19. The Plan to Fight Insurgents With Vampires
After WWII ended, the Huks, a Filipino rural resistance group that had fought the Japanese, were not eager for the Philippines to revert to an American colonial possession. Nor were they eager for a return to life under a landed native elite who exploited the farmers. So they kept up the fight, both against the Americans when they returned and against the Filipino government after independence in 1946. To support the Philippines’ US-friendly government, the CIA helped with the counter-insurgency effort, including a plan to demoralize the Huks with fake vampires. In 1950, the CIA brought in Air Force Brigadier General Edward Lansdale, a pioneer in clandestine and psychological warfare who tailored psychological operations to the specific culture targeted.
The specific culture of central Luzon, where the Huks throve, happened to believe in a mythical shape-shifting vampire called an aswang, which killed by draining its victims’ blood with a long, sharpened tongue. So Lansdale mimicked aswang attacks by abducting and killing Huk fighters. Puncture wounds were then placed on their necks, their blood was drained, and the bodies left for other Huks to find – and conclude that their comrade had fallen victim to an aswang. It proved highly effective in clearing Huk fighters out of an area. Between that and other effective counterinsurgency tactics, the Huk Rebellion was crushed within a few years.
