Limited hangout

A limited hangout is a propaganda technique of displaying a subset of the available information. It misdirects an incautious audience, because information needs a context for correct interpretation. Subtly omitting information changes the interpretation of the surrounding information. Th commercially-controlled media is a form of limited hangout, although since they also modify information, Modified limited hangout may be a more appropriate term.

Limited hangout   (propaganda technique,  tradecraft,  deep statecraft)
A limited hangout is a propaganda technique, which works because information needs a context for correct interpretation. Subtly changing or omitting information changes the interpretation of the surrounding information.
Interest of	Richard Nixon
A propaganda technique to try to suppress the revelation of secret information.

A limited hangout is the deliberate revelation of some information (e.g. about malfeasance) to try to confuse and/or prevent discovery of other information. A modified limited hangout goes further, by slightly changing the information disclosed.

Origin

Official Narrative

The first verifiable public admission and explanation of the term by a CIA officer came from former CIA officer and whistleblower Victor Marchetti.. Released by the CIA per FOIA request in 2004.

The term comes from the Intelligence community and was known to top-top level politicians as a way to leak sensitive information. The term became known to the public when in 1973, US President Richard Nixon was discussing what later became known as the Watergate scandal with John Dean, John Ehrlichman, John N. Mitchell, and H. R. Haldeman.

Purposes

In 2015, The Guardian published a carefully cropped photo of Andrew Windsor, Virginia Roberts and Ghislaine Maxwell

By presenting some true and useful information, a source may gain credibility, which can be put to use later, if a credible source is desired to disseminate disinformation. Another point is that by presenting information, an audience may be desensitized to an otherwise engaging or shocking topic. If more information later emerges, the audience may feel "this is nothing new" (as the commercially-controlled media said about Gary Webb's Dark Alliance, which minutely documented case that the CIA was engaged in the illegal drug business).

Selection of information

The more valuable the information that is "hung out", the more an audience may be disposed to confer credibility on a source. It is easy to see how a subset of information can be chosen that makes it hard to guess the remainder - for example, if it is atypical or otherwise misleading.

Personal factors may dictate which information exposed; for example, a deep politician could arrange a limited hangout of information implicating person or persons deemed to be disloyal. Information selection could be used to send coded messages that only insiders would understand.

Wikileaks

Full article: Wikileaks

A reminder that it is always wise to at least keep open the possibility of a limited hangout is Wikileaks. Julian Assange was quoted in July 2010 as stating that "I'm constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud." It seems unlikely that a man with his experience could miss such an obvious false flag.

In 2009, Wikileaks leaked a huge set of pager messages for the day of 9/11 - which one might suspect would prove interesting, but which in practice has proven to be of relatively little interest. They freely admit that "it's impossible to tell whether the logs have been faithfully reproduced in their entirety". If the set of messages was purged before being posted, then this corresponds to a limited hangout. If false messages were inserted, this makes it a modified limited hangout. Webster Tarpley maintains a high level of suspicion of the commercially-controlled media and has voiced skepticism early about stories they promote. He suggests that examples of Modified limited hangout include:

Panama Papers

Full article: Panama Papers

Described by Edward Snowden as the "biggest leak in the history of data journalism", the Panama Papers was the April 2016 release of over 2½TB of data, apparently created by the Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca - detailing >200,000 offshore companies, including the identities of shareholders and directors. This has a highly skewed distribution of people and nations (barely any from the US) suggesting that it might be a partisan limited hangout.

Modified limited hangout

Watergate Scandal

On 22 March 1973 John Ehrlichman coined the phrase "modified limited hangout" in a meeting with Richard Nixon, John Dean, John Mitchell, and H.R. Haldeman, in the following exchange:

“

PRESIDENT: You think, you think we want to, want to go this route now? And the — let it hang out, so to speak? DEAN: Well, it's, it isn't really that -- HALDEMAN: It's a limited hangout. DEAN: It's a limited hangout. EHRLICHMAN: It's a modified limited hangout. PRESIDENT: Well, it's only the questions of the thing hanging out publicly or privately.

”

Before this exchange, the discussion captures Nixon outlining to Dean the content of a report that Dean would create, laying out a misleading view of the role of the White House staff in events surrounding the Watergate coup. In Ehrlichman's words: "And the report says, 'Nobody was involved,'". The document would then be shared with the Senate Watergate Committee investigating the affair. The report would serve the administration's goals by protecting the President, providing documentary support for his false statements should information come to light that contradicted his stated position. Further, the group discusses having information on the report leaked by those on the Committee sympathetic to the President, to put exculpatory information into the public sphere.

The phrase has been cited as a summation of the strategy of mixing partial admissions with misinformation and resistance to further investigation, and is used in political commentary to accuse people or groups of following a Nixon-like strategy.

Full article: Catholic Church/VIPaedophile

Writing in the Washington Post, Mary McGrory described a statement by Pope John Paul II regarding sexual abuse by priests as a "modified, limited hangout".

Insertion of false information

If a batch of otherwise correct information contains purposely inserted falsehoods that later can be clearly shown to be incorrect by corporate media, this will muddle the waters and discredit the correct information as well.

Edward Snowden

Full article: Edward Snowden affair

Commentators such as Webster Tarpley have suggested that Edward Snowden may not in fact be the dissident voice that he claims, but in fact be part of a modified limited hangout operation to chill resistance and encourage people to self-censor. As evidence he observes that Snowden's revelations:

1. have not touched on deep events such as the JFK assassination or 9-11
2. have been treated anomalously by the commercially-controlled media, as compared to evidence presented by other whistleblowers.

John Young and Deborah Natsios of Cryptome, as well as Sibel Edmonds have also shown considerable skepticism about the Snowden affair.

Interpretation

The timing and geopolitical context of genuine leaks can be used to conjecture on the possible purposes of the leaker(s). Even more so, the selection and/or modification of information in limited hangouts. However, this very fact can itself be used to try to misdirect, for example, experts could deliberately carry out inexpert modifications to try to hide their identity.

 

Examples

Page name	Description
Afghanistan Papers	A set of documents published by The Washington Post which constitute an official opposition narrative that the invasion of Afghanistan was a mistake.
Donald Trump/Conspiracy theories	Wikipedia has an article listing all the "conspiracy theories" promoted by Donald Trump.
Hollywood/VIPaedophile	Over the years, many people have alleged that paedophilia is widespread in Hollywood. No systematic investigation has been carried out, but increasingly many insiders are personally testifying about the widespread nature of the business.
Incompetence	Incompetence is often a limited hangout.
Jeffrey Epstein/Associates List	Jeffrey Epstein's associates list was released in January 2024
Jeffrey Epstein/Black book	A list of contacts of Epstein. Many famous people. Nobody tried to investigate why, only cherry picked names and every confronted individual denied the book to mean anything other than a paper contact list, which doesn't seem plausible. Why some are still omitted is also not clear.
Lockdown Files	Matt Hanchock has his WhatsApp messages leaked
Mani pulite
National Security Archive	The largest repository of declassified U.S. documents outside the federal government.
Nieuwsuur	A state-funded TV program that replaced several award-winning current affairs programs that were "too biased"...meaning not following the official narrative.
Panama Papers	A huge (2.6TB) cache of confidential documents created by the Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca that provide detailed information on more than 214,000 offshore companies, including the identities of shareholders and directors. Those identified include numerous wealthy and powerful political figures and organisations of many countries.
Pandora Papers	The most expansive leak of tax haven files in history
Paradise Papers	A set of 13.4 million confidential electronic documents about use of tax havens to house around $10 trillion. The highly skewed nature of the exposure (very little from the US) suggest it was a modified hangout
Pentagon Papers	Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force
Pizzagate	Important conspiracy in the US/2016 Presidential election campaign.
Project Pegasus revelations	Mass leak of info about Israel spyware
QAnon	Deep State perpetrated modified limited hangout cum distraction psyop to try to obscure the increasing public awareness of its presence
Rockefeller Commission	A limited hangout to try to control revelations about the US deep state's exploitation of the CIA.
The Twitter Files	Elon Musk buying Twitter resulted in the exposure of internal Twitter Inc documents
Wikileaks/Vault 7	Release of electronic surveillance and cyber warfare tools from the CIA arsenal.

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:How to identify CIA limited hangout operation	article	18 June 2013	Webster Tarpley	Citing the Pentagon Papers as an example, Tarpley suggests that both Wikileaks and the Snowden affair are limited hangout operations by the CIA.

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