During the Kennedy administration the Joint Chiefs of Staff officer in charge was Lyman L. Lemnitzer. After the Bay of Pigs, Lemnitzer lost faith in President John F. Kennedy. “The Far Right became a fount of proposals born of frustration and put forward in the name of anti-Communism. . . Active-duty commanders played host to anti-Communist seminars on their bases and attended or addressed Right-wing meetings elsewhere." Although no one in Congress could have known it at the time, Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge. (1)
In 1959 Cuba had been taken over by the Fidel Castro and the Communists, by 1961 Kennedy was the President of the United States and the Bay of Pigs was considered a military failure. This is when the idea of false flags came into being. The dictionary defines false flag as:
“Covert operations conducted by government, corporations or other organizations which are designed to appear as though they were carried out by other entities.”
The actions really began the last year of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency, in March of 1960... It seemed that Eisenhower (an old army general) wanted to go out of office with a military win. He wanted to invade Cuba before Kennedy was inaugurated but had no good reason to do so. Eisenhower discussed with military generals even if Castro did not give them a reason to invade Cuba, perhaps they could manufacture one. One that would be generally accepted. What he suggested was a bombing, an attack, an act of sabotage carried out secretly against the US by the US military. A CIA report was signed off by President Eisenhower on March 17, 1960 for U.S. Intervention, “A Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime.” (2)
On March 24, 1960 the C.I.A. allocated $900,000 to a covert operation, and by June another $1,000,000 was allocated. The operation’s goal was to unseat Castro. They were enlisting Anti-Castro assets and began training for operations in Florida and even within Cuba. This was a separate C.I.A. operation and the Joint Chiefs had 50,000 men at the ready. This according to a document called, The Inspector General’s Survey of the Cuban Operation and Associate Documents. This was a precursor to the operation presented to President Kennedy in 1962.
Allen Dulles then head of C.I.A. (later appointed himself to Warren Commission after assassination of John F. Kennedy) was cautious about U.S. Involvement in Cuba, fearing an anti-American movement. So, he presented a General Covert Action Plan for Cuba, that would only focus on Cuban problems. The C.I.A recruited bodies for this action, they must be pro-Western, anti-Communist, politically neutral and able to gather Cuban support. The main goal was to oust Castro and restore Cuba to the 1940 constitution. The purpose was as follows:
- Act as a beacon to attract other anti-Castro groups
- Serve as a scapegoat in case covert operations were discovered
- Act as a possible replacement if Castro was taken out (3)
After the Bay of Pigs failure in 1961, both Robert Kennedy (attorney General) and Richard Goodwin (asst. special counsel to president and member of the task force on Latin American affairs) suggested that the U.S. government begin a sustained action against Castro, calling it an action to remove the communists from power in Cuba. November 4, 1961, Project Mongoose came into being. It was led by Air Force Brigadier General Edward Lansdale, but with the cooperation of many agencies; the C.I.A., Department of Defense, the Department of State, The F.B.I., Immigration and Naturalization Service among others. So three different factions had started operations to oust Castro.
Operation Mongoose wrapped up after a meeting on October 4, 1962 where they outlined 4 objects to proceed in Cuba:
- They needed more intelligence in Cuba, more C.I.A. probes
- They needed more sabotage their agents were involved in.
- They needed restrictions eased so the C.I.A. could train their agents
- The C.I.A. do anything to get rid of Castro in Cuba (4)
The Kennedy brothers seemed to go soft on Castro and the operation after the October meeting. This was the beginning of Operation Northwoods. It was at that time the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the C.I.A. would use their influence to propagandize the American public to get them on board with military action against Castro. Now the operations funneled down to one....
They would convince the public and the world into believing that Cuba was a threat to democracy and the American way of life, that they were part of the Communist threat. The patriotic Americans would then not only support the military, but demand they launch an offense against Castro. "World opinion, and the United Nations forum," said a secret JCS document, "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." (5)
Operation Northwoods called for a war in which many patriotic Americans and innocent Cubans would die senseless deaths, all to satisfy the egos of twisted generals back in Washington, safe in their taxpayer financed homes and limousines.
One idea seriously considered involved the launch of John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth. On February 20,1962, Glenn was to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on his historic journey. The flight was to carry the banner of America's virtues of truth, freedom, and democracy into orbit high over the planet. But Lemnitzer and his Chiefs had a different idea. They proposed to Lansdale that, should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof that . . . the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba [sic.]" (6)
They were going to stage attacks on base at Guantanamo Bay and Florida:
- Stage riots outside base
- Get C.I.A. Cuban assets to climb over the fence
- Then capture such Cubans inside the base
- Blow up ammunitions inside base and start fires
- Capture fake assault teams entering area from the sea
- Sink ships in Harbor, stage funerals in lieu of real ones
- Blow up ship and blame it on Cuba
- Stage fake/real Communist Cuban terror attacks and bombings in Miami and other Florida cities, and in Washington D.C.
- Create incidents that looked like a Communist Cuban missile destroyed an American Aircraft
- Cuban hijacking attempts on civilian planes and land vehicles
These are just some of the ideas they came up with that could include loss of life for both Cubans and Americans within an acceptable range enabling these diabolical generals to declare a war on Cuba and oust Castro.
Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs worked out a complex deception:
An aircraft at Elgin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CJA 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 [a remotely controlled unmanned aircraft]. Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Florida.
From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at Elgin AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. Are you confused yet? The drone aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over Cuba the drone will be transmitting on the international distress frequency a "May Day" message stating he is under attack by Cuban MiG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft, which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization radio stations in the Western Hemisphere to tell the U.S. what has happened to the aircraft instead of the U.S. trying to "sell" the incident.
Finally, there was a plan to "make it appear that Communist Cuban MiGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack." It was a particularly believable operation given the decade of shoot downs that had just taken place.
In the final sentence of his letter to Secretary McNamara recommending the operations, Lemnitzer made a grab for even more power asking that the Joint Chiefs be placed in charge of carrying out Operation Northwoods and the invasion. "It is recommended," he wrote, "that this responsibility for both oven and covert military operations be assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff." (7) This would put the C.I.A. operation under the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Joint Chiefs met with then President John F. Kennedy, and Secretary Robert McNamara in March 16, 1962. The plans were shut down, as Kennedy said there was never not going to be military force in Cuba. Lemnitzer attempted for a time to continue it behind Kennedy’s back with Secretary Robert McNamara. McNamara became increasingly untrusting of Lemnitzer and the plans never became reality. Kennedy removed Lemnitzer from office, though he turned up in Jan 1963 as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.
In November of 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the Operation Northwoods docs buried or destroyed. The idea of false flags were introduced into military vocabulary, and many believe the Gulf of Tonkin battle in 1964 that began the Vietnam conflict was started by a staged aggressive act by U.S. Others believe the attack on 9/11/2001 World Trade Center and U.S. Pentagon was a staged act to lead us into war in the Middle East. After going through the documents, I could see how they came to that conclusion.


- Operation Northwoods, BODY OF SECRETS, James Bamford, Doubleday, 2001, p.82 and following. Scanned and edited by NY Transfer, News.http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/northwoods.html
- A Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB341/IGrpt1.pdf
- Ibid
- "Memorandum for Record: Minutes of the Special Group on Operation MONGOOSE" (PDF). National Security Archive. Retrieved 27 January 2017.
- Ibid
- The Inspector General’s Survey of the Cuban Operation and Associate Documents, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB341/IGrpt1.pdf
- Ibid
- Ibid