Blowback (intelligence)

Blowback is the unintended consequences and unwanted side-effects of a covert operation. To the civilians suffering the blowback of covert operations, the effect typically manifests itself as "random" acts of political violence without a discernible, direct cause; because the public—in whose name the intelligence agency acted—are unaware of the effected secret attacks that provoked revenge (counter-attack) against them.

Blowback is the unintended consequences and unwanted side-effects of a covert operation. To the civilians suffering the blowback of covert operations, the effect typically manifests itself as "random" acts of political violence without a discernible, direct cause; because the public—in whose name the intelligence agency acted—are unaware of the effected secret attacks that provoked revenge (counter-attack) against them.

Etymology

Originally, blowback was CIA internal coinage denoting the unintended, harmful consequences—to friendly populations and military forces—when a given weapon is used beyond its purpose as intended by the party supplying it. Examples include anti-Western religious figures (e.g. Osama bin Laden) who, in due course, attack foe and sponsor; right-wing counter-revolutionaries who sell drugs to their sponsor's civil populace (see CIA and Contras cocaine trafficking in the US); and banana republic juntas (see Salvadoran Civil War) who kill American reporters or nuns (e.g. Dorothy Kazel). In formal print usage, the term blowback first appeared in the Clandestine Service History—Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran—November 1952–August 1953, the CIA's internal history of the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, sponsored by the American and British governments, which was published in March 1954¹. Blowback from this operation would indeed occur with the Iranian Revolution and the Iran hostage crisis. Recent accounts of how blowback functioned in the war on terror relation to US and UK intelligence and defense propaganda and became an important issue in a 21st Century media environment are discussed by Emma Briant in her book Propaganda and Counter-terrorism which presents first-hand accounts and discussions of deliberate and unintended consequences of blowback, oversight, and impacts for the public.

Examples

Nicaragua and Iran-Contra

In the 1980s, blowback was a central theme in legal and political debates about the efficacy of the Reagan Doctrine, which advocated for public and secret support of anti-Communist counter-revolutionaries. For example, secretly funding the secret war of the militarily-defeated, right-wing Contras against the left-wing Sandinista government of Nicaragua led to the Iran–Contra Affair, wherein the Reagan Administration sold American weapons to Iran (a state unfriendly to the US) to arm the Contras with Warsaw Pact weapons. This caused the Contras to do drug-dealing in American cities. Moreover, in the case of Nicaragua v. United States, the International Court of Justice ruled against the United States secret military attacks against Sandinista Nicaragua, because the countries were not formally at war. Reagan Doctrine advocates, including The Heritage Foundation, argued that support for anti-Communists would topple Communist régimes without retaliatory consequences to the United States and help win the global Cold War.

Afghanistan and Al Qaeda

Examples of blowback include the CIA's financing and support for Afghan insurgents to fight an anti-Communist proxy guerilla war against the USSR in Afghanistan; some of the beneficiaries of this CIA support may have joined Al-Qaeda's terrorist campaign against the United States. Spencer Ackerman and Dave Zirin have both described the 2025 Washington, D.C., National Guard shooting as a case of "imperial blowback", i.e. the unintended consequence of US covert operations in Afghanistan.

Syria and ISIS

During the Syrian Civil War, the United States and Saudi Arabia supported and aided anti-Assad armed groups. Some of those groups later shifted loyalty to ISIS.

Yevno Azef and Russian Imperial secret police

Russian socialist revolutionary Yevno Azef, as a paid police informant, provided the Russian secret-police Okhrana with information to allow them to arrest an influential member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. After the arrest, Azef assumed the vacant position and organized assassinations, including those of the director of Imperial Russia's police and later Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav Plehve (1904) and Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the Tsar's uncle (1905). By 1908, Azef was playing the double role of a revolutionary assassin and police spy who received 1000 rubles a month from the authorities.

See also

Blowback (podcast) Allegations of CIA assistance to Osama bin Laden Boomerang effect (psychology) French Connection Guatemalan Civil War Office of Public Diplomacy Plausible deniability Reagan Doctrine Unintended consequences Security dilemma Israeli support for Hamas Civilian casualties from the United States drone strikes Camp Bucca Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse Imperial boomerang 2016 shooting of Dallas police officers

People

Chalmers Johnson João Goulart Mohammad Mosaddeq Qasem Soleimani

References

Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, by Chalmers Johnson,

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1378585050 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.