False flag

False flag attacks are carried out in ways calculated to deceive the victim as to the nature of the perpetrator, conventionally (though not necessarily) by a device such as flying false colours.

This article is offered as an adjunct to the Wikipedia article "False Flag Attacks". Covert operations and confusing references to "Black Flag" have been avoided and some puzzling gaps filled in. See definition below.

False Flag Attacks are extremely rare

It is almost unheard of for a Western nation to carry out a False Flag attack.

The following list has only one minor case (with no injuries) from West Germany, one from the Nazis, one from Stalin and one from Israel. The remainder, though listed as False Flag by the Wikipedia, do not appear to belong in this list.

• 2008 Operation Jaque tricked FARC captors (two of whom were arrested) into handing over 15 hostages including Ingrid Betancourt. The implementation may have included a trivial false-flag use of Red-Cross symbol by Columbian government forces or it may have been that genuine Red-Cross personnel were themselves tricked into taking part. Not false-flag.

• 2006 Bloed, Bodem, Eer en Trouw "Flemish TV channel VTM claimed (citing justice sources) that the group was preparing to assassinate Filip Dewinter, an important figure of the far right Vlaams Belang party, in a false flag attack that would have been blamed on the Islamist movement. Taking advantage of the ensuing confusion, the group would then murder Dyab Abou Jahjah, leader of the Arab European League. Belgian justice authories denied these claims." Not false-flag.

• 1988 Masada Action and Defense Movement carried out 2 bombings (and is linked to one in 1972). There is no evidence presented in the Wikipedia article that these alleged "white supremacists" were not Zionists and their hatred of Muslims was not genuine. Not false-flag.

• 1980 Bologna massacre - far-right extremists were convicted for this attack. Involvement by the Italian secret service alleged. Not false-flag.

• 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. Genuine but minor false-flag.

• 1972 Canuck letter - dirty campaign trick, a forged letter and accusation widely believed to have ended the Presidential hopes of Senator Edmund Muskie. Not false-flag.

• 1970s The strategy of tension was a period in Italy when right-wing elements are accused of carrying out various terrorist acts. 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. Not obviously false-flag.

• 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.

• 1970 Plaza Miranda Bombings in the Philippines presumably carried out by Ferdinand Marcos which he attempted to blame on the Liberal Party victims. Not false-flag.

• 1968 The Marxist-Leninist Party of the Netherlands was a fake pro-China communist party in the Netherlands set up by the Dutch secret service using a real (but purged) communist Pieter Boevé (under the pseudonym of "Chris Petersen"). The party claimed to represent the principles of Maoism against the "heresies" of the official pro-USSR Communist Party of the Netherlands and there is no evidence otherwise, despite the false funding. Not false-flag.

• 1967 Some commentators (but not the survivors) describe the 1967 Israeli "USS Liberty Incident" as false-flag. The planes which first attacked the ship (but not the torpedo boats) were unmarked and the intention appears to have been to sink the ship without trace, with blame presumably falling on another party, the Egyptians. Debatable false-flag, treated here as covert.

• 1962 CIA Operation Northwoods 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". False-flag attacks were plotted but not authorised or perpetrated. Not false-flag.

• 1954 CIA PBSUCCESS was a covert US Operation to overthrow the Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954. Not false-flag.

• 1954 Lavon Affair, falsely described by Wikipedia as a "failed Israeli covert operation". Genuine false-flag.

• 1953 CIA Operation Ajax and Operation Boot were covert oprations to overthrow the Prime Minister of Iran and replace him with the Shah. Not false-flag.

• 1947 onwards - the Special Activities Division of the US has a large and detailed Wikipedia article on the covert operations carried out but SAD has never been accused of carrying out false-flag operations and its appearance as such in the main article seems in error. Not false-flag.

• 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 Gleiwitz incident 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.

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

• 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 ... as a false flag operation". Debatable false-flag, treated here as covert.

The list at the Wikipedia "False Flag" article (as at Mar 2012) from which this is drawn describes twenty cases, of which just four appear to be genuine. One each from the Nazis and the Soviets in 1939, the 1954 Israeli "Lavon Affair", and a fairly trivial West German case in 1978. There are three others dubbed here as "Debatable false-flag, treated here as covert", two Nazi and one Israeli. Thirteen false examples have been included to make it appear that false-flag is relatively common.

In fairness, the WP articles themselves cover most of those incidents either adequately or quite well, so it is only the "False Flag" article which has been badly distorted.

Important examples inadequately covered at WP

September 11^th, 2001

Main Pages: Category:9/11

On September 11, 2001, a complex attack was carried out for which no one has been brought to justice. The US government continues neither to investigate the evidence, admit reponsibility nor answer reasonable outstanding questions. Two US passenger 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. An attack was launched against the Pentagon, which was subject to a military stand down. Official procedure was followed neither before, during nor after the attack. None of the hijacked aircraft were intercepted, fighter jets were not scrambled, and the evidence of the demolished World Trade Center buildings was removed without being subjected to any investigation. There are many other serious anomalies and problems with the official narrative of these events. Wikipedia editors seem determined to remove any evidence from the 9/11 pages which contradicts the US government's official conspiracy theory. Subsequent to the 9/11 attacks, another possible false flag was carried out - the 'Amerithrax' Anthrax attacks, which were blamed on Islamic Terrorists at the time, although a $100M FBI investigation concluded that the Anthrax used was of US military origin. The case is now closed although some of the evidence remains 'under seal' .

1967 USS Liberty Incident

Main Article: USS Liberty Incident

This incident is referred to as a "False Flag Attack" by some commentators.

1954 Lavon Affair

Main 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 of this terrorism is 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 anything that induced antisemitism, pogroms and expulsions of Jews was to their advantage. A Zionist source says that they intended the attacks to be "blamed on local insurgents [and] discredit Nasser's rule"

Factually, the Wikipedia article on the Lavon Affair is detailed and largely complete. However, it claims that the affair was "disastrous for Israel in several ways" - while completely failing to mention the very serious effects on Egypt and Egyptian Jews.

1950 Baghdad Bombings

Never acknowledged by Israel

The April 1950 bombings that helped panic most of the 150,000 Jews of Iraq to leave for Israel have never been claimed by the Zionists.

For and against the Zionists having done it

The Wikipedia generally presents a large number of other reasons why the Jews would have wanted to leave and strongly implies that the existence of Israel, and the activities of the Zionists in Iraq did nothing to cause problems for the Jews. But in the article on "Jews in Iraq" (Oct 2011) it admits:

The true identity and objective of the masterminds behind the bombings has been the subject of controversy. A secret Israeli inquiry in 1960 found no evidence that they were ordered by Israel or any motive that would have explained the attack, though it did find out that most of the witnesses believed that Jews had been responsible for the bombings. The issue remains unresolved: Iraqi activists still regularly charge that Israel used violence to engineer the exodus, while Israeli officials of the time vehemently deny it. Historian Moshe Gat reports that "the belief that the bombs had been thrown by Zionist agents was shared by those Iraqi Jews who had just reached Israel". Sociologist Phillip Mendes backs Gat's claims, and further attributes the allegations to have been influenced and distorted by feelings of discrimination.

Journalist Naeim Giladi's position that the bombings were "perpetrated by Zionist agents in order to cause fear amongst the Jews, and so promote their exodus to Israel" is shared by a number of anti-Zionist authors, including the Israeli Black Panthers (1975), David Hirst (1977), Wilbur Crane Eveland (1980), Uri Avnery (1988), Ella Shohat (1986), Abbas Shiblak (1986), Marion Wolfsohn (1980), and Rafael Shapiro (1984). In his article, Giladi notes that this was also the conclusion of Wilbur Crane Eveland, a former senior officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who outlined that allegation in his book "Ropes of Sand".

Other accounts state that arms were stock-piled in synagogues by the Zionists and were shown to the Iraqi services by a captured member of the underground.

Definition of a false-flag attack

The Wikipedia article on "False Flag" states that "False flag (aka Black Flag) operations are covert operations designed to deceive in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities." This is confusing, but the "attack" part of that convention is maintained here. A spying or escape operation wearing the wrong uniform will not be described as "False Flag" for this purpose, nor will a covert operation.

Additional incidents

No "Reliable Source" has been found for the following report, it is included here because it is recent (at the time of writing) and the memos might become public:

A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran [in 2007 and 2008] Mark Perry, ForeignPolicy.com blog in 2012. Or according to Justin Raimond of antiwar.com, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives - what is commonly referred to as a ‘false flag’ operation.