Just saw the declassified CIA files on Operation Northwoods from 1962

Found it on the National Archives site last night. They had this plan to fake terrorist attacks and blame Cuba. Over 30 pages of approved military ops. Blew my mind how close we came to a full war. Anyone else dig into those old declassified docs?

2 comments

2 Comments

hayden70915d ago

Wait, did it say 30 pages actually got approved? I thought the Joint Chiefs signed off on it but the Secretary of Defense at the time straight up rejected it before it ever reached President Kennedy. From what I remember reading, LeMay and Lemnitzer pushed it hard but McNamara killed it fast. The Pentagon declassified a ton of it in the late 90s, but a lot of the really detailed operational stuff is still blacked out. The fake terrorist attacks and plans to blow up a drone to blame Cuba are wild enough, but the whole thing never got official approval past the generals.

christopher_sullivan14d ago

Yeah exactly, that's what I always heard too... McNamara shut it down almost immediately once he saw the full scope of it. The declassified stuff from the 90s is wild reading, especially the parts that are still so heavily redacted you can barely follow it.