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Operation Northwoods
US PLANNED FAKE TERROR
ATTACKS ON CITIZENS
TO CREATE SUPPORT FOR CUBAN WAR
From https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385499078/qid=1002637909/sr=2-1/ref=sr_8_7_1/002-0832304-3091212"> BODY OF SECRETS, James Bamford, Doubleday, 2001, Operation More at ... https://larouchepub.com/other/2001/2839operation_northwds.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-te.md.nsa24apr24.story
p.82 and following.
In [Joint Chief's chair] Lemnitzer's view, the
country would be far better off if the generals could
take over. [JFK assassination legend has it some general
presided over the fudgy JFK autopsy. --Mk]
For those
military officers who were sitting on the fence, the
Kennedy administration's botched Bay of Pigs invasion was
the last straw. "The Bay of Pigs fiasco broke the
dike," said one report at the time. "President
Kennedy was pilloried by the super patriots as a 'no-win'
chief . . . The Far Right became a fount of proposals
born of frustration and put forward in the name of
anti-Communism. . . Active-duty commanders played host to
anti-Communist seminars on their bases and attended or
addressed Right-wing meetings elsewhere."
Although no one in Congress could have known it at the
time, Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped
over the edge.
According to secret and long-hidden documents obtained
for Body of Secrets, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up
and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan
ever created by the U.S. government. In the name of
antiCommunism, they proposed launching a secret and
bloody war of terrorism against their own country in
order to trick the American public into supporting an
ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba.
Northwoods
Click images for full sized
scans
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plan, which had
the written approval of the Chairman and every member of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to
be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees
fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of
violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C.,
Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings
they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using
phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus
giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the
public and international backing, they needed to launch
their war.
The idea may actually have originated
with President Eisenhower in the last days of his
administration. With the Cold War hotter than ever and
the recent U-2 scandal fresh in the public's memory, the
old general wanted to go out with a win. He wanted
desperately to invade Cuba in the weeks leading up to
Kennedy's inauguration; indeed, on January 3 he told
Lemnitzer and other aides in his Cabinet Room that he
would move against Castro before the inauguration if only
the Cubans gave him a really good excuse. Then, with time
growing short, Eisenhower floated an idea. If Castro
failed to provide that excuse, perhaps, he said, the
United States "could think of manufacturing
something that would be generally acceptable." What
he was suggesting was a pretext a bombing, an attack, an
act of sabotage carried out secretly against the United
States by the United States. Its purpose would be to
justify the launching of a war. It was a dangerous
suggestion by a desperate president.
Although no such war took place, the idea was not lost
on General Lemnitzer But he and his colleagues were
frustrated by Kennedy's failure to authorize their plan,
and angry that Castro had not provided an excuse to
invade.
The final straw may have come during a White House
meeting on February 26, 1962. Concerned that General
Lansdale's various covert action plans under Operation
Mongoose were simply becoming more outrageous and going
nowhere, Robert Kennedy told him to drop all anti-Castro
efforts. Instead, Lansdale was ordered to concentrate for
the next three months strictly on gathering intelligence
about Cuba. It was a humiliating defeat for Lansdale, a
man more accustomed to praise than to scorn.
As the Kennedy brothers appeared to suddenly "go
soft" on Castro, Lemnitzer could see his opportunity
to invade Cuba quickly slipping away. The attempts to
provoke the Cuban public to revolt seemed dead and
Castro, unfortunately, appeared to have no inclination to
launch any attacks against Americans or their property
Lemnitzer and the other Chiefs knew there was only one
option left that would ensure their war. They would have
to trick the American public and world opinion into
hating Cuba so much that they would not only go along,
but would insist that he and his generals launch their
war against Castro. "World opinion, and the United
Nations forum," said a secret JCS document,
"should be favorably affected by developing the
international image of the Cuban government as rash and
irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable
threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere."
Operation Northwoods called for a war in which many
patriotic Americans and innocent Cubans would die
senseless deaths, all to satisfy the egos of twisted
generals back in Washington, safe in their taxpayer
financed homes and limousines.
One idea seriously considered involved the launch of
John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth. On
February 20,1962, Glenn was to lift off from Cape
Canaveral, Florida, on his historic journey. The flight
was to carry the banner of America's virtues of truth,
freedom, and democracy into orbit high over the planet.
But Lemnitzer and his Chiefs had a different idea. They
proposed to Lansdale that, should the rocket explode and
kill Glenn, "the objective is to provide irrevocable
proof that . . . the fault lies with the Communists et al
Cuba [sic.]"
This would be accomplished, Lemnitzer continued,
"by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which
would prove electronic interference on the part of the
Cubans." Thus, as NASA prepared to send the first
American into space, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were
preparing to use John Glenn's possible death as a pretext
to launch a war.
Glenn lifted into history without mishap, leaving
Lemnitzer and the Chiefs to begin devising new plots
which they suggested be carried out "within the time
frame of the next few months."
Among the actions recommended was "a series of
well coordinated incidents to take place in and
around" the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
This included dressing "friendly" Cubans in
Cuban military uniforms and then have them "start
riots near the main gate of the base. Others would
pretend to be saboteurs inside the base. Ammunition would
be blown up, fires started, aircraft sabotaged, mortars
fired at the base with damage to installations."
The suggested operations grew progressively more
outrageous. Another called for an action similar to the
infamous incident in February 1898 when an explosion
aboard the battleship Maine in Havana harbor killed 266
U.S. sailors. Although the exact cause of the explosion
remained undetermined, it sparked the Spanish-American
War with Cuba. Incited by the deadly blast, more than one
million men volunteered for duty. Lemnitzer and his
generals came up with a similar plan. "We could blow
up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,"
they proposed; "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers
would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
There seemed no limit to their fanaticism: "We
could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the
Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in
Washington," they wrote. "The terror campaign
could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the
United States.
We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida
(real or simulated). . . . We could foster attempts on
lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the
extent of wounding in instances to be widely
publicized."
Bombings were proposed, false arrests, hijackings:
*"Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully
chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release
of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement
also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an
irresponsible government."
*"Advantage can be taken of the sensitivity of
the Dominican [Republic] Air Force to intrusions within
their national air space. 'Cuban' B-26 or C-46 type
aircraft could make cane burning raids at night. Soviet
Bloc incendiaries could be found. This could be coupled
with 'Cuban' messages to the Communist underground in the
Dominican Republic and 'Cuban' shipments of arms which
would be found, or intercepted, on the beach. Use of MiG
type aircraft by U.S. pilots could provide additional
provocation."
*"Hijacking attempts against civil air and
surface craft could appear to continue as harassing
measures condoned by the Government of Cuba."
Among the most elaborate schemes was to "create
an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a
Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered
civil airliner en route from the United States to
Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination
would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to
cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college
students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with
a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled
flight."
Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs worked out a complex
deception:
An aircraft at Elgin AFB would be painted and numbered
as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft
belonging to a CJA proprietary organization in the Miami
area. At a designated time the duplicate would be
substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be
loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under
carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered
aircraft would be converted to a drone [a remotely
controlled unmanned aircraft]. Take off times of the
drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled
to allow a rendezvous south of Florida.
From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying
aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly
into an auxiliary field at Elgin AFB where arrangements
will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return
the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft
meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan.
When over Cuba the drone will be transmitting on the
international distress frequency a "May Day"
message stating he is under attack by Cuban MiG aircraft.
The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of
the aircraft, which will be triggered by radio signal.
This will allow ICAO [International Civil Aviation
Organization radio stations in the Western Hemisphere to
tell the U.S. what has happened to the aircraft instead
of the U.S. trying to "sell" the incident.
Finally, there was a plan to "make it appear that
Communist Cuban MiGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over
international waters in an unprovoked attack." It
was a particularly believable operation given the decade
of shoot downs that had just taken place.
In the final sentence of his letter to Secretary
McNamara recommending the operations, Lemnitzer made a
grab for even more power asking that the Joint Chiefs be
placed in charge of carrying out Operation Northwoods and
the invasion. "It is recommended," he wrote,
"that this responsibility for both oven and covert
military operations be assigned to the Joint Chiefs of
Staff."
At 2:30 on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 13, 1962,
Lemnitzer went over last-minute details of Operation
Northwoods with his covert action chief, Brigadier
General William H. Craig, and signed the document. He
then went to a "special meeting" in McNamara's
office. An hour later he met with Kennedy's military
representative, General Maxwell Taylor. What happened
during those meetings is unknown. But three days later,
President Kennedy told Lemnitzer that there was virtually
no possibility that the U.S. would ever use overt
military force in Cuba.
Undeterred, Lemnitzer and the Chiefs persisted,
virtually to the point of demanding that they be given
authority to invade and take over Cuba. About a month
after submitting Operation Northwoods, they met the
"tank," as the JCS conference room was called,
and agreed on the wording of a tough memorandum to
McNamara. "The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that
the Cuban problem must be solved in the near
future," they wrote. "Further, they see no
prospect of early success in overthrowing the present
communist regime either as a result of internal uprising
or external political, economic or psychological
pressures. Accordingly they believe that military
intervention by the United States will be required to
overthrow the present communist regime."
Lemnitzer was virtually rabid in his hatred of
Communism in general and Castro in particular "The
Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the United States can
undertake military intervention in Cuba without risk of
general war" he continued. "They also believe
that the intervention can be accomplished rapidly enough
to minimize communist opportunities for solicitation of
UN action." However; what Lemnitzer was suggesting
was not freeing the Cuban people, who were largely in
support of Castro, but imprisoning them in a U.S.
military-controlled police state. "Forces would
assure rapid essential military control of Cuba," he
wrote. "Continued police action would be
required."
Concluding, Lemnitzer did not mince words: "[T]he
Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that a national policy of
early military intervention in Cuba be adopted by the
United States. They also recommend that such intervention
be undertaken as soon as possible and preferably before
the release of National Guard and Reserve forces
presently on active duty."
By then McNamara had virtually no confidence in his
military chief and was rejecting nearly every proposal
the general sent to him. The rejections became so
routine, said one of Lemnitzer's former staff officers,
that the staffer told the general that the situation was
putting the military in an "embarrassing rut."
But Lemnitzer replied, "I am the senior military
office--it's my job to state what I believe and it's his
[McNamara's] job to approve or disapprove."
"McNamara's arrogance was astonishing," said
Lemnitzer's aide, who knew nothing of Operation
Northwoods. "He gave General Lemnitzer very short
shrift and treated him like a schoolboy. The general
almost stood at attention when he came into the room.
Everything was 'Yes, sir' and 'No, sir.'
Within months, Lemnitzer was denied a second term as
JCS chairman and transferred to Europe as chief of NATO.
Years later President Gerald Ford appointed Lemnitzer, a
darling of the Republican right, to the President's
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Lemnitzer's Cuba
chief, Brigadier General Craig, was also transferred.
Promoted to major general, he spent three years as chief
of the Army Security Agency, NSA's military arm.
Because of the secrecy and illegality of Operation
Northwoods, all details remained hidden for forty years.
Lemnitzer may have thought that all copies of the
relevant documents had been destroyed; he was not one to
leave compromising material lying around. Following the
Bay of Pigs debacle, for example, he ordered Brigadier
General David W Gray, Craig's predecessor as chief of the
Cuba project within the JCS, to destroy all his notes
concerning Joint Chiefs actions and discussions during
that period. Gray's meticulous notes were the only
detailed official records of what happened within the JCS
during that time. According to Gray, Lemnitzer feared a
congressional investigation and therefore wanted any
incriminating evidence destroyed.
With the evidence destroyed, Lemnitzer felt free to
lie to Congress. When asked, during secret hearings
before a Senate committee, if he knew of any Pentagon
plans for a direct invasion of Cuba he said he did not.
Yet detailed JCS invasion plans had been drawn up even
before Kennedy was inaugurated. And additional plans had
been developed since. The consummate planner and man of
details also became evasive, suddenly encountering great
difficulty in recalling key aspects of the operation, as
if he had been out of the country during the period. It
was a sorry spectacle. Senator Gore called for Lemnitzer
to be fired. "We need a shake up of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff" he said. "We direly need a new
chairman, as well as new members." No one had any
idea of Operation Northwoods.
Because so many documents were destroyed, it is
difficult to determine how many senior officials were
aware of Operation Northwoods. As has been described, the
document was signed and fully approved by Lemnitzer and
the rest of the Joint Chiefs and addressed to the
Secretary of Defense for his signature. Whether it went
beyond McNamara to the president and the attorney general
is not known.
Even after Lemnitzer lost his job, the Joint Chiefs
kept planning "pretext" operations at least
into 1963. Among their proposals was a deliberately
create a war between Cuba and any of a number of .n
American neighbors. This would give the United States
military an excuse to come in on the side of Cuba's
adversary and get rid of "A contrived 'Cuban' attack
on an OAS [Organization of Americas] member could be set
up," said one proposal, "and the attacked state
could be urged to 'take measures of self-defense and
request ice from the U.S. and OAS; the U.S. could almost
certainly obtain necessary two-thirds support among OAS
members for collective action against Cuba."
Among the nations they suggested that the United
States secretly were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Both
were members of the Commonwealth; thus, by secretly
attacking them and then blaming Cuba, the United States
could lure England into the war Castro. The report noted,
"Any of the contrived situations de above are
inherently, extremely risky in our democratic system in
which security can be maintained, after the fact, with
very great difficulty. If the decision should be made to
set up a contrived situation it be one in which
participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the
most highly trusted covert personnel. This suggests the
infeasibility of the use of military units for any aspect
of the contrived situation."
The report even suggested secretly paying someone in
the Castro government to attack the United States:
"The only area remaining for ration then would be to
bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders to initiate
an attack on [the U.S. naval base at] Guantanamo."
The act suggested--bribing a foreign nation to launch a
violent attack American military installation--was
treason.
In May 1963, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul H.
Nitze sent a the White House proposing "a possible
scenario whereby an attack on a United States
reconnaissance aircraft could be exploited toward the end
of effecting the removal of the Castro regime." In
the event Cuba attacked a U-2, the plan proposed sending
in additional American pilots, this time on dangerous,
unnecessary low-level reconnaissance missions with the
expectation that they would also be shot down, thus
provoking a war "[T]he U.S. could undertake various
measures designed to stimulate the Cubans to provoke a
new incident," said the plan. Nitze, however, did
not volunteer to be one of the pilots.
One idea involved sending fighters across the island
on "harassing reconnaissance" and
"show-off" missions "flaunting our freedom
of action, hoping to stir the Cuban military to
action." "Thus," said the plan,
"depending above all on whether the Cubans were or
could be made to be trigger-happy, the development of the
initial downing of a reconnaissance plane could lead at
best to the elimination of Castro, perhaps to the removal
of Soviet troops and the installation of ground
inspection in Cuba, or at the least to our demonstration
of firmness on reconnaissance." About a month later,
a low-level flight was made across Cuba, but
unfortunately for the Pentagon, instead of bullets it
produced only a protest.
Lemnitzer was a dangerous-perhaps even
unbalanced-right-wing extremist in an extraordinarily
sensitive position during a critical period. But
Operation Northwoods also had the support of every single
member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even senior
Pentagon official Paul Nitze argued in favor of provoking
a phony war with Cuba. The fact that the most senior
members of all the services and the Pentagon could be so
out of touch with reality and the meaning of democracy
would be hidden for four decades.
In retrospect, the documents offer new insight into
the thinking of the military's star-studded leadership.
Although they never succeeded in launching America into a
phony war with Cuba, they may have done so with Vietnam.
More than 50,000 Americans and more than 2 million
Vietnamese were eventually killed in that war.
It has long been suspected that the 1964 Gulf of
Tonkin incident-the spark that led to America's long war
in Vietnam-was largely staged or provoked by U.S.
officials in order to build up congressional and public
support for American involvement. Over the years, serious
questions have been raised about the alleged attack by
North Vietnamese patrol boats on two American destroyers
in the Gulf But defenders of the Pentagon have always
denied such charges, arguing that senior officials would
never engage in such deceit.
Now, however, in light of the Operation Northwoods
documents, it at deceiving the public and trumping up
wars for Americans to fight and die in was standard,
approved policy at the highest levels of the Pentagon. In
fact, the Gulf of Tonkin seems right out of the Operation
Northwoods playbook: "We could blow up a U.S. ship
in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba . . . casualty lists in
U.S. newspapers cause a helpful wave of
indignation." One need only replace "Guantanamo
Bay" with "Tonkin Gulf," and
"Cuba" with "North Vietnam" and the
Gulf of Tonkin incident may or may not have been
stage-managed, but the senior Pentagon leadership at the
time was clearly capable of such deceit.
Book epigram:
"The public has a duty to watch its Government
closely and keep it on the right track."
--Lieutenant Gen. Kenneth A. Minihan, USAF, Director,
NSA, _NSA Newsletter_, June 1997