Operation Northwoods: The CIA’s plan to
commit terror attacks in America. (Somehow, this all sound oddly familiar)
“The
courses of action which follow are a preliminary submission suitable only for
planning purposes. We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the
Miami area, in other 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 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 published. Exploding a few plastic bombs in
carefully chosen spots, the arrest of(supposed) Cuban agents and the release of
prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in
projecting the idea of an irresponsible government”
In the 1990s, through unclassified
documents, the world learned about the CIA’s Operation Northwoods begun in the
early 1960s as a means to rid the world of Cuba’s dictator, Fidel Castro by causing
a war between the US and that island nation.
Our intelligence sources and our
state department were caught mostly unprepared for the toppling of the once
American dominated Batista government by Castro in 1959. For the next decade,
the US government did its best to discredit Castro and remove him from power.
But almost all of those efforts failed and failed miserably including the ill
planned Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961.
In 1962 Operation Northwoods was
created by the CIA as a solution to the Castro problem. The plan was drafted by
the Joint Chiefs of Staff and signed by Chairman Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer. The operation
called for a series of terrorist attacks on American military bases and
civilian targets, conducted by CIA
personnel disguised as Cuban agents. Federal
officials would find direct evidence linking the attacks to Cuba and therefore have full justification for an
invasion of Cuba.
In the overall plan, Anti-Castro
Cubans living in the US, disguised as Castro’s army, would
attack the Army Base at Guantanamo Bay while a series of terrorist attacks
would be conducted by CIA agents in Miami (Where a number of Anti-Castro Cubans
would be murdered) and Washington and
other places.
There was also a plan to hijack a
commercial jet and simulate a crash with an empty airplane that would give the
appearance of all of the innocent passengers being killed. A boatload of Cuban
refugees on their way to Florida would be killed and that too, would also be
blamed on Castro. In the crashed plane plan, the agency suggested using Cuban
refugee pilots to provoke a distracting in-flight argument with a Cuban pilot
over the radio. There was another plan to distribute valid one-way airline
tickets to Mexico City or Caracas, Venezuela, to create unrest and dissension
amongst the Cuban people.'
There was a plan for a random, mass
shooting of civilians on the street by men dressed as Cuban military, the
bombings of various well known buildings, and a sort of “Remember the Maine”
boat bombing. The last stage of the plan also called for a fleet of captured
MiG fighter jets to fly over American airspace, harassing civil aviation and
perhaps even shooting down an American airliner bound for the Caribbean.
President Kennedy personally
rejected the proposal. One member read “The President said bluntly that we were
not discussing the use of military force, that General Lemnitzer might find the
U.S. so engaged in Berlin or elsewhere that he couldn't use the contemplated 4
divisions in Cuba."
In a follow-up memorandum to Secretary
of Defense Robert McNamara, General Lemnitzer
wrote that the Joint Chiefs believed that the Cuban problem “must be solved in the
near future. Further, they (The Joint Chiefs) see no prospect of early success
in overthrowing the present Communist regime either as a result of internal
uprisings or external political, economic or internal uprisings. Accordingly
they believe that military intervention by the United States will be required
to overthrow Castro.
Kennedy then removed Lemnitzer as
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, although he became Supreme Allied
Commander of NATO in January 1963. He remains the only person in history to
serve as Army Chief of Staff, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Supreme
Allied Commander for NATO.
But the rift between Kennedy, the
Intelligence communities and the military only worsened because the Pentagon
and the spies began to believe that Kennedy was too soft on Cuba. The rift only
widened during Kennedy's disagreements with the service chiefs over the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
Remarkably, almost unbelievably, in
1975, President Gerald Ford appointed Lemnitzer to the Rockefeller Commission
on CIA Activities within the United States. Part of the committees job was to investigate whether the Central Intelligence
Agency had committed acts that violated US laws, and allegations that E. Howard
Hunt and Frank Sturgis were involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.