do feel like you can see a lot
of this at work, not just in government, but just
in society in general.
Speaker 3 (01:05:28):
In five yeah, like how Jonathan Strickland keeps calling those
meetings and then he cries, oh, well, we can't make it.
Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
He misunderstands everything, everything, folks.
Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
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.
(01:06:02):
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
(01:06:25):
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
(01:06:46):
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.
Speaker 4 (01:06:56):
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
(01:07:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:07:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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