In article <dTR8b.4834$UZ1.4265@news02.roc.ny>, Hagen Sahm says...

The wheels of our government grind so slowly, that it would take 10 years to
even plan an attack on the Twin Towers.

False!!   Operations against American civilians in America
have been planned and executed all the time by
the intel. agencies.  Just because YOU don't know about
it tells me who ignorant you are of your own history.
Hint: What is presented on the CIA-sponsored
History Channel is mostly b.s.  
The rest of the media, forget it.
Perhaps this quote will inform you

"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media." 
--Former CIA Director William Colby

Now your history lesson, there are hundreds
of examples like the following: 


OPERATION NORTHWOODS: US PLANNED FAKE TERROR ATTACKS ON CITIZENS
TO CREATE SUPPORT FOR CUBAN WAR

From BODY OF SECRETS, James Bamford, Doubleday, 2001, p.82 and
following.
Scanned and edited by NY Transfer News. 





..In [Joint Chief's chair] Lemnitzer's view, the country would be far
better off if the generals could take over. [JFK assassination legend
has it some general presided over the fudgy JFK autopsy. --Mk]

For those military officers who were sitting on the fence, the Kennedy
administration's botched Bay of Pigs invasion was the last straw. "The
Bay of Pigs fiasco broke the dike," said one report at the time.
"President Kennedy was pilloried by the super patriots as a 'no-win'
chief . . . The Far Right became a fount of proposals born of frustration
and put forward in the name of anti-Communism. . . Active-duty
commanders played host to anti-Communist seminars on their bases
and attended or addressed Right-wing meetings elsewhere."

Although no one in Congress could have known it at the time,
Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge.

According to secret and long-hidden documents obtained for Body of
Secrets, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what
may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government. In
the name of antiCommunism, they proposed launching a secret and
bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the
American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to
launch against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plan, which had the written
approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for
boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a
wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami,
and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not
commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would
be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse,
as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch
their war.

The idea may actually have originated with President Eisenhower in the
last days of his administration. With the Cold War hotter than ever and
the recent U-2 scandal fresh in the public's memory, the old general
wanted to go out with a win. He wanted desperately to invade Cuba in
the weeks leading up to Kennedy's inauguration; indeed, on January 3
he told Lemnitzer and other aides in his Cabinet Room that he would
move against Castro before the inauguration if only the Cubans gave
him a really good excuse. Then, with time growing short, Eisenhower
floated an idea. If Castro failed to provide that excuse, perhaps, he
said, the United States "could think of manufacturing something that
would be generally acceptable." What he was suggesting was a
pretext a bombing, an attack, an act of sabotage carried out secretly
against the United States by the United States. Its purpose would be
to justify the launching of a war. It was a dangerous suggestion by a
desperate president.

Although no such war took place, the idea was not lost on General
Lemnitzer But he and his colleagues were frustrated by Kennedy's
failure to authorize their plan, and angry that Castro had not provided
an excuse to invade.

The final straw may have come during a White House meeting on
February 26, 1962. Concerned that General Lansdale's various covert
action plans under Operation Mongoose were simply becoming more
outrageous and going nowhere, Robert Kennedy told him to drop all
anti-Castro efforts. Instead, Lansdale was ordered to concentrate for
the next three months strictly on gathering intelligence about Cuba. It
was a humiliating defeat for Lansdale, a man more accustomed to
praise than to scorn.

As the Kennedy brothers appeared to suddenly "go soft" on Castro,
Lemnitzer could see his opportunity to invade Cuba quickly slipping
away. The attempts to provoke the Cuban public to revolt seemed
dead and Castro, unfortunately, appeared to have no inclination to
launch any attacks against Americans or their property 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 into hating Cuba so much that they would not only go
along, but would insist that he and his generals launch their war against
Castro. "World opinion, and the United Nations forum," said a secret
JCS document, "should be favorably affected by developing the
international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible,
and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the
Western Hemisphere."

Operation Northwoods called for a war in which many patriotic
Americans and innocent Cubans would die senseless deaths, all to
satisfy the egos of twisted generals back in Washington, safe in their
taxpayer financed homes and limousines.

One idea seriously considered involved the launch of John Glenn, the
first American to orbit the earth. On February 20,1962, Glenn was to
lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on his historic journey. The flight
was to carry the banner of America's virtues of truth, freedom, and
democracy into orbit high over the planet. But Lemnitzer and his
Chiefs had a different idea. They proposed to Lansdale that, should
the rocket explode and kill Glenn, "the objective is to provide
irrevocable proof that . . . the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba
[sic.]"

This would be accomplished, Lemnitzer continued, "by manufacturing
various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference
on the part of the Cubans." Thus, 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.

Glenn lifted into history without mishap, leaving Lemnitzer and the
Chiefs to begin devising new plots which they suggested be carried
out "within the time frame of the next few months."

Among the actions recommended was "a series of well coordinated
incidents to take place in and around" the U.S. Navy base at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This included dressing "friendly" Cubans in
Cuban military uniforms and then have them "start riots near the main
gate of the base. Others would pretend to be saboteurs inside the
base. Ammunition would be blown up, fires started, aircraft sabotaged,
mortars fired at the base with damage to installations."

The suggested operations grew progressively more outrageous.
Another called for an action similar to the infamous incident in February
1898 when an explosion aboard the battleship Maine in Havana harbor
killed 266 U.S. sailors. Although the exact cause of the explosion
remained undetermined, it sparked the Spanish-American War with
Cuba. Incited by the deadly blast, more than one million men
volunteered for duty. Lemnitzer and his generals came up with a
similar plan. "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and
blame Cuba," they proposed; "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would
cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

There seemed no limit to their fanaticism: "We could develop a
Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida
cities and even in Washington," they wrote. "The terror campaign could
be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States.

We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or
simulated). . . . We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in
the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be
widely publicized."

Bombings were proposed, false arrests, hijackings:

*"Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest
of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents
substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting
the idea of an irresponsible government."

*"Advantage can be taken of the sensitivity of the Dominican
[Republic] Air Force to intrusions within their national air space. 'Cuban'
B-26 or C-46 type aircraft could make cane burning raids at night.
Soviet Bloc incendiaries could be found. This could be coupled with
'Cuban' messages to the Communist underground in the Dominican
Republic and 'Cuban' shipments of arms which would be found, or
intercepted, on the beach. Use of MiG type aircraft by U.S. pilots could
provide additional provocation."

*"Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft could appear to
continue as harassing measures condoned by the Government of
Cuba."

Among the most elaborate schemes was to "create an incident which
will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and
shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the United States to
Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would be
chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba. The
passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or
any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering
a non-scheduled flight."

Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs worked out a complex deception:

An aircraft at Elgin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact
duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CJA proprietary
organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate
would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded
with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared
aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone
[a remotely controlled unmanned aircraft]. Take off times of the drone
aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous
south of Florida.

From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will
descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at
Elgin AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the
passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone
aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over
Cuba the drone will be transmitting on the international distress
frequency a "May Day" message stating he is under attack by Cuban
MiG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the
aircraft, which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow ICAO
[International Civil Aviation Organization radio stations in the Western
Hemisphere to tell the U.S. what has happened to the aircraft instead
of the U.S. trying to "sell" the incident.

Finally, there was a plan to "make it appear that Communist Cuban
MiGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an
unprovoked attack." It was a particularly believable operation given the
decade of shoot downs that had just taken place.

In the final sentence of his letter to Secretary McNamara
recommending the operations, Lemnitzer made a grab for even more
power asking that the Joint Chiefs be placed in charge of carrying out
Operation Northwoods and the invasion. "It is recommended," he
wrote, "that this responsibility for both oven and covert military
operations be assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

At 2:30 on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 13, 1962, Lemnitzer
went over last-minute details of Operation Northwoods with his covert
action chief, Brigadier General William H. Craig, and signed the
document. He then went to a "special meeting" in McNamara's office.
An hour later he met with Kennedy's military representative, General
Maxwell Taylor. What happened during those meetings is unknown. But
three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer that there was
virtually no possibility that the U.S. would ever use overt military force
in Cuba.

Undeterred, Lemnitzer and the Chiefs persisted, virtually to the point
of demanding that they be given authority to invade and take over
Cuba. About a month after submitting Operation Northwoods, they
met the "tank," as the JCS conference room was called, and agreed on
the wording of a tough memorandum to McNamara. "The Joint Chiefs
of Staff believe that the Cuban problem must be solved in the near
future," they wrote. "Further, they see no prospect of early success in
overthrowing the present communist regime either as a result of
internal uprising or external political, economic or psychological
pressures. Accordingly they believe that military intervention by the
United States will be required to overthrow the present communist
regime."

Lemnitzer was virtually rabid in his hatred of Communism in general
and Castro in particular "The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the
United States can undertake military intervention in Cuba without risk
of general war" he continued. "They also believe that the intervention
can be accomplished rapidly enough to minimize communist
opportunities for solicitation of UN action." However; what Lemnitzer
was suggesting was not freeing the Cuban people, who were largely in
support of Castro, but imprisoning them in a U.S. military-controlled
police state. "Forces would assure rapid essential military control of
Cuba," he wrote. "Continued police action would be required."

Concluding, Lemnitzer did not mince words: "[T]he Joint Chiefs of
Staff recommend that a national policy of early military intervention in
Cuba be adopted by the United States. They also recommend that
such intervention be undertaken as soon as possible and preferably
before the release of National Guard and Reserve forces presently on
active duty."

By then McNamara had virtually no confidence in his military chief and
was rejecting nearly every proposal the general sent to him. The
rejections became so routine, said one of Lemnitzer's former staff
officers, that the staffer told the general that the situation was
putting the military in an "embarrassing rut." But Lemnitzer replied, "I
am the senior military office--it's my job to state what I believe and it's
his [McNamara's] job to approve or disapprove." "McNamara's
arrogance was astonishing," said Lemnitzer's aide, who knew nothing
of Operation Northwoods. "He gave General Lemnitzer very short
shrift and treated him like a schoolboy. The general almost stood at
attention when he came into the room. Everything was 'Yes, sir' and
'No, sir.'

Within months, Lemnitzer was denied a second term as JCS chairman
and transferred to Europe as chief of NATO. Years later President
Gerald Ford appointed Lemnitzer, a darling of the Republican right, to
the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Lemnitzer's Cuba
chief, Brigadier General Craig, was also transferred. Promoted to major
general, he spent three years as chief of the Army Security Agency,
NSA's military arm.

Because of the secrecy and illegality of Operation Northwoods, all
details remained hidden for forty years. Lemnitzer may have thought
that all copies of the relevant documents had been destroyed; he was
not one to leave compromising material lying around. Following the Bay
of Pigs debacle, for example, he ordered Brigadier General David W
Gray, Craig's predecessor as chief of the Cuba project within the JCS,
to destroy all his notes concerning Joint Chiefs actions and discussions
during that period. Gray's meticulous notes were the only detailed
official records of what happened within the JCS during that time.
According to Gray, Lemnitzer feared a congressional investigation and
therefore wanted any incriminating evidence destroyed.

With the evidence destroyed, Lemnitzer felt free to lie to Congress.
When asked, during secret hearings before a Senate committee, if he
knew of any Pentagon plans for a direct invasion of Cuba he said he
did not. Yet detailed JCS invasion plans had been drawn up even
before Kennedy was inaugurated. And additional plans had been
developed since. The consummate planner and man of details also
became evasive, suddenly encountering great difficulty in recalling key
aspects of the operation, as if he had been out of the country during
the period. It was a sorry spectacle. Senator Gore called for Lemnitzer
to be fired. "We need a shake up of the Joint Chiefs of Staff" he said.
"We direly need a new chairman, as well as new members." No one had
any idea of Operation Northwoods.

Because so many documents were destroyed, it is difficult to
determine how many senior officials were aware of Operation
Northwoods. As has been described, the document was signed and
fully approved by Lemnitzer and the rest of the Joint Chiefs and
addressed to the Secretary of Defense for his signature. Whether it
went beyond McNamara to the president and the attorney general is
not known.

Even after Lemnitzer lost his job, the Joint Chiefs kept planning
"pretext" operations at least into 1963. Among their proposals was a
deliberately create a war between Cuba and any of a number of .n
American neighbors. This would give the United States military an
excuse to come in on the side of Cuba's adversary and get rid of "A
contrived 'Cuban' attack on an OAS [Organization of Americas]
member could be set up," said one proposal, "and the attacked state
could be urged to 'take measures of self-defense and request ice from
the U.S. and OAS; the U.S. could almost certainly obtain necessary
two-thirds support among OAS members for collective action against
Cuba."

Among the nations they suggested that the United States secretly
were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Both were members of the
Commonwealth; thus, by secretly attacking them and then blaming
Cuba, the United States could lure England into the war Castro. The
report noted, "Any of the contrived situations de above are inherently,
extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be
maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty. If the decision
should be made to set up a contrived situation it be one in which
participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the most highly
trusted covert personnel. This suggests the infeasibility of the use of
military units for any aspect of the contrived situation."

The report even suggested secretly paying someone in the Castro
government to attack the United States: "The only area remaining for
ration then would be to bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders
to initiate an attack on [the U.S. naval base at] Guantanamo." The act
suggested--bribing a foreign nation to launch a violent attack American
military installation--was treason.

In May 1963, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze sent a the
White House proposing "a possible scenario whereby an attack on a
United States reconnaissance aircraft could be exploited toward the
end of effecting the removal of the Castro regime." In the event Cuba
attacked a U-2, the plan proposed sending in additional American
pilots, this time on dangerous, unnecessary low-level reconnaissance
missions with the expectation that they would also be shot down, thus
provoking a war "[T]he U.S. could undertake various measures
designed to stimulate the Cubans to provoke a new incident," said the
plan. Nitze, however, did not volunteer to be one of the pilots.

One idea involved sending fighters across the island on "harassing
reconnaissance" and "show-off" missions "flaunting our freedom of
action, hoping to stir the Cuban military to action." "Thus," said the
plan, "depending above all on whether the Cubans were or could be
made to be trigger-happy, the development of the initial downing of a
reconnaissance plane could lead at best to the elimination of Castro,
perhaps to the removal of Soviet troops and the installation of ground
inspection in Cuba, or at the least to our demonstration of firmness on
reconnaissance." About a month later, a low-level flight was made
across Cuba, but unfortunately for the Pentagon, instead of bullets it
produced only a protest.

Lemnitzer was a dangerous-perhaps even unbalanced-right-wing
extremist in an extraordinarily sensitive position during a critical
period. But Operation Northwoods also had the support of every single
member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even senior Pentagon official
Paul Nitze argued in favor of provoking a phony war with Cuba. The
fact that the most senior members of all the services and the
Pentagon could be so out of touch with reality and the meaning of
democracy would be hidden for four decades.

In retrospect, the documents offer new insight into the thinking of the
military's star-studded leadership. Although they never succeeded in
launching America into a phony war with Cuba, they may have done so
with Vietnam. More than 50,000 Americans and more than 2 million
Vietnamese were eventually killed in that war.

It has long been suspected that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident-the
spark that led to America's long war in Vietnam-was largely staged or
provoked by U.S. officials in order to build up congressional and public
support for American involvement. Over the years, serious questions
have been raised about the alleged attack by North Vietnamese patrol
boats on two American destroyers in the Gulf But defenders of the
Pentagon have always denied such charges, arguing that senior
officials would never engage in such deceit.

Now, however, in light of the Operation Northwoods documents, it at
deceiving the public and trumping up wars for Americans to fight and
die in was standard, approved policy at the highest levels of the
Pentagon. In fact, the Gulf of Tonkin seems right out of the Operation
Northwoods playbook: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo
Bay and blame Cuba . . . casualty lists in U.S. newspapers cause a
helpful wave of indignation." One need only replace "Guantanamo Bay"
with "Tonkin Gulf," and "Cuba" with "North Vietnam" and the Gulf of
Tonkin incident may or may not have been stage-managed, but the
senior Pentagon leadership at the time was clearly capable of such
deceit.

Book epigram:

"The public has a duty to watch its Government closely and keep it on
the right track." --Lieutenant Gen. Kenneth A. Minihan, USAF, Director,
NSA, _NSA Newsletter_, June 1997