The espionage agency also considered a plan that included the use of toys. The news was picked up by all the American media, including those very close to the military like Stars and Stripes.
The "Devil Eyes" operation received the go-ahead in the 2005. The CIA secretly began developing a standard twelve-inch action figure depicting Osama bin Laden. To achieve them they asked the help of the best minds in the sector. What is even more curious is that the character's face was reproduced with particular techniques. The contact with children's hands (and their body heat) would have dissolved the color of the face revealing another similar to that of a demon (although vaguely reminiscent of a Sith of Star Wars), with penetrating green eyes.
To ensure the success of the mission, the CIA contacted the toy maker Donald Levine, a former Hasbro executive and one of the creators of the GI-Joe toys, able to generate 1964 billion-dollar business since the year they hit the shelves. dollars. The CIA became interested in Levine both because he was a true sacred monster in the toy industry and because he had a vast network of contacts with Chinese industries that would then mass produce Bin Laden's action figure.
To date there is no certainty about the diffusion of toys. According to some unconfirmed rumors, a hundred prototypes would have been made as part of a pre-production cycle in the Chinese city of Dongguan. The final prototype was "dressed" in a traditional Pakistani dress inside a well-made cardboard box. The cost of the toy would have been paltry: the end was certainly not the economic return. The action figures produced, would have been loaded on board a cargo ship with destination in the Pakistani city of Karachi in 2006. The CIA would have interrupted the mission after evaluating the prototypes.
Regardless of the "Devil Eyes" project, this is only the latest US intelligence operation to try to win the hearts and minds of local people or try to make them rise against the government. Famous, for example, during the Cold War, the creation of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, entirely funded by the CIA, as well as intellectual journals, concert tours, art exhibitions and academic seminars.
Famous, but not so well known, is the hand of the CIA in the diffusion of Doctor Zhivago (see article). But the examples to undermine the Soviet Union have been so many and only a few are known by public opinion. Suffice it to say that the American secret services used "provocateurs" to interrupt communist festivals or other young people for the distribution of carefully designed propaganda leaflets.
It would also be correct to say that the CIA precedes any armed intervention by Uncle Sam. In the 1994, before the invasion of Haiti, the CIA distributed soccer balls to demonstrate to the people the generosity of the United States. Still partly covered by military secrecy, CIA operations after September 11 against Al - Qaeda and Islamic extremism. In Afghanistan, the CIA had an advanced operational base known as Camp Chapman in the province of Khost, the same base where seven agents were killed in a suicide attack in the 2009. At least one Osama bin Laden action figure is held in Langley, the CIA headquarters.
Franco Iacch
(photo: Whashington Post)
