Operation Northwoods — full transcription
In the spring of 1962, the United States military was running Operation MONGOOSE, a covert program aimed at overthrowing Castro after the Bay of Pigs. Brigadier General Edward Lansdale, Chief of Operations for the Cuba Project, asked the Joint Chiefs for specific pretexts that would justify open military intervention.
What the Joint Chiefs produced was a planning document describing incidents that could be manufactured or staged to make Cuba appear the aggressor. A ship blown up in Guantanamo Bay. A drone aircraft disguised as a civilian airliner, with passengers boarded under false aliases, destroyed over Cuban waters while broadcasting a fake distress call claiming attack by Cuban MIGs. U.S. Air Force F-86 fighters repainted as Cuban MIGs to harass civil aviation. A staged terror campaign in Miami and other Florida cities. A boatload of Cuban refugees sunk at sea.
The document was classified Top Secret Special Handling NOFORN. It was signed by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and transmitted to the Secretary of Defense. McNamara and Kennedy both rejected it. Lemnitzer was reassigned to NATO command within months. The document remained classified until journalist James Bamford described it in 2001. The proposals were never carried out. The document establishes that the highest military command in the United States formally reduced to writing a plan to kill Americans and fabricate evidence to start a war.
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)
1. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the attached Memorandum for the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, which responds to a request of that office for brief but precise description of pretexts which would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba.
2. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that the proposed memorandum be forwarded as a preliminary submission suitable for planning purposes. It is assumed that there will be similar submissions from other agencies and that these inputs will be used as a basis for developing a time-phased plan. Individual projects can then be considered on a case-by-case basis.
3. Further, it is assumed that a single agency will be given the primary responsibility for developing military and para-military aspects of the basic plan. It is recommended that this responsibility for both overt and covert military operations be assigned the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
For the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
L. L. LEMNITZER
Chairman
Joint Chiefs of Staff
1 Enclosure — Memo for Chief of Operations Cuba Project
EXCLUDED FROM GDS
EXCLUDED FROM AUTOMATIC REGRADING
DOD DIR 5200.10 DOES NOT APPLY
TOP SECRET SPECIAL DISTRIBUTION
JCS 1969/321
12 March 1962
Page 2165
NOTE BY THE SECRETARIES to the JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF on NORTHWOODS
A report on the above subject is submitted for consideration by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
F. J. BLOUIN
M. J. INGELIDO
Joint Secretariat
Not reproduced herewith — on file in Joint Secretariat
EXCLUDED FROM GDS
EXCLUDED FROM AUTOMATIC REGRADING
DOD DIRECTIVE 5200.10 DOES NOT APPLY
TOP SECRET
JCS 1969/321
9 March 1962
COPY OF COPIES — SPECIAL DISTRIBUTION
REPORT BY THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AND JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF REPRESENTATIVE ON THE CARIBBEAN SURVEY GROUP to the JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF on CUBA PROJECT (TS)
The Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, has requested that he be furnished the views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on this matter by 13 March 1962.
JUSTIFICATION FOR US MILITARY INTERVENTION IN CUBA (TS)
THE PROBLEM
1. As requested by Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are to indicate brief but precise description of pretexts which they consider would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba.
FACTS BEARING ON THE PROBLEM
2. It is recognized that any action which becomes pretext for US military intervention in Cuba will lead to a political decision which then would lead to military action.
3. Cognizance has been taken of a suggested course of action proposed by the US Navy relating to generated instances in the Guantanamo area.
4. For additional facts see Enclosure B.
DISCUSSION
5. The suggested courses of action appended to Enclosure A are based on the premise that US military intervention will result from a period of heightened US-Cuban tensions which place the United States in the position of suffering justifiable grievances from World opinion. The United Nations should be favorably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere.
6. While the foregoing premise can be utilized at the present time, it will continue to hold good only as long as there can be reasonable certainty that US military intervention in Cuba would not directly involve the Soviet Union. There is as yet no bilateral mutual support agreement binding the USSR to the defense of Cuba. Cuba has not yet become a member of the Warsaw Pact, nor have the Soviets established Soviet bases in Cuba in the pattern of US bases in Western Europe. Therefore, since time appears to be an important factor in resolution of the Cuba problem, all projects are suggested within the time frame of the next few months.
CONCLUSION
7. The suggested courses of action appended to Enclosure A satisfactorily respond to the statement of the problem. However, these suggestions should be forwarded as a preliminary submission suitable for planning purposes and together with similar inputs from other agencies provide a basis for development of a single integrated time-phased plan to focus all efforts on the objective of justification for US military intervention in Cuba.
RECOMMENDATIONS
8. It is recommended that:
a. Enclosure A together with its attachments should be forwarded to the Secretary of Defense for approval and transmittal to the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project.
b. This paper NOT be forwarded to commanders of unified or specified commands.
c. This paper NOT be forwarded to US officers assigned to NATO activities.
d. This paper NOT be forwarded to the Chairman, US Delegation, United Nations Military Staff Committee.
APPENDIX TO ENCLOSURE A
DRAFT MEMORANDUM FOR CHIEF OF OPERATIONS, CUBA PROJECT
Subject: Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)
1. Reference is made to memorandum from Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, for General Craig, subject Operation MONGOOSE dated 5 March 1962, which requested brief but precise description of pretexts which the Joint Chiefs of Staff consider would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba.
2. The projects listed in the enclosure hereto are forwarded as a preliminary submission suitable for planning purposes. It is assumed that there will be similar submissions from other agencies and that these inputs will be used as a basis for developing a time-phased plan. The individual projects can then be considered on a case-by-case basis.
3. This plan incorporating projects selected from the attached suggestions or from other sources should be developed to focus all efforts on a specific ultimate objective which would provide adequate justification for US military intervention. Such a plan would enable a logical build-up of incidents to be combined with other seemingly unrelated events to camouflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness and irresponsibility on a large scale directed at other countries as well as the United States. The plan would also properly integrate and time phase the courses of action to be pursued. The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.
4. Time is an important factor in resolution of the Cuban problem. Therefore the plan should be so time-phased that projects would be operable within the next few months.
5. Inasmuch as the ultimate objective is overt military intervention, it is recommended that primary responsibility for developing military and para-military aspects of the plan for both overt and covert military operations be assigned the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Part 1 of 2 — Cover memo, JCS Note, Caribbean Survey Group report, Discussion, Recommendations, Appendix to Enclosure A
Continue to Part 2 →The Colonial Authority in The Interference does not invent pretexts. It inherits them. Operation Northwoods is the documented proof that the highest military command in the United States once put in writing a plan to kill Americans, fabricate evidence of a foreign attack, and use the manufactured deaths to start a war. The document was signed. It was submitted. It was rejected by one administration and classified for decades by the next. The Interference series takes the institutional logic of Northwoods and asks what it looks like when that logic operates without a civilian leadership willing to say no.
The Interference begins with a patent. US3951134, filed in 1974, describes a device for remotely monitoring and altering human brain waves without physical contact. The patent is real. The USPTO granted it.
What precedes that patent is a documented institutional record. In 1960, the CIA funded MKUltra Subproject 119 at Texas Christian University. The stated objective included techniques of activation of the human organism by remote electronic means. The contractor was unwitting. The budget was $6,370. Sidney Gottlieb signed off. In 1952, an ARTICHOKE field team produced total amnesia in two overseas subjects held in a guarded safehouse with eyes taped shut in transit. Their dispositions after the operation were outside the team's responsibility. In 1963, the CIA Inspector General recommended termination of unwitting testing on American citizens. The program ran for another decade. In 1983, a U.S. Army Intelligence report filed in the CIA's STARGATE collection treated the brain as an electromagnetic organ that could be entrained to external frequencies. Not as theory. As established fact.
The Colonial Authority in The Interference is what that timeline produces if you follow it forward rather than stop at the declassified record. The mesh program James Harlan carries inside his skull is built on the physics in these documents. The fiction begins exactly where the public record stops answering questions.