OPERATION NORTHWOODS - Faking it?

For almost 40 years, Operation Northwoods was nothing more than a highly classified sheet of paper held in US military records.
It was not until April 2001 that the corrupt scheme became public knowledge, with the release of classified National Security Archive documents online and the publication of investigative journalist James Bamford's book Body of Secrets.
Shockwaves were sent around the world as the top secret document, signed by the joint chiefs of staff, recommended causing US casualties to further the possibility of a US invasion of Cuba.
"We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," the joint chiefs wrote. "Casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
Northwoods was sparked by the work of Brigadier General Edward Lansdale, a CIA and air force officer who was in command of Operation Mongoose, the codename for US plans to topple Castro and take control of Cuba.
The joint chiefs at the time were headed by General Lyman Lemnitzer the man behind the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and Lansdale's boss.
After months of planning Lansdale's team presented a document entitled "Justification for US military intervention in Cuba" which included Operation Northwoods in an appendix marked for the attention of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
The suggestions were aimed at provoking a publicly acceptable war on Cuba and included blowing up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay, hijacking civilian aircraft and creating a Cuban communist terror group in Florida.
McNamara's reaction to the submission of the controversial plans is not known. What we do know is that a strained meeting took place three days later between President Kennedy and General Lemnitzer.
The General was told that his plans had been categorically rejected, and just months later he was denied a third term as chairman of the joint chiefs.
Quashed by the President, Operation Northwoods was consigned to the secret filing cabinets at Army HQ, and forgotten about for four decades.
Or was it?

Operation Northwoods is a conspiracy theorist's dream.
Clearly the content of the scheme itself is not at issue, the US did not implement the plan to undertake terror attacks to provoke a war against Cuba.
But the psychological impact of Northwoods is enormous.
Suddenly the American people, not just the traditionally sceptical conspiracy community, were handed verifiable, cast iron evidence that their government was capable of plotting murder and terror against its own citizens.
Combine this with the timing of the revelation, just six months before the 9/11 terror attacks, and Operation Northwoods suddenly assumes a great deal of significance.
For those sceptical about whether 19 jihadists armed with box cutters and very basic flying skills could really strike at the military and economic heart of the most powerful nation on earth, Operation Northwoods began to look like the blueprint for their theories.
The 1962 Operation had even talked about hijacking planes and targeting civilian air defence systems. The 9/11 "truthers" were convinced.
George W Bush's foreign policy goals to create a foothold in Central Asia and install a friendly government in Oil rich Iraq were set long before the Twin Towers were destroyed.
To those in the Republican party and beyond who dreamed of a new American empire, or "new world order" as many conspiracy theorists would have it, success in these ventures was crucial.
As pretexts for war go, they don't come much more convincing than 3,000 innocent men, women and children being slaughtered in the most audacious and deadly terror attack in history.
Within hours of 9/11 the US had in place a rock solid alliance of international states, who would back them in just about any attempt to capture those responsible for the atrocity.
The conspiracy theory runs that the US government, using Operation Northwoods as its inspiration, deliberately assisted the terror hijackers by relaxing security at airports, sending the air force on exercises and refusing to shoot down suspect planes.
Many theorists even go as far as suggesting that the US government either trained, recruited and funded the terrorists themselves, or used explosives to demolish the Twin Towers and a cruise missile to attack the Pentagon.
They claim that the 9/11 Commission Report was a cover-up aimed at blaming Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden for the US government's inside job.
To conspiracy theorists, 9/11 was Operation Northwoods in action, a carefully orchestrated plot to prepare the ground for the necessary US expansion into Afghanistan and the Middle East.

- Unlike many conspiracy theories we have documented evidence that Operation Northwoods was not only concocted, but openly debated and recommended by the highest ranking men in the US military.

- Just because Northwoods was rejected by President Kennedy does not mean it was rejected by subsequent administrations. Once the idea had been proposed it was clear the CIA and military were willing to kill their own citizens in order to further American interests.

- The 9/11 attacks are similar to the sort of plots considered by the military under the Northwoods plot. Using hijacked planes to attack civilian targets is explicitly mentioned by the joint chiefs in the memo handed to Secretary of Defense McNamara in 1962.

- Several inconsistencies in the evidence produced to support the official version of the events of 911 have yet to be satisfactorily explained. Most importantly questions over whether United 93 was shot down over Pennsylvania and suggestions that Tower 7 of the World Trade Centre was brought down by controlled explosion.

- Without the 9/11 attacks there is very little chance the US would have gained the international support it required to launch an all-out invasion of both Afghanistan, and the subsequent incursion into Iraq.

- Not only was Operation Northwoods not implemented, it was rejected out of hand by the US Government at a time when the powerful military elite were out of control in their obsession with deposing Castro.

- There is no evidence that the files containing the Northwoods advice were accessed by any administration following their rejection by President Kennedy.

- Not only was Northwoods immoral and inhumane, there is also no evidence that it could have worked. Conspiracy theorists who claim it could have acted as a blueprint for 9/11 do not acknowledge that the operation may well have failed, even in the febrile atmosphere at the height of the Cold War.

- Evidence presented to the 9/11 commission, and investigations into the financial and military operations of Al Qaeda show that the terror organisation actively planned, carried out and later accepted responsibility for the attacks.

- No-one, from any branch of the US armed forces or civilian government has ever revealed any measure of cover-up or conspiracy regarding supposed US involvement in carrying out the atrocity.

Operation Northwoods marks a watershed moment for conspiracy theories. The fact that the US armed forces actively plotted terror attacks against its own citizens points to a dark, frightening undercurrent present in the upper echelons of the military industrial complex. That Northwoods was a brutal, dastardly conspiracy ignoring all conventional rules of human rights and decency is beyond debate. This is clearly one of the most outrageous conspiracies of all time. However, there seems to be very little evidence that Northwoods was ever put into effect by any US administration, and certainly not on 9/11, where conspiracy theorists still struggle to produce any evidence that the government actively took part in the attacks.