Plausible deniability
Encyclopedia
Plausible deniability is, at root, credible (plausible) ability to deny a fact or allegation, or to deny previous knowledge of a fact. The term most often refers to the denial of blame in (formal or informal) chains of command
Chain of Command
Chain of Command may refer to:* Chain of command, in a military context, the line of authority and responsibility along which orders are passed* "Chain of Command" , the fifth episode of the first season of Beast Wars...

, where upper rungs quarantine the blame to the lower rungs, and the lower rungs are often inaccessible, meaning confirming responsibility for the action is nearly impossible. In the case that illegal or otherwise disreputable and unpopular activities become public, high-ranking officials may deny any awareness of such act or any connection to the agents used to carry out such acts.

In politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

 and espionage, deniability refers to the ability of a "powerful player" or actor to avoid "blowback
Blowback (intelligence)
Blowback is the espionage term for the violent, unintended consequences of a covert operation that are suffered by the civil population of the aggressor government...

" by secretly arranging for an action to be taken on their behalf by a third party—ostensibly unconnected with the major player. In political campaigns, plausible deniability enables candidates to stay "clean" and denounce advertisements that use unethical approaches or innuendo based on opposition research
Opposition research
Opposition research is:# The term used to classify and describe efforts of supporters or paid consultants of a political candidate to legally investigate the biographical, legal or criminal, medical, educational, financial, public and private administrative and or voting records of the opposing...

.

More generally, "plausible deniability" can also apply to any act that leaves little or no evidence of wrongdoing or abuse. Examples of this are the use of electric shock
Electric shock
Electric Shock of a body with any source of electricity that causes a sufficient current through the skin, muscles or hair. Typically, the expression is used to denote an unwanted exposure to electricity, hence the effects are considered undesirable....

, waterboarding
Waterboarding
Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over the face of an immobilized captive, thus causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning...

 or pain-compliance holds as a means of torture or punishment, leaving few or no tangible signs that the abuse ever took place.

Plausible deniability is a legal concept. It refers to lack of evidence proving an allegation. Standards of proof vary in civil and criminal cases. In civil cases, the standard of proof is "preponderance of the evidence" whereas in a criminal matter, the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt." If your opponent lacks incontrovertible proof (evidence) of their allegation, you can "plausibly deny" the allegation even though it may be true.

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 one 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
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 and the Allies
Allies
In everyday English usage, allies are people, groups, or nations that have joined together in an association for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out between them...

' use of Ultra intelligence, which had secretly broken German Enigma ciphers. 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 direct action despite having useful intelligence. In these situations, the purpose of forbearance or superfluous action prevented the Germans from realizing their ciphers had been broken.

History

The expression "plausibly deniable" was first used publicly by Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

 (CIA) director Allen Dulles. The idea, on the other hand, is considerably older. For example, in the 19th century, Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage, FRS was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer...

 described the importance of having "a few simply honest men" on a committee who could be temporarily eliminated when "a peculiarly delicate question arises" so that one of them could "declare truly, if necessary, that he never was present at any meeting at which even a questionable course had been proposed."

Church Committee

A U.S. Senate committee, the Church Committee
Church Committee
The Church Committee is the common term referring to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975. A precursor to the U.S...

, 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
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

's Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...

. 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.
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
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 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 Hughes-Ryan Act
Hughes-Ryan Act
The Hughes-Ryan Act is a 1974 United States federal law that amended the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. The Act was named for its co-authors, Senator Harold E. Hughes and Representative Leo Ryan...

 of 1974 sought to put an end to plausible denial by requiring a Presidential finding that each operation is important to national security, and the Intelligence Oversight Act
Intelligence Oversight Act
The Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980 is a United States federal law that amended the Hughes-Ryan Act and requires United States government agencies to report covert actions to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence . The previous...

 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
Iran-Contra Affair
The Iran–Contra affair , also referred to as Irangate, Contragate or Iran-Contra-Gate, was a political scandal in the United States that came to light in November 1986. During the Reagan administration, senior Reagan administration officials and President Reagan secretly facilitated the sale of...

 has shown. Indeed, the members of Congress are in a dilemma: 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.

Media reports on the Church Committee and plausible deniability

Iran Contra Affair

In his testimony to the congressional committee studying the Iran-Contra affair
Iran-Contra Affair
The Iran–Contra affair , also referred to as Irangate, Contragate or Iran-Contra-Gate, was a political scandal in the United States that came to light in November 1986. During the Reagan administration, senior Reagan administration officials and President Reagan secretly facilitated the sale of...

, Vice Admiral John Poindexter
John Poindexter
John Marlan Poindexter is a retired United States naval officer and Department of Defense official. He was Deputy National Security Advisor and National Security Advisor for the Reagan administration. He was convicted in April 1990 of multiple felonies as a result of his actions in the Iran-Contra...

 stated: "I made a deliberate decision not to ask the President, so that I could insulate him from the decision and provide some future deniability for the President if it ever leaked out."

Declassified government documents

  • Pentagon papers October 25, 1963 Telegram from the Ambassador in Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
    Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
    Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. was a Republican United States Senator from Massachusetts and a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, South Vietnam, West Germany, and the Holy See . He was the Republican nominee for Vice President in the 1960 Presidential election.-Early life:Lodge was born in Nahant,...

     to Special Assistant for National Security Affairs McGeorge Bundy
    McGeorge Bundy
    McGeorge "Mac" Bundy was United States National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson from 1961 through 1966, and president of the Ford Foundation from 1966 through 1979...

     on US Options with Respect to a Possible Coup, mentioning the term plausible denial Alternative link (See Telegram 216)
  • 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
    Eduardo Frei Montalva
    Eduardo Frei Montalva was a Chilean political leader of world stature. In his long political career, he was Minister of Public Works, president of his Christian Democratic Party, senator, President of the Senate, and president of Chile from 1964 to 1970...

     president of Chile) to infer United States origin of funds and yet permitting plausible denial"
  • Training files of the CIA's covert "Operation PBSUCCESS
    Operation PBSUCCESS
    The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was a covert operation organized by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, the democratically-elected President of Guatemala....

    ," for the 1954 coup in Guatemala. According to the National Security Archive
    National Security Archive
    The National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...

    : "Among the documents found in the training files of Operation PBSUCCESS and declassified by the Agency is a CIA document titled '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."

Flaws

The doctrine had six major flaws:
  • It was an open door to the abuse of authority; it required that the parties in question could be said to have acted independently, which in the end was tantamount to giving them license to act independently.
  • It rarely worked when invoked; the denials made were rarely plausible and were generally seen through by both the media and the populace. One aspect of the Watergate
    Watergate scandal
    The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...

     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
    Richard Nixon
    Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

     and his aides.
  • "Plausible denial" only increases the risk of misunderstanding between senior officials and their employees.
  • 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.

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
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

 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
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...

, an American foreign policy think tank, in the 2003 report, "Finding America’s Voice: A Strategy for Reinvigorating U.S. Public Diplomacy"

The Murder of Thomas Becket

King Henry II of England
Henry II of England
Henry II ruled as King of England , Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Count of Nantes, Lord of Ireland and, at various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland and western France. Henry, the great-grandson of William the Conqueror, was the...

 is often said to have stated of Archbishop of Canterbury
Archbishop of Canterbury
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...

 Thomas Becket
Thomas Becket
Thomas Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his murder in 1170. He is venerated as a saint and martyr by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion...

, "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?" Becket was indeed murdered, although the king denied that his plea was to be taken in such a way.

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 dis-proven without a complete decrypted log of all network connections to and from that person's computer.

Freenet file sharing

The Freenet
Freenet
Freenet is a decentralized, censorship-resistant distributed data store originally designed by Ian Clarke. According to Clarke, Freenet aims to provide freedom of speech through a peer-to-peer network with strong protection of anonymity; as part of supporting its users' freedom, Freenet is free and...

 file sharing
File sharing
File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia , documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways...

 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
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...

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

Use in cryptography

In cryptography
Cryptography
Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...

, deniable encryption
Deniable encryption
In cryptography and steganography, deniable encryption is encryption that allows its users to convincingly deny that the data is encrypted, or that they are able to decrypt it. Such convincing denials may or may not be genuine. For example, although suspicions might exist that the data is...

 may be used to describe steganographic techniques
Steganography
Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message, a form of security through obscurity...

, 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. In this case the system is said to be Fully Undetectable, FUD.

Some systems take this further, such as MaruTukku
MaruTukku
In computing, rubberhose is a deniable encryption archive containing multiple file systems whose existence can only be verified using the appropriate cryptographic key.- Name and history :...

, FreeOTFE
FreeOTFE
FreeOTFE is an open source on-the-fly disk encryption computer program for PCs running Microsoft Windows, and personal digital assistants running Windows Mobile . It creates virtual drives, or disks, to which anything written is automatically encrypted before being stored on a computer's hard or...

 and (to a much lesser extent) TrueCrypt
TrueCrypt
TrueCrypt is a software application used for on-the-fly encryption . It is free and open source. It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file or encrypt a partition or the entire storage device .- Operating systems :TrueCrypt supports Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and...

 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.

Programming

The Underhanded C contest
Underhanded C Contest
The Underhanded C Contest was a programming contest to turn out code that is malicious, but passes a rigorous inspection, and looks like an honest mistake. The contest rules define a task, and a malicious component. Entries must perform the task in a malicious manner as defined by the contest, and...

 is an annual programming contest involving the creation of carefully crafted defects, which have to be both very hard to find and plausibly deniable as mistakes once found.

See also

  • At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA
    At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA
    At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA is a memoir co-written by former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet with Bill Harlow, former CIA Director of Public Affairs...

  • Black op
    Black op
    A black operation or black op is a covert operation typically involving activities that are highly clandestine and often outside of standard military protocol or even against the law.-Origins:...

  • Church Committee
    Church Committee
    The Church Committee is the common term referring to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975. A precursor to the U.S...

  • Deniable encryption
    Deniable encryption
    In cryptography and steganography, deniable encryption is encryption that allows its users to convincingly deny that the data is encrypted, or that they are able to decrypt it. Such convincing denials may or may not be genuine. For example, although suspicions might exist that the data is...

  • Equivocation
    Equivocation
    Equivocation is classified as both a formal and informal logical fallacy. It is the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning or sense...

  • Extraordinary rendition
    Extraordinary rendition
    Extraordinary rendition is the abduction and illegal transfer of a person from one nation to another. "Torture by proxy" is used by some critics to describe situations in which the United States and the United Kingdom have transferred suspected terrorists to other countries in order to torture the...

  • Leaderless resistance
    Leaderless resistance
    Leaderless resistance, or phantom cell structure, is a political resistance strategy in which small, independent groups , including individuals , challenge an established adversary such as a government. Leaderless resistance can encompass anything from non-violent disruption and civil disobedience...

  • Lone wolf (terrorism)
  • Operation PBSUCCESS
    Operation PBSUCCESS
    The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was a covert operation organized by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, the democratically-elected President of Guatemala....

  • Opposition research
    Opposition research
    Opposition research is:# The term used to classify and describe efforts of supporters or paid consultants of a political candidate to legally investigate the biographical, legal or criminal, medical, educational, financial, public and private administrative and or voting records of the opposing...

  • Willful blindness
    Willful blindness
    Willful blindness is a term used in law to when an individual seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally putting himself in a position where he will be unaware of facts which would render him liable.For example, in a number of cases,...

  • Willful violation
    Willful violation
    In the North American legal justice system system and in US Occupational Safety and Health regulations,willful violation is an "act done voluntarily with either...


External links

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