Written by Robert J. Hanyok, a historian and intelligence analyst at the NSA, the document was titled “Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2–4 August 1964.”9 It goes into great detail, not only about what was observed on the boats, but also the SIGINT of intercepted North Vietnamese communications from those days and the days after.

The conclusion was what everyone basically knew by then, that the second attack, the one referenced by Johnson in his call for action that led to the Vietnam War, did not happen. The conclusion that the attacks were real (held by the NSA long after the actual events) was formed by “a compound of analytic errors and an unwillingness to consider contrary evidence.” Not only did it not happen, but Hanyok concluded that members of the intelligence community deliberately withheld information that suggested the second attack was illusory.

What we have here is a conspiracy very low down on the IHOP scale—perhaps a small step above a simple “glad it happened” explanation. Nothing was fabricated, there was an actual event of mistaken radar returns and imaginary engagements that Hanyok’s analysis shows were believed to be real by the people there at the time. So real in fact that many continued to insist that they saw something for years afterwards. What seems to have happened is that McNamara took advantage of the confusion surrounding the event and deliberately misled Johnson regarding the certainty of the reports.

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What do you tell your conspiracy friend who raises the Gulf of Tonkin as an example of a false flag? You should embrace the opportunity to talk about real corruption and duplicity in government. Yes, the American involvement in Vietnam was greatly escalated on what was essentially a false pretext. But it was not a created incident. McNamara knew a second incident was needed after the August 2 incident, and perhaps he was deliberately sending ships into harm’s way, certainly he seemed to be hoping there would be a second attack. But the August 4 incident was a genuine mistake, not a falsified incident. McNamara leapt upon it when he thought it was real, and then ignored suggestions and increasing evidence that it was not. He distorted, delayed, and misled. He exploited a mistake, but he did not create a fake incident.

This type of distortion and misleading by power factions within the administration is nothing new, nor is it anything particularly surprising. People want particular outcomes, and if a certain interpretation of events can help lead towards that outcome then they will try to spin that interpretation with the vigor of a devil’s advocate.

The most obvious examples of this type of spun-justification come from the events that follow the 9/11 attacks. Here there clearly was a real incident, but Bush and Cheney wanted to invade Iraq, not Afghanistan, and certainly not Saudi Arabia (where most of the hijackers were from, and quite possibly where some of al Qaeda’s financing originated). While 9/11 gave them a mandate to strike back, they could not immediately invade Iraq in response. Significant spin and distortion were required to pull that off, most notably the magnification of any evidence regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the ignoring of any evidence that suggested those weapons did not exist. That cherry-picking is similar to what McNamara did with the evidence of the August 4, 1964 attack, but on a slower and a grander scale.

Conspiracy theories grow largely in the absence of a clear picture of what actually happened. We don’t often get a clear view of high-level discussion regarding national security for obvious reasons. But that secrecy diminishes over time. The McNamara Tonkin incident is old enough, and declassified enough, to give us a unique look into “how the sausage is made.” While normally nobody else is in the room where it happened, here we have the actual tapes of McNamara first not telling Johnson, and then telling him, and then Johnson getting annoyed for not being told. The more a conspiracy theorist understands of the actual machinations of power, the less likely it is that their false interpretations will stick. You should encourage your friend to “do their own research” on the matter. Have them find out what happened on August 2 and August 4, what Johnson knew, what McNamara knew, and how and when they knew it.

This is even one case when doing YouTube research can be quite fruitful. A search for “McNamara Tonkin” will give you several interesting results, including several extended interviews with McNamara discussing the incident and the broader Vietnam situation. Beware of videos that only give you short clips of the phone conversations, the full versions with accurate transcripts are available at the National Archives of GWU.10 Listen to them with your friend if possible; read the transcripts in full.

Note McNamara’s eagerness to bomb the gasoline depots, note how he assumes that there’s going to be a second attack at some point, and how he’s already making plans for it. Then get the backstory on that, read Hanyok’s article, and understand why McNamara anticipated a second attack—it was the SIGINT that mistakenly predicted one. The conspiracy videos often highlight the fact that McNamara said “second attack” before any second attack took place. At face value this seems to be evidence that McNamara had planned a second attack. Then (the conspiracy logic goes) since there was no real second attack, McNamara must have planned a fake second attack—the “false flag.” But what he was referring to was the fact that intelligence reports had concluded there would be an attack, as explained in great detail in Hanyok’s analysis for the NSA.

When your friend brings up Tonkin he will likely assume you have never heard of it. He sees things like Tonkin and Northwoods as special knowledge that only he possesses. Your first challenge is actually going to establish the common ground. You have to find out how much they know, and then you’ve got to show him how much you know. Physical objects are good if you are discussing things in person. Show them a printout of the Northwoods documents, or the Tonkin Johnson/McNamara transcripts—ideally with key portions highlighted. Even if you are not meeting in person it’s still sometimes useful to show them a photograph of yourself holding an actual document. Links to the document are useful, but in the midst of a conversation often are just throwaways that go nowhere. You can have the best links in the world, but it takes effort to click and read. Show them the actual document and ask them, “I have read this, have you?”

The best common ground is one shared against some common foe. We see in the historical cases of Northwoods and Tonkin a willingness of people in power to exploit events in order to use them as pretexts for action, sometimes even as pretexts for war. We see in Northwoods a willingness to consider false and fabricated pretexts—very real False Flags. We know there is corruption in the halls of power. We know that people who wield power have their own individual self-interests and ideologies as their primary driving motivations, and that often (but not always) those self-interests and ideologies do not mesh well with the common person’s.

We also see in these historical examples the limitations of fabricated events. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are quite clear in Northwoods that they would prefer a real reason to invade Cuba. Their first thought was to provoke an action by Cuba, rather than try to pretend one had happened.

Prod the nest until the hornets get angry enough to sting, then justifiably burn it down. Arguably this is what McNamara was doing in Vietnam; he probably wanted the North Vietnamese to attack at some point, but he wanted a real attack, a “genuine pretext.” Perhaps he arranged the patrols to maximize the chance of such an attack, but what actually happened was an accident, a mistake that he exploited and then was forced to go along with.

While truth is often said to be stranger than fiction, in the conspiracy world the fiction is generally a lot stranger than the truth. But truth is still complex and messy. We can never say exactly what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin, we will never know what was in the mind of President Kennedy when he rejected Northwoods. But there’s a lot we can know about both situations, especially Tonkin. There’s a lot that most conspiracy theorists are simply unaware of, and it’s by shining a light on these rather mundane truths of the fog of war, of spin, of event exploitation, that we get the clearest picture of what actually happened. Northwoods was spitballing ideas that did not go anywhere. Tonkin was a mistaken battle against radar ghosts, exploited to push an agenda. Once your friend sees these thing, sees the actual facts in detail, then there’s less need in his mind for conspiracies.

Do not be disheartened if after all your attempts to show the reality behind historical False Flags your friend still turns around and says, “See what the government does.” These things take time. Focus not so much on trying to change their mind as on filling their minds with as much factual information as possible. Emerging from the rabbit hole rarely happens as a sudden realization. It’s a gradual awareness of reality that eventually crowds out the fantasy. People who think that the shootings at Sandy Hook and Las Vegas were staged are very deep down the hole. They have huge gaps and distortions in their understanding of the world. Debunking solely one point is not going to get them out. A substantial amount of illumination is required, and often a substantial amount of time to let them look around and contemplate their newfound knowledge. If you are simply getting them to honestly listen to you and to look at shared factual information, then you and your friend are taking steps in the right direction.

False Flag Bombings and Shootings

On April 15, 2013, I was in a hardware store when I received a text from a friend who never texts me. It said:

Then my wife texted:

My wife’s father was running the Boston Marathon, as he did every year. Two bombs had just gone off near the finish line and there were casualities. We had no way of getting in touch with him and we spent the next few hours glued to the TV trying to spot him in various shots. We knew he was about due to finish, and at first we were worried that he might even be the now-iconic runner who stumbled and fell as the explosions went off just behind him.

Disasters, mass shootings, and bombings are personal to different degrees to everyone. It was very real to the people who were there that day, to the people who ran the race and witnessed what happened. My father-in-law was just five minutes away from the finish line when the race was shut down. The police corralled the runners in a safe area for a while, and eventually he found a phone and let us know that he was safe. It was real to him, and it was real to us.

Most people who watched the footage of the bombing had nobody there, but they had no problem accepting it as real. They could see there were hundreds of people lining the road, tens of thousands of people had already run over the finish line. The explosions, the shock, the responses, the blood, all were very real.

Yet a small group of people insisted it was not. Scouring over the footage they looked for any little inconsistency, anything they could not immediately explain, and held it up as “evidence” that the entire event had been faked.

These are the same people who also thought that the Sandy Hook school massacre was faked and would later think that the Las Vegas shooting was faked. We know they are the same people because this type of “false flag” conspiracy very rapidly becomes a mental trap. Once they accept that one extraordinary event is fake, then that means the anything could be faked and (in their mind) probably is. It’s a dark corner deep in the rabbit hole from which it is very difficult to escape.

What makes it particularly difficult is that the adherents to these theories become adept in incorporating new information into their narratives. While there may be some who can be swayed by the usual approach of pointing out their errors (the spotlight approach), the problem is often more fundamental—an entire worldview that is based on everything being an illusion.

What is needed is more of a floodlight. They have to gain some real perspective on how the world really works. Discussing the mundane realities of Northwoods and Tonkin might help. But you’re also going to have to try to bring them a broader-based perspective on other matters. The litany of ridiculous claims for such things is endless, but there’s a few key things that come up again and again in various forms, and which can (sometimes) be addressed with appropriate perspective.

Changes in the Initial Story

During chaotic events, what is known by the media and law enforcement is rapidly changing, and often based on second- or third-hand accounts. With time the story gets more accurate, but this means that it changes as clarity is achieved. To some people this seems suspicious.

The most common version of this is there being reports of multiple gunmen in the single-shooter situations. With Sandy Hook there was a “man in the woods” (at least two, later identified as a parent and an off-duty policeman).12 With Las Vegas there were reports of shots fired from a different location (a distant flashing light reflecting off a window),13 with Pulse there were anonymous internet posts claiming a second shooter was present, later proven false.14 There were also a variety of claims of second (and third, maybe even fourth) shooters at the JFK murder.

The main reason these stories take hold is that the police initially don’t know how many shooters there are. They always go into a situation by default looking for additional shooters even if the primary suspect is dead or captured. The media reports that they are looking, and the false story gains some legs.

You can point this out, and you can also point out that none of these reports of second shooters actually panned out. But perhaps the most valuable perspective is to be gained in looking at just how (un)reliable eyewitnesses are. Research, and practical experience, has shown time and again that witnesses to chaotic and violent events usually have very different recollections of the details.15

False Injuries and Blood

The aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing revealed a variety of injuries. People had their legs blown off, bones were broken, shrapnel was embedded in limbs, and blood was everywhere. People raised all kinds of specious objection to what they saw. The blood was “too red,” people walked when they should not be able to, injuries seemed inconsistent with later photos, limbs appeared to be at the wrong angle.

Similar objections are raised with respect to other events. When a TV reporter was shot and subsequently ran away from the shooter, people asked how she could still run after being shot. When JFK was shot from the back, people were confused because his head jerked back and to the left.

These types of claims are simply based on misunderstandings of how the human body works, and limits in the personal experience of those believing the claims. Blood from a little cut in your finger is a dull red, but freshly spilled blood from an artery is actually bright red due to the high oxygen content. In many action films when people get shot they just drop dead, but in reality gunshots are frequently non-fatal. People can get around with the most horrific injuries. Later surgeries (for example, to repair an injured knee) often temporarily incapacitate people more severely than the event that caused the injury.

Inappropriate Emotions

When the father of one of the young Sandy Hook victims briefly laughed and smiled at his daughter’s funeral, people said he forgot he was supposed to be acting sad. When a man who took in some of the kids fleeing the school burst into tears when relating the story, people said he was overacting.

Belief in these claims seems to be based on a lack of life experience, and in particular the various ways in which people deal with loss or traumatic events. People do actually laugh and smile at funerals. Not all the time obviously, but it certainly happens. A recent funeral I attended after the sudden death of a dear friend was one of the saddest days of my life, and yet was also filled with the joy of friendship and happy memories. There were tears, and gut-wrenching grief, but there were also jokes, smiles, and laughter. Humans are complex—and there aren’t any firm rules for how an individual is supposed to emotionally respond to trauma. This is how people are.

How do you show this? You can relate your own experience, you can show videos of funerals, you can show them written accounts, and show psychologists’ research into dealing with grief.16 Hopefully you can reach them, but for some it might simply take the inevitable gaining of life experience that they will get as they age.

People Looking Like Other People

A common claim is that “crisis actors” are used to stage these events, and that the same actors keep showing up. This claim is invariably backed with a photo comparison that show two people that look similar. It is invariably debunked by showing higher resolution images of those two people from different angles that demonstrate conclusively that they are different people.

There are two aspects of perspective that you can bring here. Firstly, it’s not that hard to find people that look alike if you try hard enough. Even within a relatively small group, like celebrities, there’s many that look nearly indistinguishable in some photos. Katy Perry looks like Zooey Deschanel, Bob Saget looks like Stephen Colbert. There’s lots of collections of celebrity doppelgängers online; show them to your friend.

Secondly, these claims are invariably shown to be wrong. If your friend thinks some of the people are the same, then they likely believe some classic examples of such claims that have actually been soundly debunked with high resolution photos. Find out which ones they are, look them up, and show them.

Web Pages Created before the Event

Sometimes you’ll see some news story, fundraiser, or tweet that seems to be timestamped before the actual event to which it refers. There’s often very rational explanations for these anomalies, but they can be hard to explain as they are occasionally a little technical. The best approach is to show examples of them happening in events that are not disputed.

A common mistake is to report the time stamp of a tweet in a different time zone to when it happened. After the Boston Marathon bombing (which happened at 2:50 p.m. local time), a certain tweet looked different on the East Coast and the West Coast.

The West Coast image with the 12:53 time stamp was spread around as evidence that the bombing was a controlled explosion gone wrong. The simplest thing to do here is show them how to change the time zone on Twitter and show them this tweet (or whichever one they were suspicious about) in the original time zone.

There’s other ways times and dates can be misleading. When you do a Google search for an event (like “Sandy Hook Shooting”) you often get results that Google says are from before that event. This is just a glitch in Google and you can demonstrate this to your friend by searching for stories about something neutral but unique. For example you could look up the 2016 film Zootopia, about which there’s dozens of web pages that are dated prior to 2010. In Google, just click “Tools,” then “Any Time,” then “Custom Range,” and enter 2011 in the “To” box. The supposedly predated pages will appear. Disney and Google aren’t coordinating to cover-up the true release date of Zootopia, it was just a technological glitch.

This is just a small sprinkling of the wide variety of specious claims that pepper false flag mass casualty conspiracy theories. A comprehensive debunking of even one such conspiracy theory could easily fill its own book. But what they all have in common is that their claims do not hold up to investigation. Show your friend these common mistakes, and later ask them to add “debunked” or “Snopes” to their internet searches, just to get the other side. Show them enough things that are wrong, and eventually the balance will shift from automatic acceptance of alternative narratives to more cautious and reasonable fact-checking. It will probably take some time.

False Flag Summary and Resources

Key Points to Convey to Your Friend

• They should not blindly trust the government or any grossly powerful organization, and you don’t trust the government either.

• “False Flag” refers to a real type of event. But it does not follow that all suggested false flag theories are correct.

• False flag theories are suggested after every mass casualty event. It’s more of an automatic response than an evidence-based theory.

• Operation Northwoods was not an operation; it was a list of suggestions that were never implemented. It’s also pretty much the only example of such a thing.

• The Gulf of Tonkin highlights an actual misleadingly spun incident. But it was an exploited mistake, not an invented attack.

• All the claims of evidence for false flag mass casualty events, so far, simply do not stand up to detailed scrutiny. There’s a lot of them, and they are all, invariably, wrong. Keep this in mind the next time one comes along.