Operation Northwoods (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 13 March 1962)
artifactIntelligence & Surveillance
In 1962 the American military's most senior officers put their names to a plan for faking terrorist attacks on American cities - including blowing up a passenger plane by remote control.
Who they are
Operation Northwoods, a Joint Chiefs of Staff memorandum dated 13 March 1962[1].
What they do
The engine holds it as the documented proof that the machinery for this kind of planning existed at the top of the US military.
How it works
It is signed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Lyman Lemnitzer, and addressed to the Secretary of Defense. Its stated job is to supply 'pretexts which would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba'. The annex proposes a terror campaign in Miami, other Florida cities 'and even in Washington'; sinking a boat of Cuban refugees, 'real or simulated'; and letting hijackings of civil aircraft appear to continue. One paragraph goes further than the rest: swap a real airliner for an identical painted duplicate, load the duplicate with passengers travelling under false names, land it secretly, and fly the original on as a drone that broadcasts a distress call and is then blown up by radio signal.
Why it matters
That last paragraph is the one the source brief left out, and it is the reason this entry sits next to a defence contractor that builds remote flight-termination equipment. What the document does not say - and so this entry does not either - is that Kennedy and McNamara rejected it. That claim is not in the memo.
The engine's record — word for word
Declassified Joint Chiefs of Staff memorandum, read page by page from the National Security Archive scan. Cover page, verbatim: "THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF / WASHINGTON 25, D.C. / 13 March 1962 / MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE / Subject: Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)", signed "L. L. LEMNITZER / Chairman / Joint Chiefs of Staff". The body describes its purpose as supplying "brief but precise description of pretexts which would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba". THE ANNEX, verbatim. Para 4: "We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington... We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated)... Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots". Para 7: "Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft should appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the government of Cuba." PARA 8 IS THE STRUCTURALLY LOAD-BEARING ONE: "It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner... An aircraft at Eglin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone... The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft which will be triggered by radio signal." So the 1962 JCS record contains, as an approved-for-forwarding proposal, the remote destruction of a substituted civil airframe by radio command. WHAT THE DOCUMENT ESTABLISHES: the documented willingness and bureaucratic machinery of the US military's highest echelon to draft domestic false-flag terrorism as strategy. WHAT IT DOES NOT ESTABLISH, and is not held: that the proposals were rejected by McNamara and Kennedy, or never executed. Neither appears in the memorandum, which is addressed to the Secretary of Defense and never names him.
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