Talk:Operation Northwoods

What does it mean?

I don't know where NPOV leaves off and preferring life over murder picks up, but there is something to be said for the goverment institutions and personnel who could cook something like this up.

Unfounded claims

Read the document. It says to stage assassination attempts resulting in at most injury, not to actually assassinate Cuban immigrants. Nowhere in the document is it suggested that anyone would suffer worse than that, although it is ambiguous as to what how the sinking of a Cuban refugee, which it proposes could be real, would be handled. The document talks about staged terrorist attacks but not bombings specifically. The ABC source suggests that the document contemplates killing American services members, when the section it quotes clearly and explicitly states that these would be fabricated individuals. You have an actual conspiracy here, why be an equivocating conspiracy nut? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.17.101.54 (talk) 18:38, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Are we just gonna pretend this isn't at all like 9/11

I mean, at the very least it shows that the idea of using planes as weapons was not at all new or unexpected on September tenth. 2604:3D09:D78:1000:D2BC:F4CC:CF61:92BB (talk) 23:53, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Do any reliable secondary sources exist which make this comparison? –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 18:56, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

What does your own brain tell you? There are plenty of other articles on Wikipedia that talk about commonly drawn parallels between various events and phenomena. 72.68.77.5 (talk) 03:28, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. We need RSs to make that comparison. Otherwise we are talking WP:OR.Rja13ww33 (talk) 21:53, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

No it shows exactly what was done. All you hsve to do is look at build.7 and the Dancing isra-elis own testimony on israli television. 174.251.163.83 (talk) 19:12, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 18 February 2026

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: 'Not moved * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:41, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

---

Operation Northwoods → "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba" – The current title and lede refers to "Operation Northwoods." The issue is that Operation Northwoods did not exist. From an article by Ken Hughes in The Conversation:

After the meeting, “in response to direction,” Mongoose operations chief Edward G. Lansdale asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff for “a brief but precise description of pretexts which the JCS believes desirable for direct military intervention.”

The Joint Chiefs of Staff responded by drafting the document now known as “Operation Northwoods.”

Fun fact: No one called it “Operation Northwoods” at the time.

“Northwoods” was just a code word the Joint Chiefs of Staff used on Mongoose documents. In the 21st century, however, historians mistook the code word for a code name and gave the pretexts their unhistorical handle. There was no “Operation Northwoods,” but that didn’t stop it from getting its own Wikipedia page.

The erroneous name of the article is not the only error present. The article does not mention Robert F. Kennedy, who is closely tied to the proposal by Hughes in the same article. RFK repeatedly proposed to "sink the Maine again," and he led the "Special Group (Augmented)" that requested the report "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba."

I hope changing the incorrect lede and article name will be accompanied by other changes to improve the accuracy of this article. Pipoin (talk) 22:05, 18 February 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. TarnishedPath^talk 10:01, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Omit the quote marks. Wikipedia generally doesn't put such titles in quotes. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:46, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Oppose There are numerous RSs in the article calling it by that name. So I don't think such a change is warranted.Rja13ww33 (talk) 03:36, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

After reading this comment, I reviewed every source of this article to assess whether they mentioned Operation Northwoods. Complicating this was the absolute mess that these sources are in. In the analysis of each source below, you will find many comments to that effect. However, I think I was able to find some key information about the backing for the existence of Operation Northwoods. From top to bottom, with important points bolded:

1. GWU's National Security Archive states that there was an operation called "OPERATION NORTHWOODS". There is no listed author, and the piece seems to be getting this information from James Bamford's book Body of Secrets. This comment was published in 2001.

2. 2001 ABC News article by David Ruppe. Claims that there was an operation called "Operation Northwoods". Again cites James Bamford's Body of Secrets.

3. A dead link referring to "1962 U.S. Joint Chiefs Of Staff Operation Northwoods Unclassified Document Bolsheviks NWO." This should probably be deleted.

4. The "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba" memorandum itself.

5. Ruppe's 2001 ABC News article. This should also be deleted and merged with source 2.

6. This claims to be a Reuters article "via Google Groups". This is a Google Groups post from "$teve2.01" titled "REL: ATED: TAN: Xfiles versus Real Life. [WAY Long]", which purportedly contains a copy paste of a Reuters article titled "Pentagon Planned 1960s Cuban 'Terror Campaign'". I cannot find the original article, and this does not seem like a reliable source. Regardless, there is no reference to Operation Northwoods, but Operation Mongoose is mentioned.

7. Another "via Google Groups" citation that purportedly cites an Associated Press article that does not exist elsewhere on the internet. Seemingly not a reliable source. No reference to Operation Northwoods.

8. The "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba" memorandum itself. Seemingly different from 4 in that it cites a different page.

9. A directory page for the National Archives and Records Administration. From a cursory look, has nothing to do with the sentence it supposedly verifies and should be removed. Does not mention Operation Northwoods, but it has no reason to do so.

10. A press release from the National Archives announcing the release of several papers "which relate to U.S. policy towards Cuba, 1962-64". Does not mention Operation Northwoods, but it has no reason to do so.

11. A New York Times article from 1997. For some reason the citation linked to an article on www.mtholyoke.edu and a dead link on the NYT website. I have corrected this. This article does not reference Operation Northwoods, and it seems to suggest that the memorandum was part of Operation Mongoose. Its specific wording: "In March 1962, the head of Operation Mongoose, Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, the Kennedys' personal choice for the job, asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff for their views on top-secret plans to concoct a pretext for a military invasion of Cuba. Those plans involved staging phony attacks against Americans and anti-Castro Cubans."

12. Something from GWU's National Security Archive listing files. Does not mention Operation Northwoods, but there is no reason for it to do so.

13. Another citation for the memorandum.

14. Dead links to teaching resources. The archived versions do not reference Operation Northwoods, but it has no reason to do so.

15. This is the exact same website page as source 1. Why is this a separate source?

16. Another citation for the memorandum.

17. The Castro Obsession, a book by Don Bohning. A page is cited, but I know of no online version of this book and thus I cannot check this source.

18. James Bamford's Body of Secrets. Claims that "Operation Northwood" existed. See the paragraph below.

19. Associated Press article. No reference to Operation Mongoose or Operation Northwoods, but it does not seem do discuss the subject.

20. Primary source.

21. This article, Tracy Davis's "Operation Northwoods: The Pentagon's Scripts for Overthrowing Castro", obviously asserts that Operation Northwoods existed. While it was written by a professor of performing arts and published in a journal about performance, it contains very useful information about the development of the idea of Operation Northwood. See paragraph.

22. A statement of Cuba's National Assembly. Not a reliable source.

Davis states that "'Operation Northwoods' was a separate proposal arising under the auspices of Mongoose, though it had a distinct objective toward Cuba." Davis also describes how "Operation Northwoods" was revealed. She writes, "The Northwoods papers were published with excisions, including the project's name [emphasis mine], in Mark J. White's The Kennedys and Cuba... James Bamford drew more attention to the document in his book, Body of Secrets, a history of the National Security Agency published in 2001. Bamford's exposé of Northwoods spawned..." She continues, but the rest has little relevance to this discussion. I discovered another article by Anna Kasten Nelson titled "Operation Northwoods and the Covert War against Cuba, 1961–1963". Per this Washington Post article, Nelson was a member of the Assassination Records Review Board, which released the original memorandum. She refers to "Operation Northwoods" as if it existed, but the way she describes it is interesting. She states that a number of plans were "Dubbed Operation Northwoods, [and] they were an integral part of Operation Mongoose." She also writes, "Operation Northwoods, which promoted military intervention as the penultimate goal of Mongoose, died with [Mongoose]."

Some important points:

- There are at least two academic articles, two news articles, and one book that claim that "Operation Northwoods" existed.

- The two academic articles characterize "Operation Northwoods" as independent of but subordinate to Operation Mongoose.

- The majority (4 of 5) of these sources were published in 2001.

- The accuracy of these sources is directly disputed by the 2025 Hughes article, which alleges that "historians mistook the code word for a code name and gave the pretexts their unhistorical handle."

It seems that there is a direct conflict between sources about the existence of Operation Northwoods. To determine whether we need to move and significantly revise this page, we need to determine which account is supported by the most reliable sources. Pipoin (talk) 07:38, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps an adequate solution would be splitting this article in two. One article, titled "Operation Northwoods", could describe the alleged operation, how it has been characterized by historians, and the claims that it did not exist. Another titled "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba" could describe the memorandum's content and context. Pipoin (talk) 07:48, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

Like it or not, a lot of those sources are RS. ABC (for example) is specifically on our RS list. The fact that the ABC article uses Bamford's book doesn't diminish it. Bamford's book is also RS. If there is a conflict among RS.....we hash it out in the article. (E.g. "RS A says RS B is full of it....etc, etc" )

But the fact of the matter is: this is a big part of the assassination literature. If needed I can add some of those sources as well. For example, in Vince Bugliosi's 'Reclaiming History' (which is unquestionably RS), he devotes several pages to this "operation". You can see a number of hits in JSTOR as well. Ergo, I don't think such a rename is warranted.Rja13ww33 (talk) 18:44, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose. No reason to do this. You seem to be disagreeing with the factual details in the article. PARAKANYAA (talk) 23:09, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  My point is that the "factual details" are in dispute. A recently published RS has claimed that this operation quite literally did not exist and that the sources cited here as evidence that the operation existed are erroneous. Pipoin (talk) 00:07, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  Well in the first sentence in the article it says "Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation..." (Emphasis added.) Maybe it is a semantics argument to say a proposal doesn't exist....but the question here is: is there RS coverage....and there is.Rja13ww33 (talk) 01:03, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  The Hughes article is arguing that there were proposals to fake Cuban terrorist attacks or a Cuban attack on the US, but that those proposals were never called "Operation Northwoods". He says "Northwoods" was a code word for Operation Mongoose that was misinterpreted by earlier historians as a separate operation. There doesn't seem to be that much dispute about the relationship between the proposal. As you can see in my really lengthy reply on the existing sources, the RS that refer to it as Operation Northwoods seem to treat Northwoods as subordinate to Mongoose. The existing article does too: "Although part of the US government's anti-communist Cuban Project [Operation Mongoose], Operation Northwoods..."

  The issue I see here is that the article treats Northwoods as a separate operation when at least one source says it does not. That's why I requested a move: I wanted to keep the majority of the content of the article, which is fine, while removing the disputed name from the title and infobox. Reorienting the article to focus on the memo itself would avoid the issue of claiming Operation Northwoods existed, while allowing us to cover the proposals and the existence of Northwoods in the body text. For example, the lede could read, ""Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba" was a memo prepared for the Cuban Project that proposed false flag attacks to manufacture pretexts for an invasion of Cuba. The proposed attacks are commonly referred to as Operation Northwoods, but the existence of Northwoods as an independent operation is disputed."

  Alternatively, we could rephrase the first sentence to avoid the issue: "Operation Northwoods refers to plans developed by the United States government to manufacture pretexts for an invasion of Cuba through false flag attacks." We could then address the dispute later in the article. Pipoin (talk) 03:17, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  I don't think we should be basing an entire article's framing off of one source. PARAKANYAA (talk) 04:46, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  In certain circumstances, we certainly should give more value to one source than many sources. We should choose how to frame the article based on the weight due to each source, not on how many there are. If there is a consensus of the existing literature on a topic, it makes sense to disregard sources with different opinions. My concern here is that there might be excessive weighting given to the idea that Operation Northwoods existed. The article currently cites Operation Northwoods as real in the title, infobox, and lede. That is essentially stating in wikivoice that Operation Northwoods existed. If there were an overwhelming consensus of the sources, this would make sense. I'm not so sure, though, that this consensus exists. If we see the news articles as enough to support the article name, I worry that we would create a false consensus. When a shocking story is revealed, there'll be much coverage of the new revelations. When Andrew Wakefield's claims of a link between vaccines and autism were made public, the news media gave them extensive coverage. But Wikipedia rightly gives more weight to modern sources that are much more critical of Wakefield's claims and methods. Wakefield got continued coverage because his claims had real medical consequences, but there is very little reason for journalists to cover an obscure black ops proposal from 1962. Thus, if we excessively value the facts given in newspapers, we might be ossifying the article's content in the academic consensus of 2001 and not updating it for the consensus of 2026. If we disregard the newspapers and materials not present online, the result is the framing of one book supported by two academic articles and opposed by a contemporary article in a research dissemination outlet. The historical consensus seems much less overwhelming from this perspective, and rewriting the opening sentence to not take a position in the dispute makes much more sense.

  If anyone has access to the physical books, any quotes or information about their description would be really helpful for assessing the consensus. If there is an overwhelming consensus in favor of Northwoods, I think it's worth keeping the article and noting the controversy later in the lede. In my previous comment, I wrote that "at least one source" was enough to require a framing change. I think that would be a very bad standard, and I think I meant to write significant source. I apologize for any confusion, and I hope this post clears things up. Pipoin (talk) 09:38, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  One more recent source doesn't upend numerous other sources. As per wikipedia's rules, AGE MATTERS....but one opinion from one historian doesn't change all that came before him. Certainly it could be included....but to say the whole article should be renamed? Not buying into that (yet). There is definitely a case to be made that it wasn't really a "operation"...but as per COMMONNAME, we sometimes don't use the official name as the article's title. Rja13ww33 (talk) 18:42, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Cuba, WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography, WikiProject International relations, WikiProject Military history, WikiProject United States, WikiProject United States Government, and WikiProject Cold War have been notified of this discussion. TarnishedPath^talk 10:02, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Oppose The official government documents have it titled as 'Operation Northwoods'. Changing it would only make teaching people about it harder, as the wiki source would be obfuscated, and I wonder if that's the ulterior motive behind making such a proposal. See the 2nd page here for one of many official documents labeling it as 'Operation Northwoods' https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20010430/northwoods.pdfDoubletiberius (talk) 08:27, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

If you check that page, you'll see that it reads, "NOTE BY THE SECRETARIES to the JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF on NORTHWOODS (S)". Obviously, "Northwoods" is referenced here, but not necessarily Operation Northwoods. Per this RS, "'Northwoods' was just a code word the Joint Chiefs of Staff used on Mongoose documents. In the 21st century, however, historians mistook the code word for a code name and gave the pretexts their unhistorical handle. There was no 'Operation Northwoods,' but that didn’t stop it from getting its own Wikipedia page." We should defer to how RS identify and interpret the documents to avoid any original research. Pipoin (talk) 22:42, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

That's exactly what "Note by the Secretaries to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Northwoods (S). A report* on the above subject is submitted for consideration by the Joint Chiefs of Staff" means. Just because a proposed operation doesn't get approved doesn't mean its name changes. If Operation Ajax wasn't approved and acted out, it'd still be referred to Operation Ajax. That's exactly how the system works.

Furthermore, you contradict yourself in your initial blurb, e.g., "Fun fact: No one called it “Operation Northwoods” at the time.".

Fun fact: that was what the proposal was officially called at the time, backed up by the primary, contemporary source. Doubletiberius (talk) 19:06, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Please reread my comment. I am not stating that the word "Northwoods" was never used to refer to this proposal. I am stating that there was no Operation Northwoods. The distinction is important. Per the reliable source I have provided, Northwoods is a codeword for Operation Mongoose, so the title actually means, "Note by the Secretaries to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on [Operation Mongoose]". We do not do original research here at Wikipedia, and we must base our claims on what secondary sources say. Whatever we think about what primary sources show is irrelevant, since Wikipedia can only reflect the state of secondary sources.

One example of this is in the lede. If you compare this sentence--"The possibilities detailed in the document included the remote control of civilian aircraft which would be secretly repainted as US Air Forceplanes, a fabricated 'shoot down' of a US Air Force fighter aircraft off the coast of Cuba, the possible assassination of Cuban immigrants, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, exploding a US ship, and orchestrating terrorism in US cities."--to the original document, you will see that it gets several things wrong, but that account is backed by a reliable, secondary source's description of what Operation Northwoods was, so we must defer to it. Pipoin (talk) 22:37, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

That's not how operations naming works. It'd be akin to claiming that because Operation Anaconda was a sub-operation under Operation Enduring Freedom means that it's not an operation. Operation Northwoods was a proposed operation under the overarching Operation Mongoose. That's what the cited documents mean. It takes not understanding operations/operation proposals to even get close to trying to argue that the subject header of a proposal is what the new article name should be. Operation Mongoose =/= Operation Northwoods, and the primary source itself explicitly states that the name of the proposed operation was Northwoods, see page 2 of the primary document. Furthermore, no one is doing original research here, and the scholarly consensus is that it was called Operation Northwoods because it was called that, and it was labeled as such in the primary documents. Finding some fringe outlier and trying to one man a change is akin to someone trying to change the Holodomor page citing Grover Furr as their source; or worse, trying to change the Holocaust page citing David Irving. It is incredibly absurd and finding a singular outlier is not hard. There are people who think the Earth is flat, of course.

Also, Operation Northwoods has been featured on the front page multiple times on its anniversary, which is coming up soon(March 13th), so I am once again questioning the motive of trying to dispute the factual accuracy of the event and also trying to get it renamed shortly before its anniversary. Doubletiberius (talk) 15:02, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Checked the date on this request to move, and the discussion has been going on for 14 days now, well past the 7 day discussion period required. You're the only one in favor of the move with every other editor opposing. As the factual accuracy dispute was also tied in by you with the request to move, going to remove that as no one has agreed with you about it being factual inaccurate either.

No need to Rfa as there's unanimous opposition to both tags with the requester as the only one supporting the move/factual dispute, and it has been 2 weeks now of discussion. Doubletiberius (talk) 15:35, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

You have taken a side in this dispute. Please put the tag back and allow someone who is uninvolved and impartial to remove the cleanup tag. Pipoin (talk) 19:40, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

I do not think the source I have provided is at all fringe. The author is a researcher at a major center on American presidential history (the Miller Center of Public Affairs); has written for the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, and Boston Globe Magazine; and was praised by Bob Woodward as "one of America's foremost experts on secret presidential recordings" (per his page on the Miller Center website) In opposition, there are a couple books and academic articles that refer to this as an independent operation. This is not a dispute that is so obviously tilted to one side that it is comparable to genocide denial or belief in a flat Earth. Pipoin (talk) 19:35, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose. I don't see how this is an improvement. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:56, 2 March 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose This article is about Operation Northwoods, the title change indirectly changes what most of the article is about and probably necessitates its own article. Gjb0zWxOb (talk) 19:14, 5 March 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose WP:COMMONNAME - secondary sources are calling it Operation Northwoods, so that's the name we should be using in our article. Ravensfire (talk) 15:31, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.