Black Ops 101

There's been yet another angry exchange over whether Iraqi bloggers who are pro-American may be CIA fronts. This time the argument is between Jeff Jarvis (link via Instapundit), who is outraged by a charge he regards as profoundly irresponsible, and Eric Alterman, who says that a CIA connection is not beyond his imagination. "It wouldn't tax my imagination to wonder if perhaps some of those [Iraqi] bloggers might be planted by the CIA to confuse credulous readers . . ."

Well, blogger fronts wouldn't necessarily tax my imagination, either. Let's say I ran a clandestine black-ops shop. I might set up pro-U.S. Iraqi blogs; I might not: The potential pay-off is pretty limited, and the potential damage significant. What I'd be more interested in attempting would be a site that was apparently critical of the U.S. (I'm not suggesting that any particular such site is anything other than what it claims to be.)

The limitations of a pro-U.S., English-language Iraqi blog should be obvious. First, it would immediately be suspect in the eyes of my critics and enemies, and second, all of its sympathetic readers would already be my allies. True, such a blog could be useful for my side's morale, and I might be able to create some breakout posts that got attention beyond my core of friendly readers. But in the world of black ops, this is pretty small change. (Worse, if my pro-U.S. site were ever revealed to be a fake, it would immediately delegitimize any genuine pro-U.S. sites in the region.) By the way, I doubt that I'd let any of my cast of beards meet with the U.S. president.

The real work of black ops lies elsewhere: confusing and if possible delegitimizing my enemies. For that, I'd want a site that had their credulous attention, one that echoed and seemed to validate their views. Once such a site had gained the trust of its readers, I'd wait for my opportunities to embarrass, mislead, or otherwise manipulate those readers.

Those opportunities might be a long time coming; I'd have to be careful with the site because once I'd used it against my enemies I probably would have undermined the site's usefulness. I'd want to husband its value carefully. Indeed, I might end up never pulling the trigger on the site. But it would be there if I decided to exploit it, and it would be of far greater potential value to me than a risky friendly site.

Obviously, I might decide to create both friendly and hostile sites. I might also decide that a site that was anti-insurgent and anti-U.S. would be useful. There are lots of possible variations (including creating no front blogs at all). But if all I did were to create outspokenly pro-U.S. sites, I'd be doing a bad job.

The most dramatic use I might make of a seemingly hostile site would be eventually to "turn" it; to admit grudgingly in a series of endgame posts that the situation in Iraq might be changing in ways that I approve of. (Though I probably wouldn't credit the U.S.) But there might be many other, less dramatic scenarios in which I could turn the trust of my readers against their interests. That's the real point of black ops: to mislead your foes. Good black-ops operators create their tools and wait for the opportunities to use them.

Again, I have no reason to suspect that any site critical of the U.S. is anything other than what it claims to be. We're just taxing, or not, our political imaginations.