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no bull and the aftermath.

Covert is secret only in the sense that the US hand is hidden, but because it's action,

you are supposed to, if the program is working properly, cause change that is detectable.

You want to influence activities in a foreign target.

I'm David Chris and this is the LawFair podcast March 17, 2021.

Today's podcast is the third in a series of deep dive historical inquiries following

last year's review of British signals intelligence with two alumni of GCHQ in January's discussion

of the famous project Manona with NSA's senior historian Dave Hatch.

Today I'm joined by David Robars, the chief historian at the Central Intelligence Agency

to discuss covert action.

Now, you might reasonably think if it's really covert, perhaps there's nothing to say,

but it turns out we've got plenty to talk about beginning with the difference between

the action part of covert action, which often has highly visible effects, and the covert

part, which has to do more with the role of the US government in causing those effects.

All together, David Robars tells us, around 50 covert actions have been declassified over

the years and we talk about several of them involving the Middle East, Western Europe,

Africa, and Central America.

This being LawFair, of course we also talk about the legal and policy rules governing

...