Category File
Terrorism & False Flags
18 documented theories filed under this subject.
- Ray Epps and the January 6 False FlagA retired Marine's photograph went up on the FBI's Capitol Violence page and then came down, and video showed him telling a crowd to go inside the Capitol. From that the theory followed that 6 January 2021 was a federal operation and he was the agent who started it. He pleaded guilty, was sentenced to probation, sued Fox News and lost — and every one of those outcomes was absorbed as further proof.
- The Dancing IsraelisFive Israeli nationals working for a New Jersey removals company were arrested on 11 September 2001 after a neighbour reported them watching the burning towers and giving each other high fives. They were held seventy-one days and deported for working without visas. Two FBI divisions concluded they had no prior knowledge of the attacks and were not engaged in clandestine intelligence work. The companion claim that Israelis were warned to stay away traces to a Jerusalem Post report of families ringing to ask whether their relatives were alive, inverted five days later by a Hezbollah-linked broadcaster.
- The Gleiwitz IncidentOn the evening of 31 August 1939 seven SS men in Polish uniforms seized a German radio transmitter near the Polish border, fired shots, and left two bodies behind — one of them a Silesian farmer arrested the day before and killed for the purpose. Germany invaded Poland the next morning, citing Polish aggression. Almost everything known about how it was staged comes from the affidavit of the man who ran it.
- The Lavon Affair and Operation SusannahIn July 1954 an Israeli military-intelligence cell planted firebombs in Egyptian post offices, American libraries and a British-owned cinema, intending the attacks to be read as the work of Egyptians. The operation is not in dispute; Israel honoured the surviving operatives in 2005. What has never been settled is who authorised it, and the inquiry into that question brought down a defence minister, a prime minister and eventually Ben-Gurion himself.
- The Pentagon Missile TheoryA 9/11 theory claiming that the Pentagon was not struck by American Airlines Flight 77, but by a missile or smaller military-type projectile. The theory developed from early press photographs that seemed to show limited visible wreckage, the size of the exterior damage before collapse, eyewitness confusion, and the rapid emergence of competing narratives about what a commercial-jet impact should have looked like.
- The Pentagon MASCAL ExerciseA claim that the Pentagon rehearsed the attack that later struck it, built on a series of pre-2001 mass casualty exercises in which a passenger aircraft hit the building. The exercises are real and are recorded in the Defense Department's own history of 9/11, which notes that one of them, held in May 2001, supposed an airliner striking the west side.
- The Disputed Death of Osama bin LadenWithin twenty-four hours the White House said bin Laden died in a firefight, used a woman as a shield, and that a helicopter was lost to mechanical failure. It withdrew all three. Four years later Seymour Hersh published an entirely different account. The strongest check on both came from a Pakistani commission with no reason to help Washington.
- Does Al-Qaeda Exist as an Organisation?A BBC series argued in 2004 that the global terror network described by Western governments was largely an invention. The journalist it quoted most approvingly had written something more careful, and the argument has since narrowed to a question about what the word describes.
- The Airline Put Options Before 9/11In the week before the attacks, bets against United and American Airlines spiked far above normal. Investigators traced the largest trades to an ordinary institutional strategy. Finance academics have kept asking whether the anomaly was really explained away.
- Operation GladioA confirmed NATO/CIA "stay-behind" network in Europe during the Cold War implicated in false-flag terrorist attacks to discredit political opponents.
- WTC Building 7A 47-storey office block a block north of the Twin Towers collapsed at 5:20 on the afternoon of 11 September 2001. No aircraft hit it. It came down into its own footprint in about seven seconds, and it is the only tall building ever attributed primarily to fire. NIST's 2008 report traced the failure to thermal expansion of floor beams dislodging a girder at column 79. A four-year study at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, published in 2019, concluded that fire did not bring it down.
- The Lockerbie Bombing (Pan Am Flight 103, 1988)Alternative theories regarding the 1988 bombing of a Boeing 747, suggesting the official blame on Libya was a cover for Iranian or Syrian involvement.
- Richard Jewell Atlanta Olympics Bombing (1996) PatsyThis theory argues that Richard Jewell was not merely a mistaken suspect in the Centennial Olympic Park bombing investigation, but a deliberately useful one. In this version, his rapid transformation
- The Oklahoma City (1995) Second BombA 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 Patriot Act and ECHELONA surveillance-continuity theory claiming that the USA PATRIOT Act did not create a new surveillance state from scratch, but publicly legalized or widened access to capabilities already operating through preexisting interception systems such as ECHELON. In this telling, 2001 was not the beginning of bulk monitoring, but the unveiling of an older Anglo-American signals architecture that had already been harvesting international communications, including email, since the mid-1990s or earlier.
- The Anthrax Attacks (2001) Inside JobA post-9/11 theory claiming that the anthrax mailings in September and October 2001 were not foreign terrorism but a domestic operation involving a U.S.-linked Ames strain, designed in part to intensify fear, shape congressional behavior, and help drive passage of the Patriot Act and other emergency security measures.
- The Deck of Cards CodesA war-psychology theory claiming that the 2003 “most wanted Iraqis” playing cards were not only identification aids for coalition troops, but also contained coded, hypnotic, or symbolic triggers intended to unsettle Iraqi commanders and induce surrender, confusion, or fatalism. The legend grew because the cards were real, widely distributed, and already sat at the boundary between intelligence, propaganda, and recreational design.
- The Yellowcake ForgeryA major Iraq War intelligence theory claiming that the documents alleging Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Niger were forged and that the forgery pipeline ran through, or was amplified by, Italian intelligence channels. The theory grew after the IAEA declared the papers inauthentic in March 2003 and later reporting focused on SISMI, Rome intermediaries, and prewar intelligence stovepipes.
- The Stargate in BaghdadA fringe Iraq War theory claiming that the 2003 invasion was driven not by oil, sanctions, or weapons claims, but by the desire to seize an ancient portal or “stargate” allegedly hidden beneath Babylon or under one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces. The story blends Mesopotamian antiquity, Saddam’s reconstruction of Babylon, palace construction on artificial hills, and modern ancient-astronaut lore.
- The Mobile Labs HoaxA post-invasion Iraq theory claiming that the mobile trailers presented by U.S. officials as biological-weapons laboratories were misidentified and were in fact hydrogen generators for artillery or meteorological weather balloons. The theory became one of the central symbols of Iraq WMD misrepresentation because the trailers were repeatedly cited in 2003 as strong physical evidence of prohibited weapons capability.
- The Passport MiracleA 9/11 theory claiming that the discovery of one hijacker’s passport near the World Trade Center was too improbable to be authentic and therefore must have been planted as a ready-made evidentiary token for the FBI. The story focuses most strongly on the passport of Satam al-Suqami, reportedly found in lower Manhattan after Flight 11 hit the North Tower, before the towers collapsed.
- The Project for the New American Century (PNAC)A post-9/11 theory claiming that the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century had already outlined the strategic shape of a more aggressive U.S. military century and that its language about a “catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor” reflected not only strategic wishfulness but foreknowledge, intent, or readiness to exploit a major attack in order to justify wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
- The Stand Down OrderA 9/11 theory claiming that U.S. air defenses were not merely confused, delayed, or trapped by outdated protocols, but were intentionally restrained by orders from high authority so that the hijacked planes could proceed unimpeded. The theory focuses on NORAD timelines, FAA-military miscommunication, delayed scrambles, and the contrast between expectations of American airpower and the actual response on September 11.
- The Missing 2.3 TrillionA major post-9/11 theory claiming that the September 11 attacks functioned as a distraction from Donald Rumsfeld’s September 10, 2001 statement that the Pentagon could not properly track trillions of dollars in transactions. The theory does not usually argue that the full amount was physically stolen in a single act, but rather that the attacks buried scrutiny of a massive accounting crisis inside the Defense Department.
- Ku Klux Klan as a Catholic False FlagThe Ku Klux Klan as a Catholic False Flag theory was a reciprocal accusation structure in which opponents on each side of America’s religious and nativist conflicts claimed that the Klan’s violence and bigotry had been engineered by the other. One version held that Catholics created or manipulated the Klan in order to disgrace Protestants and discredit anti-Catholic activism. The reverse version held that Catholics falsely portrayed the Klan’s nature or magnified it to damage Protestant public legitimacy. The theory took shape because the second Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s was overtly anti-Catholic while also presenting itself as defender of white Protestant America. That explicit anti-Catholicism made the movement both a real threat and a perfect object for inversion theories.
- The Reichstag Fire Inside JobThe Reichstag Fire Inside Job theory held that the Nazi regime, or Nazi elements acting with its knowledge, set the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933 and then blamed Communists in order to justify emergency rule, mass arrests, and the destruction of political opposition. This theory began almost immediately, in part because the Nazis exploited the fire with such speed and ferocity. Historians have long debated the exact mechanics of the arson, and the single-culprit explanation centered on Marinus van der Lubbe has never fully silenced arguments for Nazi complicity. In the strongest version, van der Lubbe was either assisted, manipulated, or used as the visible culprit in a preplanned authoritarian seizure.
- 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.
- The "Gilded Age" Murder CabalThis theory claimed that members of American high society were not merely decadent or morally corrupt, but periodically murdered lower-status people for amusement, discipline, or secret ritual sport. It belongs to the broader rumor world of Gilded Age vice, elite impunity, and urban class terror. The theory drew force from real scandals involving wealthy men, spectacular crimes among elite circles, and the public impression that money insulated “society” figures from ordinary accountability.
- The Negro Plot (Post-Civil War)This theory held that after emancipation, freedpeople were being secretly armed and organized by northern “carpetbaggers,” Radical Republicans, and other white allies for a coming race war or mass slave uprising in reverse. Across the Reconstruction South, many white communities imagined “the big insurrection” as an imminent event, even when evidence was thin or wholly absent. The historical record clearly shows that these fears were widespread and that they helped justify white paramilitary violence, disarmament campaigns, and the repression of Black political participation. What remains unproven is the central conspiratorial claim that former slaves and carpetbaggers were coordinating a region-wide hidden insurrectionary network.