Simple Sabotage Field Manual

by United States Office of Strategic Services · 1944
PDF

The Simple Sabotage Field Manual is a guide by the CIA’s predecessor composed during World War II. Declassified in 2008, available on the CIA’s website. It claims:

Simple sabotage is often an act which the citizen performs according to his own initiative and inclination. Acts of destruction do not bring him any personal gain and may be completely foreign to his habitually conservationist attitude toward materials and tools. Purposeful stupidity is contrary to human nature.

Therefore, one may assume that no competent person would persistently follow any of the below recommendations without sabotaging sentiments.

Overview

The first four chapters give a general background for sabotage activities. The fifth one provides a detailed guide in 12 sections, the first 10 of which are dedicated to technical aspects and physical targets (buildings, manufacturing, production, mining, agriculture, transportation, communication, etc.). The last two sections are especially interesting because they address social and psychological aspects. This direction is highlighted in the introduction:

A second type of simple sabotage requires no destructive tools whatsoever and produces physical damage, if any, by highly indirect means. It is based on universal opportunities to make faulty decisions, to adopt a non-cooperative attitude, and to include others to follow suit. Making a faulty decision may be simply a matter of placing tools in one spot instead of another. A non-cooperative attitude may involve nothing more than creating an unpleasant situation among one’s fellow worker, engaging in bickering, or displaying surliness and stupidity. … This type of activity, sometimes referred to as the “human element,” is frequently reponsible for accidents, delays, and general obstruction even under normal conditions. The potential saboteur should discover what types of faulty decision and non-cooperation are normally found in his kind of work and should then devise his sabotage so as to enlarge that “margin for error.”

General Interference with Organizations and Production

Some selected recommendations from the 11th section are presented below (highlightings are mine). Full text: PDF (pages 28–31), plain text.

Organizations and Conferences

  • Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to, expedite decisions.
  • Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.
  • When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
  • Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
  • Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
  • Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to reopen the question of the advisability of that decision.
  • Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
  • Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

Managers and Supervisors

  • Demand written orders.
  • “Misunderstand” orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can.
  • Do everything possible to delay the delivery of orders. Even though parts of an order may be ready beforehand, don’t deliver it until it is completely ready.
  • Don’t order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted, so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown.
  • Order high-quality materials which are hard to get. If you don’t get them argue about it. Warn that inferior materials will mean inferior work.
  • In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that the important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers of poor machines.
  • Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw. Approve other defective parts whose flaws are not visible to the naked eye.
  • When training new workers, give incomplete or misleading instructions.
  • To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.
  • Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.
  • Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.

Employees

  • Work slowly. Think out ways to increase the number of movements necessary on your job: use a light hammer instead of a heavy one, try to make a small wrench do when a big one is necessary, use little force where considerable force is needed, and so on.
  • Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can: when changing the material on which you are working, as you would on a lathe or punch, take needless time to do it. If you are cutting, shaping or doing other measured work, measure dimensions twice as often as you need to. When you go to the lavatory, spend a longer time there than is necessary. Forget tools so that you will have to go back after them.
  • Even if you understand the language, pretend not to understand instructions in a foreign tongue.
  • Pretend that instructions are hard to understand, and ask to have them repeated more than once. Or pretend that you are particularly anxious to do your work, and pester the foreman with unnecessary questions.
  • Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right.
  • Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker.

See also