False flag
[1][2] The term was originally used to describe a ruse in naval warfare whereby a vessel flew the flag of a neutral or enemy country in order to hide its true identity.
Similarly deceptive activities carried out during peacetime by individuals or nongovernmental organizations have been called false-flag operations, but the more common legal term is a "frameup", "stitch up", or "setup".
[8] Auxiliary cruisers operated in such a fashion in both World Wars, as did Q-ships, while merchant vessels were encouraged to use false flags for protection.
The old destroyer Campbeltown, which the British planned to sacrifice in the operation, was provided with cosmetic modifications that involved cutting the ship's funnels and chamfering the edges to resemble a German Type 23 torpedo boat.
By this ruse the British got within two miles (3 km) of the harbour before the defences responded, where the explosive-rigged Campbeltown and commandos successfully disabled or destroyed the key dock structures of the port.
[10][11] Between December 1922 and February 1923, a commission of jurists at the Hague drafted a set of rules concerning the Control of Wireless Telegraphy in Time of War and Air Warfare.
This caused an outrage in Stockholm and impressed the Riksdag of the Estates, the Swedish national assembly, who until then had refused to agree to an offensive war against Russia.
The Puumala incident allowed King Gustav III of Sweden, who lacked the constitutional authority to initiate unprovoked hostilities without the Estates' consent, to launch the Russo-Swedish War (1788–1790).
In September 1931, Seishirō Itagaki and other Japanese mid- to junior-grade officers, without the knowledge of the Tokyo government, fabricated a pretext for invading Manchuria by blowing up a section of railway.
Though the explosion was too weak to disrupt operations on the rail line, the Japanese nevertheless used the Mukden incident to seize Manchuria and create a puppet government in the form of the nominally independent state of Manchukuo.
[26][27][28][29][30] On 4 April 1953, the CIA was ordered to undermine the government of Iran over a four-month period, as a precursor to overthrowing Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.
One tactic used to undermine Mosaddegh was to carry out false flag attacks "on mosques and key public figures", to be blamed on Iranian communists loyal to the government.
The bombings were to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian Communists, "unspecified malcontents", or "local nationalists", with the aim of creating a climate of sufficient violence and instability to induce the British government to refrain from evacuating its troops occupying Egypt's Suez Canal zone, a move that would embolden Egyptian President Nasser against Israel.
However, the plot was exposed before launch and Egyptian authorities tailed an operative to his target, arrest him, and later search his apartment where the entire plan, including the names of other agents and explosive materials, was held.
A notable example is an April 2022 FSB operation where would-be Ukrainian assassins of Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov were filmed while being arrested.
Together with weapons, drugs, Ukrainian passports, and Nazi memorabilia the footage also prominently showed three expansion packs for the Sims 3 video game.
[42] An example of a successful assassination was United States Marine Sergeant Herman H. Hanneken leading a patrol of his Haitian Gendarmerie disguised as enemy guerrillas in 1919.
[citation needed] Another example of combined police and military oversight of pseudo-operations include the Selous Scouts in the former country Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), governed by white minority rule until 1980.
The Selous Scouts were originally composed of 120 members, with all officers being white and the highest rank initially available for black soldiers being colour sergeant.
Engaging mainly in long-range reconnaissance and surveillance missions, they increasingly turned to offensive actions, including the attempted assassination of Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army leader Joshua Nkomo in Zambia.
[44] Some offensive operations attracted international condemnation, in particular the Selous Scouts' raid on a Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) camp at Nyadzonya Pungwe, Mozambique in August 1976.
Some false flag operations have been described by Lawrence E. Cline, a retired US Army intelligence officer, as pseudo-operations, or "the use of organized teams which are disguised as guerrilla groups for long- or short-term penetration of insurgent-controlled areas".
Death squads composed of Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS) security forces disguised themselves as Islamist terrorists and committed false flag terror attacks.
[48] According to Roger Faligot and Pascal Kropp (1999), the OJAL was reminiscent of "the Organization of the French Algerian Resistance (ORAF), a group of counter-terrorists created in December 1956 by the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (Territorial Surveillance Directorate, or DST) whose mission was to carry out terrorist attacks with the aim of quashing any hopes of political compromise".
[50] According to ex-KGB defector Jack Barsky, "Many a right-wing radical had given information to the Soviets under a 'false flag', thinking they were working with a Western ally, such as Israel, when in fact their contact was a KGB operative.
This was allegedly done as a result of Babbar Khalsa leader Bibi Amarjit Kaur blaming Bhindranwale for the death of her husband, Fauja Singh, during the 1978 Sikh-Nirankari clashe.
"[2] Political campaigning has a long history of this tactic in various forms, including in person, print media and electronically in recent years.
On 19 February 2011, Indiana Deputy Prosecutor Carlos Lam sent a private email to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker suggesting that he run a "'false flag' operation" to counter the protests against Walker's proposed restrictions on public employees' collective bargaining rights: If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions' cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions ...
[59] Some conservative commentators suggested that pipe bombs that were sent to prominent Democrats prior to the 2018 mid-term elections were part of a false flag effort to discredit Republicans and supporters of then-President Donald Trump.
