Saul Alinsky definitely stated this in his Rules for Radicals book, but he was certainly not the first to come up with this age old concept.
Many of the classic deception techniques we see today have western roots in the Roman Empire (and perhaps earlier) and were also common in the Chinese Royal Courts.
These folks were constantly stabbing each other in the back (both figuratively and sometimes literally) with a wide variety of lies, deep fakes, deceptions, mind tricks etc.
Folks who trusted authority figures or “experts” did not last long in those environments.
;-)