U.S. State Department
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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U.S. Army Field Manual 30-31B was a Cold War-era forgery by Soviet intelligence services.
It is an alleged classified appendix to a U.S. Army Field Manual that describes top secret counter insurgency tactics. In particular, it identifies a "strategy of tension" involving violent attacks which are then blamed on radical left-wing groups in order to convince allied governments of the need for counter-action. It has been called the Westmoreland Field Manual because it is signed with the alleged signature of General William Westmoreland.
U.S. government and academic sources describe the document as a forgery. The document first appeared in Turkey in the 1970s, before being circulated to other countries. It was also used at the end of the 1970s to implicate the Central Intelligence Agency in the Red Brigades' kidnapping and assassination of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro.
Authenticity
U.S. official sources, including the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, and the U.S. State Department, state that it is a forgery.
The discovery in the early-1990s of the Operation Gladio (NATO stay-behind networks) in Europe led to renewed debate as to whether or not the manual was fraudulent. According to Daniele Ganser who popularized the history of Gladio stay-behind networks, Licio Gelli, the Italian leader of the anti-Communist P2 freemason lodge told the BBC's Allan Francovich, "The CIA gave it to me".