Wikileaks has posted what it says is a manual of US counterinsurgency doctrine:
The manual, Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces (1994, 2004), may be critically described as “what we learned about running death squads and propping up corrupt government in Latin America and how to apply it to other places”. Its contents are both history defining for Latin America and, given the continued role of US Special Forces in the suppression of insurgencies and guerilla movements world wide, history making.
The document, which has been verified, is official US Special Forces doctrine. It directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions & political parties. It directly advocates warrantless searches, detainment without charge and the suspension of habeas corpus. It directly advocates bribery, employing terrorists, false flag operations and concealing human rights abuses from journalists. And it directly advocates the extensive use of “psychological operations” (propaganda) to make these and other “population & resource control” measures more palatable.
The document has been particularly informed by the long United States involvement in the El Salvador…
I have no way of judging whether the document is legitimate, but it certainly reads like it is.
Recall that in 2005 the Defense Department decided on what it called “The Salvador Option” for Iraq, with James Steele, a veteran of counterinsurgency in El Salvador during the eighties, training Iraq’s Special Police Commandos.