Where Did the Phrase ‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny’ Come From?

In February 1992, an argument broke out on a U.S. Air Force jet bound for a remote Siberian outpost. The flight was set to deliver food to aid the people of the former Soviet Union, which had collapsed the previous December—but they couldn’t agree on whether the plane was headed for the right airport to deliver its supplies. A Russian navigator insisted they weren’t. He was correct, leading one of the American crewmembers to quip, “We can neither confirm nor deny that our intelligence is not always so intelligent.”

Indeed, American intelligence is often difficult to pin down. The clandestine nature of the work necessitates a large degree of ambiguity, secrecy, and fabrication. One of the most common ways to circumvent a media request, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) letter, or other inquiry has been to state that the party “can neither confirm nor deny” the veracity of an event or existence of a document. This is particularly true when the question relates to nuclear weapons, leaked state secrets, or other matters of national security.

Appropriately, the phrase originated with a resourceful recluse who hardly ever spoke on the record.

1. Confirmation Hearing
2. Denying Confirmation of Denial

Confirmation Hearing

The “neither confirm nor deny” non-answer answer is also known as the Glomar response, a reference to the intriguing political maneuvering that helped to popularize it.

In 1968, U.S. intelligence learned that a Soviet-owned submarine, K-129, sank in the Pacific Ocean and came to rest over 3 miles below the water’s surface. What made the sub’s fate particularly interesting (if not outright concerning) was the fact that it was carrying nuclear missiles. With Russia seemingly unable to locate and retrieve it, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began putting together a plan to scoop it—and any Russian secrets it might harbor—up for themselves.

To keep suspicions low, the CIA asked wealthy aviator Howard Hughes to participate in a fabricated story in which Hughes’s company, Global Marine Development, would announce a salvage ship, the Hughes Glomar Explorer, that was intended to locate minerals on the ocean floor. But in fact, the Glomar (a contraction of Global Marine) was a ship designed to grab the Soviet sub like an arcade claw machine paws at a stuffed animal.

The mission, which was finally completed in 1974, was not terribly successful: The U.S. was able to retrieve only a portion of the hull, which harbored few intelligence secrets. Worse, Hughes’s office had been burglarized and mention of his CIA affiliation was leaked to press. When the media pressed the CIA for more information, the agency realized it had a problem—it couldn’t simply dismiss the operation, as evidence was out there. But the sensitive intelligence operation couldn’t be acknowledged, either. The agency had to figure out what not to say, and how not to say it.

Their solution was simply to avoid lying or telling the truth with one effective, if inelegant, statement. The agency told reporters that it “can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the information requested, but hypothetically, if such information were to exist, the subject matter would be classified and could not be disclosed.”

This was a very effective way of maintaining secrecy while not appearing to broadcast a huge lie to American media or to citizens. It quickly became known as the Glomar response, and later by the acronym NCND, for “neither confirm nor deny.”

It’s worth noting that the language didn’t originate with the CIA. A newspaper reporter’s questions over a silent traffic speed monitoring system in Warwickshire, England, in 1936 drew a similar answer from an officer: “I can neither confirm nor deny the report that the ‘silent’ control system is to be dropped,” he said. Other mentions date back to the 1800s, with various lawmakers, politicians, and others tap-dancing around pointed questions by deploying the statement.

Denying Confirmation of Denial

As the years went on, the need to formally respond to FOIA requests made NCND a go-to answer for federal agencies. (The CIA is not the only agency to make use of the tactic. Requests for sensitive information sent to the FBI or Department of Defense, for example, might trigger the same sentiment, if not the exact phrasing.)

Typically, an NCND will be deployed if a request for information violates or otherwise interferes with matters of national security, personal data, or matters pertaining to law enforcement as well as whether the existence of those documents is itself a classified fact. One may not, for example, expect anything other than a Glomar if one were to write the FBI asking for the names and addresses of people in the witness protection program.

There are workarounds. According to the National Archives, a requestor might challenge or appeal an NCND by informing the responding agency that the requested records have already been confirmed to exist or that permission has been granted by the party whose privacy is of concern.

NCND isn’t relegated to federal use. The New York Police Department drew criticism in 2017 for invoking it in response to queries about its surveillance of political and religious groups. The sentiment from critics was that NCND could become less about matters of national security and more about keeping law enforcement safe from public scrutiny.

While the phrase is a textbook example of bone-dry bureaucracy in action, the CIA is fully committed to the bit. When the agency debuted its official Twitter account in 2014, it tweeted that “We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first Tweet.”

Get Answers to More Big Questions: