Operation Northwoods: The History of the Controversial Government Plan to Stage False Flag Attacks on Americans and Blame Cuba

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General Lyman Lemnitzer, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Operation Northwoods was developed in early 1962. Photo taken 2 Jan 1963 after his appointment as Supreme Allied Commander Europe. In December 2017, three classified U.S. Navy videos showing unidentified aircraft moving in seemingly impossible ways were leaked to the press. The videos, which were codenamed FLIR, GIMBAL and GOFAST, were captured by Navy pilots during routine missions over the coast of California in 2004, and over the East Coast in 2014 and 2015. In each case, the pilots attempted to trail unusual, wingless aircraft that moved at hypersonic speeds, with no visible means of propulsion. These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com. During the Cold War, the CIA played a role in distributing the book "Doctor Zhivago" throughout the Soviet Union. The book by Russian writer Boris Pasternak was banned by the Soviets, according to a Washington Post article, because it displayed an open-minded view of the Bolshevik Revolution and its protagonist, a doctor-poet, was staunchly individualistic.

Dr. Wernher von Braun (center) describes the Saturn Launch System to President John F. Kennedy (right, pointing). NASA Deputy Administrator Robert Seamans stands to the left of von Braun. (Image credit: NASA) The so-called kidnapping occurred in the early 1960s, at the height of the U.S.-Soviet space race. To make it clear that they were winning this race, the Soviets launched a multinational exhibition of their Lunik satellite, the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Earth's moon. [ Top 10 Soviet and Russian Space Missions] Following presentation of the Northwoods plan, Kennedy removed Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, although he became Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in January 1963. U.S. military leaders began to perceive Kennedy as going soft on Cuba, and the President became increasingly unpopular with the military. A rift had already developed during Kennedy's disagreements with the service chiefs over the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 and flared up again with his June 10, 1963 announcement of a unilateral U.S. Test Ban Treaty. Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense. Subject: Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)" (PDF). The George Washington University. 13 March 1962. p.11. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing,” Bamford told ABC, calling Operation Northwoods one of the “most corrupt [plans] ever created by the U.S. government.”Before the civilian space organization NASA put the first astronaut on the moon in 1969, at least two U.S. military organizations drew up plans for establishing strategic lunar military outposts. In 1959, the U.S. Army drew up a proposal for a "manned military" base on the moon. That proposal, which was submitted by the Army's chief of research and development, was dubbed Project Horizon and would "develop and protect potential United States interest on the moon," according to declassified documents. Bohning, Don (2005). The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-1965. Potomac Books. p.105. ISBN 978-1-57488-675-7– via Google Books. Another proposed a “Remember the Maine incident,” referring to the U.S.S. Maine, which blew up under mysterious circumstances in Havana harbor in 1898 and gave the U.S. justification to go to war with Spain. The 1962 version of this plan, Operation Northwoods proposed, “could be arranged in several forms.”

Media Advisory: National Archives Releases Additional Materials Reviewed by the Assassination Records Review Board, archives.gov, 11/17/97 [cached] Bruce Schneier, "'Body of Secrets' by James Bamford: The author of a pioneering work on the NSA delivers a new book of revelations about the mysterious agency's coverups, eavesdropping and secret missions," Salon.com, 25 April 2001. A series of well coordinated incidents will be planned to take place in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces." The mission of the secret armies was simple: Prepare for a potential communist takeover and lead an armed resistance should such a takeover occur. In some countries, "preparing" for Soviet invasion included espionage and the hoarding of ammunitions. 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.One of the most well-known secret research programs is the Manhattan Project, which eventually produced the world's first atomic bombs. The project began in 1939, and was cloaked in secrecy as physicists investigated the potential power of atomic weapons. From 1942 to 1946, Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers led the Manhattan Project. The program was codenamed Project Iceworm, but to test its feasibility, the Army launched a cover research project called "Camp Century" in 1960. Under this guise, engineers built a network of underground buildings and tunnels, including living quarters, a kitchen, a recreation hall, infirmary, laboratories, supply rooms, a communications center and a nuclear power plant.

While Area 51 was not a top-secret base designed to study extraterrestrials, the U.S. Air Force did study the existence of UFOs. Project Grudge was a short-lived program launched in 1949 to study unidentified flying objects. The mission followed an earlier program, known as Project Sign, which published a report in early 1949 stating that while some UFOs seemed to be actual aircraft, there was not enough data to determine their origins. [ Top 10 States for UFO Sightings] While it is not certain that President Kennedy was appraised of the full Northwoods details, a White House meeting on March 16 which included Kennedy did refer to the plans. General Lemnitzer said the U.S. had contingency plans for invasion and "plans for creating plausible pretexts to use force." Lansdale's memo of the meeting records Kennedy's reply: "The President said bluntly that we were not discussing the use of U.S. military force." Numerous Congressional hearings followed the video leak, and in June 2021 The Pentagon released an unclassified report detailing more than 140 encounters between military personnel and unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), another name for UFOs. While only one of the incidents could be explained with high confidence, the report in no way suggested that aliens have anything to do with UAP; most UAP incidents can likely be explained as foreign surveillance drones or airborne clutter, such as weather balloons, Pentagon officials said in Nov. 2022. During the Cold War, the CIA played a role in distributing the book "Doctor Zhivago" throughout the Soviet Union. (Image credit: Central Intelligence Agency)

The Legacy Of Operation Northwoods

In September 1946, President Harry Truman authorized a program called Operation Paperclip, which aimed to lure scientists from Nazi Germany to the United States following World War II. Officials at the Office of Strategic Services (the predecessor to the CIA) recruited German scientists to America to aid the country's postwar efforts, which would also ensure that valuable scientific knowledge would not end up in the hands of the Soviet Union or the divided East and West Germany.