Operation Northwoods: The Time We Undeniably Planned to Trick the American Public Into Supporting a War Against Cuba

What's undeniable about the Truther movement, all nonsense, pseudoscience and straight up hallucinations aside, is that there is historical precedent behind the idea of the U.S. government launching so-called "false flag" attacks to dupe the public into blindly supporting the thorough shelling/hating of Perceived Enemy X.

It was the early 1960s, height of Missile Crisis era Cold War tensions. Fidel Castro was the new face of Cuban Communism, and the U.S. government, feeling quite threatened by our red neighbor to the southwest, needed to quickly drum up public backing for a potential clash with the island nation. So what does it do? Covertly plot all sorts of twisted CIA chicanery, of course.

Operation Northwoods outlined hijackings and bombings against "friendly" Cuban defectors, U.S. military and civilian targets alike, in addition to dispersing bunk evidence and rumors ("many") via clandestine radio. The hope was that these top-secret terror and disinformation campaigns, whether real or simulated, would implicate the Cuban regime. And while the proposals included in the plan (PDF) were never accepted nor executed, Operation Northwoods had written approval of the Chairman (Lyman Lemnitzer) and all members of his Joint Chiefs of Staff and was formally submitted to Robert McNamara, then Secretary of Defense.

The proposed attacks centered in on Florida, Washington, D.C., and southwest Cuba. And there were many.

Incidents to be carried out in and around Guantanamo could begin with the radio rumors, followed by dropping some "friendly," uniformed Cubans over naval base fences to stage attacks. From here, operatives would capture the same "friendly" saboteurs within the base, begin rioting near the main gate, detonate all ammunition within the base, set fire to aircraft and hurl mortar shells back into the base. After capturing both assault teams now bearing down from the sea into the vicinity of Guantanamo City and militia groups bearing down on the base, operatives would douse a ship in napthalene, torch the bastard, sink it at harbor's entrance, then stage show funerals for the mock-victims.

The U.S. could then respond to this Cuban "attack" by carrying out offensive operations to secure water and power supplies, and crush any remaining artillery and mortar stations that threatened the base. Et voila. The stage would be set to "commence large scale military operations."

Operation Northwoods even considered a "Remember the Maine" (USS Maine (ACR-1)) sort of incident, whereby the U.S. would detonate a ship (stocked with U.S. civilians, mind you) of its own in Guantanamo Bay, blame the Commies, and then detonate a drone vessel somewhere else in Cuban waters. It was argued that Cuban ships and planes simply checking things out would be a compelling enough case that the ship had been under siege. And the hope was that lists in U.S. newspapers of all those dead would stir "a helpful wave of national indignation."

Incidents to be carried out stateside would develop in the Miami area, other Florida cities or even the Capitol, a Communist Cuban terror campaign directed at refugees seeking haven in the U.S. Maybe the Americans could sink a boat full of Cubans on its way to Florida (this could be real or simulated); or foster highly publicized attempts on the lives of some of those refugees already inside the U.S.; or light off plastic explosives in select locations, arrest Cuban agents and release phony documents that played up alleged Cuban involvement, all to further substantiate the image of an irresponsible red government harassing its northern neighbor to the nth degree.

There was even talk of hijacking passenger airliners and surface craft and staging the shooting down of a chartered civilian airliner en route from the U.S. to Central America. Sounds, oddly, not unlike that one outside-job terrorist attack from that one time.

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Reach this writer at brian@motherboard.tv.