Bulletin From The Dept. Of You Just Can't Make This Shit Up Fast Enough To Stay Ahead

DoD Calls For "Dept. of Strategic Deception."

No, really.

And it will have two divisions: Internal and External

No? Well, okay, I might be making that part up, though I have no proof one way or the other, and knowing the NatSecState as I do (I was fledged in the USAFSS and the NSA, in the '60s), I have no reason to DOUBT that it would strategically deceive both the indigenes and the rest of the strategic world.

The Defense Department needs to get better at lying and fooling people about its intentions. That’s the conclusion from an influential Pentagon panel, the Defense Science Board (DSB), which recommends that the military and intelligence communities join in a new agency devoted to “strategic surprise/deception.”

Tricking battlefield opponents has been a part of war since guys started beating each other with bones and sticks. But these days, such moves are harder to pull off, the DSB notes in a January report (.pdf) first unearthed by InsideDefense.com. “In an era of ubiquitous information access, anonymous leaks and public demands for transparency, deception operations are extraordinarily difficult. Nevertheless, successful strategic deception has in the past provided the United States with significant advantages that translated into operational and tactical success. Successful deception also minimizes U.S. vulnerabilities, while simultaneously setting conditions to surprise adversaries.”

The U.S. can’t wait until it’s at war with a particular country or group before engaging in this strategic trickery, however. “Deception cannot succeed in wartime without developing theory and doctrine in peacetime,” according to the DSB. “In order to mitigate or impart surprise, the United States should [begin] deception planning and action prior to the need for military operations.”

Doing that will not only requires an “understanding the enemy culture, standing beliefs, and intelligence-gathering process and decision cycle, as well as the soundness of its operational and tactical doctrine,” the DSB adds. Deception is also “reliant … on the close control of information, running agents (and double-agents) and creating stories that adversaries will readily believe.”

Such wholesale obfuscation can’t be done on an ad-hoc basis, or by a loose coalition of existing agencies. The DSB writes that ”to be effective, a permanent standing office with strong professional intelligence and operational expertise needs to be established.” I wonder: what would you call that organization? The Military Deception Agency? Or something a bit more … deceptive?

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What was the name of that nefarious group inside the Pentagon that Rumsfeld tried to start, the Office of Strategic Influence, and got convicted felon/GoPoP operative John Poindexter to run it? Rumsfeld bragged that though he was forced to nominally close the thing, it continued operations well into 2008...

Is this s'morez of that yummy "change we been a waitin' fer?"