In the 1931 Mukden incident, Japanese officers fabricated a pretext for annexing Manchuria by blowing up a section of railway. Six years later they falsely claimed the kidnapping of one of their soldiers in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident as an excuse to invade China proper.
In the Gleiwitz incident on August 31, 1939, Reinhard Heydrich made use of fabricated evidence of a Polish attack against Germany to mobilize German public opinion and to fabricate a false justification for a war with Poland. This, along with other false flag operations in Operation Himmler, would be used to mobilize support from the German population for the start of World War II in Europe.
On November 26, 1939, the Soviet Union shelled the Russian village of Mainila near the Finnish border. The Soviet Union attacked Finland four days afterwards, claiming the shelling to have been a Finnish military action. Russia subsequently agreed that the attack was initiated by the Soviets.[8] Also, the nearest Finnish artillery pieces were well out of range of Mainila.[9]
In 1953, the U.S. and British-orchestrated Operation Ajax used "false-flag" and propaganda operations against the formerly democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq. Information regarding the CIA-sponsored coup d'etat has been largely declassified and is available in the CIA archives.[10]
In 1954, the Military Intelligence Directorate of Israel launched a series of bombings against targets in Cairo which had British and American financial interests, in the hopes of alienating the U.S. and Britain from Egypt.[11] Codenamed Operation Suzannah, it was later dubbed the Lavon Affair, after Israeli Defense Minister Pinchas Lavon. Lavon and Israeli Military Intelligence head Binyamin Gibli had planned and carried out the operation in secret, and without telling Prime Minister Moshe Sharett in advance. Lavon and Gibli both lost their jobs as a result. Israel (where it is known as "The Unfortunate Affair") finally admitted responsibility in 2005.[12]
The planned, but never executed,
1962 Operation Northwoods plot by the U.S. Department of Defense for a war with Cuba involved scenarios such as hijacking or shooting down passenger and military planes, sinking a U.S. ship in the vicinity of Cuba, burning crops, sinking a boat filled with Cuban refugees, attacks by alleged Cuban infiltrators inside the United States, and harassment of U.S. aircraft and shipping and the destruction of aerial drones by aircraft disguised as Cuban MiGs. These actions would be blamed on Cuba, and would be a pretext for an invasion of Cuba and the overthrow of Fidel Castro's communist government. It was authored by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but then rejected by President John F. Kennedy. This later came to light through the Freedom of Information Act and was publicized by James Bamford.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag