Disinformation is all about power, and because of the harmful and far-reaching influence that disinformation exerts, it cannot achieve much without power.
As a tool for shaping public perceptions, disinformation can be used by authoritarian regimes and democracies alike. The dissemination of false information is not a new practice in human history. However, over the last few decades, it has become professionalized and has taken on exorbitant proportions at both national and international levels.
The Origins of Disinformation
Disinformation can be understood as misleading information, intentionally produced and deliberately disseminated, to mislead public opinion, harm a target group, or advance political or ideological objectives.
The term disinformation is a translation of the Russian дезинформация (dezinformatsiya). On Jan. 11, 1923, the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union decided to create a Department of Disinformation. Its mission was “to mislead real or potential adversaries about the true intentions” of the USSR. From then on, disinformation became a tactic of Soviet political warfare known as “active measures,” a crucial element of Soviet intelligence strategy involving falsification, subversion, and media manipulation.
During the Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, this tactic was used by numerous intelligence agencies. The expression “disinformation of the masses” came into increasing use in the 1960s and became widespread in the 1980s. Former Soviet bloc intelligence officer Ladislav Bittman, the first disinformation professional to defect to the West, observed in this regard that ”The interpretation [of the term] is slightly distorted because public opinion is only one of the potential targets. Many disinformation games are designed only to manipulate the decision-making elite, and receive no publicity.”
With its creation in July 1947, the CIA was given two main missions: to prevent surprise foreign attacks against the United States and to hinder the advance of Soviet communism in Europe and Third World countries. During the four decades of the Cold War, the CIA was also at the forefront of U.S. counter-propaganda and disinformation.
The Soviet Union’s successful test of a nuclear weapon in 1949 caught the United States off guard and led to the advent of the two nuclear powers clashing on the world stage in an international atmosphere of extreme tension, fear, and uncertainty. In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower received a top-secret report from a commission chaired by retired Gen. James H. Doolittle, which concluded: “If the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of ‘fair play’ must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated and more effective methods than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.” Of course, “repugnant” philosophy includes subversion through disinformation.
Although the United States had high expertise in this field, it did not react much to the disinformation that was sent its way until 1980, when a false document claimed that Washington supported apartheid in South Africa. Later on, they also took offense at Operation Denver, a Soviet disinformation campaign aimed at having the world believe that the United States had intentionally created HIV/AIDS.
Hellbound and Down 