The Freedom Fighter's Manual

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Published by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1980s, the Freedom Fighter's Manual was a fifteen-page booklet airdropped over Nicaragua.^{[citation needed]} It enumerated several methods by which the average citizen could cause disorder.^{[citation needed]}

1 History
2 Contents
3 See also
4 External links
5 References

[edit] History

Main article: History of Nicaragua

On July 19, 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew the dictator Anastasio Somoza and established a military junta that had good diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. When they began to fund a similar revolutionary group in El Salvador, the United States' Reagan government felt that Nicaragua was becoming a threat to its national interests and began to fund the contras, in order to destabilize the government.^{[citation needed]} To this end, the CIA published the Freedom Fighter's Manual.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Contents

One panel of the Manual shows a man unnecessarily calling in sick to work, diminishing productivity, especially in the nationalized industries of a communist country.

The publication describes myriad ways in which the average citizen could disrupt the everyday workings of the government. It begins with actions that require little to no risk at all, such as hiding or destroying important tools, calling in sick for work, and leaving lights and faucets on. It then progresses to instruct people to steal food from the government, release livestock from farming cooperatives, and bring down telephone lines. Four pages are devoted to disabling vehicles. By the end of the pamphlet, there are detailed diagrams showing how to make and use Molotov cocktails against police stations.