Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Operation Northwoods: A Documented U.S. Plan Using Terrorism To Povoke war

Steven | 04.11.2002 03:07

"Operation Northwoods" was approved by EVERY Joint Chiefs Of Staff (U.S. top military ). In this plan, the U.S. would hijack U.S. planes, blow-up U.S. ships, and create terrorist acts in U.S. cities and blame it on (IN THIS CASE) Cuba, in order to provoke the U.S. into war (as well as justifying this war to the world).
"9/11 Timeline" at www.unansweredquestions.org



ABCNEWS.COM

Friendly Fire
Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba
By David Ruppe


N E W Y O R K, May 1 — In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly
drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create
public support for a war against Cuba.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible
assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas,
hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S.
cities.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international
community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.
America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing:
"We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists
in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by
investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency,
the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he
notes.
The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to
President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they
apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40
years.
"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so
long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing,"
Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.
"The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the public will, and here
this is the complete reverse, the military trying to trick the American people into a war that
they want but that nobody else wants."
Gunning for War
The documents show "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," writes Bamford.
The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John Glenn during
the first attempt to put an American into orbit as a false pretext for war with Cuba, the
documents show.
Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, "the objective is to provide
irrevocable proof … that the fault lies with the Communists et all Cuba [sic]."
The plans were motivated by an intense desire among senior military leaders to depose
Castro, who seized power in 1959 to become the first communist leader in the Western
Hemisphere — only 90 miles from U.S. shores.
The earlier CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles had been a
disastrous failure, in which the military was not allowed to provide firepower.The military
leaders now wanted a shot at it.
"The whole thing was so bizarre," says Bamford, noting public and international support
would be needed for an invasion, but apparently neither the American public, nor the
Cuban public, wanted to see U.S. troops deployed to drive out Castro.
Reflecting this, the U.S. plan called for establishing prolonged military — not democratic
— control over the island nation after the invasion.
"That's what we're supposed to be freeing them from," Bamford says. "The only way we
would have succeeded is by doing exactly what the Russians were doing all over the
world, by imposing a government by tyranny, basically what we were accusing Castro
himself of doing."
'Over the Edge'
The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L.
Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13,
1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military.
Whether the Joint Chiefs' plans were rejected by McNamara in the meeting is not clear.
But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer directly there was virtually no
possibility of ever using overt force to take Cuba, Bamford reports. Within months,
Lemnitzer would be denied another term as chairman and transferred to another job.
The secret plans came at a time when there was distrust in the military leadership about
their civilian leadership, with leaders in the Kennedy administration viewed as too liberal,
insufficiently experienced and soft on communism. At the same time, however, there real
were concerns in American society about their military overstepping its bounds.
There were reports U.S. military leaders had encouraged their subordinates to vote
conservative during the election.
And at least two popular books were published focusing on a right-wing military
leadership pushing the limits against government policy of the day. The Senate Foreign
Relations Committee published its own report on right-wing extremism in the military,
warning a "considerable danger" in the "education and propaganda activities of military
personnel" had been uncovered. The committee even called for an examination of any ties
between Lemnitzer and right-wing groups. But Congress didn't get wind of Northwoods,
says Bamford.
"Although no one in Congress could have known at the time," he writes, "Lemnitzer and
the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge."
Even after Lemnitzer was gone, he writes, the Joint Chiefs continued to plan "pretext"
operations at least through 1963.
One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that
the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government
to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base — an act, which Bamford notes,
would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba,
with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war.
"There really was a worry at the time about the military going off crazy and they did, but
they never succeeded, but it wasn't for lack of trying," he says.
After 40 Years
Ironically, the documents came to light, says Bamford, in part because of the 1992 Oliver
Stone film JFK, which examined the possibility of a conspiracy behind the assassination of
President Kennedy.
As public interest in the assassination swelled after JFK's release, Congress passed a law
designed to increase the public's access to government records related to the assassination.
The author says a friend on the board tipped him off to the documents.
Afraid of a congressional investigation, Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint Chiefs documents
related to the Bay of Pigs destroyed, says Bamford. But somehow, these remained.
"The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after," says Bamford

Steven

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech