https://www.spaceflighthistories.com/post/that-time-castro-would-ve-been-blamed-if-a-mercury-mission-had-failed Several other proposals were included within Operation Northwoods, including real or simulated actions against various U.S. military and civilian targets. The operation recommended developing a "Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington", which involved the bombing of civilian targets, which was to be blamed on the Cuban government to paint a false image of Fidel Castro and misinform the American public. Arrival ceremony for Giulio Andreotti, President of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic, April 17, 1973. (Image credit: National Archives and Records Administration)

The main Operations Northwoods proposal was presented in a document titled "Justification for U.S.Military Intervention in Cuba ( TS)," a top secret collection of draft memoranda written by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). [1] The document was presented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on 13 March 1962 as a preliminary submission for planning purposes. The Joint Chiefs recommended that both the covert and overt aspects of any such operation be assigned to them.In the end, however, Operation Northwoods never got further than a memo. According to ABC, President John F. Kennedy told Lemnitzer directly on March 16, 1962, that he had no plans to use any sort of force to take Cuba. Following presentation of the Northwoods plan, Kennedy removed Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, although he became Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in January 1963. U.S. military leaders began to perceive Kennedy as going soft on Cuba, and the President became increasingly unpopular with the military. A rift had already developed during Kennedy's disagreements with the service chiefs over the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 and flared up again with his June 10, 1963 announcement of a unilateral U.S. Test Ban Treaty. Main article: Operation Mongoose General Edward Lansdale, commander of the anti-Cuban Operation Mongoose project In 1968, a U.S. B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs on a routine (but secret) mission crashed near Thule Air Base in Greenland. In the aftermath of the crash, American and Danish officials launched a project to clean up radioactive debris and collect the scattered pieces of the nuclear bombs. However, for years later, news reports out of Denmark and the U.S. questioned whether all four bombs had really been located. [ Photos: Top-Secret, Cold War-Era Military Base in Greenland]

Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A: Pretexts to Justify U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba". media.nara.gov. Archived from the original on 2008-08-13 . Retrieved 3 September 2009.

The plan was drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and sent to the Secretary of Defense. Although part of the US government's anti-communist Cuban Project, Operation Northwoods was never officially accepted; it was authorized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but then rejected by President Kennedy. None of the false flag operations became active under the auspices of the Operation Northwoods proposals. This plan ... should be developed to focus all efforts on a specific ultimate objective which would provide adequate justification for US military intervention. Such a plan would enable a logical build-up of incidents to be combined with other seemingly unrelated events to camouflage the ultimate objective.