Blowback (intelligence)
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Blowback is a term used in espionage to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. Blowback typically appears random and without cause, because the public is unaware of the secret operations that provoked it.[1]
In its strictest terms, blowback was originally informative only and referred to consequences that resulted when an intelligence agency participated in foreign media manipulation, which was then reported by domestic news sources in other countries as accepted facts. In looser terms, it can encompass all operational aspects. In this context, it can thus mean retaliation as the result of actions undertaken by nations.
The phrase is believed to have been coined by the CIA, in reference to the harmful effects to friendly forces when some weapons are used under certain conditions (for example nuclear fallout, chemical weapons, etc. used upwind from friendly troops or assets, or a torpedo circling and hitting the firing vessel, etc.). The word is believed to have appeared for the very first time in the CIA document on the 1953 Iranian coup d'état titled "Clandestine Service History – Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran – November 1952-August 1953."[2][3]
In the 1980s, blowback became a central focus of the debate over the Reagan Doctrine, which advocated militarily supporting resistance movements opposing Soviet-supported, communist governments. In one case, covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua would lead to the Iran-Contra Affair, while covert support led to a World Court ruling against the United States in Nicaragua v. United States.
Critics of the Reagan Doctrine argued that blowback was unavoidable, and that, through the doctrine, the United States was inflaming wars in the Third World. Doctrine advocates, principally at the conservative Heritage Foundation, responded that support for anti-communist resistance movements would lead to a "correlation of forces," which would topple communist regimes without significant retaliatory consequence to the United States, while simultaneously altering the global balance of power in the Cold War.
[edit] See also
- Plausible deniability
- Reagan Doctrine
- Office of Public Diplomacy
- Chalmers Johnson
- João Goulart
- Abdul Qadeer Khan
- Mohammed Mossadegh
- French Connection
- Guatemala
- Maktab al-Khidamat
[edit] References
- Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, by Chalmers Johnson, ISBN 0-8050-6239-4
