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The_Info_Web/40 - EVENTS/INTELLIGENCE_SCANDALS/Operation NORTHWOODS.md

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2026-05-15 2026-10-12 Operation NORTHWOODS
Northwoods
Operation Northwoods
Event
CIA
JointChiefs
Cuba
FalseFlag
ColdWar
1960s
Intelligence Scandal Joint Chiefs of Staff paper of March 13, 1962 proposing staged incidents, blamed on Cuba, as pretexts for a U.S. invasion; declassified in 1997 and publicized by James Bamford in 2001. 1962-03-13 Washington, D.C.
type with reverse role start fn
participant_in Joint Chiefs of Staff true submitted JCS 1969/321 with Enclosure A to Secretary McNamara 1962-03-13 5

Operation NORTHWOODS was a set of proposals developed by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff under General Lyman Lemnitzer and formally submitted to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962. The document, titled "Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba," proposed creating or staging a series of violent incidents - including attacks on American citizens - that could be attributed to Cuba and used as a pretext for a U.S. military invasion. James Bamford wrote that the proposals were rejected by McNamara and President John F. Kennedy.1 The document was declassified in 1997 through the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act and brought to wide public attention by journalist James Bamford.1

Context

Operation NORTHWOODS was developed within the framework of Operation Mongoose and the broader Kennedy administration effort to develop options for ending Fidel Castro's rule in Cuba. After the Bay of Pigs failure in April 1961, American military and intelligence planners continued to develop contingency plans for a direct military intervention in Cuba. The strategic problem was the absence of a legitimate trigger - a clear provocation or attack by Cuba that could justify military action before world opinion and the United Nations.

Earlier Joint Chiefs planning on Cuba had already proposed an incident as justification. On April 26, 1961 the Joint Chiefs sent Secretary of Defense McNamara a memorandum (JCSM-278-61, "Cuba") answering his memorandum of April 20 with an analysis of courses of action for the overthrow of the Castro government. It cited CINCLANT Operation Plan 312-61 as a plan "which has previously been reviewed and approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff," and recommended: "One action that is recommended is the creation of an incident which will provide justification for the overthrow of the Castro government by the United States."2 Earle G. Wheeler signed for the Joint Chiefs, above the typed signature of Arleigh Burke, chief of naval operations.2

General Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, signed the Joint Chiefs' memorandum of March 13, 1962, which responded to a March 5 request from the Chief of Operations of Operation Mongoose, Edward Lansdale, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, relayed through Brigadier General William H. Craig, the Joint Chiefs' representative on his group; the Joint Staff drew up the list of pretexts.3 The document proposed manufacturing the trigger.1

Proposed Operations

The NORTHWOODS document proposed a range of false-flag operations:

"Remember the Maine" scenario: A staged sabotage operation against a U.S. Navy vessel at Guantanamo Bay that could be portrayed as a Cuban attack. The document suggested an unmanned drone ship could be sunk to minimize casualties, or alternatively that a real incident could be staged.

Simulated attacks on Guantanamo: Staging mortar attacks on the Guantanamo perimeter, having U.S. Marines fire at each other in a way that could be attributed to Cuban snipers, and blowing up ammunition at Guantanamo and blaming Cuba.

The annex, which states that its courses of action "are arranged neither chronologically nor in ascending order," proposed that "a 'Remember the Maine' incident could be arranged in several forms," including the destruction of a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blaming Cuba, or an unmanned vessel exploded near Havana or Santiago. Its appendix described the purpose of the plan as enabling "a logical build-up of incidents to be combined with other seemingly unrelated events to camouflage the ultimate objective."4 The Joint Chiefs' cover memorandum recommended that the enclosure be forwarded to the secretary of defense for approval and transmittal to the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, and that it not be forwarded to unified commanders, to U.S. officers assigned to NATO, or to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Military Staff Committee.5

Terror campaign in Miami and Washington D.C.: The document proposed staging "a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington." This included sinking boats carrying Cuban refugees, attacks on Cuban exiles who had "been to retaliate against any Cubans who assisted the US in the invasion," and U.S.-staged bombings.

Staged aircraft incidents: Proposing to use CIA aircraft painted to simulate Cuban Air Force colors to harass or "attack" U.S. aircraft over international waters, creating incidents that could be documented and publicized. A separate proposal suggested that a passenger aircraft could be hijacked by a "Cuban" (actually a U.S. covert operations team), diverting it and creating an international incident.

Killing of Americans: The document explicitly contemplated staging incidents in which American citizens were killed, attributable to Cuba.1

Rejection

On March 6, 1962 Edward Lansdale, chief of operations of Operation Mongoose, wrote that he was asking the Defense representative, General Craig, "to give me a brief but precise description of pretexts which the JCS believes desirable if a decision is ultimately made to use direct military intervention."6On March 5, 1962 the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, wrote to General Craig with the request, under the subject "Operation MONGOOSE." The Joint Chiefs' memorandum takes "cognizance of a suggested course of action proposed by the US Navy relating to generated instances in the Guantanamo area," citing a March 8, 1962 memorandum from the chief of naval operations to the Joint Chiefs titled "Instances to Provoke Military Actions in Cuba (TS)."7 The Joint Chiefs' memorandum of March 13 recommended that the paper be forwarded "as a preliminary submission suitable for planning purposes." The paper (JCS 1969/321) rested on the premise that intervention "will result from a period of heightened US-Cuban tensions which place the United States in the position of suffering justifiable grievances," and a draft memorandum appended to it stated that a plan built from the suggestions "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."8

On March 16, 1962 President Kennedy met with John A. McCone, General Maxwell Taylor, Roswell Gilpatric, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, McGeorge Bundy and Lemnitzer to discuss the Mongoose guidelines. U. Alexis Johnson's handwritten note records that "The President also expressed skepticism that in so far as can now be foreseen circumstances will arise that would justify and make desirable the use of American forces for overt military action," and that "no decision was expressed or implied approving the use of such forces although contingency planning would proceed."9 On April 5, 1962 the Special Group concluded that Mongoose should re-examine its basic philosophy "with particular reference to the possibility of finding a pretext for early... intervention," and five days later (April 10) the Joint Chiefs answered yes to both questions put by General Maxwell Taylor, whether the United States should invade Cuba and whether it had the capacity to do so.10 At the April 11, 1962 meeting of the Special Group (Augmented), according to McCone's notes, the "JCS paper on pretext or provocative actions was discussed," and McCone wrote that "We should have and review this paper as it is considered to be a very thoughtful and useful document."11

Bamford wrote that McNamara rejected the proposals and that Kennedy, meeting with Lemnitzer shortly after receiving the document, left no doubt about his reaction.1 In July 1962, Kennedy declined to reappoint Lemnitzer as JCS Chairman when his term expired; Lemnitzer was transferred to command NATO forces in Europe. The direct connection between NORTHWOODS and Lemnitzer's removal was not confirmed at the time but became a subject of historical interpretation after declassification.1

Declassification and Significance

The document remained classified for thirty-five years and was among the records released in 1997 under the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, which required declassification of documents relating to the Kennedy assassination regardless of their original security designation. NORTHWOODS was included because it was part of the operational planning environment in which Kennedy and the Joint Chiefs were operating in 1962-1963.

James Bamford brought the document to wide public attention in his 2001 book Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency. The NORTHWOODS document became one of the most frequently cited pieces of evidence in discussions of false-flag operations, government deception, and conspiracy theory - used both by legitimate researchers documenting Cold War operational planning and by conspiracy theorists arguing that subsequent events (the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, 9/11) followed the template NORTHWOODS had proposed.12

Footnotes

  1. Bamford, James. Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency. Doubleday, 2001. Original document: "Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba" (TS), JCS files, March 13, 1962; declassified 1997. Available at nsarchive.gwu.edu. ↩︎

  2. Joint Chiefs of Staff, memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, JCSM-278-61, "Cuba," April 26, 1961, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. X, document 178. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d178 ↩︎

  3. JCS 1969/321 (memorandum of March 13, 1962 and appendix); Joint Chiefs of Staff, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, vol. VIII, chapter 11 and note 2, https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA551509 ; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. X, document 310 and list of persons, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10 ↩︎

  4. JCS 1969/321, Enclosure A, appendix, paragraph 3, and the annex "Pretexts to Justify US Military Intervention in Cuba," paragraphs 2-3. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf ↩︎

  5. JCS 1969/321, memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, March 13, 1962, paragraphs 2 and 8. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf ↩︎

  6. Lansdale to Goodwin, March 6, 1962 (Top Secret; Sensitive), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol. X, Document 310. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d310 ↩︎

  7. Memorandum for General Craig from the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, subject "Operation MONGOOSE," March 5, 1962, and memorandum for the Chairman, JCS, from the Chief of Naval Operations, subject "Instances to Provoke Military Actions in Cuba (TS)," March 8, 1962, both cited in footnotes in JCS 1969/321, with paragraph 3 of the enclosure memorandum. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf ↩︎

  8. Joint Chiefs of Staff, memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)," March 13, 1962, signed by L. L. Lemnitzer, Chairman, with Enclosure A, its appendix and annex, and Enclosure B, from JCS 1969/321 (Top Secret, Special Handling, Noforn; declassified 1997). https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf ↩︎

  9. Guidelines for Operation Mongoose and editorial note quoting U. Alexis Johnson's handwritten covering memorandum of March 16, 1962, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol. X, Document 314. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d314 ↩︎

  10. Joint Chiefs of Staff, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, vol. VIII, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, 1961-1964, chapter 11, pp. 158-160. https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA551509 ↩︎

  11. Memorandum by Director of Central Intelligence McCone on the April 11, 1962 meeting of the Special Group (Augmented), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol. X, Document 325. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d325 ↩︎

  12. Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. Doubleday, 2007. ↩︎