Directed Information
A little-known Soviet/Russian infowar technique
Directed Information is a term of art in the practice of Soviet/Russian influence operations that would be useful for people to become aware of.
On March 1, RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan posted on Telegram a 38-minute audio recording of a February 19 discussion among German defense officials about the Taurus missile. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said, “This is designed to divide us and undermine our determination… we mustn’t play into Putin’s hands.”
We call such operations “hack-and-leak” operations. The Soviet/Russian intelligence term for them is directed information, which existed long before records were stored electronically and could be accessed by hacking.
In his 1972 book The Deception Game, Ladislav Bittman, the former deputy chief of the “special operations” (active measures) department of the Czechoslovak state security intelligence service, the StB, from 1964 to 1966, described how “special operations” operated at that time:
A workday in the disinformation factory consisted of study, analysis, discussions, and meetings as well as much bureaucratic paperwork. Our main objective was to note and dissect all the enemy’s weaknesses and sensitive or vulnerable spots and to analyze his failures and mistakes in order to exploit them. The formulation of special operations might remind one of a doctor who, in treating the patient entrusted to his care, prolongs his illness and speeds him to an early grave instead of curing him. All secret or confidential information picked up by intelligence antennae abroad was processed several times within the department in order to determine its potential for reutilization against the enemy. (p. 124; emphasis added)
In the U.S. intelligence community, the principle of “need-to-know” is a bedrock principle. It holds that “even if one has all the necessary official approvals … to access certain information, one would not be given access to such information … unless one has a specific need to know; that is, access to the information must be necessary for one to conduct one's official duties.” This principle protects confidential information from being shared too broadly, which can lead to unauthorized disclosures.
In the Soviet/Russian system, covert influence operations (“active measures” in KGB terminology) were considered so important that, according to Bittman, “All secret or confidential information picked up by intelligence antennae abroad was processed several times within the department in order to determine its potential for reutilization against the enemy.” This is extraordinary and, to the best of my knowledge, very different from the practices of Western intelligence services.
My Experience with Leaked CONFIDENTIAL Information
I had one direct experience of seeing this Soviet propensity to use confidential information it had gathered for covert influence operations. In 1988, my boss Herb Romerstein met with Fritz Ermarth, who worked on the National Security Council (NSC) staff. Herb briefed him on our activities countering disinformation, including the false child organ trafficking rumor, which was rampant at the time and which the Soviet were repeating. Shortly later, Ermarth sent a CONFIDENTIAL (the lowest U.S. government classification) cable to USIA, where Herb and I worked, and to FBI, basically telling us to keep investigating and countering this rumor.
A few weeks later or so, I saw an article in the French press, translated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service or our embassy in Paris, which contained a reference stating, as I recall, that the NSC had instructed the FBI (and USIA (?); I do not remember) to investigate the organ trafficking rumors. The information in the article so closely duplicated the information on the cable that Ermarth had sent that I do not believe it could have come from anywhere else.
Of course, at the time, I did not realize that FBI special agent Robert Hanssen, who would have seen the cable, as he worked on Soviet affairs, was spying for the KGB. Years later, when Hanssen was arrested in 2001, I realized that he must have been the source for the Soviets, who then used the information in an article in the French press (I do not remember the publication; this was 36 years ago). The incident provides evidence that the process that Bittman described was being actively followed by the Soviets more than 20 years later.
True vs. False Information
Sergei Kondrashev, who headed the KGB’s active measures Service A in the late 1960s, says he actually preferred to use true, purloined information when it was available, rather than disinformation – not for any moral reason but because it was more difficult to deny.
Retired CIA counter-intelligence officer Tennent (“Pete”) Bagley held a number of discussions with Kondrashev in Europe after the Soviet Union collapsed. He wrote up his recollections and published them after Kondrashev died in his 2013 book, Spymaster: Startling Cold War Revelations of a Soviet KGB Chief.
Bagley wrote that Kondrashev described “active measures” as:
clandestine actions designed to affect foreign governments, groups, and influential individuals in ways that favored the objectives of Soviet policy and weakened opposition to them.
This was not identical with disinformation, Kondrashev stressed. “Disinformation” was defined, as he remembered, as the “purposeful dissemination of wholly or partially distorted information with the aim of hiding our capabilities and methods and weakening or misleading those of our adversaries.” An “active measure”—for example, the public release of documents or facts embarrassing a hostile Western government or statesman —may or may not involve “disinformation”—distortion, concealment, invention, or forgery. In practice, Kondrashev found that actions based on truth had greater impact. The distinction became clear when an officer would propose such a measure and Kondrashev would say, “How much disinfo (deza) is in it?” (p. 170)
Eventually, the KGB came up with the term “directed information” to describe the use of true, typically clandestinely acquired, information in covert influence operations. This was mentioned in a KGB training manual published in 1989 on
“Political intelligence from the Soviet Union’s territory” [Russian-language pdf], which has been partially translated into English by the Free Russia Foundation in a document, “Notes on Political Espionage from USSR Territory.”
Chapter 5 of the KGB teaching manual is on “Active Measures,” from pages 86-96. One of its passages stresses the importance of “targeted information” in KGB influence operations, stating:
Forms for conducting active measures … are very diverse: influential talks with prominent figures of foreign countries, upon whom depends important political decision; promoting targeted information and disinformation [emphasis added]; bringing documentary materials advantageous to the Soviet Union to individual state, political and civic figures as well as civic organizations; publication in the foreign press of articles, publication of books, brochures, leaflets in the name of foreign authors; organization of radio and television broadcasts; press conferences and interviews with prominent state, political and civic figures, prominent scientists and other influential foreigners in accordance with the theses prepared by Service “A” of the PGU [First Chief Directorate of the KGB, the USSR’s foreign intelligence agency; now the SVR]; instigation in foreign countries of meetings, rallies, demonstrations, appeals to the governments, inquiries in parliaments; promotion of decisions, resolutions, manifestos corresponding to the interests of the Soviet Union and so on.
So, “targeted information” and “disinformation” are two different methods of exerting influence.
Note on translation: Although I do not speak Russian, I believe “directed information” is a better translation than “targeted information.” The original Russian in the manual for the phrase “promoting targeted information and disinformation” is продвижение направленной информации и дезинформации (prodvizheniye napravlennoy informatsii i dezinformatsii). Using Google online translation, the translated phrase in English is “promotion of targeted information and disinformation.”
But translating the English phrase “promoting targeted information and disinformation” back into Russian yields the phrase продвижение целевой информации и дезинформации, or “prodvizheniye tselevoy informatsii i dezinformatsii,” which is not identical to the original Russian phrase, using the adjective tselevoy instead of napravlennoy.
Translating the English phrase “promoting directed information and disinformation” into Russian yields the phrase продвижение направленной информации и дезинформации, or “prodvizheniye napravlennoy informatsii i dezinformatsii,” which is the same as the original phrase in the KGB manual, as noted above. Plus, “directed information” was the phrase I was familiar with when dealing with these issues in the early 1990s.
But what exactly is meant by “directed information?” A 2023 paper, “The transformation of propaganda: the continuities and discontinuities of information operations, from Soviet to Russian active measures,” discusses this topic and translates направленная информация (napravlennaya informatsiya) as “directed information,” based on the same 1989 KGB training manual. It says:
Directed information stood in contrast to disinformation. Directed information can be understood as often true, though possibly incomplete or distorted, information that is delivered to a specific person, institution, or group with a specific purpose, in expectation that it will prompt a desirable action.
I think this is a good working definition.
“The Lubyanaka Files”
As noted above, the 1989 KGB training manual on “Political intelligence from the Soviet Union’s territory” was pubished in full in Russian and in partial English translation in “The Lubyanaka Files” section of the Free Russia Foundation website, launched in 2019. It explained:
The Lubyanka Files is an ongoing project, overseen by the Free Russia Foundation’s Director for Special Investigations, Michael Weiss, on which previously unpublished KGB training manuals, dating from various periods of the Cold War, are translated into English and curated with accompanying essays and multimedia. The aim is to bring the theory and tradecraft of Soviet special services to life by examining their historical context and real world applications. These manuals are also still in curricular use in Russia’s modern spy academies.
Twenty-nine Russian-language KGB training manuals, dating from 1965 to 1989, were posted in October 2022.
In an earlier Substack post on Disinformation Aimed at Policymakers, I included a section with extensive quotations from an English-language translation of a KGB Manual on Confidential Contacts published on this site, which may be useful for understanding how the Kremlin’s Chekist leaders view Donald Trump. In line with this, the recent comment by former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull on how he observed Trump interacting with Putin is relevant. He said:
I’ve been with Trump and Putin. Trump is in awe of Putin. … When you see Trump with Putin, as I have on a few occasions, he’s like the 12-year-old boy that goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team. “My hero.” It is really creepy; it’s really creepy.
Letter from 51 Former Intelligence Officers on Hunter Biden Emails
In one sense, this is a very bad example, but the discussion in the media around the October 2020 “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails” signed by 51 former U.S. intelligence officers in October 2020, illustrates the problem of restricting our vocabulary on Russian covert influence operations largely to the term “disinformation.”
First, I should clarify that I thought the claims in the letter were totally wrong. It stated that the publication of the emails in The New York Post “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” In sharp contrast, I saw NO resemblance to a Russian information operation. According the Post, their story was based on information provided to Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani by the owner of a computer repair story, where Hunter Biden had left his laptop to be repaired and later abandoned it. I failed to see any Russian involvement in this chain of events and none has come to light to the best of my knowledge.
But the larger point I wish to make relates to how the letter was reported. An article in Politico by Natasha Bertrand breaking the news of the letter was titled, “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” The body of the story was accurate in describing the statement by the former intelligence officers as saying that they thought the publication of the emails “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” but the reference to “disinfo” in the headline was the critical element in framing the story and how it was subsequently reported.
It is important to recognize that the use of the term “disinfo” in the headline was likely not the doing of the article’s author. In many publications, it is standard practice for headlines to be written by copy editors, not the journalists or reporters who write the stories.
Beyond the specifics of this case, the broader point I wish to make is that the term “disinformation” dominates our understanding and vocabulary of Russian covert information influence operations, limiting how we conceive of and discuss this issue. In this case, this paucity of language led to a distortion of what the 51 former intelligence officers had said, which, in any event, was incorrect. But I would have preferred to see their mistaken judgements reported more accurately. Knowledge of the term “directed information” would have permitted this.
The Iran Contra Leak
The public disclosure of directed information can be devastatingly effective. One apparent case was the disclosure of secret U.S.-Iranian negotiations and arms deals in a Lebanese newspaper, which touched off the Iran-Contra affair in 1986.
A 1989 SECRET analytical report in the U.S. Intelligence Community's professional journal, Studies in Intelligence, “How the Iran-Contra Story Leaked,” which was declassified 25 years later, in 2014, states:
With all the publicity surrounding the Iran-Contra affair, there was little focus on who leaked the initial story to the Lebanese newspaper Al-Shiraa on 1-2 November 1986 or why. It was not until June 1987 that reporting was received on the origin of the mysterious press piece. According to [redacted], Damascus leaked the US-Iran arms-for-hostages deal for its own purposes, thus setting in motion events that would temporarily undermine US prestige in the Middle East, expose the diversion of funds to the Nicaraguan Contras, and create a major controversy in US politics.
[Redacted] the Syrian government first learned of the arms-for-hostages deal from its chargé in Tehran, Iyad Mahmud, who probably got the information from his contacts in the Iranian Government. For Mahmud, who was in fact a Syrian military intelligence officer, this knowledge quickly became a dangerous thing.
In early 1986, a group of Iranian officials kidnapped Mahmud and beat him badly before letting him go. Iranian press reports at the time claimed Mahmud had been arrested by the Iranian antivice squad for drunkenness in the company of women and then released 24 hours later. This story covered up the real reason for his arrest—to intimidate Mahmud from passing on his knowledge of the deal.
Immediately after Mahmud’s release, Damascus withdrew him and he then apparently told his colleagues what he knew. [Redacted] claims that Syria, now angry at both the US and Iran, chose the Syrian-financed Al-Shiraa to print the story. Although Syrian intelligence officials tried to take credit for disrupting US relations throughout the region, they evidently never anticipated how far-reaching the political reaction would be in the US.
The analysis then goes on to examine why the Syrian government leaked the story, settling on the hypothesis that it was done to distract from prominent revelations at the time about Syrian involvement in terrorism, which were making headlines at the time and which could have complicated Syrian relations with Europe. It continues:
It was at this moment that Syria, hoping to deflect Western attention, decided to leak the arms-for-hostages story to Al-Shiraa. For years, the Syrian Ministry of Information had maintained close ties to the publishers of the tabloid weekly, providing them with a steady flow of articles, some true and some false, that served Syrian interests. In return, Al-Shiraa became increasingly pro-Syrian ….
The Al-Shiraa arms-for-hostages story on the weekend of 1-2 November claimed the US secretly had sent Iran spare parts and ammunition for American-built fighter planes and tanks that the latter had purchased from the US before the Shah’s fall in 1979. Furthermore, it described a secret trip made by former US National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane to Tehran in early September 1986. On 4 November, The New York Times picked up the Al-Shiraa story and put it on the front page. That same day, Iranian Speaker of the Parliament Rafsanjani, in a speech marking the seventh anniversary of the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran, described in some detail a secret mission made by McFarlane and four other US officials to Tehran. Rafsanjani boasted that Iran had held them hostage for five days, before expelling them.
The fact that Rafsanjani immediately confirmed at least part of the Al-Shiraa story rather than ignoring or even denying it suggests that Iran may have been ready to end the arms-for-hostages arrangement. If so, the situation had changed considerably since the kidnaping and beating of Mahmud. By November 1986, Rafsanjani and other more pragmatic Iranian leaders were probably under a lot of pressures from radicals in the regime to terminate contacts with US officials. When the story broke in Lebanon, Rafsanjani moved quickly to make it appear as though Iran had duped “the Great Satan.”
… Syrian leaders almost certainly watched with amazement as the controversy unfolded, revealing the diversion of funds to the Contras and creating a major political scandal in the US. …
The impact of the Al-Shiraa story was also felt in Iran. On 28 September 1987, Tehran announced the execution of extremist leader Mehdi Hashemi after his conviction on several charges, including murder, kidnaping, and trying to overthrow the Iranian government. Hashemi had been identified as one of the more radical Iranian leaders, and there is speculation that he helped leak the secret US-Iranian arrangement to discredit the more moderate Rafsanjani. If so, Hashemi or one of his associates was probably responsible for giving the information to the Syrian diplomat in Tehran. The fact that the arrest of Hashemi, along with 60 of his comrades, took place in November 1986 is hardly a coincidence.
Recognition of the impiortance that the Soviet and Russian intelligence services place on the concept of “directed information” provides us with a better and more complete understanding of how hostile influence operations are conceived and conducted. Disinformation is a core concept, as is covert (black) propaganda, but “directed information” is also an important method used in Soviet, Russian, and other covert influence operations. It has only grown in importance as the digital storage of information has made hacking into secret or confidential information much easier, just as the proliferation of digital media has also made surfacing such information much easier.
In future posts, I will write more about directed information, including looking the role it played in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but in the next post I plan to look at Soviet and Russian disinformation on the 1983 Soviet shootdown of Korean Airlines flight 007. Russian disinformation on this issue succeeded in 1993, while Soviet disinformation in 1983 failed spectacularly. I will examine why, which holds lessons for how best to counter disinformation.