The U.S. and its Responsibility for Counter-Insurgency Operations in Colombia
by Michael Lopez, Colombia Bulletin, Summer 1998Recent news reports the New York Times and Washington Post have brought to light the fact that for many years, U.S. Special Forces, "Americas premier irregular fighters," have been on the ground in Colombia, on "training" missions. According to a New York Times article, Defense Department documents recorded U.S. troops involved in 10 training exercises in fiscal year 1996 involving 114 U.S. and 651 Colombian troops.
"... according to the Special Operations Command of the Southern Command, there were 28 Special Forces deployments in 1996 under JCET [Joint Combined Exchange Training], and 29 deployments involving 319 US troops in fiscal 1997. About 24 deployments involving 274 US troops are planned for fiscal year 1998, according to the Special Operations Command. Most of the trainers will come from the 7th Special Operations Group based at Fort Bragg, NC, or from the Navy SEALS."
The Washington Post reported further that "In February, according to members of the 7th Group at the Army's Special Forces Command, 20 U.S. Special Forces troops trained 56 Colombians at a base 50 miles south of Bogota. They requested that the name of the base not be disclosed because of concern about the safety of U.S. soldiers, whom the guerrillas have said they would target." [See Map]
Not investigated by the mainstream U.S. press is what these deployments mean in terms of the extent of U.S. intervention in Colombia, or, for human rights. As a result most North Americans know very little about the prominent role the U.S. has played in the counterinsurgency war there. What's more, U.S. press reports regularly portray the U.S. government as playing a secondary role as it benevolently tries to curb drug trafficking and protect its most important ally in the region.
Occasionally, though, U.S. and Colombian military officials are quoted and show what their real intentions are in Colombia. One could even draw the conclusion that the Colombian army works for the Pentagon and not the Colombian Government. On U.S. training and doctrine, former Commander Gen. Maxwell Taylor said "It [is] far better to train Latin American soldiers than to have [North] American soldiers down there doing the fighting in Latin America." Or Gen Manuel Jose Bonnet, responding to criticism of his army's human rights record "You have to understand, we're fighting this war on behalf of the United States. We're fighting for you ... Given the limitations our military has, instead of criticizing us, you should see us as heroes." Or take Gen. Charles Wilhelm, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Southern Command, on the U.S. relationship with the Colombian Army "This is not a one night stand. This is a marriage for life." Gen. Wilhelm further showed his contempt for grassroots, non-violent community organizations -- civic society -- by continuing "The threat is intensifying. We are seeing, basically, an undermining of the [Colombian] government at the grassroots level."
Increasingly apparent is that no discussion of the roots of political violence in Colombia is complete if it does not discuss the prominent role of U.S. instruction of counterinsurgency ideology to Colombian troops by the Special Forces, CIA and other "irregular" forces. The following information demonstrates that U.S. involvement in Colombian counterinsurgency operations has a historical basis, and has been entered into with knowledge and expectation of what such intervention brings to the Colombian people. The summary also shows the official thinking behind the so-called drug war that is maintained "to put [leftists] on the wrong side of the moral issue" in order to undermine popular opposition to U.S. policy by the U.S. public. Finally, this will give insight into who the Special Forces are and the significance of their training of Colombian troops.
In short, the real goal of U.S. military aid and training is to pursue a policy of neutralizing, through murder and terror, any real opposition--unarmed as well as armed--to the political and economic status quo in Colombia and to Colombia's continuation as a surrogate U.S. force in the critical northeast corner of South America. In essence, the United States, through its proxies the Colombian military and paramilitaries, is at war in Colombia, to preserve the U.S. empire.
The Drug War Pretext
With the end of the Cold War, the U.S. needed a new propaganda tool to justify intervention in Latin America. During the 1980s the focus of drug "interdiction" was on Central America, the so-called "transit zone". During this period, drug trafficking through this region increased dramatically as a variety of actors from contra guerrillas and anti-Castro Cubans to the various military heads of Central American countries and Oliver North and the CIA either trafficked in drugs or protected traffickers to fund the various wars. In the late 1980's, focus shifted to the Andean region "source countries". As with Central America, an increase in drug trafficking, especially heroin, coincided with the CIA's and Pentagon's increased attention on and influence in the Andean region. Coletta Youngers, an expert on the drug war from the Washington Office on Latin America writes "Last April, around the time when Washington announced its decision to resume aid to the Colombian Army, warlord Carlos Castaño announced that he was moving his powerful paramilitary network into southern Colombia to wrest control of coca production from the FARC. Four months later, despite the fact that Castaño's move into southern Colombia had materialized, the Clinton Administration announced that it would avoid involving the U.S. in the heaviest areas of conflict in Colombia by 'limiting' aid to army units operating in the southern half of the country. In effect, Washington is targeting precisely the area which appears destined to become the next paramilitary battleground... 'Ironically' notes one Colombian analyst, 'U.S. support for the Colombian armed forces appears to be facilitating the consolidation of the Colombian drug trade.'" An unnamed source in the Washington Post shed more light on Washington’s real intentions, stating, "During decertification, Special Forces has been able to maintain the patience, perseverance, and presence to maintain a very good relationship with the military." "We refused to disengage" stated an unidentified source to the New York Times.
Peter Dale Scott, co-author of Cocaine Politics writes that the "hypocrisy of 'anti-drug campaigns' dates back to 1974, the year when Congress cut back U.S. aid programs to repressive Latin American police forces and then beefed up so-called anti-narcotics aid to the same forces by about the same amount. To keep the aid coming, corrupt Latin American politicians helped to invent the specter of the drug-financed "narco-guerrilla," a myth discounted by careful and dispassionate researchers like Rensselaer Lee. U.S. military officers were equally cynical. Col. John D Waghelstein, writing in the Military Review, argued that the way to counter "those church and academic groups that have slavishly supported the insurgency in Latin America" was to put them "on the wrong side of the moral issue", by creating "a melding in the American public's mind and in congress" of the alleged narco-guerrilla connection. The actual result of such propagandizing is to sanction the role of the drug traffickers and their allies in U.S. counterinsurgency efforts, and thus further to strengthen the status of the drug cartels in the countries they terrorize."
In Colombia, adds Douglas Valentine, author of The Phoenix Program and drug-war scholar, "the ultimate purpose of counter-narcotic operations is to terrorize the civilian population into betraying the guerrillas they harbor, even if the guerrillas, labeled as subversives, are fighting on their behalf."
Background of U.S. counterinsurgency activities in Colombia
During World War II, the U.S. paid much attention to Colombia -- it commanded two coasts and neighbored the Panama Canal, and hosted critical war commodities (e.g. platinum, rubber, oil). Nelson Rockefeller, whose family owned vast portions of Colombian land, was the CIAA (Coordinator for Interamerican Affairs) and developed both important intelligence about exploitable resources as well as close relations with the Colombian elite, detailed by Colby and Dennett. President Santos granted secret permission to the U.S. to use Colombian territory for its military.
Following the war, ongoing massive political violence in Colombia exploded in the 1948 "Bogotazo" riots, when unresolved political and economic inequities in Colombian society -- many which had been funneled into a "Liberal versus Conservative" antagonisms -- resumed. The Bogotazo nearly cancelled the meeting of hemispheric leaders in Bogota that April and the plans by the U.S. to set up its cold war hemispheric structures - the OAS. This was the first crisis of the newly-formed CIA, as it was called on the carpet by Congress over why it hadn't "foretold" of the possibility of violence [it had]. La Violencia, as it was known, spread into the countryside with waves of horrendous, machete slashing violence; hundreds of thousands died in the period from 1948 to the mid 50s.
This violence and its destabilizing impact upon Colombia clearly worried U.S. leaders, as stated in a 1952 CIA report that criticized the Conservative government "This repressive tendency hinders even moderate change and so renders more likely the eventual outbreak of revolutionary violence. In Colombia there is already widespread guerrilla resistance to the regime."
The U.S., however, thought it had the answer. Counterinsurgency. It had "worked" in the Philippines, where Ed Lansdale combined "civic action" (amnesty for rebels, minor land reform, candy from soldiers, a new 'reformer' President) with ruthless military tactics and psychological warfare. Apparently one member of his team was a 27 year old Colombian, Bernardo Hugo Tovar, who had become a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1926, attended Harvard, and had parachuted into Laos with the OSS in 1945. Hugh Tovar, as he was later known, came to head covert-action staff at CIA HQ, was CIA Station Chief in Indonesia at the time of the bloodbath there, and then chief in Laos and Thailand during the Second Indochina War. Some of the identical tactics utilized by Lansdale in the early 1950s, would show up at the end of the 50s in Colombia -- along with his two right hand men, Napoleon Valeriano and Charles Bohannan.
Colombia was among the first Latin American Countries to sign mutual defense agreements with the United States in the early Fifties, and in 1950 agreed to provide an army battalion and a frigate to the UN force in Korea. Links between the U.S. and Colombian military solidified there during 1951-53, particularly with Colombian officers Alberto Ruiz Novoa and Alvaro Valencia Tovar, who would play important roles in counterinsurgency operations in the future.
In 1953, the civilian political elite forced out the Conservative president, and pushed Gen. Rojas Pinilla, former Army chief of staff and vice-head of InterAmerican Defense Board, to head a junta. He soon began a process of pacification -- amnesty for guerrillas, a land program -- as well as military action against some holdout "bandits", including use of "pajaros," precursors to today's deathsquads, who killed amnestied rebels and defenseless peasants. This had many the features of the Lansdale anti-Huk campaign, particularly having a popular military figure (Magsaysay, Rojas) take over from a corrupt, discredited ruler. However, Rojas did not totally eliminate the insurgents, and in 1955, the Colombian Army set up the first counter- guerrilla training center in Latin America, the Lancero School, with U.S. infantry (Ranger) assistance.
The failure of Rojas to "wipe up" the guerrillas plus his alienation of the Colombian elite, with his move toward creation of a Peron-like populist movement, led to his ouster in May 1957. On August 7, 1956, a report of the National Security Council's Operations Coordinating Board had clearly 'predicted' it "The Colombian government may soon be overthrown by a military junta [deletion] CIA comments that a new military government would probably be friendly to the US [deletion]". Never adequately explained was the clearly destabilizing massive explosion of Army munitions trucks that also occurred precisely that day in Cali. Just 3 weeks before, the Liberals and Conservatives had kissed and made up at a secret meeting in Spain, agreeing to the "National Front" sweetheart deal that would rule Colombia from 1958 on.
The Liberal representative at that meeting would be none other than Rockefeller's pal Lleras Camargo, who would be the next president. The relationship between these two bears scrutiny. In late 1954 Rockefeller had been sworn in as Eishenhower's special assistant in charge of Cold War strategy and psychological warfare, and chaired the supersecret Special Group which oversaw all Covert operations. He was Eisenhower's representative to the OCB.
The newly seated President Lleras Camargo, at least as early as April 1959, told the U.S. embassy in Bogota that he was having difficulty getting Colombian generals to understand the need for training for effective counterinsurgency, that combined public relations with psychological warfare. In July the State Department reported that Lleras had "made a strong plea to our Ambassador in Bogota for the granting of four helicopters" to fight the 'bandits', but this was a difficult issue as the official U.S. policy was only to provide military aid against external aggression, not for internal security purposes.
Rather than send helicopters, however, the U.S. sent a secret "Survey Team" of counterinsurgency experts, in November and December of 1959 to evaluate the situation and provide a plan for U.S.- Colombian action. Headed by OSS/CIA veteran Hans Tofte, two key players were the mainstays of the Lansdale team, Charles Bohannan and Napoleon Valeriano, who would later author a Lansdalite counterinsurgency text. By the team chief's account, they traveled more than 23,000 km, interviewed more than 2000 officials and civilians, including some guerrilla leaders. They produced three secret volumes, that reviewed the history of the violence and underlying socio-economic conditions, and issued recommendations to both the Colombian and U.S. governments. They sharply criticized the operation of the Lancero School, and called for an overhaul and change from producing trained individuals, to creating a mobile strike force. While issuing the litany of the need for reforms, both economic and political, the real emphasis of the team of Cold Warriors was two-fold civic action, and enhanced counterguerrilla military techniques.
The Colombia Survey Team, however, got into hot water when they proposed to create a totally separate, clandestine, counterguerrilla setup that apparently grated some people in the Kennedy Administration the wrong way. Some of its many recommendations would apparently be put into motion nonetheless, operating under the control of the Ambassador and utilizing many of the normal operational channels.
The most troublesome of the recommendations was the suggested "Force X" (codename of Operation Able). Force X was a "black operation" had been used in the Philippines, where government counterinsurgency troops utilized intelligence about the guerrillas, particularly using "turned" insurgents, to create pseudo-guerrillas (or counter-guerrillas) who could masquerade as insurgents. This served several purposes, including infiltrating of the insurgents, and creation of confusion and dissension both within the insurgent ranks as well as the civilian population upon with the guerrillas were, or were trying to, developing support networks. It takes no imagination to understand that such pseudo-guerrillas could also carry out atrocities that would then be blamed on the insurgents. Remember these were all very covert, "black" operations.
There are so far two pieces of evidence indicating that 'Force X' went into operation. A book, Memoirs of an Undercover Agent of the Colombian Army, details one individual's successful efforts to infiltrate both groups of bandits and of guerrillas (there were both). There is an additional account, originally published in France, of FARC insurgents who escaped the 1965 Plan Lazo, reporting on strange, bearded men with new rifles who were going around the countryside, appearing to be anti-government, asking lots of questions, and disrupting the guerrillas' operations. Clearly they were reporting on the Force X counterinsurgency operation. And the account could have been written about the paramilitaries, particularly those of Urabá, today. The last sentence shows that the U.S. advisers hoped that they would create so much dissension and distrust within the guerrillas that the insurgents would turn upon each other, whether in battles between different guerrilla bands or more likely internal purges and expulsion’s. Viewed in this light, "purges" and internal dissension within the Colombian insurgent movement, take on new meaning. There would be further disruptive activities within the Colombian insurgent forces, never clearly identified as Force X before, but given the precedence, a clear possibility. Given what is known of disruptive tactics of government infiltrators during the 60-70's in the U.S. civil rights, black power, and anti-war movement (FBI's COINTELPRO and CIA's MHCHAOS, many of the most violent individuals, who advocated terroristic activities, were secret infiltrators. And this model was clearly in operation in Urabá in the early 1990s, when former comrades [ELN and FARC] turned upon each other and their armed groups engaged in massacres upon the others supporters, in the unions and shanty towns.
This "Force X" was the likely precursor to the Project X that Amnesty reported on in 1996, where U.S. military trainers provided instruction in a range of techniques, ranging from infiltrating student groups to interrogation techniques.
By 1962 the U.S. Special Forces were brought in to train Colombian officers counterinsurgency, while others were sent to U.S. bases for training, including the School of the Americas in the Canal Zone. Michael McClintock wrote extensively on the historical development of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine in Instruments of Statecraft U.S. Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, Counterterrorism, 1940-1990.
"A proposal to organize indigenous irregulars [paramilitary groups] with the twofold function in Colombia was made by a top-level U.S. Special Warfare team from Fort Bragg during a two week visit there in February 1962. In a secret supplement to his report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Special Warfare Center commander General Yarborough, who headed the survey team, pressed for a stay-behind irregular force and its immediate deployment to eliminate communists representing a future threat
[A] concerted country team effort should be made now to select civilian and military personnel for clandestine training in resistance operations in case they are needed later. This should be done with a view toward the development of a civil and military structure for exploitation in the event the Colombian internal security system deteriorates further. This structure should be used to pressure toward reforms known to be needed, perform counter-agent and counter-propaganda functions and as necessary execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorists activities against known communist proponents. It should be backed by the United States."
Later, McClintock writes, "The brief of General Yarborough's survey team was to prepare the way for the first of a series of Special Warfare Mobile Training Teams due to arrive in Colombia in early March 1962. It was to evaluate the insurgency/counterinsurgency situation, the country's assistance and training needs, and the Colombian counterinsurgency effort 'with a view toward integrating viable Colombian doctrine and techniques into counterinsurgency instruction presented at the US Army Special Warfare School [part of the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg].' Its paramilitary prescription, a virtual blueprint for the Colombian army "death squads" that are still active, was apparently implemented at once. Although the U.S. embassy intelligence officers there informed Yarborough's team that the 'some 8,000 communists' in Colombia were 'inept bumblers and posed no real threat to the government,' the team recommended the assignment of five twelve-man Special Forces 'A' detachments to four Colombian counterguerrilla brigades as well as an administrative detachment and psychological warfare specialists.
The principal recommendations of the 1962 mission were subsequently adopted in the Colombian military's comprehensive counterinsurgency plan, the Plan Lazo, adopted at the end of 1962 and continued through 1965. The programs that followed combined guerrilla and counterguerrilla warfare, and involved both counterterror and counterorganization. Colombia's doctrine of counterinsurgency today seemingly differs little from that of the United States in the 1960s. The Colombian army's 1969 counterguerrilla-manual, Reglamento de Combate de Contraguerrillas, is based on U.S. field manuals and training texts, which it lists in an appendix."
The training of Colombian soldiers continued throughout the 1970s and 80s both in Colombia and at the U.S. at the School of the Americas, ("SOA") as well as the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg. Just under 10,000 Colombian officers and soldiers received training at the SOA alone. The U.S recently revoked the visa of one SOA graduate, Gen. Ivan Ramirez over his ties to several army massacres of civilians. Ramirez, called a "terrorist" by the U.S., was understandably perplexed. He responded in a May 24, 1998 interview with Radio Caracol that the CIA had advised the 20th Intelligence Brigade, which Ramirez supervised from 1992 to 1995, and which was notorious for the murder scores of civil politicians and human rights activists. CIA agents and US military personnel "were in Colombia, knew all about the state security organizations' intelligence systems, and now they criticize the actions of these groups," he said. "In the 1960s there was a permanent intelligence adviser, in the 1970s the CIA was there...I met all the CIA heads, until two or three years ago." "Now it turns out I’m the terrorist."
The CIA has also maintained it influence of Colombian Intelligence institutions which rely on paramilitary groups for information gathering and selective assassinations. As reported by HRW in Killer Networks, "A U.S. Defense Department and Central Intelligence agency (CIA) team worked with Colombian military officers on the 1991 intelligence reorganization that resulted in the creation of [41 clandestine and intelligence] networks that identified and killed civilians suspected of supporting guerrillas."
"In 1996, the United States deployed at least two teams of fifty-two U.S. Army Special Forces personnel to Colombia for two-month missions. Out of forty-nine deployments involving a total of 231 U.S. military and intelligence advisors scheduled for 1996, thirty-two deployments involving ninety-seven advisors were in support of the navy. They included the stationing of a U.S. Navy intelligence officer with the Colombian Navy in SantafÉ de Bogotá. "The U.S. helped design its Riverine units to patrol rivers," one of the ports the Riverines are based in is Barrancabermeja, the site of one of the 41 intelligence networks promoted by the CIA." The CIA Directorate of operations has also sponsored training for Colombian Special Forces units."
"Green Berets train the Colombian Army in Cimitarra, a town that even Colombian police reports identify as a center for illegal paramilitary operations. Other U.S. officials work closely with Colombia's top Commanders. Even "the U.S. Military Advisory Group's office is inside the Colombian Armed Forces command compound, conveniently down the hall from the offices of the Colombian army commander.
On May 25, 1998, the Washington Post noted, as has been repeated elsewhere, that "while the United States is reluctant to get involved in counterinsurgency operations, the line between the narco-traffickers and the guerrillas has blurred." But, says Valentine, "It's really not news that the U.S. is sending special forces to train elite Colombian troops in counter-insurgency-narcotics-terrorism. On 4 May 1990, Newsday had an article "Behind Colombian Raid" about how [in 1989], Jose Gonzalo Rodriquez, his 17 year old son and several bodyguards were assassinated by a U.S. special operations team working with an elite Colombian police unit. The CIA advises the Colombian special police. It was a CIA operation. I do not believe the U.S. is reluctant to get involved in counter-insurgency operations in Colombia. As far as I know, the U.S. government always has been involved, for the same reasons it carved Panama out of Colombia, and for the same reasons (through the CIA) it backed Noriega and his drug regime, then used counter- narcotics as a pretext to invade Panama, capture Noriega and convict him in a kangaroo court. The USG only says it is reluctant so the CIA can claim plausible denial.
Who are the Special Forces and what is Irregular Warfare
But exactly who are the Special Forces and what exactly do they "specialize" in? Doug Valentine answers "As military adjuncts of the CIA, US Army and Navy Special Forces specialize in 'unconventional' warfare -- unconventional weapons, communications, formations and tactics, including, and especially, political and psychological warfare. Is it relevant to narcotics interdiction? Yes, in so far as the patrons the CIA supports in Colombia have a stake in the licit and illicit narcotics business."
"US Special Forces were modeled on the German SS, and like the SS their "unconventional" purpose is to wage war against the civilian population -- against guerrillas like the Viet Cong in Vietnam, Jews in Warsaw, the Resistance in Paris. They are usually not fighting regular enemy military units, although they certainly can and do. They most often work behind enemy lines in foreign countries and, at home, in areas where guerrillas are thought to out-gun the regular police. The special police have the best intelligence on drug dealers and subversives, which is why elite military special forces work with elite CIA advised police units in Colombia."
"In South Vietnam the CIA developed a ‘motivational indoctrination’ program, which US Special Forces used to train their counter-parts in South Vietnam's Special Forces. Recruits were drawn from regular military units (or prisons) based on their aggressive spirit, and taught to believe they were ‘elite’, thus distancing them from the civilian population they came from but would be targeted against. The feeling of being ‘elite’ helps condone all manner of atrocities committed against ‘ordinary’ civilians. That is the effect US Special Forces training will have on Colombian forces they train."
Colombia has been cited by U.S. "special operations" gurus as a shining example of "success". At a conference in 1983 entitled "The Role of Special Operations in U.S. Strategy in the 1980s", the question arose whether the U.S. had ever fully succeeded in training Third World militaries in its counterinsurgency methods. "Special Forces activities in Colombia were cited as one of the best programs the United States has ever had. It succeeded because the ambassador directed it in an outstanding manner, and because he enlisted the support of the Colombian government at the top level. U.S. agencies cooperated effectively, and as the program developed it was turned over to the Colombians to run." (One of the three conveners was none other than Hugh Tovar, and a participant was Retired Lt. Gen. William Yarborough.)
All but the most reactionary scholars agree that in Colombia, the insurgency has clear internal roots, and was not inspired by some "foreign" ideology. What has come to "curse" Colombia was the U.S. foreign policy requirement that Colombia fit into the Cold War duality. This was stated clearly by a Conservative Congressman, Alavro Gomez Hurtado "It is not an exaggeration to conclude that in Colombia, from a strictly military point of view, the enemy [guerrillas] was invented in the name of a continental response... The inspiration for this ideological-military offensive at the beginning of the 60s came from outside the country. A weak president was pressured to appoint a new kind of officer as head of the military [clearly a reference to Novoa and Tovar], someone who was sympathetic to ideas being advanced by the Alliance [for] Progress." The U.S. and it's counter-insurgency "solution" did nothing to resolve the longstanding problems in Colombian society, and today must be exposed and terminated.
ANNEX C
ANTI-GUERRILLA METHODS & TECHNIQUES
APPLICABLE IN COLOMBIA, to
APPENDIX I - LANCEROS, to
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR COLOMBIAN ACTION
[in Secret 1960 Report]1. The following summary outlines typical anti-guerrilla methods and techniques which can be immediately adopted by government forces in the guerrilla areas in Colombia. Though there are numerous methods known, the five methods and techniques described herein are believed to be particularly suitable to present conditions in Colombia.
2. The Lancero units, with some additional instruction on these methods, are best fitted to carry out the missions as described, although the operations may be conducted by any suitably trained units.
Civil Affairs and Psychological Warfare should participate in the implementation of methods suggested, and will afford a timely and proper introduction of these efforts in Colombia.
3. OPERATION "ABLE" (FORCE X)
a.Objectives
(1) Infiltrate enemy ranks and organization.
(2) Gain Order of Battle, "modus operandi", intelligence, penetrate security systems, disrupt supply lines, etc.
(3) Create damage, dissension and demoralization in enemy ranks.
b. Execution
(1) Selection, training and preparation of selected personnel to adopt enemy dress, speech, manners, customs, etc. is the first step. Once this is accomplished, posing as "friendly", (i.e. anti- government), this undercover force can effect link-up with other enemy forces. Cover story for the contact will be that it is "liaison and contact" purposes, etc.
(2) Intelligence is acquired during the "fraternization" phase,including the identities of sympathizers and government officials collaborating with the enemy.
(3) Combat is ordered when intelligence desired has already been acquired, or upon discovery of true identity of the undercover force.
c. Advantages
(1) Enemy intelligence is infiltrated. Modas operandi is disclosed and exploited. Enemy security and alarm systems disrupted.
(2) Identities of sympathizers or local officials actively aiding the enemy are discovered. Supply and intelligence systems are discovered. Supply and intelligence systems based on villagers are also disrupted.
(3) Creates dissension, mutual distrust in enemy ranks, which may result in fights, often in actual combat between different units of the enemy forces.
[following this were other suggestions for counterinsurgency operations OPERATION "BAKER" (MAGIC EYE), OPERATION "CHARLIE" (SECRET SERVICE), OPERATION "DOG" (POINTER), and OPERATION "EAST" (LION)]