False flag

False flag
Interest of	• Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed • Sandra Barr • Kevin Barrett • Amy Baker Benjamin • Bonnie Faulkner • James H. Fetzer • Allan Francovich • Bernie Suarez • Webster Tarpley • Washington's Blog
False flags are attacks intended to blame a third party. Since a 1979 conference in Jerusalem, the most common pattern in the West has been coordinated bombs attacks which authorities and the commercially-controlled media quickly blame on suicidal Muslims. This pattern promotes the overarching "war on terror" narrative, promotes fear and is used to concoct casus bellis as needed.

A False flag operation describes covert military operations designed to deceive in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by perpetrators other than those who actually planned and executed them. Increased mass communications (especially the mass surveillance capabilities of intelligence agencies such as the NSA) mean that large false flag attacks are the limited preserve of the most influential, disciplined organisations, particularly those adept at preserving secrecy through coopting the machinery of national governments. False flag attacks are routine for deep state groups, but always carry an element of risk.

Public Awareness

Washington's Blog reported in April 2013, after the Boston Marathon Bombing that interest in False Flag attacks was at an all time high, citing Google Trends data:

The geographical data showed that searches were being made on the term especially in USA, Canada, UK, Malaysia, Australia and Germany:

Psychology

How to Create a False Flag in 10 Easy Steps

The psychology of the the targets of terror (the general public) has been extensively studied by "terrorologists", who have gradually refined the process of how to most successfully tell the "big lie". Terror drills have been used to condition people, for example stoking Islamophobia.

Fallback strategies

False flags are usually designed with many contingency (fallback) strategies to thrawt subsequent investigation by allowing the perpetrators to choose from a maze of official narratives and opposition narratives according to how events pan out. Additional countermeasures such as assassination or blackmail of whistleblowers, witnesses or journalists are sometimes used to try to preserve secrecy, but these counter-strategies have risks of their own. Exploitation of the target population's psychological weaknesses (such as people's fear, naivety, just world bias, cognitive dissonance and conditioning) is an essential part of the effort to minimize the proportion of people who uncover the deception.

September 11th, 2001

Full article: 9-11

Although widely effective at the time, 9/11 changed the dynamics of false flags because after nearly 15 years of mostly online activism by the 9/11 Truth movement have lead to its being widely doubted. A 2015 survey, for example, found that 33% of Canadians were in favor of a Parliamentary review of the 9/11 Commission Report, with 26% neither for nor against, and only 19% opposed. This has lead to a new emphasis on internet censorship and the removal of freedom of speech (notably in France in 2015) as ways to try to prevent the unmasking of false flags attacks.

Strategy

Webster Tarpley has published extensively on the strategy of false flags. While they are inevitably contain an element of risk - especially for the lower level operatives who are usually lied to about their involvement, and are often murdered as part of the cover-up - certain common strategies are employed to maximise the "plausible deniability" by which higher-ups life to fight - and kill - another day.

Drills

Anti-terror drills provide cover for activities as suspect as placing live explosives in a school bus. Many high profile terror attacks are near simultaneous with such drills (for example, 9-11 and 7-7). Rogue employees can easily make the decision to make these drills "go live" if they deem conditions favourable, for example by remote detonation of bombs unbeknownst to other participants.

Selected Recent Examples

September 11^th & Amerithrax

Full articles: 9/11, 2001 Anthrax attacks

On September 11, 2001, a complex attack occurred which killed thousands of people. No one has been brought to justice or even charged with the crime. The US government continues neither to investigate the evidence, admit reponsibility nor answer reasonable outstanding questions. Two planes were flown into two of the World Trade Center Towers, both of which collapsed completely just an hour or two later, as did WTC7, a third tower in the World Trade Center which was not hit by an aeroplane. There is considerable compelling evidence - both forensic and from eye-witnesses - that explosives were involved in all three tower collapses. Additionally an FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has revealed a U.S. intelligence alliance between al Qaeda starting in 1997 and ongoing to present time. An attack was launched against the Pentagon, which was subject to a military stand down. The official narrative fails to explain the innumerable deviations from standard operating procedure before, during and after the attacks. No hijacked aircraft were intercepted, fighter jets were not scrambled as SOP determines and the evidence of the demolished World Trade Center buildings was removed without being subjected to any investigation. Wikipedia editors rapidly censor any evidence which contradicts the official narrative.

Operation Gladio

Full article: Operation Gladio

This was a large operation in many European countries which is still only partially understood. It was most clearly revealed in Italy, after bomb attacks which killed hundreds of civilians were eventually admitted to have been carried out by a team established by NATO and the CIA. This operation quite probably gave rise to the Turkish deep state. The program has continued and expanded internationality and codenamed Gladio B.

1967 USS Liberty Incident

Full article: USS Liberty Incident

The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty illustrates when can happen when false flag attacks fail. Had the USS Liberty been actually sunk according to plan, Israel might have succeeded in plausibly denying culpability. As it was, the survivors report the planes as Dassault Mirage IIIs and Super-Mystere jets, which could only have been Israeli. The torpedo boats were correctly marked as being Israeli. The survivors all state that the USS liberty was flying the US flag, rendering highly implausible the official Israeli narrative that "we made a mistake". Other evidence includes the lack of markings on the Israeli planes and the jamming of US distress frequencies to try to stop the ship radioing for help. A high level cover up and a subservient US corporate media prevented major repurcussions at the time.

1954 Lavon Affair

Full article: Lavon Affair

Israel used Egyptian Jews as fifth-columnist to mount terrorist attacks on American and British-owned targets in Cairo and Alexandria. That it was actually Zionist terrorism was discovered when one of the saboteurs was caught planting a bomb in 1954. Israel blamed antisemitism in Egypt for the accusations and anyone who dared repeat them, silencing almost all western comment.

Israel finally ended five decades of denial in 2005, presenting official citations to surviving agents, saying: "This is historic justice for those who were sent on a mission on behalf of the state and became the victims of a complex political affair."

The motive is still not entirely clear, though Israel wished to induce the British government to retain its occupying troops in Egypt's Suez Canal zone. Israel also urgently needed manpower to work and defend the land it had seized in 1948, so inducing antisemitism, pogroms and expulsions of Jews was to their advantage. The Wikipedia article on the Lavon Affair is detailed and largely complete, but it claims that the affair was "disastrous for Israel in several ways" - while omitting the serious effects on Egypt and Egyptian Jews.

Admitted False Flag Attacks

Nation states rarely admit to carrying out False Flag attacks, even when clear evidence exists that is unaccounted for by any other version of events. Some recent attacks which have been admitted, from wikipedia's list of false flag attacks:

• 1978 Celle Hole one bombing carried out by a West German secret service to further implicate the Red Army Faction, an active terrorist group. Revealed to be a not very serious (nobody hurt, no prison escape) case by the German government in 1986.

• 1970s In Italy right-wing elements are accused of carrying out various terrorist acts as part of a broader Strategy of tension. There do not appear to be any of the elements of a false-flag element, though the 1972 killing of three Italian police Peteano bombing blame was initially blamed on their ideological opponents, the Lotta Continua ("continuous struggle", far left extra-parliamentary organization). Officers of the carabinieri were later indicted and convicted for manipulating the investigation in false directions. An Ordine Nuovo ("New Order" far right Italian cultural and extra-parliamentary political and terrorist organization founded in 1956) member has been named as the bomber.

• 1970s the CIA Project Cherry is described in Wikipedia as a "USA non-stop assassination project to kill Norodom Sihanouk, Prince, and later King of Cambodia" but with no details.

• 1962 Operation Northwoods was a series of proposals for false-flag attacks, blaming Cuba for attacks carried out on US people/assets rejected by the Kennedy administration. In the same year Operation Mongoose was 12 proposals devised by the Department of Defense and against the same target. James Bamford wrote in his well-cited 2002 book "Body of secrets" that Northwoods "had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff".

• 1953 Operation Ajax and Operation Boot were covert operations to overthrow the Prime Minister of Iran and replace him with the Shah.

• 1944 Panzer Brigade 150 wore American uniforms as they attempted to seize bridges ahead of the Ardennes Offensive, a German counter-attack. Their success was slight though the tactic caused the Americans great alarm. A Wikipedia article on the "Kommandoverband Jaguar German army unit" was deleted when it was discovered to have been largely taken from (and hence a copyright violation of) an article on a Russian web-site here, claiming that Germans in Russian uniforms spent 6 hours in Soviet occupied territory. It is unclear whether this is a true false-flag attack/operation (as intended at both Wikipedia and Wikispooks). It is known that SOE agents sometimes wore German uniforms behind enemy lines and, in 1944, German soldiers were sometimes wearing the better-quality American uniforms. Debatable false-flag, treated here as covert.

• 1939 The Gleiwitz incident in which Germans dressed as Polish briefly seize a German radio station. They briefly broadcast in Polish and left behind the body of a freshly murdered German Silesian known to have been sympathetic to Poles. Genuine false-flag. Pretext for the German invasion of Poland, official start of WWII.

• 1939 The Shelling of Finland by Joseph Stalin and USSR in order to get pretext for 'justified' war of aggression named Winter War.

• 1933 The Reichstag Fire was Hitler's pretext for suspending the Weimar Constitution and could have been false flag. Historians disagree as to whether Van der Lubbe acted alone or whether the arson was planned and ordered by the Nazis.

 

Examples

Page name	Date	Attributed to	Perpetrator(s)
2005 London bombings	7 July 2005 08:50:00 - 7 July 2005 09:47:00	Hasib Hussain Mohammad Sidique Khan Germaine Lindsay Shehzad Tanweer
2014 Ukraine coup/Odessa massacre	2 May 2014		2014 Ukraine coup
9-11	11 September 2001	9-11/The 19 Hijackers Al-Qaeda Zacarias Moussaoui	Operation Gladio/B Mossad United States/Deep state
John F. Kennedy/Assassination	22 November 1963	Lee Harvey Oswald	John F. Kennedy/Assassination/Perpetrators United States/Deep state
Bologna massacre	2 August 1980 10:25:00	Communists	Operation Gladio
Cheonan sinking	26 March 2010	North Korea	Cheonan sinking/Perpetrators
Gleiwitz Incident	31 August 1939	Poland	Germany Alfred Naujocks Gestapo
Gulf of Tonkin Incident	2 August 1964 - 4 August 1964	North Vietnam	US Navy
J. D. Tippit/Murder
Jubilee Plot	20 June 1887		Francis Millen Thomas Callan Michael Harkins
Lavon Affair	July 1954 - October 1954	Egypt	Mossad
Mukden Incident	18 September 1931	China	Japan
Oklahoma City bombing	19 April 1995	Timothy McVeigh Terry Nichols	United States/Deep state
Operation Embarrass	14 February 1947 - 1948	'The Defenders of Arab Palestine'	MI6
Operation Gladio/B	1997 - Present		NATO Deep state CIA
Pan Am Flight 103	21 December 1988	Abdelbaset al-Megrahi
Patrick Haseldine/Suppressed Lockerbie evidence ignited 9-11 attacks		Al-Qaeda
Russian apartment bombings	4 September 1999 - 16 September 1999	Ibn al-Khattab Chechnya	FSB
Shelling of Mainila	26 November 1939	Finland	Soviet Union
Syrian Chemical Weapons Attack	21 August 2013	Syrian Government
USS Liberty Incident	8 June 1967

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Anatomy of a NATO-sponsored false flag operation	audio transcript	27 March 2014		Leaked audio of high-level discussion of a planned Turkish false flag operation. It is an example of classic military/intelligence deception tactics in furtherance of policy already decided upon - in this case the overthrow of the Syrian government of Bashar al Assad.
Bandar ibn Israel	article	28 August 2013	Sharmine Narwani	The collusion of Saudi Arabia's Bandar bin Sultan with Israel in acts of terrorist violence in the Middle East through 2013.
Charlie Hebdo déjà vú	article	14 January 2015	Adrian Salbuchi	A deeply insightful analysis of the Charlie Hebdo shootings affair of January 2015. It connects many dots linking it to a litany of similar outrages and exposing the essentially False flag nature of all of them
False Flags for Israel	webpage	11 September 2012	Deanna Spingola	An overview of Israel's long history of False Flag attacks.
The Terror Attacks in France. The Broader Geopolitical Implications	interview	10 January 2015	Umberto Pascali	Interview with Umberto Pascali – For Voice of the People, TV Sonce, Skipje, Macedonia

See Also

• Category:False Flag - The category of false flag attack pages