something from a photograph. Politics has long been a fertile field
for this form of manipulation: During the Soviet era, image editors
removed a number of disfavored Communist Party officials from
photos with Stalin. Americans did the exact opposite: In 1950, a
close race for the U.S. senate seat for Maryland was affected when
Senator Joseph McCarthy’s staff faked a photograph by adding a
Communist Party official to a photo of a rival politician. The photo
was widely distributed before being revealed as a forgery, and many
people believe that the false association with communism con-
tributed to the rival’s defeat.
11
Attacks through photo forgery may be especially dangerous be-
cause they can be hard to detect. A manipulated photo released by
the g