Political Warfare Cadres Academy

Political Warfare Cadres Academy   (Military academy)
Motto	To be as cruel as the enemy
Successor	National Defense University (Taiwan)
Formation	July 15, 1951
Headquarters	Tapei, Taiwan
Interests	counterinsurgency, anti-communism, School of the Americas, John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, torture, WACL
CIA-supervised Taiwanese military academy known for its training in torture, especially to Latin-American police, military and intelligence forces.

The Political Warfare College, better known under its former name Political Warfare Cadres Academy, is a military academy in Beitou District, Taipei, Taiwan, known for its CIA-supervised training in torture.

Foundation

CIA Station Chief Ray Cline and Yaroslav Stetsko supervised the establishment of the Academy The academy was tasked with training cadres from the military government of Chiang Kai-Shek for anti-communist repression.

The academy is the Asian equivalent of the Psychological Warfare Center at Fort Bragg (USA) and the School of the Americas.

Name

It was at first known as the Political Staff College, but renamed the Political Warfare Cadres Academy in 1970. The Academy, named Political Warfare College, is today part of the Taiwan National Defense University.

Graduates

Through the World Anti-Communist League, the Academy played a major role in training the police, military and intelligence forces of Latin American governments of the 1980s in interrogation, counter-terror tactics, and unconventional warfare methods, including the use of death squads.

• El Salvador's Roberto D’Aubuisson, or "Blowtorch Bob," was one of the college's most notable graduates. D’'Aubuisson becomes both the head of ANSESAL, the local equivalent of CIA, and the leader of an extreme right-wing paramilitary organization, the nationalistic Republican Party (ARENA). D'Aubuisson sets up death squads and notably murders Archbishop Oscar Romero.

• Lieutenant Colonel José Domingo Monterrosa Barrios, later Salvadoran Commander of the Armed Forces, was a trainee at the Political Warfare Cadres Academy in 1978. He was responsible for ordering the 1981 El Mozote massacre of over 1,000 Salvadoran civilians, nearly half of them children.

• The Guatemalan state subsequently sent over an estimated "fifty to seventy" military officers to Taiwan to learn political warfare. An estimated that approximately 200,000 people were killed or disappeared during the civil war (1960-1996).

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