"OPERATION NORTHWOODS"

On September 1, 1939, World War II officially started when Nazi troops dressed in Polish uniforms "attacked" a German radio station on the border between Germany and Poland, thus providing Hitler with apparent justification to launch his invasion against the Poles. On March 13, 1962, General Lyman Lemnitzer (pictured above), the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, submitted on behalf of the Joint Chiefs an even more outrageous plan, "Operation Northwoods," to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. President Kennedy, upon review of the proposal, was furious, and General Lemnitzer shortly thereafter was denied a reappointment to the Joint Chiefs.

Lemnitzer and the other Joint Chiefs were virulent anti-Communists and were outraged by the humiliation inflicted on the United States by its mishandling of the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba. Their proposed response of "Operation Northwoods" was the stuff that tin foil-hatted conspiracy theorists dream about--except that this time it was all true. "Operation Northwoods" called for the performance of various bad things by the U.S. and then blaming them on Cuba in order to garner public support for military action against that nation. 

The most benign component of this scheme was based on the hope that John Glenn's Mercury capsule would explode in flight. If it did, there would be evidence placed to suggest that Cuba had sabotaged it. Since Glenn thwarted this aspect of the plan by surviving his space mission, there were backup scenarios, including the bombing of civilian targets in the United States, the faked shooting down of a civilian airplane over the water in or near Cuban airspace, the sinking of refugee boats coming from Cuba, the blowing up of an American warship in Guantanamo Bay, the gunning down of Cuban immigrants in the streets of the United States, the flying of a U-2 spy plane over Cuba at such a low altitude that it would be brought down, and the launching of military sorties against countries near Cuba--again, with all of these actions to be attributed to Castro.  

This plan was submitted at a time when the military leaders were convinced that the Kennedy administration was too soft on Communism and that something had to be done (even including, according to some theorists, Kennedy's assassination). It is perhaps not coincidence that one of the most popular literary works published in 1962 was Seven Days in May, an excellent novel whose premise was based on an attempted military coup against the United States. Kennedy himself affirmatively encouraged the adoption of the story into a movie, which was released in 1964. 

After Kennedy vetoed "Operation Northwoods," Lemnitzer was transferred to Europe to become the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. He was later appointed by President Gerald Ford to the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States (also known as the "Rockefeller Commission" to see if the CIA had broken American laws and if government officials had been involved in the Kennedy assassination.

For additional information on "Operation Northwoods," please obtain a copy of James Bradford's book Body of Secrets.