Doc Mercer
EOG Master
Operation Northwoods
US PLANNED FAKE TERROR ATTACKS ON CITIZENS
TO CREATE SUPPORT FOR CUBAN WAR
TO CREATE SUPPORT FOR CUBAN WAR
From BODY OF SECRETS, James Bamford, Doubleday, 2001, p.82 and following.
Scanned and edited by NY Transfer News.
Scanned and edited by NY Transfer News.
<center> <table style="border-collapse: collapse;" border="0" bordercolor="#111111" cellpadding="7" cellspacing="0" width="630"> <tbody> <tr> <td>...In [Joint Chief's chair] Lemnitzer's view, the country would be far better off if the generals could take over. [JFK assassination legend has it some general presided over the fudgy JFK autopsy. --Mk] For those military officers who were sitting on the fence, the Kennedy administration's botched Bay of Pigs invasion was the last straw. "The Bay of Pigs fiasco broke the dike," said one report at the time. "President Kennedy was pilloried by the super patriots as a 'no-win' chief . . . The Far Right became a fount of proposals born of frustration and put forward in the name of anti-Communism. . . Active-duty commanders played host to anti-Communist seminars on their bases and attended or addressed Right-wing meetings elsewhere."
Although no one in Congress could have known it at the time, Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge.
According to secret and long-hidden documents obtained for Body of Secrets, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government. In the name of antiCommunism, they proposed launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba.
The idea may actually have originated with President Eisenhower in the last days of his administration. With the Cold War hotter than ever and the recent U-2 scandal fresh in the public's memory, the old general wanted to go out with a win. He wanted desperately to invade Cuba in the weeks leading up to Kennedy's inauguration; indeed, on January 3 he told Lemnitzer and other aides in his Cabinet Room that he would move against Castro before the inauguration if only the Cubans gave him a really good excuse. Then, with time growing short, Eisenhower floated an idea. If Castro failed to provide that excuse, perhaps, he said, the United States "could think of manufacturing something that would be generally acceptable." What he was suggesting was a pretext a bombing, an attack, an act of sabotage carried out secretly against the United States by the United States. Its purpose would be to justify the launching of a war. It was a dangerous suggestion by a desperate president.
Although no such war took place, the idea was not lost on General Lemnitzer But he and his colleagues were frustrated by Kennedy's failure to authorize their plan, and angry that Castro had not provided an excuse to invade.
The final straw may have come during a White House meeting on February 26, 1962. Concerned that General Lansdale's various covert action plans under Operation Mongoose were simply becoming more outrageous and going nowhere, Robert Kennedy told him to drop all anti-Castro efforts. Instead, Lansdale was ordered to concentrate for the next three months strictly on gathering intelligence about Cuba. It was a humiliating defeat for Lansdale, a man more accustomed to praise than to scorn.
As the Kennedy brothers appeared to suddenly "go soft" on Castro, Lemnitzer could see his opportunity to invade Cuba quickly slipping away. The attempts to provoke the Cuban public to revolt seemed dead and Castro, unfortunately, appeared to have no inclination to launch any attacks against Americans or their property Lemnitzer and the other Chiefs knew there was only one option left that would ensure their war. They would have to trick the American public and world opinion into hating Cuba so much that they would not only go along, but would insist that he and his generals launch their war against Castro. "World opinion, and the United Nations forum," said a secret JCS document, "should be favorably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere."
Operation Northwoods called for a war in which many patriotic Americans and innocent Cubans would die senseless deaths, all to satisfy the egos of twisted generals back in Washington, safe in their taxpayer financed homes and limousines.
One idea seriously considered involved the launch of John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth. On February 20,1962, Glenn was to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on his historic journey. The flight was to carry the banner of America's virtues of truth, freedom, and democracy into orbit high over the planet. But Lemnitzer and his Chiefs had a different idea. They proposed to Lansdale that, should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof that . . . the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba [sic.]"
This would be accomplished, Lemnitzer continued, "by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans." Thus, as NASA prepared to send the first American into space, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were preparing to use John Glenn's possible death as a pretext to launch a war.
Glenn lifted into history without mishap, leaving Lemnitzer and the Chiefs to begin devising new plots which they suggested be carried out "within the time frame of the next few months."
Among the actions recommended was "a series of well coordinated incidents to take place in and around" the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This included dressing "friendly" Cubans in Cuban military uniforms and then have them "start riots near the main gate of the base. Others would pretend to be saboteurs inside the base. Ammunition would be blown up, fires started, aircraft sabotaged, mortars fired at the base with damage to installations."
The suggested operations grew progressively more outrageous. Another called for an action similar to the infamous incident in February 1898 when an explosion aboard the battleship Maine in Havana harbor killed 266 U.S. sailors. Although the exact cause of the explosion remained undetermined, it sparked the Spanish-American War with Cuba. Incited by the deadly blast, more than one million men volunteered for duty. Lemnitzer and his generals came up with a similar plan. "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," they proposed; "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
There seemed no limit to their fanaticism: "We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington," they wrote. "The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States.
We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated). . . . We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized."
Bombings were proposed, false arrests, hijackings:
*"Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government."
*"Advantage can be taken of the sensitivity of the Dominican [Republic] Air Force to intrusions within their national air space. 'Cuban' B-26 or C-46 type aircraft could make cane burning raids at night. Soviet Bloc incendiaries could be found. This could be coupled with 'Cuban' messages to the Communist underground in the Dominican Republic and 'Cuban' shipments of arms which would be found, or intercepted, on the beach. Use of MiG type aircraft by U.S. pilots could provide additional provocation."
*"Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft could appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the Government of Cuba."
Among the most elaborate schemes was to "create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight."
Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs worked out a complex deception:
An aircraft at Elgin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CJA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone [a remotely controlled unmanned aircraft]. Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Florida.
From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at Elgin AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over Cuba the drone will be transmitting on the international distress frequency a "May Day" message stating he is under attack by Cuban MiG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft, which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization radio stations in the Western Hemisphere to tell the U.S. what has happened to the aircraft instead of the U.S. trying to "sell" the incident.
Finally, there was a plan to "make it appear that Communist Cuban MiGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack." It was a particularly believable operation given the decade of shoot downs that had just taken place.
In the final sentence of his letter to Secretary McNamara recommending the operations, Lemnitzer made a grab for even more power asking that the Joint Chiefs be placed in charge of carrying out Operation Northwoods and the invasion. "It is recommended," he wrote, "that this responsibility for both oven and covert military operations be assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
At 2:30 on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 13, 1962, Lemnitzer went over last-minute details of Operation Northwoods with his covert action chief, Brigadier General William H. Craig, and signed the document. He then went to a "special meeting" in McNamara's office. An hour later he met with Kennedy's military representative, General Maxwell Taylor. What happened during those meetings is unknown. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer that there was virtually no possibility that the U.S. would ever use overt military force in Cuba.
Undeterred, Lemnitzer and the Chiefs persisted, virtually to the point of demanding that they be given authority to invade and take over Cuba. About a month after submitting Operation Northwoods, they met the "tank," as the JCS conference room was called, and agreed on the wording of a tough memorandum to McNamara. "The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the Cuban problem must be solved in the near future," they wrote. "Further, they see no prospect of early success in overthrowing the present communist regime either as a result of internal uprising or external political, economic or psychological pressures. Accordingly they believe that military intervention by the United States will be required to overthrow the present communist regime."
Lemnitzer was virtually rabid in his hatred of Communism in general and Castro in particular "The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the United States can undertake military intervention in Cuba without risk of general war" he continued. "They also believe that the intervention can be accomplished rapidly enough to minimize communist opportunities for solicitation of UN action." However; what Lemnitzer was suggesting was not freeing the Cuban people, who were largely in support of Castro, but imprisoning them in a U.S. military-controlled police state. "Forces would assure rapid essential military control of Cuba," he wrote. "Continued police action would be required."
Concluding, Lemnitzer did not mince words: "[T]he Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that a national policy of early military intervention in Cuba be adopted by the United States. They also recommend that such intervention be undertaken as soon as possible and preferably before the release of National Guard and Reserve forces presently on active duty."
By then McNamara had virtually no confidence in his military chief and was rejecting nearly every proposal the general sent to him. The rejections became so routine, said one of Lemnitzer's former staff officers, that the staffer told the general that the situation was putting the military in an "embarrassing rut." But Lemnitzer replied, "I am the senior military office--it's my job to state what I believe and it's his [McNamara's] job to approve or disapprove." "McNamara's arrogance was astonishing," said Lemnitzer's aide, who knew nothing of Operation Northwoods. "He gave General Lemnitzer very short shrift and treated him like a schoolboy. The general almost stood at attention when he came into the room. Everything was 'Yes, sir' and 'No, sir.'
Within months, Lemnitzer was denied a second term as JCS chairman and transferred to Europe as chief of NATO. Years later President Gerald Ford appointed Lemnitzer, a darling of the Republican right, to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Lemnitzer's Cuba chief, Brigadier General Craig, was also transferred. Promoted to major general, he spent three years as chief of the Army Security Agency, NSA's military arm.
Because of the secrecy and illegality of Operation Northwoods, all details remained hidden for forty years. Lemnitzer may have thought that all copies of the relevant documents had been destroyed; he was not one to leave compromising material lying around. Following the Bay of Pigs debacle, for example, he ordered Brigadier General David W Gray, Craig's predecessor as chief of the Cuba project within the JCS, to destroy all his notes concerning Joint Chiefs actions and discussions during that period. Gray's meticulous notes were the only detailed official records of what happened within the JCS during that time. According to Gray, Lemnitzer feared a congressional investigation and therefore wanted any incriminating evidence destroyed.
With the evidence destroyed, Lemnitzer felt free to lie to Congress. When asked, during secret hearings before a Senate committee, if he knew of any Pentagon plans for a direct invasion of Cuba he said he did not. Yet detailed JCS invasion plans had been drawn up even before Kennedy was inaugurated. And additional plans had been developed since. The consummate planner and man of details also became evasive, suddenly encountering great difficulty in recalling key aspects of the operation, as if he had been out of the country during the period. It was a sorry spectacle. Senator Gore called for Lemnitzer to be fired. "We need a shake up of the Joint Chiefs of Staff" he said. "We direly need a new chairman, as well as new members." No one had any idea of Operation Northwoods.
Because so many documents were destroyed, it is difficult to determine how many senior officials were aware of Operation Northwoods. As has been described, the document was signed and fully approved by Lemnitzer and the rest of the Joint Chiefs and addressed to the Secretary of Defense for his signature. Whether it went beyond McNamara to the president and the attorney general is not known.
Even after Lemnitzer lost his job, the Joint Chiefs kept planning "pretext" operations at least into 1963. Among their proposals was a deliberately create a war between Cuba and any of a number of .n American neighbors. This would give the United States military an excuse to come in on the side of Cuba's adversary and get rid of "A contrived 'Cuban' attack on an OAS [Organization of Americas] member could be set up," said one proposal, "and the attacked state could be urged to 'take measures of self-defense and request ice from the U.S. and OAS; the U.S. could almost certainly obtain necessary two-thirds support among OAS members for collective action against Cuba."
Among the nations they suggested that the United States secretly were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Both were members of the Commonwealth; thus, by secretly attacking them and then blaming Cuba, the United States could lure England into the war Castro. The report noted, "Any of the contrived situations de above are inherently, extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty. If the decision should be made to set up a contrived situation it be one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the most highly trusted covert personnel. This suggests the infeasibility of the use of military units for any aspect of the contrived situation."
The report even suggested secretly paying someone in the Castro government to attack the United States: "The only area remaining for ration then would be to bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on [the U.S. naval base at] Guantanamo." The act suggested--bribing a foreign nation to launch a violent attack American military installation--was treason.
In May 1963, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze sent a the White House proposing "a possible scenario whereby an attack on a United States reconnaissance aircraft could be exploited toward the end of effecting the removal of the Castro regime." In the event Cuba attacked a U-2, the plan proposed sending in additional American pilots, this time on dangerous, unnecessary low-level reconnaissance missions with the expectation that they would also be shot down, thus provoking a war "[T]he U.S. could undertake various measures designed to stimulate the Cubans to provoke a new incident," said the plan. Nitze, however, did not volunteer to be one of the pilots.
One idea involved sending fighters across the island on "harassing reconnaissance" and "show-off" missions "flaunting our freedom of action, hoping to stir the Cuban military to action." "Thus," said the plan, "depending above all on whether the Cubans were or could be made to be trigger-happy, the development of the initial downing of a reconnaissance plane could lead at best to the elimination of Castro, perhaps to the removal of Soviet troops and the installation of ground inspection in Cuba, or at the least to our demonstration of firmness on reconnaissance." About a month later, a low-level flight was made across Cuba, but unfortunately for the Pentagon, instead of bullets it produced only a protest.
Lemnitzer was a dangerous-perhaps even unbalanced-right-wing extremist in an extraordinarily sensitive position during a critical period. But Operation Northwoods also had the support of every single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even senior Pentagon official Paul Nitze argued in favor of provoking a phony war with Cuba. The fact that the most senior members of all the services and the Pentagon could be so out of touch with reality and the meaning of democracy would be hidden for four decades.
In retrospect, the documents offer new insight into the thinking of the military's star-studded leadership. Although they never succeeded in launching America into a phony war with Cuba, they may have done so with Vietnam. More than 50,000 Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese were eventually killed in that war.
It has long been suspected that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident-the spark that led to America's long war in Vietnam-was largely staged or provoked by U.S. officials in order to build up congressional and public support for American involvement. Over the years, serious questions have been raised about the alleged attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on two American destroyers in the Gulf But defenders of the Pentagon have always denied such charges, arguing that senior officials would never engage in such deceit.
Now, however, in light of the Operation Northwoods documents, it at deceiving the public and trumping up wars for Americans to fight and die in was standard, approved policy at the highest levels of the Pentagon. In fact, the Gulf of Tonkin seems right out of the Operation Northwoods playbook: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba . . . casualty lists in U.S. newspapers cause a helpful wave of indignation." One need only replace "Guantanamo Bay" with "Tonkin Gulf," and "Cuba" with "North Vietnam" and the Gulf of Tonkin incident may or may not have been stage-managed, but the senior Pentagon leadership at the time was clearly capable of such deceit.
Book epigram:
"The public has a duty to watch its Government closely and keep it on the right track." --Lieutenant Gen. Kenneth A. Minihan, USAF, Director, NSA, _NSA Newsletter_, June 1997
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Although no one in Congress could have known it at the time, Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge.
According to secret and long-hidden documents obtained for Body of Secrets, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government. In the name of antiCommunism, they proposed launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba.
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Code named Operation Northwoods, the plan, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.Operation NorthwoodsClick images for full sized scans
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</td></tr></tbody></table></center>The idea may actually have originated with President Eisenhower in the last days of his administration. With the Cold War hotter than ever and the recent U-2 scandal fresh in the public's memory, the old general wanted to go out with a win. He wanted desperately to invade Cuba in the weeks leading up to Kennedy's inauguration; indeed, on January 3 he told Lemnitzer and other aides in his Cabinet Room that he would move against Castro before the inauguration if only the Cubans gave him a really good excuse. Then, with time growing short, Eisenhower floated an idea. If Castro failed to provide that excuse, perhaps, he said, the United States "could think of manufacturing something that would be generally acceptable." What he was suggesting was a pretext a bombing, an attack, an act of sabotage carried out secretly against the United States by the United States. Its purpose would be to justify the launching of a war. It was a dangerous suggestion by a desperate president.
Although no such war took place, the idea was not lost on General Lemnitzer But he and his colleagues were frustrated by Kennedy's failure to authorize their plan, and angry that Castro had not provided an excuse to invade.
The final straw may have come during a White House meeting on February 26, 1962. Concerned that General Lansdale's various covert action plans under Operation Mongoose were simply becoming more outrageous and going nowhere, Robert Kennedy told him to drop all anti-Castro efforts. Instead, Lansdale was ordered to concentrate for the next three months strictly on gathering intelligence about Cuba. It was a humiliating defeat for Lansdale, a man more accustomed to praise than to scorn.
As the Kennedy brothers appeared to suddenly "go soft" on Castro, Lemnitzer could see his opportunity to invade Cuba quickly slipping away. The attempts to provoke the Cuban public to revolt seemed dead and Castro, unfortunately, appeared to have no inclination to launch any attacks against Americans or their property Lemnitzer and the other Chiefs knew there was only one option left that would ensure their war. They would have to trick the American public and world opinion into hating Cuba so much that they would not only go along, but would insist that he and his generals launch their war against Castro. "World opinion, and the United Nations forum," said a secret JCS document, "should be favorably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere."
Operation Northwoods called for a war in which many patriotic Americans and innocent Cubans would die senseless deaths, all to satisfy the egos of twisted generals back in Washington, safe in their taxpayer financed homes and limousines.
One idea seriously considered involved the launch of John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth. On February 20,1962, Glenn was to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on his historic journey. The flight was to carry the banner of America's virtues of truth, freedom, and democracy into orbit high over the planet. But Lemnitzer and his Chiefs had a different idea. They proposed to Lansdale that, should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof that . . . the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba [sic.]"
This would be accomplished, Lemnitzer continued, "by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans." Thus, as NASA prepared to send the first American into space, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were preparing to use John Glenn's possible death as a pretext to launch a war.
Glenn lifted into history without mishap, leaving Lemnitzer and the Chiefs to begin devising new plots which they suggested be carried out "within the time frame of the next few months."
Among the actions recommended was "a series of well coordinated incidents to take place in and around" the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This included dressing "friendly" Cubans in Cuban military uniforms and then have them "start riots near the main gate of the base. Others would pretend to be saboteurs inside the base. Ammunition would be blown up, fires started, aircraft sabotaged, mortars fired at the base with damage to installations."
The suggested operations grew progressively more outrageous. Another called for an action similar to the infamous incident in February 1898 when an explosion aboard the battleship Maine in Havana harbor killed 266 U.S. sailors. Although the exact cause of the explosion remained undetermined, it sparked the Spanish-American War with Cuba. Incited by the deadly blast, more than one million men volunteered for duty. Lemnitzer and his generals came up with a similar plan. "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," they proposed; "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
There seemed no limit to their fanaticism: "We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington," they wrote. "The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States.
We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated). . . . We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized."
Bombings were proposed, false arrests, hijackings:
*"Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government."
*"Advantage can be taken of the sensitivity of the Dominican [Republic] Air Force to intrusions within their national air space. 'Cuban' B-26 or C-46 type aircraft could make cane burning raids at night. Soviet Bloc incendiaries could be found. This could be coupled with 'Cuban' messages to the Communist underground in the Dominican Republic and 'Cuban' shipments of arms which would be found, or intercepted, on the beach. Use of MiG type aircraft by U.S. pilots could provide additional provocation."
*"Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft could appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the Government of Cuba."
Among the most elaborate schemes was to "create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight."
Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs worked out a complex deception:
An aircraft at Elgin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CJA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone [a remotely controlled unmanned aircraft]. Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Florida.
From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at Elgin AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over Cuba the drone will be transmitting on the international distress frequency a "May Day" message stating he is under attack by Cuban MiG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft, which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization radio stations in the Western Hemisphere to tell the U.S. what has happened to the aircraft instead of the U.S. trying to "sell" the incident.
Finally, there was a plan to "make it appear that Communist Cuban MiGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack." It was a particularly believable operation given the decade of shoot downs that had just taken place.
In the final sentence of his letter to Secretary McNamara recommending the operations, Lemnitzer made a grab for even more power asking that the Joint Chiefs be placed in charge of carrying out Operation Northwoods and the invasion. "It is recommended," he wrote, "that this responsibility for both oven and covert military operations be assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
At 2:30 on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 13, 1962, Lemnitzer went over last-minute details of Operation Northwoods with his covert action chief, Brigadier General William H. Craig, and signed the document. He then went to a "special meeting" in McNamara's office. An hour later he met with Kennedy's military representative, General Maxwell Taylor. What happened during those meetings is unknown. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer that there was virtually no possibility that the U.S. would ever use overt military force in Cuba.
Undeterred, Lemnitzer and the Chiefs persisted, virtually to the point of demanding that they be given authority to invade and take over Cuba. About a month after submitting Operation Northwoods, they met the "tank," as the JCS conference room was called, and agreed on the wording of a tough memorandum to McNamara. "The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the Cuban problem must be solved in the near future," they wrote. "Further, they see no prospect of early success in overthrowing the present communist regime either as a result of internal uprising or external political, economic or psychological pressures. Accordingly they believe that military intervention by the United States will be required to overthrow the present communist regime."
Lemnitzer was virtually rabid in his hatred of Communism in general and Castro in particular "The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the United States can undertake military intervention in Cuba without risk of general war" he continued. "They also believe that the intervention can be accomplished rapidly enough to minimize communist opportunities for solicitation of UN action." However; what Lemnitzer was suggesting was not freeing the Cuban people, who were largely in support of Castro, but imprisoning them in a U.S. military-controlled police state. "Forces would assure rapid essential military control of Cuba," he wrote. "Continued police action would be required."
Concluding, Lemnitzer did not mince words: "[T]he Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that a national policy of early military intervention in Cuba be adopted by the United States. They also recommend that such intervention be undertaken as soon as possible and preferably before the release of National Guard and Reserve forces presently on active duty."
By then McNamara had virtually no confidence in his military chief and was rejecting nearly every proposal the general sent to him. The rejections became so routine, said one of Lemnitzer's former staff officers, that the staffer told the general that the situation was putting the military in an "embarrassing rut." But Lemnitzer replied, "I am the senior military office--it's my job to state what I believe and it's his [McNamara's] job to approve or disapprove." "McNamara's arrogance was astonishing," said Lemnitzer's aide, who knew nothing of Operation Northwoods. "He gave General Lemnitzer very short shrift and treated him like a schoolboy. The general almost stood at attention when he came into the room. Everything was 'Yes, sir' and 'No, sir.'
Within months, Lemnitzer was denied a second term as JCS chairman and transferred to Europe as chief of NATO. Years later President Gerald Ford appointed Lemnitzer, a darling of the Republican right, to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Lemnitzer's Cuba chief, Brigadier General Craig, was also transferred. Promoted to major general, he spent three years as chief of the Army Security Agency, NSA's military arm.
Because of the secrecy and illegality of Operation Northwoods, all details remained hidden for forty years. Lemnitzer may have thought that all copies of the relevant documents had been destroyed; he was not one to leave compromising material lying around. Following the Bay of Pigs debacle, for example, he ordered Brigadier General David W Gray, Craig's predecessor as chief of the Cuba project within the JCS, to destroy all his notes concerning Joint Chiefs actions and discussions during that period. Gray's meticulous notes were the only detailed official records of what happened within the JCS during that time. According to Gray, Lemnitzer feared a congressional investigation and therefore wanted any incriminating evidence destroyed.
With the evidence destroyed, Lemnitzer felt free to lie to Congress. When asked, during secret hearings before a Senate committee, if he knew of any Pentagon plans for a direct invasion of Cuba he said he did not. Yet detailed JCS invasion plans had been drawn up even before Kennedy was inaugurated. And additional plans had been developed since. The consummate planner and man of details also became evasive, suddenly encountering great difficulty in recalling key aspects of the operation, as if he had been out of the country during the period. It was a sorry spectacle. Senator Gore called for Lemnitzer to be fired. "We need a shake up of the Joint Chiefs of Staff" he said. "We direly need a new chairman, as well as new members." No one had any idea of Operation Northwoods.
Because so many documents were destroyed, it is difficult to determine how many senior officials were aware of Operation Northwoods. As has been described, the document was signed and fully approved by Lemnitzer and the rest of the Joint Chiefs and addressed to the Secretary of Defense for his signature. Whether it went beyond McNamara to the president and the attorney general is not known.
Even after Lemnitzer lost his job, the Joint Chiefs kept planning "pretext" operations at least into 1963. Among their proposals was a deliberately create a war between Cuba and any of a number of .n American neighbors. This would give the United States military an excuse to come in on the side of Cuba's adversary and get rid of "A contrived 'Cuban' attack on an OAS [Organization of Americas] member could be set up," said one proposal, "and the attacked state could be urged to 'take measures of self-defense and request ice from the U.S. and OAS; the U.S. could almost certainly obtain necessary two-thirds support among OAS members for collective action against Cuba."
Among the nations they suggested that the United States secretly were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Both were members of the Commonwealth; thus, by secretly attacking them and then blaming Cuba, the United States could lure England into the war Castro. The report noted, "Any of the contrived situations de above are inherently, extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty. If the decision should be made to set up a contrived situation it be one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the most highly trusted covert personnel. This suggests the infeasibility of the use of military units for any aspect of the contrived situation."
The report even suggested secretly paying someone in the Castro government to attack the United States: "The only area remaining for ration then would be to bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on [the U.S. naval base at] Guantanamo." The act suggested--bribing a foreign nation to launch a violent attack American military installation--was treason.
In May 1963, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze sent a the White House proposing "a possible scenario whereby an attack on a United States reconnaissance aircraft could be exploited toward the end of effecting the removal of the Castro regime." In the event Cuba attacked a U-2, the plan proposed sending in additional American pilots, this time on dangerous, unnecessary low-level reconnaissance missions with the expectation that they would also be shot down, thus provoking a war "[T]he U.S. could undertake various measures designed to stimulate the Cubans to provoke a new incident," said the plan. Nitze, however, did not volunteer to be one of the pilots.
One idea involved sending fighters across the island on "harassing reconnaissance" and "show-off" missions "flaunting our freedom of action, hoping to stir the Cuban military to action." "Thus," said the plan, "depending above all on whether the Cubans were or could be made to be trigger-happy, the development of the initial downing of a reconnaissance plane could lead at best to the elimination of Castro, perhaps to the removal of Soviet troops and the installation of ground inspection in Cuba, or at the least to our demonstration of firmness on reconnaissance." About a month later, a low-level flight was made across Cuba, but unfortunately for the Pentagon, instead of bullets it produced only a protest.
Lemnitzer was a dangerous-perhaps even unbalanced-right-wing extremist in an extraordinarily sensitive position during a critical period. But Operation Northwoods also had the support of every single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even senior Pentagon official Paul Nitze argued in favor of provoking a phony war with Cuba. The fact that the most senior members of all the services and the Pentagon could be so out of touch with reality and the meaning of democracy would be hidden for four decades.
In retrospect, the documents offer new insight into the thinking of the military's star-studded leadership. Although they never succeeded in launching America into a phony war with Cuba, they may have done so with Vietnam. More than 50,000 Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese were eventually killed in that war.
It has long been suspected that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident-the spark that led to America's long war in Vietnam-was largely staged or provoked by U.S. officials in order to build up congressional and public support for American involvement. Over the years, serious questions have been raised about the alleged attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on two American destroyers in the Gulf But defenders of the Pentagon have always denied such charges, arguing that senior officials would never engage in such deceit.
Now, however, in light of the Operation Northwoods documents, it at deceiving the public and trumping up wars for Americans to fight and die in was standard, approved policy at the highest levels of the Pentagon. In fact, the Gulf of Tonkin seems right out of the Operation Northwoods playbook: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba . . . casualty lists in U.S. newspapers cause a helpful wave of indignation." One need only replace "Guantanamo Bay" with "Tonkin Gulf," and "Cuba" with "North Vietnam" and the Gulf of Tonkin incident may or may not have been stage-managed, but the senior Pentagon leadership at the time was clearly capable of such deceit.
Book epigram:
"The public has a duty to watch its Government closely and keep it on the right track." --Lieutenant Gen. Kenneth A. Minihan, USAF, Director, NSA, _NSA Newsletter_, June 1997
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arty
[SIZE=+1]When a former worker from the World Trade Center came forward recently with crucial and verifiable information about what was really on the 81st floor of the South Tower (WTC 2), he broke up a logjam of unanswered questions about the source of the molten metal seen falling from the tower before its collapse on 9/11.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Based on this important piece of information from a former IT professional who worked with computers in the Twin Towers, I was able to determine that the two airplanes that struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center on 9/11 had directly impacted secure computer rooms in both buildings: [/SIZE] <DT>[SIZE=+1]? the first on the 95th floor of the North Tower;[/SIZE] <DT>[SIZE=+1]? the second on the 81st floor of the South Tower.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]This information raises new questions:[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]? Were the computer rooms equipped to play a role in the crime?[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]? Were there homing devices or computers in these rooms that used precision-guidance systems to direct the planes into the towers?[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]? Did these computer rooms contain pre-placed explosives or forms of Thermite to destroy evidence, create an incendiary spectacle, and weaken the structure prior to the collapses?[/SIZE] <DT> <DT> <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]EVIDENCE OF THERMITE[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>
[SIZE=+1]Photographic evidence strongly suggests that the secure computer rooms in both towers contained forms of Thermite, which had been pre-placed to destroy evidence and facilitate the collapse of the immense steel-frame towers while creating a deadly pyrotechnic spectacle.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]After examining the photographic and physical evidence, Professor Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University has concluded that the yellow and white glowing metal pouring from the east corner of the 81st floor of the South Tower was, most likely, molten iron created by a Thermite reaction.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]It could not have been molten aluminum as the federal government's Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers (NIST, 2005) speculates, Jones says, because, among other things, molten aluminum at that temperature would appear silver-grey in daylight conditions.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Having tested pieces of hardened molten metal from the twin towers, Jones found that they were composed primarily of iron, not structural steel. This is positive physical evidence of an aluminothermic reaction, more commonly known as Thermite, having occurred in conjunction with the collapse of the twin towers and WTC 7.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Aluminothermics refers to the intense exothermic (heat producing) reactions that occur when powdered aluminum is mixed with powdered iron oxide and/or other elements and oxides. Copper, potassium permanganate, zinc- and barium nitrate are among the additives Jones has found evidence of in the dust from the World Trade Center.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]The Thermite reaction produces an extremely hot reaction (up to 2500 ?C or 4500 ?F), which creates molten iron and aluminum oxide. The molten iron produced from Thermite is white hot and the aluminum oxide is a white smoke.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]EVIDENCE OF SULFIDATION[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Thermate is a variant of Thermite that contains additives to enhance certain effects. It may contain pyrotechnic additives, such as barium nitrate, for incendiary purposes.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]The addition of barium nitrate increases its thermal effect, creates flame in burning and significantly reduces the ignition temperature.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]The addition of 2 percent sulfur to Thermite improves the steel-cutting properties by creating a eutectic that will melt steel at much lower temperatures.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Eutectic comes from the Greek word "eutektos," which means "easily melted." Thermate cuts through steel like "a warm knife through butter," Jones says.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]The FEMA-sponsored Building Performance Study of 2002 contains evidence of melted steel caused by sulfidation and oxidation. This is found in the "Limited Metallurgical Examination" written by Professor Jonathan Barnett. The NIST report, however, fails to address the evidence of sulfidation found in the structural steel from the WTC.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Barnett examined two pieces of melted steel: one from the WTC 7, the other from the Twin Towers. About the first piece, Barnett wrote: "The thinning of the steel occurred by a high-temperature corrosion due to the combination of oxidation and sulfidation." This was done by "a eutectic mixture of iron, oxygen, and sulfur that liquefied the steel," he concluded.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Barnett found the same sulfidation in the piece of melted steel from the Twin Towers. "The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion of Samples 1 and 2 are a very unusual event," Barnett wrote. "No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified."[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Professor Jones points to Thermate, with 2 percent sulfur, as being the most likely culprit. The oxidation and sulfidation of the steel requires the oxygen and sulfur being "intimately in contact with the metal at high temperature," Jones said.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]VISIBLE EVIDENCE OF THERMATE[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]The molten iron seen falling from the South Tower's eastern corner before it collapsed must have weighed many tons. One cubic meter of iron weighs about 8.5 tons and it certainly looks like several cubic meters poured from the 81st floor shortly before it collapsed. But what could have been the source of so much iron on the 81st floor?[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]The NIST report gives no answers to this crucial question. In this respect, the NIST report is a good example of studied ignorance. Not only does NIST fail to provide any information about what was on the crucial floors of the South Tower (79, 81, and 82), but they actually suggest that these floors contained normal office materials.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]"There were vigorous fires on the east side of the 80th through 83rd floors, especially on the northeast end of the 81st and 82nd floors, where the aircraft had bulldozed the office desks and chairs and added its own combustibles," the NIST report says in its "Account of WTC 2."[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]From the NIST report the reader gets the impression that these were normal office floors with "desks and chairs," although that was definitely not the case with the 81st floor while the contents of the 82nd and 79th floors remain unknown.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Fuji Bank was the tenant of floors 79-82, yet for some reason the NIST researchers were unable or unwilling to provide any description of the contents of these crucial floors four years after 9/11.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]A former Japanese bank employee recently came forward and explained that the 81st floor was an entire floor of server-size computer batteries:[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Fuji Bank had reinforced the 81st floor, he said, so the floor could support more weight. The entire floor was then filled with server-size Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) batteries.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]These units were bolted to a raised floor about 3 feet above the reinforced 81st floor. "The whole floor was batteries," he said, "huge battery-looking things." They were "all black" and "solid, very heavy" things that had been brought in during the night. They had been put in place during the summer prior to 9/11, he said.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]But were they really batteries or were they Thermate?[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]"It's weird," he said. "They were never turned on."[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]See: 
<DT> <DT> <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]THE WHITE SMOKE OF WTC 1[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]On the 95th floor of WTC 1, Marsh & McLennan had a "large walled data center," a secure computer room along the north and east sides of the tower. And that's exactly where the plane hit the north wall of the 95th floor.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]The plane struck the North Tower right in the middle of the north face. The nose of the plane struck the 130th perimeter column at the 96th floor slab and something, perhaps the nose landing gear, carried on right through the middle of the building and severed three columns on the south side of the tower.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]An image caught on video immediately after the plane struck the tower shows a huge fireball engulfing the north face of the building where the plane hit. But from the east side of the tower a suspicious huge white dust cloud is emerging that looks like an exploding bale of cotton[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]It is pure white and shows no signs of burning jet fuel. This white dust is emerging from the east wall of the tower, from the level and side occupied by the computer room.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Photo below: One frame from the Naudet video. You can watch the high-resolution video by renting the DVD called 9/11, the Filmmakers' Commemorative Edition[/SIZE] <DT>[SIZE=+1][/SIZE] <DT>
<DT> <DT> <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Professor Jones, when shown this photo, said, "It looks very much like aluminum oxide dust." The white smoke is clearly coming out of the east side of the building and is also seen behind the orange and sooty cloud that is rising on the north side of the tower.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]It is very clear that two very different materials are exploding in the crash area: jet fuel and some form of Thermate, which is producing the telltale white smoke.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]The NIST report does not mention the white smoke or dust seen coming out of the north tower and attributes these clouds to 10,000 gallons of burning fuel mixed with dust:[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Atomized jet fuel is highly flammable (similar to kerosene), so both the hot debris and the numerous pieces of electrical and electronic gear in the offices were more than sufficient as ignition sources.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]A surge of combusting fuel rapidly filled the floors, mixing with dust from the pulverized walls and floor slabs.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]The pressure created by the heated gases forced the ignited mist out the entrance gash and blown-out windows on the east and south sides of the tower.[/SIZE] <DT>[SIZE=+1]The resulting fireballs could be seen for miles, precipitating many 911 calls.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Isn't it odd that the explosion, which was supposedly caused by jet fuel combusting in the middle of the building, did not affect the western fa?ade as it had the eastern?[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Why did the east side of the building react so differently from the west side? And why is the smoke coming from the east side such a bright white and completely lacking any of the characteristics of burning jet fuel?[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Is this where Thermate incendiary devices had been placed in the computer room of Marsh & McLennan? If Thermate bombs had been pre-placed in the 95th floor computer room, who put them there? [/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Certainly Marsh & McLennan must know or have records of who had access to that room and what was in it. This information needs to be revealed.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Photo below: The North Tower before the South Tower has been hit by a plane.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Notice the stream of white smoke coming from one side of the North Tower, but the rest of the smoke is black.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]These images can be found at:[/SIZE] <DT>
<DT> <DT> <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]WHITE SMOKE FROM WTC 2[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]The bright orange and black fireballs that erupted from the South Tower are indelibly seared in the memory of the modern world. But here again, there was a conspicuous white cloud that is not easily explained by the burning jet fuel.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Again, the NIST report points only to burning jet fuel:[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Within about one half of a second, dust and debris flew out of windows on the east and north faces.[/SIZE] <DT>[SIZE=+1]Several small fireballs of atomized jet fuel burst from windows on the east face of the 81st and 82nd floors, coalescing into a single, large fireball that spanned the entire face.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]A tenth of a second later, fire appeared in the dust clouds ejected from the south face of the 79th, 81st, and 82nd floors.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Photo below: The plane entered at the left side of this picture and exited along the right side.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]As with all photos that show this fireball at the South Tower, the cloud of smoke that shot out of the entrance hole is mostly gray and white, with very little soot. [/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]If you have Hufschmid's book Painful Questions, this photo is on page 88[/SIZE] <DT>[SIZE=+1]"The fireballs burned for 10 seconds, extending almost 200 feet out from the north, east, and south faces," NIST reports. "Having consumed the aerosol fuel, the flames then receded."[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]From the south face of WTC 2, the "dust clouds" that emerged look nothing like combusting jet fuel. They look much more like the white smoke of Thermate than burning kerosene.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]The massive aircraft and its estimated 9,100 gallons of fuel hit the south face of the South Tower at 540 mph and carried on through the east and north sides. But what is exploding out of the south side of the tower a fraction of a second later?[/SIZE] <DT>[SIZE=+1]The huge whitish cloud of dust that comes from the south face has orange flame within it but has none of the dark orange and black colors seen in the jet fuel fireballs that emerged from the north and east sides of the tower.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]This white dust lacks any visible evidence of burning kerosene but was expelled from the tower at least 250 feet. What was the force pushing it out if no jet fuel is seen in it or behind it?[/SIZE] <DT>[SIZE=+1]As one looks up at the three fireballs emerging from the explosion that occurred at the crash level of the South Tower, it is clear to see, from the color of the flame and soot, that the jet fuel is primarily in the front of the fireball. The further one looks to the rear, toward the point of entry, the less evidence one sees of burning kerosene.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]When the South Tower begins to collapse, huge amounts of white smoke are pushed from the tower. Furthermore, prior to every documented flow of molten metal, NIST observed puffs of dust. The photographic and physical evidence proves that Thermate was used in the destruction of the towers and strongly suggests that it had been pre-placed on the floors that the planes hit.[/SIZE] <DT>[SIZE=+1]If Arab terrorists did not pre-position Thermate in the secure computer rooms and throughout the Twin Towers and WTC 7, who did?[/SIZE] <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Finding what was on these crucial floors and who had access to these floors and secure computer rooms will help identify the real culprits of 9/11.[/SIZE] <DT> <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Photo below: The plane entered the South Tower from this side of this building. There is not much soot in a fireball at the entrance hole.[/SIZE] <DT>
<DT> <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Photo below: This shows the exit hole where some plane parts flew out. This fireball looks more like a sooty, hydrocarbon fire.[/SIZE] <DT>[SIZE=+1][/SIZE] <DT>
<DT> <DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]Photo below: The South Tower. The plane entered at the left, and exited at the right. A stream of white smoke is mixing with the black smoke. What could create that white smoke?[/SIZE] <DT>[SIZE=+1][/SIZE] <DT>
<DT> <DT>[SIZE=+1]
</td> <td>In the neighboring south tower people were also evacuating, but an announcement over the PA system tells them their building is secure and they can return to their desks..." 
</td> <td>"Today it is still a mystery why no-one in the towers reached the roof..."