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In politics and espionage, deniability refers to 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—ostensibly unconnected with the major player. More generally, "plausible deniability" can also apply to any act which leaves little or no evidence of wrongdoing or abuse. Examples of this are the use of Electricity or Pain-compliance Holds as a means of torture or punishment, leaving little or no tangible signs that the abuse ever took place. OVERVIEW Arguably, the key concept of plausible deniability is plausibility. It is fairly easy for a government official to issue a blanket denial of an action, and it is possible to destroy or cover up evidence after the fact, and this might be sufficient to avoid a criminal prosecution, for instance. However, the public might well disbelieve the denial, particularly if there is strong circumstantial evidence, or if the action is believed to be so unlikely that the only possible explanation is that the denial is false. The concept is even more important in espionage. Intelligence may come from many sources, including human sources. The exposure of information to which only a few people are privileged may directly implicate some of those people in the exposure. For instance, suppose a government official is traveling secretly, and that only 1 of his aides knows the specific travel plans. Suppose further that the official is assassinated during his travels, and that the circumstances of the assassination (an ambush, perhaps) strongly suggest that the assassin had foreknowledge of the official's travel plans. The only logical conclusion is that the official has been betrayed by his aide. There may be no direct evidence linking the aide to the assassin, but the collaboration can be inferred on the facts alone, thus making the aide's denial implausible. Plausible deniability in the context of espionage dates back to at least World War II and the Allies ' use of ULTRA intelligence, which had secretly broken German encryption codes. For example, if ULTRA revealed a U-boat position, the Allies would not simply send a ship to sink the U-boat. Instead, they might send up a search plane, which would "fortuitously" sight the U-boat, and also ensure that the U-boat saw the search plane. In other cases, the inability to provide plausible deniability forced Allied commanders to avoid taking action despite having useful intelligence. HISTORY 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 leaders, 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.2, pg 16 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. Legislative barriers after the Church Committee The Under Cover, or Out of Control? November 29, 1987 Section 7; Page 3, Column 1 ''(Book Review of 2 books: The Perfect Failure and Covert Action)'' Media reports on the Church Committee and plausible deniability Iran Contra Affair Declassified government documents
FLAWS The doctrine had six major flaws:
::''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.'' :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.
::''"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''
OTHER EXAMPLES 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 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. Council on Foreign Relations "...the U.S. government may at times require a certain deniability. Private activities can provide that deniability." -- Council On Foreign Relations , an American foreign policy think tank, in the 2003 report, "Finding America’s Voice: A Strategy for Reinvigorating U.S. Public Diplomacy" 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. 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 his computer. Normally, this is done by setting the computer to relay certain types of broadcasts automatically, 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 his 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 and (to a lesser extent) FreeOTFE / TrueCrypt which nest encrypted data. The owner of the encrypted data may reveal one or more keys to decrypt certain information from it, and then deny that more keys exist, a statement which cannot be disproven without knowledge of all encryption keys involved. The existence of "hidden" data within the overtly encrypted data 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:
RESOURCES Notes Further reading External links
Church Committee links
See also
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