August 15, 2002—The following is a summary of a segment of Body of
Secrets, written by respected journalist James Bamford, which describes
U.S. government plans to create terrorism in this and other countries in
order to provoke war.

The former investigative producer for ABC World News Tonight with Peter
Jennings, Bamford has written investigative stories for The New York
Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine and other publications..

In his latest book, Bamford relies on long-suppressed official
government records which demonstrate that top Pentagon officials once
called for innocent people to be shot on American streets, planes to be
hijacked and phony evidence to be manufactured, all to convince Congress
and the American public to support a war with Cuba.

The New York Times Book Review commended Bamford’s earlier bestseller
about the National Security Agency, The Puzzle Palace, as a
“comprehensive and detailed report on the agency.” Bamford’s Body of
Secrets includes information about Operation Northwoods, a Pentagon plan
of the early 1960s which called for, in the author’s words, “the launch
of a secret campaign of terrorism within the United States in order to
blame Castro and provoke a war with Cuba.”

After the Bay of Pigs incident, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved plans
for Operation Northwoods—a plan which, according to Bamford, “called for
innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying
refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent
terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere.”

In early 1962, President John F. Kennedy had backed away from
anti-Castro efforts. Determined to have war with Castro’s Cuba, General
Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other chiefs,
then agreed they would need to fool Congress, the American public and
other nations into hating Cuba so much they’d demand war against Castro.

The Pentagon proposed, writes Bamford that “people would be framed for
bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony
evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and
his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing,
they needed to launch their war.”

A Joint Chiefs of Staff document read: “World opinion, and the United
Nations forum, 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.”

A document obtained by Bamford shows that Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs said:

· “Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest
of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating
Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an
irresponsible government.”

· “Advantage can be taken of the sensitivity of the Dominican [Republic]
Air Force to intrusions within their national air space. ‘Cuban’ B-26 or
C46 type aircraft could make cane-burning raids at night. Soviet Bloc
incendiaries could be found. This could be coupled with ‘Cuban’ messages
to the Communist underground in the Dominican Republic and ‘Cuban’
shipments of arms which would be found, or intercepted, on the beach.
Use of MiG type aircraft by U.S. pilots could provide additional provocation.”

· “Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft could appear
to continue as harassing measures condoned by the Government of Cuba.”

Another Joint Chiefs document proposed the government should: “create an
incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has
attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the
United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The
destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross
Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a
holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support
chartering a non-scheduled flight.”

Other Joint Chiefs recommendations included inciting “well coordinated
incidents” near the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay. One suggestion
involved having “friendly” Cubans dress in military uniforms and start
riots near the base’s main gate. Others involved starting fires, blowing
up ammunition and damaging base installations.

Lemnitzer and other generals suggested, “We could blow up a U.S. ship in
Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba.” They added, “ . . . casualty lists in
U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”

Other plans included the Joint Chiefs’ statement: “We could develop a
Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida
cities and even in Washington. . . . The terror campaign could be
pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States.”

Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs proposed to “make it appear that Communist
Cuban MiGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an
unprovoked attack.” They also suggested the following complex plan:

“An aircraft at Elgin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact
duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA 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. 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 a 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.”
 

Lemnitzer wasn’t able to sell the Operation Northwoods proposals to
Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. After Lemnitzer was no
longer chairman of the Joint Chiefs, other Pentagon officials continued
suggesting pretext operations. One scheme involved provoking a war
between Cuba and any one of its Latin American neighbors, as an excuse
for the U.S. to join Cuba’s adversary and battle Castro.
 

One plan recommended endangering an OAS [Organization of American
States] member, and having the OAS member request U.S. assistance. The
plan read: “the U.S. could almost certainly obtain the necessary
two-thirds support among OAS members for collective actions against
Cuba.”
 

In one report, the Joint Chiefs suggested they could entice England into
war against Castro if they could attack members of the British
 

Commonwealth, such as Jamaica or Trinidad-Tobago. The same report
recommended paying a Castro supporter to attack the United States. It
read: “The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe
one of Castro’s subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on [the
U.S. naval base at] Guantanamo.”
 

As Bamford points out, the act of bribing another country to violently
attack an American military base would amount to treason.
 

Then-Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze sent a proposal to the
White House in May 1963. It suggested, quoting the memo: “a possible
scenario whereby an attack on a United States reconnaissance aircraft
could be exploited toward the end of effecting the removal of the Castro
regime.”
 

The Nitze plan proposed sending additional American pilots, if Cuba
should first attack a U-2. The plan involved sending the pilots on
“unnecessary low-level reconnaissance missions with the expectation that
they would also be shot down, thus provoking a war,” writes Bamford.
 

Again quoting the Nitze proposal, “[T]he U.S. could undertake various
measures designed to stimulate the Cubans to provoke a new incident.”
One Nitze suggestion was to send pilots on “show off” or harassing
missions over Cuba to provoke an attack.
 

“The initial downing of a reconnaissance plane,” reads the Nitze memo,
“could lead at best to the elimination of Castro, perhaps to the removal
of Soviet troops and the installation of ground inspection in Cuba.” A
month after the memo came out, a low-level flight was made, but the
Cubans didn’t attack.
 

Every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and senior Pentagon official
Paul Nitze supported provoking war with Cuba. Fortunately, wiser heads
prevailed. The people in higher level governmental positions at the time
said no to the proposals.
 

Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee, father of former Vice President Gore,
was in the Senate when the above-referenced events occurred. He
recommended the Senate investigate General Lyman Lemnitzer and the
danger of right-wing extremism in the Pentagon.
 

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee determined there was danger in
the fact that right-wing extremists within the military had been
promoting propaganda which exaggerated the nature of the Communist
threat. The Senate report warned of a possible military revolt and
takeover of the presidency such as the one portrayed in the movie “Seven
Days in May.”
 

Bamford says the pretext war proposals have long been hidden from
Congress and the public under “phony claims of national security.” He
mentions provocations of later wars that he considers “right out of the
Operation Northwoods handbook.”
 

When government secrets protect the health and safety of U.S. military
personnel, intelligence agents or the people at large, that’s a positive
thing. When secrets serve only to cover up crimes of government
officials in order to stifle public outrage and keep corrupt systems in
place, those secrets obviously hurt the people. How can this country
learn from and correct its past mistakes if our public servants won’t
admit them and our major media won’t expose and debate them?