The following quote is from the book, Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein:
"Whenever you run a clandestine operation, you run two things at the same time: you prepare the team for the hit, and you keep it so small there's nobody to spread it all around. And across the hall is a big staff working on what we call special plans. They're preparing the cover story. The cover story is what they want people to believe and to talk about, and to argue about." - From a 1992 speech by Col. Fletcher Prouty, former chief of special operations, Joint Chief of Staff