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Possibly a Serious Possibility

How 'lurking weasel' phrases skewed Cold War intelligence

Decades later, a NATO study would find something similar: ask 23 officers what ‘likely’ means in terms of probability, and you’ll get a dozen different numbers. As Kent put it: ‘What we consciously or subconsciously seek is an expression which conveys a definite meaning but at the same time either absolves us completely of the responsibility or makes the estimate at enough removes from ourselves as not to implicate us’. To Kent, these kinds of ‘lurking weasel’ phrases were simply a way to avoid decisions: language that sounds authoritative but dodges responsibility.

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