Who's heard of Operation Northwoods, and why aren't students of history being taught about it?

Question

It was a 1962 draft drawn up by the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon that discussed staging terror attacks against Americans, including blowing up a plane, blowing up a military ship and setting gunmen loose in US cities, all as a pretext for war with Cuba, who would obviously be blamed for the attacks. Before you neocon hacks start screaming conspiracy theory and calling it urban legend, you should know that the existence of this program is beyond dispute, part of the National Archives. Kind of makes you look at things in a different light.

http://abcnews.go.com/us/story?id=92662&...
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/200104... - the actual documents

Inconsequential? It shows a side of things that is very consequential, specifically the willingness of elements of the US government to do something like this. Do you think the idea just died after this?

BTW, I am not necessarily speaking of general US history high school student, but rather more advanced students studying the Kennedy era in more depth, to which it is very relevant, particularly in light of his relationship with the Joint Chiefs and the CIA. It also is potentially relevant in light of his assassination not long after turning down the plan. Oh, I forgot, that was Oswald and the magic bullet. Irrelevant? What a tool.

Challenge to lone gunman theory

Betsy Mason / CONTRA COSTA TIMES | August 21 2006

LIVERMORE - More than four decades after his death, John F. Kennedy's assassination remains the hottest cold case in U.S. history, and the clues continue to trickle in. Now Lawrence Livermore Laboratory scientists say a key piece of evidence supporting the lone gunman theory should be thrown out.

A new look at clues gleaned from studies of crime-scene bullet fragments shows they may have been misinterpreted.

I'm afraid someone has a very limited idea of what history is. Ideas and context are a part of history as well, not just hard events.

Answer 1

Students are not being taught it because they have barely enough time to be taught the PC version of history in the first place. Heck they get to the end of WWII and the rest of history is condensed into a two day blurb. So all these individual concepts including the one you mentioned are out there to be discovered a later time.

Answer 2

I had to learn American History twice, actually two different versions, one in high school and one in college. You wouldn't believe they were both talking about the same country! In high school, all our founding fathers and statesmen had only the very best motivations and America was the best and most benevolent country on earth. In college I learned that not everyone agreed, there were bitter battles over the simplest things, not everyone was acting from the best motives, and that through the years the US govt. was guilty of some very serious misdeeds.

I got the idea that the high school version was idealized. I'm not exactly sure why, but I'm guessing it's because parents complain when kids come home and tell them they learned today that George Washington didn't get along with his mother, or that the men who spoke the most eloquently about freedom and the equality of man were all slave-owners, or that our motivation for nuking Japan may not have been entirely military.

As for Operation Northwoods, all through the Cold War the CIA was seriously out of control. Their mission was supposed to be collecting data ('intelligence'), but from their inception they instead concentrated on 'dirty tricks', manipulation of other countries' elections and politics, assassinations, etc.etc. to the point where actual intelligence gathering was serioulsy compromised. They served the Military-Industrial Complex by greatly overestimating the military strength of the Soviet Union and China, in fact when the USSR collapsed nobody was more surprised than the CIA.

Answer 3

It's a prime example of the sick mentality of our military that nothing is beyond consideration regardless how many Americans die during the operation! Accomplish the mission at all costs,is what is driven home in the US Army! This is further proof that 9/11, WTC is an event that was staged to increase the level of terror so the military could attack Iraq and Afghanistan, and now Iran! Stop denying the truth and wake up and smell the coffee!

Answer 4

What I read in the GWU pdf concerned attacks on the Marine Base Guantanamo not US cities. If I missed something post what page that was on.

I am positive that many other such insane plans were submitted and sent upstream. Perhaps because of protocol. Perhaps to embarrass the original authors and help get them set aside

Answer 5

How can you learn "history" from a hypothetical plan which was never carried out?

The study of History is the study of ***actual events*** that occured in the past, not pipe dreams of planners.

Get a real life, moron.

Answer 6

It's not being taught because it didn't happen. Teachers, especially history teachers, have a very limited amount of time to teach a whole lot of material. They simply don't have the time to teach about operations that never happened. They barely have enough time to teach of the operations that did happen. How many of you were taught about Operation Torch, Operation Sea Lion (another that didn't happen), or Operation Market Garden (watching the movie A Bridge Too Far doesn't count).

Answer 7

Because based on the questions asked here, they barely teach the basics. Let alone some X files BS Operation plan. Your barking up a tired tree.......

Answer 8

Stupid people thought of really stupid things, and because of this you assume America attacked itself on 911 without saying it. You asked why its not taught as part of History because its irrelevant. There are a lot of things not taught as part of history like how the fathers of our constitution wanted the individual to keep and bear arms in case the government got too powerful...shocking

Answer 9

it isn,t history. history is what major issues guided this nation not wht may or may not have happened had this been instituted. i would guess every nation in the world has had such conversations or even acted upon it.

Answer 10

"why aren't students of history being taught about it? "

What is there to learn from it? What is there to gain from knowing about it?

Its nothing more than a draft, or an idea basically. If no action was taken, then its largely inconsequential.