Editing Plausible deniability (section)

==History==
{{globalize|article|the United States|date=May 2015}}
The term's roots go back to US President [[Harry Truman]]'s [[United States National Security Council|National Security Council]] Paper 10/2 of June 18, 1948, which defined "covert operations" as "all activities (except as noted herein) which are conducted or sponsored by this Government against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and executed that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the US Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them."<ref>Office of the Historian, Department of State. ''[https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945-50Intel/d292 National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects (NSC 10/2)],'' Washington, June 18, 1948.</ref> During the [[Eisenhower administration]], NSC 10/2 was incorporated into the more-specific NSC 5412/2 "Covert Operations."<ref>Office of the Historian, Department of State. ''[https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950-55Intel/d250 Covert Operations (NSC 5412/2)],'' Washington, undated.</ref> NSC 5412 was declassified in 1977 and is located at the National Archives.<ref>''[https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/273.html Records of the National Security Council (NSC), Record Group 273.]''</ref> The expression "plausibly deniable" was first used publicly by [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA) Director [[Allen Dulles]].<ref>{{cite book
| last =Carlisle 
| first =Rodney P 
| year =2003
| title =The Complete Idiot's Guide to Spies and Espionage
| publisher =Alpha Books
| isbn =0-02-864418-2 
|page= 213}}</ref> The idea, on the other hand, is considerably older. For example, in the 19th century, [[Charles Babbage]] described the importance of having "a few simply honest men" on a committee who could be temporarily removed from the deliberations when "a peculiarly delicate question arises" so that one of them could "declare truly, if necessary, that he never was present at any meeting at which even a questionable course had been proposed."<ref>{{cite book
| last =Babbage
| first =Charles
| year =1864
| title =Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
| url =https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Fa1JAAAAMAAJ
| publisher =Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green
|pages=261–262}}</ref>

===Church Committee===
The [[Church Committee]] of the [[U.S. Senate]] conducted an investigation of the intelligence agencies in 1974–1975. In the course of the investigation, it was revealed that the [[CIA]], going back to the [[Kennedy administration]], had plotted the assassination of a number of foreign leaders, including [[Cuba]]'s [[Fidel Castro]], but the president himself, who clearly supported such actions, was not to be directly involved so that he could deny knowledge of it. That was given the term "plausible denial."<ref>{{cite book | author=Zinn, Howard | title=Declarations of Independence: Cross Examining American Ideology | publisher=Perennial | year=1991 | isbn=0-06-092108-0|page=16}}</ref>

{{Quote|Non-attribution to the United States for covert operations was the original and principal purpose of the so-called doctrine of "plausible denial." Evidence before the Committee clearly demonstrates that this concept, designed to protect the United States and its operatives from the consequences of disclosures, has been expanded to mask decisions of the president and his senior staff members.|Church Committee<ref>[[Church Committee]] Reports United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Senate, Nov. 20, 1975, II. Section B Covert Action as a Vehicle for Foreign Policy Implementation. p.  11</ref>}}

Plausible denial involves the creation of power structures and chains of command loose and informal enough to be denied if necessary. The idea was that the CIA and later other bodies could be given controversial instructions by powerful figures, including the [[President of the United States|president]] himself, but that the existence and true source of those instructions could be denied if necessary if, for example, an operation went disastrously wrong and it was necessary for the administration to disclaim responsibility.

===Later legislative barriers===
The [[Hughes–Ryan Act]] of 1974 sought to put an end to plausible denial by requiring a presidential finding for each operation to be important to national security, and the [[Intelligence Oversight Act]] of 1980 required for Congress to be notified of all [[covert operations]]. Both laws, however, are full of enough vague terms and escape hatches to allow the executive branch to thwart their authors' intentions, as was shown by the [[Iran–Contra affair]]. Indeed, the members of Congress are in a dilemma since when they are informed, they are in no position to stop the action, unless they leak its existence and thereby foreclose the option of covertness.<ref name="NYT">[[New York Times]] Under Cover, or Out of Control? November 29, 1987 Section 7; p.  3, Column 1 ''(Book Review of 2 books: The Perfect Failure and Covert Action)''</ref>

===Media reports===
{{Quote
|text=The (Church Committee) conceded that to provide the United States with "plausible denial" in the event that the anti-Castro plots were discovered, Presidential authorization might have been subsequently "obscured". (The Church Committee) also declared that, whatever the extent of the knowledge, Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson should bear the "ultimate responsibility" for the actions of their subordinates.
|author=John M. Crewdson
|source=''[[The New York Times]]''<ref>{{Cite news|first=John M.|last=Crewdson|date=1975-11-21|title=Castro Plot Study Finds No Role by White House|language=en-US|work=[[The New York Times]]|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1975/11/21/archives/castro-plot-study-finds-no-role-by-white-house.html|access-date=2020-06-07|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
}}

{{quote
|text=CIA officials deliberately used [[Aesopian language]]<ref>Definition: Using or having ambiguous or allegorical meanings, especially to elude political censorship: "They could express their views only in a diluted form, resorting to Aesopian hints and allusions" ''(Isaac Deutscher)''.</ref> in talking to the President and others outside the agency. ([[Richard Helms]]) testified that he did not want to "embarrass a President" or sit around an official table talking about "killing or murdering." The report found this "circumlocution"<ref>Definition: The use of unnecessarily wordy and indirect language, Evasion in speech or writing, An indirect way of expressing something</ref> reprehensible, saying: "Failing to call dirty business by its rightful name may have increased the risk of dirty business being done." The committee also suggested that the system of command and control may have been deliberately ambiguous, to give Presidents a chance for "plausible denial."
|author=Anthony Lewis
|source=''[[The New York Times]]''<ref>{{Cite news|last=Lewis|first=Anthony|date=1975-11-23|title=How Fantasies Became Policy, Out of Control|language=en-US|work=[[The New York Times]]|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1975/11/23/archives/how-fantasies-became-policy-out-of-control-the-honorable-murderous.html|access-date=2020-06-07|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
}}

{{quote
|text=What made the responsibility difficult to pin down in retrospect was a sophisticated system of institutionalized vagueness and circumlocution whereby no official - and particularly a President - had to officially endorse questionable activities. Unsavory orders were rarely committed to paper and what record the committee found was shot through with references to "removal," "the magic button"<ref>Definition of the "Magic Button" from the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' Article: The Search for a 'Magic Button' In American Foreign Policy; October 18, 1987; ''(Review by David Aaron of the book Covert Action)'' ''I recall during my days as a Senate investigator finding a piece of yellow note pad with jottings from a meeting with White House officials during the Kennedy Administration that discussed an "Executive Action" or, in plain English, an assassination capability. The notes referred to it as the "magic button."''</ref> and "the resort beyond the last resort." Thus the agency might at times have misread instructions from on high, but it seemed more often to be easing the burden of presidents who knew there were things they didn't want to know. As former CIA director Richard Helms told the committee: "The difficulty with this kind of thing, as you gentlemen are all painfully aware, is that nobody wants to embarrass a President of the United States."
|source=''[[Newsweek]]''<ref>[[Newsweek]] The CIA'S Hit List, December 1, 1975, p. 28</ref>}}

===Iran–Contra affair===
In his testimony to the congressional committee studying the [[Iran–Contra affair]], Vice Admiral [[John Poindexter]] stated: "I made a deliberate decision not to ask the President, so that I could insulate him from the decision and provide some future deniability for the President if it ever leaked out."<ref>{{cite book 
| last =Jamieson 
| first =Kathleen Hall 
| year =1993 
| title =Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction, and Democracy 
| publisher =Oxford University Press US 
| isbn =0-19-508553-1 
| url-access =registration 
| url =https://archive.org/details/dirtypoliticsdec00jami 
|page=86}}</ref>

===Declassified government documents===
* A telegram from the Ambassador in Vietnam [[Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.]], to Special Assistant for National Security Affairs [[McGeorge Bundy]] on US options with respect to a possible coup, mentions plausible denial.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Cable from Ambassador Lodge to McGeorge Bundy on US Options With Respect to a Possible Coup, 25 October 1963|url=https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc148.htm|access-date=2020-06-07|website=www.mtholyoke.edu|archive-date=2021-03-08|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210308112115/https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc148.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Department Of State: Office of Electronic Information|first=Bureau of Public Affairs|title=Documents 209-244|url=https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/kennedyjf/iv/12652.htm|access-date=2020-06-07|website=2001-2009.state.gov|page=Telegram 216|language=en}}</ref>
* CIA and White House documents on covert political intervention in the 1964 Chilean election have been declassified. The CIA's Chief of Western Hemisphere Division, J.C. King, recommended for funds for the campaign to "be provided in a fashion causing ([[Eduardo Frei Montalva]] president of Chile) to infer United States origin of funds and yet permitting plausible denial."<ref name = "national2">{{cite web
| title =Chile 1964: CIA covert support in Frei election detailed; operational and policy records released for first time
| work =National Security Archive
| url =http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20040925/
| access-date =2006-07-08
| archive-date =2014-06-17
| archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20140617091539/http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20040925/
| url-status =dead
}}</ref>
* Training files of the CIA's covert "[[Operation PBSuccess]]" for the 1954 coup in Guatemala describe plausible deniability. According to the [[National Security Archive]]: "Among the documents found in the training files of Operation PBSuccess and declassified by the Agency is a CIA document titled 'A Study of Assassination.' A how-to guide book in the art of political killing, the 19-page manual offers detailed descriptions of the procedures, instruments, and implementation of assassination." The manual states that to provide plausible denial, "no assassination instructions should ever be written or recorded."<ref name = "national">{{cite web
| title =CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents 
| work =National Security Archive
| url =http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/index.html 
| access-date=2006-07-08
}}</ref>

=== Soviet operations ===
In the 1980s, the Soviet [[KGB]] ran [[Operation INFEKTION|OPERATION INFEKTION]] (also called "OPERATION DENVER"), which utilised the East German [[Stasi]] and Soviet-affiliated press to spread the idea that HIV/AIDS was an engineered bioweapon. The Stasi acquired plausible deniability on the operation by covertly supporting biologist [[Jakob Segal]], whose stories were picked up by international press, including "numerous bourgeois newspapers" such as the ''[[Evening Standard|Sunday Express]]''. Publications in third-party countries were then cited as the originators of the claims. Meanwhile, Soviet intelligence obtained plausible deniability by utilising the German Stasi in the disinformation operation.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Selvage|first=Douglas|date=2021-08-09|title=Operation "Denver": The East German Ministry for State Security and the KGB's AIDS Disinformation Campaign, 1986–1989 (Part 2)|journal=Journal of Cold War Studies|volume=23|issue=3|pages=4–80|doi=10.1162/jcws_a_01024|issn=1520-3972|doi-access=free}}</ref>

===Little green men and Wagner Group===
In 2014, "[[Little green men (Russo-Ukrainian War)|Little green men]]"—troops without insignia carrying modern Russian military equipment—emerged at the start of the [[Russo-Ukrainian War]], which ''[[The Moscow Times]]'' described as a tactic of plausible deniability.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Person|first=Robert|date=2015-10-26|title=Baltic Russians Aren't Pawns in Strategic Game|url=https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2015/10/26/baltic-russians-arent-pawns-in-strategic-game-a50487|access-date=2021-09-28|website=The Moscow Times|language=en}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=Russian Private Military Companies in Syria and Beyond|url=https://www.csis.org/npfp/russian-private-military-companies-syria-and-beyond|access-date=2021-09-28|website=www.csis.org|language=en}}</ref>

The [[Wagner Group]], a Russian [[private military company]], has been described as an attempt at plausible deniability for Kremlin-backed interventions in Ukraine, Syria, and in various interventions in Africa.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Mackinnon|first=Amy|title=Russia's Wagner Group Doesn't Actually Exist|url=https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/06/what-is-wagner-group-russia-mercenaries-military-contractor/|access-date=2021-09-18|website=Foreign Policy|language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=The Wagner Group: Untangling the Purpose behind a Russian Power Tool|url=https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/events/wagner-group-untangling-purpose-behind-russian-power-tool|access-date=2021-09-18|website=cisac.fsi.stanford.edu|language=en}}</ref><ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite web |last=Hussain |first=Murtaza |date=February 2, 2023 |title=The Grisly Cult of the Wagner Group's Sledgehammer |url=https://theintercept.com/2023/02/02/wagner-group-violence-sledgehammer/ |website=The Intercept |language=en}}</ref>