Active Measures
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Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference by Fletcher Schoen and Christopher J
STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVES 11 Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference by Fletcher Schoen and Christopher J. Lamb Center for Strategic Research Institute for National Strategic Studies National Defense University Institute for National Strategic Studies National Defense University The Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) is National Defense University’s (NDU’s) dedicated research arm. INSS includes the Center for Strategic Research, Center for Complex Operations, Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs, Center for Technology and National Security Policy, Center for Transatlantic Security Studies, and Conflict Records Research Center. The military and civilian analysts and staff who comprise INSS and its subcomponents execute their mission by conducting research and analysis, publishing, and participating in conferences, policy support, and outreach. The mission of INSS is to conduct strategic studies for the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Unified Combatant Commands in support of the academic programs at NDU and to perform outreach to other U.S. Government agencies and the broader national security community. Cover: Kathleen Bailey presents evidence of forgeries to the press corps. Credit: The Washington Times Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference By Fletcher Schoen and Christopher J. Lamb Institute for National Strategic Studies Strategic Perspectives, No. 11 Series Editor: Nicholas Rostow National Defense University Press Washington, D.C. June 2012 Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of the contributors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Defense Department or any other agency of the Federal Government. -
Active Measures: the Secret History of Disinformation & Political
Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation & Political Warfare | Thomas Rid Philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point, May 25th, 2020 however, is to change it. — Karl Marx INTRODUCTION Thomas Rid is Professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Rid’s latest book, Active Measures, a startling history of disinformation, was published in late April 2020 with Farrar, Straus and Giroux (also in Russian, Japanese, Polish). His most recent book, Rise of the Machines (2016), tells the sweeping story of how cybernetics, a late- 1940s theory of machines, came to incite anarchy and war (also in Chinese, Russian, German, Japanese, Turkish). His 2015 article “Attributing Cyber Attacks” was designed to explain, guide, and improve the identification of network breaches (Journal of Strategic Studies 2015). In 2013 he published the widely-read book Cyber War Will Not Take Place. Rid’s Ph.D. thesis, “War and Media Operations: The US Military and the Press from Vietnam to Iraq,” was the first academic analysis of the role of embedded media in the 2003 Iraq War, providing a concise history of US military public affairs management since Vietnam. Rid testified on information security in front of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as well as in the German Bundestag and the UK Parliament. From 2011 to 2016, Rid was a professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Between 2003 and 2010, he worked at major think tanks in Berlin, Paris, Jerusalem, and Washington, DC. Rid holds a PhD from Humboldt University in Berlin. -
Soviet Active Measures an Update Jul 1982.P65
Special Report No. 101 Soviet Active Measures: An Update July 1982 United States Department of State Bureau of Public Affairs Washington, D.C. This report describes Soviet active Forgeries After an initial mailing to Spanish measures which have come to light since journalists failed to obtain publication, the the publication of Special Report No. 88, Forgeries are a frequently used active forgery was circulated on November 11 to Soviet Active Measures: Forgery, measures technique. Several have come to all delegations (except the U.S and Spanish) Disinformation, Political Operations, in light in recent months. Their appearance has to the Conference of Security and Coopera- October 1981. been timed to influence Western opinion on tion in Europe (CSCE), then meeting in current sensitive issues. As far as we are Madrid. This time several Madrid newspa- The Soviet Union uses the term active aware, only one of these recent forgeries pers ran stories that exposed the letter as a measures (aktivnyye meropriyatiya) to achieved uncritical publication. fabrication probably of Soviet origin. cover a broad range of activities designed to Forgeries are usually sent through the promote Soviet foreign policy goals, mail to journalists, officials, or other persons The Clark-Stearns Letter. In January including undercutting opponents of the who might make them available to the 1982, a forged letter and an accompanying U.S.S.R. Active measures include media. Forgeries normally do not carry a research analysis dated September 23, 1981, disinformation, manipulating the media in return address, nor is the sender identified in from Judge William Clark, then Deputy foreign countries, the use of Communist a way that can be checked. -
Disinformation in the Reagan Years and Lessons For
CONTENTS Introduction 1 Disinformation in Perspective 2 Declassified: The Reagan Years 3 What’s Old is New Again 7 About the Author 8 America is an enemy; and second, that Russia is a “besieged fortress, surrounded by enemies.”3 At least partially, Russian eforts to undermine the United States and the West in general are a predictable consequence of those narratives. With respect to the 2016 election, using disinformation as a primary means to sow derision has clear benefits for Russia in that it is efective and remarkably low cost.4 And, perhaps more importantly, modern Russia does not need to develop a new strategy for this kind of attack, as its Soviet predecessors left a well-developed playbook from which to borrow many methods and objectives. R STREET POLICY STUDY NO. 164 February 2019 Using these low-cost disinformation campaigns to divide America, undermine the West and undercut the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) efectively serves the greater purpose of increasing Russia’s power relative to the West. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his circle are making use of the underlying nature of democracy to turn DISINFORMATION IN THE REAGAN these objectives into reality. For example, people within YEARS AND LESSONS FOR TODAY1 democracies ultimately decide what happens in their soci- eties, including the future of foreign and military policy.5 By Megan Reiss Accordingly, if it can successfully divide the people or per- suade them to push for what are, in fact, Russian policy pref- INTRODUCTION erences, Russia may be able to gain power while weakening elatively speaking, after the end of the Cold War, the the United States. -
Soviet Bloc Intelligence and Its AIDS Disinformation Campaign
Operation INFEKTION Soviet Bloc Intelligence and Its AIDS Disinformation Campaign Thomas Boghardt The practice of intelligence dif- weaken the USSR’s opponents— fered considerably between East first and foremost the “main and West during the Cold War. enemy” (glavny protivnik), the Western intelligence services were United States—and to create a most commonly tasked with gath- favorable environment for ering information, but their advancing Moscow’s views and Soviet bloc counterparts placed international objectives much greater emphasis on decep- worldwide. Our friends in Moscow tion operations to influence “ opinions or actions of individu- This is the story of one such mea- call it ‘dezinformatsiya.’ als and governments. 2 sure—a campaign to implicate Our enemies in America the United States in the emer- call it ‘active measures,’ These “active measures” (aktiv- gence of the AIDS pandemic that and I, dear friends, call it inyye meropriatia, as the Soviets appeared in the early 1980s. The ‘my favorite pastime.’ called them) included manipula- story both illustrates the nature of tion and media control, written Soviet and communist bloc disin- and oral disinformation, use of formation programs and foreign communist parties and demonstrates the potential long- front organizations, clandestine term consequences. —Col.” Rolf Wagenbreth, radio broadcasting, manipula- director of Department X (dis- tion of the economy, kidnappings, Editor’s Note: This article was the information) of East German paramilitary operations, and sup- recipient of an Annual Studies in foreign intelligence1 port of guerrilla groups and Intelligence Award in 2009. The terrorist organizations. Under references to end notes seen in Joseph Stalin, active measures this text are included only in the also included political article’s .PDF versions posted in assassinations. -
Formative Battles: Megan Ward Shannon Pierson Cold War Disinformation and Jessica Beyer Campaigns and Mitigation Strategies
Science Technology Innovation Program Authors Formative Battles: Megan Ward Shannon Pierson Cold War Disinformation and Jessica Beyer Campaigns and Mitigation Strategies August 2019 Formative Battles: Cold War Disinformation Campaigns and Mitigation Strategies During the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union refined covert methods of political intervention and conflict, making use of proxy wars, election interference, and disinformation campaigns to advance their respective interests. Work such as Dov H. Levin’s research tracking election interference (2016) illustrates that both superpowers used disinformation as a core tactic throughout the Cold War and the subsequent decade. Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. and USSR competed in an arms race of fictions, attempting to cultivate ideological support internationally and domestically. In response, presented with sophisticated and widespread Soviet disinformation, the U.S. created a then- groundbreaking interagency organization called the Active Measures Working Group (AMWG). The AMWG operated using a “Report-Analyze-Publicize” strategy that prioritized overt disinformation and successfully challenged Soviet active measures in the 1980s (Bailey, 1998). At the international level, both the Non-Aligned Movement, with its focus on non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries, and the United Nations’ General Assembly more generally attempted to address the issue. Some have posited Cold War mitigation strategies could be used to combat the newest itineration of harmful propaganda and disinformation (Cull, et al, 2017; Neal, 2019; Selga & Rasmussen, 2017; Deeks, McCubbin, & Poplin, 2017), but while Cold War disinformation mitigation tactics may provide aspirational frameworks for modern efforts, they are largely inapplicable in a modern disinformation battlefield. -
Russia's Hostile Measures: Combating Russian Gray Zone
C O R P O R A T I O N BEN CONNABLE, STEPHANIE YOUNG, STEPHANIE PEZARD, ANDREW RADIN, RAPHAEL S. COHEN, KATYA MIGACHEVA, JAMES SLADDEN Russia’s Hostile Measures Combating Russian Gray Zone Aggression Against NATO in the Contact, Blunt, and Surge Layers of Competition For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/RR2539 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this publication. ISBN: 978-1-9774-0199-1 Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. © Copyright 2020 RAND Corporation R® is a registered trademark. Cover image design: Rick Penn-Kraus Map illustration: Harvepino/Getty Images/iStockphoto Abstract spiral: Serdarbayraktar/Getty Images/iStockphoto Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute www.rand.org Preface Russia challenges the security and stability of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and many of its member states. -
SOVIET ACTIVE MEASURES 01/21/09, Loj F02-083/1 WHITE
SOVIET ACTIVE MEASURES 01/21/09, loj F02-083/1 WHITE HOUSE STAFF AND OFFICE FILES deGraffenreid, Kenneth: Files Box 91786 Soviet “Active Measures” Working Group Soviet “Active Measures” 04/02/1981-09/21/1981 Soviet “Active Measures” 09/22/1981 Soviet “Active Measures” 09/23/1981-12/31/1981 Soviet “Active Measures” 01/01/1982-01/21/1982 Soviet “Active Measures” 01/22/1982-01/31/1982 Soviet “Active Measures” 02/01/1982-03/16/1982 Soviet “Active Measures” 03/17/1982-04/31/1982 Soviet “Active Measures” 05/01/1982-05/14/1982 Soviet “Active Measures” 05/15/1982-12/31/1982 HPSCI (House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) Report on Active Measures Published December 1982 DEGRAFFENREID, KENNETH: FILES, 1981-1987 Intelligence Directorate, NSC: Senior Director and Staff Member This collection consists of two series. The series are SERIES I: Subject File and SERIES II: Chronological File. CONTAINER LIST SERIES I: Subject File RAC Box 1 "Active Measures" Working File 01/01/1981-09/30/1981 "Active Measures" Working File 10/01/1981-12/31/1981 "Active Measures" Working File 01/01/1982-04/30/1982 "Active Measures" Working File 05/01/1982-09/15/1982 "Active Measures" Working File 09/16/1982-12/31/1982 "Active Measures" Working File 01/01/1983-06/30/1983 "Active Measures" Working File 07/01/1983-08/31/1983 "Active Measures" Working File 09/01/1983-11/07/1983 "Active Measures" Working File 11/08/1983-12/31/1983 "Active Measures" Working Group 01/01/1984-01/04/1984 "Active Measures" Working Group 01/05/1984-01/31/1984 "Active Measures" Working Group -
Volume 3, Issue 2: November 2020 56 the Solzhenitsyn Affair: Yuri
Volume 3, Issue 2: November 2020 The Solzhenitsyn Affair: Yuri Andropov’s Personal Obsesssion Christian Orr (USPIS Intelligence) Introduction When the general public thinks of Soviet assassination and kidnapping, they typically conjure up images from fictional espionage—especially of James Bond, AKA Agent 007. Yet, the real-world history of the Soviet Union in general and of the Komitet Gozudarstevennoi Bezopasnosti (KGB, the Committee for State Security and so-called “Sword and Shield” of the Communist Party of the CCCP) in particular, as well as of the KGB’s predecessor organizations, is replete with real-life examples of murder, kidnapping, and other forms of mayhem. Assassinations were specifically handled by KGB’s Department 13, tasked with the grimly euphemistic mokryie dela—translated as either “liquid affairs” or “wet work.”1 The earliest example that comes to mind is the murder of Leon Trotsky. Fallen far from grace from his heyday as a key participant in the Bolshevik Revolution, the exiled Trotsky was stabbed in the head with an ice pick in 1940 in Mexico.2 Fast-forward to the Cold War, and the list of Soviet assassination victims runs the gamut from Ukrainian emigré leader Stepan Bandera, to Liv Rebet in the 1950s, to Bulgarian defector Giorgi Markov in 1978 (the latter was killed in the streets of London with an umbrella that discharged a poison pellet into his leg). The KGB was even responsible for kidnappings in such far-flung places as Calcutta and Rangoon.3 1 Central Intelligence Agency, “Soviet Use of Assassination and Kidnapping,” Unclassified document, CIA Historical Review Program, September 22, 1993, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study- ofintelligence/kent-csi/vol19no3/html/v19i3a01p_0001.htm. -
Understanding Russian Subversion Patterns, Threats, and Responses
February 2020 Perspective EXPERT INSIGHTS ON A TIMELY POLICY ISSUE ANDREW RADIN, ALYSSA DEMUS, KRYSTYNA MARCINEK Understanding Russian Subversion Patterns, Threats, and Responses ussia is suspected of having undertaken a wide range of subversive activities against the United States and its partners and allies since 2014—examples include military support for the separatist republics in eastern Ukraine, Ran attempted coup in Montenegro, and influence campaigns in the 2016 U.S. and 2017 French elections. Responding to Russian subversion is difficult, in part because the threat is, by its very nature, not clearly known. In this Perspective, we review past RAND Corporation and other relevant work and synthesize overall insights about why and how Russia undertakes subversion. This review and synthe- sis offer insights about the likely threat of Russian subversion to the United States and its partners and allies. Russia likely finds subversion—which we define as efforts intended to influence the domestic politics of other countries—attractive because it could help achieve multiple Russian foreign policy interests at relatively low cost. The threat of Russian subversion to different countries varies based on the intensity of Russia’s interests and the resources available to undertake subversion. In western Europe and the C O R P O R A T I O N United States, Russian subversive tools appear to be limited political warfare, or sharp power (Cardenal et al., 2017; to information, cyber, and political ones. In neighboring Cohen and Radin, 2019; Robinson et al., 2018). There is former communist countries, Russia uses a wider range substantial debate about these terms—for example, crit- of military and economic tools. -
Soviet Subversion and Propaganda, How the West Thought Against It
SUMMARY REPORT October 2017 Soviet Subversion, Disinformation and Propaganda: How the West Fought Against it An Analytic History, with Lessons for the Present Nicholas J. Cull, Vasily Gatov, Peter Pomerantsev, Anne Applebaum and Alistair Shawcross 2 Abstract What were Soviet influence and disinformation campaigns? What did the West do about them? This study answers these questions, explaining the Cold War strategies followed by the USSR, as well as the Western response. Eleven case studies follow, each one examining a counter-disinformation tactic in depth, with comments on the relevance of that tactic today. The first seven case studies focus on defensive tactics aimed at stopping Soviet propaganda in the West, while the latter four focus on offensive tactics used to promote accurate information and democratic messages to the USSR and beyond. The conclusion features a deeper examination of the difference between modern Russian propaganda and its Soviet antecedents. 3 Executive Summary What were Soviet influence and disinformation campaigns? What did the West do about them? This study answers these questions, explaining the Cold War strategies followed by the USSR, as well as the Western response. The full report contains eleven case studies, each one examining a counter-disinformation and counter-propaganda tactic in depth, with comments on the relevance of that tactic today. Here is a brief precis of each one of them. What Were Soviet Active Measures? Case Studies of Cold War The term “Active Measures’ came into use in the USSR Counter-Propaganda in the 1950s to describe overt and covert techniques for influencing events and behaviour in foreign countries. -
The Stasi at Home and Abroad the Stasi at Home and Abroad Domestic Order and Foreign Intelligence
Bulletin of the GHI | Supplement 9 the GHI | Supplement of Bulletin Bulletin of the German Historical Institute Supplement 9 (2014) The Stasi at Home and Abroad Stasi The The Stasi at Home and Abroad Domestic Order and Foreign Intelligence Edited by Uwe Spiekermann 1607 NEW HAMPSHIRE AVE NW WWW.GHI-DC.ORG WASHINGTON DC 20009 USA [email protected] Bulletin of the German Historical Institute Washington DC Editor: Richard F. Wetzell Supplement 9 Supplement Editor: Patricia C. Sutcliffe The Bulletin appears twice and the Supplement usually once a year; all are available free of charge and online at our website www.ghi-dc.org. To sign up for a subscription or to report an address change, please contact Ms. Susanne Fabricius at [email protected]. For general inquiries, please send an e-mail to [email protected]. German Historical Institute 1607 New Hampshire Ave NW Washington DC 20009-2562 Phone: (202) 387-3377 Fax: (202) 483-3430 Disclaimer: The views and conclusions presented in the papers published here are the authors’ own and do not necessarily represent the position of the German Historical Institute. © German Historical Institute 2014 All rights reserved ISSN 1048-9134 Cover: People storming the headquarters of the Ministry for National Security in Berlin-Lichtenfelde on January 15, 1990, to prevent any further destruction of the Stasi fi les then in progress. The poster on the wall forms an acrostic poem of the word Stasi, characterizing the activities of the organization as Schlagen (hitting), Treten (kicking), Abhören (monitoring),