From Uberpedia, the ultimate online resource
 |
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (February 2007) |
A Black Operation or Black Op is a covert operation typically involving activities that are highly secret due to questionable ethics and legality. The term itself is often used in political, military, intelligence and business circles. Agents or persons who specialize or are involved in a black operation are typically referred to as a "Black Operator" or "Black Operative."
Origins
Black Ops missions often fall into the deniable category, a situation in which there is no claim of responsibility for the action, and/or a false flag operation is used to give the appearance that another actor was responsible, or -- most often -- black operations involve extensive arrangements so as to be able to hide the fact that the black operation ever occurred. Black military operations, or paramilitary operations, can be used by various secret services to achieve or attempt to achieve an unusually sensitive goal. The methods used in black operations are also used in unconventional warfare. Depending on the precise situation in a given case, and the level of authoritarianism of the national government or other responsible party, some tasks will be conducted as black operations, while there are usually other activities that can be admitted openly. Black operations may include such things as assassination, sabotage, extortion, spying on allied countries or one's own citizens, kidnapping, supporting resistance movements, torture, use of fraud to obtain funds, use of child soldiers, human experimentation, trafficking in contraband items, etc.
External links
- Mayer, Jane. "Outsourcing Torture". The New Yorker, 30 May 2008.
- Stephen Gray and Don Van Natta. Thirteen With the C.I.A. Sought by Italy in a Kidnapping The New York Times. 25 June 2005.
Peter Khan Zendran, "Black Ops target Iran". [1]. The Iranian. 2 June 2005.
See also
|
|||||
Related links