The CIA’s Vampires: Draining Blood in the Jungle
The Cold War made for all kinds of morally grey operations, but few darker than the terror campaign waged against the communist Huks in the Philippines. Unable to overcome the guerrillas, the US were forced to summon vampires.
The Cold War made for all kinds of morally grey operations, but few darker than the terror campaign waged against the communist Huks in the Philippines. Unable to overcome the guerrillas, the US were forced to summon vampires.
In Filipino folklore there’s a creature known as the aswang, a night horror. While the term is broad its most commonly known in its vampire incarnation, a beautiful woman by day who shape-shifts into a blood-drinking monster at night, stabbing/feeding with a long hollow tongue.
The Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon (People’s Army against Japan), known as Huks by Americans, were originally organized in central Luzon to fight the invading Japanese Army in 1941. Communists, they took up again in rebellion once the US puppet government took power after WW2.
The history of the Huk Rebellion is long and fairly complex, but in short the main issue is that after the Philippines recapture by Americans their efforts against the IJA were not rewarded, their leaders were arrested, and they were forcibly disarmed. By 1949 it was open war.
President Truman, alarmed by the successful communist revolt in a key puppet state, authorized military aid in 1950. Financial backing let the Philippine government assemble more death squads, but even more crucial was the CIA’s advice, in the form of one Edward Lansdale.
Ed Lansdale was a fairly unremarkable advertising man before joining the air force in World War II, where he carved a niche for himself as a psychological analyst and “native whisperer” in the back office. After the war he requested to stay in the Philippines for Asian 6 reasons.
Shortly after the CIA’s involvement began, the Huks began to experience new, more mysterious casualties. Lone soldiers, hanging from trees, their necks punctured with gory wounds, completely drained of blood. The Huks, recognizing signs of aswang attack, would avoid such places.
That wasn’t all, though. On the walls and doors of villages sympathetic to the Huks, ominous evil “eyes of God” appeared looking at the houses of suspected Huk supporters. The death squads were one thing, but vampires and malignant curses? The Huks began to be shunned, abandoned.
It wasn’t until much later in Lansdale’s own memoirs were the details of the operation made known. CIA-advised enforcement squads were taking Huk casualties and using a special pole to inflict nasty neck punctures, then they’d hang the corpse upside-down to drain it of blood.
Along with clandestine evil-eye painting, the entire aswang situation was a CIA psyop, designed by a man with deep roots in Filipino folklore who was also into the mildly occult arts of palm-reading and astrology. What’s a little ritualistic murder to the American State?
The success of the aswangs against the Huks led to further CIA psyops, culminating in the vile MKUltra Project attempting domestic mind control. CIA sponsored movies and television explicitly designed to plant triggers in the populace. Of course MKUltra is officially shut down.
Should internal Huks ever really start to get going, you can fully expect General Lansdale’s successors to dust off the old tactics here at home. After all, how better to protect shadowy bloodsucking elites than the specter of a vampire?
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