False flag attacks are not something that get discussed much when talking about the history of wars and conflicts. However, they have been used by governments for years to justify attacks on other countries, as well as create public support for whatever the authorities deem necessary to deal with the alleged/created threat.
Just what is a false flag attack? Here is an explanation on Wikipedia: “covert operations which are designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one’s own.”
Here are just a few examples, including a couple involving the US. Many historians have even come to the conclusion that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a false flag attack orchestrated by the US, using old, empty destroyers as the targets, as a justification for the war in Vietnam. To my knowledge, this conclusion is unconfirmed, but being that the intelligence itself was skewed with documented proof of this fact, it seems at least possible these accusations could prove to be true.
The most interesting and quite startling false flag attack plan by the US that was thankfully never implemented was Operation Northwoods. When you read the information from that plan (PDF), you won’t believe your eyes.
In the 1931 Mukden incident, Japanese officers fabricated a pretext for annexing Manchuria by blowing up a section of railway. Six years later they falsely claimed the kidnapping of one of their soldiers in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident as an excuse to invade China proper.
In the Gleiwitz incident in August 1939, Reinhard Heydrich made use of fabricated evidence of a Polish attack against Germany to mobilize German public opinion and to fabricate a false justification for a war with Poland. This, along with other false flag operations in Operation Himmler, would be used to mobilize support from the German population for the start of World War II in Europe.
On November 26, 1939 the Soviet Union shelled the Russian village of Mainila near the Finnish border. The Soviet Union attacked Finland four days after the Shelling of Mainila. Russia has agreed that the attack was initiated by the Soviets. Also, the nearest Finnish artillery pieces were well out of range of Mainila.
In 1953, the U.S. and British-orchestrated Operation Ajax used “false-flag” and propaganda operations against the formerly democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq. Information regarding the CIA-sponsored coup d’etat has been largely declassified and is available in the CIA archives.
In 1954, Israel sponsored bombings against US and UK interests in Cairo aiming to cause trouble between Egypt and the West. This operation, later dubbed the Lavon Affair, cost Israeli defense minister Pinhas Lavon his job. The state of Israel (where it is known as “The Unfortunate Affair”) finally admitted responsibility in 2005.
The planned, but never executed, 1962 Operation Northwoods plot by the U.S. Department of Defense for a war with Cuba involved scenarios such as hijacking a passenger plane, sinking a U.S. ship, burning crops and blaming such actions on Cuba. It was authored by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, nixed by John F. Kennedy, came to light through the Freedom of Information Act and was publicized by James Bamford.
Former GRU officer Aleksey Galkin, former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko and other whistleblowers from the Russian government and security services have asserted that the 1999 Russian apartment bombings that precipitated the Second Chechen War were false flag operations perpetrated by the FSB, the successor organization to the KGB. Galkin has since recanted his accusations, which were made while he was a prisoner of Chechen rebels. However, there are other theories that the FSB engineered this incident.