Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Andrew the try Force Howard. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know. Friends and neighbors, conspiracy
Speaker 3: realist workers of the world unite. We can all agree
Speaker 3: on this at some point in your life. Good question.
Speaker 3: Have you ever met someone who seems almost purposely bad
Speaker 3: at their job, like not just over their head, but
Speaker 3: like beyond the point of incompetence.
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess the old cliche is associated with
Speaker 4: like government jobs and people that are like unfirable, but
Speaker 4: that seems to no longer be the case.
Speaker 3: Just running the clock on the pension.
Speaker 4: One percent or you know, there's a certain level of
Speaker 4: potentially entitlement that comes along with people who have been
Speaker 4: in a job for a really, really long time and
Speaker 4: they just start to kind of get bitter and resentful
Speaker 4: and maybe kind of just give up.
Speaker 2: You know, I've been in some restaurants where I'm pretty
Speaker 2: sure there's at least someone in the managerial level that
Speaker 2: is specifically attempting to sabotage their own business. The way
Speaker 2: the restrooms look, because of how unclean everything is. Sure,
Speaker 2: you're just going who is run this place?
Speaker 5: Not even phoning it in, right, just like not even
Speaker 5: making the call.
Speaker 3: I also love to that point the this happens at
Speaker 3: a few restaurants in Atlanta, I'm sure it's throughout the world.
Speaker 3: Where you look at a menu. Menus, by the way,
Speaker 3: one of my favorite forms of literature. You look at
Speaker 3: a menu and instead of you know, immediately the pricing
Speaker 3: or the list of dishes available, or like a cutesy
Speaker 3: little paragraph about the origin story, you see a full
Speaker 3: half page of the menu dedicated to rules and warnings
Speaker 3: and regulations.
Speaker 2: You're talking about what I've been in there? What is
Speaker 2: that place?
Speaker 3: There are a couple places. I'm thinking of the Vortex
Speaker 3: that's one.
Speaker 5: But there are a bar no children allowed.
Speaker 4: It's like a giant It looks like a ride at
Speaker 4: an amusement park, carnival or something.
Speaker 5: They're very very strict about. No kids allowed.
Speaker 4: It's a bar, but they could let kids in if
Speaker 4: they wanted to, because.
Speaker 2: They serve food.
Speaker 5: It's a restaurant there though.
Speaker 4: That yeah, there is, and they do have a comedy
Speaker 4: brand that actually I think just got bought out. Laughing
Speaker 4: skull skull no longer associated with that.
Speaker 3: I think that makes sense.
Speaker 4: I think it was bought by This is sorry too
Speaker 4: much inside baseball.
Speaker 5: But Taco Mac, which is like a regional chain.
Speaker 4: Of like their Decatur locations, don't particularly care for there Mac.
Speaker 3: They're moving their stuff around. Yeah. Also that that's a
Speaker 3: great observation I would agree with it. Don't have a giant, cartoonish,
Speaker 3: super fascinating looking skull that seems like it belongs on
Speaker 3: a Putt putt course and then make people disappoint their
Speaker 3: children driving by. Anyway, So if you are if you
Speaker 3: have had the dubious experience of meeting someone, perhaps in
Speaker 3: a position of authority, who seems almost like almost purposely
Speaker 3: purpusly bad at their job, then you will be interested
Speaker 3: in tonight's episode. This is a long waited fun when
Speaker 3: for us folks, tonight's episode is about an instruction manual,
Speaker 3: a short book, a novelette. Unlike other manuals or self
Speaker 3: help guides. I don't know if you guys read self
Speaker 3: help books. Wait, let's posit there the secret, right, do
Speaker 3: you read the secret?
Speaker 4: I'm always your people referencing the secret. I guess I
Speaker 4: don't know the secret, and no one shared it with.
Speaker 3: The secret argues popularized by talk show host in billionaire
Speaker 3: Oprah Winfrey. The Secret argues that one must adjust one's
Speaker 3: thoughts to manifest real world results.
Speaker 5: Ah.
Speaker 3: Yes, diplomatically put The issue with that is it essentially,
Speaker 3: on some level, argues that people just aren't praying hard enough.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, But it also is like sort of like
Speaker 4: a self actualization power of positive thinking.
Speaker 5: If you wanted to keep it secular.
Speaker 3: Right, there's some validity to that. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3: But you know this, look, self help guides, instruction manuals.
Speaker 3: We've all dealt with, at least the manuals. The manual
Speaker 3: we're talking about tonight is not about how to do
Speaker 3: something well. It's got great instructions, for sure, about how
Speaker 3: to assemble certain devices, and there's real mcguiver to it.
Speaker 3: It has phenomenal hacks for the workplace and social dynamics
Speaker 3: that all well, most of which still work and are
Speaker 3: applicable in the modern day. But each and every piece
Speaker 3: of this guide is meant to break a thing. It's
Speaker 3: it's a SITH instruction manual. Back in the day, the
Speaker 3: US government made a literal instruction book on sabotage, and folks,
Speaker 3: we read it spoiler, it is an absolute banger. Like
Speaker 3: it's not just well written, but for the time, it's
Speaker 3: accurate and there's there's unexpected poetic snark throughout it.
Speaker 5: Oh for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's super useful if you're trying to be useless.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, or destroy something from within by coercing pieces
Speaker 2: of like cogs in that machine sometimes use act.
Speaker 4: Against its own long game, right, Like, it's like its
Speaker 4: own sabotage.
Speaker 2: It's crazy.
Speaker 3: So listen, all of you all, it's a sabotage. Here
Speaker 3: are the facts, all right. This is called the Simple
Speaker 3: Sabotage Manual, or we'll use that phrase here. To understand
Speaker 3: what it is, we have to understand the folks who
Speaker 3: created it, the OSS, or the Office of Strategic Services.
Speaker 3: The OSS is the direct antecedent or predecessor of the CIA,
Speaker 3: and it was formed. We talked about this in our
Speaker 3: two part episode on the CIA hiring magicians. It was
Speaker 3: formed as a reaction to the disastrous Japanese attacks on
Speaker 3: Pearl Harbor, because before then, all of what we would
Speaker 3: consider US intelligence apparatus it was kind of ad hoc.
Speaker 3: You know, you might have some guys in the navies,
Speaker 3: some guys in the army, you might have a loose
Speaker 3: confederation of professors and diplomats. But when the US absolutely
Speaker 3: got waxed at Pearl Harbor, they said, this is a
Speaker 3: massive intelligence failure. Other catastrophes are on the horizon. We
Speaker 3: have to create an organization that just does intelligence.
Speaker 4: Would you say that maybe, prior to Pearl Harbor there
Speaker 4: was sort of a sense of this gentlemanly understanding of
Speaker 4: war and rules of engagement, and then that event sort
Speaker 4: of just tossed that all out the window, and it's like, nah,
Speaker 4: we got to play really dirty.
Speaker 5: Moving forward to.
Speaker 3: A degree, yeah, I would say in that historically intelligence
Speaker 3: and trade craft was going to be largely or significantly
Speaker 3: orbiting the upper end shalons of society.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: You need people who can travel, you need people who
Speaker 3: can speak multiple languages. You need people who can go
Speaker 3: into any room and seem as though they belong in
Speaker 3: that room, So the demographic is pretty limited.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to talk about this a little more,
Speaker 2: but I just want to put out there that a
Speaker 2: lot of the intelligence that we're talking about here is
Speaker 2: stuff that we've discussed in many other episodes on many
Speaker 2: other topics when it comes to counter what counter propaganda
Speaker 2: is what they would call it, and disinformation campaigns and
Speaker 2: all kinds of stuff that is undermining the enemy without
Speaker 2: weapons or even explosives. And then what we're talking about
Speaker 2: today is where you bring in the explosives and you know,
Speaker 2: other things like rickety machines.
Speaker 3: Right listen, and sabotage. Yeah. So after Pearl Harbor, all right,
Speaker 3: it's nineteen forty one, there's a president of the US.
Speaker 3: His name's Rosa Belt, and he appoints a absolute larger
Speaker 3: than life cartoonish pill, a very clever man named William
Speaker 3: Donovan wild Bill to his friends. And wild Bill is
Speaker 3: originally helming this thing we talked about in our CI episode.
Speaker 3: They originally call it the Coordinator of Information and this
Speaker 3: becomes the OSS Office of Strategic Services goes It goes
Speaker 3: a fish on June thirteenth, nineteen forty two, and it's
Speaker 3: a very short lived organization. This escapes a lot of
Speaker 3: the fiction and film about this group. Its career is
Speaker 3: very limited. It's sort of like how the historical time
Speaker 3: span of the quote unquote wild West is itself just
Speaker 3: a very brief period of American history. But during its
Speaker 3: very short existence, the OSS was powerful, it was radical,
Speaker 3: and it was is super controversial. I mean, there's no
Speaker 3: arguing that the OSS was anything but instrumental to Allied
Speaker 3: victory in World War Two. But and this is the
Speaker 3: fun this is the funny part about upper echelons and spying.
Speaker 3: At first, I'm sure we all saw this. Other branches
Speaker 3: of the military and the US government did not care
Speaker 3: for the OSS because wild Bill was getting the majority
Speaker 3: of his initial recruits from upper krusty silver spoon types,
Speaker 3: krusty yeah yeah, upper krusty Krembrulai krusty types, wealthy East
Speaker 3: Coast elites. And as the organization grew, that became a
Speaker 3: problem for a moment because people in those circles, the
Speaker 3: blue bloods, right, they saw joining the OSS, or at
Speaker 3: least being affiliated, as a kind of social flex It
Speaker 3: gave you social cachet. You know who, Not only am
Speaker 3: I vander Bildt, but I'm aiding in the war effort.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, well it seems to me maybe I'm wrong,
Speaker 2: correct me if I'm roud here, guys, but it seems
Speaker 2: like a lot of the activities the OSS was getting
Speaker 2: into required creativity, maybe a level of education that wouldn't
Speaker 2: that you wouldn't find in a lot of places, you know,
Speaker 2: specifically in the in the types of military operations that
Speaker 2: were being carried out during World War Two. It's a
Speaker 2: different type of thinking and a different type of creativity.
Speaker 2: I think that maybe somebody who comes from those worlds,
Speaker 2: like those Ivy League schools, might flourish in at least
Speaker 2: when it comes to the planning and the conceptualization of
Speaker 2: how to undermine the enemy.
Speaker 4: Being able to move with in those circles too, is
Speaker 4: a big deal to what Ben was saying earlier, Like
Speaker 4: in terms of the higher echelon circles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like that when the Reynolds impersonate what Brian lefev
Speaker 3: and go into the box seats at that sports game
Speaker 3: and one of them start stealing batteries and the other
Speaker 3: one says, damn it, act like you belong here. That's
Speaker 3: a reference for maybe twelve people, but for this reason,
Speaker 3: for the demographic prevalence of the upper crust. Critics in
Speaker 3: the government and detractors of this plan, they started calling
Speaker 3: this organization ohso social right, because now are you really
Speaker 3: serving the war effort or do you just want to
Speaker 3: have something nice to say at the next gala. So,
Speaker 3: as with some of his other projects, your boy wild
Speaker 3: Bill Donovan does have a sort of logic here. The
Speaker 3: effective agents. They have two types, two rough categories of
Speaker 3: agents in the OSS. The first are loosely called choir boys,
Speaker 3: and these are men and women. They're your desk folks,
Speaker 3: your analysts, your linguistic experts, your intelligence coalators. The other
Speaker 3: category would be the cowboys. These are the field guys.
Speaker 3: They're predominantly young. They're predominantly from well to do families
Speaker 3: in the US, mostly the East Coast. We're talking like
Speaker 3: nineteen to twenty five years old. And all of these
Speaker 3: agents go through this process that evaluates a pretty high
Speaker 3: bar of admittance. To your earlier points, Nolan, that things
Speaker 3: like fluency in other languages, which a lot of Americans
Speaker 3: don't have at that point, frequent and believable excuses for
Speaker 3: international travel, which very few Americans have at that point,
Speaker 3: and then again to the point we've made earlier connections
Speaker 3: to decision makers elites around the world. You have to
Speaker 3: be familiar with the international set. You need to move
Speaker 3: and look as though you belong in those environments. And
Speaker 3: quite simply, you know, class divides and all those problems
Speaker 3: of that time and now set aside. Those are attributes
Speaker 3: that wealthy people are just far more likely to possess.
Speaker 3: You know, you can find the smartest guy from rural Appalachia,
Speaker 3: but you're gonna have to teach him Mandarin. He's not
Speaker 3: just gonna know it from grad school, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 4: And then but I mean, like you know, you've mentioned
Speaker 4: multiple times been what a tall order it is to
Speaker 4: learn that language as an adult. So who really do
Speaker 4: have to have some acumen you know, for picking up
Speaker 4: new languages already, because it's already an uphill climb for
Speaker 4: such a difficult language like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And they're I think also they're looking for
Speaker 3: Japanese in this context, right, Japanese and then Central and
Speaker 3: Eastern European languages, with German of course being a clear favorite.
Speaker 3: There's a ton of fascinating history out there about the
Speaker 3: oss Uh and ore pal Robert Evans over on behind
Speaker 3: the Bastards did a fantastic deep dive into the history
Speaker 3: of wild Bill. But for our purposes tonight, the main
Speaker 3: thing to remember is this, due to the skills required
Speaker 3: to be a recruit, the OSS always knew it could
Speaker 3: not accomplish its mission through its own internal numbers. So
Speaker 3: first problem, to use a modern phrase, they need to outsource.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which means another really important thing that you need
Speaker 2: to have in your arsenal when you become an OSS
Speaker 2: recruiter someone who's going out there to outsource people, is
Speaker 2: you've got to be able to communicate in very specific
Speaker 2: ways and have phrases and concepts at the ready that
Speaker 2: can manipulate and influence other human beings on the ground level.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The OSS operatives and their allies, particularly the British,
Speaker 3: at this point, they sought to do just what you're describing, Matt,
Speaker 3: to establish communication with people civilian and military alike behind
Speaker 3: denity lines in German occupied parts of Europe. And then
Speaker 3: we could say turn them. I would say it's more
Speaker 3: diplomatic to argue they are convincing that person to help
Speaker 3: with a given task or mission, or in many cases
Speaker 3: to find someone who's already up to some hijinks and say,
Speaker 3: let's teach you out a hijinks you know exactly, Let's
Speaker 3: teach you like high level hijinks.
Speaker 4: For sure, And this was not necessarily the most straightforward
Speaker 4: of tasks.
Speaker 5: There are some.
Speaker 4: Challenges involved, one being that making contact and successfully you know,
Speaker 4: flipping somebody to whatever the cause may be, in this case,
Speaker 4: the cause of the United States, that's not easy. It's
Speaker 4: a challenging thing. It requires a lot of foresight, a
Speaker 4: lot of planning, and a lot of a certain set
Speaker 4: of skills. The second challenge being that you couldn't just
Speaker 4: jump in right away with a new asset after turning them.
Speaker 4: There is a lot of training involved. Throwing them out
Speaker 4: into deep water, as you would say, ben could potentially
Speaker 4: be very very dangerous and would blow their cover and
Speaker 4: make them absolutely useless to you, and all the hard
Speaker 4: work that you put into turning them would be for not.
Speaker 4: So you'd really need to give them some way to
Speaker 4: you know, make them know kung fu, like like like
Speaker 4: Keanu in the in the Matrix, some kind of very
Speaker 4: crash course level amount of training that could get them
Speaker 4: the skills they need, but then put them in the
Speaker 4: field as quickly as possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's well said. You can't. You can't find
Speaker 3: the guy who makes the most important rotor in the
Speaker 3: factory and then kidnap them for a month and teach
Speaker 3: them to be a spy. You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: You have to, as you were saying, you have to
Speaker 3: give them the basics vicariously indirectly. And the third issue
Speaker 3: is you want to make sure you establish reasonable limits
Speaker 3: on behavior, because otherwise the asset may get overwhelmed, frightened off,
Speaker 3: they may snitched enemy forces, they might accidentally bite off
Speaker 3: more than they can chew. And what if they screw up?
Speaker 3: What if they get caught, you know, trying to sabotage
Speaker 3: some munitions factory right for sure?
Speaker 4: And and maybe just to backcheck with what I was saying,
Speaker 4: I think the biggest thing right away is not removing
Speaker 4: them from that situation where they are expected to be
Speaker 4: for too long, because that in and of itself is
Speaker 4: the whole point for them to be able to use
Speaker 4: that situation to their and our advantage.
Speaker 2: Let's get into something really quickly here, and it's about
Speaker 2: why would somebody who makes machines for an access power.
Speaker 2: Let's say in Italy, decide to work with some stranger
Speaker 2: that comes up to them, right who speaks Italian, But
Speaker 2: you don't know this person, and they're just talking to you,
Speaker 2: trying to convince you of something to work against the
Speaker 2: people you're making the weapons for. Why on earth would
Speaker 2: you do that? And we're going to get into the
Speaker 2: specifics as we get into the manual, but one of
Speaker 2: the main things that these OSS people were looking for
Speaker 2: were a reason, a concrete, specific reason for an individual
Speaker 2: to fight against the powers that they're working for. So
Speaker 2: it's literally like, well, we'll talk about specifics, but if
Speaker 2: you think about it in the real world right now,
Speaker 2: and just to take it a little bit, just for
Speaker 2: a moment to California, you would have something that enough
Speaker 2: people or an individual is angry about, upset about, and
Speaker 2: have reason to fight back against something, then you can
Speaker 2: if you can use that anger, you can maybe flip
Speaker 2: them and turn them to working against the system that
Speaker 2: controls them.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's not super different than assets.
Speaker 4: Say, you know that the FBI might recruit from say
Speaker 4: organized crime, you know, if you've seen it in the
Speaker 4: movies or whatever. There usually has to be some beef
Speaker 4: that they know about and that they are able to
Speaker 4: use to their advantage and give the person a reason
Speaker 4: or they've got some really bad dirt on them that
Speaker 4: I guess could also potentially be an option here.
Speaker 3: And so part of this again we have these three issues.
Speaker 3: We will discuss the unrest in Los Angeles, which I
Speaker 3: think we're all tuned into as we're recording on Monday,
Speaker 3: June ninth. We'll have that coming up in our listener
Speaker 3: mail segment as well. See, we do see some parallels
Speaker 3: with the OSS here. Again we see the first issue
Speaker 3: making contact, the second issue keeping people relatively unextraordinary for
Speaker 3: management and enemy forces. And third, we want to establish
Speaker 3: reasonable limits of behavior. Someone biting off more than they
Speaker 3: can chew could spell disaster for the mission entire So
Speaker 3: how do we navigate these issues? Says the OSS, Especially
Speaker 3: with a ticking clock where every little ding against the
Speaker 3: opponent could change the course of the war, especially if
Speaker 3: they operate over time, The solution quickly became obvious. What
Speaker 3: was the solution? Will tell you after word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. They wrote a book.
Speaker 2: There's a book club.
Speaker 3: They wrote a book.
Speaker 4: Sort of the like Bizarrow evil version of how to
Speaker 4: win friends and influence people.
Speaker 3: It's definitely about influencing people, and those parts are personally
Speaker 3: just the way it's written, those are personally some of
Speaker 3: my favorite parts. That's where I could I could clearly
Speaker 3: hear a repressed stand up comic at the end of
Speaker 3: the manual, But all right, it's a forty four and
Speaker 3: the OSS distributes a literal book on sabotage to OSS
Speaker 3: officers in multiple foreign countries. Outside of a relatively brief preface,
Speaker 3: this thing, the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, which you can
Speaker 3: freely read online or hear an audiobook of it, was
Speaker 3: not solely written for the officers. Instead, it's like a
Speaker 3: teacher's textbook, and it's meant for you, as an officer
Speaker 3: to give this information to citizen saboteurs throughout areas of
Speaker 3: Europe occupied by Germany. These guys that are the intended
Speaker 3: audience of this instruction, they are not the upper crust
Speaker 3: of their society, right, These are not the landed lords
Speaker 3: and ladies. Unlike the original OSS hires. They're much more
Speaker 3: likely to be blue collar workers and middle management. You know,
Speaker 3: are guys on the production line. They're mid tier bosses
Speaker 3: who do admin and set meetings. I can't wait until
Speaker 3: we get to the art of sabotaging meetings. But it's
Speaker 3: essentially a textbook right as the title says, it's a
Speaker 3: textbook for simple sabotage, tons of weird, at times darkly
Speaker 3: hilarious stuff. The CIA will later go on to call
Speaker 3: this surprisingly relevant because get this, guys, I don't think
Speaker 3: they were certain it would work. I don't you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, Even back then, I think they were
Speaker 3: a bit skeptical about how much of this instruction could
Speaker 3: translate to real world action.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see that. I don't know. I honestly
Speaker 2: don't know, but it does seem like the first major
Speaker 2: foray into this stuff. Although we have talked about how
Speaker 2: the spy game goes way way way back, so there's
Speaker 2: been little versions of this, but never maybe a wide
Speaker 2: scale at least what it says in the introduction to
Speaker 2: the manual, like a wide scale attempt to proliferate sabotage
Speaker 2: amongst like civilians in I think, on three or at
Speaker 2: least three fronts throughout the Yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's get to that. Let's dive
Speaker 3: into what it taught people to do. So the preface
Speaker 3: of the manual, it's gonna directly let's say all of us,
Speaker 3: the three of us and try force and you listening
Speaker 3: at home, thank you for joining us. Let's say we're
Speaker 3: all oss agents. We get this book, this manual, and
Speaker 3: the front of it directly addresses us. And most of
Speaker 3: what it's trying to do is establish the context in
Speaker 3: which citizen saboteurs, as the manual calls them, reside. It's
Speaker 3: saying like, hey, look, these are not you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, These are not the James Bond types. These
Speaker 3: guys are not black block protesters, a phrase that didn't
Speaker 3: exist at the time. We want them to do simple,
Speaker 3: easy stuff, and we want them to be safe, and
Speaker 3: you have to understand that most of them are not
Speaker 3: going to want to do this. So how do you
Speaker 3: how do you finesse that?
Speaker 4: Why am I picturing this like some sort of like
Speaker 4: I don't know, boy scout manual with like an intro
Speaker 4: sort of meant to like puff you up and make
Speaker 4: you feel like welcome to the team, and sort of
Speaker 4: like these are our goals and you know what it
Speaker 4: means to be part of the part of the club.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, yeah, Oh, actually, let's do that for fun.
Speaker 3: Here is a boy Scout handbook.
Speaker 5: Let's just had it within our series that was not coordinated.
Speaker 3: Oh, you nailed it, nol uh. Page one, Welcome to
Speaker 3: the Adventure of Scouting.
Speaker 5: There you go.
Speaker 3: That's what scouting is.
Speaker 5: Exactly.
Speaker 4: What's the This is the adventure of sabotage.
Speaker 3: Right right, right right They the manual defines simple sabotage
Speaker 3: with a quote that I believe is worth us just
Speaker 3: reading in full.
Speaker 2: Simple sabotage does not require specially prepared tools or equipment.
Speaker 2: It is executed by an ordinary citizen who may or
Speaker 2: may not act individually and without the necessity for active
Speaker 2: connection with an organized group, and it is carried out
Speaker 2: in such a way as to involve a minimum danger
Speaker 2: of injury, detection, and reprisal.
Speaker 4: You too, can do simple sabotage exactly, exactly. Hey, you
Speaker 4: don't have to be a nuclear physicist. You can just
Speaker 4: realize you don't need to turn the screws all the
Speaker 4: way and then let that pony roll off the line.
Speaker 2: Dude, well, just can we can just move on the
Speaker 2: next line. There in the thing you spoke to the
Speaker 2: poetic nature of this, but also the sith lord like overtones.
Speaker 4: Just because it is pleasant like a manual in this
Speaker 4: but it's not dry like a manual.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, no, it's clearly someone from a nice
Speaker 3: school in the East Coast in the US wrote this.
Speaker 3: All right, you want to, let's do it. Okay, I
Speaker 3: want to do a transatlantic voice, but we're going to
Speaker 3: give it some respect. Where destruction is involved, the weapons
Speaker 3: of the citizen saboteur are salt, nails, candles, pebbles, thread,
Speaker 3: or any other materials he might normally be expected to
Speaker 3: possess as a householder or as a worker in his
Speaker 3: particular occupation. His arsenal is the kitchen shelf, the trash pile,
Speaker 3: his old usual kit of tools and supplies. The targets
Speaker 3: of his sabotage are usually objects to which he has
Speaker 3: normal and in conspicuous access in everyday life stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really nice picture.
Speaker 3: Siver each one, each one, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: A poor man's empty hand is a weapon. Yeah, this
Speaker 3: is dope, honestly, the way it's written. They go on
Speaker 3: to describe two categories of sabotage physical destruction. Right, everybody
Speaker 3: is familiar with that, and interpersonal disruption, which is where
Speaker 3: it gets very severence in off of Spacey and like
Speaker 3: Dilbert comics. Also Scott Adams is a bad person.
Speaker 5: Swing the seeds of discord, you know, among other things.
Speaker 2: Well, and speaking of chords and even discords, there's a
Speaker 2: thing they mentioned in here right at the end of
Speaker 2: the introduction, the human element. That's what they call it.
Speaker 2: The type of activity that just kind of slows down
Speaker 2: the works, slows down the gears of the machine. And
Speaker 2: I wonder if you guys remember the ad campaign from
Speaker 2: the early maybe is the mid Oughts, I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's in the two thousands where they would put the
Speaker 2: human element, the hu human Element. Do you remember this
Speaker 2: ad campaign at all? They were on posters.
Speaker 3: I do remember it, but I don't remember the specificity
Speaker 3: of what they were what they were trying to incite.
Speaker 2: It was Dow Chemical and they were they were saying
Speaker 2: that the thing that makes us different as a chemical
Speaker 2: company is the human human.
Speaker 3: Familiar with the periodic table.
Speaker 4: It made me think of what a globocm like in
Speaker 4: Mister Show and their original logo was people selling people
Speaker 4: to people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so this is also I mean, this is
Speaker 3: a people first enterprise.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: You cannot you cannot closely supervise the citizen saboteur. You
Speaker 3: cannot be assured of their acumen. Right. And you know
Speaker 3: that if you are creating an agent of chaos, even
Speaker 3: in the best of circumstances, it is chaos that will result.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: So we see a lot of lessons about motivating this saboteur.
Speaker 3: How do you get in the head of this potential asset.
Speaker 3: And we have to remember that a lot of this
Speaker 3: is meant for people who are in Nazi ok areas
Speaker 3: of Europe. They're already probably pissed at the invading regime.
Speaker 3: The manual cleverly notes that some civilians there's a non
Speaker 3: zero chance that they're already engaged in covert disruptive acts,
Speaker 3: but they are likely untrained. They likely have a personal
Speaker 3: axe to grind, and the fact that they are added
Speaker 3: to this lowers their odds of success over time, while
Speaker 3: also increasing the likelihood that they will be caught. They
Speaker 3: are subject matter experts right at the factory or what
Speaker 3: have you. They know how to screw stuff up, they
Speaker 3: may not know the best way to screw it up,
Speaker 3: and they may not know how to cover their tracks
Speaker 3: and the OSS therefore is attempting to teach those lessons.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, do you think you had to take a
Speaker 4: little test, a little quiz to show that they that
Speaker 4: they did this?
Speaker 3: Unfortunately the unfortunately the tests were all live.
Speaker 5: Got it? Okay, that makes sense, dude.
Speaker 3: Like, does the fuse work? Did you get caught? If yes,
Speaker 3: and then no, congrats you passed. Now onto the next one.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yes. This is the section that gets into the whole like,
Speaker 2: how do you motivate somebody to even do this kind
Speaker 2: of thing? Because it even states quote, the ordinary citizen
Speaker 2: very probably has no immediate personal motive for committing simple sabotage, right, Like,
Speaker 2: so no, it's just somebody's not going to just start
Speaker 2: doing this stuff, so he must be made to anticipate
Speaker 2: indirect personal gain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's that's the issue. Yeah, let's go to that. Like, okay,
Speaker 3: so imply, but do not promise. Yes, indirect personal gain
Speaker 3: the pursuit of happiness, very american. Yeah, and so you're
Speaker 3: as SS officers in this scenario, we are instructed to
Speaker 3: check in on our recruits when we can with suggestions, reassurance,
Speaker 3: and pressure. Right, that's our stick to our carrot as
Speaker 3: well as specific task and we want to eliminate feeling discouraged.
Speaker 3: We want to motivate through ideology. That's that indirect personal gain,
Speaker 3: but we have to bridge a cultural gap to do so.
Speaker 3: You want people to feel like there's something they are
Speaker 3: part of, something bigger than themselves and their individual act.
Speaker 3: You want to make sure that they are personally safe
Speaker 3: and as incognito as possible, so you can keep the
Speaker 3: grift running over a window of time. But this is
Speaker 3: so precient here. The manual also warns OSS officers. They say, look,
Speaker 3: if you are trying to motivate people through abstract cultural concepts,
Speaker 3: may come up with buppkis. You know, you're in a
Speaker 3: communist country. You're talking about freedom of the press, and
Speaker 3: they're saying, oh yeah, but also I don't want to
Speaker 3: get shot, you know what I mean. From their perspective,
Speaker 3: that's a that's a weak argument. So you have to
Speaker 3: point out specific policies in that land that suck, right, Like.
Speaker 2: Specific officers that are like local to their area.
Speaker 3: Right, right sub aldermen whomever, right assistant deputy to the
Speaker 3: assistant deputy of blah blah blah. That guy's food rationing
Speaker 3: policy is whack. Dude, wouldn't it be awesome if that
Speaker 3: was no longer there and you could have three times
Speaker 3: as much bread. You have to meet people where they're
Speaker 3: at if you want to take them somewhere, you know,
Speaker 3: And that's the argument, and it is brilliant the CIA.
Speaker 3: We will see multiple other intelligence agencies replicate that tactic.
Speaker 3: But they also they also acknowledge this is one of
Speaker 3: my favorite life of the whole thing. They also there's
Speaker 3: this stroke of casual brilliance. The writers of this are amazing.
Speaker 3: They acknowledge almost as a throwaway, that what is being
Speaker 3: asked of these civilians fundamentally goes against everyone's idea of
Speaker 3: being competent no matter where you go, whether it's a
Speaker 3: good person, an evil person, or like the majority of
Speaker 3: people and in between, they want to be good at
Speaker 3: what they do. And the manual says, quote, purposeful stupidity
Speaker 3: is contrary to human nature.
Speaker 5: Boom, But is it? It's interesting?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Like they like classifying it that way, purposeful stupidity. It's
Speaker 4: not really stupidity incompetence, right, I mean, if you're being
Speaker 4: intentional about it right to an end, it's actually kind
Speaker 4: of smart.
Speaker 5: You got to cover it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretending to be just bad at what you do.
Speaker 2: So let's go back to let's just right here, jump
Speaker 2: back to number two. I think the heading number twoossible
Speaker 2: effects because they describe some of the things that would
Speaker 2: be like purposefully being stupid or you know whoop sees
Speaker 2: and just making things bad, slashing tires, draining fuel, tanks,
Speaker 2: starting fires, starting arguments, acting stupidly, short circuiting electric systems,
Speaker 2: upbraiding machine parts, wasting materials, manpower and time. Yes, so
Speaker 2: like doing these little things like again we're saying acting stupidly,
Speaker 2: Like you're a machine worker, right, and you accidentally do
Speaker 2: something that screws up the machine that makes that fabricates
Speaker 2: the parts for like three days.
Speaker 3: Oh that's the wrong oil in the engine. Yep, oh geez,
Speaker 3: it's too late now.
Speaker 4: But it also doesn't serve the mission if you get
Speaker 4: pegged as an incompetent employee that it canned, right, So
Speaker 4: you guys really tread that line.
Speaker 3: There's a tight rope to walk, which they discuss as well,
Speaker 3: you know, because now you're asking people to endanger themselves
Speaker 3: if you go too hard and paying as an incompetent worker.
Speaker 3: Then you will be of fire. You will meet that
Speaker 3: reprisal you're trying to avoid. So it's best for the
Speaker 3: mistakes to be untraceable, attributed to organizational dynamics or to
Speaker 3: the roaring horde of coworkers. The golden goose, obviously, is
Speaker 3: to not just persuade someone that the risk to their
Speaker 3: livelihood and their family is worth it, but to convince
Speaker 3: them that in this case it is superbly rational to
Speaker 3: take irrational action. And the absolute holy grail of it
Speaker 3: is to motivate a civilian saboteur such that they themselves
Speaker 3: believe in the mission to the point where they recruit
Speaker 3: and educate other civilians. Right, Take a little celluloid from
Speaker 3: an old comb, Take a candle and some paper, Light
Speaker 3: some stuff up. That's the idea.
Speaker 2: It's viral in nature. Is designed to be viral in
Speaker 2: nature because the own manual states it only really works
Speaker 2: if you've got thousands of people in an occupied place
Speaker 2: doing this kind.
Speaker 3: Of stuff, right right, paper cuts.
Speaker 2: Exactly, So you kind of have to you have to
Speaker 2: reach that if it's going to be effective. Just two
Speaker 2: little extra things to add to this, because I think
Speaker 2: it's a great point and it's a great place to
Speaker 2: end this section here, but just to point out that
Speaker 2: they even state one of the main things that's going
Speaker 2: to motivate people in this realm is to have the
Speaker 2: sense that they are working for some unseen organization, basically,
Speaker 2: like some unknown group like the rebels, the Rebel Alliance.
Speaker 2: We're working for them, and we're just one cog in
Speaker 2: that machine now that's working against this bigger thing. Because
Speaker 2: if they ever had that internal realization of oh, well,
Speaker 2: I'm just like or well, no, the internal maybe, but
Speaker 2: the for me, the internal realization of oh, I'm just
Speaker 2: like one little person standing up against this giant machine, demoralizing, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you wouldn't probably take the action that's sary.
Speaker 4: But if you feel like you're part of a network,
Speaker 4: this unseen, vast network of people just like you, and
Speaker 4: you're working in lockstep, than you are greater than the star.
Speaker 3: But like we said, cultivate the perception that the civilian
Speaker 3: is part of something bigger than themselves.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but specifically this unseen, unknown thing, right is
Speaker 2: the way to keep them there and then and then
Speaker 2: to get them over that line. It says, quote a
Speaker 2: reasonable amount of humor in the presentation of suggestions for
Speaker 2: simple sabotage will relax tensions of fear. Just this idea
Speaker 2: of that go in with some humor about it, hey like,
Speaker 2: and I've just I could see that character in my mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you gotta you gotta work the cultural type rope
Speaker 3: of humor there as well. Right, they're asking a lot
Speaker 3: of the civilian saboteurs, but of the OSS ambassadors in addition, Right,
Speaker 3: and they're asking them to traverse some cultural chasms. But
Speaker 3: when you get past those cultural chasms, which are again
Speaker 3: the most interesting part, I'm not going to stop teasing that.
Speaker 3: We're getting to that at the end. When you move
Speaker 3: on through this the motivations, the context and so on,
Speaker 3: the behavioral manipulation, you get to tactics, tools, targets, and
Speaker 3: timing and specifically what they call it. These are divided
Speaker 3: into three categories, and they're time based, situational based categories.
Speaker 3: General conditions, how to screw things up during general day
Speaker 3: to day things, and then prior to an imminent military
Speaker 3: offensive that's the second category, and then during a military
Speaker 3: offensive that's the third category. And every section attempts to
Speaker 3: instruct civilian assets on how to behave like Grimlins in
Speaker 3: wartime folklore, right, we all remember, I don't want to
Speaker 3: make assumptions, all right, So during the days of wartime aviation,
Speaker 3: back in the day, there was this great lore that
Speaker 3: grew up around the idea of gremlins. It's probably most
Speaker 3: well known in the West through the Fantastic Twilight Zone
Speaker 3: episode with William Shatner.
Speaker 4: There's also a great Looney Tunes episode where Bugs Bunny
Speaker 4: literally does battle with a gremlin.
Speaker 5: And it's really red and stimpy, level fed up, like
Speaker 5: tortured by that guy.
Speaker 4: And usually it's bugs doing the torturing, but in this one,
Speaker 4: this little gremlin runs him through the ringer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, gremlins in this milieu are largely invisible, untraceable pest
Speaker 3: that bedevil enemy capabilities. And they don't do it through
Speaker 3: grand cinematic acts of destruction, but they do it instead
Speaker 3: via a constant, unending barrage of tiny inconvenient Oh this
Speaker 3: is the wrong wrench. Where's the right wrench? Oh crap,
Speaker 3: we're running out of time to assemble this and things
Speaker 3: just break down. Oh now we have to stop everything
Speaker 3: and figure out how how this breakdown occurred. And all
Speaker 3: these small acts accumulate, they aggregate, they create a domino
Speaker 3: effect of logistical chaos. At least that's the idea, right.
Speaker 3: It's like, for anybody familiar with StarCraft StarCraft two, I
Speaker 3: want to say you you have the thing called like
Speaker 3: the Zerg swarm. Do you guys remember that an individual
Speaker 3: Zerg is not itself extraordinary, but they mob you. They
Speaker 3: move in a huge swarm.
Speaker 2: The little teeny tiny guys that are on land. When
Speaker 2: you've got a specific amount of them that is too many.
Speaker 2: Just if you just imagine too many tiny little characters,
Speaker 2: then your your space is going to get overrun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like how many year olds can you fight?
Speaker 2: Yeah? You know how many you got those pylons? You know,
Speaker 2: those pilons will get taken out real quick, and then
Speaker 2: once you don't have power, you're there to get out
Speaker 2: of luck.
Speaker 4: It is funny though, the way Gremlin's been personified as
Speaker 4: these little green monsters. I mean, when the lore was
Speaker 4: coming up, was was that how they were described? And
Speaker 4: obviously it's a joke. You don't be believed in this.
Speaker 4: It was more of a personification of the concept of
Speaker 4: this kind of chaos, right.
Speaker 2: But it was real things right there. There were pilots
Speaker 2: that would report like that all of a sudden, the
Speaker 2: mechanical stuff on one of the wings is like not
Speaker 2: working right all of a sudden while we're mid flight,
Speaker 2: mid mission or something.
Speaker 4: So they believed in little green fellas that were at
Speaker 4: fing their stuff up.
Speaker 3: Well, base, we've got a food fighter.
Speaker 2: But that was real too.
Speaker 4: I guess I'm just wondering the specifics around, like true
Speaker 4: belief in gremlins as a real entity rather than just
Speaker 4: this concept of this is the personification of chaos and sabotage.
Speaker 3: It's like full Cole's pendulum. Right. People can create a
Speaker 3: conspiracy knowing that they created it, but then over time
Speaker 3: other people don't know it was purposely made up. You know,
Speaker 3: so someone and especially you know wartime, when you're always
Speaker 3: about to die, like playing sports for a living, it
Speaker 3: encourages superstition. So there probably there's a non zero amount
Speaker 3: of airplane mechanics of World War Two who are like,
Speaker 3: I don't believe in God, but there might be something
Speaker 3: to this gremlin story.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, because in this manual where we're talking about,
Speaker 2: they split it up as we're about to get to
Speaker 2: like a regular time when there's it's not wartime, right
Speaker 2: before some kind of mobilization, and then during a mobilization
Speaker 2: of war, right, so you imagine that we our side
Speaker 2: is encouraging other people to sabotage in all of those times,
Speaker 2: can't we probably imagine that this type of sabotage is
Speaker 2: also happening on American soil and British soil, oil, on
Speaker 2: the Allied powers soil. So in the hangars where the
Speaker 2: planes are being built, maybe there's one or two people,
Speaker 2: ten people, maybe dozens of people who are doing these
Speaker 2: little things like not tightening the bolts quite as much
Speaker 2: as they need to be. I don't know.
Speaker 3: And also there's a very effective I like that point.
Speaker 3: There's a very effective weaponization of misogyny too in the
Speaker 3: factory line, like ah, I'm just the woman. That's why,
Speaker 3: that's why these bombs keep exploded at the wrong time.
Speaker 3: And this is a it's a grand manipulation of human
Speaker 3: prejudices and assumptions. And the manual here is suggesting that
Speaker 3: in this juncture, it's suggesting how you prioritize what to
Speaker 3: hit you want to hit industrial manufacturing, any transportation facilities, roads, railroads, automobiles, trucks, motorcycles,
Speaker 3: bicycle even bicycles, screw up the bikes, right, and especially trains.
Speaker 3: And then they say, you also want to hit anything
Speaker 3: that could be a communication vector or facility for enemy
Speaker 3: comms or propaganda, which plays a big role in World
Speaker 3: War Two. They do this was interesting to me. They
Speaker 3: do have a strong asterisk or caveat on direct attacks
Speaker 3: toward what they call developing military factors. They were saying
Speaker 3: this because if you are a civilian and you happen
Speaker 3: to let's say, work at a very high value emergent
Speaker 3: military facility or to a military base, attacking them greatly
Speaker 3: increases the risk of discovery, which means they're going to
Speaker 3: find you and they will learn everything that you know,
Speaker 3: which is why you know. The USS officers are also
Speaker 3: limiting the civilian saboteur's understanding of the large or lay
Speaker 3: of the land. But if the enemy gains that intelligence,
Speaker 3: then they could establish a predictive pattern for destruction and
Speaker 3: could say, hey, things go wrong when the following factors
Speaker 3: coincide with US spinning up a military initiative, right, or
Speaker 3: things die down when something is of a lesser priority,
Speaker 3: and then you give away the whole game. You got
Speaker 3: to keep it simple, keep it small, and as we'll
Speaker 3: see after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 5: Keep it stupid, keep it so stupid.
Speaker 3: We returned, all right, This is where we get to
Speaker 3: the good stuff. Specific suggestions for simple sabotage. It's an
Speaker 3: exhaustively numbered list. It explores monopoly of various Sith Macguiver
Speaker 3: level ways of destroyed stuff, destroying building by fire, destroying
Speaker 3: them by or destroying things by water. I don't know
Speaker 3: how about this. This is our primary source, so I
Speaker 3: argue we should share at least a few quotations directly
Speaker 3: from the Sabotage Field Manual so you can see how
Speaker 3: specific they get, especially with like this improvised fuse stuff
Speaker 3: is great. It's up there with bag of moths at
Speaker 3: the propaganda film for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's just jump right in whenever possible, arrange to
Speaker 4: have the fire start after you've gone away. Okay, jacky,
Speaker 4: use a candle and paper combination, setting it as close
Speaker 4: as possible to the inflammable material you want to burn.
Speaker 4: From a sheet of paper, tear a strip three or
Speaker 4: four centimeters wide and wrap it around the base of
Speaker 4: the candle. Two or three times. Twist more sheets of
Speaker 4: paper into loose ropes and place them around the base
Speaker 4: of the candle. When the candle flame reaches the encircling strip,
Speaker 4: it will be ignited and in turn will ignite the
Speaker 4: surrounding paper. The size, heat, and duration of the resulting
Speaker 4: flame will depend on how much paper you use and
Speaker 4: how much of it you can cramp in a small space.
Speaker 2: Hey, now, let's talk about the conditions that might even
Speaker 2: help that fire go further. This is number six on
Speaker 2: their list here. A clean factory is not susceptible to fire,
Speaker 2: but a dirty one is. Workers should be careless with refuse,
Speaker 2: and janitors should be inefficient in cleaning if enough dirt
Speaker 2: and trash can be accumulated in an otherwise fireproof building
Speaker 2: will become inflammable.
Speaker 3: And the manual list that as one of the circumstances.
Speaker 3: After it lists several more types of improvised fuses. And
Speaker 3: we got to tell you, folks, it's a little dicey
Speaker 3: with our HR and legal department. We don't recommend trying
Speaker 3: these at home, but you do need to know they
Speaker 3: are easy to create and replicate, and trust us, they
Speaker 3: do work, especially in a dirty factory, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean? Like, Hey, I'm middle management. It all the
Speaker 3: let's put all the oily rags paint. Yeah, over by,
Speaker 3: over by the furnace, because that's our new policy. We
Speaker 3: have a committee on that. There are six people on
Speaker 3: the committee, and after four weeks we agreed. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: a nice teaser, guy.
Speaker 4: I think one of the most clever like improvised fused
Speaker 4: situations I've ever seen was I believe it was in
Speaker 4: Better Call Saul, where Gus Fring is trying to burn
Speaker 4: down his own business and he takes a frozen turkey
Speaker 4: and sits it on like a pan, like a govern
Speaker 4: pan that's sort of tilted down towards a fryar, and
Speaker 4: so as the heat from the friars starts to defrost
Speaker 4: the turkey, it slides down until it goes in the.
Speaker 5: Fryer and causes a massive grease explosion.
Speaker 3: Isn't that incredible?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's not in the manual, but that's good.
Speaker 3: It would it would work there, especially, I remember what
Speaker 3: you're describing their no, because look, the manual does spend
Speaker 3: time on attacks, on livestock attacks, but because of food scarcity,
Speaker 3: they probably wouldn't have pulled off a turkey. You simply
Speaker 3: couldn't trust. You couldn't trust the civilian saboteur at this
Speaker 3: time to not take the turkey.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, of course, you know what I mean. Well,
Speaker 2: while they're actively encouraging, you know, folks to target food
Speaker 2: supplies right like it is. It is crazy, like fuel, food, water,
Speaker 2: any of the basic supplies. This this thing says, go
Speaker 2: after those. You gotta prioritize these things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's cut to that one feed crop. They say,
Speaker 3: crops and livestock will probably be destroyed only in areas
Speaker 3: where there are large food surpluses or where the enemy
Speaker 3: is known to be stealing food from the people. I'm
Speaker 3: paraphrasing there, But they say, let crops harvest you early
Speaker 3: to late, spoil stores of grains, fruit and vegs, soak
Speaker 3: them in water, feed crops, the livestock, leaf stuff in
Speaker 3: the sun. This is sabotage not just by direct action,
Speaker 3: but by neglect. And sabotage by neglect and negligence is
Speaker 3: quite clever, and I would argue occurs with great success today.
Speaker 3: This is the thing. They also say, Look, you can
Speaker 3: compromise any water system. You can attack it. You can
Speaker 3: you can flood the pipes in a way that no
Speaker 3: one will catch because you might have Look, we've all
Speaker 3: been there. You could if you get caught, you could
Speaker 3: just say sorry, I had a bad bem. I had
Speaker 3: a war crime in the bathroom. I'm not working for anybody.
Speaker 3: I just ate the wrong you know, the wrong block.
Speaker 4: Is well, I love your death by one thousand paper
Speaker 4: cuts analogy, Ben, because you never want to overplay your
Speaker 4: hand on any of these. And I think that's the
Speaker 4: key and the sort of ideology that this manual communicates.
Speaker 5: It really is sort of like a way of life,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 3: I mean it's got to bed. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, the stuff Ben is describing is it's one of
Speaker 2: those things that if you're a commanding officer and you
Speaker 2: just get word that something like that happening, like oh
Speaker 2: dang it, what the hell, Hell gods, come on, we
Speaker 2: gotta do better.
Speaker 3: There'll bevich over here. Oh yeah, my gosh, this guy
Speaker 3: is like a serial killer of kmmodes.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, exactly. But then there's a random warehouse fire, right,
Speaker 2: you know, like, oh crap, we really needed those things. Well,
Speaker 2: they and they also describe, you know, if you're not
Speaker 2: gonna use fire, use water, as Ben is saying, make
Speaker 2: the sprinkler system go off and ruin the stuff that's
Speaker 2: stored in a in a specific area of a warehouse
Speaker 2: doesn't have to be the whole thing. Hit one sprinkler
Speaker 2: with a hammer, and you've ruined a bunch of important stuff.
Speaker 4: Well, and if we know anything about like things like
Speaker 4: insurance fraud, like this stuff is hard to pull off
Speaker 4: because investigations are going to determine that there was some
Speaker 4: foul play or that there was, you know, something going
Speaker 4: on behind the scenes. So it's really important to not
Speaker 4: tip your hand in that way, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, but whom is the responsible?
Speaker 4: So a lot of times they maybe would know something
Speaker 4: was funky, but they couldn't really figure out because you
Speaker 4: can't fire everybody right right.
Speaker 2: Well, the authority wherever they are in these situations are
Speaker 2: planning attacks and military movements and large scale stuff. So
Speaker 2: who is gonna waste resources figuring out how the fire
Speaker 2: got set?
Speaker 3: Feels like a demotion, yeah, because there's a bigger mission.
Speaker 3: And don't you don't you want to move up to
Speaker 3: colonel then why don't you make one of your underleans
Speaker 3: look at this, and that underlean is going to make
Speaker 3: another underly and look at this. You know, for anybody
Speaker 3: who's worked in manufacturing, you know, if you've been on
Speaker 3: an assembly line, that there are tons of ways machinery
Speaker 3: can go wrong accidentally, right, and that that means there
Speaker 3: are tons of ways to sabotage machinery. Fun fact for
Speaker 3: our fellow etymology nerds, the word sabotage comes from the
Speaker 3: French word saboteur, which means to bungle, to screw up,
Speaker 3: to wreck. It originally did refer to the act of
Speaker 3: damaging and employer's property, but I love it.
Speaker 4: Initially it was like unintentional, it's it's referring to being
Speaker 4: care being sort of a dumb dumb but then it's
Speaker 4: sort of co opted and there is this layer of
Speaker 4: intent that's built in. When people say sabotage or even
Speaker 4: self sabotage, they're talking about kind of knowingly doing something
Speaker 4: even though you know it's bad or you know it's bad.
Speaker 5: This is going to be a bad result.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the idea is to earlier point Noel, the
Speaker 3: manual is communicating acts of sabotage committed in a way
Speaker 3: that reduces overall recognition of a problem until it is
Speaker 3: past the point of fixing, and several of the acts
Speaker 3: are structured. We mentioned this earlier as a such that
Speaker 3: you could have a form of temporary cover by getting
Speaker 3: caught and shrugging and saying, my bad, I didn't know
Speaker 3: that was the wrong oil for this engine. Right. That's
Speaker 3: an extreme example, because anybody at that level of a
Speaker 3: line would know the correct oil. But then you can
Speaker 3: blame it on someone else and say, you know, obviously
Speaker 3: you want to blame another department, not another individual. So
Speaker 3: you say, whomever is wreck wasditioning the fuel, sent us
Speaker 3: the wrong thing. They sent us the wrong lubricant. And
Speaker 3: this explanation can only work a finite number of times
Speaker 3: before the employee is fired unless is why recruitment is
Speaker 3: a golden goose, unless their boss is also on the grift,
Speaker 3: at which point the bad employee gets promoted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it also kind of capitalizes or takes advantage
Speaker 4: of the inherent inefficiency of large operations. Right, and like there,
Speaker 4: we're going to get to you in a minute. Some
Speaker 4: of the ways that that discord from within can be
Speaker 4: so and also just kind of creating confusion, not by
Speaker 4: doing the acts, but by messing with the communication and
Speaker 4: messing with the way all the pieces fit together to
Speaker 4: further obscure what's actually going on. This is where it
Speaker 4: really gets fascinating and almost satirical.
Speaker 3: This is my favorite part as well. Let's play the
Speaker 3: groundwork for that. So the section about specific industrial sabotage,
Speaker 3: it is clearly the result of fascinating, intense research. And
Speaker 3: I strongly suspect that OSS analysts visited manufacturing facilities in
Speaker 3: the United States and they asked what the most common
Speaker 3: or troublesome malfunctions can be. Right, So, like we're talking
Speaker 3: to the you know, the head of widget making, what's
Speaker 3: the worst thing that could happen to the widget line?
Speaker 3: And the Supervisor's like, well, you know Mac in thirty four,
Speaker 3: blah blah blah, that was a whole pickle, that was
Speaker 3: a bag of badgers. And they go, great, thank you
Speaker 3: for the information. They get back to their HQ, their layer,
Speaker 3: and they reverse engineer that issue and they figure out
Speaker 3: the easiest, most cost effective way to create that issue.
Speaker 3: It is brilliant. It is fucking evil, and I am
Speaker 3: so impressed with their acumen. But yeah, Rail systems, that's
Speaker 3: where we start to see in the manual, the behavioral tampering,
Speaker 3: the inter personal sabotage. The wildest stuff is at the
Speaker 3: very end. We'll save you the time folks. It's called
Speaker 3: quote general interference with organizations and production. This is the
Speaker 3: film office space. You know. The protagonist says he doesn't
Speaker 3: love his job, he stops trying. It's a weaponized version
Speaker 3: of the same principles. Insist on doing everything through official channels.
Speaker 3: Never have shortcuts. Always make speeches, talk as frequently as possible,
Speaker 3: at great length. Illustrate your points with long anecdotes.
Speaker 4: Some of this just sounds like the way people act
Speaker 4: on company calls, like yeah, really, yeah.
Speaker 5: None of this.
Speaker 4: That's why I'm refer to it as almost being satirical,
Speaker 4: because you're describing here just some of the obnoxious parts
Speaker 4: of working in a bureaucracy or working for a big company.
Speaker 3: Yeah. To finish that part, illustrate your points by long
Speaker 3: anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make
Speaker 3: a few appropriate patriotic comments.
Speaker 2: It sounds we're as we continue. It is describing Congress,
Speaker 2: it is describing government. It is describing every every slow
Speaker 2: timing thing that you've ever been a part of.
Speaker 3: And Rand Corporation also goes on piggybacking from this research
Speaker 3: or this manual to weaponize some research when possible, refer
Speaker 3: all matters.
Speaker 2: To committees congress.
Speaker 3: Even before emails, people were thinking this could have been
Speaker 3: a letter. Say that you're say that you're doing this
Speaker 3: for further study considerations.
Speaker 5: Not how it's supposed to work. This is the bad way.
Speaker 3: Make sure the committees are as large as possible. There
Speaker 3: should never be fewer than five members. Hurt feelings, Always
Speaker 3: bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible, Haggle over
Speaker 3: precise wording of communications, ad minutes and resolutions. And when
Speaker 3: you start a meeting, always refer to matters decided upon
Speaker 3: at the last meet and try to relitigate them, reopen
Speaker 3: the question of the whether or not that's.
Speaker 5: A good decision.
Speaker 2: Waste time. And that's that's on the large scale stuff. Now,
Speaker 2: what if you're just a manager and you're getting orders
Speaker 2: then from all these committees to do stuff?
Speaker 5: What do you do?
Speaker 4: Then?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure I understand you.
Speaker 2: For clarification, that's literally, that's literally been said. The first
Speaker 2: thing that it says to do in there, just misunderstand
Speaker 2: everything that comes your way as a manager.
Speaker 3: Right, and the best, the ideal version the OSS wants
Speaker 3: is not just to say I misunderstood you, but to
Speaker 3: say right on that sounds great. I'm referring to this
Speaker 3: to this subcommittee that submits questions to the committee upon
Speaker 3: clarification policies, and once we get our clarification policies signed off,
Speaker 3: then we can reopen this conversation according to those policies,
Speaker 3: which will help us refer this to the correct committee
Speaker 3: for that decision.
Speaker 5: It's that moment when you realize that these type of
Speaker 5: operations are inefficient by design.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, but that's what's making me so upset
Speaker 4: or to frustrated. What we're describing here is meant to
Speaker 4: be something that you do to tear down an organization
Speaker 4: or to disassemble it from within. And yet all of
Speaker 4: these things could read like a manual how to manual
Speaker 4: of how to conduct parliamentary procedure.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. Yeah, it's weaponized parliamentary procedure. And you
Speaker 3: don't have to be a saboteur to do that. To
Speaker 3: those excellent points earlier, we see elected members of Congress
Speaker 3: enacting these things specifically to advance their agendas and stymy
Speaker 3: progress of their enemies or arguably the American public.
Speaker 2: Boom agree do everything.
Speaker 3: Possible to delay the delivery of orders. They already just
Speaker 3: straight up said filibuster, you guys, filibuster about everything. If
Speaker 3: there are parts of an order for manufacturing and assembly
Speaker 3: that are ready beforehand, just don't send them through. Just
Speaker 3: hold off. Take forever to write train tickets, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah you know, Oh no, there they are. Oh my mistake.
Speaker 3: Don't order stuff until well after you needed it.
Speaker 2: Yes, a bad job.
Speaker 5: Just do a bad job.
Speaker 2: In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs. First,
Speaker 2: see that the important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers
Speaker 2: of poor machines. Yes. When training new workers, give incomplete
Speaker 2: and misleading instructions.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah yeah, and also insist on perfect work with
Speaker 3: stuff that doesn't matter, and with important stuff, approve the
Speaker 3: heck out of it. Also screw up morale overall by
Speaker 3: promoting and praising visibly praising inefficient and bad workers. And
Speaker 3: then do your best to discribt inminate against the competent ones.
Speaker 3: Never do paperwork on time, Always spread rumors. This is great, man.
Speaker 3: This is like the necronomicon for middle office management. But
Speaker 3: this okay, this sounds familiar, unfortunately to a lot of us.
Speaker 3: The final section is real, sith lord. It's for an
Speaker 3: employee non management, screwing up the workplace, things like always
Speaker 3: complain and never teach other people, never pass on your
Speaker 3: skill or experience. If someone asks you for help, tell
Speaker 3: them the wrong way to do it. God dude, it's
Speaker 3: so petty. It feels like it's asking a lot too.
Speaker 3: Because these these folks practicing this simple sabotage, especially on
Speaker 3: an interpersonal level, they are going to get caught. I mean,
Speaker 3: there will be consequences unless it's like a Cambridge five
Speaker 3: thing where the you know, the compromise goes all the way.
Speaker 4: Up and then the subterfusion of it all just the
Speaker 4: like dishonesty, like if this one, if possible, join or
Speaker 4: help organize a group for presenting employee problems to management.
Speaker 5: Why so that you can then be.
Speaker 4: Like the spokesperson of the wrong thing, see that the
Speaker 4: procedures adopted are as inconvenient as possible for the management
Speaker 4: involving the presence of a large number of employees at
Speaker 4: each presentation.
Speaker 5: We're talking about community meetings here. We're talking about, oh my.
Speaker 2: God, a little meeting that we have like every week,
Speaker 2: even like where can stit?
Speaker 5: You you know, town halls and things.
Speaker 3: Like that too, you know, Yeah, I've got more of
Speaker 3: a comment than a question. Yes, yeah. And also make
Speaker 3: sure that each grievance gets its own separate meeting, and
Speaker 3: need all the people there for every meeting bring up
Speaker 3: problems that are largely imaginary and then misunderstand as employee everything.
Speaker 3: Maybe we'ven ended on this one of the final and
Speaker 3: weirdest instructions for employees.
Speaker 2: Can I give you mind bripe off? Or that is
Speaker 2: my favorite one of the whole manual. Just before we
Speaker 2: jump to these last two, uh, jam paper, bits of wood, hairpins,
Speaker 2: and anything else that will fit into the locks of
Speaker 2: all unguarded entrances to all public buildings. Somebody going around put.
Speaker 4: Gum into the payphones, you know, like yeah, it's a
Speaker 4: little anarchist cookbook at that level. Here's my favorite line,
Speaker 4: which is strange. This is towards the end quote cry
Speaker 4: and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by
Speaker 4: government clerk.
Speaker 5: I'm about to do that thing.
Speaker 3: So what says soon says why are you always making
Speaker 3: us have all these crazy meetings? You immediately fucking break down.
Speaker 3: I'd say, why are you guys bullying me?
Speaker 4: You know that's a rhetorical device, a manipulation that is
Speaker 4: often employed by folks, even in relationships where someone calls
Speaker 4: you on something and then you immediately cry and say,
Speaker 4: why are you so mean to me?
Speaker 5: Or I'm just I'm just such a bad person.
Speaker 4: I can't you know, like I mean, it's just a
Speaker 4: way of deflecting the actual thing of value and kicking
Speaker 4: the can down the road because now you have this
Speaker 4: new problem to deal with, and it kicks that important
Speaker 4: thing right out of your mind because you're being presented
Speaker 4: with a person literally losing it.
Speaker 3: The histrionics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do feel like you can see a lot
Speaker 2: of this at work, not just in government, but just
Speaker 2: in society in general.
Speaker 3: In five yeah, like how Jonathan Strickland keeps calling those
Speaker 3: meetings and then he cries, oh, well, we can't make it.
Speaker 2: He misunderstands everything, everything, folks.
Speaker 3: This is just a rough overview of the Simple Sabotage Manual.
Speaker 3: It is short. We encourage you to read it. You
Speaker 3: can check it out now for yourself in audio or
Speaker 3: print form anywhere online. It was not declassified until two
Speaker 3: thousand and eight, and due to the circumstances surrounding the publication,
Speaker 3: the dissemination, we'll never know how many copies were made.
Speaker 3: We don't know to what degree these instructions were enacted
Speaker 3: in the field, but we do know this, and this
Speaker 3: is troubling. The concept had to have worked to some extent,
Speaker 3: because we can assume this because the OSS's later form,
Speaker 3: the CIA, went on to publish more sketchy subversive manuals,
Speaker 3: The Assassination Manual in the nineteen fifties. You can read
Speaker 3: a version of that online and the Freedom Fighter's Manual
Speaker 3: in the nineteen eighties, dropped by air throughout Nicaragua. So
Speaker 3: it's got to work, and it makes us wonder what
Speaker 3: else is out there, what has yet to be declassified,
Speaker 3: What manuals are being used now for tonight. That's the
Speaker 3: stuff they don't want you to know. We can't wait
Speaker 3: to hear your thoughts. Find us online, give us a
Speaker 3: call on the phone, or drop us a note on
Speaker 3: our good old fashioned email. But for the Internet while
Speaker 3: we still have it.
Speaker 4: Jeez, oh man, we didn't even talk about how this
Speaker 4: stuff can be applied to sewing chaos and disinformation and
Speaker 4: general you know, just awfulness on the Internet. Yeah, it
Speaker 4: all is applicable, and yeah, let us know. You can
Speaker 4: find us all over the Internet as long as it's
Speaker 4: still there. Like Ben was saying at the handle conspiracy stuffhere,
Speaker 4: we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group Here's where
Speaker 4: it gets crazy, on xfka, Twitter, and on YouTube where
Speaker 4: we have video content color for you to enjoy. On
Speaker 4: Instagram and TikTok where conspiracy Stuff show.
Speaker 2: If you want to call us, our number is one
Speaker 2: eight three three std WYTK. Call us. Let us know
Speaker 2: your thoughts on the mayhem machine that is outlined in
Speaker 2: this manual. Do give yourself a cool nickname and let
Speaker 2: us know within the message if we can use your
Speaker 2: name and message on the air. If you'd like to
Speaker 2: send us an email, we are.
Speaker 3: The entities that read each piece of correspondence we receive.
Speaker 3: Don't need for a committee. Be well aware, yet unafree.
Speaker 3: Sometimes the void writes back. Tell us your favorite weaponized
Speaker 3: sabotage attempts in your line of work, in your neck
Speaker 3: of the global woods. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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