Strategic Perspectives No. 11

Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference

This study explains how one part-time inter-agency committee established in the 1980s to counter Soviet disinformation effectively accomplished its mission. Inter-agency committees are commonly criticized as ineffective, but the Active Measures Working Group is a notable exception. The group successfully established and executed US policy on responding to Soviet disinformation. It exposed some Soviet covert operations and raised the political cost of others by sensitizing foreign and domestic audiences to how they were being duped. The group’s work encouraged allies and made the Soviet Union pay a price for disinformation that reverberated to the top of the Soviet political apparatus.

Download: