Grey is the new black : covert action and implausible deniability

International Affairs 94: 3 (2018) 477–494; doi: 10.1093/ia/iiy067 © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of International Affairs. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Anxiety about ambiguous warfare and ‘hybridity’ is all the rage. But the rapidly proliferating literature on ‘grey’, ‘hybrid’ and ‘non-linear warfare’ is confused and references a bewildering range of military, political and economic developments associated with the changing nature of war over several decades.1 The proliferation of terms emphasizes that conceptual clarity is in short supply, and this elasticity ultimately obscures more than it explains.2 We argue that this lack of clarity turns upon the paradoxical nature of covert action. Covert action by definition seeks to change things and often leaves some sort of a trail. Although some have remarked on the varying degrees of exposure associated with hybrid warfare, little systematic analysis exists of the role of visibility and acknowledgement.3 We therefore seek to relocate the debate within a wide-ranging analysis of covert action which, on closer inspection, was often hardly covert at all. We unpack ideas surrounding secrecy to challenge assumptions about covert action and offer broader insights into contemporary interventionism. For hundreds of years, states have sought to intervene in the affairs of others in a deniable manner. Since the professionalization of intelligence services in the aftermath of the Second World War, this behaviour has become known as covert action: commonly understood as activity to influence events in a plausibly deniable manner. Indeed, the concept of plausible deniability—some have gone as far as to call it a doctrine4—is central to understandings of covert action both academically and in practice. Yet plausible deniability has rarely been subjected

International Affairs 94: 3, 2018 to critical analysis. 5It has instead almost become received wisdom. 6In reality, plausible deniability barely existed even in its supposed heyday and certainly has little place in the twenty-first century.
The orthodox consensus assumes that states engage in covert action when they can plausibly deny sponsorship.The execution of the act itself may not necessarily be secret-assassinations, for example, involve someone visibly dying-but the sponsorship thereof is hidden both during and after the event.States must be able to deny involvement, and in a plausible or believable manner.This portrayal creates a conceptually neat but monodimensional understanding of covert action, in which secrecy is both binary and assumed.For some covert actions, it may well be the case that sponsorship remained secret from all except the sponsoring state.Indeed, certain operations undoubtedly have not yet surfaced for this very reason, and it is important to be aware of such 'unknowns' when discussing covert actions.
However, many covert actions are an open secret: implausibly deniable.The CIA's failed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, together with large-scale paramilitary operations in Laos, Angola and Afghanistan, spring to mind as obvious examples where denials lacked plausibility.More recently, the Kremlin initially denied intervention in Ukraine in 2014 and still denies interference in the 2016 US presidential election.In both cases, the denials rang hollow.Yet these operations did not fall outside the boundaries of covert action; nor did their lack of secrecy necessarily constitute a failure of covert action (although in the case of the Bay of Pigs it clearly did).This observation problematizes the role of plausible deniability as integral to covert action.One might counter that the existence of hitherto unknown covert actions, which need not be denied, undermines this argument; however, given that many supposedly successful covert actions (encompassing both influence and paramilitary operations) lacked secrecy, there are certainly grounds to question assumptions surrounding plausible deniability in covert action.
To address this issue, we consider four questions: (1) What is plausible deniability and how does the concept hold up in practice?(2) What degrees of visibility and acknowledgement actually exist?(3) Why do leaders use covert action if some exposure is likely, and does it have coercive value?(4) How does implausible deniability in covert action connect to the recent debate over hybrid warfare?This article begins by considering orthodox conceptualizations of plausible deniability, and secret interventionism more broadly, within the existing literature.It then interrogates the role and reality of plausible deniability in covert action, offering a more complex conceptualization in the process.Finally, it develops a logic underpinning implausible deniability, recognizing the value of covert action both as a communicative tool and in creating and exploiting strategic ambiguity. 5 In the course of this analysis, we advance three arguments.First, plausible deniability is surprisingly poorly conceptualized in both academic discourse and political practice.This generates a misleadingly simplistic view of the nature and effects of covert action as a form of state interaction.In reality, a spectrum of attribution and exposure exists since covert action has multiple audiences, both internal and external.Second, although cases of plausibly deniable covert action exist-including some which have yet to come to light-the concept has long been flimsy, especially regarding paramilitary operations.This is even more the case today, for changes in the nature of mass media and the proliferation of electronic whistleblowing have increased implausible deniability.Both these developments challenge state secrecy while blurring boundaries between overt and covert, public and private, even truth and fiction.Implausible deniability is also linked to the growth of special forces and private military actors which have further increased the grey space between secrecy and visibility.
Third, we argue that implausible deniability does not spell the end of covert action.Indeed, political leaders wish to have their cake and eat it, avoiding constitutional accountability for risky operations while harnessing the benefits of open secrecy.Implausible deniability allows them to communicate resolve, exploit ambiguity and even 'hang tough' by boasting about deploying special forces.As early as 1962, President Kennedy was astounded to find that his approval rating soared to 82 per cent in the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco simply because it made him look action-orientated. 7Ultimately, we advance a new understanding of covert action, moving away from the flawed idea of plausible deniability towards that of unacknowledged activity.Indeed, we suggest that much of the fashionable debate about the newness of hybrid war labours under a misapprehension.It revolves around the nature and prominence of covert action as much as any innovative operational means.

Conceptualizing plausible deniability
Taking their lead from US executive orders and legislative statutes, scholars have long referred to 'plausible deniability' when defining covert action.They have paid less attention to the phrase itself, interpreting 'plausible deniability' in myriad ways.Consequently, it lacks a clear conceptual grounding in the existing discourse.For some, it is simply an informal 'buzzword'. 8For others, it amounts to a doctrine or 'so-called doctrine'. 9For many, it is simply an 'overarching objective' tying covert operations together. 10nternational Affairs 94: 3, 2018 Some scholars see plausible deniability as functioning at the international level: to allow a state to deny involvement in a certain act.Others locate it at the domestic level: to allow senior officials-and ultimately the premier-to deny personal knowledge and instead punish so-called 'rogue elephants' for transgression if the covert action is discovered.11Gregory Treverton, who served on the first Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and penned the pioneering academic study of covert action in the late 1980s, links the two levels by noting that early covert action was designed to 'enable the US government to argue plausibly that it, and failing that, at least the President, had not been involved'. 12he time-frame of plausible deniability is equally confused.Most definitions do not consider how long sponsorship should remain hidden after an operation in order for it to qualify as successful-or even to qualify as covert action at all. 13 This is problematic, for it raises unanswered questions about the purpose of deniability, alongside when and why leaders admit involvement.It also risks blurring lines with deception and special military operations, where secrecy has an operational shelf-life. 14As a British cabinet secretary lamented after the Second World War, sponsorship of covert operations in peacetime had to remain deniable for far longer; deniability now necessitated going beyond the short-term wartime requirement of merely protecting agents. 15ome writers advance the improbable idea of 'silent warfare' or 'secret armies'.16More sophisticated attempts to discuss plausible deniability conflate visibility with acknowledgement.Johnson and Wirtz, for example, note that the role of the sponsor 'is neither apparent nor publicly acknowledged'.17This seems too idealistic and binary, for sponsorship can be apparent but not acknowledged.Perhaps this is redolent of the unrealistic expectations that some high-level policy-makers entertain when considering covert action.Either way, it all amounts to a rather vague term too often used casually.As Admiral John Poindexter, National Security Advisor to President Reagan, put it during the Iran-Contra hearings of 1987: plausible deniability is 'simply a concept' and 'open to interpretation'. 18nternational Affairs 94: 3, 2018   This uncertainty is problematic, both analytically and practically.Domestically, it blurs accountability, the identity of actors and the constitutional implications.Internationally, it creates the misleading assumption that target states lack awareness of the hidden hand behind successful operations.As we shall see, covert action is multidimensional, with varying audiences and degrees of exposure.In many cases, the target is aware of the perpetratorindeed, quite often the effectiveness of covert action depends on this awareness to achieve a degree of coercion that lies somewhere between diplomacy and conventional force.For example, when explaining the purpose of extensive Cold War covert actions against Indonesia, the CIA's Deputy Director for Plans, Frank Wisner, remarked: 'I think it's time we held [President] Sukarno's feet to the fire.' 19 More broadly, much of the International Relations (IR) literature offers a simplistic view of secrecy.It does not treat covert action in a sophisticated manner, but takes plausible deniability at face value.It considers secrecy/ transparency in a more or less binary manner, sees exposure as negative, and offers little consideration of the paradoxical nature of covert action-or indeed of covert action at all. 20The vast literature on signalling, for example, has largely ignored the value of covert communication, focusing instead on public threat as a means of coercion or signalling resolve. 21A rare exception is Austin Carson's work on secrecy and non-escalation which, although limited to 'covert' warfare, recognizes that exposure is not dichotomous and that violent action conducted within the twilight world of quasi-secrecy can prevent escalation. 22t is, of course, in paramilitary covert actions-or 'secret wars'-that plausible deniability has long been paper-thin.However, like hybrid warfare, covert action is also poorly integrated into the literature on proxy warfare.Writing on covert action does implicitly incorporate proxy wars, such as those in 1980s Afghanistan, under the banner of paramilitary operations, but does little to address the obviously implausible deniability of those covert actions.Conversely, much of the literature on proxy warfare, again like that on hybrid warfare, struggles with the idea of covert action.Authors have acknowledged a 'sponsor's dilemma', whereby it is difficult for those sponsoring proxies to do so openly for fear of breaching the principle of International Affairs 94: 3, 2018 non-interference. 23Yet disagreement exists over the relationship between proxy warfare and covert action.Andrew Mumford argues that the two are distinct on the basis that covert action requires intelligence or special forces personnel on the ground in the target country, whereas proxy warfare is conducted more indirectly. 24Others believe proxy warfare can be a (para)military form of covert action-nevertheless, all conceptualize exposure in binary terms. 25xamination of the literature reveals two fault-lines, concerning respectively the target and the credibility of the deception.Both are important, but the literature offers one fairly consistent assumption: that covert action requires plausible deniability for an unspecified length of time which, in turn, requires secrecy from its target audience.We argue, by contrast, that not all covert actions are plausibly deniable and that exposure-if unacknowledged-is not necessarily counter productive.Plausibility operates on a continuum.Action which is neither acknowledged nor apparent is plausibly deniable covert action.Despite this forming the orthodox view, many operations traditionally considered successful are actually apparent but not acknowledged: that is, implausibly deniable.The historical prevalence of this phenomenon is reinforced as archives of the former Soviet Bloc open up and scholars realize that many 'secret' western operations were in fact known to Soviet intelligence. 26Ultimately, the complexity of plausible deniability should be embraced; otherwise, as demonstrated above, we are left with a misleading and impoverished concept.

The myth of plausible deniability
The concept of plausible deniability in its classic form is synonymous with American Cold War traditions.It can be traced back to NSC10/2, enunciated in 1948, a year after the creation of the CIA.In this document, the US National Security Council defined covert action as operations 'so planned and executed that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the US Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them'. 27After covert action to influence the Italian elections that same year, plausible deniability, as Treverton put it, became 'dogma'. 28NSC5412, issued in March 1954, used the same language as NSC10/2 and reaffirmed the importance of plausible deniability in larger anti-communist International Affairs 94: 3, 2018 covert actions. 29Accordingly, the early Cold War era became known as the 'the age of plausible deniability'. 30et even at this early stage, the idea contained an element of self-delusion.The plausible deniability of the CIA's most important Cold War covert actions was already questionable.The first book on the CIA, The cloak and dollar war, appeared as early as 1953 and offered a summary of its European covert action programme, including both failed attempts to roll back communism in eastern Europe and broader black propaganda operations.Indeed, even influence operations struggled to maintain plausible deniability and, at the height of the Cold War, critics regularly pointed to black radio stations operated by both sides, covert publications and outright forgeries. 31In retrospect, and challenging orthodox understandings of covert action, these operations were apparent but not acknowledged: implausibly deniable.
Exposure reached new heights with widespread press reporting of the preparations for the Bay of Pigs operation in 1961.Several mainstream American newspapers discussed CIA training of Cuban exiles in camps in Florida and Guatemala.Plausible deniability was increasingly a collective delusion. 32The following years saw presidential plausible deniability fade away when, in the aftermath of major inquiries into the CIA, Congress stipulated that the President should report all covert actions through what became known as a presidential 'finding'. 33eanwhile, numerous Cold War covert actions, such as those in Cambodia and Angola, were widely described and publicly debated in real time.
During the following decade, the Reagan Doctrine elevated the importance of covert action, but also revelled in unsecrecy.Even on the election trail, Reagan promised the American public that he would 'unleash' the CIA.Delighted by the discomfort that the mujahideen were causing Soviet forces in Afghanistan, Reagan began to hint openly that America was aiding the resistance forces there.Senators even engaged in proxy-war tourism along the Afghan-Pakistan border. 34The covert action in this theatre, known as 'Operation Cyclone', was implausibly deniable: decidedly apparent and, given the hints, barely unacknowledged.
During the 1980s and 1990s, American directives continued to make dogmatic references to plausible deniability, but these remained confused and at odds with reality.Executive Order 12333, issued by Reagan in 1981, reiterated the idea that covert actions, referred to as special activities, 'are planned and executed so that the role of the United States Government is not apparent or acknowledged publicly'. 35 the same language, adding that the United States sought 'a form of plausible denial to the outside world'. 36Officials, no less than academics, conflated secrecy with lack of acknowledgement by implying that plausible deniability involves action which is neither apparent nor acknowledged.These are two separate things; and covert action was, in fact, increasingly apparent, at times even a matter of display.America has not been alone in this.Many states engaging in covert action make use of plausible deniability as an organizing idea, but have used it more flexibly. 37lthough codifying less than the United States, 38 the UK emphasized plausible deniability in the aftermath of the Second World War.By the mid-1960s, however, policy-makers had to distinguish between 'untraceable' and 'deniable' operations, when MI6 and special forces waged 'secret' wars in both Yemen and Indonesia, and denials rang hollow.Untraceable operations were those 'in which the hand of HMG [Her Majesty's Government] at best will not even be suspected and at worst cannot be proved'.These demonstrated traditional conceptualizations of covert action.Deniable operations were those in which 'if, in spite of the probability that HMG connived [in] its execution and in spite of some tenable arguable evidence that HMG was officially involved, HMG considers it politically feasible to deny complicity in public statements e.g. in the House of Commons or the United Nations'. 39These, by contrast, were implausibly deniable.This formulation-perhaps because it was not for public consumption-offers a more realistic account of deniability.In contrast to American understandings, the UK distinguished secrecy or visibility from acknowledgement and opened the way towards implausible deniability.It is telling that the literature discussed in the previous section of this article is overwhelmingly American and does not take account of the nuances visible in the UK historical record.
Russia also conceptualizes plausible deniability along a continuum in a manner that emphasizes degrees of secrecy and acknowledgement.As in the West, Russian (and earlier Soviet) covert action is 'based on the principle of plausible deniability, where the result is to influence decision-making in a direction favourable or at least not harmful to the Kremlin'. 40In practice, however, the old Soviet idea of 'active measures', its term for political warfare, was more complex than western equivalents.It offered a more holistic approach, adopted and implemented by a variety of institutions.Covert methods and actors overlapped with their overt counterparts, making them deliberately difficult to conceptualize and counter.This was particularly the case regarding propaganda, which drew on both covert and overt tools interchangeably and simultaneously. 41Now, Moscow's active International Affairs 94: 3, 2018 measures exploit the western commitment to pluralism and new forms of media to blur the line between secrecy and acknowledgement, truth and lie, fact and fiction. 42he visibility of much covert action has increased in recent years, further eroding the utility of plausible deniability as traditionally understood.This trend is driven by wider factors within leaders' control, such as the remarkable rise of special forces and private military companies (PMCs) since 9/11.The majority of special forces activity requires high levels of skill but is not especially covert: this applies to activities such as raiding, forward air control, hostage rescue and security sector reform.But other core special forces activities, including what the Pentagon terms 'Activities Specified by the President or SecDef [Defense Secretary]', overlap with covert action.This latter kind of activity, which challenges the long-held US bureaucratic distinction between covert action and military special operations, was exemplified by a new style of counterterrorism adopted in Afghanistan and Iraq, fusing the rapid exploitation of intelligence gained from special forces raids with social network analysis.The information obtained thereby enabled further kinetic action on an almost industrial scale.The rise of special forces-operating in such numbers, in so many arenas, and in such close involvement with the intelligence services-makes plausible deniability difficult. 43ikewise, PMCs, although not new, transformed themselves into global corporations following 9/11 and the ensuing surge in demand for security that governments alone could not meet. 44Although originally perceived as conducting relatively mundane guard duties in Iraq and Afghanistan, PMCs soon expanded, hiring a number of senior CIA officers-to the extent that some regarded one company, Blackwater (now Xe/Academi), as 'an extension of the agency'. 45MCs allegedly became involved in CIA or Pentagon programmes to track and kill militants, 46 back-filled many traditional special forces roles in secondary locations such as Colombia, 47 and worked alongside special forces and intelligence officers in the emerging wars in Libya and Syria. 48The rise of PMCs, operating in a grey zone between the public and the private, further complicates issues of deniability.
International Affairs 94: 3, 2018 Factors outside government decision-making processes also have an impact upon exposure; the most important is information and communications technology (ICT).Although active press reporting has always qualified the secrecy of military operations, 49 recent changes in ICT have amplified vulnerabilities for intelligence services and special forces alike.These include affordable, worldwide and real-time coverage; global internet access; and access to com mercial mapping and space imagery systems. 50ICT allows citizens to communicate, to collect evidence, and ultimately to compromise plausible deniability. 51eanwhile, state secrecy-and plausible deniability-is further challenged by a globalized civil society, with increased contact between legions of investigative journalists, human rights lawyers and whistleblowers.Claims about the 'end of secrecy' have been overstated, and governments are fighting back hard against journalists and whistleblowers; 52 Barack Obama's White House prosecuted twice as many whistleblowers under the 1917 Espionage Act as all previous presidents combined. 53Nevertheless, all of this has substantially challenged the 'doctrine' of plausible deniability-so much so that Dennis Blair, the US Director of National Intelligence in 2009-2010, dismissed it as a relic of the Cold War and irrelevant for twenty-first-century counterterrorism operations. 54hanges in the media environment have important implications for understanding the nature of covert action; they go far beyond a mere diminution of secrecy and further demonstrate the spectrum of visibility and acknowledgement.Over the past 20 years we have seen a demassification-or fragmentation-of the media characterized not only by hundreds of new channels but also by informal reporting from bloggers.Meanwhile, military operations are increasingly accompanied by information operations in which claim competes with counterclaim to damage the credibility of any narrative. 55This has important implications for understanding plausible deniability, for it highlights confusion rather than secrecy.Ample evidence pointed to Russian military involvement in Ukraine, for example, but western journalistic methodology caused mainstream news outlets to report respectfully the flat denials of Moscow and pick up some of the commentary by private Russian-owned news outlets and thousands of patriotic Russian online bloggers. 56We must, of course, be wary of forgetting history here: the KGB advanced disinformation throughout the Cold War.It aimed not simply to defame the target, but to spread confusion which, in turn, would entice the International Affairs 94: 3, 2018 target to act in favour of Soviet interests. 57Recent 'fake news' follows in this tradition, but allows sponsors to sow even more confusion, given the fragmentation and proliferation of new media channels.Changes in the media landscape have not only made it harder to verify information; they have also prompted policy-makers to embrace the idea of implausible deniability, as we suggest below.
Deniability is thus a nuanced concept.Existing versions of plausible deniability-inherent in orthodox understandings of covert action-do not fare well when applied to known historical examples; nor do they stand up in the current strategic environment.Embracing the complexity of deniability within covert action, as we do here, suggests that there must be a reason-beyond selfdelusion-to explain why policy-makers returned to this option time and again.On the one hand, it does appear that the United States failed to think through the doctrine of secrecy in a particularly sophisticated manner.On the other hand, a more nuanced account of plausible deniability involving a spectrum of visibility and acknowledgement has important implications for understanding current and historical covert actions.It could be argued, for example, that early CIA operations in eastern Europe, visible to a particular audience, demonstrated resolve and kept the flame of hope alive among dissidents; that the Bay of Pigs operation, through its exposure, displayed dynamism to the American people; and that awareness of operations in Angola and Afghanistan conveyed key messages to audiences at home and abroad.We explore this aspect of the topic in detail in the next section.

Embracing implausible deniability
During the Cold War, as we have suggested, plausible deniability was in fact widely recognized as implausible.Covert actions involving 'secret armies' of as many as 40,000 people achieved only a pantomime secrecy.Nonetheless, leaders sometimes embrace, or even celebrate, implausible deniability.Costs of exposure should therefore not be taken at face value; they will not spell the end of covert action.On the contrary, implausible deniability has logic and political value.Special forces, covert action, and the modern transition of intelligence officers from gatherers to hunters,58 allow politicians to signal resolution and resilience when they choose.Tony Blair caught this mood perfectly in 2006 while addressing a press conference.When journalists asked him about MI6 activities in Moscow, he quipped: 'We never comment on intelligence matters . . .except when we want to, obviously.'59His flippant aside disguises an important truth: that covert action as a grey activity can perform a wider range of functions than genuinely secret operations.
It is overly simplistic to think of covert action merely in terms of hidden sponsorship.In reality, covert action, as we have seen, involves multiple levels of exposure and multiple audiences.Allies, adversaries and domestic audiences may International Affairs 94: 3, 2018 well be aware that a state is engaging in operations, creating a unique form of dramatic irony.Covert action might even be thought of as a kind of secret theatre that can be used to communicate or create uncertainty. 60Implausible deniability allows states to communicate resolve, while not escalating crises into open warfare. 61It conveys messages, picked up via counter-intelligence apparatuses, about intentions to other leaders. 62There are numerous examples of such behaviour in recent history.In the mid-1960s, Britain launched covert actions against Egyptian interests in Yemen and against Indonesia.Both cases were visible to the targets; indeed, President Nasser of Egypt even sent those heading the Yemen operation a Christmas card.It was not always successful, however.Communication within the Indonesian Army was so poor that SAS raids did not achieve the signalling or deterrence effects intended. 63Like deception and deterrence, covert action has communicative value only if the target can both see and understand it. 64n 1969, the United States used 'secret' bombing Cambodia to signal resolve to local leaders.The following decade in Angola both superpowers employed covert aid primarily to signal resolve to local allies and each other, measuring commitment from observed changes in the magnitude of their opponent's aid.Likewise, western aid to the mujahideen in Afghanistan was intended to convey resolve. 65Accordingly, Lord Carrington, the British Foreign Secretary, refused to deny that MI6 was sending arms to Afghanistan because doing so would 'remove an incentive on the Soviet Union to look for a political solution and lay ourselves open to domestic criticism for being unwilling to back our words with deeds'. 66ritain therefore found itself in the seemingly odd position of unofficially hinting at more aggressive levels of covert action than were actually taking place.
Implausible deniability-or open secrecy-prevented escalation during the Cold War: parties had a shared interest in maintaining the fiction of secrecy in order to avoid pressure to escalate.Such 'tacit collusion' managed risk and offered a way out of tense situations 67 -which was of considerable importance, given the nuclear dimension of the superpower standoff.However, as demonstrated above, a similar logic applied when using covert action against non-nuclear and non-aligned states.It still holds in the post-Cold War world, suggesting a lack of strategic transformation and the advisability of caution in calculating the role of nuclear weapons in determining the place of covert action within a state's grand strategy.In 2007, Israel launched a 'covert' strike on a suspected Syrian nuclear International Affairs 94: 3, 2018 reactor to demonstrate resolve to other nuclear proliferators in the region, namely Iran.Crucially, the deterrent value depended on Israeli denials being implausible. 68ore recently, building on Carson's work on non-escalation, Russian activity in Ukraine signals to the United States and its allies that while Moscow will pursue its interests, it will do so not through direct conflict, but through more limited means, thereby circumscribing the nature of competition. 69More recently still, in February 2018, non-acknowledgement helped defuse a potential crisis when dozens of Russians died fighting US-backed forces in Syria. 70emarkably, secrecy and special forces have become a sort of performative spectacle.Premiers love to associate themselves with special forces because it makes them look tough.On 24 February 2013, Michelle Obama announced the winner of the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture of 2012 while surrounded by people in uniform.Two of the top contenders featured the CIA and covert The award went to Argo, with Zero Dark Thirty a close runner-up.Both films claimed to feature true stories and to be focused on narrating real events.Both received government support, including access to CIA and special forces officials, together with reams of specially declassified intelligence documents. 71With policy elites inside the Pentagon and the CIA treating elaborate secrecy as an ostentatious display of importance, 72 the CIA and special forces are now celebrated in America as superpatriots, rather in the way that the KGB and its successors are praised as macho defenders of Russia. 73Intelligence and special forces perform a Janus-like function, signalling resolve to domestic audiences, yet appeasing a war-weary public opposed to conventional 'boots on the ground' in difficult locations.
Performative posturing using intelligence and special forces creates ambiguity as much as it shows resolve.It proudly demonstrates the existence of these virile capabilities without specifying when and where they are being used.This twilight zone is useful: many states, in practice, have long preferred ambiguity over deniability.The CIA neither confirms nor denies its activities.Likewise, British ministers neither confirm nor deny intelligence and special forces activity, while Israel operates a deliberate 'policy of ambiguity'.As Alexandra Perina, Attorney Advisor to the State Department in 2013-2014, explained, denials recast the 'neither confirm nor deny' principle from a 'position of inscrutability which maintains factual neutrality to one imbued, if ever so slightly, with affirmation'. 74Many covert actions, rather than being denied outright-and plausibly-as orthodoxy would have it, therefore instead turn on non-acknowledgement.Acknowledgement and denial exist at the ends of a continuum, not as binary absolutes.
International Affairs 94: 3, 2018 Hybrid warfare forms a timely example of implausibly deniable operations creating exploitable ambiguity.The approach, developed in the United States but now associated with Russia,75 combines political and military activity with covert action, especially influence operations.Its aim, according to one Russia specialist, is 'to generate a situation where it is unclear whether a state of war exists-and if it does, who is a combatant and who is not'. 76In short, it creates ambiguity.Russian activities in Ukraine, especially in the eastern Donbas region, form the most recent prominent example.Scholars have labelled them 'implausibly' deniable and compared them to Soviet operations against Poland in the 1920s: 'sufficient to keep the wound bleeding but insufficient, thus far, to warrant massive retaliation'. 77ntervention in Ukraine displayed many of the factors associated with twentyfirst-century implausible deniability discussed above.Ultra-nationalist Russian agitators seem to have moved into Ukraine to intensify the local grievances of ethnic Russians and to create disturbances.The inevitable Ukrainian response was then used to justify the intervention of irregular forces consisting of pan-Slavic Russian 'patriots', privateers and mercenaries, supplied and advised by Russian intelligence services and special operations forces.Under Russian supervision, the rebel units focused on radio stations and communications facilities in an attempt to shape the narrative, seeking to frame events as a humanitarian crisis that could be blamed on Kiev.All the while, Moscow denied any involvement. 78oving beyond hybrid warfare to political influence operations, a former senior MI6 officer described Russian covert action targeting the 2016 US presidential election as equally 'implausibly deniable'.This operation aimed to reduce the credibility of the American election system, using tried and tested practices that date from the Soviet era, yet are now more sophisticated, especially when combined with advances in communications technology, overt propaganda and attempts to work through institutions such as the OSCE or the UN. 79The attack on a Russian military intelligence officer turned MI6 spy, Sergei Skripal, in England in February 2018, using Russian-made military grade nerve agents, also fits into this pattern.Here again, despite widespread accusations, the Kremlin denies sponsorship.
The ambiguity created by implausible deniability is useful for a variety of reasons.First, implausible deniability opens up a gap in the decision-making of cumbersome institutions like NATO that Russia can exploit.Russia is highly unlikely to expand into the Baltic states, so it is important not to overstate the case here, but the Kremlin certainly welcomes disunity within NATO, and the International Affairs 94: 3, 2018 the public domain without officially acknowledging something. 86Recent CIA activities in Yemen underline this.Multiple press stories revealed the classified drone programme in a controlled way, largely as a result of information planted by unnamed US officials.The plants, probably authorized by the White House, kept the American people minimally informed and characterized the operations in a manner designed to boost support without compromising security.They also signalled respect for local sovereignty by noting Yemeni consent, without formally acknowledging Yemeni involvement and so technically not violating the pledge to keep it hidden.Domestic watchdog groups struggled to secure additional details about internal procedures, collateral damage estimates and legal viewpoints. 87mbiguity thus has value at the domestic as well as the international level.

Conclusions
Implausible deniability, even pantomime secrecy, are not new.Some of America's larger paramilitary Cold War covert actions were so ostentatious that they could barely be disguised at all.Despite official denials, audiences were well aware of the hidden hand and to whom it belonged.Now 'special activities' is a massive enterprise with both a public and a privatized face.America's Joint Special Operations Command boasts close to 100,000 personnel and its own Special Forces University located in Florida, together with an academic journal.Yet despite this panoply of activity, the United States does not seem to have thought through the doctrinal issue of unsecrecy.Some have criticized the expansion of special forces as the uncritical elevation of tactic to strategy, merely focused on an unending global game of 'whack-a-mole' that is not fully integrated into wider policy. 88y contrast, others have devoted more thought to implausible deniability.The UK, as demonstrated above, historically differentiated between untraceable and deniable covert actions, while much current activity takes place within a deliberately broad framework, thereby circumventing the more rigid 'neither apparent nor acknowledged' approach of the United States.Russia has a longer tradition of thinking about unsecrecy.As Galeotti reminds us: 'From the tsars through the Bolsheviks, they have been accustomed to a style of warfare that embraces much more eagerly the irregular and the criminal, the spook and the provocateur, the activist and the fellow-traveller.' 89 During the Cold War, the Soviet Union used overt and covert propaganda simultaneously, and did so alongside subversion and other more overt forms of intervention.Likewise, the Kremlin recognized the positive gains to be derived from exposure (as opposed to acknowledgement).They deemed forgeries, a speciality of the KGB, successful even if exposed.If the Americans could convince a foreign leader that a particular document was a forgery, then, the Kremlin hoped, that forgery would serve to remind the leader International Affairs 94: 3, 2018 of similar American activities in the past-or simply create fear and uncertainty about the present. 90his article has sought to problematize the concept of plausible deniability.We conclude that, in reality, covert action is less about plausible deniability and more about non-acknowledged intervention as performance.It is misleading to assume that successful covert action necessitates that the sponsoring hand remain hidden long after the act.Some scholars predict the demise of covert action, largely because increased exposure, caused by changes in the media and communications technology, erodes plausible deniability. 91But this view rests on an assumption, challenged here, that robust plausible deniability was a key part of Cold War operations.Covert action is broader than current conceptions of plausible deniability allow.There may well be cases of covert action yet to come to light which are plausibly deniable; but, even so, our key point still stands.A spectrum of visibility and deniability exists; the one constant is non-acknowledgement.
Building on this, we asked why, despite this lack of plausibility, leaders continue to use such actions, and how these developments connect to discussions about hybrid warfare.We conclude that implausible deniability does not spell the end of covert action.The grey zone between secrecy and exposure brings significant benefits.It has communicative value and allows states to demonstrate resolve without escalating to military conflict.In an era of new nationalism, it also injects calculated uncertainty into relations between states, creating fear abroad and yielding electoral dividends at home. 92This has clear relevance to debates about hybrid warfare, and we seek to put the intelligence literature into dialogue with strategic studies, suggesting not only that hybrid warfare is not especially new, but that understanding covert action is integral to understanding this wider form of interventionism.This is the future.It is not only Russia that is using implausible deniability as a way of acting with impunity.The Russians believe the Americans have done the same in the post-Soviet space.Meanwhile, the US military has also pointed to China and Iran as using similarly ambiguous approaches. 93et there are potential costs and hazards.As two venerable national security lawyers have observed, practitioners can mask imperfect secrecy by generating a vast background noise about plots and conspiracies in order to create a surfeit of information.The problem for the adversary is trying to identify which ones are serious, since countering all contingencies is impossibly costly.But this, in turn, creates issues for the perpetrator regarding loss of control.Such ambiguity and swirl of rumour has the short-term tactical effect of lending an advantage, but in the longer term could increase tension and the general possibility of conflict. 94nder conditions of implausible deniability, covert actions are less of a precision instrument and may have more unintended consequences.