CODE NAME “NORTHWOODS”

Conspiracy of State Terrorism – How US generals planned an intervention against Cuba

By Jurgen Rose

[This article published in: Freitag 38, 9/22/2006 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.freitag.de/2006/38/06380701.php. Jurgen Rose is a lieutenant colonel in the German army and presents his own opinions in this article.]




Since the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, there has been no doubt that the US was resolved to eliminate its revolutionary neighbor Cuba. How far the political intentions were converted into concrete military plans was left to speculation. Now a recently declassified document of the US chief of staff shows how precise and detailed were the scenarios of a Cuban intervention. We have rarely witnessed such political bankruptcy.

Obviously there is nothing more foolish in the world than conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists need not be taken seriously. They disqualify themselves… Everybody who has once grappled with the theme “war and media manipulation” knows that truth is the first victim before and in every war.

For example, a supposed terror attack in 1898 on the American cruiser USS Maine that subsequently turned out to be a boiler explosion was used by the US government as a pretext for a long-planned war of conquest against the colonial power Spain. At its end, Cuba, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Philippines were subject to the United States. That the North Vietnamese marines in the Gulf of Tonking never attacked the US destroyer Maddox in the summer of 1964 was also proven. Nevertheless the US Congress issued a blank check to president Lyndon B. Johnson for the carpet-bombing of North Vietnam. In his memoirs, Henry Kissinger revealed how insidiously he deceived the US public and the world as secretary of state together with president Nixon at the end of the sixties about the bombing of Laos and Cambodia.

Finally, in a study published by the “Project for the New American Century” titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” we read this sentence: “The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.” The authors that included Paul Wolfowitz, Eliot Cohen, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan and Dov Zakheim among others must have had truly prophetic gifts. Exactly one year later on September 11, 2001, “the colossal crimes” (Helmut Schmidt) occurred in New York and Washington. According to the latest surveys, a third of Americans no longer believe the official government version of 9/11. More than 80 million people, as many as all Germany’s inhabitants, are unconvinced! Many people can be intellectually brainwashed for a long time but not everyone can be brainwashed forever. Nevertheless the high priests of government propaganda with their willing journalist accomplices run completely single-mindedly through the arena of the media circus and slander every doubt of a critical public as a gloomy conspiracy theory.

The waiting period for an operation planned under the code name “Northwoods” in a Pentagon memorandum marked “Top Secret” has recently run out. The study was written by the US general staff and signed on March 13, 1962 by General L.L. Lemnitzer, general chief of staff of the US army and later commander of NATO in Europe. :”Justification for a military intervention of the US in Cuba” was the theme of the dossier.

A sensational subject is hidden behind the awkward bureaucratic-sounding formulation. The very real scenario of a conspiracy from a textbook appeared, not some conspiracy theory served on a silver platter. What was presented to the US defense secretary in this memorandum by his generals was nothing but a crystal-clear strategy for the US government to create a pretext for an intervention of the US against Cuba through propaganda campaigns and concealed secret service and military operations. The absolute leadership for converting the plans is revealing. Reading the detailed list of criminal actions submitted by the military of the US government makes one simply speechless. What was conceived with Northwoods was nothing but blatant state terrorism perpetrated by a superpower that supposedly desires nothingg more zealously than spreading freedom, democracy and human rights worldwide.

That this state crime did not ultimately take place as planned may have been the result of the “missile crisis” of the fall of 1962 when the Soviet Union by stationing medium-range missiles in Cuba went to the edge of a nuclear wear to deter the US from a surprise attack on the Caribbean island. The negotiations between the two superpowers at that time secured the existence of an independent Cuba for decades. Seen this way, the history of the Cold War could be rewritten in the light of this and other notorious plans of which Operation Northwoods may be only the tip of the iceberg. Carefully observing the political events in countries on the target list of the US – like Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Bolivia and North Korea – is more important. Only the attention of a critical public can stop the ambitions of politicians like Cheney and Rumsfeld.