As some of you know, I'm writing a series of open letters to the Montana state legislature. Some of those letters are online at The Jefferson River Gazette's resource site, which is largely un-finished but which also has quite a bit of reading material presently posted. The article below is one of my open letters to the Judiciary Committee, Montana House of Representatives. Feel free to read this article at its home link, here:
http://www.jeffersonrivercoalition.com/northwoodsdocument.htm[edited February 13, 2009, by EA, to correct the above link.]
Also please note that this article exceeds the limit for characters in one text-box here at the forum, so I'll have to place it here in several postings.~
The Northwoods Document
Out of the Iran-Contra-Mena U.S. Senate hearings of the mid-1980s came words like “secret government”, “invisible government”, and “shadow government”. When the subject of “continuity of government” came up during Senate proceedings, the Chair consistently and ardently denied, refused to allow, any discussion of the subject. Transcribed from televised coverage, a peak moment contained this:
Representative Jack Brooks of Texas: “Colonel North, in your work at NSC , were you not assigned at one time to work on plans for the Continuity of Government in the event of a disaster?”
Counsel for Oliver North [objecting]: “Mr. Chairman!”
Chairman: “I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area, so may I request that you {Rep. Brooks] not touch upon that, sir?”
Representative Brooks: “I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers and several others, that there had been a plan developed by that same agency [NSC], a contingency plan, in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American Constitution, and I was deeply concerned about it and I was wondering if that was the area in which he worked.”
Chairman: “May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this I'm certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.”
With that, the investigations into the Iran-Contra-Mena scandal squashed any further attempt by the U.S. Congress to gain public access to the existence of the secret government. Of course, we now know that the Shadow Government is indeed the reality which confronts every American citizen, and every Montanan, today. In my post notes / addendum section following these letters you shall find FEMA's “Federal Preparedness Circular”, FPC-65 of July 26, 1999 – issued on the same day then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen's infamous speech was published in the Washington Post. That FPC-65 is entitled: FEDERAL EXECUTIVE BRANCH CONTINUITY OF OPERATIONS (COOP). Also provided in the post notes / addendum section following these letters is the entire speech of that date by then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen, entitled "Welcome To The Grave New World".
FPC-65's stated purpose?
PURPOSE: This Federal Preparedness Circular (FPC) provides guidance to Federal Executive Branch departments and agencies for use in developing viable and executable contingency plans for the continuity of operations (COOP). COOP planning facilitates the performance of department/agency essential functions during any emergency or situation that may disrupt normal operations.
A recent surfacing into the public awareness of the secret existence of a “continuity of government” cabal operating inside the Federal government has been given us by Richard Clarke on the morning of 911. Webster Griffin Tarpley has brought it forward in his 2005 masterpiece, 911: Synthetic Terror: Made In USA. On page 260 we read again Clarke's notation regarding the continuity of government:
“Around this time, Bush and Cheney were discussing the need to authorize shoot-downs of civilian airliners by the pilots in the Combat Air Patrols the Air Force was now straining to deploy. Richard Clarke told the teleconference of key agencies: 'Three decisions. One, the President has ordered the use of force against aircraft deemed to be hostile. Two, the White House is also requesting fighter escort of Air Force One. Three, and this applies to all agencies, we are initiating COG. Please activate your alternate command center and move staff to them immediately.' (Bamford 2004, 66) COG was Continuity of Government, the centerpiece of long-standing machinery for emergency rule from bunker complexes which had been developed over the years, including with the help of figures like Oliver North and Buster Horton. Clarke spoke at around 9:55 A.M.”
But “Continuity of Government” aside, through the Senate hearings on the Iran-Contra-Mena crimes the American public was made aware that certain Secret activities within the US government had been criminal, had been costly in a number of unfortunate ways, had been embarrassing – and that such embarrassments included the role played by CIA, DEA, and NSC in massive cocaine shipments brought onto American soil via government aircraft, and were vividly offensive to our American form of representative government. Indictments were issued, which the man behind the Secret government's policies, then-Vice President under Ronald Reagan, Mr. George Herbert Walker Bush, would later undo with Presidential pardons when he ascended to the White House as President. One of the criminals who had worked under George Herbert Walker Bush in the Reagan Administration and who soon received a Presidential Pardon by his old boss, the newly-installed President of the USA, George Herbert Walker Bush, was John Poindexter, who ended up working under George Herbert Walker Bush's son, George Walker Bush, at the “Total Information Awareness” agency within DARPA. The agency's logo, complete with the Illuminati's all-seeing eye (eye of Horus), is shown atop this page.
In that logo we see the “All-seeing Eye” of the Illuminati atop an unfinished pyramid holding the world in its illuminating vision. John Poindexter had been a criminal government employee working with CIA and NSC under George Herbert Walker Bush in the Reagan White House during the Iran-Contra-Mena scandal. After Bush's Presidential Pardon, the invincible idiot is now with DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, overseer of the Information Awareness Office], where he astonished the world with his published plan to establish a lottery for the prediction of “terror events” - a plan which was immediately discarded by Congress because it would pay, literally, the terrorists who committed any terrorist attacks – and Poindexter was reassigned. A known and convicted, and Presidentially-pardoned criminal, he is still a government employee with DARPA. Officially embarrassed, the Total Information Awareness underwent a name change to the more benign Information Awareness Office. Do the computer databases of the IAO interface with the computer databases of the NSA? Isn't the current government drive going in the direction of “information sharing” between all government agencies, for our greater Security?
A number of landmark revelations suggesting the existence of a secret government with a rogue agenda exist, and the Iran-Contra-Mena hearings constitute just one. Perhaps the classic example is the Northwoods Document which came into public awareness decades after it had been written. ABC News disclosed something of the nature of the Northwoods Document while reviewing a book by James Bamford. Below are some excerpts from their article of May 1, 2001, about four months before 911.
Link good as of April, 2006.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/print?id=92662N E WÂ 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.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.
America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.
The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.
"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.
The plans were motivated by an intense desire among senior military leaders to depose Castro, who seized power in 1959 to become the first communist leader in the Western Hemisphere — only 90 miles from U.S. shores.
"The whole thing was so bizarre," says Bamford, noting public and international support would be needed for an invasion, but apparently neither the American public, nor the Cuban public, wanted to see U.S. troops deployed to drive out Castro.
The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee published its own report on right-wing extremism in the military, warning a "considerable danger" in the "education and propaganda activities of military personnel" had been uncovered. The committee even called for an examination of any ties between Lemnitzer and right-wing groups. But Congress didn't get wind of Northwoods, says Bamford.
One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base — an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war.
Ironically, the documents came to light, says Bamford, in part because of the 1992 Oliver Stone film JFK, which examined the possibility of a conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy.
As public interest in the assassination swelled after JFK's release, Congress passed a law designed to increase the public's access to government records related to the assassination.
The author says a friend on the board tipped him off to the documents.
Afraid of a congressional investigation, Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint Chiefs documents related to the Bay of Pigs destroyed, says Bamford. But somehow, these remained.
"The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after," says Bamford.
Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
~End excerpts from ABC News article of 2001.
What Mr. Bamford was talking about is one of the most amazing documents ever released under the Freedom Of Information Act. In this document high-level Pentagon planners, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff themselves, were brain-storming for “pretexts” which would create and enlist public support for invading Cuba. While the truth was that Castro's Cuba was a benign (at that time) nation-state which could pose no threat to the United States, that truth itself was clearly not what the USG's war machine wanted.
What was wanted, what was desired, what some government employees felt was needed and necessary, was a military invasion of Cuba and forced regime change. We may note that this document was drafted before the Cuban-Russian-U.S. missile crisis, so that later development. was not in play when the Northwoods Document was created. After learning of Roosevelt's eight-point plan to induce Japan to attack in 1941, we must also now ask ourselves whether any covert Statecraft was practiced which would have induced the USSR to inject missiles into Cuba; but I digress.
Certain interests wanted to invade Cuba, as we shall see. To do that, and have the support of the American public, they were looking into pretexts. What, then, is a “pretext”?
From my aging Random House Dictionary, 2nd Edition Unabridged, I read under “pretext”:
“Something that is put forward to conceal a true purpose or object; an ostensible reason; excuse.”
So the Joint Chiefs of Staff were looking for an excuse, a false-flag “ostensible reason” which would “justify” in the minds of most Americans a military invasion of Cuba by the U.S. Is that not an abuse of power? Is that not an abuse of office?
These men were grown men, supposedly fit to serve this nation's interests at the Pentagon as the heads of the various branches of the U.S. military. They were presumed by an unwitting public to be trustworthy, honest, careful in their decision-making policy, sensitive to the will of the people in every important way – and yet they were sitting at planning tables in government offices trying to think up lies which they could sell to the American people for the purpose of gaining public support for a war against a foreign sovereign nation. The war they desired was as illegal as was the Bay of Pigs invasion. The war they desired was not a defensive war but a war of aggression. At that time, 1962, the targeted nation was Cuba.
And now, more than forty years afterward, they're caught in a criminal conspiracy which is so bogus as to, were it not so hideously sinister and evil, appear to be comic. The old black and white movie, Dr. Strangelove, comes to mind. But in this case we're dealing with actual history, with realism instead of fiction. Every time I read this document I get fearful, I get angry, and I feel more and more helpless in the face of such monstrosity. We are talking about the U.S. Pentagon here, and the heads of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard. We are talking about the leadership and the highest authorities within the largest, most overly-financed, most widely-spread, most diversely-armed, most technologically developed military force in the history of mankind. We are talking about the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Department of Defense. Let us pause for a moment and let that sink in fully; let us ponder the horrible meaning, its importance to us all today as we contemplate what happened to this nation on 911.
Those star-studded gentlemen called Admirals and Generals were busily thinking up ways to convince the American people of the need to invade a foreign, sovereign nation-state which was posing no threat to the American people. They were considering possibilities which would derive from creating acts of terrorism against innocent people and properties, at tax-payer expense, using para-military Intelligence-community operatives such as agents-provocateur and “informants” and contracted criminals of even lower moral standing, such as the infamous Melvin Lattimore and Ali Mohammed, to execute terror acts which would serve as “pretexts” to thereby gain public support for their desired war. I submit that what these Admirals and Generals were up to can in no way be interpreted to possess congruence with their oaths of office and moral commitments to the will of the American people, to this Federal government, and to our U.S. Constitution. I feel sure that every member of the Judiciary Committee will agree with me on that.
I think that the creation of the Northwoods Document is blatant treason tinged with an overlay of outright insanity. Since that statement by self is fairly strong on many levels, let us pause to refresh our memory regarding the content of the document.
~ Begin quoting passages from the Northwoods Document:
13 March 1962
MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
Subject: Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)
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 would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that the proposed memorandum be forwarded as a preliminary submission suitable for planning purposes. It is assumed that there will be similar submissions from other agencies and that these inputs will be used as a basis for developing a time-phased plan. Individual projects can then be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Further, 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.
(Signing) For the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
L.L.Lemnitzer, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
1 Enclosure for Chief of Operations, Cuba Project
~End quoted passages from first page of Northwoods Document.
We see that someone put the JCS up to figuring out what sort of events could be engineered, staged and executed, and publicized, to sway public perception regarding Cuba, and whoever did that must have been someone whom the Joint Chiefs of Staff recognized as sitting in an office higher than their own. In other words, the authority for the project came from above the JCS level, was accepted by the JCS, and, once the project had selected what it considered to be the best examples of possible pretexts they then offered it up the chain of command to the issuing authority in the form of an official Department of Defense document, signed by the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff himself, General L. L. Lemnitzer.
(end installment one - continued next post)
