The notion that police may legally withhold and misrepresent information to catch suspected criminals while public policy precludes counterterrorism agencies from using deceptive "news releases" to thwart suspected terrorists seems foolishly -- even dangerously -- inconsistent. If al Qaeda and its affiliates operate as highly decentralized and highly compartmentalized networks of terrorist and support cells, as the intelligence community believes they do, then they no doubt face serious challenges in sharing information and coordinating activities. Any reports that create uncertainty about whether an Internet cafe might have been compromised or a cell phone tracked could postpone a planned meeting. That delay, in turn, might provoke new kinds of "chatter" for rescheduling that could make it easier to track al Qaeda's supporters. Even better, the delays might lead to outright cancellation of planned attacks.
When al-Jazeera reported, as it did this summer, that a captured al Qaeda operative has absolutely refused to say anything, and that 12 suspected militants had been arrested in London and another five detained in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, one could imagine other al Qaeda members wondering: Did he turn or are these arrests a ruse? When the BBC reported that British and Pakistani authorities had found hundreds of names and cell phone numbers on the laptops of an al Qaeda computer operative -- but no public arrests occurred over the next month -- did that mean the report was a lie? An exaggeration? Or that surveillance was quietly underway?
A fateful feint: Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower sends the troops off to 'full victory' on D-Day, after an Allied deception led the Germans to believe that British and U.S. troops would be landing far from Normandy.
(U.s. Army Signal Corps Via AP)
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Disinformation may not guarantee a victory, but it surely buys time, just as it did for the Allies in Operation Fortitude. Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had the incomparable luxury of knowing how successful their deceptions were, thanks to the Bletchley Park cryptanalysts who had cracked the codes of Germany's high command. But even without such intimate knowledge of the current enemy, U.S., British and European intelligence agencies would be fools to give al Qaeda sympathizers any accurate impression of what they know. Media disinformation is thus as much a defensive shield as an offensive weapon.
Though the idea of disinformation makes free societies uncomfortable, it's likely that most Americans would understand if the government withheld some information about its counterterrorist operations, since putting it all out there would give terrorists too much knowledge of our vulnerabilities. Conversely, outright propaganda and wag-the-dog scenarios utterly bereft of fact would undermine both security and credibility.
The healthiest approach -- the one most respectful of the inherent conflict between a free press and a secure society -- is to openly acknowledge that deceiving our enemies has been and remains a legitimate national security policy. Then we can publicly debate the question of whether the operational benefits of attempting to deceive terrorists and their supporters are outweighed by the costs they impose, if uncovered, on media and governmental credibility and accountability.
America's experience with World War II and the Cold War would indicate that this is a debate where a reasonable accommodation can be made to both sides.
Author's e-mail: schrage@media.mit.edu
Michael Schrage, a senior adviser to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Security Studies program, conducts research on the technologies of deception in digital networks.
