Intelligence Wanted: "Simple Stupidity", CIA's Top Secret, is Declassified!

(EXCLUSIVE by C. Spaniels, NWMN Intelligence Correspondent)

I cannot describe the thrill I experienced when I discovered the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, written in 1944 by the CIA’s precursor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). 

For once, the world makes perfect sense.

This tome, recently “declassified”, contains detailed instructions for citizens of countries deemed enemies of the United States on how to grind industries of all stripes to a slow and maddening death through sloth, ambiguity, confusion, argument, second-guessing, finger-pointing, tardiness, and brown-nosing incompetent subordinates. 

Anticipating that many readers actually were not able to read, the OSS boiled down the entire strategy to this:

“Purposeful Stupidity”

German frauleins polish torpedoes instead of arming them

I don’t care what language you translate that into, most people on earth will get it; except the really stupid, who are the front-runners in sabotaging almost anything without the Simple Sabotage Field Manual.  So presumably the bulk of this piece of work was targeted at the small crowd of not-so-stupid people around the world so that they can act like they’re stupid and bring The Third Reich to its knees. 

Quite frankly, I don’t think that Simple Sabotage Field Manual really accomplished a lot during WWII as it debuted not long before Hitler ate cyanide and the Atom Bomb obliterated two Japanese cities.  The Nazis had been cranking out Panzers, U-Boats, and Messerschmitts at mind-boggling speed, as had Japan by marshaling outfits like Mitsubishi to make kamikaze Zeros and top-heavy dreadnoughts in record time.   By then it was too late to influence the riveters and pencil-pushers of those countries.

But the really interesting history of the Simple Sabotage Field Manual began after the allied victories.

It appears that the Simple Sabotage Field Manual became the underground bible of global business as the ink was drying on various documents with the Subject: “We Surrender”.

Further, it is clear that global business had received only clandestine carbon paper or underground mimeographed reproductions of this covert publication without the title and the first pages.  According to one of my many anonymous sources, some copies had “А-Я по операционной Бизнес в коммунистической нации” scrawled in crayon on the cover, which roughly translates into “The A-Z of Operating Business in a Communist Nation”.  Very few people read Russian, of course.

I suggest that you read the whole thing on your own but let me share some of the Simple Sabotage Field Manual:

(via Slate/Business Insider)

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.

·        When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committee as large as possible — never less than five.

·        Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

·        Argue over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.

·        Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open 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.

Managers

·        In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers.

·        Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw.

·        To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions.

·        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.

·        Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can.

·        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.

I can tell you that every word of the Simple Sabotage Field Manual describes, in a thoroughly déjà vu fashion, my entire business career.   

I cannot fathom what the world’s productivity would be like if this thing hadn’t fogged its way into the soul of the global military/industrial/business infrastructure since WWII.

Declassifying the Simple Sabotage Field Manual was useful but it’s not like anyone on earth doesn’t know this stuff inside out.  So ingrained is Simple Stupidity in everyone’s daily life here in the Space Age that you could give a 9-year old a multiple choice quiz on this, call it “How to Succeed in Business”, and it’s an automatic Ace. 

The geniuses at the OSS threw this beautiful piece of trade-craft together and it spread like the Bubonic Plague ― way after its Sell-By date ― not to the places they wanted it to, but to the very country it served, as well as about 100 others around the world.  (Possibly, stupid?)  It’s like everything the CIA has done since the OSS, which is backfire.  (Possibly, stupid?)

Look at any government the CIA toppled and reanimated with some kind of unpopular leader, and every one of them went to hell (dead) or hiding in just a few years. (Possibly stupid?)  Arm the Afghanis to fight Russia?  Bang, you’ve just funded al-Qaeda.  (Possibly stupid?)  Feel like manipulating Iraq?  Boom: you’ve got ISIS.  (Possibly stupid?)

In closing, I must call the reader’s attention to

 “Spaniels’ Theory of the Universal Conservation of Stupidity”

― a brief treatise on which can be found in the 2010 folder in this “Blog”.

In it I have proven conclusively (in an Elegant Equation of course) that Stupidity in the Universe has a Mass that doesn’t change, as well as properties that can do things like bend Logic (Trump) and actually harness Light (Las Vegas).  Generally speaking, Stupidity will expand in places of least resistance, such as countries with high levels of education.   Third World nations have such a dense mass of Stupidity that they literally deflect S-Rays (see treatise), which are then absorbed by geographies and nations with an almost limitless capacity for Stupidity. 

S-Waves, a super concentration of S-Rays, blows up a bunch of galaxies

“Spaniels’ Theory of the Universal Conservation of Stupidity” can be summarized as follows: If you teach someone how to do something right in Kansas, in another far-away part of the Universe (such as New Jersey) someone is doing something incredibly stupid.

I actually think that had I been alive and presented my groundbreaking theory to the Allied authorities, we might have won the war.

(ed. “earlier?")

The Hubble Telescope detects high concentrations of Stupidity in galaxies colored yellow, red, peach, blue, and orange.

© 2015 Michael Gury