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Great. More fuel for the conspiracy theorists to claim that every single tragedy from 9/11 to Sandy Hook was a false flag operation. Not that they couldn’t poss

Great. More fuel for the conspiracy theorists to claim that every single tragedy from 9/11 to Sandy Hook was a false flag operation. Not that they couldn’t possibly be, but a 60 year old document that the government once considered a false flag operation doesn’t indicate in any way that the Vegas shooting was a secret CIA operation, but it’ll be used by nutters as “proof” of such.

catshirt 9y ago
news report confirms another instance of the US planning fake attacks on its own citizens for political purposes and your response is to chastise conspiracy theorists? your frustration seems a little misdirected. which is the bigger offense?
- notahacker 9y ago
  Maybe he read the accompanying document and saw that wasn't a document recording any instance of "the US faking attacks on its own citizens for political purposes", merely a document about possibly acquiring MiGs which noted in passing that if such aircraft were acquired or replicas built without it becoming known there would be more potential for use in "a deception operation designed to confuse enemy planes in the air, to launch a surprise attack against enemy operations or a provocation operation in which Soviet aircraft would appear to attack US or friendly installations in order to provide an excuse for US intervention".
  - megous 9y ago
    Why fake anything when propaganda works well enough.
  - catshirt 9y ago
    “a provocation operation in which Soviet aircraft would appear to attack US or friendly installations to provide an excuse for U.S. intervention” what is that, if not a fake attack for political purposes?
    - notahacker 9y ago
      Did the document record anything happening? No Did it happen? No. Did you (initially) falsely imply it did? Yes. This is the equivalent of shouting that a startup is proven to be on the brink of failing and lying about their finances because you've discovered a memo which notes that one of many advantages of contractors over employees is that you can get rid of them at short notice.
      - catshirt 9y ago
        sorry, I’ve edited the word “planned” into my post as to not seem misleading. (forgive me for paraphrasing the title of the thread incorrectly). unsurprisingly, it doesn’t actually change my point in the slightest. maybe we can have a more interesting conversation now.
        notahacker 9y ago
        I've also edited. It's the third on a list of three hypothetical examples of a situation in which undisclosed MiGs are of more potential use than disclosed MiGs. This is a "plan" to attack its own citizens in the same sense as a document noting "contractors are better from the point of view of flexibility, workforce mobility and the ability to downsize the work force" is a plan for mass firings.
        catshirt 9y ago
        i don't think your analogy is strong. but instead of continuing to mince words... s/*/plan/ for literally whatever word you choose. and my point stands. discussed? evaluated? none of it makes me feel better.
        notahacker 9y ago
        I'd say "took into account the possibility of as a factor in the usefulness of something they didn't actually make" if we're splitting words here. I mean, the hypothetical considerations of the advantages of continuous offshore nuclear deterrents over land-based ICBMs are considerably more detailed and ugly in their implications, but I'd still consider a headline arguing "$NuclearPower planned to exterminate every man woman and child living in $RivalState after watching millions of its own citizens die" to be rather misrepresenting the intent of such documents.
  - simion314 9y ago
    But it shows again that attacking your own citizen and blaming the enemy is a tactic that was considered a few times(or maybe more times) by the US government, this seems disgusting to start a war with false motives, it puts everything to doubt, so some people around the world doubt that US interventions had any other motivation then self interest and not self defense
    - notahacker 9y ago
      I really don't think a passing reference to a hypothetical use of MiGs the US never actually manufactured is of any evidential value whatsoever in concluding that US interventions were motivated primarily by perceived self interest (which is already well-established fact) The title is lurid clickbait.
      - simion314 9y ago
        My point is that this operation or similar ones are bad and the citizens should condemn them and not try to minimize the importance. As a citizen I would also disagree with my government to start a war and send my family members to die for false motives and for political reasons.
MichaelGG 9y ago
No, the Vegas shooting is strange enough to feed things by itself. The only hotel witness disappears for a to bit then does a weird interview on Ellen? If you pitched this as a TV episode it'd be rejected as too implausible. But that's probably true for lots of real stories.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  Unfortunately, too strange to be true seems to be le mode et les temps. The recent NSA leaker was named "Reality Winner" FFS. Everything has turned upside down. The whole state of current US government and politics is something from a terrible pulp spy novel sold in the discount bin at and off-brand pharmacy whose brand of bandages just don't ever seem to be able to stick, but they're a third of the price of the name brand so you'll just put some medical tape over the bad side. I follow the news somewhat regularly and most days I have a moment where I have a hard time really reconciling the events. If somebody pitched a story like the current North American reality, I'd probably politely decline to listen further out of respect for better taste and sense. The Vegas shooter is the least strange incident to have occurred (at least this is from an outsider to the US)—following the news cycle for the past 20 years says it's not all that uncommon, or hard to understand. He was a disenfranchised person with a possible mental disorder and a growing disenchantment with the society of which he's increasingly growing apart with easy access to purchasing high-powered weaponry. To me it seems like 1 + 1. These kinds of stories are far less rare, even in Canada, than you think. It's just that most of them are far less successful in their savage response to their feelings or ruinously-broken logic.
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    Still zero motive. FBI takes over a week to decipher a note that is trajectory calculations. Most mags unloaded. 23 rifles, most unused. And he was wealthy enough to buy proper machine guns. If he really wanted to go all out, why not use the right tools? Why buy a California legal gimped rifle? "Crazy" is not an excuse for glaring plot holes.
joekrill 9y ago
"Nutters" will find "proof" regardless of what they've been given. What this _does_ prove is what the US is willing to even _consider_ doing to justify various things it wants to accomplish. So at some point you must at least consider that an event _could_ have been a false flag, don't you? Even if you come to the conclusion it wasn't, to write it off entirely without consideration is almost as irresponsible as claiming every major event is a false flag.
- pc86 9y ago
  > What this does prove is what the US is willing to even consider doing to justify various things it wants to accomplish. It doesn't even begin to prove that. It proves that the US military, which has plans and contingencies for nearly every imaginable scenario, has plans and contingencies for nearly every imaginable scenario.
  - joekrill 9y ago
    Uhh, yeah, that's actually exactly what it proves. If they have "plans and contingencies" for it then -- by that very fact -- it's been considered! And if you want to get pedantic, they most definitely don't have them for "nearly every imaginable scenario". The military would be overrun with simply coming up with plans and contingencies. They'd literally have to have infinite plans and contingencies to cover every imaginable scenario.
- Feniks 9y ago
  To be fair, although the US is involved in every war and terrorist organisation since the 50s they rarely start them.
cpr 9y ago
The term "conspiracy theorist" was promoted in the wholly-owned MSM (look up Operation Mockingbird) by the CIA after the JFK assassination (clearly a cover-up, as it's coming out now--recently released autopsy report shows bullet entrance wounds in front and rear) to discredit people who questioned the official narrative.
- jdhn 9y ago
  > (clearly a cover-up, as it's coming out now--recently released autopsy report shows bullet entrance wounds in front and rear) Really? While I knew that the papers had been released, I didn't know that they disclosed entry wounds in the front and rear of his head. I figured that would be much bigger news.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
DINKDINK 9y ago
It is equally irrational to believe that all conspiracy theories are true as it is to believe that all conspiracy theories are false. False flag operations certainly happen[1]. It just takes a long amount of time for whistleblowers to leak information providing information to confirm such a fact. [1]https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-ever-growing-list-of-admitted-false-flag-attacks/5578473 https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-ever-growing-list-of-admit...
jerf 9y ago
If you are one of those people who pride themselves on nuance, this is the time for it. Is everything that happens in the world a false flag? No, I seriously doubt it. Crazy people and evil people exist and do crazy and evil things rather distressingly often. On the other hand, is being concerned about false flags intrinsically just being a nutter? Equally unlikely to be realistic. First, we do have historical evidence that it is a thing that has happened before, and second, it's not like it's that crazy an idea. Follow the money & benefits, and there's an awful lot of people today and historically that would have an awful lot of motivations to pull one off. If you think everything is a false flag, you're too paranoid. If you think false flags never happen, or at least that it's impossible anyone would pull one on you, first, you're too trusting. Second, that very trust ironically increases the chances that someone will consider it a risk worth taking. False flags work best when the very idea that something would be a false flag is easily pooh-poohed and dismissed. Dismissing them out of hand is not a great strategy, IMHO. The fact that there's an internet competition to be the first to declare something a false flag is simply meaningless. There's an internet competition to be the first to declare a movie a disaster, the first to declare that a game is a disaster, the first to declare that someone's Ask HN project is worthless... it's all just irrelevant noise, not evidence of anything in any direction.
vkou 9y ago
The problem with conspiracy theories is that in hindsight, many of them turn out to be true. That's not to say that there's anything to the 9/11 truthers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident
- ryanwaggoner 9y ago
  No, a tiny, tiny fraction turn out to be true. There are thousands of new ridiculous conspiracy theories every year. That one proves true every decade means nothing.
  - vkou 9y ago
    No, but if you're being told that _______ is for your own good, trust us, we have secret information that we can't possibly share with you, you are almost certainly being fed a pot of crock. Remember the entire song and dance that surrounded the Iraq war? That was a conspiracy by the Bush administration to start a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people... On a pack of lies. Any time a group of people gather, and, in secret, make a decision contrary to the public welfare... That's a conspiracy. This happens all the time in the world - and it's not crazy to believe that it does. It's arguably crazy to believe that it doesn't.

catshirt 9y ago

news report confirms another instance of the US planning fake attacks on its own citizens for political purposes and your response is to chastise conspiracy theorists? your frustration seems a little misdirected. which is the bigger offense?

notahacker 9y ago
Maybe he read the accompanying document and saw that wasn't a document recording any instance of "the US faking attacks on its own citizens for political purposes", merely a document about possibly acquiring MiGs which noted in passing that if such aircraft were acquired or replicas built without it becoming known there would be more potential for use in "a deception operation designed to confuse enemy planes in the air, to launch a surprise attack against enemy operations or a provocation operation in which Soviet aircraft would appear to attack US or friendly installations in order to provide an excuse for US intervention".
- megous 9y ago
  Why fake anything when propaganda works well enough.
- catshirt 9y ago
  “a provocation operation in which Soviet aircraft would appear to attack US or friendly installations to provide an excuse for U.S. intervention” what is that, if not a fake attack for political purposes?
  - notahacker 9y ago
    Did the document record anything happening? No Did it happen? No. Did you (initially) falsely imply it did? Yes. This is the equivalent of shouting that a startup is proven to be on the brink of failing and lying about their finances because you've discovered a memo which notes that one of many advantages of contractors over employees is that you can get rid of them at short notice.
    - catshirt 9y ago
      sorry, I’ve edited the word “planned” into my post as to not seem misleading. (forgive me for paraphrasing the title of the thread incorrectly). unsurprisingly, it doesn’t actually change my point in the slightest. maybe we can have a more interesting conversation now.
      - notahacker 9y ago
        I've also edited. It's the third on a list of three hypothetical examples of a situation in which undisclosed MiGs are of more potential use than disclosed MiGs. This is a "plan" to attack its own citizens in the same sense as a document noting "contractors are better from the point of view of flexibility, workforce mobility and the ability to downsize the work force" is a plan for mass firings.
        catshirt 9y ago
        i don't think your analogy is strong. but instead of continuing to mince words... s/*/plan/ for literally whatever word you choose. and my point stands. discussed? evaluated? none of it makes me feel better.
        notahacker 9y ago
        I'd say "took into account the possibility of as a factor in the usefulness of something they didn't actually make" if we're splitting words here. I mean, the hypothetical considerations of the advantages of continuous offshore nuclear deterrents over land-based ICBMs are considerably more detailed and ugly in their implications, but I'd still consider a headline arguing "$NuclearPower planned to exterminate every man woman and child living in $RivalState after watching millions of its own citizens die" to be rather misrepresenting the intent of such documents.
- simion314 9y ago
  But it shows again that attacking your own citizen and blaming the enemy is a tactic that was considered a few times(or maybe more times) by the US government, this seems disgusting to start a war with false motives, it puts everything to doubt, so some people around the world doubt that US interventions had any other motivation then self interest and not self defense
  - notahacker 9y ago
    I really don't think a passing reference to a hypothetical use of MiGs the US never actually manufactured is of any evidential value whatsoever in concluding that US interventions were motivated primarily by perceived self interest (which is already well-established fact) The title is lurid clickbait.
    - simion314 9y ago
      My point is that this operation or similar ones are bad and the citizens should condemn them and not try to minimize the importance. As a citizen I would also disagree with my government to start a war and send my family members to die for false motives and for political reasons.

MichaelGG 9y ago

No, the Vegas shooting is strange enough to feed things by itself. The only hotel witness disappears for a to bit then does a weird interview on Ellen? If you pitched this as a TV episode it'd be rejected as too implausible. But that's probably true for lots of real stories.

52-6F-62 9y ago
Unfortunately, too strange to be true seems to be le mode et les temps. The recent NSA leaker was named "Reality Winner" FFS. Everything has turned upside down. The whole state of current US government and politics is something from a terrible pulp spy novel sold in the discount bin at and off-brand pharmacy whose brand of bandages just don't ever seem to be able to stick, but they're a third of the price of the name brand so you'll just put some medical tape over the bad side. I follow the news somewhat regularly and most days I have a moment where I have a hard time really reconciling the events. If somebody pitched a story like the current North American reality, I'd probably politely decline to listen further out of respect for better taste and sense. The Vegas shooter is the least strange incident to have occurred (at least this is from an outsider to the US)—following the news cycle for the past 20 years says it's not all that uncommon, or hard to understand. He was a disenfranchised person with a possible mental disorder and a growing disenchantment with the society of which he's increasingly growing apart with easy access to purchasing high-powered weaponry. To me it seems like 1 + 1. These kinds of stories are far less rare, even in Canada, than you think. It's just that most of them are far less successful in their savage response to their feelings or ruinously-broken logic.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  Still zero motive. FBI takes over a week to decipher a note that is trajectory calculations. Most mags unloaded. 23 rifles, most unused. And he was wealthy enough to buy proper machine guns. If he really wanted to go all out, why not use the right tools? Why buy a California legal gimped rifle? "Crazy" is not an excuse for glaring plot holes.

joekrill 9y ago

"Nutters" will find "proof" regardless of what they've been given. What this _does_ prove is what the US is willing to even _consider_ doing to justify various things it wants to accomplish. So at some point you must at least consider that an event _could_ have been a false flag, don't you? Even if you come to the conclusion it wasn't, to write it off entirely without consideration is almost as irresponsible as claiming every major event is a false flag.

pc86 9y ago
> What this does prove is what the US is willing to even consider doing to justify various things it wants to accomplish. It doesn't even begin to prove that. It proves that the US military, which has plans and contingencies for nearly every imaginable scenario, has plans and contingencies for nearly every imaginable scenario.
- joekrill 9y ago
  Uhh, yeah, that's actually exactly what it proves. If they have "plans and contingencies" for it then -- by that very fact -- it's been considered! And if you want to get pedantic, they most definitely don't have them for "nearly every imaginable scenario". The military would be overrun with simply coming up with plans and contingencies. They'd literally have to have infinite plans and contingencies to cover every imaginable scenario.
Feniks 9y ago
To be fair, although the US is involved in every war and terrorist organisation since the 50s they rarely start them.

cpr 9y ago

The term "conspiracy theorist" was promoted in the wholly-owned MSM (look up Operation Mockingbird) by the CIA after the JFK assassination (clearly a cover-up, as it's coming out now--recently released autopsy report shows bullet entrance wounds in front and rear) to discredit people who questioned the official narrative.

jdhn 9y ago
> (clearly a cover-up, as it's coming out now--recently released autopsy report shows bullet entrance wounds in front and rear) Really? While I knew that the papers had been released, I didn't know that they disclosed entry wounds in the front and rear of his head. I figured that would be much bigger news.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

DINKDINK 9y ago

It is equally irrational to believe that all conspiracy theories are true as it is to believe that all conspiracy theories are false. False flag operations certainly happen[1]. It just takes a long amount of time for whistleblowers to leak information providing information to confirm such a fact. [1]https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-ever-growing-list-of-admitted-false-flag-attacks/5578473 https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-ever-growing-list-of-admit...

jerf 9y ago

If you are one of those people who pride themselves on nuance, this is the time for it. Is everything that happens in the world a false flag? No, I seriously doubt it. Crazy people and evil people exist and do crazy and evil things rather distressingly often. On the other hand, is being concerned about false flags intrinsically just being a nutter? Equally unlikely to be realistic. First, we do have historical evidence that it is a thing that has happened before, and second, it's not like it's that crazy an idea. Follow the money & benefits, and there's an awful lot of people today and historically that would have an awful lot of motivations to pull one off. If you think everything is a false flag, you're too paranoid. If you think false flags never happen, or at least that it's impossible anyone would pull one on you, first, you're too trusting. Second, that very trust ironically increases the chances that someone will consider it a risk worth taking. False flags work best when the very idea that something would be a false flag is easily pooh-poohed and dismissed. Dismissing them out of hand is not a great strategy, IMHO. The fact that there's an internet competition to be the first to declare something a false flag is simply meaningless. There's an internet competition to be the first to declare a movie a disaster, the first to declare that a game is a disaster, the first to declare that someone's Ask HN project is worthless... it's all just irrelevant noise, not evidence of anything in any direction.

vkou 9y ago

The problem with conspiracy theories is that in hindsight, many of them turn out to be true. That's not to say that there's anything to the 9/11 truthers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident

ryanwaggoner 9y ago
No, a tiny, tiny fraction turn out to be true. There are thousands of new ridiculous conspiracy theories every year. That one proves true every decade means nothing.
- vkou 9y ago
  No, but if you're being told that _______ is for your own good, trust us, we have secret information that we can't possibly share with you, you are almost certainly being fed a pot of crock. Remember the entire song and dance that surrounded the Iraq war? That was a conspiracy by the Bush administration to start a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people... On a pack of lies. Any time a group of people gather, and, in secret, make a decision contrary to the public welfare... That's a conspiracy. This happens all the time in the world - and it's not crazy to believe that it does. It's arguably crazy to believe that it doesn't.