Joint Chiefs planned terrorism in USA

March 13, 1962 Operation Northwoods

USA: The Joints Chiefs of Staff (the heads of the US Army, Air Force and Navy) presented a plan to Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara (and possibly to President John F Kennedy himself), that suggested using terrorism in the USA to turn opinion towards a US invasion of Cuba.

Long believed to be residing in the imagination of conspiracy theorists, the Operation Northwoods document (Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba) was declassified in recent years by the Freedom of Information Act.

We can be thankful that the military's plan was not enacted, for more reasons than one. McNamara has recently revealed that it was not till years after the Cuban Missile Crisis (began October 15, 1962), he discovered that Fidel Castro's Cuba had complete nuclear missiles; he and Kennedy had been incorrectly briefed by the CIA that the delivery systems were 'on the water' in a shipment from the USSR.

The Joint Chiefs even proposed killing astronaut John Glenn during the first attempt to put an American into orbit. The US brass wrote, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof ... that the fault lies with the Communists et all Cuba [sic]".

This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with many more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date (or your birthday) when you're there.