Please Read: Pentagon Plan to Provoke Terrorist Attacks
Dear Friends and Fellow Americans,
Why am I sending this to you now? I have decided to send this to you
NOW because of an under-reported item in Sunday's Los Angeles Times
newspaper by Willaim Arkin (October 27th). In that article Rumsfeld is
alleged to be making efforts to provoke more terror attacks as part of a
plan to flush terrorist groups out into the open in order to find and
destroy them.
I am speaking of their "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group, (P2OG)":
"Among other things, this body would launch secret operations aimed at
'stimulating reactions' among terrorists and states possessing weapons of
mass destruction -- that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into
action and exposing themselves to 'quick-response' attacks by U.S. forces.
Such tactics would hold 'states/sub-state actors accountable' and 'signal to
harboring states that their sovereignty will be at risk,' the briefing paper
declares."
More important than Arkin's article is Chris Floyd's article in
CounterPunch that connects the dots, citing the Operation Northwoods
documents (see below) and what's really going on here and abroad as the
direct intended result of the 911 events which were allegedly allowed to
happen.
Surely, you can see the parallels between the events of 911, Rumsfeld's
plan to instigate terror attacks and the documented plans of Operation
Northwoods.
What is Operation Northwoods ... ?
Since before September 11th 2001, I was aware of documents declassified
and uncovered in 2000 that demonstrate efforts on the part of the 1962 Joint
Chiefs of Staff to stage terrorist attacks against American civilians to
start a war with Cuba. Researcher James Bamford (The Puzzle Palace) was made
aware of documents found during a search of declassified JFK assassination
docs. Bamford then published these documents in his 2001 book Body Of
Secrets. It was on the New York Times bestseller list in early 2001.
These explosive documents show that the Joint Chiefs of Staff plotted to
initiate a "remember the Maine" terrorism campaign against the American
people by "Cuba" - staging attacks on Guantanimo Bay, blowing up US
airliners filled with American citizens, bomb Washington DC, and much much
more - so that "casualty lists in US Newspapers would cause a helpful wave
of national indignation" and a pretext for invasion and war with Cuba. John
F. Kennedy opposed this plan and was dead within a few months.
Shortly after I heard about this book in early 2001 it was covered by
the Baltimore Sun newspaper and then by Peter Jennings on prime time
ABCNews. (See links to those articles below)
PDF copies of the original documents are available at the National
Security Archive (see link below) as well as the archive link at my site
here:
Operation Northwoods Documents (archived at Elfis.Net)
<http://www.elfis.net/parapolitics/northwoodsdoc1.pdf>
In May 2001 local parapolitical investigator and radio host Alex Jones
interviewed author James Bamford about these documents. Note that during
this pre 911 interview Alex alludes to other plans mentioned in the docs
that intimate sniper attacks in US cities.
Alex Jones interviews James Bamford 5/9/1 (File Size = 5mb)
<http://www.elfis.net/parapolitics/aj050901pmJamesBamford1.mp3>
Over a year and a half after the above interview wherein Jones and
Bamford discuss the documented plans for fake terror attacks against
American citizens (including sniper attacks) Alex would suddenly put two and
two together and issue a press release on October 23rd in which he draws the
connection between certain passages of the Northwoods docs that suggest the
2002 sniper attacks in Washington DC.
Alex Jones' Operation Expose the Govt Snipers Press Release
<http://www.infowars.com/northwoods.htm>
In less than 24 hours the alleged snipers were apprehended by
authorities following their surreal Manchurian Candidate-esque "cue"
televised to the sniper using the Cherokee folktale of the fox and the :
"You have indicated that you want us to do and say certain things. You've
asked us to say,'We have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose.' We
understand that hearing us say this is important to you."
--Montgomery Co. Police Chief Charles Moose, Oct. 23, at a televised
news briefing addressed to the sniper.
Just weeks before Alex Jones' realization I had a conversation with one
of my other local parapolitical writers/researchers who had already drawn
the same conclusion, that the sniper attacks were the continued
implimentation of the Northwoods plan.
Whether you think of this as absolute fact, complete fantasy, or disinfo
from some unknown group, the fact remains that no-one is addressing the
obvious parallels between the 911 "intelligence failure" ***
*** Or was it an Intelligence Success ... see W199EYE released by former FBI
deputy director John O'Neill (before his murder on 911) and published by
Greg Palast in his book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. W199EYE is an
alleged Executive Order signed by President Bush before September 11th 2001,
pulling all FBI agents from investigation of the very terrorists who would
allegedly carry out the 911 attacks. This order and the resulting lawsuits
by 911 victims families have been deemed a "threat to National Security".
<http://www.elfis.net/parapolitics/191eye.gif>
AND NOW .... Big Brotha is getting everything he wants ...
From the Federation of American Scientists at <www.FAS.org>
SECRECY IN THE NEWS
The pending Homeland Security Act includes "the most severe
weakening of the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] in its 36-
year history," Senator Patrick Leahy told the Washington Post.
See "Disclosure Curbs in Homeland Bill Decried" by Dan Morgan,
Washington Post, November 16:
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61385-2002Nov15.html>
and "Homeland bill's secrecy rules criticized" by Tamara Lytle,
Orlando Sentinel, November 15:
<http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-asecfoi15111502nov15.story>
A November 14 New York Times column by William Safire galvanized
public concern about the privacy implications of DARPA's "Total
Information Awareness" initiative that would probe databases of
private transactions in search of terrorists. A November 16
Washington Post editorial put the matter in some perspective:
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61653-2002Nov15.html>
By creating a new Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence,
the Pentagon has done approximately the opposite of what was
recommended by a classified review of U.S. intelligence headed
by Brent Scowcroft last year. See "New Intelligence Post
Consolidates Rumsfeld's Clout" by Vernon Loeb in the Washington
Post online, November 18:
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4439-2002Nov18.html>
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
OPERATION NORTHWOODS
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Baltimore Sun Coverage:
Friendly Fire - Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S.
Cities to Provoke War With Cuba By David Ruppe
N E W Y O R K, May 1 In the early 1960s, America's top military
leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of
terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.
<http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html>
-=-=-=-=-=-
ABCNews Coverage:
New book on NSA sheds light on secrets - U.S. terror plan called Cuba
invasion pretext By Scott Shane and Tom Bowman Sun Staff
Originally published April 24, 2001
WASHINGTON - U.S. military leaders proposed in 1962 a secret plan to
commit terrorist acts against Americans and blame Cuba to create a pretext
for invasion and the ouster of Communist leader Fidel Castro, according to a
new book about the National Security Agency.
<http://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-te.md.nsa24apr24.story>
-=-=-=-=-=-
Original Official NSA Declassified Documents:
The National Security Archive
April 30, 2001
In his new exposé of the National Security Agency entitled Body of
Secrets, author James Bamford highlights a set of proposals on Cuba by the
Joint Chiefs of Staff codenamed OPERATION NORTHWOODS. This document, titled
³Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba² was provided by the
JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, as the key
component of Northwoods. Written in response to a request from the Chief of
the Cuba Project, Col. Edward Lansdale, the Top Secret memorandum describes
U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S.
invasion of Cuba. These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program
known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans
living in the United States, developing a fake ³Communist Cuban terror
campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,²
including ³sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),²
faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a
³Remember the Maine² incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and
then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. Bamford himself writes that
Operation Northwoods ³may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S.
government.²
Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Justification for US Military
Intervention in Cuba [includes cover memoranda], March 13, 1962,
TOP SECRET, 15 pp.
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/news/20010430/>
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/news/20010430/doc1.pdf>
-=-=-=-=-
CounterPunch
November 1, 2002
Into the Dark - The Pentagon Plan to Provoke Terrorist Attacks
by CHRIS FLOYD
This age: layers of lime harden in the sick son's blood... There's nowhere
to run from the tyrant-epoch... Who else will you kill? Who else glorify?
What other lies will you invent?
Osip Mandelshtam,
"1 January 1924"
This column stands foursquare with the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S.
Secretary of Defense, when he warns that there will be more terrorist
attacks against the American people and civilization at large. We know, as
does the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, that this
statement is an incontrovertible fact, a matter of scientific certainty. And
how can we and the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense,
be so sure that there will be more terrorist attacks against the American
people and civilization at large?
Because these attacks will be instigated at the order of the Honorable
Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense.
This astonishing admission was buried deep in a story which was itself
submerged by mounds of gray newsprint and glossy underwear ads in last
Sunday's Los Angeles Times. There--in an article by military analyst William
Arkin, detailing the vast expansion of the secret armies being massed by the
former Nixon bureaucrat now lording it over the Pentagon--came the
revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a super-Intelligence Support
Activity" that will "bring together CIA and military covert action,
information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception."
According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense
Science Board, the new organization--the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations
Group (P2OG)"--will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate
reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent
acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.
In other words--and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no
one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan--the United States
government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military
operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's
say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other
members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment
the murder of innocent people--your family, your friends, your lovers,
you--in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.
For P2OG is not designed solely to flush out terrorists and bring them to
justice--a laudable goal in itself, although the Rumsfeld way of combating
terrorism by causing it is pure moral lunacy. (Or should we use the Regime's
own preferred terminology and just call it "evil"?) No, it seems the
Pee-Twos have bigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into
action--by killing their family members? luring them with loot? fueling them
with drugs? plying them with jihad propaganda? messing with their mamas? or
with agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groups then plan and
direct the attacks themselves?--they can then take measures against the
"states/sub-state actors accountable" for "harboring" the Rumsfeld-roused
gangs. What kind of measures exactly? Well, the classified Pentagon program
puts it this way: "Their sovereignty will be at risk."
The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a
little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire's
burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir 'em with
a stick, and presto: instant "justification" for whatever level of
intervention/conquest/rapine you might desire. And what if the territory you
fancy doesn't actually harbor any convenient marauders to use for fun and
profit? Well, surely a God-like "super-Intelligence Support Activity" is
capable of creation ex nihilo, yes?
The Rumsfeld-Bush plan to employ murder and terrorism for political,
financial and ideological gain does have historical roots (besides al Qaeda,
the Stern Gang, the SA, the SS, the KGB, the IRA, the UDF, Eta, Hamas,
Shining Path and countless other upholders of Bushian morality, decency and
freedom). We refer of course to Operations Northwoods, oft mentioned in
these pages: the plan that America's top military brass presented to
President John Kennedy in 1963, calling for a phony terrorist
campaign--complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead
Americans--to provide "justification" for an invasion of Cuba, the
Mafia/Corporate fiefdom which had recently been lost to Castro.
Kennedy rejected the plan, and was killed a few months later. Now Rumsfeld
has resurrected Northwoods, but on a far grander scale, with resources at
his disposal undreamed of by those brass of yore, with no counterbalancing
global rival to restrain him--and with an ignorant, corrupt president who
has shown himself all too eager to embrace any means whatsoever that will
augment the wealth and power of his own narrow, undemocratic, elitist
clique.
There is prestuplyeniye here, transgression, a stepping-over--deliberately,
with open eyes, with forethought, planning, and conscious will--of lines
that should never be crossed. Acting in deadly symbiosis with rage-maddened
killers, God-crazed ranters and those supreme "sub-state actors," the
mafias, Bush and his cohorts are plunging the world into an abyss, an
endless night of black ops, retribution, blowback, deceit, of murder and
terror--wholesale, retail, state-sponsored, privatized; of fear and
degradation, servility, chaos, and the perversion of all that's best in us,
of all that we've won from the bestiality of our primal nature, all that
we've raised above the mindless ravening urges and impulses still boiling in
the mud of our monkey brains.
It's not a fight for freedom; it's a retreat into darkness.
And the day will be a long time coming.
Chris Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor to
CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
<http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd1101.html>
-=-=-=-=-
P2OG: LATIMES - The Secret War - William Arkin
<http://www.latimes.com/la-op-arkin27oct27001451,0,7355676.story>
The Secret War
Frustrated by intelligence failures, the Defense Department is dramatically
expanding its 'black world' of covert operations
By William M. Arkin
William M. Arkin is a military affairs analyst who writes regularly for
Opinion. E-mail: warkin@igc.org
October 27 2002
SOUTH POMFRET, Vt. -- In what may well be the largest expansion of covert
action by the armed forces since the Vietnam era, the Bush administration
has turned to what the Pentagon calls the "black world" to press the war on
terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
The Defense Department is building up an elite secret army with resources
stretching across the full spectrum of covert capabilities. New
organizations are being created. The missions of existing units are being
revised. Spy planes and ships are being assigned new missions in anti-terror
and monitoring the "axis of evil."
The increasingly dominant role of the military, Pentagon officials say,
reflects frustration at the highest levels of government with the
performance of the intelligence community, law enforcement agencies and much
of the burgeoning homeland security apparatus. It also reflects the desire
of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to gain greater overall control of
the war on terror.
Insulated from outside pressures, armed with matchless weapons and
technology, trained to operate below the shadow line, the Pentagon's black
world of classified operations holds out the hope of swift, decisive action
in a struggle against terrorism that often looks more like a family feud
than a war.
Coupled with the enormous effort being made throughout the government to
improve and link information networks and databases, covert anti-terror
operations promise to put better information in the hands of streamlined
military teams that can identify, monitor and neutralize terrorist threats.
"Prevention and preemption are ... the only defense against terrorism,"
Rumsfeld said in May. "Our task is to find and destroy the enemy before they
strike us."
The new apparatus for covert operations and the growing government secrecy
associated with the war on terrorism reflect the way the Bush
administration's most senior officials see today's world:
First, they see fighting terrorism and its challenge to U.S. interests and
values as the 21st century equivalent of the Cold War crusade against
communism. Second, they believe the magnitude of the threat requires, and
thus justifies, aggressive new "off-the-books" tactics.
In their understandable frustration over continued atrocities such as the
recent Bali attack, however, U.S. officials might keep two points in mind.
Though covert action can bring quick results, because it is isolated from
the normal review processes it can just as quickly bring mistakes and larger
problems. Also, the Pentagon is every bit as capable as the civilian side of
the government when it comes to creating organization charts and bureaucracy
that stifle creative thinking and timely action.
The development of the Pentagon's covert counter-terror capability has its
roots in the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The Army created a highly
compartmentalized organization that could collect clandestine intelligence
independent of the rest of the U.S. intelligence community and follow
through with covert military action.
Known as the Intelligence Support Activity, or ISA, when it was established
in 1981, this unit fought in drug wars and counter-terror operations from
the Middle East to South America. It built a reputation for daring,
flexibility and a degree of lawlessness.
In May 1982, Deputy Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci called the ISA
"uncoordinated and uncontrolled." Though its freelance tendencies were
curbed, the ISA continued to operate under different guises through the
ill-starred U.S. involvement in Somalia in 1992 and was reportedly active in
the hunt for Bosnian Serbs suspected of war crimes.
Today, the ISA operates under the code name Gray Fox. In addition to covert
operations, it provides the war on terrorism with the kind of so-called
"close-in" signals monitoring -- including the interception of cell phone
conversations -- that helped bring down Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Gray Fox's low-profile eavesdropping planes also fly without military
markings. Working closely with Special Forces and the CIA, Gray Fox also
places operatives inside hostile territory.
In and around Afghanistan, Gray Fox was part of a secret sphere that
included the CIA's paramilitary Special Activities Division and the
Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command.
These commands and "white" Special Forces like the Green Berets, as well as
Air Force combat controllers and commandos of eight different nations report
to a mind-boggling array of new command cells and coordination units set up
after Sept. 11.
An Army brigadier general commands the Joint Interagency Task Force at
Bagram air base north of Kabul to coordinate CIA, Defense Department and
coalition forces in Afghanistan. A new Campaign Support Group has been
established at Ft. Bragg, N.C. The Special Operations Joint Interagency
Collaboration Center has been created in Tampa, Fla.
In Europe, the Joint Interagency Coordination Group handles
information-sharing and logistical support with NATO. Hawaii's Pacific
Command stood up a Joint Interagency Counter-Terrorist Group this summer.
Meantime, old commands are being morphed into new ones for the covert war.
The two Joint Interagency Task Forces in the United States previously
devoted to fighting drugs now have the war on terrorism as their highest
priority.
The epicenter of the Pentagon's covert operations remains the North
Carolina-based Joint Special Operations Command, often referred to as Delta
Force. The super-secret command is still not officially acknowledged to
exist. Its two-star commander, Army Maj. Gen. Dell L. Dailey, who spent much
of the Afghan war in Oman, has no public biography.
Among Dailey's assets is a fleet of aircraft specially equipped for secret
operations -- conventional and covert military planes and helicopters, and
even former Soviet helicopters. The bulk of those craft, including the
reconfigured Russian choppers, fly from airfields in Uzbekistan and from two
Pakistani air bases, Shahbaz and Shamsi.
The Air Force and the CIA collect additional intelligence from unmanned
Predator and Global Hawk drones. They also have low-profile reconnaissance
assets that look like transport planes and operate under such code names as
ARL-Low, Keen Sage, Scathe View and Senior Scout.
Not to be left out, the Navy's Gray Star spy vessel, reminiscent of the old
Pueblo, captured by North Korea in 1968, now sweeps up sophisticated -- and
obscure -- "measurements and signatures intelligence" to monitor the
ballistic missile capabilities of Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
Even with all this, the Pentagon wants to expand covert capabilities.
Rumsfeld's influential Defense Science Board 2002 Summer Study on Special
Operations and Joint Forces in Support of Countering Terrorism says in its
classified "outbrief" -- a briefing drafted to guide other Pentagon agencies
-- that the global war on terrorism "requires new strategies, postures and
organization."
The board recommends creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an
organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group, (P2OG), to
bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare,
intelligence, and cover and deception.
Among other things, this body would launch secret operations aimed at
"stimulating reactions" among terrorists and states possessing weapons of
mass destruction -- that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into
action and exposing themselves to "quick-response" attacks by U.S. forces.
Such tactics would hold "states/sub-state actors accountable" and "signal to
harboring states that their sovereignty will be at risk," the briefing paper
declares.
Never to be outdone in proposing hardware solutions, the Air Force is
designing its own Global Response Task Force to fight the war on terrorism.
The all-seeing, all-bombing Air Force envisions unmanned A-X aircraft
capable of long-range, nighttime gunship operations and an M-X covert
transport, as well as hypersonic and space-based conventional weapons
capable of delivering a "worldwide attack within an hour."
Who says the arms race is over? Rumsfeld's science board warns against
overemphasis on equipment even as it recommends more. Washington is well on
its way to an arms race with itself.
And for those who worry that all these secret operations and aggressive new
doctrines will turn the United States into the world's policeman, there is a
ray of hope.
Rumsfeld is now the field marshal of the war on terrorism, but the Pentagon
is also creating new layers of bureaucracy that may save it from itself. Not
to mention the rest of us.
Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times
-=-=-=-=-=-
DOD EXAMINES "PREEMPTIVE" INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS
One way to invigorate U.S. intelligence would be to "Develop an entirely new
capability to proactively, preemptively evoke responses from
adversary/terrorist groups," according to the Defense Science Board, a
Pentagon advisory group.
Such an approach would "improve [intelligence] information collection by
stimulating reactions" from the target.
One hundred "highly specialized people with unique technical and
intelligence skills such as information operations, PSYOP, network attack,
covert activities, SIGINT, HUMINT, SOF, influence warfare/deception
operations" could constitute a new, elite "Proactive Preemptive Operations
Group (P2OG)," reporting to the National Security Council with an annual
budget of $100 million.
The proposal is the latest sign of a new assertiveness by the Defense
Department in intelligence matters, and an indication that the cutting edge
of intelligence reform is not to be found in Congress but behind closed
doors in the Pentagon.
The Defense Science Board recommended creation of the preemptive operations
group in its "DSB Summer Study on Special Operations and Joint Forces in
Support of Countering Terrorism."
The findings and recommendations of the DSB Summer Study were set forth in
an August 16, 2002, PowerPoint briefing. The first thirty pages of the
unclassified 78 page PointPoint presentation are posted here:
<http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/dsbbrief.ppt>
The DSB briefing was first reported by Dan Dupont in Inside the Pentagon on
September 26. It was also discussed by William M. Arkin in the Los Angeles
Times on October 27.
<http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2002/10/102802.html>
-=-=-=-=-
The Secret War
Frustrated by intelligence failures, the Defense Department is dramatically
expanding its 'black world' of covert operations
By William M. Arkin
William M. Arkin is a military affairs analyst who writes regularly for
Opinion. E-mail: warkin@igc.org
October 27 2002
<http://memes.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1305>
