The Nicaragua White Paper, drafted by a young American intelligence officer named Jon D. Glassman, was a sensationalized piece of psyops propaganda published by the U.S. State Department in February 1981; its purpose was to use public diplomacy to justify the U.S. military intervention in Nicaragua. Sources for the document were allegedly Salvadoran rebel documents. The fallacy-filled paper described a "smoking gun" linking Salvadoran insurgents, Nicaragua, Cuba, and the Soviet Union.
The deception was discovered by Jonathan Kwitny, a Wall Street reporter who analyzed the documents and determined various failures of fact. When confronted, Glassman admitted to Kwitny that he had manufactured figures, lamely claiming that he had justified 'extrapolations' on embellishments of. various figures pieces of information, including figures related to Salvadoran insurgent use of Soviet weapons.