| Dictionary: dirty tricks |
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| Idioms: dirty tricks |
Undercover or clandestine operations and deceitful stratagems in politics and espionage. For example, This campaign has been dominated by the dirty tricks of both sides. The adjective dirty here is used in the sense of "unethical" or "unfair." The term originally was applied to covert intelligence operations carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency, whose planning directorate was nicknamed "department of dirty tricks." It later was extended to underhanded activity intended to undermine political opponents and commercial rivals. [1940s]
| Intelligence Encyclopedia: Dirty Tricks |
Dirty tricks are clandestine activities carried out by a covert-action group to discredit, destabilize, or eliminate an opposing regime, one of its agencies or departments, or an individual. A type of covert operation, dirty tricks include everything from the spreading of false rumors to sabotage, overthrow, and assassination.
American dirty tricks. The history of dirty tricks practiced by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a long one. Among the most significant examples in this extensive catalogue are the many attempts to undermine or neutralize Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. These ranged from large-scale conspiracies such as assassination plans and the Bay of Pigs invasion to bizarre brainstorms at the fringes of practicability. An example of the latter was a plot to introduce a substance that would cause Castro's famous beard to fall off, thus presumably eliminating his machismo and thus his credibility with the Cuban people.
Castro was far from the only foreign leader targeted by CIA dirty tricks. Another example was Chilean president Salvador Allende, who steered his nation toward Marxism in the early 1970s. The CIA bribed members of the Chilean Congress, and employed a number of means to foment unrest in Chile. Evidence gathered by the Church Committee of the U.S. Senate indicates that the CIA may have been behind the truckers' strike of 1972–73 that helped spawn the coup in which Allende lost his life and General Augusto Pinochet took power.
Soviet dirty tricks. Though CIA dirty tricks, such as those that were revealed in the course of the Iran-Contra hearings in the late 1980s, are legendary for their cunning, the United States is hardly the only nation that has employed dirty tricks in its covert operations. Another example is the Soviet Union, whose KGB operatives were past masters at such tactics ranging from disinformation to assassination. The Soviets, of course, had the advantage—at least, in countries where their system gained control—of being able to suppress all undesirable information. Yet, even before the fall of the Soviet empire, extensive information on Soviet activities was available.
To cite one example among many of those noted by British journalist Chapman Pincher in The Secret Offensive (1985) the Soviets sought to strike back at Egyptian president Anwar Sadat for his increasingly pro-American acts by printing leaflets attacking him as a U.S. puppet. These tracts, which the CIA traced to the Soviets, but which were purportedly issued by Muslim fundamentalists, helped fan the flames of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had Sadat assassinated in 1981. The KGB also provided the Weathermen, a U.S. radical group in the 1960s, with money and other forms of assistance through Cuban intermediaries, and Soviet support for terrorist groups attempting to destabilize western Europe during the 1970s and 1980s is well-documented.
Further Reading
Books
Bennett, Richard M. Espionage: An Encyclopedia of Spies and Secrets. London: Virgin Books, 2002.
Carney, John T., and Benjamin F. Schemmer. No Room for Error: The Covert Operations of America's Special Tactics Units from Iran to Afghanistan. New York: Ballantine, 2002.
Pincher, Chapman. The Secret Offensive. New York: St. Martin's, 1985.
Richelson, Jeffrey T. The U.S. Intelligence Community, third edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995.
| WordNet: dirty trick |
The noun has one meaning:
Meaning #1:
an unkind or aggressive trick
| Wikipedia: Dirty tricks |
Dirty tricks are unethical, duplicitous, slanderous or illegal tactics employed to destroy or diminish the effectiveness of political or business opponents. The term "dirty trick" can also be used to refer to an underhanded technique to get ahead of an opponent (such as sabotage or disregarding rules of engagement).
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Leaking secret information, digging into a candidate's past (opposition research) or exposing real conflicts between the image presented and the person behind the image are always subject to argument as to whether they are dirty tricks or truth-telling. When a candidate runs into trouble or roadblocks in his or her campaign that are traceable to the other side, he/she can easily charge their opponent with dirty tricks. Often, the candidate is right in this accusation, but one candidate's "dirty trick" is another's "political strategy." The distinction changes with the times. Of course imputing the discovery of a past misdemeanor to the other side can be considered a "dirty trick" in its own right.
However, manufactured, irrelevant, cruel and incorrect rumors or outright falsehoods designed to damage or destroy an opponent are easily described as dirty tricks. They serve to tie up the opponent into defending against and answering false charges rather than explaining their policies and platform.
Sometimes dirty tricks are not only aimed at slandering the opponent. Dishing the dirt against your candidate's opponent can be effective at alienating voters in order to turn them off from the entire project. These tactics may reduce turnout in order to assure your candidate gains by having his/her core voters show up at the polls; thus, an operative molds the outcome by angering everyone.
Political speech is protected by the Constitution in the United States and it is rare that a wronged candidate sues for slander after an election season is concluded. Laws were introduced in the UK to prevent untrue statements being made about candidates—see Miranda Grell for a 2007 case.
Political candidates have been accused by their opponents of every sin and crime ever described, from graft and vice to bribery and communism, polygamy, drug use, spousal abuse, fascism, pedophilia, miscegenation, cannibalism, adultery, stupidity, demagoguery, mental illness and support for nudism.
The story of dirty tricks in American politics begins with the first campaign for President of the United States, in the 1790s. Thomas Jefferson hired journalist and pamphleteer James Thomas Callender to slander his opponent, Alexander Hamilton[citation needed]. After a falling out, Callender turned on Jefferson and published attacks on his previous employer.
The Nixon Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP), a private non-governmental campaign entity, used funds from its coffers to pay for, and later cover up, "dirty tricks' performed against opponents by Nixon's employee, Donald Segretti. Nixon's use of the FBI to investigate, slander and abuse opponents goes beyond simple pranks or dirty tricks into the realm of government initiated crime.
As a result of post-Watergate reform legislation, such activities are strictly regulated, though other private entities still may practice what has become commonly referred to as questionable or unethical dirty tricks.
Recent nomenclature equates a Dirty Tricks Squad to any organized, covert attempt to besmirch the credibility or reputation of a candidate, individual or organization so as to render them ineffective.
Some[who?] claim that the Republican Party used dirty tricks with the Lewinsky Scandal[1] in an attempt to defame and remove from office Democratic President Bill Clinton, however proponents argued that legitimate charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power are adequate grounds for impeachment and would consequently not amount to "dirty tricks" [2][3]. At the time, the Republican Party had the most seats in the United States Congress, and Republican Kenneth Starr served as the Independent Counsel and was in charge of submitting investigation reports to Congress as well. Left-wing advocacy groups, such as Media Matters, often claim Starr's investigation into the scandal was flawed and lacked convincing evidence.[4]
In the United Kingdom the term "dirty tricks" became, for a while, synonymous with the British Airways campaign against rival Virgin Atlantic and the wider business interest of the airline's chairman Richard Branson. British Airways, faced with likely defeat, apologised "unreservedly" in court, and settled the case, giving £500,000 to Branson and a further £110,000 to his airline; further, BA was to pay the legal fees of up to £3 million. Branson divided his compensation among his staff, calling it the "BA bonus".
In Israel, a 1990 political scandal in which Shimon Peres tried to bring down the Likud-led government and establish an Alignment-led one later became known as the dirty trick, a term coined by Yitzhak Rabin during an interview.[5]
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Idioms. The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Intelligence Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dirty tricks". Read more |
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