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In addition, in politics and espionage, deniability is the ability of a powerful player or actor to avoid Blowback by secretly arranging for an action to be taken on their behalf by a third party. The necessary act is farmed out or delegated to a third party ostensibly unconnected with the major player. This can take the form of a private person or Mercenary being hired to carry out a task, or a government or agency being asked or compelled to do you a quiet favor. CHURCH COMMITTEE A U.S. Senate committee, the Church Committee , in 1974-1975 conducted an investigation of the intelligence agencies. 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 rulers, including Cuba's Fidel Castro. But the president himself, who clearly was in favor of such actions, was not to be directly involved, so that he could deny knowledge of it. This was given the term plausible denial. 1 :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. 2 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—up to and including the 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. FLAWS IN PLAUSIBLE DENIAL The doctrine had six major flaws:
:One aspect of the Watergate crisis is the repeated failure of the doctrine of plausible deniability, which the administration repeatedly attempted to use to stop the scandal affecting President Richard Nixon and his aides.
LEGISLATIVE BARRIERS TO PLAUSIBLE DENIAL AFTER THE CHURCH COMMITTEE The Hughes-Ryan Act of 1974 put an end to plausible denial by requiring a Presidential finding that each operation is important to national security, and the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980 required that Congress be notified of all covert operations. But both laws are full of enough vague terms and escape hatches to allow the executive branch to thwart their authors' intentions, as the Iran-contra Affair has shown. Indeed, the members of Congress are in a dilemma, highlighted ...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. 8 QUOTES FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES, NEWSWEEK :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. 3 :CIA officials deliberately used Aesopian also suggested that the system of command and control may have been deliberately ambiguous, to give Presidents a chance for "plausible denial." 6 :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" OTHER EXAMPLES OF PLAUSIBLE DENIAL Another example of plausible deniability is someone who actively avoids gaining certain knowledge of facts because it benefits that person not to know. As an example, an unscrupulous attorney may suspect that facts exist which would hurt his case, but decide not to investigate the issue because if the attorney had actual knowledge, the rules of ethics might require him to reveal those facts to the opposing side. Thus his failure to investigate maintains plausible deniability. Murder in the Cathedral King Henry II Of England is credited with the stating quite publicly, "who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?" This saying resulted in the assassination of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket , although the king denied that his plea was to be taken in such a way. Freenet file sharing The Freenet File Sharing network is another application of the idea. It obfuscates data sources and flows in order to protect operators and users of the network by preventing them (and, by extension, observers such as Censor s) from knowing where data comes from and where it is stored. Popular culture The term was used in the 1996 movie '' Independence Day '' when the President asks the Secretary Of Defense why he had not been told about the existence of Area 51 . Events in the films '' Chocolat '' (wherein the town mayor declares "something has to be done," yielding disastrous results) and '' Clear And Present Danger '' (the main plotline) also include elements of plausible deniability. Use in computer networks In computer networks, deniability often refers to a situation where a person can deny transmitting a file, even when it is proven to come from their computer. Normally, this is done by setting the computer to automatically relay certain types of broadcast, in such a way that the original transmitter of a file is indistinguishable from those who are merely relaying it. In this way, the person who first transmitted the file can claim that their computer had merely relayed it from elsewhere, and this claim cannot be disproven without a complete decrypted log of all network connections to and from that person's computer. Use in cryptography In Cryptography , deniable encryption may be used to describe Steganographic Techniques , where the very existence of an encrypted file or message is ''deniable'' in the sense that an adversary cannot prove that an encrypted message exists. Some systems take this further, such as MaruTukku archives which contain multiple encrypted archives. The owner of the archive may reveal one or more keys to decrypt certain information from the archive, and then deny that more keys exist, a statement which cannot be disproven without knowledge of all encryption keys involved. The existence of data in this archive is then ''deniable'' in the sense that it cannot be proven to exist. Deniability in fiction ''Deniability'' is a popular concept in suspense fiction and thrillers:
President George W. Bush Lewis Libby claims he was told by Vice-President Cheney to disclose the identity of Valerie Plame and her work for the CIA, if it is true that George W. Bush authorized this leak as Libby claims the President used the doctrine of plausible deniability. Being the Commander-in-Chief he has the authority to declassify information thus protecting Libby and Cheney from committing an illegal act. However the President went on to claim moral indignation stating, “I want to know the truth.” "If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is." "If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration." "If the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of." All an effective use of the smokescreen of plausible deniability as he knew that because he had already declassified the information no crime had been committed, however the President may have come undone as according to a number of news sources in 2004: “Mr. Bush was also asked whether he would fire anyone who was involved in leaking Ms. Wilson's name - which might or might not have violate the law, depending on the circumstances. Without hesitation, Mr. Bush said “yes””. For one of the news sources for the above quote please see: {Link without Title} ON MORALITY In the term Plausible denial, the word "denial" implies some social mores against lying or fraud. This means that the users of this term know its use is immoral. Citizens in an Amoral society would not need to falsely deny their actions. Plausible denial is a type of lying that requires preparation to avoid blame or detection. By preparing to use plausible denial, citizens admit by their actions the foreknowledge of guilt and the knowledge of social mores. Otherwise, citizens would not feel the need to prepare. RESOURCES Footnotes
::''An additional possibility is that the President may, in fact, not be fully and accurately informed about a sensitive operation because he failed to receive the “circumlocutious” message...The Committee finds that the system of Executive command and control was so inherently ambiguous that it is difficult to be certain at what level assassination activity was known and authorized. This creates the disturbing prospect that assassination activity might have been undertaken by officials of the United States Government without its having been incontrovertibly clear that there was explicit authorization from the President of the United States.''
::''It was naive for policymakers to assume that sponsorship of actions as big as the of Pigs invasion could be concealed. The Committee’s investigation of assassination and the public disclosures which preceded the inquiry demonstrate that when the United States resorted to cloak-and-dagger tactics, its hand was ultimately exposed.''
::''"Plausible denial" increases the risk of misunderstanding. Subordinate officials should describe their proposals in clear, precise, and brutally frank language; superiors are entitled to, and should demand, no less''
::''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."'' Further reading
External links
External links using "plausible denial" in declassified government documents
See also
:::''Involves flying terror suspects abroad to countries where it is likely that they will be Tortured . This is done to avoid the illegality of ordering their torture or carrying it out on US soil. By having another government order it, the intention to torture the suspect can be plausibly denied.'' |
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