All language subtitles for CI3

They called it Operation Northwoods.

Kept secret for decades, the document was obtained by journalist

James Banford and published in his book

on the National Security Agency, 'Body of Secrets'.

The author explains: "In 1962,

the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved what may be

the most corrupt plan ever created by the US government."

In the name of anti-communism,

they proposed launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism

against their own country

in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived

war they intended to launch against Cuba.

Among the suggestions: a fake hijacking

involving remote-controlled planes to be blamed on Cuba;

the blowing up of an American ship,

also to be blamed on Cuba;

and a terror campaign in Florida, carried out by anti-Castro exiles

to be blamed – on Cuba.

The most remarkable fact about Northwoods itself was that it was

approved by every single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

the highest ranking military officers in the land.

Only when it reached the desks of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara

and president Kennedy, was the plan nixed.

"The idea was to create a pretext,

to show that there was an attack by

Cuba on the United States, and the idea was to

have US personnel

from the CIA and other places, secretly create

terrorism in the US. The documents actually said

people would be shot on American streets, bombs would be blown up.

And again, all this, the evidence would be laid to point the finger at Castro.

Northwoods was a proposal for what is termed in intelligence jargon

a false flag operation.

For students of war, there are multiple overlapping strategies

for the defeat of the enemy.

The first tactic is well understood:

physical violence between opposing armies.

The second, far more mysterious, is PSYWAR (PSYchological WARfare).

In psychological operations, the target is the mind.

Not just enemy personnel of infrastructure, but the beliefs,

motives, and ultimately, behaviors of entire societies.

Alexander the Great is credited with one of the earliest recorded

examples of the military PSYOP.

When he was forced to retreat from conquered lands,

vacuums of power were left in his wake.

To discourage pursuers,

he advised his craftsmen to build and leave behind massive body armor,

such as would befit giants.

Breastplates and helmets for mythical men, 8 feet tall.

The discovery of the objects would make his enemies think twice before giving chase.

The 11th century warlord, Genghis Khan

used similar tactics of creative deception.

Prior to military campaigns, agents of influence,

disguised as villagers from an already conquered region,

would be dispatched into enemy territory to warn the people of the horrors awaiting them.

To further intimidate opponents, Khan devised a trick of light.

As darkness fell over his encampments, he ordered his men to light 5 camp fires where only 1 was necessary.

Observing the spectacle,

one scout reported back that Khan's army

had more fires than there are stars in the sky.

In the modern age, PSYWAR would evolve into an art form.

President Eisenhower defined psychological warfare as anything from

the singing of a beautiful anthem up to the most extraordinary kind of physical sabotage.

Black propaganda - well, let's start with the white propaganda.

White propaganda is propaganda, persuasion, news,

media operations of one sort or another,

that are openly acknowledged by their sponsor,

which in this particular case is the US government.

So, the Voice of America for example, is white propaganda.

Black propaganda, on the other hand, is disavowed

by the agency that's sponsoring it.

It operates on the basis of plausible deniability,

so that if something goes sour, or the true goals,

the true nature of the propaganda is revealed,

then the actual sponsor can say: "No, that's - we didn't do that,

we didn't have anything to do with that,

the accusations that we had something to do with it are just completely wrong, they're a fantasy", and so on.

So, black propaganda involves

both media operations, on the one hand: persuasion, publicity,

but typically it will be media that

poses as opposed to the sponsor

in order to discredit the side that's being attacked.

Let me give you an example of how that works: suppose you're in the middle of the Cold War,

there's a radio battle, and this is very

– this is actually a rather benign form,

comparatively, of black propaganda.
There's a radio battle between east and west,

and one side or the other creates a radio station

that poses as being the other side's voice,

and then says outlandish, stupid,

provably false

or very hostile things about

the first side, okay? Well then the first side can use that

as its own propaganda, by saying: "See?

This is the people that we're dealing with. They're completely nuts." Or, "they're completely corrupt",

or, "they have no integrity", or

a whole range of other types of accusations.

The false flag operation takes the concept of black propaganda to a murderous extreme.

Secret agents carry out an act of terrorism or other outrage,

which is then blamed on the enemy of choice.

Often times, false flags are perpetrated by what Lawrence Klein of the US army War College

called a pseudo-team:

Individuals, who are organized to impersonate enemy forces.

Setting examples from the Huk insurrections in the Phillippines,

the Mau Mau in Kenya,

the French in Indochina and other conflicts,

Klein stresses their utility in intelligence gathering.

But there are other, more important uses.

In 1951, the democratically elected leader of Iran,

Mohammad Mossadegh,

was overthrown by the CIA and replaced by the fascist Shah.

The man in charge of organizing the coup, Kermit Roosevelt,

explicitly referred in his memoirs to the use of false flag operations.

In the year 2000, NY Times reporter James Risen,

obtained a previously secret account of the coup,

written by CIA agent Donald Wilber.

Risen explains:

The fact that Mossadegh was not a communist to begin with, was of little concern to the plotters.

The real threat was an independent Iran in control of its own oil reserves.

Coinciding with the false flags, mobs were paid by the CIA to riot in the streets.

In his book, CIA Diary, CIA whistleblower Philip Agee

indicates that the tactics used during the coup in Iran became a matter of routine.

During the brutal occupation of Algeria by France,

an even more elaborate pseudo-team was created.

In the mid 1950s, the Direction de la surveillance du territoire,

formed a group known as The Organization of the French-Algerian Resistance, or ORAF.

Posing as members of the anti-colonial resistance,

ORAF committed false-flag bombings targeting civilians with the aim of:

Sometimes, false flag operations fail.

Under Operation Susannah in 1954,

Israeli military intelligence attempted to carry out a series of false-flag bombings in Egypt.

The targets were to be American and British businesses,

and were to be blamed on Muslim Brotherhood.

According to Israeli historian Shabtai Teveth,

the assignment was:

The operation was cut short before the bloodshed could begin.

Conspirator Philip Natanson was caught attempting to detonate a bomb in a British-owned theater.

Israeli defense minister, Pinhas Lavon, resigned over the affair.

Some false flags meet with initial success,

only to create blowback at a later date.

During the attempted coup in Venezuela,

anti-Chavez forces intentionally fired on their own supporters, killing several people.

The goal was to create the illusion of a popular uprising and government crackdown.

The coup plotters, along with Bush administration's spokesman Ari Fleischer,

appeared on television denouncing the alleged government attacks and offering support for the coup government.

"We know that the action encouraged by the Chavez government provoked this crisis.

The Chavez government suppressed peaceful demonstrations,

fired on unarmed, peaceful protesters, resulting in 10 killed and a 100 wounded."

It was later revealed that the military officials

filmed the segment before the murders took place,

exposing their actual sponsorship.

"For forty years, secret terrorist organizations, many trained by western intelligence agencies,

have manipulated the political control of European sovereign states

via campaign of terror and murder.

Originally part of a secret network, these groups changed

from being defenders of state security

into attackers of the established political order.

Until 2 years ago, that secret network

was generally known by the single word: Gladio.

Operation Gladio was a secret,

highly classified

operation that was initiated by Prime Minister Winston Churchill

in around the '40s and '50s.

At its inception, Churchill intended to set up a secret,

European-wide cell of military units

that would basically be able to mobilize

in response to a potential invasion

of Western Europe by communist Russia.

Now, these cells were actually set up with

the support of the US. NATO was the main vehicle.

It was done secretly across many Western European countries

and over time, it evolved into

a highly disturbing form of covert action,

and Operation Gladio was

actually a specific operation as part of this overall

process which was taking place in Italy.

What we can say for certain is that, within about 10 years,

this phenomenon that we saw in Operation Gladio

became much more than what Churchill had originally described it was intended to be,

and in the end we had a situation where

these actual cells were

given the task of actually carrying out

various kinds of actions, including terrorist activity in different parts of Western Europe,

in order to project blame onto left-wing

or communist-social movements.

The stay-behind networks had been set up to repel a Soviet invasion,

yet the invasion never came.

In 1968, a brief for the British Chiefs of Staff noted that:

and that:

Nevertheless, the myth of Soviet expansionism remained an important component of Cold War propaganda.

"What we are watching is a four-phased operation,

phase one has been completed, the seizure of Nicaragua.

Next is El Salvador, to be followed by Honduras and Guatemala. It's clear and explicit."

"There is a Caribbean domino..."
"Of course."
"...clearly, that is unfolding."

"Well, I wouldn't call it necessarily a domino theory, I would call it

a priority target list.

A hit-list, if you will.

For the ultimate takeover of Central America."

In addition to justifying imperialism abroad,

the myth of the international communist conspiracy would also play out domestically.

In Europe, Gladio would provide the ammunition.

The stay-behind networks had been supplied with massive amounts of military equipment,

including explosive devices which were stored in secret locations across the continent.

In some countries, churches were used.

With no Soviet army to repel, the fascists

increasingly focused on what they regarded as "the enemy within".

False-flag terror would be their primary weapon.

Operation Gladio and later programs in other European nations

were kept secret for decades, but eventually revealed

in a series of judicial and congressional investigations in the early 1990s.

In Italy, the program was closely linked to a masonic league known as P2,

or Propaganda Due.

It was made up of military and intelligence officers,

political leaders, industrialists,

mafioso, bankers and even Vatican contacts.

Among its current members is recent Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

During his tenure as prime minister, Berlusconi

openly expressed admiration for Mussolini

and the philosophy of fascism.

During the initial stages of Gladio,

P2 was chaired by another avowed fascist,

Licio Gelli.

A 1969 memo from Aginter Press,

a fascist front group, is explicit about Gladio's tactics:

Even more explicit, was Gladio participant Vincenzo Vinciguerra

who went on the record for the BBC stating outright

the shocking mission and targets of Gladio.

It was called The Strategy of Tension.

It did seem to be the case that, for the most part,

civilian governments were not aware

of the nature of these operations going on. They were completely shocked when they discovered that

you had CIA and MI6, through NATO,

effectively infiltrating their own intelligence services and operating

autonomous subsections of these agencies in order to carry out these kind of operations.

In most cases, we did find, however, that there were

specific members of the civilian government who were aware.

Either it could have been a defense minister, for example it might have been the prime minister alone,

but it varied from case to case.

One of the first major bombings in Italy occurred on December 12, 1969

at the Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura.

16 people were killed and another 88 wounded when fascists

detonated an explosive device.

An anarchist named Giuseppe Pinelli was blamed.

He took the fall for the bombing, literally,

when police threw him out of the window of a local precinct.

*[a mistake - the actual date is August 2, 1980]

In Belgium, the machine gun became the weapon of choice.

In the mid 1980s, masked terrorists began strolling into supermarkets

and opening fire on men, women and children.

Described in the press as The supermarket massacres ,

they were linked by the Belgium parliament to their Gladio unit.

It was later suggested that one of the aims of The supermarket massacres

was to encourage a right-wing government

that would be more amenable to accepting US proposals

for stationing nuclear-tipped missiles in Belgium.

The dinner was ready and we were waiting for my daughter, my son-in-law and their two children.

Saturday was our family day.

All of a sudden I heard shooting from the Delhaize supermarket.

We ran out to the terrace and my wife screamed: "Our children!"

I said: '"Calm down, I will take a look at what happened."

The doors to the supermarket were wide open and a crowd was pushing out.

I wanted to go in against the tide, but people were saying: "Don't! People are being shot in there."

Then they told me that my whole family had been shot.

The Strategy of Tension was a Europe-wide enterprise.

The first one was to

organize gangs

to do hold-up, hostage, you know, and killing.

The second one was to

organize the so called "left movement"

who will do terrorist attempt

just to make believe, make the population believe that

these terrorist attempt were done by the left.

In some of these cases,

you had situations where you had local left-wing groups

who had emerged organically on the basis of perfectly normal,

domestic, kind of, dynamics

and were infiltrated and manipulated

by intelligence agencies to instigate these utter provocations and to take the blame.

That gives you an example where organic

forms of political movements,

whether or not they're involved in terrorism at the beginning,

can be infiltrated, manipulated and mobilized by states

to carry out this kind of activity.

And there are many, many examples from historical record.

We had basically, waves of terrorist bombings and atrocities carried out

in Turkey, in Italy, in Greece, in Spain,

in many parts of Western Europe, and

in all of these cases we have strong evidence

that these instances were actually mobilized

by the secret cells that were

coopted by NATO. What actually did happen, subsequently, is that civilian governments

of these countries did respond

to these atrocities believing them to had been conducted by left-wing groups

and it did create a massive, kind of, drive against left-wing movements,

to encroach on civil liberties,

to really, kind of, conduct very draconian policies, both at home and abroad.

What we learned from Operation Gladio is that

intelligence and covert action,

as carried out by states, is

clearly something which is routinely conducted

under the radar, and that

it's often conducted in such a way that civilian administrations

are not fully aware of what is going on.

And to be honest with you, I think this is not really something controversial, I mean, anyone who has genuinely studied

covert operations and the

nature and structure of intelligence agencies

will be aware that the whole point of covert action is precisely to conceal it from public awareness.

The danger of it is, clearly, that when you have a case like

Operation Gladio, or The Strategy of Tension,

documented during the Cold War,

this really reveals how far intelligence agencies are able to go,

as a consequence of that. And that raises a lot of disturbing questions about,

really, the scope of the intelligence agencies and their capacity

to conduct very, very dangerous covert action which is not in the interest

of the wider public, which is not in the national interest

and which violates even the basic, kind of, rule of law, that is established by the civilian government.

False-flag operations have not only been used to demonize dissidents and topple governments,

they've also been used as sparks to ignite world wars.

In 1931, the Japanese blew up several stretches of their own

railroads in the Chinese region of Manchuria.

The attacks were blamed on Chinese rebels, providing a pretext for the Japanese to invade.

Similarly, in 1939,

the Nazis faked an attack on a German radio station in Gleiwitz.

They took a concentration camp victim, dressed him in a Polish army uniform,

then left his body at the crime scene in order to implicate the Polish government.

In this case, the result was nothing less than WWII.

False-flag's not necessary to start wars,

but they serve an important function.

They allow the aggressor state to portray itself as the victim

while rallying public opinion behind the war effort.

In fact, they needn't even involve real physical events.

The Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which it was alleged that North Vietnamese forces

attacked an American naval vessel was entirely fictitious.

"Shortly after noon, the COB of the day is broken,

as general quarters sound (sirens).

In a deliberate and unprovoked action, three North Vietnam PT boats

unleash a torpedo attack against the Maddox."

"Destroyer was carrying out a mission of patrol in those waters, in international waters, when it was attacked."

"Well, I think it's a very clear demonstration of the unity of the country

behind the policies that are being followed by the president in

South Vietnam, and more specifically, of the action that was taken in response to the attack upon our destroyers."

The Tonkin incident never happened.

Yet, it allowed for a vast expansion of the American war effort in Vietnam.

These kinds of operations, they're effective in the short run,

particularly because all the information comes from the US government,

and secondly, the media

– so submissive to relay whatever the government says happened,

rather than investigate in greater depth

the circumstances surrounding these false-flag operations. So,

they're successful to the degree in which they monopolize the government

and the mass media conform to

the message which has been sent out.

In light of the immense historical consequences of false-flag operations,

one might assume that they would be the subject of continual and extensive study by journalists and scholars.

Yet, if anything, the opposite is true.

False-flags remain one of the biggest taboos in journalism.

In order to sidestep the issue, and deep politics as a whole,

many journalists and academics have created a workaround.

They call it: conspiracy theory.

"How much would you attribute the increase in conspiratorial thinking to that red line?"

"There has been an explosion of conspiracy theories flying fast and furious over the Internet."

"Those - conspiracy - people“

"A lot of the conspiracy theories, of course, now, a lot of
"Those - conspiracy - people“

"A lot of the conspiracy theories, of course, now, a lot of

conspiracy theory goes back to the Bush era."

"I'm Jesse Ventura and this is – Conspiracy Theory."

"Conspiracy mongering..."

"Fringe conspiracy theorists..."
"Conspiracy theory ... Conspiracy theorists..."

"The people who foment conspiracy theories... Crazy conspiracy theories...

...full blown, American, conspiracy theories...

Conspiracy theories are a great American pastime, and not all of them are on the right! There's plenty on the left as well."

"Never told a soul about it. In fact, they engage in a vast conspiracy..."

"So you get accused of being a conspiracy theorist..."

"Speculation, conspiracy theories..."

"Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories."

"Painting this type of picture

only feints(?) the delusions of those who wear tinfoil hats around their house..."

"You know, there have always been crazy people

who gravitate, if they have schizophrenia, who gravitate toward conspiracy theories..."

"Those true believers in the mystic power

of new age crystals, spirit channeling,

people who talk to trees."

"And I don't consider myself a conspiracy buff at all,

but when they get a lot of coincidences, I get a little suspicious."

How does this term "conspiracy theory" get used,

and what are the purposes that its used for?

Conspiracy theory is a little bit like the word propaganda

and it's used specifically to discredit someone

and to say, in effect: "You're nuts. You're making it up",

or: "You don't have knowledge about this",

or that you're irrational.

That's the description of a conspiracy theory.

That is a very effective way,

and frequently used in the mass media, and by media commentators and reporters,

as a means of discrediting points of view that they don't agree with.

Conspiracy theory is a term that's used

whenever anybody ascribes

conscious intent to people with power.

So, I can say to you that schoolteachers are concerned about their salaries

and they're organizing and they're threatening a strike and they're pressuring.

I can say to you that farmers are doing this, and looking for subsidies,

and are facing certain policies,

but the minute I say to you that the very people at the top, the plutocracy,

the very rich and powerful, the ones who own most of America,

that they are consciously pursuing power and wealth,

someone will come along and say: "What do you have, a conspiracy theory?“ Or they'll say: "Oh, you're cynical“,

or „You're paranoic.“ Their view is that stuff just happens.

Things just happen. Unintended consequences, or our leaders are stupid,

and they're jerks or they're confused and they don't know any better;

and of course, the critic knows much better than everybody else.

People who operate in this world, operate with intent.

There's no such thing as imperialism without imperialists,

there's no such thing as capitalism without capitalists,

there's no such thing as

rulers who are somnambulous, who walk around in their sleep.

You watch out for your interests.

You watch out and you make calculations, what makes you think that David Rockefeller doesn't?

What makes you think that the people at the top don't do it?

And what makes you think they don't collude and organize?

"Oh, what do you think, you have a group of

people who sit around in a room and they plan this?"

And I always say: "Oh no, God, they don't sit around in a room,

they meet on carousels and they go up and down on merry-go-rounds, they meet skydiving and they hold hands, and they argue-"

Of course they sit in rooms! Where the hell else are they gonna meet?

Popular usage of the term conspiracy theory does not appear to closely correlate with evidence and support of a particular assertion.

British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, dismissed the idea that the invasion of Iraq

may have been motivated by oil, as an absurd conspiracy theory.

In fact, the most absurd conspiracy theories are often promoted

by the most powerful individuals in society, including Tony Blair himself.

His claim that Iraq had retained massive amounts of chemical and biological weapons and was plotting with Al-Qaeda

to attack the West had 0 evidentiary support.

The Third Reich promoted the conspiracy theory that Jews were responsible for most of the world's ills.

During the Cold War, American policy planners claimed that the Kremlin was engaged in a world wide communist conspiracy,

even while their own intelligence reports suggested the opposite.

More recently, Muslims have become the primary scapegoat.

In 2008, the John McCain presidential campaign

mailed out 28 million copies of the pseudo-documentary Obsession,

a hate film suggesting that Muslims are engaged in a massive conspiracy to create a world-wide Islamic dictatorship.

On the populist Right, macro conspiracy theories are often used to deflect the tension

from class analysis, while encouraging scapegoating.

These are the big players in the world right now on the things that are happening.

Big education is fundamentally involved in everything that is happening.

Soros, the Tides Foundation, Open Society,

Anonymous is now starting to take a big role,

SEIU and AFL-CIO, Russia and Putin

is now in control. I remember, I said that about 8 years ago

and I said Putin's gonna come roaring back.

(mockingly) “Aw, that's crazy.“
Yeah, really?

Here's Occupy Wall Street, Islamic extremism, Iran,

the White House and the media. These are all the real players that are

causing so many problems right now.

What's a conspiracy?

And what... to what's - is every thing that somebody says happened?

Does that mean that that's actually happened?

Some of the stuff that people believe about

the CIA, or the National Security State, or Jews,

or black people, or Wall Street, or, you name it.

Liberal media, right wing media.

Some of the things that people believe about, all of those controversial things, are not true.

And so we get into a situation

in which the accusation that a conspiracy exists,

or that there is a plan afoot to do something,

becomes a powerful political tool.

One of the most powerful tools of propaganda is rumors.

Rumor mongering.

One can see it even in elections, you can see it international affairs, and so forth.

Rumors appeal to people's primal fears,

fears about race, fears about gender, fears about their own relationship

- between themselves and authority - those sorts of things.

And there are plenty of people out there who will exploit those fears.

And it's quite difficult for ordinary people who are living their lives

to card out what is just nonsense - from what is incredible, yet real.

There's no simple solution to this problem.

Present day media tends to encourage people to believe in nonsense

by giving credibility to it, on the one hand,

and on the other hand - often times, not always -

denying the reality of evidence that is substantial.

I think that the way to get at this,

in a social sense, is to keep an open mind,

investigate carefully and not to believe in stuff that you don't understand.

We, as scholars, teachers, media people,

just as ordinary citizens, should not

propagate stuff that they don't understand or that they don't have factual support for.

The term conspiracy theory is a very interesting one.

It is, of course, applied to

almost anything that's perceived as threatening, any kind of

a broader attempt to explain specific events.

There certainly are people and elements out there that create

these explanations for everything and those are, potentially, dangerous because they do lead to scapegoating.

On the other hand, there are actual people, actual covert operations,

actual things happening that we don't know about and it's very very important to understand them.

I mean, they are fundamentally conspiracies, which simply means

several people colluding in a secret and illegal operation.

Conspiracies are prosecuted every day in courtrooms of this country,

and theory is what we use to try to understand things, so

I find the term conspiracy theory a broad brush pejorative, which

I think is designed to suppress discussion.

I do think we need to distinguish between those who see a boogeyman everywhere,

and those who do careful research and come to the conclusion in particular cases,

that there was some sort of organized effort

to do something, perhaps to remove a president,

or to achieve some other change of which the public was never informed.

If you're going to look and say, you know, it's structures and systems that run the world,

you have to realize that there are trap doors in these

structures and systems and that

not all of the structure, not all of the system is visible in the public record.

That's where we come back to what I say about deep politics and a deep state.
not all of the structure, not all of the system is visible in the public record.

That's where we come back to what I say about deep politics and a deep state.

We have to acknowledge that there are processes going on

that are not finding their way, straight away, into newspapers and history books.

And it's so interesting that America can see that about other countries,

just has problems seeing it about itself.