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ABSTRACT
Despite its prominence as a tool of statecraft, covert action’s defining characteristic – plausible deniability – remains a slippery concept. This article investigates the logics underlying the two main variants. The first ideal-type, the state model, captures efforts by states to disclaim sponsorship of covert operations. The drivers of covert action are primarily international, the sources of exposure are many, and its relationship with democratic norms is harmonious. The second ideal-type, the executive model, describes efforts to shield chief executives from blame. The drivers of covert action are domestic, the sources of exposure are limited, and its relationship with democracy is conflictual.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Rory Cormac, Stephen Marrin, Julia Santucci, Damien Van Puyvelde, Michael Warner, participants at the 2019 International Studies Association Conference, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful feedback.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here
Notes
1 Malcolm Byrne, Iran-Contra: Reagan’s Scandal and the Unchecked Abuse of Presidential Power (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas 2014).
2 Lawrence E. Walsh, Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters (Washington, DC: United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columba Circuit 1993), https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_27.htm.
3 Murrey Marder, ‘Bay of Pigs Invasion Was No Secret to Many’, Washington Post, 23 Dec. 1984, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1984/12/23/bay-of-pigs-invasion-was-no-secret-to-many/849883fe-ef3b-42bd-adbc-086b9d6287cc/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f5f7985bd84f.
4 Paul P. Kennedy, ‘U.S. Helps Train Anti-Castro Forces At Secret Guatemalan Air-Ground Base’, New York Times, 10 Jan. 1961, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1385912-u-s-helps-train-an-anti-castro-force-at-secret.html.
5 Tad Szulc, ‘Anti-Castro Units Land in Cuba; Report Fighting at Beachhead; Rusk Says U.S. Won’t Intervene’, New York Times, 18 Apr. 2018 1961, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0417.html?module=inline.
6 John F. Kennedy, ‘Address Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors’, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, 20 Apr. 2020 1961, https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/american-society-of-newspaper-editors-19610420.
7 Peter Kornbluh (ed.), Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba (New York: The New Press 1998), 142–43, emphasis in original.
8 Although they differ in the sense that the Bay of Pigs was a CIA-led operation whereas Iran-Contra was not, they both qualify as covert action according to conventional definitions. Moreover, the fact that one of them – Iran-Contra – was conducted outside of established channels illustrates the logic of the executive model. That is, leaders may go this route when conducting covert action to escape culpability.
9 For a summary of these issues, see Rory Cormac and Richard J. Aldrich, ‘Grey Is the New Black: Covert Action and Implausible Deniability’, International Affairs 94/3 (2018), 477–94.
10 Elizabeth E. Anderson, ‘The Security Dilemma and Covert Action: The Truman Years’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 11/4 (1998), 403–27; Jonathan N. Brown, ‘The Sound of Silence: Power, Secrecy, and International Audiences in US Military Basing Negotiations’, Conflict Management and Peace Science 31/4 (2014), 406–31; Austin Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2018); Lindsey A. O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2018); and Michael Poznansky, ‘Feigning Compliance: Covert Action and International Law’, International Studies Quarterly 63/1 (2019), 72–84.
11 Alexander B. Downes and Mary Lauren Lilley, ‘Overt Peace, Covert War?: Covert Intervention and the Democratic Peace’, Security Studies 19/2 (2010), 266–306; David N. Gibbs, ‘Secrecy and International Relations’, Journal of Peace Research 32/2 (1995), 213–28; O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War; Michael Poznansky, ‘Stasis or Decay? Reconciling Covert War and the Democratic Peace’, International Studies Quarterly 59/4 (2015), 815–26.
12 Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics; and Michael F. Joseph and Michael Poznansky, ‘Media Technology, Covert Action, and the Politics of Exposure’, Journal of Peace Research 55/3 (2018), 320–35.
13 David E. Pozen, ‘The Leaky Leviathan: Why the Government Condemns and Condones Unlawful Disclosures of Information’, Harvard Law Review 127/2 (2013), 512–635; and Rahul Sagar, Secrets and Leaks: The Dilemma of State Secrecy (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2013).
14 Charles R. Beitz, ‘Covert Intervention as a Moral Problem’, Ethics and International Affairs 3/94 (1989), 45–60.
15 Joseph and Poznansky, ‘Media Technology, Covert Action, and the Politics of Exposure’.
16 See Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics; and Rory Cormac, Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018).
17 Roy Godson, Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards: U.S. Covert Action and Counterintelligence (New York: Routledge 1995); Loch K. Johnson, ‘On Drawing a Bright Line for Covert Operations’, The American Journal of International Law 86/2 (1992), 284–309; Loch K. Johnson, Secret Agencies: U.S. Intelligence in a Hostile World (New Haven: Yale University Press 1996); O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War; Poznansky, ‘Feigning Compliance: Covert Action and International Law’; and Gregory F. Treverton, Covert Action: The Limits of Intervention in the Postwar World (New York: Basic Books, Inc. 1987).
18 Quoted in James Schwartz, ‘Plausible Deniability’, Washington Post, 22 Jul. 1987.
19 Cormac and Aldrich, ‘Grey Is the New Black: Covert Action and Implausible Deniability’, 479.
20 Cormac and Aldrich, ‘Grey Is the New Black: Covert Action and Implausible Deniability’; and Alexandra H. Perina, ‘Black Holes and Open Secrets: The Impact of Covert Action on International Law’, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 53/3 (2015), 507–83.
21 Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics; and Gregory F. Treverton, ‘Covert Action: From “Covert” to Overt’, Daedalus 116/2 (1987), 95–123.
22 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to 10 September 2001 (New York: Penguin Books 2004); and Treverton, ‘Covert Action: From “Covert” to Overt’.
23 Karen DeYoung, ‘Congressional Panels Approve Arms Aid to Syrian Opposition’, Washington Post, 22 Jul. 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/congressional-panels-approve-arms-aid-to-syrian-opposition/2013/07/22/393035ce-f31a-11e2-8505-bf6f231e77b4_print.html; Jack L. Goldsmith, ‘The Remarkably Open Syrian Covert Action’, Lawfare, 23 Jul. 2013, https://www.lawfareblog.com/remarkably-open-syrian-covert-action; and Mark Mazzetti and Ali Younes, ‘C.I.A. Arms for Syrian Rebels Supplied Black Market, Officials Say’, New York Times, 26 Jun. 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/27/world/middleeast/cia-arms-for-syrian-rebels-supplied-black-market-officials-say.html?_r=0.
24 Cormac and Aldrich, ‘Grey Is the New Black: Covert Action and Implausible Deniability’, 482.
25 For an argument about how leaders anticipate exposure and adjust their behaviour accordingly, see Joseph and Poznansky, ‘Media Technology, Covert Action, and the Politics of Exposure’.
26 Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics.
27 O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War, 68–70. See also Gibbs, ‘Secrecy and International Relations’.
28 Frederick A.O. Jr. Schwarz, ‘The Church Committee and a New Era of Intelligence Oversight’, Intelligence and National Security 22/2 (2007), 291.
29 Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee), Final Report, Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office 1976), 46.
30 Treverton, Covert Action: The Limits of Intervention in the Postwar World, 5.
31 Cormac and Aldrich, ‘Grey Is the New Black: Covert Action and Implausible Deniability’, 480.
32 William J. Daugherty, Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky 2004). See also Len Scott, ‘Secret Intelligence, Covert Action and Clandestine Diplomacy’, Intelligence and National Security 19/2 (2004), 327.
33 Jennifer D. Kibbe, ‘Covert Action and the Pentagon’, Intelligence and National Security 22/1 (2007), 57–58.
34 Ronald Reagan, ‘Executive Order 12333–United States Intelligence Activities,’ Pub. L. No. 46 FR 59941, 3 CFR, 1981 Comp., 200 (1981), https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12333.html.
35 A. John Radsan, ‘An Overt Turn on Covert Action’, Saint Louis University Law Journal 53/2 (2009), 534.
36 Downes and Lilley, ‘Overt Peace, Covert War?: Covert Intervention and the Democratic Peace’, 271.
37 Joseph and Poznansky, ‘Media Technology, Covert Action, and the Politics of Exposure’, 322.
38 Austin Carson, ‘Facing Off and Saving Face: Covert Intervention and Escalation Management in the Korean War’, International Organization 70/1 (2016), 107.
39 O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War, 49.
40 Lester, When Should State Secrets Stay Secret? Accountability, Democratic Governance, and Intelligence, 87.
41 Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New York: The New Press 2003), 1–2.
42 Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics.
43 Carson, ‘Facing Off and Saving Face: Covert Intervention and Escalation Management in the Korean War’.
44 Kornbluh, Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba.
45 Austin Carson and Michael Poznansky, ‘The Logic for (Shoddy) U.S. Covert Action in Syria’, War on the Rocks, 21 Jul. 2016.
46 O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War, 53–54.
47 Poznansky, ‘Feigning Compliance: Covert Action and International Law’.
48 Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Stody (New York: Simon and Schuster 1979).
49 Alan J. Kuperman, ‘The Stinger Missile and U.S. Intervention in Afghanistan’, Political Science Quarterly 114/2 (1999), 219–63.
50 Treverton, Covert Action: The Limits of Intervention in the Postwar World, 5.
51 Anderson, ‘The Security Dilemma and Covert Action: The Truman Years’.
52 O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War, 134.
53 Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics.
54 O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War.
55 Poznansky, ‘Feigning Compliance: Covert Action and International Law’.
56 Ibid.
57 Carson and Poznansky, ‘The Logic for (Shoddy) U.S. Covert Action in Syria’.
58 DeYoung, ‘Congressional Panels Approve Arms Aid to Syrian Opposition’.
59 Radsan, ‘An Overt Turn on Covert Action’, 520.
60 Daugherty, Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency.
61 William Spaniel and Michael Poznansky, ‘Credible Commitment in Covert Affairs’, American Journal of Political Science 62/3 (2018), 668–81.
62 Loch K. Johnson, ‘Covert Action and Accountability: Decision-Making for America’s Secret Foreign Policy’, International Studies Quarterly 33/1 (1989), 91.
63 Quoted in Johnson, 'Covert Action and Accountability: Decision-Making for America's Secret Foreign Policy', 91.
64 Genevieve Lester, When Should State Secrets Stay Secret? Accountability, Democratic Governance, and Intelligence (New York: Cambridge University Press 2015), 87; and Radsan, ‘An Overt Turn on Covert Action’, 522–23, 538–39.
65 Loch K. Johnson, America’s Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society (New York: Oxford University Press 1989).
66 Daugherty, Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency, 97–98.
67 Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee), Final Report, Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence, 58. See also James A. Barry, ‘Covert Action Can Be Just’, Orbis 37/3 (1993), 385; and Perina, ‘Black Holes and Open Secrets: The Impact of Covert Action on International Law’, 531, ft. 75.
68 Johnson, ‘Covert Action and Accountability: Decision-Making for America’s Secret Foreign Policy’, 90. See also Schwarz, ‘The Church Committee and a New Era of Intelligence Oversight’, 291.
69 Lester, When Should State Secrets Stay Secret? Accountability, Democratic Governance, and Intelligence, 87.
70 O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War, 55.
71 For a discussion of tacit signals in the realm of intelligence politicisation, see Joshua Rovner, Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2011).
72 Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee), Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office 1975), 309, emphasis added. On the varying relationship between presidents and the heads of the intelligence agencies, see Daugherty, Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency; and David Priess, The President’s Book of Secrets: The Untold Story of Intelligence Briefings to America’s President’s from Kennedy to Obama (New York: PublicAffairs 2016).
73 O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War, 54.
74 Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee), Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 273.
75 Byrne, Iran-Contra: Reagan’s Scandal and the Unchecked Abuse of Presidential Power.
76 Downes and Lilley, ‘Overt Peace, Covert War?: Covert Intervention and the Democratic Peace’; Gibbs, ‘Secrecy and International Relations’; O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War; and Poznansky, ‘Stasis or Decay? Reconciling Covert War and the Democratic Peace’.
77 James D. Fearon, ‘Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes’, American Political Science Review 88, no. 3 (1994), 577–92.
78 Gibbs, ‘Secrecy and International Relations’, 223.
79 Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee), Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 51–52. Of note, assassinations were not officially banned until 1976. See Brent Durbin, The CIA and the Politics of US Intelligence Reform (New York: Cambridge University Press 2017), 147–48.
80 Kibbe, ‘Covert Action and the Pentagon.’
81 Mary-Rose Papandrea, ‘Leaker Traitor Whistleblower Spy: National Security Leaks and the First Amendment’, Boston University Law Review 94/2 (2014), 464; and Pozen, ‘The Leaky Leviathan: Why the Government Condemns and Condones Unlawful Disclosures of Information’.
82 Daugherty, Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency, 35.
83 Goldsmith, ‘The Remarkably Open Syrian Covert Action’.
84 Graham T. Allison, ‘Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis’, American Political Science Review 63/3 (1969), 689–718.
85 Cormac, Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy, 50.
86 Joseph and Poznansky, ‘Media Technology, Covert Action, and the Politics of Exposure’.
87 Quoted in Joseph and Poznansky, ‘Media Technology, Covert Action, and the Politics of Exposure’, 324.
88 It is also possible, though far less likely, that a senior official with direct knowledge of a covert operation could air his or her version of events to the media or the public, eliminating the executive’s ability to deny culpability.
89 FRUS, ‘88. Transcript of a Telephone Conversation Between Secretary of State Rogers and the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger)’, in James McElveen and James Siekmeier (ed.), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXI, Chile, 1969–1973 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office 2014), https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v21/d88.
90 Cormac, Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy, 11; and O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War, 54.
91 Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee), Final Report, Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence, 623.
92 Radsan, ‘An Overt Turn on Covert Action’, 520.
93 Treverton, Covert Action: The Limits of Intervention in the Postwar World, 3, 222.
94 W. Michael Reisman and James E. Baker, Regulating Covert Action: Practices, Contexts, and Policies of Covert Coercion Abroad in International and American Law (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1992).
95 Beitz, ‘Covert Intervention as a Moral Problem’, 58.
96 Beitz ‘Covert Intervention as a Moral Problem’, 59.
97 Johnson, ‘Covert Action and Accountability: Decision-Making for America’s Secret Foreign Policy’, 90.
98 Poznansky, ‘Feigning Compliance: Covert Action and International Law’.
99 Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee), Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 150.
100 Byrne, Iran-Contra: Reagan’s Scandal and the Unchecked Abuse of Presidential Power.
101 O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War, 54.
102 Rory Cormac, ‘Coordinating Covert Action: The Case of the Yemen Civil War and the South Arabian Insurgency’, Journal of Strategic Studies 36/5 (2013), 692–717; and Marcus Eyth, ‘The CIA and Covert Operations: To Disclose or Not to Disclose – That Is the Question’, BYU Journal of Public Law 17/1 (2002), 45–72.
103 Michael C. Horowitz, Sarah E. Kreps, and Matthew Fuhrmann, ‘The Consequences of Drone Proliferation: Separating Fact from Fiction’, International Security 41/2 (2016), 7–42; and Ben Jensen, Brandon Valeriano, and Ryan C. Maness, ‘Fancy Bears and Digital Trolls: Cyber Strategy with a Russian Twist’, Journal of Strategic Studies 42/2 (2019), 212–34.
104 Austin Carson and Keren Yarhi-Milo, ‘Covert Communication: The Intelligibility and Credibility of Signaling in Secret’, Security Studies 26/1 (2017), 133–35.
105 Ellen Nakashima, ‘Trump Gives the Military More Latitude to Use Offensive Cyber Tools Against Adversaries’, Washington Post, 16 Aug. 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-gives-the-military-more-latitude-to-use-offensive-cyber-tools-against-adversaries/2018/08/16/75f7a100-a160-11e8-8e87-c869fe70a721_story.html?utm_term=.08c6357ab164; and David E. Sanger, ‘Trump Loosens Secretive Restraints on Ordering Cyberattacks’, New York Times, 20 Sept. 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/us/politics/trump-cyberattacks-orders.html.
106 Cormac, Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Michael Poznansky
Michael Poznansky (corresponding author) is Assistant Professor of International Affairs and Intelligence Studies in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of In the Shadow of International Law: Secrecy and Regime Change in the Postwar World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).