Plausible deniability

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Plausible deniability is the term given to the creation of loose and informal chains of command in government, which allow controversial instructions given by high-ranking officials to be denied if they become public.

A 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.

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Flaws in plausible denial

The doctrine had six major flaws:

  • It was an open door to the abuse of authority; it required that the bodies in question could be said to have acted independently, which in the end was tantamount to giving them license to act independently. 9
  • It rarely worked when invoked; the denials made were rarely plausible and were generally seen through by both the media and the populace. 10
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" only increases the risk of misunderstanding between senior officials and their employees.11
  • It only shifts blame, and generally, constructs rather little.
  • If the claim fails, it seriously discredits the political figure invoking it as a defense.
  • If it succeeds, it creates the impression that the government is not in control of the state.
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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

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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 4 language 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" 5 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." 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"12 and "the resort beyond the last resort." Thus the agency might at times have misread instructions from a 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." 7
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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.

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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.

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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 censors) from knowing where data comes from and where it is stored.

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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.

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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: [1]

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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.

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Resources

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Footnotes

  • Note 2: 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 Page 11
  • Note 4: 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).
  • Note 5: Definition: The use of unnecessarily wordy and indirect language, Evasion in speech or writing, An indirect way of expressing something
  • Note 6: New York Times How Fantasies Became Policy, Out of Control, The Honorable, Murderous Gentlemen of A Secret World, November 23, 1975, page 199
  • Note 8: New York Times 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)
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 [Bay 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
  • Note 12: 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."
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Further reading

  • Treverton, Gregory F.; Covert Action: The CIA and the Limits of American Intervention in the Postwar World. 1988 ISBN 1850430896 8
  • {{cite book

| last =Campbell | first =Bruce B. | authorlink = | coauthors = | year =2000 | title =Death Squads in Global Perspective : Murder With Deniability | publisher =Palgrave Macmillan | location = | id =ISBN: 0312213654 }}

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External links

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External links using "plausible denial" in declassified government documents

  • Pentagon papers October 25, 1963 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, mentioning the term plausible denial Alternative link (See Telegram 216)
  • National Security Archive January to September 1964 documents CIA and White House documents on covert political intervention in the 1964 Chilean election declassified. The CIA's Chief of Western Hemisphere Division, J.C. King, recommended that funds for the campaign "be provided in a fashion causing (Eduardo Frei Montalva president of Chile) to infer United States origin of funds and yet permitting plausible denial"
  • National Security Archive the training files of the CIA's covert "Operation PBSUCCESS," for the 1954 coup in Guatemala. "Among the documents found in the training files of Operation PBSUCCESS and declassified by the Agency is a CIA document entitled "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."
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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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