The main difference between a black operation and one that is merely secret is that a black operation involves a significant degree of deception, to conceal who is behind it or to make it appear that some other entity is responsible (e.g. false flag operations).[5][6]
Black may be used as a generic term for any government activity that is hidden or secret. For example, in the United States, some activities by military and intelligence agencies are funded by a classified "black budget", of which the details, and sometimes even the total, are hidden from the public and from most congressional oversight.[7][8]
In June the same year, the CIA declassified secret records—part of a collection of highly guarded documents called the "Family Jewels"—detailing illegal domestic surveillance, assassination plots, kidnapping, and other "black" operations undertaken by the CIA from the 1950s to the early 1970s. CIA Director General Michael Hayden explained why he released the documents, saying that they provided a "glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency".[12]
^Popular Electronics, Volume 6, Issue 2–6. Ziff-Davis Publishing Co., Inc. 1974, p. 267. "There are three classifications into which the intelligence community officially divides clandestine broadcast stations. A black operation is one in which there is a major element of deception."
^Djang, Chu, From Loss to Renewal: A Tale of Life Experience at Ninety, Authors Choice Press, Lincoln, Nebraska, p. 54. "(A black operation was) an operation in which the sources of propaganda were disguised or misrepresented in one way or another so as not to be attributed to the people who really engineered it."