In 1962, during the
Kennedy administration, a
plan was hatched by the
Joint Chiefs of the
Armed Forces, under the leadership of Army
General Lyman L. Lemnitzer. In order to draw
America into a war with
Cuba, specific targets would be struck, in order to goad the populace into supporting the war effort. The difference between the plan, known as
Operation Northwoods, and other military operations would be that American military personel would not only be striking at Cuban targets, but also at choice, public American targets. The
Joint Chiefs even went so far as to speculate that they "could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and that "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
So alleges a recent book, which received only nominal national attention. The book, titled
Body of Secrets and written by journalist
James Bamford, is a history of the
National Security Agency, or
NSA. It contains references to documents that were made available some 40 years after the events they pertain to, after the passing of the
Freedom of Information Act. These documents, it seems, were found by an anonymous source on a board that Bamford frequented, and he later confirmed were in the national archives.
The plan apparantly was pitched to Kennedy's
National Security Advisor,
Robert McNamara, on March 13th of 1962.
McNamara's answer was never clearly recorded, but
Kennedy himself told
Lemnitzer that there was virtually no chance of ever again using military force against
Cuba. A few months later,
Lemnitzer was removed from his position and transferred.
The
ABCNews article on the book says that
Bamford claims that other plans were also advanced. Some of these include covertly begining a war between another
Latin American country and
Cuba and then publicly intervening, paying some of
Castro's forces to attack Americans at
Guatanamo Bay, intentionally risking
U-2 pilots in low-flying missions so that they might be shot down and give pretext for
war, and causing a malfunction in
John Glenn's
spaceflight and then blaming the
Cubans for
sabotage.
Had any of these operations been tried, the
Joint Chiefs also wanted permission to establish a military government in
Cuba. This, as
Bamford notes, would be "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."
It seems that the Government, or at least portions of it, are out to get you sometimes.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html