The US helped the Philippines devise and implement a counterinsurgency operation, and made considerable progress, including the use of more napalm.20 In a bit of bizarre psychological warfare, Lansdale also collaborated closely with Desmond FitzGerald—a Wisner recruit at the CIA—to create a vampire. As part of a range of psychological operations alongside the war on the guerrillas, CIA agents spread the rumor that an aswang, a bloodsucking ghoul of Filipino legend, was on the loose and destroying men with evil in their hearts. They then took a Huk rebel they had killed, poked two holes in his
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