false flag is as old as warfare. Stealthily attack your enemy, blame their OTHER enemy for it.
Sun Tzu's book is full of stuff like this.
As far as general deception goes, it's like "the art of warfare is deception".
Being 12/7 (Pearl Harbor day for those who failed history, ha ha ha) I ought a leave a nice WW2 example of deception in warfare, of how prior to D day, General Patton was put in charge of a fake army complete with rubber tanks and jeeps, which were basically movie props, moved about by soldiers every day so that it would look like a real army to Nazi reconnaissance. They made it look as best as they could that they were going to invade at Pas de Calais, but it was really Normandy [which we all know from history class]. Anyway, this kind of thing is as old as warfare, too.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
