DISINFORMATION

The technique of conveying false information to an adversary. Disinformation, a translation of the Russian  word dezinformatsia, was regarded by the KGB as a separate discipline and a key component in a coordinated strategy to achieve specific political goals. Disinformation can include the  Soviet use of  active measures or dirty tricks, which may include the smearing of political opponents, the fabrication of documents, and the manufacture of bogus news stories prepared for planting into the pages of sympathetic newspapers and journals by compliant journalists. Modern examples of disinformation include the claim that AIDS had originated as an experiment with a dangerous virus conducted at Fort Detrick, Maryland; that the Central Intelligence Agency had imported cocaine to destroy disadvantaged black communities in Los Angeles; and, most successfully, that President John F. Kennedy had been the victim of a CIA assassination plot