PERSPECTIVE, Part III: We’re Dismantling the Systems That Prevent the Next 9/11

The Perfect Lie: Operation Mincemeat, 1943

On April 30, 1943, a Spanish fisherman discovered a body floating off Huelva. The corpse wore a British Royal Marines uniform and carried a briefcase chained to his wrist. Inside: top-secret documents revealing Allied plans to invade Greece and Sardinia—anywhere but Sicily. The papers identified the deceased as Major William Martin of the Royal Marines, complete with service records and personal correspondence.

Except Major William Martin had never existed, much less served with the British Royal Marines. The entire identity was an elaborate fabrication.

Operation Mincemeat was World War II’s most audacious deception, designed to convince Germans that Sicily wasn’t the real target. The operation succeeded not because of technology, but because of something we’ve forgotten: understanding how your adversary thinks. The British didn’t just create a fake identity—they created a complete human being. Major Martin had a fiancée named Pam, unpaid bills, theater stubs, and love letters. He carried aspirin and wore a religious medallion.

But the genius wasn’t in the props; it was in the psychology. British intelligence knew German officers were methodical and hierarchical. They understood Germans would analyze documents through their cultural lens: If a British officer carried such sensitive information, it must be authentic.

The team studied Spanish procedures, timed decomposition, researched currents, and considered what Major Martin ate. The British anticipated every question and crafted answers that would satisfy the Germans’ careful examination.

Most crucially, they understood that the best lies contain truth. The documents mixed genuine military terminology with false details.

The deception worked. German forces reinforced Greece and Sardinia. When Allied forces landed in Sicily, they faced lighter resistance, shortening the campaign and saving thousands of lives.

Today’s Major Martin: Digital Deception at Scale

Modern disinformation uses identical principles but amplified through digital networks:

Complete Character Development: Hostile actors create fake personas with years of social media history and realistic friend networks. These “sock puppet” accounts develop credibility before activating.

Psychological Targeting: Today’s operators use analytics to understand American psychology—which emotional triggers work on different groups, which conspiracies resonate in specific communities.

Attention to Detail: Fake accounts have breakfast photos, vacation pictures, and mundane updates stretching back years.

Truth Mixed with Lies: The most effective disinformation embeds false claims within factual reporting.

Understanding the System: Modern operators study social media algorithms, understanding how content goes viral and how to game recommendation systems.

The difference? Today’s operations reach millions simultaneously and adapt in real-time.

The Infrastructure We Dismantled

Until recently, the United States government maintained teams specifically trained to think like Operation Mincemeat planners—understanding adversary psychology, anticipating deception tactics, and coordinating rapid responses to sophisticated influence operations. As someone who spent years coordinating with these capabilities across multiple agencies, I watched this critical infrastructure systematically dismantled just when we needed it most.

At the State Department, my office coordinated closely with the Global Engagement Center (GEC) and other agencies that employed specialists who understood influence operations from the inside. The GEC worked against information manipulation and propaganda from Russia, ISIS, China, and Iran, employing former intelligence officers who could spot sophisticated fakes because they knew how such operations were constructed. When Russian state media outlets like RT and Sputnik launched coordinated campaigns, these teams anticipated the next moves because they understood the operational playbook. Meanwhile, DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency worked directly with social media platforms to identify coordinated inauthentic behavior, building relationships that enabled rapid response to emerging threats. The FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force tracked nation-state disinformation operations, connecting disparate campaigns to reveal larger strategic objectives designed to erode trust in American institutions.

These teams shared institutional knowledge about how deception operations actually work—the digital equivalent of knowing that Major Martin needed theater stubs and love letters to seem authentic, understanding which psychological triggers work on different demographic groups, and recognizing how adversaries exploit American cultural fault lines.

Then, over the past year, these capabilities were systematically eliminated or scattered to the winds.

The dismantling began in December 2024 when the State Department’s Global Engagement Center lost critical funding and saw its workforce reduced by 60%, scattering specialists who had developed deep knowledge of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian disinformation tactics. By July 2025, the State Department’s Office of Countering Violent Extremism – my office, which worked to stop violent extremism from groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda as well as far-right Neo-Nazis and other white-nationalist groups globally – was shuttered entirely, eliminating the institutional expertise that had spent years understanding how extremist groups recruit online and how to counter their messaging strategies. The Department of Homeland Security’s counter-disinformation capabilities were similarly gutted, with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s relationships with social media platforms effectively severed under political pressure. At the FBI, the Foreign Influence Task Force was reorganized and refocused, losing much of its proactive capability to track emerging disinformation campaigns before they gained traction.

The justification was depressingly familiar: “unclear metrics” and “overlapping authorities.” But measuring deception prevention is exactly like measuring Major Martin’s success—the victory is in what doesn’t happen, the invasion that meets lighter resistance, the conspiracy theory that fails to take hold, the election disinformation campaign that never gains credibility. When you prevent something from happening, there’s no dramatic press conference, no arrest statistics, no visible victory to celebrate. Success is invisible, which makes it politically expendable.

The Cost of Forgetting History

Without institutional memory of sophisticated deception, we’re fighting digital influence operations with 1943 analytical tools—after discarding Operation Mincemeat’s lessons.

The “Maui Fire Conspiracy”: After Hawaiian wildfires, coordinated accounts spread false claims about government land grabs and directed energy weapons. The campaign mixed real images with false context, exploited legitimate grievances, and targeted specific communities algorithmically.

Election 2024 Disinformation: Foreign operators created hundreds of fake local news websites, each tailored to specific districts. These required sophisticated understanding of American electoral psychology—exactly the adversary analysis our disbanded teams specialized in.

Ukraine Aid Opposition: Campaigns used authentic footage from other conflicts, labeled as “Ukraine corruption,” to erode support for military aid. Operators understood American taxpayer psychology and political fault lines.

Each succeeded not because the technology was undetectable, but because we no longer had teams trained to think like their creators.

What Operation Mincemeat Teaches Us

The British succeeded because they understood three principles we’ve forgotten:

Know Your Enemy: They studied German psychology and decision-making processes. Today’s counter-disinformation requires understanding how hostile actors think and exploit American vulnerabilities.

Sweat the Details: Major Martin’s credibility depended on aspirin tablets and theater tickets. Modern operations succeed through similar attention to detail: fake accounts with years of realistic history.

Coordinate Everything: Operation Mincemeat required seamless cooperation between multiple agencies. Modern responses need similar coordination between intelligence agencies, tech platforms, and local officials—capabilities we’ve dismantled.

Most importantly, they understood that the best defense against deception is thinking like deceivers.

In 1943, Major Martin’s briefcase changed World War II because British intelligence understood the Germans better than Germans understood themselves. This isn’t the first time meticulous deception has changed events—from the Trojan Horse to the elaborate ruses that helped win both World Wars, history is filled with operations that succeeded through psychological manipulation rather than brute force. One such collection of deception operations is detailed in my recent book The Spy Archive: Hidden Lives, Secret Missions, and the History of Espionage, which offers a blueprint for understanding both the power of strategic lies and why our current approach to countering them is failing catastrophically.

Today’s disinformation operates on identical principles that the “Major Martin” operation hinged upon: psychological manipulation, attention to detail, and coordinated execution. The question isn’t whether sophisticated influence operations are targeting American communities—they already are. The question is whether we’ll rebuild the institutional expertise to think like Major Martin’s creators, or continue reacting to each new deception with surprise.

Make sure you’ve read Part 1 and Part 2 of “The Prevention Files, We’re Dismantling the Systems That Prevent the Next 9/11.”