Fourty years ago the Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan
to engineer a war pretext to get public support for an invasion
of Cuba. The Joint Chiefs of Staff consists of consist of the Chairman,
the Vice Chairman, Chief of Staff of the Army, the Chief of Naval
Operations, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and the Commandant
of the Marine Corps. The plan would have involved the murder of
innocent people, including American citizens. It involved hijacking
planes and orchestrating terrorist attacks within the United States.
The military was willing to do it but Kennedy refused.
First...if they were willing to do that they would be willing to
do ANYTHING!!
Second, remember that word... orchestrating. Orchestrate: to
arrange or combine so as to achieve a desired or maximum effect
or stage manage: To direct or manipulate from behind the
scenes, as to achieve a desired effect; orchestrate.
To direct or manipulate from behind the scenes to achieve a desired
effect. To manipulate from behind the scenes.
Those being manipulated will probably not even know they are being
manipulated. Keep that in mind.
During and after the anthrax attacks the White House attempted
to use them as an Operation Northwoods against Iraq.
Yes, that was what the anthrax attacks were about. A war pretext
to justify punishing Iraq.
Operation
Northwoods
Friendly Fire : U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S.
Cities to Provoke War With Cuba
By David Ruppe
N E W Y O R K, May 1. In the early 1960s,
America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill
innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to
create public support for a war against Cuba.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans
reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés,
sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes,
blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism
in U.S. cities.
The plans were developed as ways to trick
the American public and the international community into supporting
a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.
America's top military brass even contemplated
causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow
up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty
lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national
indignation."
Details of the plans are described in Body
of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James
Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the
National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected
to the agency, he notes.
The plans had the written approval of all
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's
defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently
were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed
for nearly 40 years.
"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.
"The whole point of a democracy is
to have leaders responding to the public will, and here this is
the complete reverse, the military trying to trick the American
people into a war that they want but that nobody else wants."
Gunning for War
The documents show "the Joint Chiefs
of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt
plan ever created by the U.S. government," writes Bamford.
The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the
potential death of astronaut John Glenn during the first attempt
to put an American into orbit as a false pretext for war with
Cuba, the documents show.
Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn,
they wrote, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof
… that the fault lies with the Communists et all Cuba [sic]."
The plans were motivated by an intense
desire among senior military leaders to depose Castro, who seized
power in 1959 to become the first communist leader in the Western
Hemisphere - only 90 miles from U.S. shores.
The earlier CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion
of Cuba by Cuban exiles had been a disastrous failure, in which
the military was not allowed to provide firepower. The military
leaders now wanted a shot at it.
"The whole thing was so bizarre,"
says Bamford, noting public and international support would be
needed for an invasion, but apparently neither the American public,
nor the Cuban public, wanted to see U.S. troops deployed to drive
out Castro.
Reflecting this, the U.S. plan called for
establishing prolonged military - not democratic - control over
the island nation after the invasion. [Jeez. Iraq 40 years later.]
"That's what we're supposed to be
freeing them from," Bamford says. "The only way we would
have succeeded is by doing exactly what the Russians were doing
all over the world, by imposing a government by tyranny, basically
what we were accusing Castro himself of doing."
'Over the Edge'
The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed
by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with
the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13,
1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military.
Whether the Joint Chiefs' plans were rejected
by McNamara in the meeting is not clear. But three days later,
President Kennedy told Lemnitzer directly there was virtually
no possibility of ever using overt force to take Cuba, Bamford
reports. Within months, Lemnitzer would be denied another term
as chairman and transferred to another job.
The secret plans came at a time when there
was distrust in the military leadership about their civilian leadership,
with leaders in the Kennedy administration viewed as too liberal,
insufficiently experienced and soft on communism. At the same
time, however, there real were concerns in American society about
their military overstepping its bounds.
There were reports U.S. military leaders
had encouraged their subordinates to vote conservative during
the election.
And at least two popular books were published
focusing on a right-wing military leadership pushing the limits
against government policy of the day. The Senate Foreign Relations
Committee published its own report on right-wing extremism in
the military, warning a "considerable danger" in the
"education and propaganda activities of military personnel"
had been uncovered. The committee even called for an examination
of any ties between Lemnitzer and right-wing groups. But Congress
didn't get wind of Northwoods, says Bamford.
"Although no one in Congress could
have known at the time," he writes, "Lemnitzer and the
Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge."
Even after Lemnitzer was gone, he writes,
the Joint Chiefs continued to plan "pretext" operations
at least through 1963.
One idea was to create a war between Cuba
and another Latin American country so that the United States could
intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government
to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base - an act, which
Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was
to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of
having one shot down as a pretext for a war.
"There really was a worry at the time
about the military going off crazy and they did, but they never
succeeded, but it wasn't for lack of trying," he says.
After 40 Years
Ironically, the documents came to light,
says Bamford, in part because of the 1992 Oliver Stone film JFK,
which examined the possibility of a conspiracy behind the assassination
of President Kennedy.
As public interest in the assassination
swelled after JFK's release, Congress passed a law designed to
increase the public's access to government records related to
the assassination.
The author says a friend on the board tipped
him off to the documents.
Afraid of a congressional investigation,
Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint Chiefs documents related to the
Bay of Pigs destroyed, says Bamford. But somehow, these remained.
"The scary thing is none of this stuff
comes out until 40 years after," says Bamford.
