ABSTRACT
Deception is far older than warfare. This chapter addresses the conditions that make for success or failure of denial and deception in a democratic regime, in the context of strategic deception by the United States in peacetime. It generally addresses deception and not denial, although denial is an essential and inseparable part of deception. The history of warfare is littered with examples of deception, most of them successful. During World War I, deception was attempted in land warfare also, but the conditions of trench warfare were such, on the western front at least, that it was hardly possible to deceive the enemy about where any major blow was to fall. The immediate cause of World War II was a deceptive measure by Hitler known as the Gleiwitz incident. As the war developed, British soldiers and policymakers settled down to organize deception seriously, inspired by the war's most intelligent, though not its luckiest, high commander, A. P. Wavell.
