ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests three major factors that often play a role: deniability to achieve a goal that cannot be publicly acknowledged and in which one's participation is deniable; stigmatization to discredit one's opponents by blaming them for acts that attract widespread repugnance; and destabilization to provoke a general social or political crisis out of which a group or agency seeks some future benefit. The terrorism literature often uses the word provocation to describe acts of deception or impersonation. Technically, the term provocateur originates in the practice of police or intelligence agents, though we sometimes use it to describe one terrorist group impersonating another. Terrorist wars often involve false fronts that can serve the interests of the authorities as much as the terrorists themselves. For over a century, every major terrorist crisis has involved some such duplicity, some use of false flags, and the tactics would again be evident during the second great age of international terrorism that began in the mid-1960s.
