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• Pretending there is unity of thinking and closeness in spiritual
values and interests.
• Discrediting other competing influences on the receiver that
interfere with the manipulator’s goal.
• Offering sympathy and support to the receiver under circumstances
that eventually can be turned to the manipulator= s advantage. For
example, one can use a receiver’s vanity and conceit to advantage
with flattery and respect and by drawing one= s ally into the
conversation against another. 402
Technical Devices
In addition to the psychological and information manipulation devices
described by Gorbachev, modern states must first and foremost focus on
technical manipulation. Technical devices have been used at the highest levels
and focus on computers—the lifeline of the Information Age. One of the most
bizarre, yet successful, manipulations using a technical device may have
involved the United States, according to Alvin Snyder, former director of
worldwide television for the US Information Agency during the Reagan years.
Snyder produced a film about the downing of Korean Airlines (KAL) Flight
007. The film, shown at the UN, was designed to display to the world the
insensitive and illegal way the Soviets shot down a civilian airliner. Snyder
now says that important data was intentionally withheld from him, data that
made it clear he was not given information on the pilots’ conversations with
ground elements, the ground controllers’ responses, or the fighter pilots’
actions.
According to new information Snyder has, the pilot fired warning shots
and tipped his wings in the international signal to force the plane to land, all of
which failed to get the crew= s attention. As a result, Snyder= s film version of
the incident, based on selected sound bites, was incorrect. As Snyder noted:
Using text in Russian and an English translation, along with a
chronology and map of the route, the tape supported the contention that
402 The discussion of information under information and psychological devices was
taken from M. I. Gorbachev, “Manipulyativnye priemy delovogo obshcheniya”
[Business Translation Techniques], Bezapasnost’ [Security], Moscow, No. 7-12 (23),
July-December 1994, pp. 101-104. The author would like to thank Harry Orenstein of
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe for translating selected pages of this
article.
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