The title here on HN is somewhat better than the original on Newsweek, which replaces "wanted to plan" with "planned". But I object to both.
The linked memo [1] consists of a table estimating the cost for the US to secretly acquire MIGs. Stop and go read it, it's only a cover form, a table estimating the cost to get some MIGs, and a failed attempt at redacting the 3rd page, which describes the effort. The final paragraph reads:
> There is a possibility that such aircraft could be used in a deception operation designed to confuse enemy planes in the air, to launch a surprise attack against enemy installations or in a prevocation operation in which a Soviet aircraft would appear to attack U.S. or friendly installations in order to provide an excuse for U.S. intervention. If the planes were to be used in such covert operations, it would seem preferable to manufacture them in the United States.
Emphasis added. But note that the documents do not describe the mental status of the authors, they're just listing facts. Any guesses by journalists as to what the actors behind the documents were thinking or what they desired to do are only guesses.
The US government is a very, very large organization, that asks a lot of questions and produces a lot of documents. You can also expect that someone, somewhere was also tasked to answer the question "how hard would it be for the Soviet Union to procure US aircraft and launch a false flag attack against themselves, and what can/should we do to mitigate this risk." Within the Soviet government, someone else investigated what it would cost to procure some F-86 and F-4 aircraft, and what it would cost the US to get MIGs, and what they could/should do to mitigate this risk.
I would argue that it would be irresponsible of both governments to not ask these questions. I would also agree that false flag operations and indeed war itself are reprehensible, and would hope that the decision-makers, armed with this information, would still make the right choice. But given the lives, dollars, and issues at stake, and the comparably tiny cost of answering the question, it would be irresponsible not to check.
I agree with the general direction of your argument, but wholeheartedly disagree that this doesn't constitute "planning", and find your de-emphasis of 'using the aircraft in a covert operation to attack the US', disconcerting.
A potential Zombie Apocalypse is not a bad thing to plan for. Sure, a disease outbreak might not turn people into the exact kind of zombie planned (there are as many zombie "rulesets" in movies as there are time travel "rulesets"), but it's an exercise which probably doesn't veer far from an actual worst-case scenario of disease outbreak. Remember that the Spanish Flu outbreak killed 3%-5% of the world population in 3 years[1].
It's not even a bad thing for the CDC to plan for[2]. I have a conservative cousin who is in the Marine reserves and is an FBI special agent. He complained to no end that the CDC was "wasting" our taxpayer dollars on the zombie outbreak preparedness marketing campaign. But he also failed to see that as a marketing campaign, it went viral because of unassuming hosts like him (very meta) and, ironically, it was an extremely efficient use of taxpayer dollars.
A false flag attack which attacks US or allied property is just a justification to lie to the American voter and to co-opt American tax dollars. If anything, the author who suggested it for such a purpose is part of the Pentagon "swamp" (in Trump terminology) and is part of the reason the US is currently waning in power (soft, hard, economic, etc).
The CDC may use zombie apocalypse as a lighthearted framework for training (and, even more, public preparedness) for a generic disease outbreak, but with the military, if they actually use it at all, I expect it is more as an emotionally convenient framework for preparing for the potentiality of widespread domestic counterinsurgency.
> A false flag attack which attacks US or allied property is just a justification to lie to the American voter and to co-opt American tax dollars. If anything, the author who suggested it for such a purpose
The false flag use wasn't a prominent suggestion, and the highlighted false flag uses started with a false flag attack on a Soviet-allied threat. Elevating a secondary variation of what is itself one of many possible uses for acquired MiGs as if it was a standalone or primary justification for the exercise is dishonest.
You have no idea what you are talking about. I think you are talking about the "zombie riot" civic emergency drills conducted in recent years, but I'm talking about specifically something my army unit did (develop SOPs for a zombie apocalypse) as coordination training. Additionally, you should know that you are a conspiracy theorist and completely out of touch with reality if you think that regular US army units will fire on American citizens in some kind of "widespread domestic counterinsurgency". You truly have no idea what you're talking about.
> but I'm talking about specifically something my army unit did (develop SOPs for a zombie apocalypse) as coordination training
Developing SOPs as a training exercise (SOPs developed in such contexts are, IME, throwaways) and having standing SOPs are a different thing.
That certainly makes sense.
> Additionally, you should know that you are a conspiracy theorist and completely out of touch with reality if you think that regular US army units will fire on American citizens in some kind of "widespread domestic counterinsurgency".
Actually, I think that that's one of the major problems command authorities would face in such a situation even if there was legitimate reason to bring the Army into such a situation, and even overt preparation for the distant possibility would be problematic and disruptive, which is why any such preparation would not be overt.
There's a big ethical difference between "we wrote some generic plans for what now seems to be unethical but who knows how it could be interpreted in the future when decision makers ask for plans and expect something well-researched and not half-cocked, and it's better to be prepared than unprepared" and "decision makers actually decided that they want to do something unethical so they asked for the plans so that they could actually plan some real, unethical operation, and only because of some unforeseen reason did they cancel their unethical plans, and we journalists are reporting today on their unethical intentions."
Both are plans. Devising hypothetical plans is not unethical even if the plans as executed wouldn't be ethical.
> Devising hypothetical plans is not unethical even if the plans as executed wouldn't be ethical.
I'm torn. This seems like a stretch.
Sure, it's possible that the writer here was just stating facts. But if they wrote it as a suggestion for some power-hungry General to "burn the ships"[1] similar to the Russian general in "The Sum of All Fears", then it's certainly unethical. If they did it just to provide options to the rest of the Pentagon in case some rogue general did this, then it's likely neutrally-ethical.
There are ethics involved in simply planning a menu of options. What options are on the menu? How are the options ordered? What options are left off? People react based on the options presented to them and in what order they are presented.
I'm not arguing that devising these plans is ethical. Recall Kranzberg's First Law of Technology: that technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral. Rather that the existence of the plans and the decision to develop them cannot be judged on an ethical basis.
Sorry, I was trying to emphasize that part in the middle of a quote, and only had italics to work with. I am accustomed to that syntax meaning that there was emphasis in the quoted section.
And regarding the definition of the word "planning", I think there is a useful distinction between intent to do a thing and consideration of the possibility. It is useful to consider what could happen if I (or my successor, or someone with my credentials) went rogue and tried to use my company's data to destroy it or cause harm. I agree that the CIA's morals may not be so altruistic as my own, but this memo is step 2 of a 10-step process to initiating a false flag op, not step 10.
Perhaps the Soviets wanted to know how hard it would be for the US to replicate one of their birds, and got an embedded spy to commission an investigation to find out for them.
A major problem with what you're writing here is that there is a very rich history of false flag attacks from nearly all governments, certainly including the US -- both planned and executed. For instance Operation Northwoods [1] was another false flag plan which would have the CIA carry out terrorist attacks against American civilian and military targets and then blame it on the Cuban government, to justify a war against Cuba. This plan made it all the way to JFK. Literally the one and only thing that stopped this plan from happening was JFK not cooperating with the CIA.
The 1953 Iranian coup [2] was organized by the US and CIA in particular. One of the many actions we were responsible for includes forming fake communist forces allegedly in support of the government. The government was not pro communist, but also did not actively crack down on them, so creating these fake groups who were both supposed to be communist and pro government worked doubly well. In any case these groups would then threaten and intimidate Islamic groups in the name of the government. This behavior culminated with these fake groups bombing the home of an influential Islamic cleric [3]. The whole idea being to turn the Islamic community against the government - and it worked. To this day the name of the individual who signed off on the operation is redacted, but it's rather evident that it was Eisenhower.
Ultimately governments tend to be consistently Machiavellian -- or at least populated by those willing to adopt such methods. And false flags are one of the most effective operations for shifting public opinion, creating justifications for war, and so on. The thing I find disappointing is how much people refuse to accept reality. Most people will not believe the two paragraphs I wrote above even though there is declassified material literally acknowledging exactly what happened. But it doesn't fit the way we naturally like to view our government, so most people resort to cognitive dissonance instead of acknowledging that their preconceived notions might not actually be correct.
I would have gone with the Gulf of Tonkin incident [1], in which it was later revealed that MACV-SOG had inserted a covert operations team (which was captured) and paid for an airstrike the night before North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked.
Congress was naturally not told of any of this before they passed the resolution that arguably led to the escalation of the war under Johnson.
> The thing I find disappointing is how much people refuse to accept reality. Most people will not believe the two paragraphs I wrote above even though there is declassified material literally acknowledging exactly what happened. But it doesn't fit the way we naturally like to view our government, so most people resort to cognitive dissonance instead of acknowledging that their preconceived notions might not actually be correct.
This is a critically important point when it comes to many (or most) facets of our society. I'd add to that the fact that most people don't like to admit they have been fooled. They cling to the narrative that has been instilled in them from birth, ("The US Navy, a global force for good") because that's the world they want to live in, that's the world they've been told they live in, and that's the world they have perceived their entire lives.
You mean us. Our elected officials made those decisions. Congress funded both. OIF/OEF did not go forward without the blessing of Congress. Sure, the Executive Branch lied about the key detail, but part of decisionmaking is deciding the risk of deception.
Even domestically, moderate politicians were dragged into it. The narrative had been set up by the hawks and regime changers that if you don’t support invading Iraq, you’re for the terrorists and against America.
Even though the lie of Al Qaeda training on Iraqi soil was paper-thin, anti-war politicians and celebrities were shouted down and shunned. It didn’t matter that it made no sense, that Al Qaeda was expressly against the Saddam regime, the momentum was overwhelming. Everyone wanted to trust in the Bush administration’s war effort. The nation was temporarily unified after 9/11.
Only perhaps the Senate Intelligence Committee probably knew, almost everyone else in Congress gets their news from the papers like us schmucks, unfortunately.
It’s a shame that the only major customers of our expensive intelligence community are various Executive Branch officials and the Senate & House Intelligence Committees.
Even moderate Democrats were sucked into the Iraq War. From my vantage as a random service member at the time, I thought it was unjustified, but I was light on the cable news and AM radio.
I don't think this is a particularly big deal, and certainly less serious than other publicly known events in the 1960s (and 1980s) that almost started WWIII, however...
> But note that the documents do not describe the mental status of the authors, they're just listing facts.
Do government documents normally describe the mental status of the authors, rather than sticking to facts (whether true or not)?
> The US government is a very, very large organization, that asks a lot of questions and produces a lot of documents.
What percentage are serious enough to get discussed by the National Security Council and/or Attorney General?
> Within the Soviet government, someone else investigated what it would cost to procure some F-86 and F-4 aircraft
I haven't seen any documents on that, but did the Politburo discuss how US planes could be used in a false flag attack? If they did, how would it justify or excuse the US doing so?
> it would be irresponsible not to check
It's irresponsible of the US government to not look into the possibility of murdering Americans in order to start WWIII?
I woke up at 4 am this morning. I had this terrible dream where I was in a war and was going to be evacuated and my children had to choose which toys they were going to take (because we couldn't carry them all). They could only take a few toy cars. It broke my heart and I couldn't get back to sleep. And this is nothing compared to what really happens in war.
I can't imagine how a human being could start a war and even provoke one like this. It is just terrible to know that people like this exist.
> It is just terrible to know that people like this exist.
Which ones, the capitalist dogs or the commie bastards? If you dislike those people enough, you'll want to go to war with them if you're in a position of power.
Neither of those stereotypes are truly responsible for the atrocities for which they are capable.
Wars only happen because peaceful citizens do not take responsibility for the war-mongers in their societies. We wouldn't have the wars we have, if we didn't elevate the war-making classes above the folds. We need to always be diligent and vigilant about keeping the war-machine in check - alas, none of us in the West really has a clean slate on this issue. Citizens are responsible for the actions of their governments; this means our militaries, too. The fact that we fail to take that responsibility, means atrocities continue to happen.
It is my personal belief that anyone who dedicates their lives to war-making is separated from the criminal classes only by a very, very thin line: the piece of paper authorising their use of deadly force against other humans, granted them by their government, and ultimately by us, the citizens.
The most honourable roles our societies have to offer are sadly under-acknowledged: teachers, nurses, doctors, builder of roads, takers of trash.
All of these are an echelon above the warrior, in my opinion.
I doubt that doctors and nurses and teachers are under acknowledged. They deserve a place above a brute warrior for sure, but the education and medical bureaucries are only moderately more humane than our military.
This is idealistic and completely incorrect. You should read a history book.
Wars will end when we have limitless energy or evolve beyond greed and the lust for power.
Here's a situation I'd like you to analyse briefly: The US pulls out of every military installation they have outside of US territory. What happens in global geopolitics over the next year? Hint: the answer is 5 letters long with one space.
I don't actually know the answer to this riddle is. And US is present abroad because it wants to be and because it furthers their own interests, in a lot of places their presence is not actually welcome.
This is a complete red herring. You should read the OP.
The poster said nothing about 'ending' war or a superpower instantly disrupting the balance of power.
The OP posited that wars can be prevented via internal power struggles between war-mongers and the rest. That is a notion one can certainly argue with, but saying "war is about limited resources", while true in an abstract sense, is not engaging with it in any meaningful way - it is simply non-responsive.
What happens: whatever the people, who are now in control of
'whatever superpowers the US left behind', decide.
Look, I know its hard for you to not feel right without insulting anyone, but I've actually read a metric fuck-ton of history, know a few words in a few languages, and am generally not an ignorant 'incorrect-oid'. There is no truly correct/incorrect point of view, when it comes to killing humans. Fact: we don't need to do it. We do it because we want to.
Here's a thought experiment for you, American. What would happen if, instead of putting your citizens in debt to the tune of $TRILLIONS of dollars, every year, while funding active warfare on multiple fronts around the globe, for the last 80 years, the good ol' folks of the USA had instead built massive super-weaponry that delivered schools, water-filtration, and medical facilities, with awesome overwhelming power, to the people who needed it.
Instead of, you know, dropping one bomb every twenty minutes for the last .. umm, lets just say, at least .. decade?
Hmm?
You think its so easy? Lets see that B1 bomber re-purposed to drop the write kind of supplies that makes war unnecessary, not "invetible", as your formidable culture seems to want the rest of us to think it is ..
It would be nice if things worked that way, but a tremendous amount of food aid and cash is diverted by the corrupt leaders of the places that need it the most. I would bet without bothering to look that the US also spends the most on foreign aid, in addition to military spending. A large part of the past decade in Iraq has been helping rebuild. Going into Iraq was a mistake. Probably Afghanistan too.
After WWII, the USA was the least affected nation and was tasked with the protection of West Germany and western europe by proxy, and also Japan. The US policy of containment may have been a mistake, and it caused an immense amount of damage and suffering. Hindsight is 20/20 and in the 60s and 70s, no one foresaw the collapse of the USSR in 1989. The US has overstepped its bounds many times since the end of WWII, but the game between the US and the Soviets was serious business. The US has tons of blood on its hands, I'm not blind to that.
Interactions between nation-states will always be messy because there isn't a higher authority that can impose its will unless the nation-states are both small enough.
Idealism is necessary for coming up with potential outcomes for the future, but realism is necessary to understand the problem.
btw: The answer to the above question I posed is either multiple serious regional conflicts (Europe and SEA, probably India v Pakistan) or WW III.
We did build schools in Afghanistan and the Taliban blew them up. Evil exists; it’s childish to pretend it doesn’t. As long as there are people that think it’s ok to beat women for not wearing a burka, there will be a need for men and women willing to fight. You don’t placate evil, you destroy it. Does anyone out there actually believe that the Taliban could have been defeated with schools and wells? An incredibly naïve viewpoint. Until you actually spend some time in those places, you can have no idea of the evil that thrives in the hearts of men.
The US had nothing to do with creating the Taliban. If you are trying to argue that the US created the Afghan mujahideen rebels in the 1980s, you're still (mostly) wrong. Some Afghans were already rebelling against the Soviet aligned Democratic Republic of Afghanistan when the US decided to throw in with them. You could make the argument that the US had a hand in creating extremists in Afghanistan by aligning with them, but the USSR were the initial aggressors that created a rebel opposition group.
We're all aware that funding Osama bin Laden was part of that, that part isn't up for debate. What is up for debate is who built the Taliban and mujahideen.
What does Pakistan have to do with the person’s comment?
>...The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence and military are widely alleged by the international community to have provided support to the Taliban during their founding and time in power, and of continuing to support the Taliban during the insurgency.
I read Cthulu_'s comment as stating that the emotion in the parent comment was one of the reasons we can go to war.
> It is just terrible to know that people like this exist.
Whether you're a communist, a capitalist or some other divisive label, you have to feel that way about some other group of people before you can go to war with them.
Not saying I totally agree with this stance, just offering my interpretation of his comment - hopefully Cthulu_ will tell me if I'm putting words in their mouth :)
Since those terrible people exist, that’s why we have people doing these sorts of plans. It’s naïve to think that if we just abolish militaries that bad people go away. Letting the Soviet Union even exist amounted to being an accomplice to mass murder. They were the most evil regime in the 20th century in terms of body count. And that includes Hitler. Just the way they shot their own retreating troops during Stalingrad should turn one’s stomach. That doesn’t even consider their progroms as well as famines caused by farm collectivization. Look at Mao as well — literally millions died because of his aversion to sparrows. This moral relativism casting the US as some evil empire is ridiculous. The alternative to US hedgemony in the 20th century would have been far worse than anything imaginable. All of Europe would have been like East Germany. Asia would have been comparable to North Korea. War is a horrible thing, but sometimes the alternatives are worse.
This is dismissive. I don't foresee any valid contingency scenario that validates a "false flag," the fact that individuals in the government would think this way only gives credence to the most cynical out there.
Sure they didn't do it, but that they felt they had the authority to consider it (in a democracy, where they answer to us) speaks volumes.
It's a contingency scenario for the situation where the president (or senior officials) want to start a war. Yes it's a stretch but they might see it that way, "if the president wants to invade Canada then we need a plan to make it happen".
I only read your first link, but seeing how all it is is a contingency plan, so that the US would know how to proceed in a hypothetical war against Britain, I don't think I really have to look any further. The US likely has one for the EU, Russia, and China as well. And China and Russia definitely do, and the EU would if they had a true central military. It's just good planning.
Consider the world of information security, which I'm involved in. What's the best way for blue team (defenders) to protect their assets? Look at what the red team (attackers) are doing/targeting. That doesn't necessarily mean their active avenues of attack, but what are their trends, possibilities, means and ways. The same cuts true for the opposite scenario.
As someone who has spent time around Lajes Field, War Plan Gray is interesting seeing as how the U.S. de facto seized land on Terceira anyway. Much of my family came over around that time to make room for the military base.
Ironically, the Portuguese are very upset now that the U.S. is pulling more and more soldiers away from Lajes as it's leaving a hole in the local economy.
To my understanding, the US Military has "plans" for things it never intends to do. The plan is basically an outline for how such a thing might be done; it may be used for training or to recognize when another country is doing that thing.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> (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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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".
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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
my only point is that however you interpret the article, pivoting your response towards mocking conspiracy theorists speaks more towards a personal peeve than an objective analysis of the documents. at best it's almost irrelevant. at worst it's ironic.
TL;DR the plan was deemed impossible to pull off for a bunch of obvious reasons and nothing came of it.
This is basically meeting minutes of BSing at the water cooler.
The military/intelligence part of government cooks up all sorts of hair brained schemes for stuff that will never happen and even though it never goes beyond the brainstorming phase it still goes on record because the on the off chance that aliens invade Argintina it's really nice to just take an off the shelf plan that's close and adapt it and get sign offs rather than waste time trying to schedule a meeting with all the subject matter experts and make the plan from scratch with all the poor high speed decision making that comes with the fog of war.
So you should appreciate all the plans they consider? If they have a plan on how to stop a protest by killing the citizens with drones, or how to start a new war vs country X by killing children in a school and blaming it on X, this plan is fine, let's congratulate them for considering all possibilities including killing the citizens you are paied to protect. There are some things that you should not do, even war has rules.
What was the purpose of that, though? I can't imagine it.
By 1962 Russians already tested Tsar Bomba - so their nuclear capabilities were significant. What positive outcome could the US government have possibly hoped to achieve?
Fortunately, I'm not so sure on your second statement. There was an extremely concerted push from both the media and government to turn Syria into Iraq 2.0 around 2013. And ultimately it was a complete failure with public opinion never really turning towards the support necessary for that sort of operation.
Normally, this is the sort of Alex Jones stuff that I would roll my eyes at dismissively, but given the language is plain in the declassified documents, it seems very clear to me that the US at least considered the possibility of a false flag attack. Even just considering it is bad enough. I suspect the reason it was allowed to be declassified was because it was never acted upon. Which then makes me wonder how many other events may actually be false flags which are still classified. I really don't like getting all tin foil-y, but this kind of thing makes me even less trusting of government.
I get where you are coming from. And generally I would agree with you. But for something like this, what was considered was, as far as I can tell, something that would violate international law and/or possibly be considered a war crime, depending on exactly what would have been done in the hypothetical situation where this was acted upon.
I can't see any legitimate argument for the government considering violating serious international laws.
> Under what circumstances is false flagging your own citizens warranted?
None, in my opinion. That said, I have not considered the question deeply enough to conclude that it is never appropriate.
In any case, that isn't what the document [1] is about. Paragraph 5 mentions the "possibility" of various things. Our government should know how others within itself, perhaps with nefarious purposes, might conduct a "deception operation" against it. More specifically, ¶ 5 mentions operations in which "Soviet aircraft would appear to attack U.S. or friendly installations". Providing the appearance of something is not necessarily doing it. I also do not think false flag operations conducted against foreign countries are as ethically off the table as those against one's self.
TL; DR There are legitimate reasons for studying how false flag operations may be done.
The linked memo [1] consists of a table estimating the cost for the US to secretly acquire MIGs. Stop and go read it, it's only a cover form, a table estimating the cost to get some MIGs, and a failed attempt at redacting the 3rd page, which describes the effort. The final paragraph reads:
> There is a possibility that such aircraft could be used in a deception operation designed to confuse enemy planes in the air, to launch a surprise attack against enemy installations or in a prevocation operation in which a Soviet aircraft would appear to attack U.S. or friendly installations in order to provide an excuse for U.S. intervention. If the planes were to be used in such covert operations, it would seem preferable to manufacture them in the United States.
Emphasis added. But note that the documents do not describe the mental status of the authors, they're just listing facts. Any guesses by journalists as to what the actors behind the documents were thinking or what they desired to do are only guesses.
The US government is a very, very large organization, that asks a lot of questions and produces a lot of documents. You can also expect that someone, somewhere was also tasked to answer the question "how hard would it be for the Soviet Union to procure US aircraft and launch a false flag attack against themselves, and what can/should we do to mitigate this risk." Within the Soviet government, someone else investigated what it would cost to procure some F-86 and F-4 aircraft, and what it would cost the US to get MIGs, and what they could/should do to mitigate this risk.
I would argue that it would be irresponsible of both governments to not ask these questions. I would also agree that false flag operations and indeed war itself are reprehensible, and would hope that the decision-makers, armed with this information, would still make the right choice. But given the lives, dollars, and issues at stake, and the comparably tiny cost of answering the question, it would be irresponsible not to check.
[1]: https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-3...