Were the Nice Attacks A False Flag Or A Lone Nut?

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post
July 19, 2016

The recent truck attack in Nice, France was, from the outset, exploited by national governments and reported in a schizophrenic manner that, on one hand, declared the attacker a "weird" loner acting completely on his own by virtue of his many psychological problems while, on the other hand, a terrorist attack aimed at the allegedly democratic institutions of France and the Western world. Among the reports surrounding the attack, many alternative media outlets are suggesting that the attack was yet another false flag engineered or at least facilitated by Western intelligence agencies for the purposes of propaganda, psychic driving, and the establishment of the "new normal" of constant terror and fear.

So which is it?

Is the Nice attack a false flag, a terror attack, or the work of a lone nut in the midst of a psychotic break? At this point, there is not enough evidence to declare a position either way. However, there are some interesting points surrounding the attack that could signal a possible false flag and/or government sponsored terror attack. Because the mainstream outlets refuse to acknowledge the possibility of such an attack, it is incumbent upon us to mention and discuss them at least briefly so that all possibilities are on the table.

Is It A Terror Attack Or A Lone Nut?

While mainstream media outlets and law enforcement agencies are claiming that the attacker, 31-year old delivery driver Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was not known to have any "direct" terror connections and thus an act of a psychologically damaged and depressed man, world leaders are nonetheless condemning the attack as an "act of terror" and are using the attack to justify a greater erosion of what is left of civil liberties and extension of declarations of a state of emergency.


The Telegraph describes Bouhlel by writing:

Neighbours described him as a "very weird loner" and father of three who had recently become estranged from his wife and had become depressed following the breakdown of his marriage. 

A woman living in the same shabby apartment block as Bouhel today told how he "seemed very weird". She told The Telegraph: "He lived alone. He said very little to anyone and wasn’t very polite. He wouldn’t hold the door open for you." 

Still, the news agency writes that Bouhel "had no known links with terrorism and was not under surveillance."

But, if these accounts are to be believed and Bouhel did not commit an act of terror but an act of random violence, that is not stopping French Ministers and other world leaders from taking advantage of the attack to drum up support for more militarism within their own borders and for the "war on terror." 

Consider again, the Telegraph report which writes,

New Prime Minister Theresa May said Britain must redouble its efforts to defeat "brutal" terrorist "murderers" after the "horrifying" attack, as she called a meeting of senior officials in the Government's emergency Cobra committee.

As the United Nations issued a statement calling the latest "cowardly and barbaric", French Prime Minister Manuel Valls tweeted: "The city of Nice has been hit by terrorism on the day of our national holiday. Immense pain, the country is in mourning. The French will face it." 

President Francois Hollande meanwhile spoke of a "monstrosity", and said soldiers would be deployed to support gendarmes and police, particularly at the country’s borders. 

. . . . . 

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said: "We are at war with terrorists who want to strike us at any cost and who are extremely violent."

I.D. Left In Truck

Another interesting aspect of the Nice attack was the fact that the attacker's "identity papers" were found in the truck after he was killed. While finding documents of identification are not necessarily in and of themselves something that points to a false flag having taken place, we must bear in mind the alarming levels of coincidences where mass shooters, terrorists, suicide bombers, and other attackers often leave passports, I.D.'s and other identifying documents in conspicuous places to be found by investigators and media organizations. Thus, we have to ask, is it a prerequisite to have passports and related I.D. papers present or in full view before committing a terrorist attack or is it merely a way of allowing the attacker and thus the patsy organization/boogeyman to be identified immediately for greater propaganda effect?

Known To Police Prior To Attacks

Like virtually all of the other terrorists in Europe and the United States, Bouhlel was known to police prior to the attacks. However, unlike prior perpetrators, Bouhlel was not known for terrorist related activity but for "petty crimes" including domestic violence and "using weapons" as well as "road rage." Although we are unaware of the specifics of Bouhlel's charges, it is interesting that "using weapons" would be considered "petty," especially in France where simply owning a weapon is crime enough. As Yahoo! News Australia reported:

While he had several run-ins with the law previously, Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Nice resident born in Tunisia, was not on a watch list of French intelligence services as a suspected militant. 

He was convicted for the first time in March this year, French Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas said. 

"There was an altercation between him and another driver and he hurled a wooden pallet at the man," Urvoas said. 

As it was his first conviction, Bouhlel was given a suspended sentence and had to contact police once a week, which he did. 

Tunisian security sources told Reuters Bouhlel had last visited his hometown of Msaken four years ago. 

He was married with three children, but had marital problems, the Tunisian sources said. 

He was not known by the Tunisian authorities to hold radical views, and had held a French residence permit for the past 10 years without obtaining French nationality, Tunisian sources said.

The Telegraph also gives further information in regards to the profile of Bouhlel as a potential terrorist. According to the Telegraph as well as a number of other mainstream media reports, Bouhlel was not even a practicing Muslim, having visited the Mosque only beginning in April and having been an otherwise "normal" 31 year old in France. The Telegraph reports:

The Bastille Day killer described by Isil as a "soldier of Islam" regularly used dating sites to pick up male and female lovers, it was claimed on Sunday night. 

Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel's mobile phone records suggest he used dating websites and dabbled with drugs and drink, French media reported. 

The handset was picked up by police officers after they shot him dead last Thursday in a lorry that he had used to kill 84 people on the Promenade des Anglais, in the French city of Nice.

According to officers, the phone is proving more important to the investigation than the seven suspects currently in custody for their links to the terrorist.

The killer is said to have sent a chilling text message demanding weapons minutes before the seafront massacre.
. . . . .

Bouhlel's phone is said to be full of messages, videos and photographs, including ones of men and women he had recently slept with.

"The testimony which investigators are relying on most is that of the mobile phone," reported the BFM TV news channel, basing their report on evidence leaked to them.
Two hundred officers are now working exclusively on inquiries related to data found on the phone. Bouhlel loved sending selfie photos to people, and would record all of his relationships with other people, however brief.

He visited gyms and salsa bars regularly, and would also visit websites "showing pictures of executions", said BFM TV. 

"The busy sex life of a man who had recently discovered a religious faith is shown by the data on the device," BFM added. 

. . . . .

A psychiatrist who saw him in 2004 told L'Express that Bouhlel had come to him because of behavioural problems and that he diagnosed him as suffering from"the beginnings of psychosis." 

The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said the attacker "appears to have become radicalised very quickly" as one neighbour of his estranged wife added: "Mohamed only started visiting a mosque in April."

Was Bouhlel truly a disturbed individual who had a psychotic break brought on by the circumstances of his life? Or was he recruited by an intelligence agency at the Mosque, seeing a mentally ill potential patsy for another false flag event? Unfortunately, with Bouhlel dead, we will never know the answer to this question. 

More Than One Participant

One important question to ask, however, is that, if Bouhlel was merely a lone nut acting as a result of a psychotic break, why did he have accomplices? A lone nut is not likely to have a network of assistance in a terror attack if he is, indeed, a lone nut. Again, the Telegraph:

According to officers, the phone is proving more important to the investigation than the seven suspects currently in custody for their links to the terrorist.

The killer is said to have sent a chilling text message demanding weapons minutes before the seafront massacre. 

Suspects range from two Albanians suspected of supplying a pistol to Bouhlel, and others whose phone numbers appeared on the phone. 

Another man, 37, arrested in Nice on Sunday is suspected of supplying arms to the killer after reportedly receiving messages saying: "Bring more weapons, bring five of them to C.” 

The message is said to have been sent 18 minutes before he ploughed a 19-tonne lorry into holiday crowds, killing 84 people. 

More than 200 investigators were urgently working to determine the significance of ‘C’ and whether the killer had accomplices or links with a terrorist network. 

Seven people including a woman were in custody on Sunday night after the arrests earlier in the day of an Albanian couple suspected of aiding Bouhlel, described by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) as one its “soldiers”. 

He sent a flurry of texts shortly before the attack. Another one, saying “I’ve got the material”, was sent to one of the men in custody, whose identities have not been made public. 

Bouhlel fired a 7.65mm automatic handgun at police before they shot him dead on Thursday night. Other weapons found in the lorry turned out to be fakes or replicas.

If so many other weapons turned out to be fakes, who would act as an accomplice in a terror attack, why would they provide Bouhlel with fake weapons? Why would a terrorist or a lone nut for that matter load a truck full of fake weapons before committing his attack? The first explanation that comes to mind for this would be that he was the target of a sting operation where he was told he was actually shipping weapons to a terrorist organization but where intelligence agencies did not want Bouhlel or the organization to actually receive them.

There are still more interesting notes about Bouhlel. The Telegraph writes, 

investigators examining Bouhlel’s phone records found evidence that he was in contact with known Islamic radicals.

However, an intelligence source cautioned: “That could just be a coincidence, given the neighbourhood where he lived. Everyone knows everyone there. He seems to have known people who knew Omar Diaby (a known local Islamist believed to be linked with the Al Nusra group close to Al Qaeda)."

Relatives have reportedly claimed Bouhlel, in the days before the attack, persuaded friends to smuggle £84,000 in cash back to his family in their hometown of Msaken, Tunisia. His brother Jaber also said he had not seen his brother for several years and the money had come as a complete surprise.

Having connections to "known Islamic radicals" and having recently come into a sizeable amount of cash inexplicably and suddenly [we are assuming he did not convince them to smuggle their own cash], we must again wonder about Bouhlel's social networks and the networks which may have provided him with this cash and assistance. Was it the DGSE? Was it the CIA? Or was it something else?
 
Drills All Across France In The Months Leading Up To Attack In Nice

One hallmark of the false flag operation is the running of drills shortly before or during the actual attack. Many times, these drills will involve the actual sequence of events that takes place during the real life attack . These drills have been present on large scale false flags such as 9/11 as well as smaller scale attacks like the Aurora shooting.

For instance, as Webster Tarpley documents in his book 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made In USA, at least 46 drills were underway in the months leading up to 9/11 and on the morning of the attack. These 46 drills were all directly related to the events which took place on 9/11 in some way or other.[1] Likewise, the 7/7 bombings in London were running drills of exactly the same scenario that was occurring at exactly the same times and locations.

Although one reason may take precedence over the other depending on the nature and purpose of the operation drills are used by false flag operators for at least two reasons. One such purpose is the creation of intentional confusion if the drill is taking place during the actual attack. The other, more effective aspect, however, is using the drill as a cloak to plan the attack or even “go live” when it comes time to launch the event. Even more so, it gives the individuals who are involved in the planning of the event an element of cover, especially with the military/intelligence agency’s tight chain of command structure and need-to-know basis. If a loyal military officer or intelligence agent stumbles upon the planning of the attack, that individual can always be told that what he has witnessed is nothing more than the planning of a training exercise. This deniability continues all the way through to the actual “going live” of the drill. After the completion of the false flag attack, Coincidence Theory is used to explain away the tragic results.[1]

While no drills appear to have been taking place during the Nice attack, drills had been taking place all across France in the lead up to it. 

In early April of this year, French emergency services staged a "mock terror attack" ahead of Euro 2016 after the Paris and Brussels attacks and ahead of the Nice attack. The Daily Mail described the drills by writing:

Officials in France have staged a mock terrorist attack as the country prepares to host the European Championship this summer - and these pictures show what would happen if there is use of chemical weapons.

More than 2,000 people from the French emergency services took part in a fake chemical attack designed to give them the best possible training should the tournament by targeted.

Again, in late April 2016, French security forces undertook a drill that involved a simulated terrorist attack on the steps of the Cannes Film Festival. Deadline.com provided a summary of the drills. It reported:

French police used the steps of the Cannes Film Festival’s famed Palais on Thursday as the focal point of a security exercise that included a simulated terrorist attack. The planned event went down less than a month before the French Riviera town hosts the 69th edition of the festival. 

France has been on high alert since the attacks in Paris in November killed 130, and the Brussels attacks last month. The country is also playing host to soccer’s European Championship this summer. The fest runs May 11-22, while Euro 2016 runs June 10-July 10 in Saint-Denis, Lens, Lyon, Lille, Paris, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Saint-Etienne, Marseille and Cannes neighbor Nice. 

In the terror simulation Thursday, attackers scaled the Palais steps with police in pursuit attempting to secure the area and eliminate the threat (see footage below courtesy of AFP; click through to YouTube). Reuters reported that 200 volunteers took part in the exercise, which occurred right at the epicenter of Cannes’ glitzy and A-list-plus red carpets that go along with films’ world premiere screenings inside.

In early June, terror drills were conducted in Lyon, France where a terrorist attack and mass shooter were simulated. The Telegraph describes the drills:

French special forces swooped on Lyon in a mock terror training exercise ahead of the official start of Euro 2016. 

The drill included a bomb attack followed by armed gunmen at the city's fan zone where supporters will gather to watch matches live on a big screen. 

Emergency responders took part in a mock terror training exercise as travelling fans were warned that tournament venues are potential targets for terrorist attacks. 

Fears over fan zones have heightened in recent days after the Foreign Office warned Britons planning to travel that they must be "vigilant at all times".

These drills did not take place in Nice nor did they simulate an individual driving a truck through a crowd but they are worthy of note and contextualization nonetheless. Whether these drills were preparation for a false flag attack, legitimate preparation by security forces who are unaware at the lower levels that their superiors are actually involved in the funding and spread of terrorism and jihadism across the globe or even whether they were mere attempts at acclimation for the general public is up for debate.

Cui Bono? and Conclusion

Regardless of who is actually responsible for the attack in Nice, the fact is that Western governments, the French government in particular, are seizing upon it as an excuse to continue their own jihad against civil liberties. If anyone gained from Nice, it is not the perpetrator but the government of France who has now extended its state of emergency and will no doubt continue to clamp down on the rights of French citizens. NATO, too, is set to gain from a recently invigorated French resolve to "fight terror over there" so they can avoid continuing to "fight it over here."

Of course, at the end of the day, there is not enough evidence to declare that the Nice attacks were false flags or, for that matter, that they were not. At this point, one explanation is as likely to be accurate as the other. Whatever the case, there is little doubt that the situation for the French people is about to get worse.


[1] Tarpley, Webster Griffin. 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made In USA. 5th Edition. Progressive Press. 2011.

Image: Anthony Freda Art

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 650 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

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