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We have to be very careful when it comes to weighing U.S. intelligence reports on foreign threats. Remember the CIA’s “slam dunk” case for nuclear weapons in Iraq? North Vietnamese attacks on an American warship in the Tonkin Gulf?

Both false, it would turn out many thousands of deaths later.

But if it’s true that Russia has an “extremely elaborate” plan to stage a phony event showing the aftermath of a Ukrainian attack on Russian-speakers and perhaps even Russia itself, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time it’s used  a “false flag” incident to justify military action.

In 1999, Russia’s internal security force, the FSB, carried out a string of horrific apartment building bombings that the Kremlin blamed on Chechen rebels. The bombings, equivalent psychologically to the 9/11 Al Qaeda airliner attacks on New York and the Pentagon,  whipped up Russians’ fears of the Chechens and eventually vaulted Prime Minister Vladimir Putin into the presidency.

In 2014, Putin’s intelligence se…