SYSTEMS OF COMMUNICATION
Telephone: Avoid using it. Start from the assumption that it is tapped. In case of necessity: speak with a natural voice but without explicitly mentioning names or meeting places. Agree on the use of conventional phrases (number the meeting places, use the date of the following day and falsify the appointment time). If a telephone call is made from a private phone keep the call as brief as possible (if the line is tapped directly from nearby rather than from the main office it takes almost 15 minutes to trace the phone number from which the call is being made.
Written Messages: Avoid using them, never use the regular mails (mail can be checked very, very easily). Never trust third persons with compromising messages. Do not keep them in the house or on your person any more than ·necessary. Destroy them after reading them.
Contacts with Comrades: In the case of comrades who work in the same place or who regularly see each other the best method obviously is to communicate verbally. In the case of comrades whose homes are known avoid being seen at their home.
CRITERIA FOR CHOOSING A MEETING
Avoid places that are near police stations or other similar places and in general avoid places in the city habitually under surveillance by the forces of order (financial districts, high crime areas). Remember the Reale law: don't stand in front of banks, post offices, headquarters of various public service facilities.
HOW TO GO TO A MEETING PLACE
The most important thing is to avoid bringing a tail with you. Keep in mind that a tail can be old or young, a man or a woman, and in any case be quite ordinary-looking.
In case a comrade realizes he is being tailed, it is best not to show that you've noticed and above all don't try to lose the pig: it is useless to confirm for him that you're carrying out illegal activity! Take him for a ride around the city, in the opposite direction of the meeting place, do some shopping and then go home.
GROUP MEETING PLACES
Public Places: are okay for small groups of comrades and for meetings for discussion purposes only...
Legal Private Homes: are useful for bigger meetings and indispensable for very long discussions. Best are homes of comrades unconnected to the organization and to all political activity and who are in a relationship of trust with one of our comrades.
Illegal Private Homes: are stable structures of the organization, indispensable for the riskiest illegal and material activities. They are buildings acquired with false names and in any case not traceable to a comrade. Every illegal house must have a person who is responsible for it who, besides looking after it from a legal point of view manages it, that is they appear as its tenant and maintain· a minimum of relations with neighbors.
True work of gathering information must above all: lose all character of irregularity or improvisation, in other words it must become a methodical labor, which is carried out in a planned fashion, with established goals and priorities. It must not be a separate activity; its reason for being must be connected to the overall political initiative of the organization. This means one must also assume a military knowledge of the terrain on which one acts.
SEVERAL AIMS OF INFORMATION GATHERING
In the Workplace:
1) An accurate knowledge of the physical structure (planimetry) of the workplace,
2) a study of the production cycle,
3) a deeper understanding of the functioning of all machinery within the workplace, of the exits, etc., with enough detail to be able to develop methods of sabotage,
4) a study of the flow chart of the power structure in the workplace
5) a reconstruction of the control hierarchy from the head of personnel in the office and their political attributes,
6) a reconstruction of the repressive network (security guards, police, office spies),
7) a knowledge of yellow union-ism (scabbing).
This investigative work makes use of particular methods which must guarantee the absolute certainty of the information and the absolute precision of the facts. The successful outcome of the illegal initiative and the safety of the comrades depends on these two requirements. The instruments to use in these investigations and which already imply some risks are: surveillance, tailing, infiltration, raids and interrogation.
Surveillance
Consists of watching a house or a headquarters to study the schedules of a person, the comings and goings from a house, the situation on a block, etc. It is a static control which requires staying in one place often for hours. The biggest risk consists of making store owners or residents of the area·suspicious, or allowing oneself to be noticed and remembered by too many people.
1. The choice of an observation post (or better yet several posts) more or less sheltered or which provides you with a good alibi (a cafe with a window that gives you a good view of the position; a telephone booth where you can carry on endless conversations; a park bench, etc.). If this is impossible alternate stopping at a quiet spot with walks along the street. Avoid prolonged stops in a car (you make their job easier: its easier to write down a license plate number than to describe a person).
2. Switch off so that one comrade is not in the same place for hours, or work together to switch things up.
3. Never ask nearby store-owners for information: it's likely that they know the target and can compromise your investigation. Worse, they may be friendly with the police.
Shadowing Someone
It is useful to know the habits, schedules, routes, places frequented, and sometimes the actual home of the object of investigation. It is a moving observation that requires much attention. The obvious risk is that you will be noticed by the person you are following, to put him on his guard or worse yet to get your cover blown (and allow them to call in the police.
Some rules to follow:
1. Follow at a distance not too great that you lose sight of them and never too close.
2. In more isolated areas increase the distance. If the neighborhood becomes semi-deserted, redouble your precaution; you may want to give up and have another comrade tail the next day.
3. If you are on foot dress so that you are anonymous-looking and change your dress style somewhat. If the tail is done with a car, use a very common one which does not stand out.
4. In the case of an investigation, keep changing comrades and cars.
5. Depending on how hot your target is, you should realize if they are already being tailed or how worried they are about being tailed. If either apply then give up tailing them.
OTHER EXCERPTS FROM LATER BR MANUALS
Investigation
The achievement of any goal (be it propagandistic, be it a high level military one) must be preceded by a preliminary investigation which establishes the conditions for its success in relation to the minimum risk towards the freedom of the comrades.
The conditions for carrying out an action are not always the best for purposes of disengagement: the decisive question in deciding what risks to take is the importance of the objective. In general, despite the progressive tightening of nets of the repressive structure (plans for citywide and regional roadblocks by the special police corps) it holds true that for a specific objective and for a definite period of time (which it's true, is becoming shorter and shorter) the organized force put in the field can be superior to the force of the enemy.
It is this possibility that must be confirmed in all its particulars by the investigation. The investigation must, in other words theoretically comprehend the whole terrain of the action; mentally go over all the phases of the action and the disengagement that follows and sometime go through a test-run of these phases where the complexity of a specific action requires it and where the succession of phases of action.and within each of these phases the movements of the action groups must be perfectly synchronized.
The comrades who carry out the investigation are also those who must carry out the action.
Reprisal and Sequester
It is a good idea to have a picture of the person (take it from the newspapers or have a comrade get it) and start from the work place which in general is known since it's there that the individual regularly carries out his notorious activity which has made him guilty. Often the home of this type of person does not officially appear in the phone book nor is it traceable from the car they use since it often is a government car. In such cases the home must be directly located by tailing them. If the person in question moves by car the tail can be done by car, but in general it is dangerous to wait for a long time near closely guarded public buildings. In this case you can resort to tailing on foot over successive portions of the route. You must wait for their car, whose distinguishing marks you learn well, until it comes to the first intersection and you wait to see what direction it takes. The next day you wait for it at the second intersection, and so forth.
If they leave work in too irregular a pattern, then it is necessary to establish surveillance starting from their home, keeping in mind that the comrades can only wait in one place to carry out the reprisals or the sequestration for a very limited period of time, one hour at most. Once a certain regular pattern of behavior has been established it is a matter of deciding the place of the reprisal or sequestration in the immediate vicinity of the home or the place of work or on the way to or from work... The same approach (though simplified) holds if the person is on foot or takes public transportation and it is therefore possible to maintain a continuous visual contact; in this case it is best that the tail be carried out by several comrades to avoid arousing suspicion. If it is decided to carry out the action on the road, carry out the ambush right after a curve in the road, or simulate an accident or street work in progress or even dress up as policemen...
Kidnapping Technique
While the reprisal ends with the arrest of the person who will be left in their car without keys, under the conditions desired, or accompanied for a brief tract of road to a more secluded place (during reprisals the threat of use of weapons naturally leads to their use and the eventual rebellion of the person only escalates the situation), a sequestration is carried out against a person on foot or behind the wheel of a car, requires the literal carrying of the person to a van or a car and for this operation two comrades are required (three and they get in each others' way).
If the person arrives on foot, approach them in such a way as to cross their path in the immediate vicinity of the waiting van or car. While one comrade passes them, the other paralyzes them with a blow to the stomach. The first comrade takes them by the shoulders, the other by the legs, and together they load the person into the vehicle. If the person is in a car,, immediately open the car door and stun them with a blow to the head so they will let go of the steering wheel. While two comrades carry out this operation, others instead must have weapons in hand to hold passersby at bay or dissuade them from intervening. In the van two other comrades seize the person, immobilize them, tie their hands and feet with small chains and then put them in two jute bags that have been cut and sewn together so·as to make up an approximately 2 meter (6 2/3 feet) package. They put a gag in the person's mouth and a blindfold over their eyes. The van should cover a short stretch of road; then carry out the transfer of the sack on a street that has already been chosen, dark if possible, where another vehicle is waiting where the package will be placed between the front and back seats and kept under constant control by a comrade.
Just as the support unit must·watch and act with the sole purpose of making sure the sequester or reprisal goes smoothly, so during the transfer the support unit which follows the van must stop it from being followed and must therefore stop any car that tries to follow, insuring in this way that the transfer is not observed.
Once the transfer is carried out the comrades of the support unit must also change cars and insure that the third stage of the operation is completed, that is reaching the base. The base must be such that it guarantees the maximum secrecy for the last operation, the transfer from the vehicle to the base itself. To this end one can consider enclosing the person (for a few days only)in a cell made out of a box, building an easily simulated double wall, of the air raid defense type, on the bottom. For long imprisonments an apartment is needed, in which a sound-proof cage is built in any one of the rooms using styrofoam and fiberglass and directly accessible from the box.
But we are fighters and we know how to learn from the errors, delusions and defeats which the struggle inevitably brings with it. We are Marxist-Leninists and we know that "to fight, to be defeated, to fight again, to be defeated again, to fight anew until the final victory" is the law of history.
- Brigate Rosse
