Alex Jones had a more extreme interpretation.

Jones is taking the proposals to stage attacks and presenting them as if they actually involve killing people. This is false. There was no plan to actually kill Americans—the proposals to blow up ships and airplanes only involved drone aircraft. Suggestion number 8, one of the more complex suggestions, was:

Since Operation Northwoods comes up quite often, it’s quite important for you to understand its history, the historical context, the people involved, and the actual contents of the document. The two important things to remember about Northwoods are:

1) It was a series of preliminary proposals that never got even got to the initial planning stages.

2) In none of the incidents were American citizens intended to be hurt or killed. Although, there was the potential for Cuba nationals to be harmed, and of course any invasion of Cuba would likely cost hundreds or thousands of lives.

There’s a note at the start of the list that makes clear that this was just series of preliminary proposals:

Basically, it was a collection of ideas intended to be used as a starting point to develop actual plans. None of the ideas appear to have proceeded past this initial speculation. The Joint Chiefs of Staff did not approve of these ideas being implemented. They simply approved of this document as a starting point for discussions.

And we know the ideas were never implemented because the events described never happened. If any of the suggestions (beyond the more banal ones, like “spreading rumors”) were implemented then they would have made the news. But there’s no reports of passenger planes being buzzed by Cuban MiGs, no party of teenagers went missing, no Navy jet was “lost” over Cuba.

Context is of vital importance in understanding the merits of any claim. Let’s look at the timeline of events around the time of the Operation Northwoods document.

• 17 April 1961—Bay of Pigs Invasion—a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by CIA-sponsored former Cubans. The plan was developed by Eisenhower but approved by JFK.

• November 1961—Decision to implement the “Cuban Project,” a.k.a. “Operation Mongoose,” a plan of sabotage and propaganda.

• 5 March 1962—The head of the Cuban Project writes a memo headed “Operation Mongoose” requesting a list of pretexts that would provide justification for a US invasion of Cuba.

• 7 March 1962—The Joint Chiefs indicate a desire to develop a Cuban provocation.

• 9 March 1962—Date of the Operation Northwoods memo with the list of suggestions.

• 13 March 1962—The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend the list of nine suggestions comprising Operation Northwoods be “forwarded as a preliminary submission suitable for planning purposes,” assuming “that there will be similar submissions from other agencies.”

• May 1962—Plans were suggested to fly U2s unnecessarily over Cuba to provoke an attack by the Cubans.

• 14 October 1962—High altitude photos prove Soviet-made missiles were in Cuba, leading to the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Notice that The Cuban Project and the Operation Northwoods documents are bookended by the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK had been anxious all along to avoid a confrontation with Cuba that might escalate to war with Russia. The Bay of Pigs had been framed as a counterrevolution specifically to allow America plausible deniability. After this failed there was a focus on finding adequate pretexts to allow the US to invade Cuba without giving the Soviets reason to respond in kind. Operation Northwoods was part of this, but ultimately went nowhere.

Why didn’t Northwoods proceed? The documents provide few specifics, but there are clear concerns on a number of fronts. We might summarize the probable reasons as:

• There was significant risk of being caught. The US wanted to get rid of the communist regime in Cuba, but they did not want war with Russia. They would not proceed unless it was certain of success. Getting caught would have huge repercussions both internationally and at home.

• Many in the government and military simply did not want to invade Cuba, regardless of the validity of the reasons for doing so. Hence there was no point creating false pretexts for something they did not actually want to do.

• Individuals might have been concerned about the morality of possibly injuring Cuban refugees. This concern might have also manifested in a secondary manner where the concern would simply be that the plan would make them look too evil, were it actually revealed.

• Events overtook the idea with the Cuban Missile Crisis in October. An invasion of Cuba now needed no real pretext with the presence of nuclear missiles threatening Florida, and yet there was even less of a desire to do anything that might prompt a nuclear event.

There are important lessons to learn from reading the official documents from around that time.6 Firstly, that the power structure of the government and the military was (and is) not of one mind. It is made up of people (all men back then) with their own differing experiences, skills, ideologies, and motivations. Many different plans for both sabotage and propaganda were suggested and discussed. The fact that false pretexts (False Flags) were suggested at all indicates that some people were willing to consider them. Many in the military and the government were probably willing to implement them, if they could get away with it.

That bears repeating: if they could get away with it. Would you rob a bank of $10 million if all you had to do was click a button, and you were 100 percent guaranteed to get away with it, with no consequences, just $10 million in your bank account no questions asked?

Many people would say yes. But even then, they hesitate—and for similar reasons the Joint Chiefs might have hesitated regarding Northwoods. Is it really 100 percent without risk? Even if there’s a small chance of getting caught you are looking at losing everything, and spending years in jail. Unless the assurance comes from God himself (and even then …) can you really be sure it’s going to work? The risk is unknown. The consequences are severe.

There’s other concerns that different people might have. The morality of the situation would put many people off. The consequences of success might even put off a few—we’ve all heard tales of lottery winners whose lives were ruined after getting the mega-millions. “Don’t rock the boat” works for many people.

But many people would take the $10 million. Why didn’t Kennedy implement Northwoods? Probably not so much because he thought it was immoral (most of the plans involved no loss of life) but rather from a desire to avoid war with Russia. He knew it was impossible for it to be risk-free, but mostly he did not want to invade Cuba and provoke a war.

The risk did not match the reward. That’s the key lesson that you can take from Operation Northwoods, and it’s the key way we can take what your friend considers to be an ace card with the claim of a False Flag and turn it around. Sure, you can tell him (quite honestly) people would do a lot if they could get away with it and if there’s a big payoff. But Northwoods was not implemented precisely because they could not guarantee getting away with it, the risks were bigger than the rewards, and even a successful payoff carried risks of its own.

Ask your friend about their favorite “false flag” theory: what are the risks? What are the rewards? Could the goal have been achieved an easier way? With many proposed 9/11 theories the risks were huge. If one president was incapable of covering up Watergate (a relatively simple burglary and wire-tapping job), then how could another cover up the secret wiring of three huge buildings with millions of explosives, then organize the hijackings of four planes? How exactly do you create a risk-free fake school shooting involving an entire community of fake actors? And for what? A minor shift in public opinion on gun control? A shift that did not actually happen, and actually resulted in an increase in gun sales? What president, what person in any position of power, would risk everything just to get this inconsequential blip in public opinion?

If they bring up Operation Northwoods, seize the opportunity. Go over it with them, see what the plans were, what the risks were, and why they did not do them. Then compare that directly with the theories of your friend.

While Northwoods was never implemented, the use of False Flags or false pretexts for action has certainly been suggested and implemented at the highest levels of government, in the US and around the world. It is quite certain that false pretexts have been used, possibly many times, in the history of US military intervention. As mentioned in the introduction, conspiracies are very real. An incident that many people think as a prime example of this is the event that precipitated the Vietnam War: the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. But like Northwoods, it’s an incident that is greatly misunderstood, a card in the deck that can again be flipped around to shed some genuine perspective on what types of false flag are actually plausible.

The Gulf of Tonkin

The two Gulf of Tonkin Incidents seemed like relatively simple things. The USS Maddox, a Navy destroyer, was reportedly attacked by North Vietnamese boats on August 2, 1964. A second and larger attack on the Maddox and another destroyer (the Turner Joy) was reported two days later on August 4. These reported acts of aggression led to retaliatory attacks by the US on the North Vietnamese on August 5 and the passing of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, which then led to full-scale military involvement in the Vietnamese conflict, and hence to the Vietnam War and the loss of thousands of US and Vietnamese lives.

But it’s more complicated than that. People thought, on the day, that there was a real attack on August 4. The destroyers took evasive action and fired on what they thought were enemy torpedo boats. But it quickly became clear that there were serious doubts about exactly what was happening. Later it became even more clear that there was no real attack at all. The account given to the American public and to Congress was not an accurate representation of what had happened on either day, but especially not on the second day.

Even President Johnson was not fully informed as to exactly what was going on. On the evening of August 4, he addressed the nation and said:

But despite Johnson’s resolute tone and his description of events with specifics like “a number of hostile vessels” and “with torpedoes,” he was far from certain about what had happened. This was partly because of the “fog of war,” the difficulty in getting accurate information from the battlefront. But it was mostly because the initial reports of an attack were wrong, but Johnson did not find this out until later.

To understand these events, we need to understand the role of Robert McNamara, Johnson’s Secretary of Defense and the man most influential in the escalation of the Vietnam situation. McNamara was a trusted advisor to Johnson, who relied on him for intelligence briefings regarding what was going on in Vietnam. They spoke frequently on the phone, and many of those conversations were recorded and are now publicly available. What this particular conspiracy boils down to can be summed up as “what McNamara did or did not tell Johnson.”

The first reports that came from the Navy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin were unequivocal that the attacks were taking place, and that they were being attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. McNamara was being kept continually up to date on the situation, and since Captain Herrick of the Maddox initially thought he was under attack, so did McNamara.

McNamara was of the opinion that the best course of action in Vietnam was to bomb the North Vietnamese to cripple their military and industrial capacity and force a resolution to the conflict. Johnson was unwilling to take this step unilaterally and insisted that they wait until the North Vietnamese had attacked them. The very limited attack by what turned out to be a small boat on August 2 was insufficient provocation. But now there were two US destroyers being attacked by torpedo boats. Clearly this was the larger scale provocation that McNamara had hoped would happen.

But five hours after the “attacks,” Captain Herrick had reviewed the incident and began to have serious doubts as to what actually happened. He sent this message to Washington, where it was received at 1:27 p.m., Washington time:

Basically an “oops, we goofed, there was no attack, don’t do anything” message. But what happened next was McNamara ignored that message, almost pretending like he never got it. He did not immediately inform Johnson, and instead went ahead organizing and then executing an order for retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam, signed off by President Johnson, thus making the conflict real, and laying the foundation for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and hence the full Vietnam War.

Public suspicion about this story began almost immediately, with many contemporary articles casting doubt on if the August 4 incident had ever happened. Importantly though, there was never any real doubt about the first incident on August 2. A common simple mistake made by conspiracists has been to describe the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” as one single event, when in fact there were two separate events. Many conspiracists are very unfamiliar with the details and may be surprised to learn of the first attack.

In 1969 Joseph Goulden’s book Truth is the First Casualty brought the issue to the attention of a broader audience. Goulden presented convincing evidence from eyewitness accounts that the second attack never took place, and that details of the first attack were somewhat overblown.

But the most detailed revelations regarding what really happened eventually came from the National Security Agency (NSA)—the government organization tasked with intercepting and interpreting foreign communications. The NSA had long stuck to the official story at the time, claiming there was good SIGINT (Signals Intelligence—generally radio traffic and coded communications) evidence to support both the planning and the actual events of second attack. But with a 1998 internal document that was released under the Freedom of Information Act in 2006, the official position changed.8