28: Cuba Cacophony: Northwoods, Mongoose, JMWAVE and DRE

Nearly a year after the Bay of Pigs disaster, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara received a memo from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer (pictured left of JFK next to General Curtis LeMay) on the topic of “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba (TS).”

The March 13, 1962 proposal appears to be heavily influenced by the “more ruthless than the enemy” attitude of the Doolittle Committee report. 

It suggested ways to justify to the American public an all-out war on Cuba. It brought Operation Mongoose to a new level of activity outside the borders of Cuba with recommendations that included assassinating anti-Castro Cuban refugees living in Miami or sinking a boatload of refugees escaping the island and blaming it on Castro by using false documents. The most horrific suggestion was faking a Cuban air force attack on a civilian jetliner or blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Castro-planned sabotage, similar to the “Remember the Maine” incident which justified the U.S. entry into the Spanish American War some six decades earlier.

The justification memo also noted that the project should be undertaken “in the event that current covert efforts to foster an Internal Cuban rebellion are unsuccessful” and “a credible internal revolt is impossible of attainment during the next 9-10 months ... It is understood that the Department of State also is preparing suggested courses of action to develop justification for U.S. military intervention in Cuba.”

The JCS members who put their names to it in addition to Lemnitzer were (to the right of JFK) General George Henry Decker (Chief of Staff, U.S. Army); Admiral George Whelan Anderson Jr. (Chief of Naval Operations); and General David Monroe Shoup (Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps). 

General Curtis Emerson LeMay (Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force) would become as vociferous a hawk on the issue of Cuba as Pawley, and in October President Kennedy would replace Lemnitzer with General Maxwell Taylor.1 

William Bamford, an expert on the National Security Agency who revealed the document in his 2001 book Body of Secrets, stated that Operation Northwoods “may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.” What’s more amazing is that the proposal was made three weeks after Robert Kennedy had told Air Force General Edward G. Lansdale, the Pentagon’s Deputy Director of the Office of Special Operations (OSO), to focus on intelligence gathering instead of proposing wildly outrageous schemes for Operation Mongoose, which was originally developed by the JCS and Lansdale to foment a revolt within Cuba to overthrow Castro. 

On April 11, 1962, General Lansdale provided a report on the “Status of Operation Mongoose” at week four of the 19-week Phase 1. “Our Center in Miami processed 1,309 refugees last week ... McCone can provide details” of “debriefing visitors to Cuba, at a number of free world ports.” 

Read more »