What is a "False-Flag" attack?

Though never mentioned on radio, television or in the press, the term "false flag" is frequently found on the internet, especially on "conspiracy-oriented" sites, and often with no clear explanation as to what it actually means.

During childhood, most of us will have come across romanticised stories of "piracy on the high seas", in which the pirates lure an intended victim within range of their guns by flying the flag of a friendly nation. What is less easy to believe is that, immediately prior to launching their attack, the pirates would somehow find the time to lower this false flag and finally show their true colours by hoisting the "Jolly Roger", that well-known, and probably mythical, pirate flag of schoolboy fiction.

False-flag attacks don't only happen at sea, though there was the infamous case of the attempted sinking of the USS Liberty by Israeli forces in 1967 which, had it been successful, would have been used by America as "justification" for an attack on Egypt.

for a survivor's story of the attack.

On a much more modest scale, most of us could envisage a situation where we have a "problem neighbour" against whom the police seem unable or unwilling to act effectively. In desperation we might go out late one night, throw a rock through our own window and then say we saw our designated enemy running away laughing.

That's what is meant nowadays by a "false flag" attack, with one group, most often a government, launching a terrorist attack against it's own citizenry in order to generate public support for a pre-planned war against another nation, or to justify the imposition of martial law on it's own people.

To quote Herman Goering, Hitler's deputy, "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."

Hitler himself was no stranger to the false flag attack, having personally arranged the fire that destroyed the Reichstag, Germany's parliament building, in order to justify the assumption of dictatorial powers.

By 2001 the Taliban had practically eliminated Afghan opium production, one of the CIA's major sources of "black budget" (meaning illegal) income, and there was also the matter of their refusal to allow an oil pipeline across the country from the Caspian basin. The Pentagon needed an excuse to attack not just Afghanistan, but a number of countries whose leaders dared to defy them in some way. Some in the US government actually called for a "new Pearl Harbour" to fool the public into supporting such a venture.

for the proof of this statement.
the actual PNAC file (852KB .pdf).

New Pearl Harbour? No problem! Just demolish a few old, and very heavily insured, skyscrapers that had become a liability because of safety issues, then blame it on "cave-dwelling Arabs" working for an organisation that doesn't exist. What do the lives of 3,000 innocent people matter when the CIA's opium crop is at stake?

The World Trade Centre demolition was a classic false-flag operation. People were murdered by their own government, purely to generate support for a long-planned invasion of a country that had never threatened the US - except by cutting off it's illegal opium supply.

The most important question to ask whenever there is a terrorist attack anywhere in the world is who benefits? It is seldom the group or nation blamed for the attack, which is likely to be bombed "back to the stone age". Neither is it the civilian population of either country. The people always lose in any conflict. Nearly always you'll find the chief beneficiaries are the government and arms manufacturers of the state that claims to have been attacked, which strongly suggests that "they did it themselves".

We continually hear of "international terrorists", but really there is only one international terrorist organisation, the London-based group known variously as MI5, MI6, CIA, ISI and Mossad (the motto of which is "by deception thou shalt do war"). This banker-controlled group has been responsible for nearly every terrorist atrocity anywhere in the world during the last half century and more.

for a brief history of "false flag" terrorism through the ages.