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FBI Releases File On the Anarchist Cookbook
An anonymous reader noted that the FBI has released its file on The Anarchist Cookbook, the 1971 manual of mayhem. It's a pretty long PDF that isn't actually OCRd but there's some crazy stuff in there. But my personal favorite is the scanned in images of 3.5" floppy disks.
There was a chemistry teacher at my high school who had a copy printed off and bound on his front counter desk.
Of course, he also like to set up those little green plastic army men on that counter during tests, pour flammable liquid over the scene, then light it and play with them, making sound of death and agony as they melted.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
That's how I backed up all my floppy disks, too!
Ah the book with the recipe for napalm that will according to legend blow you the fuck up. Great stuff. Its all fun and games until someone explodes into a ball of fire.
ACK
Of course by "scanned" you mean "photocopied" (and that photocopy later scanned).
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Back in the day, like in 7th grade or something, a guy at my school took it with him to school because we were all very cool back then. Then they had a meeting with his parents, lol.
Almost as cool as using "lol"?
Disturbing to look at letter after letter to the FBI. All these well meaning people thinking that they're doing the right thing by reporting this work to the FBI, suggesting that the FBI stop it's publication. These people are a greater threat to freedom than anyone who has bought this book.
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When my father found me reading a copy he took it and destroyed it, providing me w/ a copy of the TM 31-210 Improvised Munition Handbook instead:
http://www.libertylib.com/improvised-munitions-handbook/improvised-munitions-handbook.shtml
Which if nothing else should be mandatory reading for people who mistakenly believe gun control can be made to work --- I used to make black powder by collecting nitrates from underneath piles of cow manure in local fields, collecting charcoal when emptying the ashes from the fireplace and sulfur by purchasing sulfur candles from the local store (unfortunately there weren't any naturally occurring sulfur deposits w/in bicycling distance).
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
The letter from congressman George Mahon (D-TX) is disheartening.
He tells Hoover that "several of my constituents" have expressed alarm about the book. He then says he has not read the book but "the reviews have caused quite a bit of controversy." Finally, he asks for something to tell the constituents.
The process is totally hollow. And isn't that the way things continue to work40 years later? If anything, it's worse. Today's congressperson would scream louder and vilify the opposition (all while willingly ignorant about the issue at hand.)
Boy, I tell you what, man, you got that there dang ol' FBI hangin' around yer house, them black helicopters goin' chopchopchopchopchop all over the place, man.
Ah the book with the recipe for napalm ...
I simply don't understand the legacy this "book" has gathered over the years. I, in my infinite youth, once read the manual and you know what jumped out at me wasn't all these alleged homemade napalm and pipe bombs ... in fact, that stuff seemed so low quality and stupid to me that I don't even remember much of it. And I've often been told the napalm in the book really isn't the best stuff you can make with homemade items. Apparently there are much better mediums to use with fuel like Vaseline (petroleum jelly) if you can get enough of it.
... oftentimes this trouble is easily traced back to you no matter how well the book tries to convince the reader you're being super careful and are virtually untraceable.
But what really stuck out to my late teenage mind was how the author of it seemed to be obsessed with disruption. I remember it reading like a case study for "common" scenarios whereby you could operate within questionable circumstances to undermine regular corporate and government actions -- specifically in Western nations.
For example, in one of the scenarios the book presupposes that you have a large contractor building some huge building right next door to your home that you refused to sell (like the beginning of the film Up). So it goes about how to put nails through strips of webbing, then lay them across the dig site at night and cover them with a bit of gravel to puncture holes in the tires of machinery. Or get used oil from your car and go spill it next to their machinery and then tip off the EPA. The list went on and on for many pages about how to sabotage several scenarios.
And I wasn't too impressed with it. It was as if everyone thought that until this point in time no one had ever engaged in determined guerrilla warfare or an unfriendly neighborly spat. This book exhibits somewhat of an active imagination in causing trouble
It simply blew my mind that someone could be arrested for possession of this book because after all the notoriety it's really not that useful. Sure, if your given scenario matches any in the books, you've got some cheap tricks at your disposal but anyone with an imagination would be far better equipped than anyone with that book. I found nothing permanently useful in that book and would recommend any of the US Army Field Manuals for reading before that since the information is more generalized and interesting like the one on Counterinsurgency. FM 21-76 served me well in Boy Scouts -- probably better than the boy scout's manual. Why do we flip out that The Anarchist's Cookbook is available to terrorists when the Army is releasing far more useful books to anybody and everybody?
My work here is dung.
I always found Anarchists a bit gamey, no matter how they're cooked.
rewriting history since 2109
I wanted to learn how to make Napalm from human fat
Napalm is a mix of gasoline with soap. To make soap from human fat, get (by weight) 7 parts fat, 2 parts water, and 1 part sodium hydroxide. Mix thoroughly in a blender until it starts thickening. Pour in a mold and let stand for a few days. To make napalm, grind the soap and mix 2 parts gasoline with 1 part soap.
From the PDF under "enclosure" from someone reviewing the book:
"The formulas and procedures presented concerning the production of high and low explosives cannot be called incorrect but they are not always complete and therefore present a hazard to anyone using the information"
No kidding. Darwin Awards waiting to be handed out.
As a BBSer with my own copy back in the day, we didn't dare try any of that shit because it even looked like it was missing steps.
The Amateur Astronomer's Handbook has recipes for silvering mirrors, and there are warnings to not keep the mixture (sugar recipe) standing around too long because it creates silver fulminate. The complete lack of similar safety warnings in the Anarchists' Cookbook is a red flag not to try this stuff. Consult a real explosives manual instead.
--
BMO
The true power of The Anarchist Cookbook has almost nothing to do with its contents. Matter of fact, if it were Mexican Cuisine, the Anarchist Cookbook would be day-old Taco Bell. The thing that William Powell (the original author) managed to do was accidentally come up with one of the underground's most powerful BRAND NAMES, one that could single-handedly ignite the imaginations of a typical teenager so much that it got out of his control. Once the publisher saw that it was such a money-maker, they refused to let it die. Eventually, the early crop of computer underground "anarchists" on the BBS scene took the book concept and created digital extensions of the information in the form of "G-Files" and early 8-bit graphics. By the time the Anarchist Cookbook made it to the Internet, it was no longer a book. It was a movement, one without direction or guidance or measurable intent, all loosely bound together by a set of files that had been slapped with the same Anarchist Cookbook brand name. Most of the people who downloaded the Cookbook, in whatever form, probably never tried much beyond a smoke bomb or two. The thrill was in the power of the potential of the information itself, even if it was incorrect. For the FBI to dedicate this much time studying it makes me sit back and scratch my head. Truth be told, the Central Library in any given city is far more dangerous... it just doesn't sound anywhere near as appealing to the typical kid.
Max Nomad . Bohemian Griot Publishing, LLC . http://www.bgpublishing.com
Well about 1981 I got a hold of a 336 page printable copy floating around the BBS world. In 1981 I was not much older than your son, and around 1983 (pretty sure we got our printer in 1983 - we also got a non-loaner modem that year) I almost got suspended from school for bringing a couple of pages to school. It didn't help that another kid photocopied them and started selling them in the library... then fingered me as his source, the cops got called, my parents got called, etc - incidentally, I mainly brought them because of the killer smoke bomb of potassium nitrate and sugar that I wanted to show another kid, and the one that they terrified the principal didn't even work (potassium permanganate and gasoline - in the late 1970s a neutralizing agent was added to pure potassium permanganate fish tank cleaner to slow its reaction with gasoline, and pure permanganate is harder to get now).
Scary that I even remember the ingredients... but my day with the police and the principal scared the beejesus out of me, so much so that I became much more careful with just about everything. I admit, before I was 16 or so I committed a lot of white collar crime (hacking in the bad sense, phreaking, piracy, etc) with my parents largely ignorant of it. Funny how now I'm very much against the crimes I perpetrated back then, and most of the people I associated with are too (in fact, the two I keep in contact with are an MIT trained professor and a guy with a doctorate in physics who works for Alcatel-Lucent).
Are you kidding? The right thing to do is to read it with your kid, and explain each and every way that following the book would get him blown up. Then you take him out and build some model rockets or smoke bombs so he has a non-destructive way to deal with the urge. This kind of material is a perfect teaching opportunity.
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Required reading if you like the Anarchists Cookbook. See also:
http://earth-liberation-front.org/
http://www.animalliberationfront.com/
Which have practical field tested techniques.
I'll probably end up on a watch list for this post.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
"Five day waiting period? But my psychotic ex is threatening to kill me and my children TODAY!"
From reading the actual FBI file, I noticed something interesting :
1. The FBI made an effort to investigate the book's author BEFORE they determined a crime had even been committed.
2. The FBI wrongly assumed the author was a pseudonym because they felt the topics "spoke from firsthand experience". They obviously never asked a chemist or someone who had actually tried these techniques if anything in the book would work. Had they done so, they would have realized the book was fake. Also, these government agents tended to take advertising copy at face value...getting information from the media the same way we do.
3. The FBI REALLY IS WATCHING YOU. Send them a letter and a news clipping and complain, and the FBI will INVESTIGATE YOU! Every letter written by some old lady had a note attached where an agent checked the files on that lady and found out what she had sent in the past. (evidently each time when the FBI found that a person had sent them things that seemed supportive of the agency, they would stop investigating)
The Man's own private records reveal many of the things we say about him are true. The Man really is ignorant and responds to popular opinion, not common sense. Criticize The Man, or communicate with him at all, and he will try to find a reason to send you to prison.