Cold War
With XXL condoms against the Red Army – the crazy plans of the CIA
The condom plan was supposed to break the morale of the Red Army soldiers.
© akg-images / / Picture Alliance
The CIA wanted to fight enemies of the West with explosive shells, gigantic condoms and fake pornography. But the crazy plans never worked.
The series “Mad Men” portrays the great and crazy time of the advertisers in the 1960s, but it was even crazier in parts of the CIA. The post-war period felt like a pre-war era; the confrontation with the USSR seemed inevitable. In addition to the well-known nuclear armament, there were countless attempts by the secret services to weaken the enemy. When the winds were favorable, the USA used large balloons to send leaflets on the trip to “enlighten” the population in the east or to turn against the local governments.
In the early 1950s, director Frank Wisner is said to have hatched a completely ludicrous plan. Wisner was head of a camouflaged department for psychological warfare at the time. The dealt with manipulating news abroad and also tried to set up a kind of guerrilla army behind the Iron Curtain, which should come to the aid of the Allies at the crucial moment with uprisings behind the front. The later secret armies such as Gladio in Italy were based on these forerunners.
Concrete plan or just an idea?
In addition to these realistic plans, he came up with the idea of smuggling particularly large condoms into the USSR or having them thrown. The XXL rubbers should be particularly large, but should be labeled “Medium”. This trick was intended to convince Soviet women and Red Army soldiers that the US soldiers were particularly masculine. Wisner hoped this would demoralize the enemy. The plan was never implemented, so it remains unclear whether it was just a crazy idea of the bon vivant Wisner, or whether it was a serious concept after all.
In fact, the original idea came from World War II and is attributed to Winston Churchill. In different versions of the story, the British prime minister wanted to shock either the Nazis or his allies in the US or USSR with oversized British condoms. In Churchill’s case, it is a bon mot that alludes to a fact: In bad weather, in the mud and during landing operations, soldiers put condoms on the barrels of their weapons. For this, the British soldiers’ condoms were enlarged beyond the appropriate size. In truth, your own soldiers must have been frustrated when they wanted to use the oversized models for the actual purpose.
Holed condoms
The CIA story is certainly not unthinkable. At that time, far more absurd plans were forged. In the Philippines, the CIA tried to sabotage the career of a politician, Claro M. Recto, because he was dangerous to the CIA candidate. A number of slanderous articles launched did not have the desired success, so they resorted to the condom weapon. Gift packages were prepared with “Claro M. Recto – the friend of the people” written on them. They should be distributed to potential voters. They contained condoms that the CIA had purposely punctured in order to sabotage the reputation of the politician at his base.
The CIA candidate’s surprise death in a plane crash made efforts to eliminate his competitor unnecessary. In order to discredit the Indonesian President Sukarno, the CIA came up with the idea of disseminating lewd pictures of him. Sukarno himself had no sex pictures, so a porn film was made in Los Angeles with a blonde and a male actor who was made similar to Sukarno by an elaborate mask. However, the film was never distributed.
Killer clam
Most of the murder plans were aimed at Fidel Castro. The CIA intended to assassinate him by trying to slip an explosive cigar on him. Once infected, it would have torn the revolutionary’s head off. There were also plans to kill Castro using his passion for diving. For example, by trying to contaminate the inside of your diving suit with a contact poison. The project of having the annoying Castro done by a super shell was even more brilliant.
For the shell plan, you didn’t have to get close to Castro. The mussel should be placed in its diving area. And of course it wasn’t a real clam. It should be artificially made, be extra large, and have a glowing and bizarre look. The diving enthusiast Castro, according to the calculation, would then inevitably be attracted by the gem – if he had touched the shell, it would have exploded, because in reality the shell was a camouflaged depth charge. Castro survived this and many other plans, however.