Wrong flag
The term false flag ( false flag ) is an intelligence , political and military concept, originally from the Maritime dates. It describes deception maneuvers and covert operations , usually by the military or a secret service , which are carried out by another, third party allegedly to conceal the identity and intentions of the actual author ( false flag operation ). The action is thus apparently actively attributed to an uninvolved third party, which may be an individual, an organization, a religious or ethnic group or a state. The actual actor is acting “under a false flag”, which is typically accompanied by the targeted use of disinformation and is subject to the strictest secrecy to protect against the discovery of the real author .
Operations that have become known had, among other things, targeted damage to reputation, the staging of terrorist activities and the creation of reasons for war (war cause lie). Such actions are usually designed in such a way that the government in question or the management of the respective secret service can credibly deny having anything to do with it. This concept was as Plausible deniability ( Credible deniability ) in the 1950s for actions of the CIA developed.
origin
The concept has its origins in seafaring , where the flag of a ship indicates its nationality and origin. In order to deceive the enemy in times of war, it was quite common for ships to fly the flag of a state other than their own. Warships or privateers (described in more detail under Privateer ) also made use of this deception measure, which was generally accepted, provided that the true identity was shown by hoisting one's own flag before the start of any fighting. Gradually, the use of foreign emblems, i.e. flags, insignia and uniforms, also expanded in the country, also with the restriction that they were removed before combat operations. In the meantime, this practice is also covered by international law under certain conditions - the use of international trademarks is expressly prohibited.
Operation types
In the case of secret services, one of the possible goals is to make use of human sources which, if the actual recipient of the information supplied were known, would otherwise in all probability not be willing to cooperate. During the Cold War, Eastern services often used so-called Romeo agents for this purpose. During Operation Scorpio , for example, the right-wing BND secretary Heidrun Hofer was seduced by an allegedly equally minded man with whom she started a relationship. After she had provided the supposedly politically like-minded person with highly classified material for years, he was exposed as a KGB agent.
Even covert operations of intelligence services or the military are partially carried out under false colors, such discredit to unrelated third parties to fake threats from terrorists or to create a pretext for military intervention. Operation Ajax in 1953 (overthrow of Iranian President Mohammed Mossadeq by the CIA and MI6 ) and Operation PBSUCCESS in 1954, which led to the overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán , are examples of staged regime change .
Creation of grounds for war
Several wars were started on the basis of feigned actions by the enemy. The best-known example is the alleged Polish attack on the Gleiwitz transmitter staged by the National Socialists, which was instrumentalized as the occasion for the beginning of the Second World War . In 1931, Japanese officers carried out a bomb attack on the Mukden Railway in northern China ( Mukden incident ). The Chinese were blamed for the explosion, and it was used as an excuse for the Japanese government to bomb Chinese cities and finally occupy Manchuria , which had been home to Japanese troops for years. In the Mainila Incident in 1939, the USSR itself created the occasion for the Winter War , while it is controversial whether the Tonkin Incident in 1964 was orchestrated by the United States itself to intervene in the Vietnam War .
The US military's Operation Northwoods, planned in 1962, was intended to create a pretext for the invasion of Cuba through self-staged terrorist attacks by allegedly Cuban terrorists . However, President John F. Kennedy declined to execute and did not extend the term of office of Lyman L. Lemnitzer , chairman of the United General Staff , who was largely responsible for the plans . The plan came to the public at the request of a journalist under the Freedom of Information Act 1997. The journalist and intelligence expert James Bamford kept these plans of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for "perhaps the worst" ever developed from a part of the US government - "In the name of anti-communism , the military struck a secret and bloody war of terror against their own country before American to To win the public over to the insane war [against Cuba] ”.
Staged Terrorism
Cases of state terrorism are documented in which states or their secret services initiated terrorist attacks under false flags. These were then attached to unwanted political groups using disinformation and falsified evidence in order to discredit them as terrorists .
Italy
One example was the alleged staging of terrorist attacks by right-wing extremist groups close to the intelligence service in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, for which left-wing extremist groups, such as the Red Brigades, were held responsible . This hypothesis is known as the " strategy of tension ". The Commission of Inquiry into Terrorism and Massacre (1994-2000) of the Italian Senate found:
"These massacres were organized or supported by people in institutions of the Italian state and by men who were connected to the American secret service."
Algerian civil war
Habib Souaïdia, an officer in an Algerian anti-terrorist unit , accused the Algerian government in 2001 of initiating false flag terrorist attacks. During the civil war of the 1990s , in which, according to Amnesty International estimates, up to 200,000 people died, she waged a "dirty war" against her own population in the strictest of secrecy . The government officially waged war against Islamist terrorist groups who carried out terrorist attacks against soldiers and civilians. According to Souaïdia, however, military personnel were at least involved in numerous massacres of the civilian population. He himself witnessed how secret agents of the state carried out terrorist attacks against civilians, for which the Islamist terrorists were then officially and falsely held responsible. According to other witnesses from the secret services, the leadership of the largest terrorist group Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA, German "Armed Islamic Group" ) was infiltrated by agents of the Algerian secret services. Souaïdias' allegations, which were also confirmed by several other witnesses in a similar form, were never officially investigated; instead, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in absentia. He lives in exile in France.
Israel / Egypt
1954 launched Israeli military intelligence Aman the operation Susannah that the so-called Lavon Affair led and inspired substantial domestic and foreign policy entanglements. Israeli agents recruited specifically for this purpose carried out bomb attacks on US cultural institutes and companies in Egypt in August 1954 . As planned, there was only property damage. The blame should primarily be placed on the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian communists. The aim was to trick the US government into believing that the Egyptian state was unstable and powerless against Islamist and political extremists. The aim was to disrupt the good relations between the US and the Egyptian head of state Gamal Abdel Nasser , who some military officials, including Moshe Dayan , viewed as a strategic threat to Israel's position.
In addition, the looming withdrawal of British troops from the Suez Canal zone, which is considered to be detrimental to Israel, should be prevented. In August 1954, arson attacks were carried out on US libraries in Cairo and Alexandria and on a post office. However, after a few attacks, Egyptian security forces managed to uncover the agents' ring when one of the agents tried to set a US cinema on fire. Ten members were sentenced in Egypt in 1955, two of them to death. Two others committed in prison suicide . The operation was carried out without the knowledge of the Israeli Defense Minister Pinchas Lawon , who was known for seeking a peaceful settlement with the Arabs. However, it was attached to him by his opponents in the government and the military using falsified evidence and false statements, whereupon he had to resign. He was rehabilitated in 1961. The affair seriously damaged Israel's reputation in Western government circles and raised numerous questions about the practices of the Israeli secret services towards friendly countries.
Legal Aspects and Deniability
Such operations generally violate various norms of national and international law, often also against those of the executing country. Therefore, such activities are typically carried out in the strictest secrecy and avoiding the creation of written evidence as far as possible, which makes it much more difficult to resolve them later by parliamentary committees of inquiry or courts.
The avoidance of traces also serves to enable the relevant government or management of the respective secret service to credibly deny knowledge of the events. This concept was as Plausible deniability ( Credible deniability developed) in the 1950s for actions of the CIA. In secret service terminology, false flag operations are counted as black operations because of the implicit violations of the law and high confidentiality requirements .
See also
Web links
- Glossary Counter-espionage , State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Baden-Württemberg
Individual evidence
- ↑ James Bamford : NSA. The anatomy of the most powerful intelligence agency in the world. 2001, p. 89.
- ↑ a b Gunther Latsch: The dark side of the west . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 2005, pp. 48 ( online - April 11, 2005 ).
- ^ Habib Souaïdia: Dirty War in Algeria. Report by an ex-officer in the Army Special Forces (1992–2000) . Translation from French. Chronos-Verlag, Zurich 2001, pp. 199–201.
- ↑ "When the men of the DRS let their beards grow, I knew they were preparing for a 'dirty job' in which they pretended to be terrorists." Habib Souaïdia: Dirty war in Algeria. Report by an ex-officer in the Army Special Forces (1992–2000) . Translation from French. Chronos-Verlag, Zurich 2001, p. 113.
- ↑ a b c Algeria's dirty war. Secret service agents unpack. ( Memento of the original from June 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Le Monde Diplomatique , March 17, 2004.
- ↑ a b Ali Al-Nasani: The everyday massacre. In: Die Zeit , October 2002.
- ↑ For the entire complex see Israel / Lavon Affair: The Breakdown . In: Der Spiegel . No. 4 , 1961 ( online ). ; Josef Müller-Marein: Ben Gurion resents the politicians . In: The time . No. 13/1961; The third man . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1972 ( online ).
- ↑ Shabtai Teveth: Ben-Gurion's spy: the story of the political scandal that shaped modern Israel. Columbia University Press, New York 1996, ISBN 0-231-10464-2 , p. 81. Quotation: “To undermine Western confidence in the existing [Egyptian] regime by generating public insecurity and actions to bring about arrests, demonstrations, and acts of revenge, while totally concealing the Israeli factor. The team was accordingly urged to avoid detection, so that suspicion would fall on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communists, 'unspecified malcontents' or 'local nationalists'. "
