Blowback (intelligence)
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Blowback is a term now broadly used in espionage to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. Because the public was unaware of the operation, the consequences transpire as a surprise, apparently random and without cause. In its strictest terms, blowback was originally informational only, as in covert propaganda disseminated in foreign countries getting reprinted in domestic press, or non-privy domestic intelligence services seeing it and putting it in their reports as being legit. 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 shrapnel that often flies back when shooting an automatic firearm.
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 overt 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. Conservative 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.
Given prior CIA support (both military hardware and training) of the Islamic insurgency in Afghanistan, and purportedly also of Osama bin Laden, the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack is the most prominent contemporary example of blowback, since this U.S. support actually helped build Bin Laden's terrorist organization in Afghanistan. See Manchurian blowback.
See also deniability, Reagan Doctrine, João Goulart, Office of Public Diplomacy.
Reference
- Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, by Chalmers Johnson, ISBN 0805062394
Blowback in a more direct sense refers to the consequences that are entailed when an intelligence agency participates in foreign media manipulation, which is then reported by their own domestic news sources as "fact".
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