The tense relationship between the United States and Cuba during the Cold War led the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to hatch a slew of bizarre schemes aimed at taking down the Castro regime. While the goal of most of these covert operations (such as Operation Mongoose) was to assassinate Fidel Castro himself, other plans aimed to incite an all-out war between the U.S. and Cuba, experts have said.

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/19/us/declassified-papers-show-anti-castro-ideas-proposed-to-kennedy.html Originally published in THRILLER (2006),edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author James Patterson. Oleg Penkovsky was a high-ranking Soviet military intelligence officer who worked as a spy for the United States and Great Britain during the Cold War. Best known for his role in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Penkovsky supplied the U.S. government with valuable details about the capabilities of Soviet missiles that had been installed in Cuba. The New York Times is equally dishonest (as always), with a headline that states “Anti-Castro Ideas Proposed to Kennedy”, [ 7] stating the plans involved only ”Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass or Disrupt Cuba”. Among the NYT’s examples were a plan to show Castro in compromising situations with women, or devising “a poisoned scuba suit as a gift for Mr. Castro”, with no indications whatever of the atrocities actually proposed.Scott Shane and Tom Bowman with contribution from Laura Sullivan, "New book on NSA sheds light on secrets: U.S. terror plan was Cuba invasion pretext," Baltimore Sun, 24 April 2001. Fidel Castro arrives MATS Terminal, Washington, D.C. (Image credit: Warren K. Leffler, Library of Congress) Several other proposals were included within Operation Northwoods, including real or simulated actions against various U.S. military and civilian targets. The operation recommended developing a "Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington", which involved the bombing of civilian targets, which was to be blamed on the Cuban government to paint a false image of Fidel Castro and misinform the American public.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the attached Memorandum for the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, which responds to a request of that office for brief but precise description of pretexts which could provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba.The desired result from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere. I’ve never heard of Operation Northwoods. Never heard of it and don’t believe it,” Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy’s White House special counsel, told The Baltimore Sun in 2001. “Obviously, it would be totally illegal as well as totally unwise.”

U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba. ABC News reported on the Operation Northwoods story in 2001. Numerous Congressional hearings followed the video leak, and in June 2021 The Pentagon released an unclassified report detailing more than 140 encounters between military personnel and unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), another name for UFOs. While only one of the incidents could be explained with high confidence, the report in no way suggested that aliens have anything to do with UAP; most UAP incidents can likely be explained as foreign surveillance drones or airborne clutter, such as weather balloons, Pentagon officials said in Nov. 2022. A "Remember the Maine" incident could be arranged: We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba. Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.

N E W  Y O R K, May 1, 2001 -- 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. Another proposed a “Remember the Maine incident,” referring to the U.S.S. Maine, which blew up under mysterious circumstances in Havana harbor in 1898 and gave the U.S. justification to go to war with Spain. The 1962 version of this plan, Operation Northwoods proposed, “could be arranged in several forms.” The so-called kidnapping occurred in the early 1960s, at the height of the U.S.-Soviet space race. To make it clear that they were winning this race, the Soviets launched a multinational exhibition of their Lunik satellite, the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Earth's moon. [ Top 10 Soviet and Russian Space Missions]

Army officials managed to cover up the massacre for a year before an investigative journalist with the Associated Press (AP) brought the atrocity to the attention of the American people in November 1969. In light of news reports, an official inquiry was made into the events at My Lai and was concluded in March 1970. The inquiry resulted in criminal charges against 14 U.S. Army officers, all but one of whom were acquitted for their crimes. Declassified documents associated with the inquiry are available from the Library of Congress. proposed US false flag operation against American citizens Operation Northwoods memorandum (13 March 1962) [1] General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who was in charge as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

It is assumed that a single agency will be given the primary responsibility for developing military and para-military aspects of the basic plan. It is recommended that this responsibility for both overt and covert military operations be assigned the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Main article: Operation Mongoose General Edward Lansdale, commander of the anti-Cuban Operation Mongoose project