How The CIA Used Vampires To Fight Communism

Written By Southpoint Collective

Most wars are fought with bullets and bombs, but sometimes, the most powerful weapon is fear itself. In the shadowy world of psychological warfare, the CIA once turned to one of humanity’s oldest nightmares to break their enemies’ will - vampires. Yes, you heard that right. In a desperate bid to control a communist rebel group in the Philippines, U.S. operatives used superstition, folklore, and a bit of theatrical bloodshed to strike terror into the hearts of their foes. This is the bizarre tale of how the CIA weaponized the undead in one of history’s strangest wartime tactics.

The Phillipines is quite possibly one of the most beautiful places in the entire world, so maybe it’s no surprise then that throughout the ages, so many different nations or even sub-factions within itself, have fought for control over it.

At one point in time it was one of the many Spanish colonies around the world, but even they found it incredibly difficult to govern owing to the physical and cultural roadblocks in there path. As I’m sure you can imagine, it’s hard enough trying to oversee a nation of people on one singular landmass, but in the case of the Phillipines, it is a nation spread across more than 7000 islands. Owing to the sheer multitude of these islands, and their enforced isolation of one people group from another, it’s maybe no surprise then nearly 200 different languages arose from this region.

Despite all of these differences in geography and cultural practices, there did seem to be one particular overarching belief that haunted the dreams of almost all Filipinos, and that was the terrifying story of the most evil of all creatures known locally as the Aswang.

We don’t exactly have a direct match in our modern popular horror mythology, but looking at most of it’s characteristics, it does seem to most closely align to the idea we have of the classic Vampire.

The Filipino Aswang did also have the ability to shapeshift into other forms, but instead of turning itself into a bat like we’ve come to expect, the Aswang could turn itself into a snarling dog, a man-sized vulture, and in what might be the most surprisingly terrifying of them all, a giant pig.

But no matter what form it took, the Aswang was said to be the cause of any sudden illness, unexplained death or any sort of unexpected misfortune.

All the way back in 1589 a Spanish priest ministering in the region, wrote a book entitled Customs of the Tagalogs, Tagalog being one of the main languages spoken in the Phillipines.

In this book he notes local stories of the Aswang and how locals swear they had see it flying around at night, murdering men and eating their flesh.

According to custom, the Aswang would swoop down onto the roofs of buildings, and then, in what might be one of the grossest mythical creature lores i’ve ever heard of, it would slide a long proboscis-like tongue down into the home through something called a ugggh “a licking hole” in the ceiling. Apparently it’s preferred victims were pregnant women and children and would either entirely suck out their insides or after doing whatever it did with that long tongue, would leave it’s victims suffering with some form of deadly disease. It’s beginning to sound less like a vampire and more like a giant mosquito if you ask me.

And don’t worry, you haven’t accidentally downloaded an ancient mythologies podcast, the reason I’m giving you all of this background is because it will become the backdrop for one of the Cold War’s most inventive psychological warfare operations. 

In 1950, a man named Edward Geary Lansdale would arrive for the very first time in the Phillipines. 

Before the outbreak of the Second World War, Lansdale had been an incredibly successful advertising executive based in San Francisco. He boasted high profile clients like Levi Jeans, Wells Fargo Bank and even Nestle. But when the United States joined the Allied war effort, Lansdale gave it all up to answer his nations call to arms.

It wasn’t long before it became apparent to his superior officers that he was not simple foot soldier, and that his creativity and knack for thinking outside the box could be a very crucial skill to leverage. He was soon recruited to join the Office of Strategic Service which would in time transfor into what we know as the CIA today.

They put his advertising skills to work immediately, but instead of getting people to buy material items, he was tasked with selling a particular narrative to the American people. His job was simple, create and implement highly targeted and specialised propaganda that not only won support for the Allies, but in turn utterly demonised the enemy.

His media and marketing campaigns were not simple, Us good, them bad, affairs, they were heavily researched pieces of information, tweaked and altered according to a variety of factors for any particular target audience. As we know, the United States, whilst being one enormous country is in fact made up hundreds of different groups of people, all with their own slightly different world views, interests, beliefs and things that they hold dear. What made Lansdale so spectacular at his job, was that he was able to take one overarching message and tailor it specifically to pull on the emotions of the things he knew were important to any one of those groups.

And it was exactly this skill, using a group of peoples pre-existing beliefs, which made him the CIA’s top choice when looking for someone to assist in the anti-communist campaign in the Phillipines.

Officially he was there as an Air Force officer and adviser to the Filipino president Ramon Magsaysay. Unofficially of course, he was there as CIA propaganda machine.

President Magsaysay and his US backed regime had been fighting an especially drawn out war against a communist rebel group known as the Huks (pr. Hooks). The huks had gained popularity amongst the people during World War II when they had originally formed as a specialised anti-Japanese unit. Their full name in fact, translates to The People’s Anti-Japanese Army. After the war had ended however, and they were at a bit of a loss as to what was next for them, their leader at the time, a man named Luis Taruc decided to sever all ties with the government after they handed America equal rights to the Phillipines natural resources.

They decided to follow the communist teachings that were springing up around the region and soon became a thorn in the side of newly formed Filipino-American alliance.

Lansdale would later write a book about his time there and in it he writes: "My orders were plain, The United States government wanted me to give all help feasible to the Philippine government in stopping the attempt by the Communist-led Huks to overthrow the government by force. My help was to consist mainly of advice where needed and desired. It was up to me to figure out how best to do this.”

Up until that point most military commanders still considered dropping leaflets or using radio broadcasts as the very pinnacle of propaganda, but Lansdale would soon open their eyes to the true potential of well-crafted psychological warfare.

We’re going to take a short break, and when we return, we’ll see exactly how Edward Lansdale and his team of CIA operatives went about using the local Filipino’s own cultural stories, mythologies and crucially fears, against them.

Lansdale had decades of experience behind him by this point, and he knew that this was not a process that should be rushed. He needed time to study and research his so-called market, learning all he could about the locals lores, taboos, myths and superstitions. He spent months interviewing local peasants and villagers finding out all he could, and then carefully picking each new piece of information apart to see if, at it’s core, it could be utilised in any way to achieve his goals.

As we’ve already mentioned, one of the things that made Lansdales particular methodologies so effective was his ability make his psyops hyper-specific to his target. In fact, in World War II, one of his most successful operations was when he would interview captured German soldiers and get them to give up just the names of their battlefield officers. Once he had these names and knew where they were stationed, he would set up a series of loudspeakers along the battle lines and in the dead quiet of night his plan would go into operation.

Just when everything was still, and in the darkest part of the night when all you have are fear and thoughts of home swirling around in your head, he would call out the names of individual German officers, and in perfect German explain to them in no uncertain terms that if they did not surrender, then they specifically would be the next ones to die. 

This was a tactic that he would employ in the Phillipines as well, albeit with his signature tailoring to his audience. In this iteration he would discover which of the locals were secretly giving support to the Huk rebels and then under cover of darkness, creep up to their house and paint a large, cryptic symbol in the shape of an eye on the wall outside of their homes. When the inhabitants woke the next morning to discover these evil looking symbols, they were both confused and terrified. Lansdale would then follow this up by having a light aircraft fly above the villages the next night using a loudspeaker strapped to the underside of the plane, and having someone who could speak the local dialect, broadcast mysterious curses on any villagers who dared to offer help to the rebels.

When the villagers heard this, and realized this must be linked to the mysterious eye symbol on their homes, many immediately gave up their support. This would ultimately lead to some of the Huk units in the are surrendering completely after being taken to the point of near starvation.

But all of this was mere child’s play in comparison to the truly unhinged operation Lansdale would unleash next.

According to his memoir, a large squadron of around 300 Huk rebels had set up their camp on a hill just outside of a local village. The leaders of the nearby village had eventually come to the Americans pleading for help after the Huks threatened to kill anyone who didn’t cooperate with them.

When Landsale heard this, his mind went into overdrive he stood thinking for a while, before a menacing grin spread across his face.

He began putting together CIA trained psychological warfare squad entirely made up of local Filipinos, in order to make the dissemination of information more believable.

Their instructions for this particular operation were clear. The psyop agents were to infiltrate the village and begin surreptitiously planting stories that an Aswang had been seen haunting the very hill on which the Huk rebels had set up their camp.

Now this was not meant to scare the villagers themselves, but knowing how people talk, and knowing that many of them were aiding the rebels, the information would inevitably make its way across the to the rebel camp, and coming from the mouths of the local villagers, would make it all the more believable to the Huk soldiers.

After just a few days when they were sure that the stories had begun to spread throughout the rebel encampment, phase two of their plan was ready to be implemented.

Lansdale writes of this plan:

“The psychological warfare squad set up an ambush along a trail known to be used by the Huks. When a night patrol came along the trail, the ambushers would silently snatch the last man of the patrol, making sure that they were not seen in the process. They punctured his neck with two clear holes, vampire-fashion, held the body up by the heels, drained it of all it’s blood and then quietly put the corpse back on the trail, ready to be discovered. When the Huks returned to look for the missing man and found their bloodless comrade, every member of the patrol believed that the Aswang had got him and that one of them would be next if they remained on that hill. When daylight came, the entire Huk squadron had moved out of the vicinity.”

Before long Lansdale and his team were thinking up new plans, one of which was designed to turn the public sentiment against the Huks forever. In order to do this, he enlisted the help of actual government backed military forces and had them dress up as Huk rebel soldiers. Once they looked the part, they were sent out into the villages with orders to harass and steal from the villagers before quickly fleeing the area. And it worked, more and more reports began emerging of local Filipinos who had once supported the Huk fighters, now absolutely fed up with them after what they had “supposedly” done to them and their village.

These operations proved to be so effective that Lansdales influence on proceedings within the country grew increasingly larger. As the Cold War dragged on, America began to realise more and more the strategic importance of having access to the Philippines as a staging ground for any conflict in the East. It only made sense then, that they do everything they possibly could to make sure that a US friendly leader was in power at all times.

Ramon Magsaysay would end up as little more than a puppet president himself, eventually answering directly to Lansdale who was effectively pulling the strings.

In order to keep him in power, the very same type of psychological warfare tactics would now be employed against the very people they were once used to protect. His political opponents would be drugged and then photographed, using the images in a nationwide smear campaign against them. They even began sneaking in weapons to stage their own coup should Magsaysay somehow lose the elections.

In what was a strategy straight out of Lansdales playbook, one notable operation in the campaign against Magsaysays rivals was truly a masterpiece of psychological warfare. A large number of condoms were distributed across the country with the logo of the opposition party clearly emblazoned across the outside of the wrapper. The kicker was that all of these condoms had had holes poked in them, and when they inevitably failed in their primary use, the outrage was directed squarely at the man they all believed had disseminated them to begin with.

America’s influence in the Philippines would continue for decades, using them as a strategic ally in a region that was increasingly becoming a hotbed for communist ideologies.

In the end, Lt. Col. Edward Geary Lansdale would go down in CIA history as the father of their modern psychological warfare doctrine, as well as being the very first American to ever use vampires in combat.

SOURCES

Southpoint Collective

From savvy startups to established businesses needing a refresh, we can help tell your story. We offer solutions to help you create your website, handle social media, produce fresh new content and brand your business.

https://www.southpointcollective.com
Next

Australia’s Most Ridiculous War (And How The Emus Won)