An Amateur's Guide to Denial and Deception

摘要

Until his death in 2013, Barton Whaley was the foremost Western expert on the art of denial and deception, an engaging iconoclast who understood the connection among magicians, card sharps, Operation FORTITUDE, and Greeks bearing gifts. When Whaley spoke, astute students would pay attention to every word. An attentive listener might be treated to a spontaneous explanation of deception theory, counter-deception theory, a compelling analysis of how denial and deception facilitated Nazi rearmament in the 1920s and '30s, or the unsettling observation that efforts at denial and deception work most of the time. Whaley spent his scholarly life cataloging instances of denial and deception in what appeared to be a quest to uncover every successful stratagem to forewarn future policymakers and officers. He could not succeed in that task, but he managed to collect a series of compelling insights into the human mind and how people, bureaucracies, and politics itself can be manipulated, especially by those who understand the intricacies of denial and deception. Decades of empirical work enabled him to speak with authority about the use of stratagem in all sorts of endeavors.