# Donald Segretti The Nixon campaign operative who ran "Operation Chaos" — a political sabotage campaign against Democratic presidential candidates in the 1972 primaries. Segretti's "dirty tricks" included forging letters on Democratic candidates' letterhead, planting false stories, disrupting campaign events, and manufacturing disinformation designed to sow distrust among Democratic primary voters. He served four months in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of distributing illegal campaign literature. Segretti's operation was part of the broader Watergate scandal apparatus, but his specific contribution to the vault is the template: systematic, professionalized political sabotage conducted through deniable channels. The term "ratfucking" — political slang for campaign dirty tricks — was popularized through Segretti's activities as reported by Woodward and Bernstein. The pattern of manufacturing disinformation to disrupt opposing campaigns predates social media by decades; Segretti did with forged letters what troll farms now do with fake accounts. ## See Also - [[Election Interference]] — the broader concept - [[Active Measures]] — the intelligence framework for political disruption