There is a widespread, recurrent desire to reproduce the success of the U.S. government’s interagency Active Measures Working Group (AMWG) from the 1980s.  The AMWG was formed in 1981 to counter Soviet disinformation and active measures (covert influence operations).

It is widely agreed that the AMWG was effective and played a major role in causing the Soviet Union to stop crude, overt, anti-American disinformation in 1987 and 1988.  It has attained almost legendary status in some circles.

What can we learn from a very successful formula from 30 to 40 years ago that can be applied today?

The most comprehensive account of the AMWG is the 2012 monograph Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference, published by the U.S. National Defense University (NDU).  (Image: cover of NDU monograph; credit: NDU)  In composing this Dispatch, we have relied heavily on this account.  We have also spoken with Kathleen Bailey, who chaired the AMWG from 1985 to 1987 (pictured on the monograph cover), and with several people who participated in the AMWG in the 1980s.

The AMWG accomplished the following key tasks:

• It spread previously little-known knowledge about Soviet active measures throughout the U.S. government and beyond
• It made exposing Soviet disinformation the new norm in the U.S. government, rather than “not dignifying false claims with a response,” which had been the typical attitude previously
• It gave those in the U.S. government with expertise about Soviet active measures a venue to write publicly about this issue.

The challenge today is to devise approaches that will best enable people to duplicate what the AMWG accomplished, while responding to challenges that did not exist in the 1980s.

One of the most important things the AMWG did was to make expertise about Soviet disinformation and active measures available widely throughout the U.S. government and to journalists, academics, think tanks, foreign governments, and others.

Until the 1980s, in-depth expert knowledge about Soviet active measures in the U.S. government existed mainly in the CIA.  Over the years, it had gathered detailed information on Soviet influence operations, especially from defectors.  Ladislav Bittman, who was deputy chief of the active measures department of the Czechoslovak intelligence service from 1964 to 1966, defected in 1968 and was debriefed for one year, although this would have included other topics besides active measures. (Image: Bittman testifying before the U.S. Senate in 1985; credit: Terry Ashe/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images)

In October 1979, KGB Major Stanislav Levchenko, who headed KGB active measures in Japan, defected to the United States.  “By this time, the KGB had greatly expanded and upgraded its active measures capabilities, and Levchenko was able to tell the CIA exactly how the expanded organization operated,” the NDU monograph noted (p. 38).

CIA’s new director, William Casey, stepped up CIA efforts to report on Soviet influence operations.  “By late 1981, all CIA stations were ‘to submit a monthly report on Soviet covert action (‘active measures’) in their respective countries as a way of permitting more aggressive counter operations.”  Casey also created a new Office of Global Issues in 1981 to analyze Soviet active measures as well as other transnational issues such as narcotics and terrorism. (NDU monograph, p. 26-27)

In 1981, exposing disinformation was a departure from precedent at the State Department, where the most common response had been “we don’t want to dignify that kind of stuff with a comment.”  (NDU monograph, p. 36)

One of the first key decisions the AMWG made was that Soviet misdeeds would be publicized in a “nonpolemical style … based on solid information.”  The State Department would lead that effort “for the sake of credibility and to ensure the effort was managed with political sensitivity.”  Also, the focus would be on disinformation, “base falsehoods that no reasonable person would countenance as acceptable diplomatic discourse,” rather than propaganda. (NDU monograph, p. 35)  (Image: Cartoon on the cover of the 1986 AMWG report) 

In October 1981, the AMWG issued its first publication: State Department Special Report 88, “Soviet Active Measures: Forgery, Disinformation, Political Operations.”  It was short (four pages) and authoritative.  It provided an overview of active measures techniques, the key bureaucratic entities in the Soviet Union that directed them, and their impact.

State distributed the special report widely – 14,000 copies to news organizations and other interested parties worldwide.  (NDU monograph, p. 39)

By 1985:

The group had produced 20 unclassified documents …, coordinated a number of sessions with interested journalists, visited over 20 foreign countries to sensitize embassies and foreign countries to active measures, and ensured that overseas posts [embassies and consulates] were kept informed of active measures and had priority assignments to report possible forgeries that occurred.  (NDU monograph, p. 54)

The most authoritative and influential publications of the Active Measures Working Group were three comprehensive reports submitted to Congress in 1986, 1987, and 1989, in response to a Congressional requirement to produce public reports on Soviet active measures (NDU monograph, p. 57).  They were:

• Active Measures: A Report on the Substance and Process of Anti-US Disinformation and Propaganda Campaigns  (1986)
• Soviet Influence Activities: A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda, 1986–1987  (1987)
• Soviet Influence Activities: A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda, 1987-1988  (1989).

These public reports gave experts throughout the government an outlet to share their knowledge.

The 1987 report included a chapter on “The U.S.S.R.’s AIDS Disinformation Campaign,” which was also issued separately as a State Department “Foreign Affairs Note.”  This report had enormous impact.

It addressed a controversial issue that was affecting people all over the world.  During the 1980s, many people were dying from a mysterious, deadly new disease for which there was no effective treatment initially.  The sudden appearance of a deadly new virus naturally gave rise to suspicions and conspiracy theories.  Soviet disinformation took advantage of this by falsely claiming the Pentagon had created the AIDS virus.  The report included an extensive chronology of the appearance of AIDS disinformation in the media of the USSR and dozens of other countries, providing a comprehensive picture of how the false claims had spread.  (Cartoon on the cover of the 1987 AMWG report, from Pravda, shows an American scientist supposedly handing a vial of the "AIDS virus" to a Pentagon general in exchange for money.)

The 1987 AMWG report caused a stir in October 1987 when Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev complained about it to U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz during a meeting in Moscow.  Shultz staunchly defended the report, which he said “bothered [Gorbachev] a great deal.”  He recalled:

“I haven't read the report myself, but he had it, it was all marked up, places in it.  And he seemed to resent the fact that there were critical comments in it.  And there was sort of an attitude of, how could anybody be critical of the Soviet Union,”

“And I said, ‘Really, it’s very easy.  After all, you invaded Afghanistan, you shot down that Korean airliner [in 1983] and then Mr. Gromyko [then Soviet foreign minister] went to Madrid and said that they’d do it again ….  And then you’ve been spreading all this bum dope [false information] about AIDS, so you can see that it`s possible to be upset.’”

Faced with this unwavering stance from the U.S. secretary of state, the Soviets were forced to choose between the value that anti-American disinformation had for them versus the costs that it created by undermining their efforts at the time to improve their image in the West.

 

Under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union decided it had to reduce tensions with the West because it realized it could not compete with the U.S. military buildup and other policies under President Reagan.  Georgi Arbatov, head of the Institute of the United States and Canada in the Soviet Academy of Sciences, said at the time, “We have a ‘secret weapon’ that will work almost regardless of the American response – we would deprive America of The Enemy.” (Image: Gorbachev's 1987 book Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World; credit: Goodreads.com)

But the conciliatory strategy of “new political thinking” could not work as long as the Soviet Union was spreading crude anti-American disinformation and the U.S. government was vigorously exposing it.  In response to continued U.S. efforts to expose disinformation, the Soviets began to stop publishing crude anti-American disinformation in their media starting in August 1987.

In December 1987, Gorbachev came to Washington for a U.S.-Soviet summit.  Pressed by USIA Director Charles Wick on the subject of disinformation, Gorbachev told Wick, “No more lies. No more disinformation.”  Soviet officials said to Wick, “We have to have new thinking now.” 

The AMWG has garnered accolades for this dramatic success but it is important to recognize that it would not have occurred if the Soviet leaders had not decided to reduce tensions with the United States in the late 1980s.  The AMWG was also exposing Soviet disinformation in the early and mid-1980s, but the Soviets were pursuing a confrontational policy at that time and showed no inclination to reduce disinformation.

The media environment has, of course, changed since the 1980s, when there was no Internet, email, or social media.

Government bureaucracies with worldwide reach had an enormous information advantage in the 1980s.  If, for example, the Ghanaian Times published Soviet disinformation on AIDS or another topic in the 1980s, the U.S. government would know about this from embassy reporting, while few others outside Ghana would.  (In the 1980s, the Ghanaian Times was “frequently the starting point of stories which are then replayed by the Soviets worldwide,” according to the 1987 AMWG report on AIDS disinformation.)

Today, the Ghanaian Times is online.  Anyone can see what it publishes.

As many have noted, we are now in an age in which decentralized networks have become a very dynamic form of organization while centralized bureaucracies do not play as dominant a role as they did in the 1980s.  (Image: a businesswoman drawing an international network, credit: Shutterstock)

Expertise is as important as ever, but now a great deal of expertise on influence operations by Russia and other countries is also found outside government bureaucracies.  Ideally, one should connect the top experts on disinformation from different countries in a network that offers a broad public platform with firm financial footing and access to the latest analytical tools.  

Both governments and the private sectors of various countries have roles to play in such an effort.  There is a great deal of expertise about Russian disinformation in the countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where Soviet propaganda and disinformation were prevalent for decades.  Western governments have a key role to play in funding NGOs as well as exposing disinformation themselves, and both NGOs and governments should actively share information and cooperate.  In many cases, it is wise to partner with non-governmental organizations, which can often mount a quicker, more hard-hitting rapid response to disinformation, as described in GEC Counter-Disinformation Dispatches #1.  Social media platforms are obviously an enormously important channel of communication and vector for disinformation today.

The Global Engagement Center (GEC) at the State Department coordinates U.S. government efforts on disinformation overseas, funds non-governmental organizations that counter disinformation, and communicates publicly on this issue along with other elements of the State Department and other government agencies. 

Despite the vast difference in media environments, core truisms endure.  From the outset, those in the AMWG recognized that “the key to exposing Soviet disinformation and forgeries was preserving the group’s unimpeachable record of accuracy and trustworthiness.”  (NDU monograph, p. 43)  This is as true today as it was in the 1980s. 

The indispensable tasks of accumulating and sharing expertise, monitoring, and analyzing disinformation, coordinating, and cooperating within governments, and among governments and non-governmental organizations in exposing disinformation remain essentially the same as they were in the 1980s.  Because of technological advances and geopolitical changes, the forms this pursuit will take will inevitably be more complex than the AMWG of the 1980s.

In sum, the AMWG was effective but its success coincided with the Soviet desire for reduced tensions in the late 1980s, a condition that does not exist today with the Russian Federation.  Therefore, the AMWG’s dramatic success cannot necessarily be duplicated by recreating a new AMWG.

That said, the AMWG combined the following 10 elements for success, which are still relevant for similar efforts today, whether they be governmental, quasi-governmental, or private:

• Clear support from the highest organizational level
• Experienced, savvy, forward-leaning leaders
• In-depth substantive expertise
• Active use of the latest analytical tools
• A willingness to publicly confront those who spread disinformation
• High-quality public reports and briefings by skilled communicators, on a regular or as-appropriate basis
• Firm organizational and financial footing
• Productive cooperation within government, among governments, and outreach to non-governmental organizations, private experts, and social media platforms, animated by an important common purpose
• A willingness to take risks
• Vulnerabilities that can be exploited among those who spread disinformation.

The full AMWG stopped meeting regularly when the USSR collapsed at the end of 1991.  A few members continued to meet less frequently until 1996, in what one described as “an exercise in nostalgia.”  (NDU monograph, p. 96)

In an historical oddity, for a time the person who chaired the smaller AMWG was FBI Special Agent Robert Hanssen (NDU monograph, p. 18), who was later arrested in February 2001 for spying for Russia and the Soviet Union.  He was apparently not spying for Russia when he headed the AMWG, as he stopped when the USSR collapsed, fearing he would be caught, and only resumed in 1999.  The FBI called him “the most damaging spy in FBI history.”  He is now serving 15 consecutive life sentences at a supermax prison in Colorado. (Image: mug shot of Hanssen after his arrest; credit: Federal Bureau of Investigation)

For more, see:

• Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference, U.S. National Defense University, 2012
• “Forget Counterterrorism, the United States Needs a Counter-Disinformation Strategy,” by Brian Raymond, Foreign Policy, October 15, 2020
• “The Interagency Active Measures Working Group: Successful template for strategic influence” by Herbert Romerstein, in Strategic Influence Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda and Political Warfare, pp. 197-205
• Soviet Subversion, Disinformation and Propaganda: How the West Fought Against it, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2018
• Affidavit in support of criminal complaint against Robert P. Hanssen, February 16, 2001.

Next issue: “The Extraordinarily Broad Scope of Russian Propaganda and Disinformation"

Past issues:

• #1: A Counter-Disinformation System That Works, January 8, 2020
• #2: Three Ways to Counter Disinformation, February 11, 2020
• #3: The Myth that Debunking Doesn’t Work, March 25, 2020
• #4: What Works in Debunking, April 14, 2020
• #5: The Coronavirus and Disinformation: Russia Remains True to Form, May 27, 2020
• #6: Using Pseudo-Academic Online Journals to Amplify Fringe Voices, September 28, 2020
• #7: Building an International Disinformation Network, November 10, 2020

To contact us, email: GECDisinfoDispatches@state.gov