To heighten the impact of the voting, Lansdale orchestrated a typical bit of black propaganda. After the Military Intelligence Service arrested a Huk agitprop cell in Manila, Lansdale used their communications channels to write his own propaganda on behalf of the insurgency. His theme was “Boycott the Election!” based on the assumption that the 1951 vote would be as dirty as its 1949 predecessor. He produced an entire fake directive along those lines “typed on a captured Huk typewriter on captured paper, with authenticating identification.” So realistic was Lansdale’s missive that
