Boston Marathon Bombing Conspiracy: Attack Was U.S. False Flag, Says Florida Professor

It was only a matter of time. Conservative teapot of simmering rage Glenn Beck began spouting off conspiracy theories of a third suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings and a U.S. cover up earlier this week, and now a Florida professor is suggesting the attacks were a false flag operation perpetrated by the American government.

Florida Atlantic University professor James Tracy first became something of a conspiracy theorist celebrity in December of last year when he started popularizing the idea that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., which took the lives of 20 children and six adults, was a government hoax hoping to catalyze the liberal gun control lobby in Congress. Tracy's comments drew the ire and attention of many across the country, including CNN's Anderson Cooper, who essentially brought the academic on his program to condemn his controversial views.

Tracy inserted himself into the national conversation once again this week, asserting that the Boston Marathon bombings that killed three and wounded 180 were also a false flag operation carried out by the U.S. government.

The 47-year-old professor, who teaches a class on conspiracy theories, recently suggested on his blog - memoryholeblog.com - that the attack did not happen the way the media portrayed it, that the government was somehow involved, and that those wounded in the attacks were probably just "crisis actors."

"We have the official narrative that this was carried out by two individuals, two Chechen immigrants, but it could be more complex than that," Tracy told WPTV. "The government was carrying out drills on that day. We don't know exactly what was taking place, what the dynamics were."

"Photographic evidence of the event suggests the possibility of play actors getting into position after the detonation of what may in fact have been a smoke bomb or similarly benign explosive," Tracy writes on his blog. "The event closely resembles a mass-casualty drill, which for training purposes are designed to be as lifelike as possible."

Tracy adds on his blog that there is evidence that rebuts the official information being reported surrounding the bombings. The professor goes so far as to analyze the exact "force and direction" of the bomb explosions, and questions the extent of destruction they could have plausibly caused.

"What exactly took place on April 15 at the Boston Marathon is unclear, yet what is now evident is a stark divergence between the narrative description of excessive carnage meted out as a result of the explosive devices and at least a portion of the video and photographic documentation of the bombing itself," wrote Tracy.

Tracy said he remains skeptical of the accepted narrative of the bombing suspects circulating in the media.

"Look at the way that it has overall been handled," he said. "We have really a breakdown of due process. We've got a public lynching of these individuals. It's very serious."

Earlier in December, Tracy made similar claims about the Sandy Hook school shooting. The professor based his conspiracy theories almost exclusively off of the early conflicting, erroneous reports from the crime scene in Newtown, using the familiar element of mass confusion that normally follows such tragedies as proof that the real truth behind the shooting was not reported.

Not long after Tracy began espousing these polarizing theories, FAU quickly distanced itself from the professor.

"James Tracy does not speak for the university. The website on which his post appeared is not affiliated with FAU in any way," school spokesman Lisa Metcalf said to the Sun Sentinel at the time.