British “Black” Productions

Abstract Recently declassified archival materials reveal that the United Kingdom conducted a sustained program of so-called black propaganda at the height of the Cold War. This article examines roughly 350 operations in which the British government spread propaganda through forgeries and front groups. Placing the campaign in its broader global history, the article demonstrates that British black propaganda mainly targeted Soviet activity in Africa and Asia as part of the postcolonial battle for influence. The British government engaged in black propaganda far more often than has previously been kown, including aggressive operations seeking to disrupt, attack, and sow chaos as much as simply to expose lies. Although much of the content was broadly accurate, the fake sources deliberately deceived audiences in order to encourage a reaction, incite violence, or foment racial tensions.


Introduction
Much of the literature on the "unconventional" Cold War associates black propaganda with lies spread by the Soviet Union. 1 Scholars have generally depicted British propaganda and intelligence activity as comparatively timid, restrained, and procedural. 2 Despite some scholarship casting doubt on the ethics and methods of the West's broader "cultural Cold War," the more common view is that the United Kingdom responded to Soviet activity by exposing disinformation and countering it with true (if selectively edited) claims, either openly or without attribution through a range of trusted contacts. 3 Only in times of crisis, such as the Suez debacle; ambitious covert actions, such as the 1953 coup in Iran; or irregular warfare, such as in Northern Ireland, did the United Kingdom resort to more deceitful activity. Or so the argument goes.
New archival files challenge this view. In reality, British Cold War black propaganda, typically defined as "the purposeful manipulation of the perceptions of a target audience through the use of disinformation or deception," was more systemic, ambitious, and forceful than generally acknowledged. 4 Covert operations-even those deemed particularly sensitive, such as black propaganda-were closely bound up with the UK's "everyday" foreign policy, a point that is rarely discussed in a literature that instead focuses on crises and conflicts. 5 Drawing on archival materials declassified in 2019 and 2020, this article reveals, for the first time, a sizable and sustained British program running worldwide for more than twenty years starting in the mid-1950s. The files cover roughly 350 separate "black production" operations conducted by the Information Research Department (IRD), the unit in the UK Foreign Office (later renamed the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) responsible for propaganda. Black productions used front groups and forgeries to attack political opponents.
In bringing this program to light, the discussion here highlights three points. First, and most important, the British government engaged in black propaganda more extensively than historians have long assumed, including elaborate multipronged and mutually reinforcing operations. The IRD went beyond merely exposing enemy disinformation, even though this is how officials justified much of their activity. 6 In reality, the propaganda, which was endorsed-and sometimes shaped-by ministers from both governing political parties, was surprisingly forceful in seeking to stir tensions, disrupt adversaries, sow chaos, and, in some cases, even incite violence. All IRD black productions were negative, but those that targeted nationalism, especially in Africa, involved a higher level of personal attack and aggression compared to those targeting Communist states. Bringing together the Cold War and the battle for postcolonial influence, much of the IRD campaign directed at the Soviet Union was designed to sustain British influence in Africa and Asia rather than to defeat the USSR per se.
In addition to shedding new light on British history, the declassified evidence contributes to several overlapping waves of Cold War historiography. It highlights the importance of ideas in the conflict: The way people thought shaped the direction of the Cold War. Misperception, disinformation, and swirling fears interacted with changing material incentives and policy choices. 7 The Cold War was a "propaganda conflict par excellence." 8 Moreover, the new evidence reinforces arguments about the importance of supplementing coverage of Europe with attention to former colonies in the Third World. 9 British propaganda deliberately internationalized each target-sometimes well beyond bipolar power politics. It drew on fake groups from, and sent material to, multiple countries. The IRD recognized that power was diffuse and distributed more widely than the two superpower blocs. The Cold War was a global struggle, and UK propaganda operations vis-à-vis developing countries were more offensive and aggressive compared to analogous operations in Europe. 10 The second argument is that most of the claims made in the black productions were factually accurate, if selectively edited. Given that the source was false, however, the propaganda was still intended to deceive its audience. The fake source is especially significant because, despite having broadly accurate content, the source-along with the tone and emotion that stemmed from it-was designed to encourage a reaction. This was particularly the case when the source was a supposed liberation movement, leftist group, or religious organization. In such cases, encouragement became explicit and aggressive, occasionally crossing the line into inciting violence or religious hatred. What inflamed audiences was not simply the "facts" but also the source.
This argument helps to establish a more robust understanding of black propaganda and its relationship to disinformation (the two are often used interchangeably). Black propaganda, at least for the British, had to do not so much with the accuracy of the information disseminated as with the creation of fake sources by which that material was disseminated. That said, the IRD did use lies-fake sources-to deceive the audience. Technically, therefore, it perhaps constitutes disinformation but offers more nuance than implied in much literature that focuses bluntly on falsehood. Two axes of truth exist: source and content. This point advances our understanding of self-legitimacy in a liberal democracy. Fake sources did not simply add credibility to truths, as justified by defenders. Instead, the context shaped how audiences would interpret and respond to the factual content. This argument contributes to more recent debates about the supposed post-truth world by problematizing the simplistic idea that an age of reason has given way to a new age of emotion. 11 Third, officials had a sophisticated and nuanced understanding of success but struggled to measure and articulate impact. The IRD recognized that, counterintuitively, exposure of propaganda did not necessarily equate to failure and that success could be intangible and unpredictable. However, the IRD struggled to move beyond counting outputs-the number of operations and the amount of press coverage each received-rather than the outcomes of each operation. Even this was difficult, though, and, unfortunately for the IRD, its superiors were more interested in metrics than the intangible impact of influence operations. By the time deep budget cuts were adopted in the 1970s, certain officials and politicians were less keen for such activity to be conducted outside the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). This argument contributes to recent debates about the success of covert action in the Cold War by broadening discussion beyond grander attempts at regime change and complicating the nature of success and the way it was judged. In laying out these arguments, the article first introduces the department involved and offers a broad overview of activity levels and meta-narratives, placing them into the broader international historical context. It then analyzes five key themes in detail, examining the purpose and veracity of claims made and demonstrating that the propaganda was designed to disrupt, discredit, and exploit rifts. It closes by assessing the impact of the black productions, including by examining reactions in target countries.

The Rise and Fall of IRD Black Productions
Created in 1948 to counter Soviet propaganda, the IRD expanded quickly to counter broader nationalist targets as well. It drew on "raw" material to prepare and distribute "non-attributable propaganda" to "targeted recipients." 13 In a history of the IRD published a quarter of a century ago, Paul Lashmar and Paul Oliver make brief reference to a "special department" that worked closely with the SIS "placing specific stories that needed to get out." It was, they said, "one of the best kept secrets," about which only senior staff knew. 14 This department appears to be the IRD's Special Operations Section, responsible for the activities revealed here.
This small section of the IRD specialized in "the preparation and dissemination by covert and deniable means, through special outlets, of material in support of policy." The group's mandate included the distribution of news stories and feature articles through covertly controlled press agencies, as well as pamphlets, letters, booklets, and posters purportedly written by notional or genuine bodies. Much of this material was based on classified intelligence, mostly from SIS or Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and IRD personnel had to receive special clearance to see it. The IRD aimed its "output at those targets throughout the world which are of particular importance to HMG  The program of some 350 black propaganda operations pales in comparison to the 1,500 projects conducted during the Second World War by the UK covert propaganda organization, the Political Warfare Executive. 16 It also pales in comparison to the sheer quantity of Soviet black propaganda operations during the Cold War, most of which consisted of outright lies. 17 The large-scale psychological warfare of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in which black propaganda complemented a flood of unattributable news stories, also dwarfed IRD activity. Black propaganda consisted of only around 2 percent of CIA propaganda activity, but the overall number of such operations would have been huge compared to those conducted by the United Kingdom. 18 Intriguingly, though, in 1960 the British offered to take the lead over the United States in black propaganda, perhaps suggesting near parity in this specific activity when the two countries' interests aligned (or at least when the British knew about them). The British still had a lingering sense of superiority in the darker fields of covert action, but it is unclear whether this offer was ever taken up. 19 By all indications, U.S.-British cooperation on the most sensitive aspects of covert action failed to achieve the formal interdependence for which Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had hoped. 20 Despite being small compared to the United States and Soviet Union, the 350 IRD operations constituted a significant peacetime program worthy of study for two reasons. First, the number was far larger than historians currently realize. Moreover, the IRD activity was conducted on top of SIS black propaganda in places such as Egypt and Syria; on top of myriad other IRD activities, including disseminating material unattributably and covertly running press organizations; and on top of black propaganda in Northern Ireland that was conducted by a different IRD team. 21  was time consuming, difficult, and deceitful. The IRD's private admission that it had "capacity for special political action in the Information field" seems an understatement. 22 The surprising enthusiasm of the department's personnel was reflected in their comment that "we should not hesitate to draw a bow at a venture." 23 Second, the operations are significant because senior British officials have always denied using such methods. H. H. Tucker, long-time head of the IRD's Editorial Section, recalled after the agency was disbanded that it "has been accused of all sorts of sinister methods, of waging black propaganda, of misleading people and so on, all of which-and I can speak of this as an insiderare false." 24 Similarly, Christopher Mayhew, an architect of the department, accused critics of failing to provide evidence of a single lie or fabricationalthough, to be fair to him, the black propaganda analyzed here began after his tenure. 25 Perhaps taking their lead from such testimonies and the early batches of declassifications, scholars have played down accounts of black propaganda as "sensationalist." 26 This article recounts the full story in a non-sensationalist manner.
The IRD ran a sustained black propaganda campaign from 1951 to 1977, peaking in 1966. Work started slowly, with three or four operations a year from 1951 to 1957. During these years, SIS rather than IRD seemingly conducted the bulk of activity, against targets such as Egypt and Syria, through its Special Political Action (SPA) section and SPA (Prop) unit dealing with black propaganda. IRD gained a substantial role toward the end of the decade, although confusion existed about the division of responsibility with SIS even though the two bodies worked closely together.
The IRD's remit for black productions increased in 1957, and its number of staff doubled, largely as a result of the broader expansion of IRD to counter 22. IRD, "Information Research Department (IRD)," attached to Reddaway to Johnson, "Informa- According to Hans Welser, an experienced director of the section, each operation required a "skill which is not very common." 28 The work was difficult and time-consuming: forgeries required months of planning, outstanding intelligence, and a collection of letterheads and signatures to copy, as well as the right types of envelopes, paper, and even staples to make the forgeries as convincing as possible. Deciding where to send them out was also a careful consideration-and many of these locations remain classified. The year 1959 saw fifteen separate projects (seven targeted the World Youth Festival, and others exposed front organizations and exploited divisions between Communism and Islam).
At this point, the Soviet Union ramped up its own disinformation efforts. The Soviet State Security Committee (KGB) set up a dedicated unit, Department D, in 1959 and upgraded it three years later to a larger organization known as Service A. The U.S. Senate, increasingly alarmed, held a hearing on Soviet-bloc forgeries in 1961. 29 IRD black productions rose gradually, although fewer "targets of opportunity," rather than changes in policy, caused a dip in early 1964. 30 The second half of the year witnessed a "considerable overall increase." 31 Welser was impressed. As activity levels continued to rise, he called for greater black output because "when they hit a target they do extremely well." 32 That the Soviet Union targeted the Third World at around the same time, trying to emulate the United States in being a global power, is no coincidence. 33 British propaganda rose in response, but the IRD was also proactive and self-sustaining in former colonies compared to operations in Europe. Britain had been using propaganda to counter nationalism in Third World countries before these areas received a great deal of Soviet attention. At around this time, 27  for example, the British noticed a rise in Soviet disinformation in India, ruefully commenting that such activity evidenced "a rather I.R.D. character." 34 The British had been doing this for years.
The most common target by far was Sino-Soviet friction and Soviet front organizations, but the IRD also targeted Egypt, Indonesia, and Communist regimes in Africa-determined to disrupt the Soviet policy of "collecting allies in the third world." These targets were not mutually exclusive. The Sino-Soviet schism reflected the struggle for leadership of the Communist bloc, with the Third World as its main goal. 35 IRD operations peaked in 1966 when Rhodesia issued its Unilateral Declaration of Independence, which the IRD targeted with twenty products in the first half of the year alone. From then on black productions gradually declined, especially after 1969. This was largely because of cost. Black productions were extremely expensive and time-consuming, and they struggled to generate a quantifiable impact. The 1969 Duncan report on the "United Kingdom's Overseas Representation" sought to reform Britain's diplomatic establishment, including information work, in response to national decline and the postimperial landscape. Faced with severe budget cuts, the IRD was hit hard in the early 1970s. But it did maintain its capabilities after a major reorganization and received new life when the head of the Foreign Office expressed increased concern about countering Soviet "disinformation." 36 Other IRD activity, however, such as using covertly controlled media organizations, increased just as black productions declined. The IRD distributed some 650 articles through controlled and independent outlets in the year from October 1973, up by 100 from the year before. 37 Again, this demonstrates not the impact of Cold War détente but the comparative expense of black productions.
IRD black productions seem to have ebbed and flowed in relation to opportunity, which was modulated by international activity: increasing around summits, conferences, and front festivals and alongside Soviet activity. At the same time, though, cost was a large factor driving the rise and fall of black propaganda. Cuts hit the IRD hard, pushing officials toward less time-consuming forms of propaganda.   , 1960-1969. 38 peaked in 1979, the IRD had already been closed, although its successor agencies discreetly continued similar propaganda functions, including use of fake groups, into the 1980s (albeit on a smaller scale). 39

Narratives and Targets
The UK's black productions were decidedly international and designed to disrupt, divide, and discredit as much as to expose. The material, which was broadly accurate but deliberately shaped to deceive audiences, fell into one of five meta-narratives (Fig. 1). The majority attacked both the Soviet Union and nationalists for being expansionist, unreliable, and deceitful. Other themes included exploiting divisions within international Communism and exposing adversaries' setbacks. Most of these themes stayed fairly constant throughout 38. This includes only operations for which the propaganda content is available to analyze. the 1960s, although attacks on nationalists dramatically increased in the middle of the decade.
The chart is crude, not least because certain operations addressed multiple themes, but it illustrates two things. First, the propaganda was entirely negative. The IRD did not use black productions to promote British policies or ideas. Rather, the aim was to attack, expose, and exploit. More positive messages resided in white and gray material. Second, operations most consistently targeted Soviet ambitions, influence, and mendacity, but they also attacked such activity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, showing the links between the Cold War and postcolonialism and the importance of understanding power diffusion and propaganda beyond Europe. Attacking what the IRD saw as Soviet deceit and expansionism in the Third World featured much more prominently than exposing perceived Soviet setbacks.

Exposing Soviet Expansionism, Unreliability, and Deceit
The IRD's most consistent target was international front organizations that feigned neutrality yet actively spread propaganda favoring Soviet policies. 40 British propaganda on this theme, peaking in 1959-1960 and again in the second half of the 1960s, was intended not only to expose these organizations as tools of Soviet foreign policy but also to disrupt their activity. The British delivered their message through a roughly even split between forgeries supposedly written by the fronts themselves and entirely fake groups, usually notional think tanks investigating Soviet front activity. Forgeries were aggressive in seeking to divide and disrupt; by contrast, the notional groups were more about exposing and discrediting.
The IRD created an entirely fictitious think tank: the "International Committee for the Investigation of Communist Front Organisations." With offices supposedly in Vienna, Munich, Stockholm, Brussels, Rome, Paris, Cairo, and Dakar, it quickly became the most frequently used of the notional groups. From October 1959 to June 1968, it purportedly issued at least twenty bulletins-numbered non-consecutively in order to confuse Soviet officials. The IRD posted up to 1,000 copies of each bulletin to peace organizations, student groups, universities, and the media worldwide. The "Committee" took a wide aim, using a combination of open and secret information to expose and discredit front activity ranging from the International Organisation of Journalists to the All-African Trades Union Federation and the International Union of Students (IUS). The overarching message was simple: these groups were tools of Moscow.
For example, in June 1966 the IRD used the notional committee to target a meeting of the World Peace Council (WPC) due to be held in neutral Geneva for the first time. The WPC was the largest of the Soviet front groups and had already been banned from having headquarters in Paris and Vienna. 41 The IRD now emphasized the disadvantages to the Swiss government of allowing front activities by warning that the Soviets would use it as "a victory march" to gain credibility. 42 The Swiss subsequently banned front meetings, thereby providing an opportunity for the "Committee" purportedly to send a follow-up bulletin highlighting this "severe setback" for the WPC. 43 The IRD believed its operation had contributed at least in part to the ban. 44 In February 1967, another bulletin kept up the pressure on the WPC, highlighting the confusion in its ranks as a result of "the constant public unmasking of its real nature, origins and objectives." 45 The ninth World Youth Festival, due to be held in 1965, was another prominent target of the notional committee. It also demonstrated how the IRD used multiple fake groups to create complementary messages designed to reinforce each other's narratives while appealing to different audiences. World Youth Festivals purported to encourage free exchange of cultural and political views yet in reality were discreetly sponsored by the Soviets and planned, using prepared lists of speakers, in such a way as to limit free debate. 46 In the build-up to the event, due to be held in Algeria, the "Committee" purportedly issued a bulletin to youth and student organizations worldwide to expose Communist tactics at previous festivals. 47 After the event was canceled because of a military coup in Algiers and attempts to reschedule it in Accra collapsed after the fall of Kwame Nkrumah, the "Committee" purportedly highlighted the reputational damage to such "Communist camouflage organisations" and gleefully pointed out the difficulties in holding such events 47. IRD, "Special Editorial Unit Report: January-June 1965," in TNAUK, FCO 168/1994. outside the Iron Curtain. All the while it falsely insisted that its investigation was "entirely impartial," with copies posted worldwide from addresses in Munich, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Vienna, and Rome. 48 The Youth Festival finally took place in Sofia in June 1968. The IRD used the committee to highlight the "unprecedented lack of interest in the event." Black propaganda criticized it as Soviet imperialism and tacitly encouraged those attending, especially "ever growing European student extremism," to rise up against manipulation. 49 At the same time, the IRD issued a more aggressive leaflet purporting to be from a student group, the "Committee for European Syndicalist Action," to incite violence. "We say," it railed, "that the time has come to answer violence with violence." Local newspapers took it at face value and described the "Committee for European Syndicalist Action" as an "ultra-left" group carrying out "subversion on behalf of imperialist intelligence." The IRD was pleased that the Communists thought the group was genuine. 50 The aim, complementing and moving beyond other propaganda targeting the youth festival, was to disrupt rather than merely expose. Students from the New Left did cause trouble at the festival, just as the IRD hoped, through spontaneous demonstrations and critical discussions on the state of socialism. 51 However, it is difficult to isolate the impact of IRD propaganda.
A simultaneous leaflet by a fictitious African group, the "Freedom for Africa Movement," provided a third line of attack. In emotive terms, it criticized Soviet imperialism and implored Africans to stay neutral and not attend: "BROTHERS, THE FILTHY HYPOCRISY OF THESE PEOPLE MUST BE EXPOSED!!!!! THESE PEOPLE ONLY WISH TO USE US TO CON-SOLIDATE THEIR POLICIES IN A FALSE SHOW OF UNITY!!!!!!" 52 The three documents demonstrate how the IRD launched a multipronged and self-reinforcing campaign, dramatically tailoring the presentation of the same broad message to reach different audiences. This highlights the comprehensive, coordinated, if slightly convoluted nature of the IRD program. British black productions also sought to warn audiences about Soviet expansionism, subversion, and deceit more broadly. Peaking in the late 1960s and early 1970s, this theme drew heavily on forgeries and particularly targeted the Middle East and Mediterranean.
The Novosti Press Agency, a large Soviet news agency, had the dubious honor of being the IRD's most frequently forged organization. From 1965 to 1972, the IRD forged at least eleven Novosti bulletins not only to expose Soviet activity but to disrupt relations between the Soviet Union and the target audience, particularly Middle Eastern counties.
The 1967 Arab-Israeli war provided a useful opportunity to stir tensions between Moscow and the Arab world. Soviet arms sales had encouraged Egyptian and Syrian belligerence toward Israel; Nasser then ignored Soviet calls for conciliation, causing Soviet leaders to feel manipulated. 53 The Soviet Union then did nothing to prevent Israel from taking the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. 54 The IRD issued a forged Novosti press release shortly after Egypt, Syria, and Jordan suffered a devastating defeat. Amid the usual lines criticizing Western imperialism and imploring Arab-Soviet friendship, the forged document legitimized the Soviet stance and criticized Nasser by claiming that Moscow had urged him not to initiate hostilities. This claim was accurate but was presented misleadingly because Soviet leaders had been more relaxed about the prospect of war. 55 (Some even claim they agitated for it. 56 ) The forged bulletin also accused Arab countries of lying about U.S. and British support for Israel to hide the "shame" of defeat, and criticized Nasser for "the complete wastage of so much expensive military equipment." 57 Although Soviet officials had publicly defended Nasser, privately they were furious at the amount of equipment captured or destroyed. 58 The IRD sought to make the private public and create tension between Moscow and Nasser.
In a multipronged attack, the IRD also forged a Muslim Brotherhood leaflet denouncing the forged Novosti press release. It accused the Soviet Union of encouraging the war, criticized the quality of Soviet military equipment, and, in an attempt to exploit divisions between Communism and Islam, aggressively attacked the "filthy-tongued atheists" for blaming the defeat on "peasants who lived all their lies nursing reactionary Islamic superstitions." 59 Meanwhile, a notional "League of Believers," also created by the IRD, similarly attacked the USSR as atheist and blamed the Arab defeat on atheist arms. 60 The row, manufactured and disseminated by the IRD, gained a great deal of press attention, including in The Guardian and The Washington Post, as well as foreign language press in local countries. Some took it as genuine, and even those who noted Moscow's denials were wont to cite the propaganda, asking, "forgery or faux-pas?" 61 Dividing Islam from international Communism remained a common theme for black productions. In 1969, the IRD forged a bulletin supposedly written by the New China News Agency (NCNA), a Chinese state-run press agency, and posted copies from Paris to liberation movements, universities, and newspapers across the Middle East. It accused the Soviets of failing to support the Palestinian Liberation Organization despite promises to the contrary. 62 This was broadly true. Although the KGB did have an agent inside Yasir Arafat's intelligence office, the Soviet Union had shown less interest in the PLO than in certain Palestinian factions and had kept them at arm's length. 63 At the end of 1972, shortly after Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddhafi set up an Association for the Promotion of Islam, the IRD returned to Novosti with a forged booklet on the "role of Islam in modern society." Using genuine-but selectively edited-Soviet material, the IRD sought to demonstrate "how Islam and other religions are oppressed by the Soviet Union." The language was comparatively subtle but still aimed to "arouse the indignation" of Muslims by pointing out state restrictions on religious activity. The IRD posted nearly 500 copies to "all Moslem countries" and to "countries with large Moslem populations." 64 The propaganda again used a lie to make 59 a broadly true point. The Soviet regime did seek to create a subservient religious hierarchy, and Moscow did see the Muslim populations of Central Asia as "backward people." 65 An insurgency in Oman created a further opportunity to arouse Muslim indignation. What had started out as a broadly nationalist uprising gradually took on Marxist-Leninist connotations toward the end of the 1960s. British forces had withdrawn from the region, and Western officials worried that Soviet personnel might move in. 66 The IRD fabricated WPC documents to expose Soviet support for the insurgents. This time the forgery embellished a genuine WPC statement but added three extra points: Soviet support for the guerrillas, Soviet subversive plans for the region more generally, and Soviet designs on local oil. For extra plausibility, the IRD incorporated it inside an otherwise authentic reproduction of the English language Voice of the WPC monthly roundup. The press reported it widely at face value. 67 Much of the information included in the forgery was true. The Soviet Union did train selected guerrillas fighting in Oman from 1968 and, alongside Cuba, gradually became the rebellion's main purveyor of weaponry and training. 68 Likewise, the KGB did keep in close contact with South Yemeni intelligence, which was also aiding the insurgency. 69 Six months later, the IRD followed up the operation with more forged WPC material: 500 copies of a glossy brochure reiterating the same message but with "further antagonist references designed to irritate an even wider range of Arab targets" alongside a rebuke to doves among the guerrilla leaders. 70 This came shortly after the KGB and South Yemeni intelligence had signed a secret agreement to collaborate against Britain, the United States, and Saudi Arabia. In reality, however, the area proved an "almost constant headache" for the USSR, and the prospect of broader expansionist subversion, which the IRD had secretly warned about, never really materialized. 71 Soviet designs on Arab oil proved a common theme throughout the period. Alongside references to the Omani insurgency, the IRD forged warnings from the World of Trades Unions. 72 Again demonstrating a multipronged approach in which forgeries worked alongside fictitious groups, the "Centre d'Etudies Micro-analytiques," another British notional research institute, sent 1,500 copies of a report exposing Soviet oil policy to trade ministers, oil companies, and newspapers in oil-producing countries worldwide. 73 The IRD clearly sought to spin a large web drawing on multiple sources and techniques to propagate the idea of Soviet expansionism in the region and to divide the Arab world from international Communism.
Overall, this theme of propaganda was more forceful and aggressive than simply exposing Soviet misdeeds. It actively sought to divide, discredit, and spread tension via a multipronged strategy, using a range of reinforcing forgeries and fake groups, thereby demonstrating the effort and time expended by the British. Also striking is the internationalism and attempts to discredit the Soviet Union in the eyes of others (whether Arabs, Muslims, students in Latin America, etc.). Even when attacking the Soviet Union directly, the British still emphasized the global nature of the Cold War and the battle for influence outside Europe.

Widening the Sino-Soviet Split and Disrupting Both Communist States' Advances into the Postimperial World
This IRD program did not particularly target China in isolation. Relatively few examples are indexed in the files; they include an attempt to highlight China's poor treatment of Muslims and an attempt to discredit Chinese medical aid. As was often the case, these were designed to influence audiences in Africa and Asia. 74 The IRD did come under pressure from potential collaborators in India to target China with disinformation, but the British were reluctant, fearing that doing so might unmask IRD activities against India. If the locals found out about IRD forgeries in the subcontinent, a political storm would ensue. The Indians did suspect one document supposedly by a Chinese front as being a forgery. The local MI5 officer instantly recognized it as British handiwork. Following guidance from MI5 and IRD, he denied all knowledge and disingenuously even offered to provide Indian intelligence with assistance in determining its veracity. 75 The bulk of the effort from the start of the 1960s instead focused on bolstering the enmity between China and the Soviet Union and impeding their rival efforts to gain influence in the Third World. Both sides had hoped to prevent the quarrel from creating a schism in the global Communist movement and resorted to attacking each other by proxy, including through large propaganda campaigns. 76 IRD propaganda was thus simply one more factor in a confusing international melee of truths, half-truths, and lies. The IRD's specific aim was to expose and widen the schism, thereby undermining both sides' attempts to dominate the postimperial sphere. This explains the comparative neglect of attacking China in its own right: British policy recognized the growth of malign Chinese influence in Asia and Africa from the late 1950s and was more focused on the end goal of winning support in the Third World.
Widening the Sino-Soviet schism became a key theme of all IRD activity in the 1960s, and black productions were no exception. 77 At least 21 operations targeted the bilateral rift from 1962 to 1970, with the peak coming around the start of China's Cultural Revolution in 1966, by which time any final remnants of Sino-Soviet alliance had vanished. 78 The United States engaged in similar-and likely far more extensive-activity on this matter. The CIA spread propaganda emanating from fake resistance groups supposedly based in southern China aiming to build on opposition to the Cultural Revolution. 79 The British were just one propaganda actor among many.
The IRD was slow off the mark, perhaps as a consequence of the SIS's initial reluctance to accept the reality of the Sino-Soviet split, and so the aim was simply to stir and expose what had become a taboo for Soviet foreign policy. 80  The IRD forged material from both sides, usually bulletins from the NCNA and the Novosti Press Agency. In the process, UK black propaganda would respond directly to other pieces of UK black propaganda. For example, a series of three forged "counter-vituperative" Novosti circulars responded to forged NCNA bulletins in advance of the 1965 Afro-Asian Conference scheduled to be held in Algiers. The staged argument was designed to demonstrate the disruptive effect of the Sino-Soviet dispute on international conferences and, by allowing the issue to dominate the agenda, to frustrate delegates from nonaligned countries. 82 In the end, a coup against the Algerian leader, combined with rumbling disagreement over the Sino-Soviet split, prevented the conference from going ahead at all.
The IRD also forged international front material to stoke tensions. From 1962 to 1964, three forged circulars attributed to the Chinese People's Committee for World Peace criticized the Soviet Union, played up the importance of Joseph Stalin, and criticized the WPC. 83 In response, the International Institute of Peace, a Soviet front, published an article in Pravda condemning the purported Chinese attitude. The British were delighted with the international press coverage, including an article in Peace News titled "international proletarian mudslinging." 84 Shortly afterward, the IRD forged a circular supposedly written by the International Institute for Peace on behalf of the WPC. It condemned the Chinese Cultural Revolution as "gravely disturbing" and "a danger of the first magnitude to peace." Although the main thrust was true-Moscow did perceive China as a threat-the International Institute for Peace quickly denounced it as a forgery, though not in time to keep it from being reported in the African press. 85 Complementing this activity, the IRD's notional "International Committee for the Investigation of Communist Front Organisations" published an exposé of how the Sino-Soviet dispute was disrupting international front organizations and could lead to new rival "camouflage" organizations. 86 Once again, the IRD's approach involved forging material from press agencies and front organizations on both sides of the Sino-Soviet split. Although time-consuming and expensive, coordinated releases exposed the split, stoked tensions further, and disrupted the activity of the front organizations. The effort was active and forceful, aiming to disrupt as much as expose. This theme, too, was closely connected to the battle for influence in the postimperial world, insofar as widening the Sino-Soviet schism would also undermine the two countries' competition for global leadership. British propaganda reflected the idea that the Cold War involved more than two competing superpowers. The United Kingdom recognized the diffusion of power and the importance of nonaligned countries in pushing back against Communist advances-these countries just needed a discreet push themselves. The intended audience was therefore international rather than the USSR or China.

The Battle for Postcolonial Africa
Africa became a key Cold War battlefield and a priority target for the IRD. As the British empire declined, UK officials feared that Moscow would gain sway in the postcolonial space, and, sure enough, Soviet leaders envisaged a full-scale attempt to compete with the United States for influence by the end of the 1950s. 87 The KGB waged a black propaganda campaign designed to increase suspicions of the United States, using forgeries to "reveal" CIA plots against almost every country on the continent. 88 IRD black productions targeted Africa more than any other region. The effort peaked in 1965 but remained high throughout the second half of the decade. Hotspots, in descending order of frequency, included Ghana, Sudan, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), Tanzania, Congo (where SIS seemingly took the lead as part of a broader covert action campaign), and Kenya. 89 This was in spite of growing reluctance from the late 1960s to interfere-even covertly-in areas not of strategic importance. 90 Authorization for this activity came from the highest levels of government. The IRD had to overcome stiff resistance from the Commonwealth Relations Office to launch covert action against commonwealth territories and relied on intervention from Conservative Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home to step up activities against Ghana in particular. 91 In June 1964, the prime minister specifically tasked the IRD to target Ghana after assessing that President Nkrumah was becoming increasingly pro-Soviet. 92 Just four months earlier, Nkrumah had been fooled by a Soviet forgery supposedly written by a disillusioned U.S. military intelligence officer "revealing" CIA and SIS attacks on Ghana. He was so incensed that he wrote a personal letter of protest to the U.S. president. 93 Later in the year, the new Labour foreign secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, recommended that the Foreign Office maintain a "black propaganda potential and from time to time produce black material." He specifically suggested stirring racial trouble between Africans and the Chinese. 94 The propaganda was covert, but it did not exist without ministerial knowledge and direction.
IRD black productions aimed to expose Soviet designs on the continent-in particular, the role of Soviet fronts-and to widen tension between African nationalists and (a) the Soviet Union, (b) Arab countries, and (c) the Chinese. Once again the approach was international, recognizing multiple players and diffuse power. In addition, the propaganda attacked specific nationalists personally to a far greater extent than it targeted Communism.
Attempts to isolate African nationalists sometimes incited racial tension. In early 1963, for example, African students in Bulgaria clashed violently with police after local authorities banned their attempts to establish an all-African students' union. The IRD exploited the opportunity by fabricating a response from the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY). Amid flowery platitudes about anti-racism and Soviet-African friendship, the statement defended the Bulgarians while denouncing the Africans as uncivilized, "primitive," and morally weak. The aim was to "intensify indignation" among African students-and the effort proved successful. The forgery received press coverage across the continent, with many newspapers reacting violently. It caused at least one university demonstration specifically against the WFDY. Another WFDY forgery, ostensibly full of praise and solidarity, repeated the theme three years later, highlighting the "backwardness" and "political immaturity" of Africa. 96 Yet another forgery, this time attributed to Novosti, blamed poor results obtained at Lumumba University in Moscow on the quality of the black students themselves. The IRD sent more than 1,000 copies to addresses across the developing world. Deliberately stirring racial tensions would, they hoped, deter would-be applicants and anger nonaligned leaders. 97 The IRD used fake groups as well. One, "Black Power-Africa's Heritage," sought to split the black power movements in the United States and Africa by attacking Stokely Carmichael, one of the most prominent figures. Carmichael had already been targeted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and had moved to West Africa, where he became increasingly socialist, pan-Africanist, and supportive of restoring Nkrumah to power in Ghana. The IRD attacked him as an "unbidden prophet from America" and demanded that he return home. 98 Exploiting racial tension was not entirely dissimilar to Soviet objectives targeting the United States, where the KGB waged a campaign posing both as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and as an African-American organization agitating against the KKK. One pamphlet, supposedly from the latter, reported accurate U.S. statistics and real cases of race crimes to turn African audiences against the United States. 99 By comparison, the UK propaganda was far smaller in scale and less aggressive, and it included fewer falsehoods mixed in with the accurate accounts of discrimination. Even so, the underlying principle was similar.
The IRD used a range of fake groups to attack nationalist leaders across the continent, but the fictitious "Freedom for Africa Movement" became its vehicle of choice. Also known as the "Loyal African Brothers" after the opening rallying cry of every leaflet, the "Freedom for Africa Movement" was purportedly a neutral Francophone organization created in mid-1960 to advance opposition to both European colonialism and the more recent Soviet encroachment. The vast majority of its output, however, accused the Soviet Union of neoimperialism. The IRD drafted roughly 50 leaflets on behalf of the movement from 1960 to 1969, although ten or so were never sent. This material, written in French and English (occasionally featuring a mixture of the two) and printed in batches of around 300, was sent to leaders, youth organizations, and the media across the continent. Activity peaked in the middle of the decade. 100 The "Freedom for Africa Movement" specialized in attacking individual leaders-often using aggressive language-for being tools of international Communism. The archives contain numerous examples. A prominent Kenyan nationalist, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, became a target in October 1964. He had secretly told the Chinese that President Jomo Kenyatta should be overthrown, enabling the "Movement" to attack him as a tool of the Chinese. 101 The IRD then bolstered the attack using another fake group: the "People's Front of East Africa," which supposedly consisted of pro-Chinese activists. They violently proclaimed support of Oginga Odinga against the "bourgeois reactionary government." Many local newspapers reported the statements as genuine. Kenyatta blamed the Chinese; the Chinese attacked the statements as a forgery; Oginga Odinga thought the CIA was behind it. 102 Confusing matters further, Soviet forgeries also attacked Oginga Odinga. Moscow sought to expose his secret dealings with China and cause Kenya to break diplomatic relations with the Chinese. 103 In this, Soviet and UK propaganda was strangely aligned.
From 1965 to 1968, the "Freedom for Africa Movement" purportedly posted hundreds of copies of four leaflets attacking Diallo Telli, the secretary general of the OAU. The first accused him of violating the organization's charter, becoming "delirious for power," and being biased toward the Chinese and the United Arab Republic. It closed with a rallying call: "DIALLO TELLI MUST BE REPLACED BY A PERSON WORTHY OF OUR TRUST." 104 Four months later, the second leaflet stepped up these accusations (alongside a swipe at the United Kingdom for credibility purposes), accusing Telli of being a self-serving tyrant "PLACING ALL OF AFRICA IN THE MOST GRAVE PERIL." 105 When that proved insufficient, the IRD played the Soviet card: Telli had "visited Moscow for SECRET NEGOTIATIONS with the leaders of the Soviet Union" and "received SECRET DIRECTIVES relative to MANIPU-LATING the OAU to serve the [USSR's] expansionist political exigencies." 106 Once again, the IRD complemented these attacks with propaganda from another notional group, this time supposedly based in Accra. 107 The attacks did not prevent Telli from remaining in office until 1972.
By 1969, the IRD wondered whether the "Freedom for Africa Movement" had outlived its usefulness. As nationalism and African unity declined in salience, the propaganda gained less traction. The IRD therefore created a new fake group: the "Organisation of African Students for African Power," a more "up-to-date" entity based in East Germany. 108 The group espoused a radical New Left position "proclaiming a plague on both houses," which the IRD thought provided a better platform to "damage opponents" than the dated nationalist approach, while being difficult to trace back to Britain because many genuine groups of this sort had sprung up in the late 1960s. 109 The new group attempted to link a wave of assassinations in Africa to the Soviet Union, but it is unclear how successful they were. The IRD used the fake group only once. 110 The choice of East Germany is instructive, demonstrating the international prism through which the British viewed developments in places like Ghana and Kenya. Propaganda targeting African countries drew on relations between East Germany, the Soviet Union, China, and the United States.
Rhodesia's UDI in November 1965 led to a dramatic spike in IRD black propaganda: at least 27 operations in less than a year. This formed part of a broader covert action campaign designed to "bring about the downfall of Ian Smith's regime and a return to constitutional government and the rule of law in Rhodesia, with a view to the resumption of progress toward majority rule as quickly as possible." Covert operations, including black propaganda, distinguished between the rebel regime and the constitutional elements in Rhodesia and targeted only the white community. This time, they were expressly forbidden to "stimulate racial conflict.

Cormac
Most of the IRD's black work in Rhodesia came from two new fake groups designed to discredit and undermine Smith's regime. The first was called the "Matopos Club," by implication an anti-Smith white Rhodesian group. The IRD prepared at least fifteen leaflets in the club's name in the first half of 1966 alone. To maintain credibility, the "Matopos Club" railed against "those arrogant dictators in Whitehall" but also attacked Smith for lying, creating "chaos," crippling the economy, and, ironically, spreading propaganda. "The whole world is against us," it preached. "We must call a halt while we can still save our country." The club purportedly campaigned for pragmatic negotiations and, encouraging direct action, called on readers to write to their member of parliament. The IRD was impressed with the results and revived the series in November. 112 Another fake white anti-Smith organization, this time unnamed, complemented the "Matopos Club." Also created by the IRD, the group shared news stories censored in the Rhodesian press, under the heading "more of what we are not allowed to read." The operation deliberately bolstered the Matopos line about Smith's deceit and use of propaganda. 113 The IRD considered more aggressive operations. One involved using a notional white supremacist "extreme" group to express support for Smith and encourage him to crack down on liberal elements within his government. The aim was to discredit him through association with a terrorist organization, but the operation was canceled. 114 The IRD dropped a similar operation that would have used a notional "People's Front of East Africa" to incite violence against the Rhodesian regime. 115 Both operations would have breached the cabinet secretary's principle of not stimulating racial conflict. The rules of engagement differed when attacking Rhodesia. The British government was more comfortable stimulating conflict between Africans and the USSR.
This close analysis of black propaganda targeting Africa demonstrates three things. First, the effort was connected to the general aim of such activity, namely, to disrupt and discredit. Second, and unlike propaganda targeting the Communists, the British were more personal and aggressive in attacking nationalist leaders. Propagandists felt less inhibited when targeting postimperial Africa, feeling fewer constraints compared to targeting the more powerful Soviet Union. They even deliberately incited racial tension between Africans and the USSR, although they stopped short of doing something similar between locals and the Rhodesian government. Third, the discussion here demonstrates the internationalism at play: British activity targeting countries from Ghana to Kenya drew on perceptions of China, the Soviet Union, East Germany, Bulgaria, Egypt, and even the United States. Interplay between the Cold War and decolonization was crucial but so too was the growing recognition of multiple actors of influence beyond the two superpowers.

Egypt
Egypt was a prime target of UK black productions. At least 23 IRD operations were directed against the country, with most black productions coming long after the Suez crisis. Three crucial years in the Yemeni civil war-1964, 1966, and 1967-were particularly busy years for the department in dealing with Egypt.
IRD activity targeting Egypt was similar to that targeting the Soviet Union. It used both fake groups and forgeries to expose to an international audience supposed Egyptian subversion, expansionism, and designs on oil. Unlike anti-Soviet propaganda, though, the IRD was much more prepared to target Nasser personally. 116 His intervention in the Yemeni civil war, in which Egypt supported republican forces against royalists loyal to the deposed Yemeni ruler, Muhammad al-Badr, prompted most of the attacks. To oppose the Egyptians, British policymakers turned to a range of covert operations during the war, from black propaganda to funneling arms to friendly tribes. 117 In December 1962, a republican coup overthrew al-Badr and ignited the civil war. As Egyptian forces flooded into the country, a notional Syrian group purportedly warned Yemenis living in Aden and South Arabia about the dangers of Egyptian domination by relaying their own supposed experiences of dealing with Nasser. 118 Eighteen months later a fictitious Ba'athist organization, also purportedly from Syria, attacked Nasser's expansionist ambitions in Yemen. The IRD was behind both. Using familiar themes, they opposed imperialism, exposed the economic cost of Nasser's intervention, and sought to divide Egypt from other Arab counties, including through exploiting religious tensions. For example, the Ba'athists purportedly criticized Egyptian "secret agents, spies and troublemakers [who] lord it all over the place and chase the women, married or unmarried, violating Islamic traditions and Arab customs." 119 The IRD developed these themes at regular intervals throughout the civil war using various notional groups supposedly based in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and East Germany. 120 As the war drew to a close in 1967, a final flurry of propaganda accused Nasser of unnecessarily prolonging the conflict and of wasting huge sums of money in doing so. The messages all complemented one another and reinforced familiar themes but targeted different audiences. The IRD used each notional group only once, but the campaign still sent more than 1,000 leaflets across the region to newspapers, politicians, student groups, religious leaders, radio stations, and prominent officials. British intelligence assessed that Nasser had no great desire to be in Yemen but was "bound by his 'face' as leader of Arab revolution." 121 The propaganda campaign sought to attack and undermine that very face.
Meanwhile, the IRD created forgeries of material supposedly from the Muslim Brotherhood to complement the work of the fake groups. For example, a forged leaflet attacked Egypt for using chemical weapons in Yemen in an attempt to generate publicity against Nasser and put pressure on the ceasefire negotiations. The claims were factually accurate, but the tone and fake source were deliberately designed to mislead the audience and incite violence. The IRD used aggressive religious language to provoke opposition to Nasser: these crimes have not been committed by the atheists or the imperialists or the Zionist Jews, but by the Egyptians who are supposed to be believers. These Egyptian murderers have gone too far in their hypocrisy unpunished, but they can no longer pretend to be believers in God and in His Prophet and in His sacred book.
It continued, "if the Egyptians have to go to war and fight, why don't they direct their armies against the Jews?" The IRD, posing as the Brotherhood, pointed out that the Egyptian bombs used against Yemen would have been enough to "destroy Israel completely." This criticism, the British deceitfully added, was "in the name of Islam." The propaganda exposed Egyptian activity and smeared Nasser, but, in creating a credible forgery, British officials evidently saw inciting hatred against Israel as tolerable collateral. 122 The United States was deliberately muted in exposing Egyptian use of chemical weapons. It did not want a confrontation over the issue, sought to avoid further commitments to Yemen, and was itself using defoliants in the war in Vietnam. Criticizing Egypt would have invited criticisms of the United States. 123 Perhaps the UK propaganda therefore had a U.S. dimension too: exposing the activity without drawing criticism from Washington. 124 This propaganda activity reinforces recent literature on the international nature of the Yemeni civil war and underscores UK involvement while demonstrating that the British targeted Egypt by drawing on Israeli, Syrian, Iraqi, and German angles. It highlights the role played by smaller powers, including the United Kingdom, beyond the so-called Arab Cold War. The British waded into an inter-Arab conflict between monarchies and republics over power and legitimacy. The battle for influence mixed a range of factors from Cold War competition to nationalism and local rivalries. 125 This was reflected in British propaganda that reduced perceptions of British agency by highlighting the multiple internal and external actors.
Unlike the UK's targeting of the USSR, the IRD's Egyptian propaganda campaign demonstrated little inhibition. The goal was to draw on the international context to discredit and disrupt Nasser rather than simply expose him. However, the British were more willing to risk inciting racial and religious tension in Egypt as acceptable collateral for credibility.

Indonesia
Indonesia was a prominent adversary of the United Kingdom during this period. The so-called Konfrontasi (Confrontation), lasting from 1962 to 1966 and stemming from Indonesia's opposition to the creation of Malaysia, involved a wide range of British covert actions, from sabotage to political warfare. 126 From September 1964 until President Sukarno's fall from power in 1967, the IRD launched at least eleven operations attacking him personally and stoking conflict between Indonesia and international Islam.
The most prominent line was aimed at discrediting Sukarno in the eyes of Muslims. In May 1965, the IRD sent 160 copies of a forged leaflet, supposedly written by the chairman of the leading Indonesian Islamic political party, to newspapers and Islamic organizations across the Middle East. Aiming to expose Sukarno's desire to take over leadership of the Muslim world and to "antagonise Muslim leaders in the Middle East," it urged Muslims to "rally under the banner of the new leader of Islam--Sukarno." 127 In subsequent weeks, the IRD followed up with two forged statements purportedly from the Muslim Brotherhood attacking Sukarno. The first, written "in the name of God the Merciful and Compassionate," attacked the flamboyancy of his private life. Specifically, it accused him of trafficking up to 30 young women from Japanese corporations in return for trade deals. It stated that two women had attempted or committed suicide and that two more had "previously disappeared in similar circumstances." 128 The second forgery built on the first: Sukarno's "extravagance in pleasures"-including a relationship with a "prostitute" who ate "pig's meat," "only pretended that she had converted to Islam," "coats her lips with paint," and is featured in a portrait hanging over the bed of one of Sukarno's four wives-brought "shame" on Muslims worldwide. His behavior was "a great insult to the whole Islamic world." 129 Aside from whether claims about trafficking Japanese women were true, the broader suggestion that Sukarno was posing as leader of the Muslim world seems deceitful. Sukarno was not particularly trying to achieve such leadership. Islam was notably absent from Indonesian foreign policy, and Sukarno grew increasingly suspicious of relationships between Indonesian and Muslim actors. 130  Either way, the propaganda sought to exploit real rifts and suspicions between Indonesia and the Middle East to undermine Sukarno's attempt to challenge the global order. Many Arab countries did not support Sukarno's confrontation with Malaysia or his radical foreign policy more generally, much to Sukarno's frustration. 132 In return, Sukarno countered unwanted external influence on Indonesia from Saudi Arabia. 133 Soviet-bloc countries targeted Indonesia with disinformation of their own in the summer of 1965. Czechoslovakia's foreign intelligence service forged a letter, supposedly from the British ambassador in Jakarta to the Foreign Office, outlining a fake U.S.-UK plan to invade Indonesia from bases in Malaysia. 134 The Soviet government had material on Sukarno's renowned sexual escapades with which they planned to discredit or blackmail him. 135 Meanwhile, the Chinese grew increasingly concerned about Sukarno's "bourgeoise" regime and feared he was trying to use Beijing to create his own regional hegemony. 136 UK activity did not exist in a vacuum.
A failed military putsch at the end of September 1965 allowed the IRD to add another line of attack. The British, alongside Australia and the United States, fanned and exploited rumors that Indonesian Communists were behind the attempted coup. 137 A wave of propaganda sought to "blacken" the local Communist Party "in the eyes of the army and the people of Indonesia." This, as the Foreign Office later modestly assessed, "marginally contributed" to the military's subsequent purge of Communism in which 500,000 people died. 138 Much activity was conducted locally from the regional office in Singapore, but from London the IRD forged Chinese material defending the local Communists and attacking the Indonesian generals. The aim was to encourage further purges by providing the generals with ammunition against 131 the Chinese. 139 At the same time, the IRD tried to associate Sukarno with the Communists by distributing pictures of him pinning a medal on the leader of the local Communist Party to the press and the army. 140 This, too, led to further purges.
In April 1966, with Sukarno's authority substantially diminished, the IRD issued a third forged Muslim Brotherhood statement, this time claiming that Allah was punishing him. The aim, according to the IRD, was to divest Sukarno of any lingering pretensions to near divinity. It resurrected its main line of attack: "Sukarno's indulgence up to his ears in sexual pleasures with cheap and easy women . . . has shocked the believers to an intolerable degree." 141 By early 1967, Sukarno had fallen from power altogether.
As with Egypt, the propaganda targeting Sukarno recognized the international dimension in local developments. In addition to pointing out Sukarno's links to Communism, it took a less obviously bipolar Cold War approach by taking up the Islamic angle. In doing so, it misrepresented Sukarno's relationship to Islam in order to antagonize Muslim audiences outside Indonesia.
Overall, these five propaganda themes demonstrate that IRD black activity was multipronged, sophisticated, and carefully coordinated. It went far beyond exposing adversaries' lies and misdeeds and actively sought to disrupt, exploit rifts, and widen divisions. Propaganda was more personal and aggressive when deployed against nationalists than against Communists, partly because the British thought that attacking the former was less risky than attacking Soviet leaders directly. The material was broadly true when targeting both nationalists and Communists, but the sources were fake. This, in turn, gave new meaning to the "facts." Sometimes to appear credible the fake source incited racial or religious tension. At other times, it incited violence while deliberately deceiving audiences that an organized rebel group existed. All the while it blurred the line between nationalism and Communism and recognized multiple actors of influence, thereby placing the Cold War firmly in a global perspective.

Success and Impact
It is notoriously difficult to assess the often-intangible impact of covert propaganda. The IRD measured outcomes in terms of both press coverage 139. IRD, "NCNA Handout," November 1965, in TNAUK, FCO 168/2386. generated by the black propaganda and reactions to that coverage. For example, the IRD assessed that a forged Chinese Peace Committee circular issued in 1963 had achieved "considerable success": the forgery was quoted freely in the Hindustan Times and in the Italian Socialist Democratic Party's daily newspaper, quoted almost verbatim in the French communist newspaper L'Humanité, mentioned in the UK's own Daily Telegraph, and denounced in Pravda. Coverage of the forgery angered WPC leaders and also angered the Chinese, who blamed Moscow for the forgery. 142 Other operations also hit their mark in the local press. IRD officials were pleased that a newspaper in Zanzibar printed their forgery about Soviet racism and that other sub-Saharan newspapers reacted angrily. 143 A Tunisian weekly, Jeune Afrique, printed-in full-a forgery supposedly written by the International Institute for Peace. Despite the lack of criticism in the coverage, the IRD was delighted. 144 Alternatively, local media at times simply repeated snippets from the propaganda. For example, a Tunisian daily newspaper, Le petit matin, and Ankara Radio repeated material by the fake "International Committee for the Investigation of Communist Front Organisations." 145 Better still, local media outlets reacted angrily to the material, assuming it was genuine, and thus allowing the propaganda to enter the broader information ecosystem. In early 1965, newspapers in Aden reported a fake World Federation of Trades Union bulletin playing up troubles in Sudan; one Aden daily printed it in full. 146 A Sudanese newspaper simultaneously reported the work of another fake Chinese group as genuine. 147 In mid-1965, a Kenyan weekly took as genuine a fake Novosti bulletin denouncing African socialism (as did the Hindustan Times), much to the IRD's delight. 148 Two months later, the work of a fake pro-Chinese group in Kenya attracted much local coverage, with many assuming it was genuine. 149 Even when denounced as a forgery by the Communists, IRD material was still picked up as far afield as the Congolese and Ceylonese press. 150 All of this demonstrated that the IRD's campaign was gaining traction.
The Kenyan press reported material distributed by the fake "Freedom for Africa Movement" about the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. 151 That same month, multiple newspapers from Pakistan to the Middle East picked up a fake Novosti bulletin on the subject. Some discussed its authenticity, whereas others reported it as fact. 152 The official Moroccan news agency uncritically covered a follow-up forgery by the World Muslim Brotherhood. 153 Such coverage and documented reactions proved comparatively rare, however. According to the IRD's records, only around 10 percent of operations generated press reaction. Far more often, the IRD simply found "no reactions noted so far." Disappointingly for the IRD, this included both coverage of the propaganda and targets' responses to the coverage. Propaganda success should not be measured in terms of number of outputs or even number of reactions. The outcome-or "so what"-is important. Too often there was little sense of impact.
The IRD tried to put a positive spin on the lack of reaction by noting that "the lack of reactions to the 'black' productions is disappointing but not at all unusual: even so one knows from experience that they quite often do damage." 154 This defense, based on personal experience rather than quantifiable metrics, began to raise eyebrows-and perhaps with good reason given the number of CIA and Soviet disinformation operations that achieved welldocumented reactions in target countries during the Cold War. 155 Thus, by 1967, an IRD official refused to show one of the department's internal sixmonthly reports to his superior "unless something more positive could be said." 156 This, however, does not tell the full story. Success was, and remains, more than ensuring that propaganda was (a) believed to be authentic, (b) picked up 150 in target media, and (c) able to produce a demonstrable reaction in line with the objectives. This would be an extremely high bar to reach.
The IRD appreciated that understandings of success and failure are nuanced. Sometimes too much coverage and reaction constituted a failure insofar as it risked drawing too much attention to a source. 157 Sometimes the IRD deemed an operation successful even if it was intercepted before reaching its intended recipients, simply because it preoccupied the adversary's security authorities with laborious investigations to uncover the source. 158 Exposure was a particularly important and complicated issue. Recognizing that exposure "must always be reckoned with," the IRD differentiated between disavowable operations, which could be denied but with potential embarrassment, and black operations, which should have "no evidence of Western inspiration." 159 Still, exposure of the latter could paradoxically be positive by increasing publicity-so long as British sponsorship remained hidden. Accordingly, the IRD included red herrings to divert attention from Britain in case of exposure. 160 A 1962 forgery of an International Union of Students booklet offers an interesting example. The IRD, worried that the booklet could be too easily traced back to the UK, subtly made it look like a Chinese forgery insteadthus widening the Soviet-Sino schism in the process. 161 Plausibility changed with the target audience. The IRD hoped that the IUS booklet would be seen as genuine by "the mass of underdeveloped area readership" but knew that it would raise questions among experienced readers and might cause them to doubt it was Chinese. 162 The IRD repeated the trick a few years later by giving a forged Novosti booklet slight Chinese overtones so that, if it was exposed as a forgery, Soviet officials would blame China and, in the process, deepen the rift with Beijing. 163 Exposure of the operation as a forgery did not amount to failure.
The United Kingdom's junior relationship with the United States often made the IRD's subtlety unnecessary. Targets often assumed the CIA was behind IRD forgeries, thereby providing a security blanket for the British. Examples are numerous, from WPC forgeries to a notional Italian peace movement. 164 When the KGB reported an increase in "large scale anti-Soviet propaganda" in 1967, it pointed the finger at "the USA and other imperialist states." In response, the KGB launched a wave of covert action to "compromise policies of the American government and the most dangerous enemies of the Soviet state." 165 Britain did not get a mention by name. Likewise, and despite the large UK propaganda effort, the Chinese accused the "Indonesian Army Rightists and Islamic reactionary forces" purging Indonesian Communists in late 1965 of being "under the command" of the CIA. 166 This may well have been deliberate. Perhaps, as was the case in India, Soviet and Chinese officials did not see the UK threat on anything like the same scale as that posed by the United States. Therefore, even if Moscow and Beijing recognized the UK's handiwork, they found it politically more useful to present the CIA as omnipotent. 167 Either way, the IRD enjoyed a relatively free pass that reduced the direct risk of the black operations.
Sometimes exposure had positive consequences. In April 1974, for example, the IRD forged a WPC circular on the dissident novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who had been recently stripped of his Soviet citizenship. The WPC had kept quiet on the issue for fear of contradicting its supposed stance of defending human rights and intellectual freedom. As hoped, the forgery spurred the WPC to issue a denial that explicitly drew attention to the fact that the WPC had failed to pronounce on the Solzhenitsyn case-a significant and revealing admission in itself. IRD officials were even more delighted when the denial reached a wider audience than the forgery. 168 British policymakers often had an oddly cavalier attitude toward such consequences. They recognized the uncontrollable nature of black productions and optimistically embraced the idea of unforeseen success. 169 It probably helped that they framed others or, if that failed, hid behind the CIA. Similarly, they took comfort from the knowledge that the content-albeit not the source-was accurate, and so it was not a bad thing if more audiences were talking about the issues raised in the forgeries.
Overall, difficulties in demonstrating reactions to propaganda combined with the intangible nature of success to prevent the IRD from assessing the impact of the campaign in a formal manner. This eventually counted against the unit. Black productions survived the drastic cuts to IRD in the early 1970s, when its budget was slashed by more than half, but the number of operations dwindled to a handful each year. 170 By the middle of the decade, the department was still fighting for survival amid Cold War détente and was under pressure to move away from secret funding. Officials reluctantly acknowledged that "there is no accurate measure of the effectiveness of information work generally and measuring the effectiveness of IRD in its present form would present even greater difficulty. We can make no useful contribution to such an assessment." 171 The foreign secretary shut down the IRD shortly afterward, transferring some residual black propaganda function to SIS, although certain functions lingered inside the Foreign Office into the 1980s. 172

Conclusion
Recently declassified files reveal that the United Kingdom undertook a sustained black propaganda program using notional organizations and forged material from genuine organizations. It predominantly targeted the Soviet Union, especially trying to exploit the Sino-Soviet split and to prevent Communist advances into postcolonial Africa. The campaign also targeted Indonesia, Rhodesia, and Egyptian activity in Yemen-all broader UK covert action hotspots in the 1960s.
Analysis of the program and its constituent pieces of propaganda reveals three key findings. First, all black productions were negative. Rather than praising the United Kingdom, they merely attacked the UK's opponentts. This was broadly similar in principle (though not in scale) to Soviet disinformation. According to the CIA, the promotion of Communist ideology "was not an essential factor" in Soviet black propaganda operations. Instead, the KGB's objective was "to compromise, discredit, and ultimately destroy the governments, organizations and individuals most likely to block the increase of Communist and Bloc power in the area concerned." 173 The IRD was far more aggressive, personal, and direct when targeting nationalist leaders than when targeting Communists. The IRD named, shamed, and smeared specific nationalists, ranging from members of the Tanzanian government to the president of Indonesia. By contrast, black propaganda targeting Communist states sought to turn audiences against Moscow by exposing Soviet duplicity and expansionism. Similarly, the IRD relied on notional groups to a far greater extent when targeting Africa compared to the Soviet Union. The agency thus had leeway to be more aggressive and direct than when forging, say, international front communiqués that needed to be more restrained to remain credible. The British were unwilling to stir indignation among black audiences on the Rhodesia question but happy to do so on Communism. This reflects the UK's overarching attitude of greater caution when targeting the Soviet Union with covert action. 174 Second, the forgeries, by the IRD's own admission, often lacked tangible success. The IRD had a reasonably sophisticated view of impact but struggled to translate this into metrics. The measurement difficulties became problematic when the department faced serious budget cuts. It became even more problematic when the 1976 Labour government asked why the Foreign Office, as opposed to SIS, was even conducting such activity at all. Nonetheless, the IRD's musings on exposure, disavowable, black, and untraceable operations were surprisingly nuanced and modern, countering simplistic views that a successful forgery was one that stayed secret and changed minds. That said, the IRD still struggled to demonstrate a track record of success-a rather underwhelming outcome.
Third, in a broad sense, most of the productions were factually accurateif selectively edited. They all had fake sources, whether through forgery of genuine organizations or the creation of notional groups, thereby rendering them black propaganda. Two principles underpinned Britain's policy on using forgeries. First, they could be used only as a last resort. Second, wherever possible, they had to say "not merely the truth, but the truth in the words actually used." 175 Using lies to peddle "truths" was morally more acceptable to a liberal democracy than using lies to peddle a mixture of truths and more lies, an approach in which the Soviet Union specialized. Peddling truths, 173. Quoted in McGarr, "Fake News," p. 2.

Cormac, Disrupt and Deny.
175. Memorandum from Barker to Bullard, "Forgeries: Policy" (see note 36 supra). especially direct quotations, also had practical benefits in making the forgery more difficult for the target to deny. In this sense the IRD can be distinguished from other Cold War actors such as the KGB. Fake sources were designed to ensure that truths were credible and more likely to be heeded by the target audience-a common justification of democracies' use of gray and black propaganda during the Cold War and today. This reflects a long-standing British approach of identifying the most effective channels for getting material "out there" with the optimum prospects of achieving the desired impact, while recognizing that effective propaganda needs to be truthful. This perhaps amounts to a British style in propaganda. 176 However, this justification-based on a division between source and content-was flawed. The propaganda sought to encourage a reaction, and the facts were mixed with emotion, encouragement, and instructions. Sometimes this was subtle, as in the case of fake think tanks that presented facts and allowed the audience to form its own judgment. On other occasions-for example, with forged Muslim Brotherhood material and notional African or leftist groups-the emotion and encouragement were both explicit and aggressive. The fake source and the emotion associated with it deliberately resonated with the emotions of the target audience and created a prism through which accurate "facts" were reinterpreted. Sometimes incitement of indignationand potentially of violence or racial/religious hatred-was an unavoidable consequence of maintaining credibility when posing as certain organizations. On other occasions, it was a deliberate aim. Accurate claims made by notional resistance groups were misleading because they implied a false sense of opposition, which the IRD hoped would inspire others to take confidence from the misleading impression that they were not alone. On all occasions, the IRD chose carefully which source to use. It is wrong and simplistic to justify the propaganda simply on the grounds that the claims made were broadly accurate. The fake source was significant in itself.
This article offers preliminary conclusions on the IRD's black propaganda program. Future research to analyze the impact of the propaganda should examine reactions in the local press and archival material held in non-Western archives. This article assesses only the UK's own monitoring and perceptions of impact. The propaganda likely sparked reactions that could not easily be discerned in London. Future research should also assess whether certain themes, audiences, or targets generated more reaction than others.
176. Thanks to a reviewer for pointing this out.
The recent declassifications unequivocally demonstrate the UK's sustained black propaganda program and enable a reevaluation of UK propaganda work during the Cold War. Taking an international approach, the discussion here demonstrates a complex interplay of Communism, nationalism, and local rivalries. There can no longer be any doubt: the United Kingdom systematically used black propaganda to attack and disrupt adversaries.