Asymmetric Advantages i.e. 24/7 intelligence on a target and his network (government tax dollars, remember DOD has almost a trillion dollar annual budget) to manipulate and manage perceptions.
Quote the 4th POG…fissures etc, exploit to influence group thinking (yes this is authoritarianism at its finest and more). See NATO cognitive warfare, AirForce influence operations, and other related materials.
Why would the government be interested in managing a targets or individuals perceptions. Consider the possibilities. Specific to a coverup this is in the era of influence operations and modern warfare central to staging a coverup. Here are some things one can do to manage the perceptions in an attempt to alter an outcome or exposing the truth.
You can smear the person, do nothing, build another narrative that overwhelms the truth, you can isolate the person, and you can even, depending on the person use methods of coercion and conditioning to force the person to participate in a coverup even if detrimental to the welfare and health of the individual. This is the purest form of control and intelligence agencies activities center around control. Control the participants, control the environment, control the steps the participants will make by creating limited options. This is how the United States government works within its special operations units.
Blackening Clandestine Operatives
I will explain methods to prevent public disclosure of illegal government activities -first involving civilians then operatives. You should watch this video first Ghosts in the Machine, then continue reading the post.
Civilians
Non-operatives who make discoveries about covert or clandestine activities are smeared. Every black bag technique is employed to build up a narrative that will overwhelm the truth using whatever resources it takes (classified budgets). They attempt to discredit the individual using tradecraft methods of intimidation, harassment, threats, and even physical attacks to facilitate the obstruction of justice.
Ghost Clowns
In contrast to one involuntarily subjected to a smear campaign, clandestine operatives, at least some, go through a similar blackening process. This is not the Hollywood version of James Bond: black tie, expensive cars, mansions with multiple identities.
These operatives have one passport and one identity. The operatives after being conditioned by handlers engage in activities that create a persona that serves a multifold purpose: 1) to act as a firewall in case of a leak (like attempting to disclose illegal activities) and 2) to turn the person into a ghost by having them create a persona of a mentally ill, unstable, or even homeless person-to be unnoticed for who they really are. These operatives are to go undetected.
The operatives stage activities to fuel this narrative so it is memorialized especially with law enforcement. The operatives are instructed to create public personas as unstable persons. Mannerisms and things truly unstable people do are adapted. Maybe the person takes on cutting themselves to further the visual narrative, gets and stays dirty, disheveled, and develops a signature twitch. Maybe others are told to keep their eyes wide open like Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler. Another guy walks around with a pot on his head, plays with telephone wires, and pushes a cart around. Another operative’s signature is to talk to an imaginary person. The individual will eventually develop mannerisms that started as contrived but muscle memory and repetition take over.
The government will even have operatives go into an institution to fuel the cover story (which is baked into their real identities). Here, it is like the movie when a cop going undercover commits a crime and goes to jail to obtain credibility. The operative here is a completely competent, healthy, and extremely intelligent person who goes to a mental institution to get credibility as an unstable person. They sleep in homeless centers (or what appears to be a homeless center). These clandestine operatives are known as ghost clowns.
Government
Should the clandestine operative attempt to come forward about any illegal activities their undercover “unstable” persona will work against them as they have smeared themselves as part of the kook persona. This is part of the blackening of some clandestine operatives. They are conditioned to dive into the black hole.
