Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Operation NorthWoods by Aaron Rogers


    
        The Operation NorthWoods was an operation suggested by the U.S chief secretary of staff during the time that John F. Kennedy (JFK) served as president. This project in short, was a plan to justify a war with Cuba by having members of the United States government execute terrorist attacks on its own people under the guise of the Cuban Government ( Lemnitzer 9-10). However, JFK was the individual responsible for de-activating the program, initially proposed to the president by a man name Louis Lyman Lemnitzer, the secretary of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It’s hard for one to believe that a man such as L. L. Lemnitzer would take action against JFK, but after taking a in depth look at L. L. Lemnitzer and JFK’s assassination, you might be surprised to find a strong correlation between these two individuals.

In order to consider this hypothetical, we must first take a look at the author of Operation NorthWoods, Louis Lyman Lemnitzer. Louis Lyman Lemnitzer was a four star general in the U.S army and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, L. L. Lemnitzer had a reputation for secrecy even before the North Woods Project was ever commissioned as he was documented participating in the covert negotiations that were responsible for the surrender of German Forces in Italy during WWII. Lemnitzer had a reputation for being the invisible hand directing military initiatives even prior to his interests in waging war with Cuba. He was reported advising the Joint Chiefs of Staff on military strategy throughout WWII and was also accredited with organizing the invasion of North Africa during the war.

Allegedly there are a multitude of people who criticized Lemnitzer despite his military accolades, as people “have condemned his attacks on civilian centers and his willingness to wage nuclear war.”(Lemnitzer, Pg.523) knowing that it’s a tendency of his to lean towards attacking such locations is a key factor in associating him with project North Woods, as one of the major steps in completing the operation was staging attacks within civilian centers in the United States. Furthermore Lemnitzer had begun early success with covert affairs in his military career, one of the first operations he was recorded being a part of was when he “volunteered to lead a top secret mission to Algeria in October 1942”(Lemnitzer, Pg.524) In truth Lemnitzer had begun his life sworn to secrecy in a time of American History that is covered in conspiracy, lies, grief and misfortune. In addition to this, Lemnitzer was a good negotiator, and knew how to work with people to achieve the results he wanted, when he became a major general in 1944, he “demonstrated his diplomatic skills by lessening friction between the American military and its British ally.”(Lemnitzer, Pg.524) Ultimately Lemnitzer was shown to having the makings of a powerful and manipulative individual prior to his time served as Chairman.


Lemnitzer has developed a reputation for being able to resolve conflict and achieve results in a timely and covert manner, during WWII he was accredited with helping in the capitulation of Sicily and was found to had “conducted secret talks in Switzerland that led to the surrender of all German forces in northern Italy and southern Austria on the 2nd of May 1945.” As we can see just by examining Lemnitzer’s career, he was a man who was revered for being successful in using covert tactics to resolving issues and conflict, and having been met with some much appraise for his successful endeavors, its safe to assume that Lemnitzer wasn’t one to cope with having his plans, initiatives or ideas rejected, and the notion that he would orchestrate a retaliation against whomever attempted to thwart his agenda isn’t out of the question. Lemnitzer when given power or control over a military division or brigade, was known to quickly turn the members of each unit into highly aggressive armada of soldiers “In 1957 Lemnitzer became army vice-chief of staff under Maxwell Taylor. When Taylor retired from the army in July 1959, Lemnitzer succeeded him as army chief of staff and championed the creation of a mobile, hard-hitting army with airlift capabilities.”(Lemnitzer, Pg.525) Throughout all of Lemnitzer’s life he had been met with a great amount of military success, all of his campaigns were exceptionally well thought out, and well executed… That is until one of his plans became known as one of the greatest failed attempts at a covert operation, The Bay of Pigs, “In a search for someone to blame for the fiasco, Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee called for the ouster of Lemnitzer and the other chiefs of the military.”(Lemnitzer, Pg.525) Knowing what we now know could it be plausible that Lemnitzer, after a military career of great success, couldn’t come to terms with being blamed for such a catastrophic failure, and after trying to organize a highly volatile and terroristic campaign to justify a war against Fidel Castro only to see it shut down by the late John F. Kennedy, Lemnitzer would do the unthinkable, and orchestrate the assassination of one of the greatest presidents in U.S history.

      The first thing that would lead one to believe that the assassination of JFK was staged is the multitude of theories surrounding JFK’s untimely demise. Before we can discuss any obscure theories though, we must first establish the facts of JFK’s death. The first thing we do know is that “The Warren Commission concluded in 1964 that Oswald killed Kennedy and acted alone.”(Kellog, Madison. "Who Killed JFK?) There were another three government investigations, however all of these came to the same conclusion, Oswald (JFK’s assassin) was believed to be a lone gunman, however this is still disputed to this very day.
        The first conspiracy was that there was more than one gunman that assassinated JFK, this is supported by the rifle that Oswald allegedly used to kill JFK. The 6.5×52mm Carcano was the weapon of choice by Oswald; this is a very peculiar choice for an assassin such as Oswald, as there were many documents that had shown the bullets fired from the rifle were “unstable round-nosed bullet[s] with a propensity to tumble.”(
PBS Nova, "Cold Case: JFK") Given that the rifle had an inconsistency with being accurate, and that this weapon was designed to be effective at hitting stationary targets, it is hard to believe that Oswald acted alone in killing JFK.

        The more rational concept is that Oswald was part of an organized assassination plot, a plot that could’ve been formed by none other than L. L. Lemnitzer himself. Lemintzer had a reputation for covert military operations, so for him to try and frame the assassination of JFK on Lee Harvey Oswald doesn’t sound like too much of a stretch.

            Operation Northwoods… A lot is known about this document, however very little is known as to the consequences this document created for those involved with it. In the end there will always be conspiracies revolving around what truly happened to John F. Kennedy and this could easily be considered another one of those farfetched stories. Despite this, there will always be one thing that we do know. L. L. Lemnitzer, a genius military tactician, author of Operation Northwoods & orchestrator of the Bay Of Pigs, was a very powerful & capable man, a man who could’ve very easily been capable of killing anyone he wanted to get rid of… Even the President of the United States.



Works Cited

"Lyman Louis Lemnitzer." Encyclopedia of World Biography, Gale, 1998. Biography in Context, ic.galegroup.com/ic/bic1/BiographiesDetailsPage/BiographiesDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=false&displayGroupName=Biographies&currPage=&scanId=&query=&prodId=BIC1&search_within_results=&p=BIC1&mode=view&catId=&limiter=&display-query=&displayGroups=&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&documentId=GALE%7CK1631003887&windowstate=normal&activityType=&failOverType=&commentary=&source=Bookmark&u=j084901001&jsid=0ec09d869c906272ed7cb8c8f1bbf7d6. Accessed 1 Nov. 2016.



"Lyman Lemnitzer." Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War, edited by Stanley I. Kutler, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1996. World History in Context, ic.galegroup.com/ic/whic/BiographiesDetailsPage/BiographiesDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=false&displayGroupName=Biographies&currPage=&scanId=&query=&prodId=WHIC&search_within_results=&p=WHIC&mode=view&catId=&limiter=&display-query=&displayGroups=&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&documentId=GALE%7CBT2336100284&windowstate=normal&activityType=&failOverType=&commentary=&source=Bookmark&u=j084901001&jsid=5d6fe36449c87f51826365ef333b88ee. Accessed 1 Nov. 2016.



"Lyman Louis Lemnitzer." Encyclopedia of World Biography, Gale, 1998. World History in Context, ic.galegroup.com/ic/whic/BiographiesDetailsPage/BiographiesDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=false&displayGroupName=Biographies&currPage=&scanId=&query=&prodId=WHIC&search_within_results=&p=WHIC&mode=view&catId=&limiter=&display-query=&displayGroups=&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&documentId=GALE%7CK1631003887&windowstate=normal&activityType=&failOverType=&commentary=&source=Bookmark&u=j084901001&jsid=59bd25ca22f6f90403644fe93e1e259b. Accessed 1 Nov. 2016.

"Operation Northwoods." CODE ZERO. N.p., 15 Feb. 2015. Web. 01 Dec. 2016.

L. L. Lemnitzer “NorthWoods” The National Security Archive, F. J. Blouin, M. J. Ingelido, United States Department of Defense, 21st May 1984, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf

"John Fitzgerald Kennedy." Historic World Leaders, edited by Anne Commire, Gale, 1994. Biography in Context, ic.galegroup.com/ic/bic1/BiographiesDetailsPage/BiographiesDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=true&displayGroupName=Biographies&currPage=&scanId=&query=&prodId=BIC1&search_within_results=&p=BIC1&mode=view&catId=GALE%7C00000000MQMT&limiter=&display-query=&displayGroups=&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&documentId=GALE%7CK1616000326&windowstate=normal&activityType=&failOverType=&commentary=&source=Bookmark&u=j084901001&jsid=5ca67947acbdf8a94df025e163829c55. Accessed 1 Dec. 2016.

 PBS Nova, "Cold Case: JFK”

Kellog, Madison. "Who Killed JFK? The Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy Theories." The Week UK. The Week UK, 21 Nov. 2016. Web. 08 Dec. 2016.


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