How the CIA Staged "Vampire Attacks" in the Philippines
A Look at How Brutal and Insane This Agency's Operations Can Get
For anyone who doesn’t know, the CIA is not a force for good. They’re a force for toppling governments and coercing people in other countries to behave how they want. They do the same in the United States, though their mission statement lies and says they are not allowed to. Usually the goal of any CIA operation is to extract resources or control entire populations politically and psychologically.
When the CIA manufactures revolutions and installs puppet governments in foreign countries, they call it “spreading democracy.” There are countless examples of how they have done this over the past few decades, but today we will take a look at one of the most absurd examples they’ve ever unclassified.
Communism began bubbling up circa the 1930s in the Philippines, and actually continues to this day. Several significant movements and uprisings have occurred, the first being the Hukbalahap Rebellion of 1942, which lasted for 12 years. The Hukbalahaps or the Huks (translating to the classic old “People’s Liberation Army”) sought to combat the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during WWII.
Before the CIA helped usher in full-blown Communism to America and the entire Western Hemisphere, they used to have a strong dislike for the political ideology, and sought to combat it wherever it occurred on planet Earth, by whichever means necessary. Sometimes this meant getting awfully creative.
In the Philippines, there is a strong and enduring cultural belief in a cryptid called an Aswang. While there is no collective agreement on a single unifying physical description or origin story, most Filipinos believe that this creature is essentially a non-human, vampiric monster who attacks humans to drink their blood and eat their organs. It is widely believed that the Aswang prefers pregnant women because its favorite meals are babies and unborn fetuses. It is also said to prefer the liver and heart among all the organs. They are said by many to make a “tik-tik-tik” sound just before they strike.
Due to being a shapeshifter, physical descriptions of the Aswang vary per report, but reports have been made since at least the 1600s, if not much further back. The entity is described as a witch who has werewolf-like capabilities for shifting, and a vampire-like diet. It operates at night, and fools many of its victims by pretending to be human. The one physical characteristic everyone can agree on is an incredibly long and grotesque tongue, which it uses to suck out organs and extract babies from pregnant women. Yes, a real charmer.
In the 1950s, the Philippines were undergoing some sociopolitical struggles, and the CIA decided to get involved in order to spread some of that democracy.
The Filipino Huks were getting in the way of the political plans the CIA had in mind for the country. Apparently becoming desperate, the CIA staged “vampire attacks” as part of an operation to rid the country of a communist uprising. And to everyone’s surprise, it actually worked.
Major General Edward G. Lansdale launched this operation by spreading the rumors that an Aswang was waging attacks on the islands. He recalls the operation:
“To the superstitious, the Huk battleground was a haunted place filled with ghosts and eerie creatures. A combat psy-war squad was brought in. It planted stories among town residents of an Asuang living on the hill where the Huks were based. Two nights later, after giving the stories time to make their way up to the hill camp, the psywar squad set up an ambush along the trail used by the Huks […] When a Huk patrol came along the trail, the ambushers silently snatched the last man of the patrol, their move unseen in the dark night.
They punctured his neck with two holes, vampire-fashion, held the body up by the heels, drained it of blood, and put the corpse back on the trail. When the Huks returned to look for the missing man and found their bloodless comrade, every member of the patrol believed that the Aswang had got him and that one of them would be next if they remained on that hill. When daylight came, the whole Huk squadron moved out of the vicinity.”
To be clear, the CIA caught Huk soldiers, killed them, drained the blood out of them by hanging them upside down, and placed two bite-mark looking wounds on their necks. This resulted in approximately 100-300 Huk soldiers fleeing the region., and their leader surrendered soon thereafter.
It is not clear whether the Huks were convinced they had come across genuine Aswang monster attacks, or were simply horrified to discover that the American CIA would perform such barbaric acts.
This was not the first nor last time the US intelligence agencies or military faked paranormal events in order to combat foreign enemies. In World War II, the Germans had their beliefs in ghosts and horoscopes weaponized against them. In the Vietnam War, the Vietcong had their superstitions around ghosts used as a scare tactic by the U.S. military forces. The Americans played recordings of “wandering ghosts” which moaned and groaned late into the night. This served to rattle the Vietcong, who held beliefs that the souls of those who died but were not buried properly were doomed to roam the earth unhappily, forever. One official was quoted as saying, “We play upon the psychological superstitions and fears of the enemy. The method is very effective.”
This vampire stunt by the CIA is not the only crazy thing they got up to in those days. For a real gander at how your tax dollars are spent, check out Operation Northwoods, Project Acoustic Kitty, and Operation Mongoose.