remote-controlled planes plans

about the book, "Body of Secrets":
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Its author is James Bamford. Bamford until recently was Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News tonight with Peter Jennings. I learned of this book on ABC’s website.

Bamford’s information comes from interviews. With, for instance, the former dean of the U.S. intelligence community. And from government documents. It takes 80 pages to list Bamford’s more than 600 information sources.

Here’s the story. It’s 1962. John F. Kennedy is U.S. president. Robert McNamara is Secretary of Defence. And Admiral Lyman Lemnitzer heads the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. The CIA has failed in its illegal Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

JFK decides, Bamford writes, to back away from military solutions to the Cuban problem.

But Lemnitzer, the CIA and others at the top remain obsessed with Cuba. Writes Bamford: “As the Kennedy brothers appeared to suddenly ‘go soft’ on Cuba, Lemnitzer could see his opportunity to invade … quickly slipping away. …attempts to provoke the Cuban public to revolt seemed dead…”

Continues Bamford: “Lemnitzer and the other chiefs knew there was only one option left that would ensure their war. They would have to trick the American public and world opinion…”

Lemnitzer comes up with Operation Northwoods.

“We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba…casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”

“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington.”

An elaborate variation: create “an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft…” “At a designated time the duplicate would be…loaded with…selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone [a remotely controlled unmanned aircraft]”… “the destruction of (that) aircraft will be triggered by radio signal.”

The Cubans would be blamed.

Finally, another variation is described by Bamford: “On February 20th, 1962 (John) Glenn was to lift off from Cape Canaveral…on his historic journey. Lemnitzer “proposed … that should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, ‘the objective is to provide irrevocable proof that…the fault lies with (Cuba)…” “by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans.”

Thus, Bamford notes, “as NASA prepared to send the first American into space, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were preparing to use John Glenn’s possible death as a pretext to launch a war.”

The Operation Northwoods plan shows the Pentagon was capable, according to Bamford, “of launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting a (war on Cuba).”

Can we be sure, therefore, that complicity by the Pentagon in the events of Sept. 11th is entirely out of the question?



see also
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html