Operation Northwoods

JFK vs The Joint Chiefs

President Kennedy and General LaMay, the Air Force Chief of Staff (credit: AP)

Author’s Note: I am, generally, a very big proponent of the United States of America. I think it is a strong net positive for the world, especially in the last 100 years or so. This article is very critical of what the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed in the early 1960s, and this raised concerns about unchecked power before and since then. Checking that power makes the idea of America stronger, and strengthens responsible governments everywhere. I bring this to stark light in hopes of strengthening America and similar democracies, not weakening them.

In the early 1960s, my father was in Fort Pierce, Florida, about 2 hours north of Miami. He remembers long convoys of military trucks and even tanks coming down US-1 in order to be prepared for a Cuban attack.

In April 1961, the CIA (with money given them for this purpose by President Kennedy) used Cuban expatriates to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs to depose Fidel Castro. The CIA even used B-26 bombers to provide air support. After some initial success in the first days, the world found out about the ongoing invasion. At this point, Kennedy pulled further air support, and the anti-Castro American-backed forces were surrounded and captured in three days. Castro, who had allied with the Soviet Union when he came to power in 1958, was strengthened as a leader, having led the successful counter-invasion.

This sad failure is a big part of the backdrop that precipitated the infamous memo known as Operation Northwoods.

The Northwoods Memo

On March 5, 1962, the Joint Chiefs¹ asked the secretaries of the military branches to formulate a plan that would help to publicly justify a full US military invasion of Cuba. They proposed to use false and violent pretenses.

The Cover Letter of the Northwoods memo, signed by the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The link to the full memo (which was declassified in 1997) can be found at this link. You can read it in full in about 7 or 8 minutes. This article will show many key sections of this memo. Note that “Operation Mongoose” is mentioned throughout the memo. This is is the much larger and broader multi-agency mission of the US to depose Castro and end Cuba’s strong association with the Soviet Union, through many different sets of means. Project Northwoods, if enacted, would be a major escalation in Operation Mongoose.

As is clear from the first page above, the goal is to escalate the effort to depose Castro into using direct US military force. But in order to justify this domestically (and perhaps also in the eyes of the global community), consent for war must be manufactured. This manufacturing of consent has been done in many ways in many countries, from subtle propaganda to direct lies to violent false flags.

From Page 2 of the Northwoods Memo.

In this case, the Joint Chiefs recommended deceptive violence.

False Flags at Guantanamo Bay

The first focus of the memo in terms of actions is focused around the already-existing military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, created in 1903, is the first and oldest US foreign military base.

The plan was to start with rumors, and then stage a series of false flag attacks on the Guantanamo Bay US military base, making it look like Cubans were performing escalating attacks (taken from pages 7 & 8 of the Northwoods Memo):

The reference to napthalene means a fire-bombing and may also indicate using napthalene with palmitate — napalm. More importantly, the end goal of sending in “large scale United States military operations” based on completely fabricated events is quite disturbing.

But it is not the most disturbing part.

Faking Airplane Crashes

Another action recommended by the Joint Chiefs in the memo was to fake the loss of part of a US squadron of airplanes near Cuba. A detailed plan of deception was proposed (page 11):

The deception would be made even more realistic by releasing airplane parts into the ocean near the coast of Cuba via American submarine:

Even worse than this, the Joint Chiefs also proposed faking the in-flight destruction of a civilian aircraft (by switching passengers to an alternate flight and shooting down a drone that looks like a civilian charter flight).

Then they would shoot down the civilian flight (the drone, not the one with people on it) and insist the Cuban military had shot down a plane full of US civilians.

And it gets even worse:

Actual Attacks On Neighboring Countries

The Joint Chiefs also suggested creating copies of Soviet planes and using them to attack civilian ships (page 9):

In addition, it was suggested by the head of the US military to the President of the United States that these fake Cuban/Soviet planes be used to firebomb other countries, like the Dominican Republic (page 9):

Firebombing other Caribbean countries’ food crops was on the table, and blaming it on Cuba.

All this to justify US invasion of Cuba.

It may be hard to digest, hard to believe, but it gets even worse:

Fake Domestic Terror Attacks

This single sentence is one of the darker episode of US military history (bottom of page 8):

My Dad was in one of those other Florida cities.

The absolute callousness of the mindset of these generals is illustrated by their suggestion to sink a boatload of Cuban refugees “real or simulated”. Real, or simulated. Here is the passage, from page 9:

This is darkness. Thankfully, President Kennedy chose to not act on the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

I would emphasize yet again, that this was not just some set of hypotheticals as part of a brainstorming session. The heads of the US military recommended that some or all of these actions actually be implemented. They recommended to do so unanimously.

The Joint Chiefs in late 1962.

Most people are aware that our military and the CIA performed many distasteful acts throughout history. I won’t list them all here. But the utter callousness and unanimity of these recommendations needs to be stared at in the face. This is what unchecked power looks like.

Thankfully, in this case, it did end up getting checked by the President.

We know things of this type happened in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and probably in the last two decades as well. We may want to comfort ourselves that “things are different now.”

But keep in mind that there has never been a single instance of disciplinary or legal action against people that suggested or performed any of these types of plans.

Which means we have no reason to believe they have stopped. The Operation Northwoods memo wasn’t declassified until 35 years after it was presented to the President.

So it is our responsibility as Americans to create a realistic understanding of the possible mindset and capabilities of these black operations. We should push our lawmakers and journalists to keep track of and limit these government thought processes and especially these government actions. In this age of information, we as citizens can also help monitor our government. If you live in a different country, do you really think your government has not done similar things?

It is our responsibility. To the extent that we do not become the watcher of the powerful, we are complicit.

1. In the US Military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are the single heads of each of the branches of the military. At the time, this meant the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.