Influence

Part 8 of 12  ·  Evidence

Nations at Play

Deception at the scale of states — wartime cover plans, active measures, covert programs, and the modern disinformation machinery.

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1 The Man Who Never Was: Operation MincemeatOperation Mincemeat, April-May 1943: British intelligence (Ewen Montagu, Charles Cholmondeley of Section 17M/Twenty Committee)…
2 Agent GARBO: The Double Agent Who Was Believed Over RealityJuan Pujol Garcia (‘GARBO’), run by MI5’s Tomas Harris within the Double-Cross System; his 27-strong network of fictitious…
3 Fortitude South: The Army That Did Not ExistOperation Fortitude South (with Plan Quicksilver), 1944: the notional First US Army Group (FUSAG) in south-east England under…
4 Fortitude North: A Threat Made Entirely of Radio TrafficOperation Fortitude North and its sub-plan Skye, 1944: simulated British Fourth Army wireless traffic from Scotland, plus…
5 The Ghost Army: Inflatable Tanks and Sonic DeceptionThe 1,100-man 23rd Headquarters Special Troops (‘Ghost Army’), active in Europe 1944-1945, using inflatable rubber tanks,…
6 Operation Bertram: Hiding an Army in the DesertOperation Bertram, October 1942, the deception plan for the Second Battle of El Alamein devised under Montgomery with Charles…
7 Black Propaganda: Sefton Delmer’s Radio Stations That Lied in GermanSefton Delmer’s British Political Warfare Executive black propaganda stations: Gustav Siegfried Eins (broadcasting from May 1941,…
8 Operation Trust: A Fake Resistance Run by the Secret PoliceOperation Trust (Operatsiya Trest), roughly 1921-1927: the Soviet Cheka/OGPU created the fictitious Monarchist Union of Central…
9 The Zinoviev Letter: A Forgery That Moved an ElectionThe Zinoviev letter, published by the Daily Mail on 25 October 1924 four days before the British general election; a 1998 Foreign…
10 Operation Anadyr: Maskirovka and the Missiles in CubaOperation Anadyr, 1962: the Soviet deployment of nuclear-capable SS-4 and SS-5 missiles and around 40,000 troops to Cuba under an…
11 Kim Philby: The Mole Protected by Class and CharmHarold ‘Kim’ Philby, recruited by Soviet intelligence in the 1930s as part of the Cambridge Five; headed SIS Section IX against…
12 Aldrich Ames: The Insider Who Sold the NetworkAldrich Hazen Ames, CIA counterintelligence officer in the Soviet/East European Division, who began spying for the KGB in April…
13 Robert Hanssen: Twenty-Two Years of Chalk MarksRobert Philip Hanssen, FBI counterintelligence agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence from 1979 (with breaks) until…
14 MKUltra: The State Searches for a Mind It Can BreakProject MKUltra, authorised by CIA Director Allen Dulles in April 1953 and directed by chemist Sidney Gottlieb; involved LSD,…
15 Operation Midnight Climax: Entrapment as Research MethodOperation Midnight Climax, an MKUltra subproject run by George Hunter White from 1955 in CIA safe houses in San Francisco and New…
16 Radio Free Europe and 1956: When Broadcast Hope Becomes a WeaponRadio Free Europe’s Hungarian broadcasts during the Hungarian Revolution of October-November 1956, later criticised in West…
17 Buying the Byline: CIA Media Assets and the Church Committee FindingsCIA relationships with journalists and news organisations exposed by the 1975 Church Committee and the ‘Family Jewels’ documents,…
18 Operation Ajax: Renting a Crowd to Overthrow a GovernmentThe 1953 Iranian coup d’etat (CIA cryptonym TPAJAX, British Operation Boot), executed 15-19 August 1953 with CIA officer Kermit…
19 The Voice of Liberation: An Army That Existed Only on RadioOperation PBSuccess, the CIA operation against Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz, June 1954, including David Atlee Phillips'…
20 Operation Denver: The KGB Invents the Origin of AIDSOperation Denver (widely known as Operation INFEKTION), a KGB active measure from 1983 that seeded the claim that HIV/AIDS was…
21 Service A: The Industrial Production of ForgeryKGB ‘active measures’ (aktivnye meropriyatiya) run by Service A of the First Chief Directorate through the Cold War — forged US…
22 Zersetzung: The Stasi’s Silent Destruction of a PersonZersetzung (‘decomposition’), the East German Ministry for State Security technique codified in Richtlinie 1/76 (1976) and used…
23 Operation Finale: The Capture of Adolf EichmannMossad’s capture of Adolf Eichmann in San Fernando, Buenos Aires, on 11 May 1960, under team leader Rafi Eitan with Zvi Aharoni’s…
24 Kamel Amin Thaabet: Eli Cohen’s Manufactured Identity in DamascusEli Cohen, Mossad officer who operated in Syria from 1961 to 1965 under the identity of Syrian businessman ‘Kamel Amin Thaabet’,…
25 Lillehammer: When Confirmation Bias Kills the Wrong ManThe Lillehammer affair, 21 July 1973: a Mossad team operating under Operation Wrath of God shot Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchikhi…
26 Operation Diamond: Recruiting a Pilot to Steal an AircraftOperation Diamond (Mivtza Yahalom): Mossad’s cultivation of Iraqi Air Force captain Munir Redfa, who defected on 16 August 1966…
27 Operation Northwoods: The False Flag That Was Written DownOperation Northwoods, a March 1962 memorandum from the US Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara proposing…
28 The Troll Farm: The Internet Research Agency’s Identity TheatreThe Internet Research Agency of St Petersburg, financed by Yevgeny Prigozhin; on 16 February 2018 Special Counsel Robert Mueller…
29 Guccifer 2.0: Hack, Forge a Persona, Launder the LeakGRU Unit 26165 and Unit 74455 operations against the DNC and DCCC in 2016, indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on 13 July…
30 A Nation as a Cult: North Korea’s Personality ApparatusThe North Korean cult of personality around Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un, institutionalised through Juche ideology,…