A black operation or black op is a covert operation by a government, a government agency, or a military organization. This can include activities by private companies or groups. A black operation typically involves activities that are highly clandestine and often outside of standard military/intelligence protocol or even against the law. Key features of a black operation are that it is clandestine, it has negative overtones, and it is not attributable to the organization carrying it out. The main difference between a black operation and one that is merely clandestine is that a black operation involves a significant degree of deception. A single such activity may be called a "black bag operation".
Read more about Black Operation: Etymology, Reported Examples of Black Operations
Famous quotes containing the words black and/or operation:
“A white face goes with a white mind. Occasionally a black face goes with a white mind. Very seldom a white face will have a black mind.”
—Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943)
“An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.”
—Henri Bergson (1859–1941)