The U.S. arsenal of techniques for suppressing or manipulating people in the Third World is being stocked through the efforts of scientists and social scientists working for a number of non-governmental research and development organizations around the country. Most of the work is related to Project Agile, the worldwide counterinsurgency project initiated by the Defense Department!s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Project Agile was started by the Kennedy Administration and accelerated during the Johnson regime.
In the lexicon of the counterinsurgency (COIN) R&D (research and development) industry, the products are divided into “hardware” and “software.” “Hardware” is weaponry and related equipment. “Software” ranges from recommendations on how to manipulate peasants in lands where U.S. officials fear revolution is about to break out,to reports on the vulnerability to guerrilla attack of Creole Petroleum Co. pipelines in Venezuela.
Among the leaders in the COIN industry are the ubiquitous RAND Corporation, Booz-Allen Applied Research (Chicago management consulting firm), The Simulmatics Corporation (Boston), and the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio. The latter specializes in COIN “hardware” — turning out classified reports with such titles as “State-of-the-Art Study on Impairment of Voluntary Muscular Activity” and “Biological Munitions for Small Targets.” Booz-Allen and Simulmatics, on the other hand, specialize in “software.” Those with a certified “need to know” (meaning they’re working on similar projects) can read a series of classified Booz-Allen reports on “U.S. Contributions to Emerging Nations” or Simulmatics’ “Report on Urban Insurgency Studies.”
The Simulmatics Corporation is valued for its work on the American people as well. In 1960 it was hired out by the Democratic National Committee to conduct massive simulation studies of American voting behavior which were important in shaping Kennedy campaign strategy. The client was so satisfied that it returned for help in 1964. (For details, see Ithiel de Sola Pool, Robert Abelson and Samuel Popkin, CANDIDATES, ISSUES AND STRATEGIES; A COMPUTER SIMULATION OF THE 1960 AND 1964 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, M.I.T. Press, 1965.)
However, the most important center for counter-revolutionary software R&D is the Center for Research in Social Systems (CRESS) of American University in Washington, D.C. CRESS describes itself as “non-governmental agency operating under contract with the Department of the Army” performing “social science research in support of requirements stated by the Department of the Army staff agencies and other Army
elements.” In addition to its field office at the John F. Kennedy Center for Special Warfare, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, CRESS has two main elements — the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) and the Cultural Information Analysis Center (CINFAC), formerly the Counterinsurgency Information Analysis Center.
SSRI “conducts social science research to support the Department of the Army’s mission in such fields as counterinsurgency, unconventional warfare, psychological operations, military assistance programs, and studies and evaluations of foreign cultures.” CINFAC “provides information services concerning foreign areas to qualified requestors.”
Virtually all CRESS reports are classified. But an unclassified outline of WORK PROGRAM — FISCAL YEAR 1967 (Defense Documentation Center AD637820) yields some details of the work that is under way. The following are descriptions of some of the projects excerpted from the CRESS document.
A. Working out of Bogota, Colombia and Washington, D.C., Messrs. Howard Kaufman and Norman Smith are completing a study the purpose of which is “To provide an empirical basis for formulating U.S. Army doctrine on advice appropriate to help indigenous military civic action create popular attitudes favorable to the local government and military forces.” This study was coordinated with the “U.S. Ambassador to Colombia, the U.S. State Department, and the Colombian Government’s Ministries of War, Interior, and Foreign Affairs. Empirical data bearing on the impact of a variety of civic action projects in Colombia have been collected by subcontract with a Colombian research organization, National Research of Colombia.”
B. Another project intended to help win the hearts and minds of the people (investigator unspecified) is supposed to meet “requirements for country-specific information on appeals, symbols, and methods of communication to assist Army planning and conduct of psychological operations….Within given assumptions concerning the conditions of the intercultural communication, the attitudes and behavior of Army-relevant target groups are described, symbolic cultural material appropriate for effective communications is identified, and information on mass and interpersonal communications media is presented.”
C. In response to a plea from the Subcommittee on Behavioral Sciences of the Defense Research Board for “a study effort to determine the feasibility of applying the currently developing techniques of social systems modeling and simulation to the exploration of the parameters of the insurgency/counter-insurgency problem” Robert Boguslaw (author: THE NEW UTOPIANS) and Charles Windle are working on a simulation based on pre-Castro Cuba (1950-1959). The idea is to “give military planners a better way of identifying potentially disruptive problems.”
D. CRESS’ Andrew R. Molnar and Adrian H. Jones will be working “to provide scientific information to the Office of the Provost Marshal General which will assist in formulating doctrine on internal security problems of civil and para-military police operations related to the prevention and countering of insurgency in developing nations.”
E. Recognizing that “urban communities were the centers of African nationalist activity,” that “urban leaders…may soon be active in insurgency or counter-insurgency activities,” that African students “are important because of their political involvement, intellectual resources, and prestigious status among the masses” and like to be “active in the leadership of any insurgency because of their oppositional mentality,” Mr. William John Hanna will be pushing ahead with his study of “African Groups Relevant to U.S. Military Decision-making.”
