The Freedom Fighter's Manual is the title of a fifteen-page propaganda booklet that was manufactured by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and airdropped over Nicaragua in 1983, with the stated goal of providing a "Practical guide to liberating Nicaragua from oppression and misery by paralyzing the military-industrial complex of the traitorous marxist state". The manual explains several methods by which the average citizen could cause civil disorder. The airdrops began after the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which had overthrown the former Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza in 1979, and had ties to the Soviet Union and Cuba, began to fund a similar revolutionary group in El Salvador. A Contra fighter gave the manual to a U.S. reporter in Honduras in 1984.[1]
Contents |
The publication describes many 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, make false reports of fires and crimes, and sever telephone lines. Four pages are devoted to disabling vehicles. By the end of the pamphlet, there are detailed diagrams showing how to make Molotov cocktails and use them to firebomb police stations.