Special Plans and Double Meanings: Controversies over Deception, Intelligence, and Policy Counterterrorism
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 456 Posted February 20, 2014
Edited by Jeffrey T. Richelson
For more information contact:
202/994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu
Washington, DC, February 20, 2014 — A major controversy during the administration of President George W. Bush concerned the use or misuse of intelligence with regard to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs and possible links between Iraq and al-Qaida. The best known elements of that controversy were Iraqi motivations behind the procurement of aluminum tubes, whether Iraq had sought to acquire uranium from Niger, if Iraq was seeking to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, and whether it was producing and stockpiling chemical or biological weapons.
But another aspect of that controversy involved two components of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy — the Office of Special Plans and the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG). During the Bush administration, and after, there have been numerous accounts that either confused the functions of those offices or attributed actions to them that they never undertook.
One potential cause for confusion is that the term “Special Plans” has been a euphemism for deception since World War II, and for ‘perception management’ (which included deception and ‘truth projection’) since at least the mid-1970s. And during the George W. Bush administration the term apparently had a dual use — as a traditional euphemism (for perception management) as well as a temporary title for planning with regard to Iraq, Iran, and counterterrorism.
Clearing up the confusion requires an examination of four different classes of documents — those concerning deception and special plans prior to the Ronald Reagan administration, those focusing on special plans during the Reagan administration, those related to the Office of Special Plans under Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and others focusing on the PCTEG.
Check out today’s posting at the National Security Archive’s site –http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB456/
Find us on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/NSArchive
Unredacted, the Archive blog – http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/
Dubious Secrets of the Cuban Missile Crisis Defense Department Deletes Khrushchev's Public Statements about Jupiter Missiles in Turkey 50-Year-Old Document on the Crisis Released in Glaringly Different Versions The Contradictions of Defense Department Declassification Policy National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 457 Posted - February 21, 2013 For more information contact: William Burr - 202/994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu Washington, DC, February 21, 2014 -- Inane and contradictory declassification actions on military records of the Cuban Missile Crisis indicate serious flaws in the Defense Department's declassification procedures for historical records, according to documents posted today by the National Security Archive. One of the biggest secrets of the crisis was that a deal involving the trade of Soviet missiles in Cuba for U.S. Jupiter missiles then deployed in Turkey, as well as Italy, was central to the diplomatic settlement.[1] While this was disclosed years ago, the Defense Department refuses to acknowledge that the United States had missiles at Turkish or Italian bases. A Pentagon report recently released through a FOIA appeal and published today by the National Security Archive includes several astonishing excisions, including one from Nikita Khrushchev's "publicly announced message" on 27 October 1962, where he proposed removing Soviet missiles from Cuba if the United States "will remove its analogous means from [excised]." What Khrushchev said was "Turkey," but on national security grounds the Pentagon would not declassify that word in a statement that was made to the world. Another unusual recent declassification decision involves a late October 1962 Joint Chiefs of Staff report on possible military and political operations against Cuba in the event that the negotiations with Moscow broke down. The Defense Department released that report last year in two different versions at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), one fully and correctly declassified and the other with significant excisions concerning proposals for covert operations and "provocative actions" against Cuba and Soviet forces in Cuba. Very similar proposals have been declassified before and the fact that a version in Air Force records was declassified in full raises questions about the standards used by the Pentagon to excise the other version. The "Turkey" deletion and the excised JCS report also raise questions about the extent to which Pentagon guidance influences declassification review practices at the National Archives' National Declassification Center. According to a recent NDC report, nearly forty percent of the millions of pages of documents reviewed, most of which are over forty years old, have been withheld on national security grounds. That astoundingly high percentage of exempted pagesmay include items that the Pentagon regards as "national security information"but which are no more sensitive than the Cuba "secrets" of 1962. Check out today's posting at the National Security Archive's Nuclear Vault -http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb457/ Find us on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/NSArchive Unredacted, the Archive blog - http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/
________________________________________________________
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.
_________________________________________________________
PRIVACY NOTICE The National Security Archive does not and will never share the names or e-mail addresses of its subscribers with any other organization. Once a year, we will write you and ask for your financial support. We may also ask you for your ideas for Freedom of Information requests, documentation projects, or other issues that the Archive should take on. We would welcome your input, and any information you care to share with us about your special interests. But we do not sell or rent any information about subscribers to any other party.