According to the Times, the agency had learned some of these methods from Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials; others were drawn from old Soviet techniques.
Russia has taken up Soviet techniques of airbrushing history, a book being banned two years ago for positing that Vladimir Putin had established an "authoritarian dictatorship".
His first film, made in 1931, was also set on the banks of the Douro – a document of riverside activity influenced by Soviet techniques.
During the Cold War, his area of expertise was Soviet disinformation techniques.
Reinforcing the Discipline and Order Squads, he said, harked back to the Soviet-era technique for barracks management.
The CIA and Pentagon colluded to reverse-engineer the interrogation resistance training given to US airmen at high risk of capture by the Soviets, employing techniques based on the old KGB playbook.
Although Moscow denies reverting to Soviet-style techniques, Russian media executives acknowledge privately they are waging a propaganda war with echoes of the Cold War.
The consequence was that, though the Germans succeeded in shattering the original Soviet armies by superior technique, they then found their path blocked by fresh ones.
The era's leading film-makers engaged productively with the style of US films, which gave rise to the distinctive montage technique of Soviet cinema in which editing is used to create dramatic tension.
