The Plan on Paper: What Operation Northwoods Proposed, and What Became of It

In March 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent the Secretary of Defense a menu of staged incidents meant to give the United States a reason to invade Cuba. The documents show how far senior officers were willing to go on paper. They also show where the plan stopped.

The memo is one page long, dated March 13, 1962, and stamped TOP SECRET SPECIAL HANDLING NOFORN. It is addressed to the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, under the subject line "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba." It is signed "For the Joint Chiefs of Staff" by Gen. L. L. Lemnitzer, their chairman (JCS memorandum, Mar. 13, 1962, cover page).

Attached was a list of "pretexts." One of them reads:

We could blow up a drone (unmanned) vessel anywhere in the Cuban waters… The US could follow up with an air/sea rescue operation covered by US fighters to "evacuate" remaining members of the non-existent crew. Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.

(JCS memorandum, annex, p. 8)

In plain terms, the Pentagon's top officers proposed staging a fake attack, mourning a crew that never existed, and using the public's grief to build support for war. A cover sheet filed the paper under the code word "NORTHWOODS" (Note by the Secretaries, JCS 1969/321, Mar. 12, 1962).

This was a proposal, not an attack. The record shows senior officers putting it in writing and sending it up the chain. It does not show anyone carrying it out.

Why Cuba, why 1962

A year earlier, in April 1961, the CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs had failed. The United States didn't drop the goal of removing Fidel Castro. It moved the effort into a covert program called Operation Mongoose (National Security Archive). A March 2, 1962 program review for the Cuba Project stated the goal: "The United States will help the people of Cuba overthrow the Communist regime from within Cuba and institute a new government with which the United States can live in peace" (Program Review, Mar. 2, 1962, FRUS 1961–63, vol. X, doc. 309).

The military had its own view of how that might end. On March 7, 1962, the Joint Chiefs wrote that if a credible internal revolt proved impossible within 9–10 months, the United States would need "to develop a Cuban 'provocation' as justification for positive US military action" (JCS memorandum, Enclosure B, p. 12).

The Northwoods paper itself says that time mattered. Its authors wanted the pretexts used "within the time frame of the next few months," while there was still "reasonable certainty that US military intervention in Cuba would not directly involve the Soviet Union" (pp. 2–3).

The order of events matters here. The memo came seven months before the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Northwoods was also one paper within the broader Mongoose program, not the program itself. Mongoose did carry out covert activity, including sabotage operations (National Security Archive). That doesn't mean the Northwoods pretexts were carried out. They are separate questions.

Who asked, who signed, who received it

The request came from Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, Mongoose's chief of operations. In a March 5, 1962 memo to Brig. Gen. William Craig, he asked the Joint Chiefs for a "brief but precise description of pretexts" that would justify military intervention. He wanted the Chiefs' views by March 13 (JCS memorandum, pp. 2, 5; cover report, Mar. 9, 1962).

A Defense Department and Joint Staff representative on the Caribbean Survey Group drafted the response. The Joint Chiefs reviewed it, and Lemnitzer signed the cover memo for them. Their recommendation was specific: forward the memo to the Secretary of Defense "for approval and transmittal to the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project." They asked that it not go to field commanders, NATO officers, or the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Military Staff Committee (cover memo; p. 3).

They also framed the list cautiously. The pretexts were "a preliminary submission suitable for planning purposes." The Chiefs expected similar submissions from other agencies, which would feed "a time-phased plan." Then "individual projects can then be considered on a case-by-case basis." They also asked that the Joint Chiefs be put in charge of "both overt and covert military operations" (cover memo).

That is the first limit on what the record shows. The Joint Chiefs approved sending the proposal to their civilian superior and asked him to approve it. Approving a paper for submission is not the same as authorizing an operation. The surviving documents don't show McNamara approving it, and they don't record his reaction to it.

Read the proposals closely

Each pretext is a "false flag" proposal: an incident staged so that someone else gets the blame. Some were theater; others called for real destruction or put real people at risk.

Guantánamo. The list opens with "a series of well coordinated incidents" at the U.S. naval base, designed "to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces." Items include starting rumors, landing "friendly Cubans in uniform 'over-the-fence' to stage attack on base," and starting riots at the main gate. It also includes "Blow up ammunition inside the base; start fires," "Burn aircraft on air base (sabotage)," and "Sink ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals for mock-victims" (annex, pp. 7–8). Much of this is staging. But exploding ammunition, burning aircraft and sinking a ship are real destruction, and fires and mortar fire on an occupied base carry real risk to people.

"Remember the Maine." The 1898 explosion of the USS Maine in Havana harbor helped push the United States into war with Spain. The paper offered two versions. Option (a) is one line: "We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba." It says nothing about whether anyone would be aboard. Option (b) is the unmanned drone vessel, with its fake rescue and "non-existent crew" (annex, p. 8). The second is clearly a simulation. The first is ambiguous, and it shouldn't be read as either harmless or homicidal.

A terror campaign. The fourth item is the hardest to soften: "We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington." It continues: "We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized." It also suggests "exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots" and releasing "prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement" (annex, pp. 8–9).

Two phrases deserve attention. "Real or simulated" means the drafters left open sinking a boat with real refugees aboard. "Even to the extent of wounding" contemplates real injuries to real people. Some summaries describe this item as staged assassinations of exiles. The document's wording is "attempts on lives… even to the extent of wounding," which is serious enough without exaggeration.

The airliner. The most famous scenario is also the most elaborate, and it's often described wrongly. The paper proposes making it appear that "a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner." Its passengers would be "a group of college students off on a holiday" or a similar group, "all boarded under carefully prepared aliases." Here is how it would work:

1. An aircraft at Eglin Air Force Base would be painted as "an exact duplicate" of a civilian plane belonging to a CIA-linked company in Miami.
2. The duplicate would carry the passengers. The real plane "would be converted to a drone."
3. The two would meet south of Florida. The passenger plane would then drop to minimum altitude and land at an Eglin auxiliary field "where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers."
4. The empty drone would fly on, broadcast a "MAY DAY" claiming a MiG attack, and be destroyed "by radio signal" (annex, pp. 10–11).

As written, then, the plan was not to kill a planeload of students. It was to fake their deaths and hide them. That's still a plan to deceive the world about a mass killing that never happened. But it's a different plan from the one often described online.

The list goes on: a fake MiG attack using a disguised American F-86; a USAF pilot who would radio that he'd been "jumped by MIGs," then land in secret and "resume his proper identity"; and a staged Cuban raid on a neighboring Caribbean country (annex, pp. 9, 11).

How far did it get?

The paper trail shows Lansdale's request, the drafting, the Joint Chiefs' approval for submission, and Lemnitzer's signature sending it to McNamara. After that, the record is thinner than many retellings suggest.

The best contemporaneous evidence comes from a White House meeting three days later. On March 16, 1962, Lansdale, Lemnitzer, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, CIA Director John McCone, Deputy Defense Secretary Roswell Gilpatric, national security adviser McGeorge Bundy and State's U. Alexis Johnson met with President Kennedy about Mongoose. Lansdale wrote a memorandum for the record.

According to Lansdale, Lemnitzer told the President the military had contingency plans for intervention. "Also, it had plans for creating plausible pretexts to use force, with the pretexts either attacks on U.S. aircraft or a Cuban action in Latin America for which we would retaliate." Kennedy's response, as Lansdale recorded it: "The President said bluntly that we were not discussing the use of U.S. military force." Lemnitzer, Kennedy said, "might find the U.S. so engaged in Berlin or elsewhere that he couldn't use the contemplated 4 divisions in Cuba." Kennedy concluded: "So, we cannot say that we are able now to make a decision on the use of U.S. military force" (Lansdale memorandum for the record, "Meeting with President, 16 March 1962," pp. 2–3).

Johnson's handwritten note on the same meeting says the President "expressed skepticism" that circumstances would arise to justify "the use of American forces for overt military action." It adds: "It was clearly understood no decision was expressed or implied approving the use of such forces although contingency planning would proceed" (FRUS 1961–63, vol. X, doc. 314, source note).

These two records support a careful conclusion. The President was told, at least in general terms, that the military had pretext plans. He declined to make any decision to use military force, and contingency planning was allowed to continue. But the records don't name "Northwoods" or say Kennedy read the March 13 paper. The reason recorded is limits on military capacity, with Berlin named, not an objection to deception. They also don't show a face-to-face rejection of the airliner or terror scenarios. The common story that "Kennedy personally rejected Northwoods" goes beyond what these documents say. ABC News, reporting Bamford's findings in 2001, put it more carefully: the plans "apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership" (ABC News, Apr. 30, 2001).

The most important point, and the one the evidence does support, is that no record here shows any Northwoods pretext being authorized or carried out.

One more gap limits what anyone can reconstruct. The Kennedy assassination records board later learned that the Joint Staff had destroyed minutes and transcripts of Joint Chiefs meetings from 1947 to 1978, on a 1974 order (ARRB Final Report, 1998). Whatever the Chiefs said among themselves about this paper isn't in the surviving record.

How the public learned about it

The memo stayed classified for more than three decades. Its path out ran through the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which created the Assassination Records Review Board. The board identified Cuba-policy records from Lemnitzer's files for the JFK Collection (ARRB Final Report). On November 18, 1997, the National Archives opened about 1,500 pages of newly declassified records "from the files of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairmen Lemnitzer, Taylor and Wheeler" relating to Cuba policy from 1962 to 1964 (National Archives media advisory, Nov. 17, 1997). The National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research group at George Washington University, says the Northwoods memo "only reached the public through the Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board" (National Security Archive).

It reached a mass audience in April 2001, when journalist James Bamford wrote about it in his book on the National Security Agency, Body of Secrets. He called it possibly "the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government." Bamford shared his copy with the Archive, which posted the 15-page document online on April 30, 2001 (National Security Archive, 2001). That was the moment of wide public attention, not the first release.

What this proves, and what it doesn't

The document proves something serious. The nation's top military officers formally proposed deceiving the American public and the world into war. Their proposals included real destruction and real risk to people, and they asked their civilian superior to approve it.

It doesn't prove that any of these proposals was carried out. It doesn't show that the civilian leadership authorized them; the closest records show the opposite on the use of force. And it doesn't turn later events into false flags. Northwoods is evidence about what some officials were willing to propose in 1962. It is not evidence about 9/11, a mass shooting, or anything else in the news. Each claim like that needs its own evidence.

As in our MKULTRA investigation and our COINTELPRO investigation, the common thread is secrecy, not method. Officials put things in writing that they would never have said in public, and the public found out decades later.

Why it matters if it never happened

It would be easy to dismiss Northwoods as brainstorming, or to inflate it into an attack. Neither fits the record. It wasn't idle talk. It was a formal Joint Chiefs paper, signed by their chairman and sent to the Secretary of Defense with a request for approval. It also asked for the authority to run the operations. It treated faked civilian deaths, bombs in American cities and wounded refugees as options to weigh "case-by-case."

It also stayed a proposal. A civilian process received it, and the President declined to commit to military force. The records show that check working, and they don't fully explain why it worked. Both facts matter: the proposal shows what was being considered at the top of the military in 1962, and its fate shows civilian control limiting it.

Timeline

Page numbers for the Joint Chiefs memo are the document's own printed page numbers (pp. 2–12). The cover memo, the March 12 cover sheet and the March 9 cover report are unnumbered.