Vince Houghton - Nuking the Moon - And Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board

Operation Good Times (my absolute favorite)

The objective of this plan was to “disillusion the Cuban population” with fake pictures of Fidel Castro—such as a fat Castro standing in a room in his house with “two beauties” (one on each arm). The house would be “lavishly furnished,” and the dining room table would have an enormous spread of “delectable” Cuban food. [4] That’s somewhat redundant, as all Cuban food is “delectable.” The airdropped photos would be supplemented by an “appropriately Cuban” caption—something like “My ration is different”—all in the spirit of putting “even a Commie Dictator in the proper perspective” with the underfed and underprivileged Cuban masses.

All of theabove operational ideas were relatively ho-hum if you think about it. More devious than diabolical. But one item on Lansdale’s list took things to an entirely new level—and more important, set the stage for what would become the infamous plan mentioned in this chapter’s title.

Operation Bingo was designed to overthrow the Castro regime “in a matter of hours,” using the full force and might of the U.S. military. The concept was what many today would refer to as a “false flag” operation—that is, an operation that would appear to be conducted by the enemy military, but would in fact be perpetrated by our own forces. The term “false flag” comes from the days when pirates stalked the high seas. If a pirate ship wanted to sneak up on and attack another ship, it raised the national flag of the victim ship to pretend to be its ally. A clever ruse that left the victim ship nearly defenseless against the pirate onslaught as they realized far too late that their friend was in reality a mangy scallywag buccaneer.

In this case, the victim was the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo, which would be “attacked” by a simulated force of “Cuban” soldiers (in reality, it would be noisemakers, gunshot simulators, and the like). Once the president had been “informed” of the Cuban treachery, he would order a counterattack, targeting Cuban airfields and strategic communication lines with American combat aircraft. Airborne troops (pre-positioned, because somehow that wouldn’t be suspicious) would drop into multiple areas to secure Cuban airfields, road and rail terminals, and other important strategic infrastructure. A naval fleet force (again, inconspicuously “standing by on alert”) would begin to bring in more troops and resupplies for the soldiers and Marines already on the ground. Taken together, this show of military strength would “overwhelm the Cuban military and cause its defeat.”

The generals who made up the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff took this concept and ran with it (while dismissing most of the rest of Lansdale’s ideas as insufficiently suitable for the purpose of expelling Castro from power—so basically, not crazy enough). In a perfect world, Cuba could be goaded or provoked into attacking the United States. In this ideal scenario, Castro would make it unnecessary for the United States to concoct an unseemly plan to convince our friends and enemies that we were the victim. Castro would do the dirty work for us.

Fidel Castro is a lot of things to a lot of different people. A revolutionary hero or a brutal dictator. A courageous and enlightened thinker or a murderous thug. A nationalist fighting for Cuban independence or a communist stooge of the Soviet Union. Take your pick. There’s no wrong answer. Castro was all of these. But there’s one thing we know Castro wasn’t: stupid. He wasn’t about to give the United States a perfectly valid excuse to invade his country.

This meant that the Joint Chiefs had to stack the deck, and that made the ideas behind Bingo very interesting. They needed to make it appear as though the Cubans had attacked legitimate and vital American interests. At least they needed the rest of the world to agree to suspend their disbelief so that the United States could claim victimhood and retain a modicum of plausible deniability that it wasn’t really the U.S. military behind the attacks.

In March 1962,the Joint Chiefs sent a memorandum to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as a “preliminary submission suitable for planning purposes.” The memo was titled “Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba,” and it laid the foundation for the plan that would later be presented to President Kennedy. This plan would become known as Operation Northwoods.

After a litany of caveats—the courses of action listed in the document were “only for planning purposes”; the document should be considered a “point of departure”; it would be more desirable to use “legitimate provocation” as the basis for American intervention in Cuba—Northwoods jumps right into its laundry list of ways to pretend the United States had been wronged by Castro and the Cubans. It’s a long list, so I’m only including the particularly interesting ones here.

One of these ideas should sound familiar: a simulated attack on Guantánamo. Lansdale’s original plan had moxie, but it was short on details. Northwoods provided an eleven-point checklist of operational ideas regarding the faux assault on Gitmo. First, using clandestine radio, the plan called for starting rumors of a pending attack by Cuban military forces on the American base, followed closely by an actual assault on the base by Cuban exiles (the document calls them “friendly” Cubans) dressed in Cuban military uniforms. U.S. forces would capture some of these “friendly” Cubans attempting to sabotage key Gitmo facilities, while other “friendlies” would start riots near the base main gate—the Cuban people autonomously rising up to demonstrate against the American occupiers. This is the point at which the mission went kinetic (or in layman’s terms, when we would start to blow stuff up). The next step called for setting fires inside the base that would blow up ammunition stores, and burn aircraft parked on the airfield. Concurrently, the “friendly” Cubans would launch mortar shells into Gitmo, causing “some damage to installations,” and saboteurs would set fire to an American ship in the harbor, or even sink one near the harbor entrance (this could happen along with the requisite funerals for “mock-victims” of the attack). These sabotage operations would occur simultaneously with a fake ground assault on Gitmo. After “capturing” the assault teams in the vicinity of Gitmo, and “capturing” the militia group that “storm[ed] the base,” the United States would have the necessary pretense to respond with “large scale” military operations to oust the Castro regime. Problem solved.

But if you—President Kennedy—don’t like that idea, don’t worry, sir. There are many, many others. A more detailed proposal for the sink-a-ship idea was also on the docket in case you want to go in that direction. Northwoods opined that a new “Remember the Maine ” incident in Guantánamo Bay could be an impetus for a full-scale invasion. If you still retain your Spanish-American War history (and who doesn’t, right?), you’ll recall that the catalyst for the war was the mysterious explosion of the battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor. While we know now (and probably then, too) that the ship most likely blew up because of an accident, the U.S. government used the incident to instigate a war against Spain. If it worked once, why not again? A nice little touch at the end of the plan really ties it all together: “The US could follow up with an air/sea rescue operation covered by U.S. fighters to ‘evacuate’ remaining members of the non-existent crew. Casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.” A helpful wave of national indignation. Malevolence can be so poetic sometimes.