Amemorable term coined by Central Intelligence Agency counterintelligence chief James Angleton and used by him in his 1975 testimony to the Church Committee to describe the counterintelligence environment in which Soviet espionage cases were never quite what they appeared to be. In the wilderness of mirrors, defectors have been planted deliberately, volunteer agents are deliberate provocations, and Machiavellian schemes have been plotted to mislead the West.