Overview
Operation Northwoods was a classified proposal drafted by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff in March 1962 and submitted to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. It called for the CIA and US military to stage fake terrorist attacks against American citizens and infrastructure — then attribute them to Cuba — to create a public pretext for a full military invasion of the island. The full title of the document was “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba (TS).”
The proposal was developed in the aftermath of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and while Operation Mongoose — a covert campaign of sabotage and psychological warfare against Cuba — was already underway. Elements within the Joint Chiefs believed that only direct U.S. military intervention could remove Fidel Castro, and that a manufactured casus belli would be required to secure public and international support.
Proposed Actions
The signed document, authored under the direction of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Lyman Lemnitzer, proposed a range of false-flag scenarios:
- Sinking a US Navy vessel (or a drone substitute) in Guantánamo Bay and blaming Cuba for the attack, complete with “funerals for mock-victims”
- Staging attacks on Cuban exiles in Miami and other U.S. cities, using Soviet bloc weapons to simulate Cuban aggression
- Shooting down a drone aircraft disguised as a civilian airliner carrying college students on vacation and claiming Cuba was responsible for the “shoot-down”
- Bombing buildings in Washington D.C., Miami, and elsewhere, with the attacks attributed to Cuban agents or “Communist Cuban terror”
- Hijacking or sabotaging passenger aircraft and vessels, again with fabricated Cuban responsibility
- Creating a fake “Communist Cuban Terror Campaign” in American cities involving arson, bombings, and the release of prepared documents “proving” Cuban involvement
- Fabricating evidence of Cuban military actions or atrocities using staged photography, planted operatives, and controlled media stories
The document explicitly noted that the operations should be carried out in a manner that would produce “casualties” among U.S. personnel or civilians to heighten the emotional impact. One annex even discussed the possibility of staging a fake attack on the Guantánamo base using friendly Cuban exiles dressed in Cuban uniforms.
Rejection
President Kennedy rejected the proposal. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara declined to forward the plan to the White House, finding it wholly unacceptable. General Lyman Lemnitzer, who had signed the Northwoods memorandum, was not reappointed as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. In November 1962 he was reassigned to the command of U.S. forces in Europe (NATO). The rejection occurred against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis; the administration was already deeply wary of further military entanglement in Cuba. No evidence has emerged that any of the specific Northwoods scenarios were ever executed.
Lemnitzer and other Chiefs continued to press for more aggressive action against Cuba in subsequent months, but the Northwoods-style false-flag approach was not revived in the surviving record. The memorandum itself remained classified for 35 years.
Declassification
The Northwoods documents were declassified in 1997 as part of the Assassination Records Review Board’s work on records related to the JFK assassination. They were first brought to wide public attention by journalist James Bamford in his 2001 book Body of Secrets, which reproduced key pages. The original memorandum and related papers are available in full through the National Security Archive.
Status
Confirmed — proposed but never executed. The original signed 1962 documents are publicly available through the National Security Archive and the U.S. National Archives. The proposal was formally considered at the highest levels of the U.S. military; the attacks were never authorized or carried out.