wtf is plausible deniability?

Question

I’ve heard it used a million times before but never had anyone explain it to me and I feel stupid.

In: 0

Answer 1

Let’s say you’re the president. You’re a very visible figure who is very accountable (alright stop laughing in the back).

You can’t just say “I want this guy assassinated because he’s got some saucy pictures of me and my pool boy”. Well, you can say it, but if that guy ends up dead, you’re going to be prosecuted for that.

What you can do is assigned some CIA task force the job of preventing you from being embarrassed in a public way that would undermine your authority. And you can give them a great deal of money and authority to figure out how to do that.

Now this task force could find out that ‘this guy’ has some incriminating pictures and suggest to the president… maybe we should assassinate him? But if they do that, you, ie. the president, will be aware of the suggestion and now there’s a paper trail tying you to a possible assassination.

Or this task force could just go ahead and assassinate ‘this guy’ and burn the pictures. They never asked you, they never told you. So when the press asks the president how come it looks like the CIA assassinated your old neighbour with the big camera collection, you can honestly say “I have no idea, I didn’t ask them to do that”.

You’re not just denying the implication, your denial is pretty plausible because nobody has seen, heard or read any such order from you.

Now this is a pretty silly example but there’s a lot of situations were laws, international treaties, conventions or other things get in the way of what needs doing. Sometimes countries, organizations. corporations break those laws or conventions. War crimes, environmental scandals, espionage, assassination and so on.

If possible, those parties will always prefer having plausible deniability over being accountable.

It’s kind of like mission impossible where Tom Cruise get’s a mission from a self-destructing message and a voice that states that if he gets caught, no one will acknowledge he even exists. Plausible deniability (with added dramatics).