Operation Northwoods was a Pentagon plan to provoke a U.S. invasion of Cuba in 1963 through the use of deception operations. First disclosed by the Assassination Records Review Board in 1997, the Northwoods plans are among the most significant new JFK documents to emerge since Oliver Stone’s “JFK” movie.
Operation Northwoods envisioned U.S. intelligence operatives staging violent attacks on U.S. targets and arranging for the blame for the mayhem to fall on Fidel Castro and his communist government. The idea, wrote one planner, was to creates a “justification for U.S. intervention in Cuba,” by orchestrating a crime that placed the U.S. government “in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government” in Cuba.
These plans included the use of violence on American soil against American citizens.
“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities, and even in Washington,” wrote one Northwoods planner who worked in the Defense Department. Another Northwood scheme envisioned faking the shooting down of a U.S. airplane and manufacturing “evidence” that Castro’s government was responsible.
The Northwoods plans were developed while Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer, a hawk who clashed repeatedly with JFK, served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Kennedy rejected the idea of such “pretext operations” at a testy meeting in March 1962, but the JCS continued to push them as the solution to problem of Castro.
In May 1963, the Pentagon asserted that JFK’s policy to encourage a domestic rebellion against Castro was likely to fail and that policy alternative were needed.
“An engineered provocation,” declared a JCS policy statement, “offers greater advantages in control, timing, simplicity and security than would a fomented revolt.”
There is some resemblance between the imaginary Northwoods schemes and the reality of Kennedy’s assassination, allegedly by a Castro supporter.
The Northwoods planners proposed CIA assets be used to publicize the “evidence” of Cuban involvement in the attack on a U.S. target, the better to rally public opinion in support of an invasion.
After JFK’s murder, the CIA’s assets in the Cuban Student Directorate–funded by a CIA program codenamed AMSPELL and run by CIA officer George Joannides–publicized evidence of Oswald’s pro-Castro ways in an unsuccessful effort to generate support for a U.S. invasion.
While some JFK conspiracy writers see Operation Northwoods as a template for JFK’s assassination, there is no direct evidence to link the CIA and Pentagon planners to Lee Harvey Oswald or any other alleged Dealey Plaza gunman. But the fact that the Pentagon and CIA hid the deeply cynical nature of Operation Northwoods from the public and from JFK investigators for 35 years invites suspicion that the national security agencies had something to hide.
What seems indisputable is author James Douglass’s observation that the Northwoods documents illuminate “the mentality of Kennedy’s military advisers,” who pursued devious and murderous conspiracies to advance their ambition of launching a preemptive war against Cuba that would remove Castro from power.
Intelligence historian James Bamford was the first author to write about Operation Northwoods. In his book “Body of Secrets, rightly described it as “the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.” Northwoods, he said, was a prescription for “treason.”
Most that chase down where the Operation Northwoods scheme came from find Senator Smathers down in Florida was a point of origin. He first pitched the method to JFK and was turned down. The Smather’s plan appears to have made it to the Joint Chiefs and a like plan was pitched to JFK by Joint Chief Lemnitzer, which was also turned down by JFK. This became known as Operation Northwoods.
Senator Smathers is interesting because he was very anti-Communist and highly into the anti-Castro issues happening in Florida in that period. Smathers sold his home in Florida to Richard Nixon. Senator Smathers knew Judyth Baker and connected her up with Alton Oshner in New Orleans to fashion a way to kill Castro with radiation and cancer virus methods.
So, Senator Smathers was right in the middle of all this anti-Castro efforts and the games to knock off Castro with the Soviets being none the wiser via cancer inducement methods. Smathers appears to be one of the persons of most interest for the design of Operation Northwoods and the pitch of it into the Joint Chiefs.
While Smathers would not be one to want JFK killed, his push on the anti-Communist issues and the Northwoods plan sure game the kill JFK plans a big push forward.
IMHO,
Jim Phelps
Jim: I had not known of a connection between Northwoods and Smathers. Can you supply documentation and links to flesh out this story?
There’s no documentation. Look behind the curtain. There stands Alex Jones.
Hello,
It stems from this recent story:
http://explosivereports.com/2012/08/20/bombshell-senator-suggested-false-flag-attack-to-kennedy-2-years-prior-to-operation-northwoods-proposal/
Jim Phelps
Jim, that is a valuable contribution and web link that you posted. It really gives us insight into the thinking at the highest levels of American politics and military with regards to Cuba. Notice how JFK is constantly turning these proposals down (although he did green light the Bay of Pigs invasion in early 1961).
These folks (business, politicians, military) were quite desperate to get rid of Fidel Castro. Imagine how they felt during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962. Or after the Cuban Missile Crisis when there was no invasion of Cuba!
Hello,
Second, from this news story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/aug/17/john-f-kennedy-fidel-castro
And the information’s origin appears to be the JFK Library itself.
Jim Phelps
From that news story… “Mr Smathers’ recollections of the President’s views on Cuba need to be taken with a certain grain of salt…”
Correction. Bamford was not the first author to go to print with Northwoods. That was an Australian named Jon Elliston in his book, “Psywar on Cuba” published in 1999. Bamford’s book came out 2 years later.
There was nothing new about Northwoods. Provocations have been around since Adam was a kid.
In this particular case, Northwoods was just a response to existing op-plans within which a series of “tasks” had been outlined.
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FROM WIKI:
In response to a request for pretexts for military intervention by the Chief of Operations of the Cuba Project, Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, the document listed methods, and outlined plans, that the authors believed would garner public and international support for U.S. military intervention in Cuba. According to Jacob Hornberger:
“ The plan called for U.S. personnel to disguise themselves as agents of the Cuban government and to engage in terrorist attacks on the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay.
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Would’n't you know it? Just such a plan seems to have been thwarted a few short months prior to Northwoods being put on the table by a Medal of Honor winner who shot and killed a “Cuban suspected terrorist” employed at the base. The Cuban was being escorted from the base after allegedly being found in a restricted area (the ammo dump).
The Medal of Honor winner and his accomplice were quickly put in psychiatric care and quietly drummed out of the Marines. The whole thing was then buried.
http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t19-pretextural-obligato-a-symphony-of-lies
http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/gallery/ASSASSIONATION/CUBAN-OPERATIONS/William-Szili-and-Senator-Richard-Schweiker-pic_5.htm
http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/gallery/ASSASSIONATION/CUBAN-OPERATIONS/Ruben-Lopez-pic_4.htm
You are technically correct, Greg. Jon Elliston does include some of the Northwoods document in his invaluable “Psy-War on Cuba.”
But Elliston does not refer to Operation Northwoods by name, which is why I believe that Jim Bamford must be credited with being the first to write about Operation Northwoods. There was some news coverage of the documents when the ARRB first released them but Bamford was the first to put them into context and address their sinister aspect.
Ellingston’s presentation is valuable because illuminates how the idea of pretext operations mutated in the armed forces in 1961 and 1962 but his presentation leaves impression that such Cuba pretext operations were the brainchild of Lansdale, which I think understates the importance of Operation Northwoods.
Yes, Lansdale proposed and sought out pretext operations in 1962 but he would soon be gone. Operation Northwoods signaled the adoption of pretext operations at the level of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the planning was then undertaken the JCS planners. By May 1963 Lansdale was gone, defeated by the Cuban security forces and post-missile crisis politics.
But the JCS plans for pretext operations against the Cuban government lived on. In the JCS Cuba policy statement of May 1963 “engineered provocation” was established as the most likely policy course to succeed, more likely than JFK’s veiled policy of “fomented rebellion.”
cheers, JM
Jeff, technically, if I point to something that’s black, it’s still black whether or not I say it’s black.
No argument on Lonsdale and false flag ops vs fomented rebellion.
You can slice the balogna thin Greg, but it still balogna.
Elliston never wrote the words “Operation Northwoods” so it cannot accurate to say that he was first person to write about Operation Northwoods. I guess you could say he was the first person to write about the Northwoods documents without identifying them as such.
Jeff,
I do think something is being sliced too thin, here.
Let’s try a slightly different tack. The first Europeans to see a certain animal in Australia had no idea what type of animal it was let, alone what to call it. Yet the animal they described was without a shadow of doubt, what we now call a “platypus”. That they didn’t give it a name does not mean they were not the first White people to write about it.
Since you mention “Bologna” though, it is a pretty good description of Dalek’s writings concerning Barbara Gamerikian’s oral history.
But back to “Northwoods”. There was also the crash of a U2 just before the assassination that also carries some of the insignia of a potential “engineered provocation” – though I personally think the case is clearer and stronger regarding the Guantanamo incident pointed to previously.
Surely for such an intelligent man Jeff, you don’t take Bamford’s comments concerning Northwood’s being “the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.” There are more than a number of ‘corrupt’ plans the US government has drawn up along the way. Where was Bamford when Operation Gladio broke in the early nineties? His chapter on Ed Lansdale and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in his book ‘Body of Secrets’ is wholly inaccurate. This article at CTKA discusses the role that Operation Northwood’s played in covering up important questions about the Kennedy assassination at the ARRB hearings. Greg Parker contributed a couple of comments in this article if I can recall as did Larry Hancock, Bob Groden, Bill Kelly, Pat Speer and Bill Davy.
http://www.ctka.net/2010/OpNorthwoods.html
The JFK assassination itself was the ultimate expression of Operation Northwoods. The planners of the JFK assassination wanted an invasion of Cuba to result – a “twofer” – get rid of JFK and Fidel Castro at the same time.
I personally believe that the implementation of Operation 40, put into play in 1960 set the stage for all things to eventually come back to JFK.