Counterinsurgency and the M-VICO System Human Relations Area Files and anthropology’s dual-use legacy

David H. Price Over the past decade, ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY has published a number of features covering the David H. Price is associate relationship between anthropology and the security state. Here, David Price draws attention to an professor of anthropology aborted counterinsurgency project, known as the M-VICO project. Building on the categories and at Saint Martin’s University. He is author of Threatening structures employed in the Human Relation Area Files (HRAF), this project relied on anthropologists anthropology: McCarthyism to encode data cross-culturally on all forms of behaviour in as many strategic localities as possible, and the FBI’s surveillance which the security services subsequently scrutinize and probe for possible weaknesses that could be of activist anthropologists (2004) and Anthropological exploited. In this article, David Price shows that, in the secrecy that often surrounds the financing and intelligence: The use precise purposes of its projects, anthropology is not all that different from many other disciplines, with and neglect of American some projects serving what he calls ‘dual-use’ ends. Since civilian researchers are not supposed to have anthropology during full knowledge of these ends, research into these semi-covert purposes is particularly challenging. Ed. the Second World War (Duke,2008). His email is [email protected]. Most readers will know of instances where governments encountered by US forces fighting on the Pacific Front have made use of ethnographic expertise in order to mon- (May 1971; Murdock 1961:xii; Price 2008:91-96). itor, intervene in or establish control over populations in HRAF itself was established in 1949, and it went on colonial and militarized settings. One infamous historical to flourish with substantial funding from the US mili- example is the US Special Operations Research Office’s tary and intelligence organizations, as well as university (SORO) Project Camelot, which came to public attention sponsorships..During the 1950s, HRAF received millions in 1965 when it was exposed for attempting to hire anthro- of dollars in military contracts for projects which mostly pologists and other social scientists to work for the US involved: ‘compiling bibliographies; translating selected Army in Chile and elsewhere (see Horowitz 1967). This foreign sources; organizing data into files; assembling project, which sought to ‘assess the potential for internal names and biographical backgrounds of area experts; and war within national societies’ (Horowitz 1967:4), was ter- preparing handbooks on more than fifty countries in the minated before it could be implemented due to widespread Soviet Orbit, the Middle East, and Asia’ (HRAF 1959:24). opposition that was generated when its aims became HRAF catalogued and correlated massive amounts of eth- widely known. nographic data to answer nomothetic questions about cul- While contemporary US counterinsurgency programmes ture (Roe 2007). that seek input from ethnographic research – such as the HRAF-based research mostly presented itself as pur- ‘Human Terrain’ programme – tend to attract media atten- suing strictly theoretical questions, examining a broad tion as well as ethical condemnation from anthropologists, range of issues, including such matters as cross-cultural a wide range of counterinsurgency schemes have in fact correlations between matrilocal residence and external come and gone in the US over the years. The ways these warfare (Divale 1974), and conditions favouring matri- programmes interconnect historically, and the ways in locality, patrilocality, and extended family households which they typically strive to incorporate our expertise, (Pasternak et al. 1976, Ember & Ember 1971). However, has remained largely unstudied. HRAF had in common with many other twentieth cen- This article focuses on one of the lesser-known early tury scientific research projects the support of funds from counterinsurgency projects, the M-VICO System, which US security agencies for the compilation of its database, sought to use anthropological research in much broader agencies, which had their own interests in its research. In ways than were envisioned under Project Camelot. this mixture of the theoretical interests of (what was once Designed by SORO in the 1960s the M-VICO System called) ‘pure science’ with military applications, we can adapted the methodologies developed by the Human see the kind of ‘dual-use’ research lineage that is common Relations Area Files (HRAF) organization, to produce a in other academic disciplines (such as physics, chemistry, military counterinsurgency database for US military and computer science and communication studies). That such intelligence personnel. dual lineage exists in relation to anthropology, has yet to be fully recognized within our discipline (see Price 2003)1. Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) In the 1950s, HRAF established a branch office in As described by its website (http://www.yale.edu/hraf) Washington, DC to facilitate work on government-funded HRAF is an ‘internationally recognized research organi- area studies projects. HRAF hired a series of military- zation within the field of cultural anthropology’. Based linked personnel, whose involvements helped to reinforce (and founded) in the US at Yale University in New Haven, HRAF’s access to military funds. Yet the funding the it functions today as an international membership consor- organization received also facilitated its production of a tium of universities, colleges and research institutions. Its remarkable quantity of theoretical anthropological work stated aim is to facilitate cross-cultural research and to not directly related to its military sponsorship, but rather this end, it maintains a large ethnographic database which devoted to theoretical questions of interest to anthropolo- is primarily used by academic anthropologists for cross- gists conducting comparative cross-cultural research. cultural theory testing. Military funds allowed HRAF to amass data and code texts HRAF’s approach to cross-cultural research has its roots that led to theoretical work on social structure and a variety in the ‘Cross-Cultural Survey’, which was launched by the of other topics. The dual-use nature of this work meant Institute of Human Relations (IHR) at Yale in 1937. The that the military got what it wanted while anthropologists files created through this survey were later expanded by could continue to do their research without being tied to anthropologist Lt Commander George Murdock, during any military agenda or being subjected to military interfer- the Second World War as he attempted to tailor their con- ence in their research. tent to serve the needs of the Office of Naval Intelligence, HRAF grew rapidly during the 1950s, supported by a in particular the demand for specific data on the cultures steady stream of military-intelligence funding. Indeed, by

16 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 28 NO 1, FEBRUARY 2012 Fig. 1. One of the counter- ‘the early 1950s, HRAF was receiving support from the insurgency handbooks government at the level of $200,000 a year. The Navy, the produced by SORO for CINFAC. Army, the Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency each contributed $50,000 a year to support research on four major areas: Southeast Asia, Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Near and Middle East’ (Ford 1970:14). During the 1950s, more than 85% of HRAF’s funds came from its contracts with the US Army, Air Force and Navy, while membership dues, gifts and grants totalled less than 15% of its funds (HRAF 1959:39) (see Fig. 2). HRAF’s 1959 annual report indicates that some of these gifts and grants had ties to the CIA, including grant funds 1. Dual-use anthropology from the Rubicon Foundation (which was revealed as a during the Cold War is the subject of a book manuscript CIA funding front in 1967), and a gift from CIA opera- under production by David tive and archaeologist Donald Wilber whose many years Price. For examples and a working for the CIA included his role as a key architect of discussion of the implications of dual-use research in the CIA’s 1953 Iran coup (Harwood 1967; Wilber 1954). biological research see the Though the majority of HRAF’s funds were derived from Federation of American its servicing of the national security state, the additional Scientists, ‘Case studies money HRAF raised from wider public sources for its the- in dual use biological research’ (http://www.fas. oretical cross-cultural work enabled it to maintain a public org/biosecurity/education/ profile as an organization pursuing independent scientific dualuse/index.html). objectives at arms-length from national security. Anthropology shares a similar dual-use developmental In 1954, HRAF contracted with the US government history with other social to produce a series of volumes for the Army Handbook science disciplines (for Program based at the American University in Washington, examples see: Diamond DC. HRAF’s subcontracted authors wrote these hand- 1992, Herman 1995, Simpson 1996). books by consulting non-classified materials from aca- 2. SORO’s M-VICO demic libraries across the country after which ‘classified Fig. 2. Reported Financial Revenue Sources for the Human Relations project is not related to information was added to the unclassified material, and Area File,1949-1959 (source HRAF 1959:39). Cornell University’s Peru- the final handbooks were prepared for submission to the focused applied anthropology Membership dues Army’ (Ford 1970:14-15). ‘Vicos Project.’ 6.9% of HRAF funding for this period 3. The only two copies of HRAF found that parcelling out the production of Army this report that I have located Handbooks to scholars working with academic library mate- (one in the Pentagon Library, Member Universities $350,000 the other in Georgetown rials was ideal because it ‘played the role of alleviating the University Library) are universities and HRAF from being hampered in any way by Gifts and grants undated. However the security precautions’, and it ‘also served as a direct link with 6.8% of HRAF funding for this period known SORO employment dates of the authors and the Army and was therefore in a position to fashion the final Carnegie Corporation $162,500 references in the text products to Army specifications’ (Ford 1970:15). The funds suggests it was produced generated from the handbook work made possible a ‘consid- Ford Foundation $125,000 sometime during 1964-65. erable number of translations’ of ethnographies that found None of it’s authors were National Science Foundation $17,000 anthropologists: they came their way into HRAF’s files, and this Army money, along from international relations with ‘funding assistance from the Rubicon Foundation’, also Rubicon Foundation $27,000 (Price, Butler, & Cooper), enabled HRAF to publish several volumes of its Survey of history (Condit, and Conley), Viking Fund (Wenner-Gren) $5,000 and military science (Moore) World Cultures book series (Ford 1970:15). (Rohde 2007; SORO). The task of writing the Army handbooks was mostly Standard Oil Company $4,000 That anthropologists were subcontracted out to graduate students and faculty at pres- hardly involved, suggests tigious universities, including Indiana, Chicago, Stanford, National Academy of Sciences $2,700 parallels with the Human Terrain counterinsurgency Cornell, California, Washington, Columbia, Johns Overbrook Foundation $2,500 programme: such Hopkins, Yale, as well as the American University, NYU programmes tend to appeal and the American Geographical Society (Ford 1970:28- Donald Wilber $1,000 to military sponsors, but are 29). Contributors included major figures in the world viewed as either unethical or Committee for Promotion of Advanced $800 of academia, national security and policy circles, such inherently un-anthropological Slavic Studies by most anthropologists (see as Henry Kissinger, Lawrence Krader, Kingsley Davis, Price 2011). Andre Gunder Frank, and Nicholas Poppe, June Nash and Government contracts 4. The document’s introduction refers to Karl Wittfogel (Ford 1970). However, since the presen- 86.2% of HRAF funding for this period CINFAC in a near future tation of information in the declassified versions of the planning tense, saying that handbooks tended to be generic and formulaic, the books’ Department of the Army* $4,058,000 it ‘will be conceived and organized along pragmatic simple narratives hardly reflected the diverse political or Department of the Air Force $50,000 lines’ (Price et al. 1964-65: theoretical perspectives of their authors. intro, p. 1). In 1996, Andre Gunder Frank told me that his contribu- Department of the Navy $210,000 5. See Price (2011:106- tion as a Chicago graduate student consisted of little more 10) for more on visions Other Departments $50,000 of linking Human Terrain than a few days of library work writing cultural descrip- teams to HRAF data for tions for HRAF’s Slavic Peoples Project, and that he gave Total $5,066,000 counterinsurgent purposes little thought to what he was producing mostly because similar to those envisioned by what he produced was at the academic level of a high M-VICO’s creators. ….I personally did not know what was going on, except that 6. For example, see: http:// school textbook. He had been recruited to the project ‘by one day a colonel from the Army Intelligence Service [or the www.wilsoncenter.org/event/ Bert Hoselitz, after he ran out of money to pay me at [the Army Psychological Warfare Division] came to check us out. accounting-for-culture- Research Center in Economic Development and Cultural the-military-implications- Chicago subcontracted the 6 projects from Yale which con- for-future-humanitarian- Change], and this came along as a grad student research tracted the HRAF directly from the army.’ (personal corresp. cooperation support possibility’. 16 July 1996).

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 28 NO 1, FEBRUARY 2012 17 Fig. 3. Cover of the M-VICO Another Chicago graduate student, June Nash, was also system of counterinsurgency recruited by Bert Hoselitz for a HRAF Army Handbook. taxonomy. In 1995, Nash wrote to me that Hoselitz had hired ‘a staff of mostly Europeans’. This included a Czech economist who was supposed to do the piece I did. He sat on it for a year, receiving monthly checks, then one month before publication was due, he decided the data was too biased to use. So I was called in in July and had to produce the report by August, which I did working like a Stakhanovite much to the disgust of the other scholars. It was the only [HRAF] monograph or ms. I did. I didn’t get much of an orientation, including issues of classification’ (personal corresp. June 1995).

HRAF’s 1950s connections to the Army Handbook Program have long been part of the official institutional history recounted by Ford, Murdock and others (see Ford 1970:14-15), and the large scale of the military funding received appeared openly in HRAF’s annual reports from the 1950s (see Fig. 2). However, some of the other ways that the US military drew upon the HRAF during the early Cold War period are not well known. One of the unex- amined symbiotic connections between HRAF and the army is a little-known 1960s army project known as the ‘M-VICO system of counterinsurgency taxonomy.’

The M-VICO project In 1956, a contract between the US Army and the American University led to the establishment of the Special Operations Research Office (SORO) programme at the university’s Washington DC campus (Shrader 2008:199; SORO). SORO contracted numerous counterinsurgency- related research projects that used cultural, psychological, anthropological, economic and political data to understand nographic understandings to manipulate native populations Conley, M. C. c.1966. An and combat insurgencies. In the early 1960s it hired more (Price & Jureidini 1964). The work drew almost exclusively alphabetical index to the VICO Counterinsurgency than a dozen anthropologists. Some of these SORO anthro- on academic anthropological literature, citing the writing Taxonomy. Washington pologists had doctoral degrees, among them Felix Moos, of E.E. Evans‑Pritchard, Meyer Fortes, Louis Leakey, DC.: American University, William Carr, Bela Maday, Howard Kaufman and Herbert Jomo Kenyatta, John Middleton, George P. Murdock, C.G. Special Operations Research Office. H. Vreeland, III, while other staff anthropologists held Seligman and Monica Wilson. Price and Jureidini’s report Ford, C. 1970. Human Masters and Bachelors degrees in anthropology. In addi- involved such examinations as the following: Relations Area Files, 1949- tion, a cadre of sociologists, political scientists and military Magical practices are said to be effective in conditioning dissi- 1969: A twenty year report personnel at times also stood in as ‘anthropologists’ on sev- dent elements and their followers to do battle with Government Behavior Science Notes, 1-33. eral counterinsurgency projects (Rohde 2007; Lippincott & troops. Rebel tribesmen are said to have been persuaded that Diamond, S. 1992. Dame 1964:i; SORO Box 1, 3/8/63 SORO Roster). they can be made magically impervious to Congolese army Compromised campus. In 1963, SORO opened a field office at the US Army firepower. Their fear of the government has thus been dimin- Oxford: Oxford University base at Fort Bragg, South Carolina. and the following year ished and, conversely, fear of the rebels has grown within army Press. ranks (Price & Jureidini 1964:1). Divale, W.T. 1974. Migration, established facilities in Seoul, South Korea, and in the external warfare, and Panama Canal Zone, the latter to conduct ‘social science Projects and reports such as this viewed anthropology matrilocal residence. research on problems of understanding, affecting or sup- as a useful tool for infiltrating and controlling local pop- Behavior Science Research 9:75-133. porting foreign people and societies, especially in Latin ulations with the aim of advancing the interests of the Ember, M. & C.R. Ember America, who were involved in or threatened by insur- American military. The SORO project that most clearly 1971. The conditions gency and subversion’ (Shrader 2008:200). However, as expressed this goal is revealed in the surviving documents favoring matrilocal versus 2 patrilocal residence. a result of negative publicity and a critical congressional of the organization’s M-VICO project. The most sig- American Anthropologist hearing following disclosures about SORO’s 1965 Project nificant among these documents is The M-VICO system 73: 571-94. Camelot, SORO was terminated in July 1966, and its of counterinsurgency taxonomy3 (Price et al. 1964-65), a Harwood, R. 1967. CIA operations moved to the American University’s Center for SORO text that adapts HRAF’s cross-indexing and classi- reported ending aid to some groups. Washington Research in Social Systems (CRESS) which housed the fication system to develop a database focused exclusively Post, 22 Feb, A1. Army’s Counterinsurgency Information Analysis Center on counterinsurgency. It uses HRAF methodologies to har- Herman, E. 1995. The (CINFAC) (Shrader 2008:200) ness the ethnographic record for use in US military and romance of American psychology. Berkeley: SORO and CINFAC’s approach to culture expressed intelligence agency counterinsurgency campaigns against 4 University of California what has become a recurrent Pentagon goal; to harvest data people around the world. Press. from anthropological research for input into militarized The M-VICO System covers 230 pages, 187 of which are Horowitz, I. L.(ed.). 1967 cultural engineering campaigns. In 1960, SORO’s Project photocopied directly from HRAF’s 4th edition of Outline The rise and fall of Project Camelot. Cambridge, Prosyms Pakistan involved trying to construct culturally of cultural materials (OCM). These reproduced sections, Mass: MIT Press. appropriate counterinsurgency propaganda messages for which include the OCM’s table of contents and listings HRAF 1959. A laboratory for use in Pakistan should the need for such messages arise of hundreds of HRAF’s categories and classifications, are the study of man: 1949- 1959 Human Relation (Rhode 2007:105). Similar projects were also set up for inserted throughout the document. Interspersed with these Area Files report. New Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. OCM sections are listings and explanations of new coun- Haven: HRAF. James R. Price and Paul Jureidini’s 1964 SORO report terinsurgency categories (22 new ‘primary traits’ are listed, HTS 2008. Human Terrain on ‘Witchcraft, sorcery, magic and other psychological plus a total of 123 ‘secondary cultural traits’ of interest Team Handbook. Fort. Leavenworth, Kansas. phenomena and their implications [sic] on military and to military and intelligence personnel (see figs 3 and 4). September. paramilitary operations in the Congo’ sought to use eth- OCM categories ended at number 88, and SORO added an

18 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 28 NO 1, FEBRUARY 2012 purely theoretical cross-cultural hypotheses, the M-VICO database was designed to present cultural data in a way that would help American military and intelligence agen- cies (depending on their strategic goals at the time) to engi- neer or suppress uprisings. It also sought to accomplish more than this, promising readers that: Although sets of files will be compiled about specific coun- tries, the system will also permit the establishment of one entire set of information categories not keyed to any area or country, but which will include non-area-oriented research about func- tional aspects of insurgency and counterinsurgency. The M-VICO outline has been structured to permit its users to maintain active information categories to the extent indi- cated by the degree of insurgency and counterinsurgency in areas under study. Expansion of the degree of subversion or insurgency in a given area can thus be matched by activating the subsequent information categories keyed to the normal pro- gression of insurgent movements. The flexibility of this system can be seen in the organization of its components.’(Price et al. 1964-65: intro 2) The M-VICO matrix organized data relating to spe- cific regional counterinsurgency efforts. The project’s broader aim was to compile a massive retrievable data- base for use by social scientists working for SORO or the Counterinsurgency Information Analysis Centre (CINFAC), that would help these researchers formulate meta-theories of counterinsurgency to help understand and control movements around the globe. CINFAC and SORO’s projects were based on the hope that ‘the accu- mulation of specialized information about revolutions and their antidotes could eventually result in the beginnings of a possibility for the formulation of a genuinely creative theory of revolutionary behavior’ (Price et al. 1964-65: intro 6). In effect, HRAF’s methods of selecting and cataloguing cultural traits supplied a structure upon which the military could graft whatever it believed it needed to engage in its Fig. 4. Sample page from 89th section on ‘United States policy orientation’, which counterinsurgency operations, without the anthropologists The M-VICO system of contained further categories for cataloguing cultural data involved in compiling the original research knowing about counterinsurgency taxonomy. of interest to SORO’s counterinsurgency theorists. it. SORO overlaid its own counterinsurgency data onto The M-VICO project took its name from the existing HRAF data that had been produced by university- four categories of: ‘Vulnerabilities,’ ‘Insurgency’, based academics. It viewed its ‘selection and adaptation of ‘Counterinsurgency’, and ‘Outcomes’, arranged together completed HRAF files as points of departure for a buildup in a ‘Matrix’. The M-VICO system document describes of counterinsurgency information files [that] will result in each section as follows: great economies of time, effort, and money required for Vulnerabilities. This section has been designed to organize background research in areas and culture if that research information indicating the vulnerabilities of a particular must be started from scratch’ (M-VICO intro 3). SORO country to subversion of any type. Geographical, demographic, envisioned that the M-VICO’s adaptations would trans- political, economic, military, and psychological conditions are form HRAF academic data into a touchstone of American identified in this section counterinsurgency theory. Insurgency. The content of this section of a file is indicated The M-VICO database was conceived as a tool to be Kelly, J. D. et al (eds). by the political or social temperature in a given country. The used by SORO and CINFAC researchers ‘to respond to 2010. Anthropology and information categories in this section are organized sequen- customer requests for information and analysis’ (Price et global counterinsurgency. tially to permit either partial or complete activation, category al. 1964-65: intro 1). The introduction to The M-VICO Chicago: University of by category, as may be indicated by the progression of events. Chicago Press. The categories range from political, economic, or social unrest system stresses that SORO and CINFAC’s job were not to Lippincott, A. E. & Hartley F. through organization of underground activities on through pro- be to independently analyze intelligence, but rather to cat- D. 1964. A brief review of selected aspects of the San gressive degrees of organized violence. All numbered catego- alogue, synthesize and analyze data requested by military Blas Cuna Indians. SORO: ries in this section are preceded by the initial ‘I’ and intelligence ‘customers’. The report also adumbrated Washington DC. Counterinsurgency. This section organizes information about SORO and CINFAC’s institutional claims to understand May, M. A. 1971. A anti-subversive activities ranging from pre-insurgent preven- and have integrated anthropological notions of social retrospective view of the Institute of Human tive or reformist political, social, and economic activities on structure, stressing that M-VICO information collection Relations at Yale. through police, military, and other types of response to organ- ‘will concentrate upon that which is structural and hence Behavioral Science Notes ized violence. Information categories in this section are identi- relatively slow to change, and will not include the type of 6: 141-172. fied by the initial ‘C.’ Murdock, G.P. 1961. Outline information upon which current intelligence estimates are Outcome. This section covers the settlement of active insur- of cultural materials. 4th based’ (Price et al. 1964-65: intro 1). Revised Edition. New gencies. It organizes information about military, political, eco- With M-VICO’s additions to HRAF ‘cultural trait’ cat- nomic, and social consequences of a particular insurgency, as Haven: Human Relations egories, SORO replicated the kind of dual-use processes Area Files. well as about the outlook for the future. Categories in this sec- Pasternak, B. et al. 1976. tion are preceded by the initial ‘O.’ (Price et al. 1964-65:intro that could already be seen in HRAF’s production of Area On the conditions 4-5) Handbooks for the military. SORO’s initiative of merging favoring extended family HRAF data with newer information in the M-VICO matrix households. Journal of Anthropological Research The M-VICO matrix imitates the structure of the made HRAF into a key tool at the core of a global counter- 32: 109-23. HRAF’s OCM, but rather than being a tool for testing insurgency project. It is clear that SORO also planned to

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 28 NO 1, FEBRUARY 2012 19 add further material – presumably a mixture of classified HRAF’s methodologies linked this technological rationality and non-classified information – to the data from HRAF to Pentagon aspirations to design an equally mechanical files’ (Price et al. 1964-65:intro 4). The M-VICO system theory of counterinsurgency. While HRAF’s Outline of cul- states that: tural materials provided the skeletal structure for this theory, When completed HRAF files are used as the Matrix for a the M-VICO project was unlikely ever to have worked, Center file [e.g. the CINFAC file], the inclusion of seeming given its misconceived mechanical and engineering models superfluous material poses no problem. When Center files of cultural systems (see Price 2011: 179-191). do not have HRAF material to draw upon, obviously priori- Nevertheless, the US military hunger for ethnographic ties must be established to govern the selection of material to knowledge that lies at the root of SORO’s M-VICO project complete the information categories in the Matrix (Price et al. remains strong, tasked as the army is with managing coun- 1964-65: intro 5). terinsurgency operations in diverse contexts. The leaked As an example of how HRAF files would merge with 2008 Human Terrain Team Handbook shows contempo- other files to which CINFAC had access, the document rary counterinsurgency theorists reviving the essence of explains how HRAF materials on Cuba would be supple- the M-VICO project’s dream of collating cultural data in mented with ‘VICO sections’ that would ‘be separately uniform units that can be catalogued and quickly accessed.5 organized for, say, the Castro revolution against Batista, Apparently unaware of M-VICO’s efforts to generate or Price, J.R. & P. Jureidini 1964. Witchcraft, and the currently smoldering anti-Castro agitation’ (Price catalogue workable counterinsurgency data, the Human sorcery, magic and other et al. 1964-65: intro. 6). Through such additions, SORO Terrain Handbook states that: psychological phenomena envisaged a conjoining of academic and intelligence As part of the research, we will eventually use the Organization and their implications on analysis, in which the ethnographic record produced by [sic] of Cultural Materials schema in order to contribute our military and paramilitary operations in the Congo. academic anthropologists would serve as the core of a research results to an existing database of cultural practices SORO/ CINFAC 6-64. counterinsurgency tool intended for military use against and social systems known as the Human Relations Area Files August 8. (http://www. the very populations studied by those anthropologists (HRAF) housed at Yale University. This practice allows us to kenrahn.com/Marsh/Bay_ who had undertaken their studies in ignorance of this new provide significant, abundant, and contemporary socio-cultural of_Pigs/congorpt.htm ) information that others around the world may use in their own – , et al. c.1964-65. The application of their work. research. This practice will also allow us to tie into the HRAF M-VICO system of The only two M-VICO reports that I have been able database and compare the existence of one social practice, counterinsurgency to locate (Conley 1966, Price et al. 1964-65) portray an taxonomy. American symbolic system, or historical process in our area of operations University, Washington, ambitious project in its early stages. However, M-VICO with others elsewhere in the world. Such cross-cultural analysis DC. Special Operations was terminated not long after its creation. The reasons for enables us to get closer to explaining causation and make weak Research Office. termination remain unclear, though it is possible that the assertions of what will likely happen in the population in the Price, D. H. 2003. Subtle near future. (HTS 2008:56) means and enticing widespread negative publicity SORO received over Project carrots: The impact of Camelot prompted the abandonment. But the significance These aspirations to make links with HRAF in a manner funding on American of M-VICO does not primarily lie in what it accomplished; so clearly reminiscent of the M-VICO project reflects the Cold War anthropology. the project is important as a clear expression of the US US military’s enduring dream of developing a miraculous, Critique of Anthropology 23(4): 373-401. military’s goal of re-purposing data compiled according to magically efficient, and continually anthropologically – 2008. Anthropological HRAF’s classification schema for deployment in aggres- updated counterinsurgency databank that, like a soft- intelligence. Durham: sive Cold War counterinsurgency tactics. power equivalent of flying drones, can be used to study Duke University Press. – 2011. Weaponizing The few surviving records of the M-VICO project are and control populations at will. Such dreams do not die anthropology. Oakland: cultural artefacts of a symbiotic research initiative: while easily, regardless of past failures. However, while the US CounterPunch Books. The M-VICO system of counterinsurgency taxonomy Army buys into such schemes, they appear inappropriate or Rohde, J. E. 2007. The social super-imposed military criteria onto the HRAF’s academic ineffective to most anthropologists, for whom culture is not scientists’ war: Expertise in a Cold War nation. output, at the same time the military’s craving for cultural amenable to such simplistic attempts at social engineering. PhD Thesis, University of information of an instrument for domination acted to fund It would seem that for current military and intelligence Pennsylvania. non-military HRAF projects. A survey of more recent counterinsurgency personnel, this history of ongoing Roe, S. K. 2007. A brief history of an ethnographic endeavours shows that, in spite of the failures of many failure does not matter a great deal. However, because database. Behavioral & individual projects, the way the US Army has pursued most anthropologists make professional ethical commit- Social Sciences Librarian disarticulated cultural knowledge in intermittent counter- ments to the people they work with, and because they tend 25(2): 47-77. insurgency campaigns over the past 60 years has in some to be critical of the adaptation of their expert knowledge to Shrader, C. R. 2008. History of operations research in ways remained remarkably consistent. counterinsurgency ends, anthropologists generally cannot the United States: Volume be relied upon to respond to military overtures in the ways 2, 1961-1973. Washington The resilient genealogy of a bad idea armies might wish. Because of this, the US military has DC: Government Printing Office. Perhaps it was its penchant for simplifying and stand- repeatedly found it expedient to repurpose existing aca- Simpson, C. 1996. Science of ardizing the world through its analytic categories that demic research without its original producers being made coercion: Communications prompted the Pentagon to become such a major funder of aware of what is happening to their data – an ongoing pro- research and psychological HRAF in the early Cold War years. Whatever the reason, cess of which M-VICO is a good example. warfare 1945-1960. Oxford: Oxford University HRAF’s methods of cataloguing, organizing and ana- Meanwhile, attempts to engage current researchers con- Press. lyzing the ethnographic record long held the US military’s tinue, with Human Terrain and new military cultural-engi- SORO Special Operations interest. I have seen no archival or published materials neering initiatives continuing to solicit anthropological Research Office Archival Records, American indicating any direct collaboration between HRAF and knowledge for counterinsurgency operations. With new University. SORO on the M-VICO counterinsurgency project, and I programmes such as the Cultural Knowledge Consortium Tobin, J. 1990. The HRAF doubt that anyone at HRAF knew about it. But this is not (http://culturalknowledge.info/), the Pentagon dons a as radical text? Cultural the point. The point is that awareness doesn’t functionally friendly academic-looking face as it approaches anthro- Anthropology 5(4): 473- 487. matter: HRAF built a tool in one war that the US military pologists and other academic experts, asking them to share Wilber, D. 1954. Overthrow felt it could use in other ways in subsequent wars – uses their cultural expertise for unspecified ends – or counter- of Premier Mossadeq of that were independent of any theoretical research HRAF insurgency ends that are increasingly framed as ‘humani- Iran, Nov. 1952-August 6 1953. CIA Clandestine might have pursued, as I argued elsewhere, such dual-use tarian’. Without a detailed critical accounting of the ways Service History. relationships in anthropology were common during the that anthropological knowledge has been harnessed by [Declassified Secret CIA Cold War (e.g. Price 2003). military and intelligence agencies in times past, anthro- document] http://www. If the creation of HRAF represented, as Joseph Tobin pologists are left with good reason to remain aloof from nytimes.com/library/world/ mideast/iran-cia-intro.pdf argues, ‘a radical experiment in technological rationality’ such ventures. l (accessed 3/2/11). (Tobin 1990: 482), then SORO’s bootlegged expansion of

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