Philip Giraldi — How False Flag Operations Are Carried Out Today

False Flag is a concept that goes back centuries. It was considered to be a legitimate ploy by the Greeks and Romans, where a military force would pretend to be friendly to get close to an enemy before dropping the pretense and raising its banners to reveal its own affiliation just before launching an attack. In the sea battles of the eighteenth century among Spain, France and Britain hoisting an enemy flag instead of one’s own to confuse the opponent was considered to be a legitimate ruse de guerre, but it was only “honorable” if one reverted to one’s own flag before engaging in combat.

Today’s false flag operations are generally carried out by intelligence agencies and non-government actors including terrorist groups, but they are only considered successful if the true attribution of an action remains secret. There is nothing honorable about them as their intention is to blame an innocent party for something that it did not do. There has been a lot of such activity lately and it was interesting to learn by way of a leak that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has developed a capability to mimic the internet fingerprints of other foreign intelligence services. That means that when the media is trumpeting news reports that the Russians or Chinese hacked into U.S. government websites or the sites of major corporations, it could actually have been the CIA carrying out the intrusion and making it look like it originated in Moscow or Beijing. Given that capability, there has been considerable speculation in the alternative media that it was actually the CIA that interfered in the 2016 national elections in the United States....

Strategic Culture Foundation
How False Flag Operations Are Carried Out Today
Philip Giraldi, former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer, now Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest and founding member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

George Eliason — U.S. Intelligence Crisis Poses a Threat to the World

Privatized and politicized intelligence is undermining the mission of providing unbiased information to both high-level decision makers and the American public, explains George Eliason in this first of a three-part series.…

This three-part article series is a top-down look at the deep state. Its purpose isn’t to identify every company and every player. Instead, this lead-in is a primer showing the layout of the land at the highest levels and why things have gone so very wrong inside the intelligence community.…

Rather than an intellectual exercise, this will show concrete examples of people guiding and pushing fake agendas today. You’ll see clearly the damage they are doing to American citizens that have never been questioned or warned that these things could possibly happen to them in a democratic society.

The intelligence community lost the ability to police itself during the Iraq War under George W. Bush’s tenure as president. While there remains a majority of intelligence professionals dedicated to public service, the nature of their work keeps them from even being able to talk about the corporate vultures that have taken over the industry and turned it into a for-profit venture that has little to do with national security....

Consortium News

U.S. Intelligence Crisis Poses a Threat to the World
George Eliason

Tim Hayward — The Guardian, White Helmets, and silenced comment

Setting the record straight on the fake news about the White Helmets and suppression of dissent.

Renegade News
The Guardian, White Helmets, and silenced comment

Tim Hayward | Professor of Environmental Political Theory at At Edinburgh University and founding Director of the Just World Institute and the Ethics Forum. He is a founding member of the Britain and Ireland Association for Political Thought

See also

It's so absurd it's hard to believe, but when it comes to US policy absurdity has been par for the course over the past years. At an international meeting hosted by France on global chemical weapons proliferation Secretary of State Rex Tillerson blamed both Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and Russia for carrying out a purported new chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of East Ghouta. Speaking from Paris on Tuesday, Tillerson said, "Whoever conducted the attacks Russia ultimately bears responsibility for the victims in eastern Ghouta and countless other Syrians targeted with chemical weapons since Russia became involved in Syria."

That's right - in the same sentence Tillerson leveled the accusation against Russia, while simultaneously pointing the finger at Assad, he admitted that he really doesn't know much at all about "whoever conducted the attacks"....

Zero Hedge
Tillerson Blames Russia For Alleged Syria Chemical Attack After Admitting He Doesn't Actually Know Who Did It
Tyler Durden

Whitney Webb — Birth Of An Insurgency: The US-Israeli “Secret Deal” To Manipulate Protests In Iran

With the Trump and Netanyahu administrations now working in lockstep, U.S.-Israeli hostility towards Iran has now ripened into a plan to repeat what befell Syria over six years ago – the hijacking of minor protests and their transformation into the cover for a foreign-funded insurgency intent on toppling Iran’s elected government.

Mint Press
Birth Of An Insurgency: The US-Israeli “Secret Deal” To Manipulate Protests In Iran
Whitney Webb

See also

Short and important. Flores is a good analyst. He views this as interim move and strategic iteration rather than the tactical play as a lead-up to the endgame of regime change.

Fort Russ
ANALYSIS: The US's goal in Iran this week is EU sanctions, not regime-change

Joachim Flores, Editor-in-Chief of Fort Russ News

Sputnik — Secret Surveillance Gives CIA Power to Subvert US Domestic Political Process

Many Americans still believed that the CIA was prohibited by law from operating within its own country, but that had not been the case in at least 36 years since President Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12333 in December 1981, Blunden recalled.

"It's a common misconception that the CIA is prohibited from launching domestic campaigns within the United States. One look at the General Provisions detailed in Executive Order 12333 demonstrates that this is not the case," he said.

 Potential for abuse?

Obama had reiterated his full personal confidence in Brennan even after it was discovered that the CIA had spied on the US Senate Intelligence Committee, Blunden commented.

Not to mention NSA chief James Clapper lying to Congress and getting caught.

Sputnik International
Secret Surveillance Gives CIA Power to Subvert US Domestic Political Process

Isaac Finn — Pompeo vows that the CIA will become a “much more vicious agency”

Pompeo’s statements reflect the sentiments of a large section of the political establishment and intelligence communities that increasingly see the need to further build up the US intelligence agencies as part of the preparation for war.

Only seven days before his interview at the FDD, Pompeo made similar remarks at the University of Texas at Austin National Security Forum, where he hailed Trump for proving the CIA with the “funding, authorities, or policy guidance” and allowing the agency to become “faster and more aggressive.”

The agency, he stated, “must be aggressive, vicious, unforgiving, relentless,” adding that “unceasing risk-taking is foundational” to the CIA’s activities. He added that the Trump administration was casting off restraints imposed by “the previous administration.”

The clear implication is that in addition to continuing the global drone assassination program carried out under the Obama administration, the CIA is steadily reconstructing the apparatus of rendition, black sites and torture that made it infamous around the world, while sending its agents and contractors into secret wars behind the backs of the American people.

Do you know what your government is doing? Of course not, it is top secret. "Trust us."

WSWS
Pompeo vows that the CIA will become a “much more vicious agency”
Isaac Finn

Scott Humor — A Brief History of the “Kremlin Trolls”

Backgrounder

The Vineyard of the Saker
A Brief History of the “Kremlin Trolls”

Scott Humor | Director of Research and Development

Justin Huebner — The CIA's Plan to Assassinate Greek PM Karamanlis For Ties to Russia

Last Monday the main Russian TV news channel, Vesti, ran a sensational investigative piece on the main evening news alleging that back in 2009 Russian Intelligence uncovered a plot by the CIA to remove then prime minister Kostas Karmamanlis from office, and assassinate him if necessary, for his support of Russia, in particular the South Stream gas pipeline to Europe.

Regardless of whether this is true, there is a growing perception that Western covert operations are on the rise. Erdogan is apparently convinced that the CIA was behind the Turkish coup plot. China is convinced that the US and UK were behind the recent protests in Hong Kong. Mossad director, Yossi Cohen, recently confirmed "the Israeli intelligence agency undertakes thousands of actions every year, some of which are “complex and bold,” in the heart of targeted states. He stated that they carry out operations in the most guarded and central regions of the targeted countries."

Meanwhile, the US shocked, shocked shocked that some "Russians" placed some few ads on FaceBook and Twitter.

Russia Insider
The CIA's Plan to Assassinate Greek PM Karamanlis For Ties to Russia - Exclusive Report

Justin Huebner

RT — Cambodian PM calls US democracy 'bloody & brutal' in row over USAID-funded NGO

Political tensions have been rising between Phnom Penh and Washington, after Cambodia ordered a USAID-supported organization to halt its activity in the country. The Asian nation says it is defending its sovereignty, while Washington questioned its democracy.

In the latest development to the worsening dispute between the two nations, Cambodia's long-ruling leader, Prime Minister Hun Sen, accused Washington of interference in his country's domestic affairs.

"We wish to send a clear message again to the US Embassy that we defend our national sovereignty," the Cambodian government said in an open letter Thursday, as quoted by Reuters....

Earlier this week, the Cambodian Foreign Ministry announced it was expelling the US-funded National Democratic Institute (NDI) after a series of publications in local media suggesting that the non-profit organization attempted to act against the government. Phnom Penh said the NGO had violated national registration rules....

Although in its mission statement the institute, which has been operating in Cambodia since 1992, claims that it works with all political forces, some of its materials leaked online allegedly showed its political bias and moves to assist the opposition to overthrow the government.

The intentions of other NGOs operating in Cambodia and funded by USAID (US Agency for International Development) have also been questioned by the media, suggesting those organizations might be tools of the US State Department promoting Washington's foreign policy.

"There are... NGOs who also will want to create a color revolution and topple the government like they have successfully in other countries," one of the publications on Cambodia's Fresh News said.

Busted. Libya and Ukraine changed things.

RT
Cambodian PM calls US democracy 'bloody & brutal' in row over USAID-funded NGO

Martin Armstrong — Russian Sanctions – The Start of World War III?

While a agree with the substance of the post, I am linking to it for a different reason. Martin Armstrong is a strongly laissez-faire economic liberal that views government as the problem. But here he is attributing a failed business model as a potential cause of war. The current business model in the US media is the Murdoch model that pushed Fox to the top of the ratings and raked in advertisers dollars. It is also called the tabloid model, since it's basis is sensationalism.

The major US "news" organizations have discovered that money flows to clickbait and media profit is based on the number of eyeballs that its content and presentation can attract. So the media sells what people want to buy, which is a combination of celebrity titillation and fear mongering.

Armstrong concludes that to avoid the rush to WWIII, the fairness doctrine needs to be renewed since the media is not policing itself and only government can force a rebalancing.

CNN, New York Times, and the Washington Post will be responsible for creating World War III just as Pulitzer and Hearst were responsible for creating the Spanish-American war over fake news. The Fairness Doctrine needs to be restored ASAP and applied to newspapers as well as radio and TV.

One problem with this analysis is that very often it is the US deep state that is running the narrative and providing the sources. Who is going to police the deep state?

Trump was elected to "drain the swamp" but the swamp is draining him and doing its best to drown him.

Armstrong Economics 

Russian Sanctions – The Start of World War III?
Martin Armstrong

Washington's Blog — The President Who Created the CIA Came to Regret It … Said the CIA Was a “Government All Its Own” Which Was Destroying Democracy

Harry Truman.

Washington's Blog
The President Who Created the CIA Came to Regret It … Said the CIA Was a “Government All Its Own” Which Was Destroying Democracy … “Something the Founding Fathers Didn’t Have In Mind”
WashingtonsBlog

Binoy Kampmark — Electoral Interference as Reality: A Long History of Manipulation, Bribery and Covert Ops

Sordid history of US and UK interference.

Global Research
Electoral Interference as Reality: A Long History of Manipulation, Bribery and Covert Ops
Dr. Binoy Kampmark | Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and lecturer at RMIT University, Melbourne

James Carden — Why Are the Media Taking the CIA’s Hacking Claims at Face Value?

Because the media is the tank for the Establishment. This is what the right has been saying for a long time and it was a key piece of Donald Trump's campaign.

In 1977, Carl Bernstein published an exposé of a CIA program known as Operation Mockingbird, a covert program involving, according to Bernstein, “more than 400 American journalists who in the past 25 years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency.” Bernstein found that in “many instances” CIA documents revealed that “journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.”

Fast-forward to December 2016, and one can see that there isn’t much need for a covert government program these days. The recent raft of unverified, anonymously sourced and circumstantial stories alleging that the Russian government interfered in the US presidential election with the aim of electing Republican Donald J. Trump shows that today too much of the media is all too happy to do overtly what the CIA had it once paid it to do covertly: regurgitate the claims of the spy agency and attack the credibility of those who question it....

Given the historical evidence Carden presents, the balance of the evidence suggests that this brouhaha over "Russian election hacking" may be a false flag operation aimed at domestic regime change through a soft coup.

Yes, I know, the very idea smacks of conspiracy theory, and that is one of the features of a Big Lie. In fact, the classic Big Lie depends on this.

The role of a free press is to act as devil's advocate rather than cheerleader for the Establishment view. Good that The Nation is doing so. It is almost alone in the US liberal media in this. The rest — pundits included — are acting like clowns.

If this were not happening so soon after the Iraq debacle, in which the intelligence services supported the manufacture narrative of Saddam's WMD and the threat of mushroom-shaped clouds, it might be excusable. Now it is not. The government should not be given the benefit of the doubt, anymore than Wall street financially after the crime spree that lead to the Global Financial Crisis.

These people are not only unqualified for the roles they play but also have shown themselves to be untrustworthy by the public they serve and the Constitution they are sworn to uphold and protect.

The Nation
Why Are the Media Taking the CIA’s Hacking Claims at Face Value?
James Carden, contributing writer at The Nation and the executive editor for the American Committee for East-West Accord

Pat Lang — "Zero Days"

"Zero Days covers the phenomenon surrounding the Stuxnet computer virus and the development of the malware software known as "Olympic Games."" wiki on the film
------------
I watched this yesterday and I urge you all to watch it. The level of detail concerning the roles of NSA, Cyber Command, the CIA and Israeli Mossad Section 8200 is surprising....

This was an act of war.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
"Zero Days"
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.), former military intelligence officer at the US Defense Intelligence Agency

RT — Foreign intel agencies to launch massive cyberattacks on Russian financial system – FSB

Heading 'em off at the pass.

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has information that foreign intelligence agencies are preparing to launch cyberattacks aimed at destabilizing Russia's financial system, starting as early as next week.
The attacks will also target the activities of Russia’s largest banks.

The cyberattacks, which will start from December 5, will be accompanied by a massive spam text message campaign and inflammatory social network and blog posts – all related to an alleged crisis in the credit and financial system and the bankruptcy and revocation of licenses from major federal and regional banks, a statement published on the FSB website added.

Dozens of Russian cities will be targeted in the cyber assault, it added.
It has been established that the servers and command centers to be used for the attacks are located in the Netherlands, and belong to Ukrainian hosting company BlazingFast, the FSB reported.…

This would be an act of war if state-sponsored.

RT

Foreign intel agencies to launch massive cyberattacks on Russian financial system – FSB


Sputnik
Bank of Russia Issues Recommendations to Counter Planned Foreign Cyberattacks

Sputnik — Newsweek Journalist Claims US Intelligence Fed Him False Putin-Trump Conspiracy

Sputnik International
Newsweek Journalist Claims US Intelligence Fed Him False Putin-Trump Conspiracy

Olson Gunnar — Facebook, Twitter, Western Media Attempt to Reassert Monopoly Over “Truth”

Exposing bullshit gone exponential — "First Draft News" as a US-UK covert operation.

Founding Partners

• Bellingcat
• Dig Deeper
• Eyewitness Media 
• HubEmergent
• Google News Lab 
• MeedanReported.ly 
• Storyful 
• Verification Junkie

"All the propaganda you'll ever need in one place." Only the CIA could have come with this. Or, on second thought, Google. Oh, right. Same thing.

This seems to be one of the answers of the US and UK deep state (joined at the hip) to all that "nasty Russian propaganda" from the likes of RT and Sputnik that is gaining traction as an antidote to the propaganda generated in the US and UK and spewed widely in the media and on the net.

NEO

Facebook, Twitter, Western Media Attempt to Reassert Monopoly Over “Truth”

Ulson Gunnar

Thierry Meyssan — NED, the Legal Window of the CIA

For 30 years, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been sub-contracting the legal part of illegal CIA operations. Without rousing suspicions, it has put in place the biggest network of corruption in the world, bribing trade unions and management syndicates, political parties both on both the Right and Left so that they defend the interests of the United States instead of their members. In this article, Thierry Meyssan describes the extent of this system.…

Voltaire Network
NED, the Legal Window of the CIA

Thierry Meyssan

Moon of Alabama — An Eyewitness Tells How The U.S. Ambassador Instigated "Revolution" In Syria

S. Rifai, also known as @THE_47th, is a Syrian "activist" from Homs. He was involved since early 2011 when the U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford (@fordrs58) fomented the "revolution" in Syria. He has since tweeted about the "revolution" and has shown lots of insider knowledge. Below S. Rifai corrects the U.S. propaganda record.…

"Eyewitness" is correct but too narrow. Rifai was an active participant in the revolution the US ambassador was fomenting in 2011 in Syria.

Moon of Alabama
An Eyewitness Tells How The U.S. Ambassador Instigated "Revolution" In Syria

More on propaganda.

Gallery: "Dramatic Rescue - Man With Kid Runs Towards Camera" - 43 (Staged) Pictures

Andrew Korybko — The US Is Juggling Chaos And Coordination In Order To Contain China

What to expect geopolitically and geostrategically over the next decade and longer. US policy is permanent global hegemony by preempting any rival.

How the US uses internal and peripheral destabilization instead of military force. Recall the US supporting the Afghan "freedom fighters" against the Russian occupation, that later morphed into Al Qaeda, radical Islamism, and ISIS.

Zbigniew Brzezinski's career began in the Carter administration. He is a Democrat. Hilary Clinton as secretary of state was fully involved in this strategy as was Bill Clinton in Serbia-Bosnia. There is no perceptible difference between the two parties on US foreign policy other than the GOP is more prone to involving the US directly in military action. But the outcome is the same.

Oriental Review
The US Is Juggling Chaos And Coordination In Order To Contain China
Andrew Korybko

Also

The ‘Umbrella Revolution’ and Secessionist Political Contagion in China (I)

The ‘Umbrella Revolution’ and Secessionist Political Contagion in China (II)

The Reverse Brzezinski: The Ultimate Eurasian Dilemma (I)

The Reverse Brzezinski: The Ultimate Eurasian Dilemma (II)

Extremely good strategic analysis of US foreign policy based on implementing Brzezinski's grand strategy.

Bringing everything full circle, Brzezinski has gone back to his basics of luring America’s adversaries into strategic entanglements from which they cannot retreat. His history of instigating the Soviet-Afghan War by having the CIA train and arm the Mujahideen before the Soviet intervention must never be forgotten. The concept of the Eurasian Balkans has largely overshadowed this chapter of Brzezinski’s past, but it does not mean that it is no less important for America’s contemporary strategic doctrine. As the US’ unipolar moment approaches dusk, the dawn of the multipolar era is around the corner. This necessitates a fundamental shift in the US’ previous pattern of offensive advancement into Eurasia, hence the revival of the Lead From Behind strategy.

See also:

Global Research
Going Rogue: America’s Unconventional Warfare in the Middle East
Sharmine Narwani