False flag

This page is partly a standalone page, partly an adjunct to the other place. The result is an unclear mess!

False flag attacks are actions carried out in ways calculated to deceive the victim as to the nature of the perpetrator. Historically, these often involved flying literal flags, e.g. from a ship, or wearing uniforms. The procedure has been used as a standard way to try to justify starting a war. Most recently, perhaps the most common false flag in Western nations have been bombs attacks blamed on Muslims designed to fuel fear and promote the "war on terror".

Selected Recent Examples

September 11^th, 2001

Full article: 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

Full article: USS Liberty Incident

This incident is referred to as a "False Flag Attack" by some commentators but the precise definition is debatable.

The survivors report the planes as having been unmarked - but that's not the same as them being falsely marked and claiming to be Egyptian. They were French-built Dassault Mirage IIIs and Dassault Super-Mystere jets, and could only have been Israeli. The torpedo boats were correctly marked as being Israeli. The question in this case revolves around whether the attack was "Friendly Fire" or not.

If the survivors (all of them, it would seem) are correct when they say the US flag was flying and Israel couldn't possibly have made a mistake, it does not make it a "False Flag Attack", it would only prove Israel to be an enemy of the US. The US distress frequencies being jammed (almost preventing the ship contacting other US ships) and Israel not claiming anything different doesn't prove the matter one way or the other.

For those convinced that Israel intended to sink a US ship, the question becomes - was the attack intended to teach the US a lesson (eg don't try and spy on Israel, remember that we're Moshe Dayan's "mad dog") as if Israel was no friend of the US in the first place ... or was it an attempt to sink the USS Liberty and trick the US into dropping a nuclear bomb on Cairo? The second of these probably would merit the label of "False Flag" but it's quite a serious allegation to make.

The debate over "False Flag" or not mimics another problem - was it "accidental"? Some call it "Friendly Fire", others an attempt to sink a US ship, though nowadays it is generally agreed it was deliberate.

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 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.

Israelis confess bombing

In June 1951 the Israeli Yehuda Tagar (or Tajjar, Hirst) was recognised in Baghdad by a displaced Palestinian. Tagar and his companion were arrested and confessed to being members of a Zionist ring operating in Iraq. Fifteen members of 'the Movement' were arrested and Shalom Salih took the police from synagogue to synagogue, showing them where the weapons, smuggled in since World War II, were hidden. Two of the plotters were executed for the blast which killed the Jewish boy. David Hirst notes that the Iraqi judicial system of the time was working to international standards and there was little doubt over the verdict.

When Tajjar was released after ten years he found his way to Israel and 29 May 1966 the Israeli magazine Ha'olam Hazeh (owned and run by Uri Avnery) published an account of the emigration of Iraqi Jews based on Tajjar's testimony. On 9 November 1972 a militant magazine of Israel's Oriental Jews (Black Panther, contributor Naeim Giladi), published the story again. Several other members of 'the Movement' also gave their story to the Israeli press. All their accounts confirmed that the bombs had been set off in order to 'encourage' the Iraqi Jews to immigrate to Israel. "The Zionists were not only willing to use terrorist methods to drive out the Arabs from the Jewish state but they did not hesitate to use violence against their fellow Jews who hesitated to emigrate to Israel."

For and against the Zionists having done it

The Wikipedia presents a number of reasons why the Jews were suffering and were forced to leave Iraq, and attempts to imply that the existence of Israel, and the activities of the Zionists, did nothing to cause an exodus. But in the article on "Jews in Iraq" (as at Oct 2011) it states:

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".

Admitted False Flag Attacks

It is rare that countries 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 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.

• 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 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".

• 1953 CIA 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 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.

• 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.

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.

See Also

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