Operation Northwoods, or Northwoods, was a 1962 plan by the US Department of Defense to enact acts of terrorism and violence on US soil or against US interests, blamed on Cuba, in order to generate U.S. public support for military action against the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. As part of the U.S. government's Operation Mongoose anti-Castro initiative, the plan, which was not implemented, called for various false flag actions, including simulated or real state-sponsored acts of terrorism (such as hijacked planes) on U.S. and Cuban soil. The plan was proposed by senior U.S. Department of Defense leaders, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Louis Lemnitzer.
False flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations, which are designed to appear as if 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. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and have been used in peace-time; for example, during Italy's strategy of tension.
Originally posted by selfless
Examples of false flag attacks as pretexts for war
Operation Gladio was originally conceived by Allen Dulles, who went on to become the first civilian Director of the CIA. It was the Italian code name given to NATO’s clandestine stay-behind armies, which were left across Europe after the war to better train partisan groups to counter the threat of Communist expansion. Initially, these armies were coordinated solely by the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) until, upon the orders of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR), a second command centre was formed in the shape of the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC).
These stay-behind armies later became key backers in what was known in Italy as the Strategy of Tension. This right wing, anti-Communist programme was aimed at preventing the increasingly popular Italian Communist Party from participating in a governing coalition. It lasted for over a decade. Throughout the campaign, Gladio members employed both violent and non-violent methods to manipulate public opinion against the Party, often committing false flag attacks and then blaming them on Communist insurgents. These were conducted indiscriminately against both civilian and non-civilian targets, and included the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, the 1972 Peteano car bombing, the attempted assassination of former Interior Minister Mariano Rumor and the 1980 Bologna massacre.
Gladio first came to light in August 1990, when then Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti gave testimony to a Senate subcommittee investigation into terrorism in Italy. Andreotti revealed that the secret army had been hidden within the Defence Ministry as a sub-section of the SISMI and its predecessor, the SOIS, Italy’s military secret service. This revelation infuriated the former Director of SIOS, Vito Miceli, who had “gone to prison because I did not want to reveal the existence of this super secret organization.” An organisation, which according to Vincenzo Vinciguerra, one of the 1972 Peteano car bombers, was required to “attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game [in order to force] the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.” Subsequent investigations have since revealed that Gladio-style armies also operated in Belgium (SDRA8), Denmark (Absalon), Germany (TD BJD), Greece (LOK), Luxembourg (Stay-Behind), the Netherlands (I&O), Norway (ROC), Portugal (Aginter), Switzerland (P26), Turkey (Counter-Guerrilla), Sweden (AGAG), and Austria (OWSGV).