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.

Comments

Well meaning.. but evil

[Hatta]

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.

Dangerous book w/ incomplete instructions

[WillAdams]

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

Re:Dangerous book w/ incomplete instructions

[circletimessquare]

gun control is not meant to stop criminal masterminds and intelligent determined boy scouts. its meant to stop casual hotheads and insane people. if you stop people from getting guns easily someone like yourself and criminal geniuses will still have guns. nobody thinks making guns harder to get will stop someone like you

so who won't get guns? the kind of guy who shoots up a disco because a chick looked at him funny or the guy who shot the congresswoman in arizona. these people aren't fine thinking specimens: they get guns simply because they are easy to get. so make guns less easy to get, and insane people and casual hotheads won't get guns. that's it

you have to understand, they aren't trying that hard, at much of anything in life, and it is these sort of people that cause all of the tragedy with guns

i would be able to understand gun lovers a little better if they didn't freak out at the most sane obvious and prudent restrictions on guns

Re:Dangerous book w/ incomplete instructions

[Ben4jammin]

I think there are a couple of issues here. First of all, how are you going to define a "casual hothead" before the fact? Sure it easy to see after the fact, but how do you define it beforehand in a way that isn't also going to snare a lot of people that it shouldn't?

With someone who is insane, once they are diagnosed you have a paper trail. But what about before that? Exactly when are they insane? How can you tell before they act without also limiting the rights of everyone?

The NICS guidelines (http://crime.about.com/od/guns/a/handgun_check.htm) can help, but what about people that up to a point have been good citizens, but for whatever reason, go off?

And if you look at what has been going on in CA (http://www.redding.com/news/2009/oct/12/gov-signs-ammunition-sales-bill/) check this part out:

De Leon spokesman Dan Reeves has said the local laws have helped police track down 200 criminals who bought handgun ammunition. Some were drug dealers and many had large caches of illegal guns or explosives

So even with a BUNCH of laws, both state and federal, covering both guns AND ammo bad guys still get guns/ammo. Now true, they are referring to convicted felons, which is not what you were talking about. But none of those people were convicted felons the first time they committed a felony. Are you sure it is so easy to predict? At some point, if you aren't careful, the gun laws will just put law abiding citizens at a severe disadvantage without actually helping to keep guns out of the wrong hands. Where that point of diminished returns is, I don't know. But my point is that I think you are oversimplifying things a bit.

I Don't Understand This Legacy

[eldavojohn]

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.

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 ... 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.

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?

Don't like

[JustOK]

I always found Anarchists a bit gamey, no matter how they're cooked.

The Real Power behind The Anarchist Cookbook...

[MaxNomad68]

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.