Category: False Flag

• The Oklahoma City (1995) Second Bomb

  A major domestic-terrorism theory claiming that the Oklahoma City bombing was not caused only by Timothy McVeigh’s truck bomb, but involved one or more additional explosive devices inside the Murrah Federal Building. In stronger versions, these secondary charges are said to have been planted by federal agents or other state-linked actors, making McVeigh either a partial participant or a patsy for a more complex operation.

• The Palmer Raids False Flag

  The Palmer Raids False Flag theory held that the package bombs mailed to officials in April 1919 and the larger June 1919 bombings were not truly the work of anarchists, but were staged, manipulated, or knowingly exploited by the Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice to create public fear and justify a crackdown on radicals, immigrants, and labor activism. The historical record shows that the bombings and their aftermath had a major impact on the expansion of federal anti-radical operations, and contemporary investigators linked the attacks to Italian anarchist networks associated with Luigi Galleani. The theory arose because the bombings so neatly preceded and energized the logic of the Palmer Raids that some critics came to see them as a manufactured pretext rather than a genuine attack wave.

• The Wall Street Bombing (1920) "Inside Job"

  The Wall Street Bombing "Inside Job" theory holds that the September 16, 1920 bombing in New York’s financial district was either staged, facilitated, or politically exploited by authorities in order to intensify anti-radical repression during the First Red Scare. The actual bombing killed 38 people and injured hundreds, and no perpetrator was ever definitively identified. Investigators focused on anarchist suspects, and the attack quickly became part of the wider political climate surrounding bomb scares, deportations, and anti-immigrant repression. Because the case remained unsolved, alternative explanations persisted, including claims that the bombing served as a false-flag event or was allowed to happen in order to justify continuing crackdowns associated with the Palmer-era anti-radical campaign.