Concept Interpretation Agency

(not the other CIA)

TOP SECRET

June 15, 1968

FROM:  Chuck Morris, Deputy Director of Interpretation

TO:  The Proper Authorities

ON THE FAILURE OF CERTAIN CONCEPTS

AND THE INADMITTABILITY OF OTHERS

The demise of the Crossover Point concept (and the Crossover Man) has preoccupied us to the point that insufficient attention is being paid to the conceptual crisis at home. The upcoming demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago this August — forshadowed by the takeover of Columbia University, the general strike of a million students in April, and violent Negro rebellions in 120 major cities — threaten us with a conceptual “domestic Tet.” This emergency requires a new Order of Conceptual Battle based on the following :

A.  Admitting Failed Concepts

1. That we can still produce citizens who — by their own reasoning and conviction — are persuaded that everything the U.S. Government does is right.

In other words, The Prime Directive, to coin a phrase, has failed. We can no longer move a plurality of Americans in the direction we desire for reasons they believe to be their own.

2. That the radical movement is run by Moscow Center.

Some leaders — President Johnson, Secretary of State Rusk, Cord Meyer and James Angleton at the other CIA — cling to this concept. It is wrong.

The radical movement is indigenous. Its members are not immigrants, refugees, infiltrators, moles, inserts, agents-in-place, or foreigners. They are not inspired by Bolshevism, the Vatican, Masonry, German Romanticism, French Existentialism, British Empiricism, Scottish Scepticism, or other alien influences.

In part, this is our fault. We isolated this generation of American youth from political history. They know little of Marxism, communism, social-democracy, or Fabianism. They possess scant knowledge of African culture, Asian feudalism, trade union organizing, women’s suffrage, anti-slavery movements or just about anything before 1953. Ironically our success has innoculated them against control by Moscow.

B.   Developing A New Concept

The horror that the enemy is our own monster children, begotten of America, mutants of our flesh, requires we treat them as a waste byproduct of post-war prosperity (as in Them, in which, you recall, giant non-alien ants were created by A-bomb testing).

Killing one’s children is not generally accepted in human society (c.f. Medea), unless they are sub-human (slaves, racial inferiors, infidel members of a rebel army or Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed).

Regarding the enemy as indigenous, though painful emotionally, reminds us we have dealt successfully with indigenous Americans in the past. We know what to do.

C.   Reapplying an Old Concept

The 1954 Doolittle Report to President Eisenhower defined the basic American approach toward our enemies, requiring:

"... an aggressive covert psychological, political, and paramilitary organization more effective, more unique, and if necessary, more ruthless than that employed by the enemy. No one should be permitted to stand in the way of the prompt, efficient, and secure accomplishment of this mission. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the U.S. is to survive, longstanding American concepts of “fair play” must be reconsidered."

American youth are the enemy; this concept therefore attaches.

Since they are not run by Moscow, they lack support by a major foreign power. They cannot seek diplomatic immunity nor be traded for captured U.S. spies, and we need fear no retaliation for whatever we do to them. They have no backup. They are ours. We own them. We can kill them.

The slaying by police of students at South Carolina State College  (the so-called Orangeburg Massacre) earlier this year is illustrative. Though the students were black and fit a more familiar historical model, the success of lethal sanction against students in a university demonstrates that hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct indeed do not apply. Killing students is viable.

The coming Democratic Convention provides a fortuitous proving ground for conceptual restructuring.

D. Recognizing Concepts we must destroy

1. The enemy acts on the basis of moral convictions.

They allege they are coming to Chicago to oppose the war in Vietnam, a claim that holds certain appeal. We habitually associate public acts with private motives. We distinguish killing for pay from killing in self-defense. The Doolittle Group admonishes us to abandon these habits in the face of an implacable enemy.

2. The enemy’ s acts have moral content.

Their actions are what they appear to be and no more. They will clog thoroughfares, block traffic, disrupt commerce, interrupt the work-day, play loud music, make raucous noises, clog drains, walk on the grass, disobey municipal statutes, disrobe in public, set loose wild and domesticated animals, mock normality, distribute unregulated substances, conduct mystical, pagan, and blasphemous ceremonies, and persistently and endemically jaywalk.

They will commit these acts SOLEY for the purpose of committing these acts, the outward appearance of which is their only reality. The act is the motive; the motive is the act; they are the same.

For example. They will chant aloud in unison. Their only motive for chanting aloud in unison is to chant aloud in unison. They will chant aloud in unison NOT to protest any war that may or may not be in progress at the time but for the sole purpose of chanting aloud in unison. Therefore the words they chant will have no exoteric meaning. They are only words to be chanted.

Let us say they chant, “Hey hey LBJ how many kids did you kill today?” This chant has NO more public meaning than if they chanted “Walla walla elbow jolla.” They chant only to chant. Citizens accustomed to hearing cheerleaders chant at sports events — where the chant DOES have exoteric meaning, defining which team the chanter supports — may become confused when they hear the “LBJ” type chanting referenced above. This is a category mistake. Sports chants have meaning. The words to be chanted at or near the Democratic Convention have no meaning. The act of chanting, however, does have meaning. The meaning is this: “We are chanting. Illegally and in violation of state and local laws.” The citizenry and security forces will act on this concept and no other.

The actions of enemy children are not symbolic acts, message acts, morality-imbued acts, nor are they acts of protest, solidarity, or resistance. They are merely the acts-that-they-seem-to-be, the act-in-itself. They are not acts “of” anything. If a mutant child walks on the grass, it is not for any higher purpose than to walk on the grass. If they walk on the grass where a sign states Do Not Walk on the Grass, they shall be arrested.

3. That enemy acts are normal acts.

If an enemy lays down a blanket, opens a basket, and feeds on the substances within, that is not a “picnic.” To call it a picnic, and therefore treat it as a picnic, is to place it in the same category as activities of normal citizens, which is a category mistake and a conceptual error. In no war would our men allow the enemy to bask in the sun, play music, and eat food undisturbed.

4. That there is such a thing as “excessive force.”

Excessive is an adjective of relation: excessive to what? There are only two kinds of force: sufficient and insufficient. Insufficient force is force that fails to achieve the desired end. Sufficient force achieves it. Obviously, “excessive force” is sufficient; therefore it should be folded into sufficiency. If anything, the concept formerly known as excessive could be termed “extra-sufficient,” since it accomplishes even more than sufficient force.

Never apologize for using “extra-sufficient force.” No one would understand you if you did.

E. Hold High an Eternal Concept

Narrow the enemy. All enemy acts are by definition to be suppressed with extra-sufficient force. Extra-sufficient force weeds out those unwilling or unable to confront it. Those who remain, who are willing to face extra-sufficient force, are fewer in number, more hostile, less inclined to negotiate, more fevered, less tolerant of those with whom they were once comrades, more obsessed with the confrontation itself. They will define themselves as “warriors” or “streetfighters” and lose touch with the masses from which they emerged.

Repeat this process until the enemy cannot resist.

It worked with the Indians.