Overlord/Bodyguard: Intelligence Failure through Adversary Deception

摘要

Much of today's intelligence literature emphasizes the role of cognitive bias and organizational pathologies in the explanation of intelligence failure. Adversary deception complicates the problem, not only for intelligence analysts and managers but for intelligence theorists as well. Operation Bodyguard, the deception plan covering Allied landings in Normandy in northwestern France in June 1944, is a case in point. Although German intelligence and decisionmaking displayed flaws, Bodyguard was such a monumental and masterful counterintelligence and deception operation that even perfectly rational individuals and organizations might have struggled to divine the truth through its fog and misdirection. Much of its deceptive power derived from the exploitation of human psychological traits that have come to be understood scientifically only in recent decades.