- NEW YORK - 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 ÈmigrÈs, 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- Gunning for War
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- 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.
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- Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote,
"the objective is to provide irrevocable proof Ö 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 ó 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 ó not democratic ó control over the island
nation after the invasion.
-
- "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 ó 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.
-
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- After 40 Years
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- 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.
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