U.S. Army project from 1965 to the early 1980s to train foreign intelligence officers, especially in Latin America. While few details of the project have been revealed, the manuals for the program taught foreign officers to spy on political opponents, infiltrate opposing political parties, kidnap rebels' family members, offer bounties for killed or captured insurgents, and employ blackmail tactics.
The manuals were used to train foreign officers in the United States as well as in their own countries. The contents of some of the manuals used in Project X were revealed in 1997. They were prepared by the Army Intelligence Center and School at Fort Holabird, near Baltimore, Md., and then at Fort Huachucha, Ariz.
Project X was initiated in 1965 to train South Vietnamese and other Asian officers at the U.S. Army Pacific Intelligence School on Okinawa. Subsequently, Project X operated in Iran to train intelligence officers of the Shah's Army prior to the Iranian revolution. The areas in which Project X efforts were employed expanded to Latin America and, possibly, other areas before Project X was reportedly closed down in the early 1980s. The U.S. Army still has a continuing program to train foreign intelligence officers.
