Difference between revisions of "Operation Northwoods"

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Operation Northwoods, or Northwoods, was a 1962 plan to generate U.S. public support for military action against the Cuban government of Fidel Castro, as part of the U.S. government's Operation Mongoose anti-Castro initiative. The plan, which was not implemented, called for various false flag actions, including simulated or real state-sponsored acts of terrorism (such as hijacked planes) on U.S. and Cuban soil. The scale and depth of its betrayal of human values is among the best direct evidence of the intent of US intelligence and the military to dominate the world at any cost; at one time, they did stoop this low. Even if this one plot against humanity is considered on its own, the possibility, at the very least, therefore exists that their schemes continue. When the historical record is considered in its entirety; those CIA crimes that are exposed, let alone the ones that have escaped investigation, still make a list with no discernible end. There is only a pause for the current CIA director to lie again; apologize and tell the world that this latest confession will be the last. It would therefore seem prudent to consider US world domination to be a probability, rather than a possibility, and to prepare accordingly.

The plan was proposed by senior U.S. Department of Defense leaders, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Louis Lemnitzer. The proposal was presented in a document entitled Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba,^[1] a collection of draft memoranda written by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) representative to the Caribbean Survey Group. The document was presented by the JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13 with one paragraph approved, as a preliminary submission for planning purposes.

The previously secret document was originally made public on November 18, 1997 by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board, a U.S. federal agency overseeing the release of government records related to John F. Kennedy's assassination. A total of about 1500 pages of once-secret military records covering 1962 to 1964 were concomitantly declassified by said Review Board.

"Appendix to Enclosure A" and "Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A" of the Northwoods document were first published online by the National Security Archive on November 6, 1998 in a joint venture with CNN as part of CNN's 1998 Cold War television documentary series — specifically, as a documentation supplement to "Episode 10: Cuba," which aired on November 29, 1998.^[2] "Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A" is the section of the document which contains the proposals to stage terrorist attacks.

The Northwoods document was published online in a more complete form (i.e., including cover memoranda) by the National Security Archive on April 30, 2001.

Content

In response to a request for pretexts for military intervention by the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project (Col. Edward Lansdale), the document lists methods (with, in some cases, outline plans) the author believed would garner public and international support for US military intervention in Cuba. These are staged attacks purporting to be of Cuban origin, with a number of them having real casualties. Central to the plan was the use of "friendly Cubans" — Cuban exiles seeking to oust Fidel Castro.

The suggestions included:

• Starting rumors about Cuba by using clandestine radios.
• Staging mock attacks, sabotages and riots at Guantanamo Bay and blaming it on Cuban forces.
• Firebombing and sinking an American ship at the Guantanamo Bay American military base — reminiscent of the USS Maine incident at Havana in 1898, which started the Spanish-American War — or destroy American aircraft and blame it on Cuban forces. (The document's first suggestion regarding the sinking of a U.S. ship is to blow up a manned ship and hence would result in U.S. Navy members being killed, with a secondary suggestion of possibly using unmanned drones and fake funerals instead.)
• "Harassment of civil air, attacks on surface shipping and destruction of US military drone aircraft by MIG type [sic] planes would be useful as complementary actions."
• Destroying an unmanned drone masquerading as a commercial aircraft supposedly full of "college students off on a holiday". This proposal was the one supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• Staging a "terror campaign", including the "real or simulated" sinking of Cuban refugees
• "We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington. The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute sic 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."
• Burning crops by dropping incendiary devices in Haiti, Dominican Republic or elsewhere.

James Bamford summarized Operation Northwoods in his Body of Secrets thus:

Related Operation Mongoose proposals

In addition to Operation Northwoods, under the Operation Mongoose program the Department of Defense had a number of similar proposals to be taken against the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro.

Twelve of these proposals come from a February 2, 1962 memorandum entitled "Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass or Disrupt Cuba," written by Brig. Gen. William H. Craig and submitted to Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, the commander of the Operation Mongoose project. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] (Note: the foregoing links to Brig. Gen. Craig's memo are at this time offline. The following are backup links: [7] [8] [9] [10] [11].)

The memorandum outlines Operation Bingo, a plan to, in its words, "create an incident which has the appearance of an attack on U.S. facilities (GMO) in Cuba, thus providing an excuse for use of U.S. military might to overthrow the current government of Cuba."

It also includes Operation Dirty Trick, a plot to blame Castro if the 1962 Mercury manned space flight carrying John Glenn crashed, saying "The objective is to provide irrevocable proof that, should the MERCURY manned orbit flight fail, the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba [sic]." It continues, "This to be accomplished by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans."

Even after General Lyman Lemnitzer lost his job as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Chiefs of Staff still planned pretext operations at least into 1963. A different Department of Defense policy paper created in 1963 (reported on by the Associated Press on January 29, 1998 [12] and later in journalist James Bamford's book Body of Secrets, published April 24, 2001[13]) discussed a plan to make it appear that Cuba had attacked a member of the Organization of American States (OAS) so that the United States could retaliate. The Pentagon document says of one of the scenarios, "A contrived 'Cuban' attack on an OAS member could be set up, and the attacked state could be urged to take measures of self-defense and request assistance from the U.S. and OAS." The plan expresses confidence that by this action "the U.S. could almost certainly obtain the necessary two-thirds support among OAS members for collective action against Cuba."

Included in the nations the Joint Chiefs suggested as targets United States for covert attacks were: Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Since both were members of the British Commonwealth, the Joint Chiefs hoped that by secretly attacking them and then falsely blaming Cuba, the United States could incite the people of the United Kingdom into supporting a war against Castro.[14] As the Pentagon report noted, "Any of the contrived situations described 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 should 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 Pentagon report even suggested covertly paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United States: "The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on [the U.S. Navy base at] Guantanamo."

Reaction

It has been reported that John F. Kennedy personally rejected the Northwoods proposal, but no official record of this exists. The proposal was sent for approval to the Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, but was not implemented. President Kennedy removed General Lyman Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly afterward, although he became Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in January 1963.

The continuing push against the Cuban government by internal elements of the U.S. military and intelligence community (the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, The Cuban Project, etc.) prompted President John F. Kennedy to attempt to rein in burgeoning hardline anti-Communist sentiment that was intent on proactive, aggressive action against communist movements around the globe. After the Bay of Pigs, John F. Kennedy fired then CIA director Allen W. Dulles, Deputy Director Charles P. Cabell, as well as Deputy Director Richard Bissell, and turned his attention towards Vietnam.

Kennedy also took steps to bring discipline to the CIA's Cold War and paramilitary operations by drafting a National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) which called for the shift of Cold War operations to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and The Pentagon as well as a major change in the role of the CIA to exclusively deal in intelligence gathering.

Conclusions

The World Trade Center demolition is hereby shown to be a continuation, if an escalation, of false flag operations as no more than business as usual. It does not seem to be necessary that the military were involved-the Air Force had been removed from the scene on exercises, the CIA has a well-known degree of covert and hard-to-trace access to military planes. The US nationalist, imperial thinkers had shown themselves to be capable of conceiving of such a plot: Northwoods, the Project for a New American Century, and other related documents show a steady devolution of morals and evolution of deception. But they also show plans that have in common, particulars of the 911 plan itself.

"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor" -
PNAC-Rebuilding America's Defenses-Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century^[3]

Operations, both covert and overt, continue after the threat of communism (to capitalists) has ended. Rather than merely considering this to be merely a bizarre and unfortunate mutation of US military thought, it is more likely that the Wars for Oil are in fact a battle, albeit a penultimate one, in the Wars for Capitalism. The new threat is that the CIA's operations are more likely to be carried out in the open, with support not only manufactured by, but largely composed purely of, a prevalence of propaganda over true popular opinion. However, since we do not have to merely assume that the CIA has not given up covert operations entirely, but have evidence of it in Iran and China, we must also speculate that there are other actions continuing. The Arab Spring, in particular, shows signs of having been in effect (opportunistic adventurism gaining control of Libya entirely over UN objections), if not in origin (if a person can convince themselves to set themselves on fire, surely someone trained in persuasion could convince them instead), part of the US plan of Seven countries in five years

See also

• Bay of Pigs Invasion
• The Cuban Project (Operation Mongoose)
• Body of Secrets
• Cuba-United States relations
• Operation WASHTUB - a plan to plant a phony Soviet arms cache in Nicaragua to demonstrate Guatemalan ties to Moscow. ^[4]

Further reading

• Jon Elliston Psywar on Cuba (Ocean Press, 1999) ISBN 1-876175-09-5
• James Bamford, Body of Secrets (Doubleday; 1st edition, 24 April 2001) ISBN 0-385-49907-8

References

1. ↑ Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba. National Security Archive.
2. ↑ Cold War - Episode 10: Cuba. CNN.
3. ↑ PNAC -full text
4. ↑ http://www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/Matt%20Ward/MW_Appendix_A.htm, Accessed February 2006

External links

• Operation Northwoods document in PDF format from the independent, non-governmental research institute The National Security Archive at the George Washington University Gelman Library
• Full text of Operation Northwoods in searchable HTML format
• Appendix to Enclosure A, "Memorandum for Chief of Operations, Cuba Project" and Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A, "Pretexts to Justify U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba" (circa March 1962), first published online on November 6, 1998 as part of CNN's Cold War documentary series
• Operation Northwoods document in JPEG format
• "Media Advisory: National Archives Releases Additional Materials Reviewed by the Assassination Records Review Board," Assassination Records Review Board (a division of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration), November 17, 1997
• "Pentagon Planned 1960s Cuban 'Terror Campaign'," Jim Wolf, Reuters, November 18, 1997
• "Documents Show Pentagon's Anti-Castro Plots During Kennedy Years," Tim Weiner, New York Times, November 19, 1997
• "Records Show Plan To Provoke Castro," Mike Feinsilber, Associated Press (AP), January 29, 1998
• "Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass, or Disrupt Cuba," memo from Brig. Gen. William Craig to Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, February 2, 1962; the following are photoscans of this document: [15][16][17][18]. (Note: the foregoing links to Brig. Gen. Craig's memo are at this time offline. The following are backup links: [19] [20] [21] [22] [23].)
• "New book on NSA sheds light on secrets—U.S. terror plan was Cuba invasion pretext," Scott Shane and Tom Bowman, Baltimore Sun, April 24, 2001
• "Memo: U.S. Mulled Fake Cuba Pretext," Ron Kampeas, Associated Press (AP), April 25, 2001
• "'Body of Secrets' by James Bamford; The author of a pioneering work on the NSA delivers a new book of revelations about the mysterious agency's coverups, eavesdropping and secret missions," Bruce Schneier, Salon.com, April 25, 2001
• "U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba; Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba," David Ruppe, ABC News, May 1, 2001
• "The Truth Is Out There—1962 memo from National Security Agency," Harper's Magazine, July 2001
• "Head Cases," Chris Floyd, Moscow Times, December 21, 2001; also appeared in St. Petersburg Times, December 25, 2001
• "Operation Mongoose: The PSYOP Papers," Jon Elliston, ParaScope, Inc., 1998
• Excerpt from Chapter 4 of James Bamford's Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (Doubleday, April 24, 2001)
• Operation Northwoods on SourceWatch
• The Terrorist Attacks Planned by the American Joint Chief of Staff against its Population, Voltaire Network, Nov. 5, 2001.