The next time someone heaps scorn on you, making fun of your suspicions about the federal government by calling you a "conspiracy theorist," show this post to your mocker.
The term "" has its origins in naval warfare where a flag other than the belligerent's true battle flag is used as a ruse de guerre or pretext for war. As the term is used in contemporary America, a "false flag" incident is some traumatic event that is contrived and manipulated by the authorities to achieve some covert agenda. The public is given an untruthful version of the event by government and/or the media. The intended result is a "rallying around the flag" effect, wherein an inflamed and duped populace rally in support of the government's secret agenda.
Admittedly, it is difficult for the ordinary American to think the U.S. government can stoop so low as to instigate false flags, for that would mean our government is in the hands of people so diabolical, calling them psychopaths does not begin to describe what they are. That is a frightening thought.
But it is a thought not entirely alien to our Founding Fathers who instituted a new polity based on a view of human nature as inherently self-interested instead of benevolent, and of government as a necessary evil that must be constrained and delimited. To quote James Madison in The Federalist Papers:
"What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external or internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
For his part, Thomas Jefferson, in his 1787 letter to Edward Carrington, vividly described what government would be if unchecked and unsupervised. He warned that "if once" the people "become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves."
The plain fact of the matter is that there are governments and political leaders who are evil psychopaths. Just ask the millions of innocent men, women, and children whom the Nazis had slaughtered, or the hundreds of millions of innocent men, women, and children whom the Communists had killed in the former Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China and Kampuchea. Why would Americans, who partake of the same non-angelic human nature, be uniquely virtuous? It is for that reason that the Founders established a polity with mechanisms of checks and balances to limit government.
Even with checks and balances in place, the history of the United States is riddled with actual and planned false flags and conspiracies. As an example, the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which the U.S.S. Maine and U.S.S. Turner Joy reportedly were fired on without provocation by the North Vietnamese, was a false flag of the Lyndon Johnson Administration. Congress took the bait and passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that, by pre-approving the president's military actions, gave Johnson a free ticket to wage war in Vietnam. It turned out no Vietnamese boats were even in the gulf at the time of the alleged attack.
Then there was Operation Northwoods , a false flag of such scope and devious audacity, it takes your breath away.
As reported by David Ruppe for , May 1, 2001:
In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.
America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation." [...]
The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.
Operation Northwoods was proposed in March 1962 at the beginning of John F. Kennedy's presidency by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and approved by the head of every branch of the U.S. armed forces. Only a year before, in his farewell speech to the American people on January 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had warned that "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."
The Operation Northwoods proposals called for the CIA or other government operatives to undertake acts of terrorism against U.S. military and civilian targets in Guantanamo Bay, Miami, other Florida cities, and even in Washington, D.C. Proposed acts included sinking U.S. ships, having fake Cuban MIGs attack a United States Air Force aircraft, hijacking and shooting down a chartered civil airliner, and gunning down civilians in the streets. The attacks would be blamed on the Fidel Castro government, which would be used as pretexts for a "military intervention" against Cuba.Thankfully, President Kennedy rejected the proposals. A year and 8 months later, on November 22, 1963, he was assassinated.
The public learned about Operation Northwoods only 35 years later on November 18, 1997. That day, the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board declassified Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba, a top secret collection of draft memoranda outlining the false flag proposals, written by the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Below are screenshots I took from the Appendix of a memo to the Joint Chiefs of Staff from the Department of Defense, dated March 9, 1962, in Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba. The Appendix contains the nauseating details of the proposed false flag.
Please ask yourself whether anything has really changed for us to be assured that our government has not and will not undertake false flags like Operation Northwoods or worse. On the contrary, with the establishment media acting more as a Ministry of Truth than the feisty check on political power intended by the Founding Fathers, I fully expect our government to be even more devious and skillful. (See " CIA spreads disinformation to news agencies ")
If Sandy Hook was a false flag, it is small potatoes compared to Operation Northwoods.
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