Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and there's Cherry, and it's the stuff you should know. Okay, deal with it. Yeah, up your nose, et cetera. Yeah. I just suddenly, you know how, I stopped saying that quote mid quote because I suddenly felt like an old dinosaur Chuck, and that probably nobody knew what I was talking about. And I'm tired of feeling old, Chuck. Are you feeling old? I feel young. I'm glad to answer your question. Yes. Okay, So hey, before we get started, Um, this is gonna be a really good episode. Uh, and I want to enhance it by saying, I finally saw I got to see my niece's movie that I've been talking NonStop about. O Exit. It's amazing. It's such a great I would call it a popcorn thriller. Um. Like, you know, it's not like high art. It's not trying to be high art, but it's it's like really well done in the script, doesn't have a bunch of like holes in it. Uh. It doesn't like they've trimmed off all the fat. It moves along really nicely. Um, and once it gets going, it keeps like getting going again and like these lurches forward and just it does it doesn't go off the rails. But it's just like, oh my god, I can't believe this is going on right now. And then to be able to see my niece Mila act as like the kid in this, to see her like do this stuff, it's just it's amazing Tod first of all, and I'm I'm like removing, I've done everything I can to remove any subjectivity as a proud uncle, and like actually watch her acting and like the performance she gets and it is great. It's amazing. She does an amazing job. She has to do a bunch of different stuff. She gets like tortured and harrass and beat up and everything. Um, it's actually really graphic movie in a lot of ways, but like delightfully if you ask me, Um, and she did. She did a great job. And I thought the whole cast did a really good job too, including great It is good, including Havannah Rose Lou by the way, but yes it is. It is a great movie. And I recommend anybody who watches our movies to watch the movie and it's on It's on Hulu right now streaming. It's called No Exit Awesome. I can't wait to watch it. I've been traveling. I went on the road for a bit once again. See more Bonnie Prince Billy and Matt Sweeney Superwolve shows. Matt Sweeney is that the girlfriend guy? What the guy who had that hit in the nineties called Girlfriend? No, he's local that was that was a great album. Um, I can't think of his name. No, Matt Sweeney is a genuine stuff you should know listener and super smart, awesome guy, and we're kind of pals now, so he's always kind enough to hang out and he always sends me really good ideas for the show. But that's not my ninth Bonnie Prince Billy show in the past like a year and a half. I'm going to where he goes. That's really cool. He didn't come to Atlanta, so I just I'm hitting the road and along with our good friend Joey c R. He came on this one. Oh yeah, that's right. I saw that post on Instagram. That's awesome to see Joey's looking good. Yeah, he he says hello, and uh, if you want to see pictures of this in my Travels and Travails. You can follow me to Chuck the Podcaster on Instagram. I'm sorry you had travails. Uh what I say travails? Did I not say travels? He said travels and travails? No, no travails, only good good It was only good times. I'm sure I've told you before, but I always love rubbing it in. Did I ever tell you that I saw Bonnie Prince Billy doing karaoke at our friend Toby's wedding years back? I don't know that. You told me that do you do a song? It was? It was some like sweet old country song he didn do wet with I think maybe his wife. Oh my god. I mean he's the best. He's my favorite vocalist. He's to me, the best singer that literally in music history. And a cool dude. I can tell you because I've been in the same room with them plenty of times. Me too. I was four ft from him the other night. That's really cool. Anyway. Shout out to Sweeney, Shout out to no Exit. And now let's talk about a time when the US government was not above uh planning false flag operations that were crazy and ludicrous and planning potentially to assassinate the leaders of other countries hundreds of years ago. Oh actually no, this was way back in the nineteen sixties. Yeah, planning, that's the operative word here is planning doesn't mean that like any false flag operation was ever carried out, at least by the United States government. There's been plenty of false flag operations carried out, most recently, um apparently by Russia, who was trying to accuse Ukraine of doing like sabotage embombing across the border as a pretext for invasion. And that's generally the point of a false flag operation, which we should probably define it. But it's basically where you dress up as the um somebody from the country that you want to invade, have them or you assault your own like border crossing, your own military installation, your own railroad, and then you publicize to the world how that country attacked you, and now you're gonna have to go in and invade in in you know, for your own your own welfare and the welfare of your own country. That's a false flag operation, that's right. Staging any kind of a fake operation. Uh. The it originally came about the term false flag from pirates would fly a flag of a friendly country two lureships closer than they would attack them. But since then and Russia is big on it, they've I mean, Japan has done this, Germany has done this, but the Soviets and Russia, UH, like you said, they're they're still gangbusters for this kind of thing. Yes, I also think it's just a p s A. If you are really um feeling sympathetic or um, you know, absorbing information that makes you see things through Putin's view, you're probably being manipulated online. Just why you may want to you may want to look a little deeper into that and pull your head out of that particular rabbit hole. All right, So let's go back in time, uh and talk about Operation north Woods. But to talk about Operation Northwoods, we have to first talk about who did this one for us? By the way, who put this together? This was Olivia Joint Olivia Gershn, great work. We need to talk about Cuba and what the threat that that country started to pose or the seeming threat that country started to pose to the United States, UH, in the late nineteen fifties early nineteen sixties. Yeah, because Castro came to power ninety nine, and in doing so he became the first UM. He established the first communist regime in the Western hemisphere. Uh in America's backyard, as it would later be put. And this is not settled well with the Americans because at the time we were UM I guess our military, um brass, our intelligence community, basically everybody in charge with security for America. UM was of the of the of the ILK that like, we should be invading other countries that are communists and toppling those regimes and fighting communism wherever it pops up. No, no countries too small, no countries too large. We need to invade them and fight them and remove those communists and and probably install like a democratic government from that point on, which is kind of ironic. By the way. That was Matthew Sweet, That's what I said. What did you say, Oh, Matt Matt Sweeney. Matt Sweeney. But it came to me when was when you were talking about Cuba, Matthew Sweet, because it's a great record. Yeah, I can't remember the song how it goes, but I know it was a good song. I don't think I ever heard the record had a cool video too. Yeah, while you sing it. Yeah, I love somebody, remember that. That's it. I think I need somebody to love Okay, and then the chorus is, uh, you need to get back in the Little Friend. Oh yeah, Yeah, it's a pretty good song. It's not as good as I remember just by the Superwolf record, it's better. Um alright, so good set up on Cuba. Uh, if you want to go back, well, um, I don't even know how much we need to go over it, but if you want to go back and listen to our I think pretty great episode from November called the Bay of Pigs disaster. This was sort of one of the first things that happened in the nineteen sixties when UH Eisenhower approved this boondoggle of an operation UH known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion that just went just about as wrong as it could go on every level. Yeah, and so like we were setting up fake invasions of Cuba supporting exiles invasions of Cuba. UM RFK and JFK were obsessed with Cuba and in particular removing Castro from power. Cuba was a big deal for a number of reasons, we should say, and one of the leading reasons that Cuba was a problem for the United States is because they were worried Castro is going to serve as an inspiration for other countries in Latin America, especially the economically depressed ones um where they're like, yeah, all this this capitalism running around where Americans own most of our national operations and exports and we're getting very little in return, Communism might seem pretty appealing to them, So Castro might serve as an inspiration. And if there's like that domino effect like they were worried about in Southeast Asia that happens in Latin America thanks to Cuba, all of a sudden, America's American businesses are gonna be out a lot of money, Americans are gonna be out a lot of the bananas that they've come to love thanks to Edward Burney's and we would also lose access to things like the Panama Canal and other things we need. So it wasn't just like a like a ideological problem. It was a practical problem too. But the biggest problem, the biggest problem that a communist Cuba post to the United States is that it was now an ally with the USSR. America's swore an enemy. The other polar power of the Cold War would now had a country that would be willing to let them set up nuclear missile basis a hundred boles from Florida. That was truly the big problem with Cuba and Castro, That's right. And because of that kind of from the very beginning, the US very quietly started thinking about like, hey, should we assassinate this guy? Should we depose this guy? Um, And there were all kinds of crazy like poison cigars, like mafia hitman, that kind of stuff was being talked about behind closed doors, including um, Florida Senator George Smathers, great name, Uh, he proposed assassinating Castro, was a good buddy of Kennedy's and brought it up during the nine presidential campaign and include which included the plan included a false flag attack at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. And he claims that Kennedy basically was like a put something down on paper and I'll take a look. And um, so Kennedy wasn't you know, if you believe this, he wasn't initially adverse or averse excuse me, to the idea of taking care of the problem. If you know what I'm saying, Yeah, that's how obsessed he was with removing Castro. The problem was this after the Bay of Pigs. That was what nine teen sixty one, I believe, Yeah, it was April nine. Um. The one of the huge problems with aside from America having an enormous amount of a on its face for being outed for supporting a failed coup of Castro, Um, was that Kennedy had been led to believe by his military and intelligence advisors that there was going to be an uprising, that like these exiles showing up having maken a couple of wins against the Castro regime was going to like awaken the Cuban people who would want to go back to, you know, the way things were before the Communists came along and took over the country, and they're being uprising that top of Castro. That was the thing. They weren't necessarily trying to take over the country. They're trying to incite a revolution, and that did not happen. Was supposed to work. Yeah, even though Kennedy had been told up and down by these advisors. He was a brand new president at the time, and he had been told up and down by these advisors that that was going to happen, and it didn't happen. It never materialized, and so he lost full faith in any military or intelligence advisor around him at the time. From that point on, so he found he needed to surround himself with new people to take on this this Castro Cuba problem. And the point man he put on the whole thing, he basically said, I want you to to be in charge of getting rid of Castro, you know, figuring out how to do it without sending in military people was his brother, Bobby. That's right. Uh, Like you said, Kennedy still had that new president smell, and Bobby still had that new attorney general smell. You were very very patient and waiting for your chance to use that, and I think it paid off in aces. Okay, good, I mean I try to get in there. But you know, uh so, Bobby, it was attorney general, like I said, And that isn't you know, attorney attorney general or attorneys general um or would it be attorneys generals? They usually don't get involved in stuff like this, but he was his his brother, and so he trusted him, and he ended up overseeing something called Operation Mongoose, which was kind of this crazy idea that they could disrupt life in Cuba such that, uh with you know, sabotage, with disorder, with espionage, um. And it would all be just in the name of stirring things up with the Cubans themselves again, not like putting in Americans dressed as Cubans and stuff like that. Uh. They thought they could get this done. Um. The CIA was going to be involved, the State Department was going to be involved, UM, the Defense Department, what we had at the time, the US Information Agency, and basically they were going to get together and get this done. And it was going to be headed up by a general from the Air Force named Edward Landsdale, who was interestingly a former AD exec and a CIA operative, and he was sort of in charge along with Kennedy of getting this thing planned and this Operation Mongoose again. Yeah, So Operation Mongoose is that operation that like all the wacky stuff that you have ever heard about getting rid of Castro, like a poisoned skin suit for him to scuba dive in, or exploding cigars, all that is Operation Mongoose. And like you're saying, the point was two kills a poison cigar. I don't think it was an exploding cigar. That's like a novelty, right, Well, that was the level they were at. Somebody brought up joy buzzer once, right, they were like, exploding cigar won't kill him, like yeah, but it'll humiliate him, right, and we'll finish him off with the joy buzz um. So that that's all of that fell under Operation Mongoose. And like you said, they were trying to basically make life for the average Cuban so weird and disjoined it and uncomfortable without anybody realizing the Americans were actually behind all these seemingly unrelated things that they would just get rid of Castro themselves. And that was the reason why they weren't just like, well, we can't just go in and kill Castro is because again they were friends with the Ovit's, and there was a chance that um JFK believed, uh, if they did in Vague Cuba, they would set off World War three. Like that was a very real fear. On the other hand, there was also this ticking clock going at all moments and among some people, some advisors to the White House and security advisors, it was like deafening the sound of this clock ticking. That the longer we waited, the more chance there was going to be that the Cubans were going to say, hey, so if it's come, build a missile base here. They hadn't yet, but it was on the table and everybody knew it. So they Americans needed to do something about Castro and fast. So the idea that the Americans could come up with these plots to get the Cubans to overthrow Castro themselves. That takes a lot of time, it might not pay off. And then looming in the background, getting ever closer, are these Soviet missile bases arriving in Cuba any day? Now? They just knew it. All right, that's a great suspenseful lead up to our first break. We're gonna come back and find out what happened with Operation Mongoose right after this. All right, so you set the stage very well. My friend General Lansdale is running the show. It was a pretty impossible situation to try and do this with the Cuban people without any real power, basically like he didn't have any real teeth in this. He was overseeing a bunch of different agencies. Uh And in February of sixty two, he basically put forward a plan that was supposed to get Castro out of office by October or even though he said that was pretty optimistic. And some of these ideas were pretty crazy. Um. One of them was that there's these things called star shells, which is kind of how you how you light up the night sky during wartime. I think, yeah, it's like you shoot it for as it were mortar around, but it's not mort around. It just lights things up for the night vision goggles or back then. I guess, well, I don't know if they had them back then, but it's like that one scene at night, that battle, that night battle in Apocalypse Now, Yeah, exactly. So one of the ideas was for a submarine, the US submarine to fire these star shells off the coast and convinced the Cubans that the Second Coming of Jesus was was happening and that Jesus was against Castro. Yeah, they were going to shoot it off on All Saints Day, and that was based on the premise that the Cubans were deeply, deeply Catholic and that they would see this as a sign. And these are just ideas. Again, they never did this. All of these are just ideas, but they were ideas that were literally put forth in writing by the US government to the President. So it's okay, So the clock is ticking on Lansdale, and I read that basically every week he would go to the Oval Office and asked to be taken off of this assignment. Yeah, he was apparently a golden child. Like you said, he was an ad executive CIA operative. He basically shaped the geopolitical map of Southeast Asia by himself in the fifties. Um, and they, the Kennedy's, were like, hey, you seem pretty great at this. Let's see what you can do at Cuba. And he just ran into a brick wall in Cuba, in no small part because, like you were saying, the Kennedy's didn't give him any teeth, any authority. So he had to beg for everything from everybody from this this multi agency task force that he was in charge of. It was a terrible, terrible thing. And then again that clock is ticking. So in addition to coming up with ways to get the Cubans to topple Castro, Lansdale also was trying to figure out how to justify over action and actual military invasion. And so he asked the Joint Chiefs, who were one of the agencies that were part of the task force. He oversaw for some some info on that, like what would it take do you think for the United States to be able to justifiably invade Cuba and remove Castro as its leader? Problem solved? And again like, how can I scare the president bad enough? Kind of yeah, right exactly, so they they well, no, Also, like I think he was also trying to figure out what we could do to make that happen, you know what I'm saying, Like could we also like push Cuba into a corner and make them do something and be like, oh, well, we have our hands are tied. We have to invade um. But the reason that it would scare Kennedy too is like he was against military action. You just got to keep that in mind. After the Bay of Pigs he said, no, We're not invading Cuba. So now Landsdills trying to figure out basically how to how to change the President's mind. And I guess, yeah, like you were saying, if it meant through scaring him, whatever it took, he just wanted out of this stupid assignment where he's trying to figure out how to trick the Cubans into overthrowing Castro. Right. So this this is what this briefing was all about in February of nineteen sixty two from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to basically put put it forth that this cannot be ignored. The quote was, the communist regime in Cuba is incompatible with the minimum security requirements of the Western hemisphere. Um. I mean that's like that sentence kind of kind of says it all like where where he it is incompatible having him in power with the safety of the Western hemisphere, So we gotta get rid of him. Um. They said that that, uh, we can't count on like you see what happened with the Bay of Pigs. There is no insurgents happening in Cuba that we can count on basically at this point, and we need to intervene directly. And I don't think Russia will even like be supermad at this point yet. Yeah. Yet, that was the thing because they said that Cuba is not part of the Warsaw Packed, which is kind of like the Soviet Union's version of NATO UM. And since they weren't a member of that, the Soviet Union had no obligations to back them up if they were invaded in them by America, and the fact that they didn't have any military bases there and they also didn't have any reason to back up Cuba. So it was possible that if they invaded Cuba to capital to top le Castro, they the Soviets would not be drawn into it. Maybe JFK was wrong about it sparking World War three. They didn't know that for a fact, but that was their assessment of it, right, Yeah. So uh. On February second, Brigadier General William H. Craig, he was the Joint Chief of staffs rep for Operation Mongoose, He submitted this memo to Landsdale that said it was called possible actions to provoke, harass, and disrupt Cuba. And this is where some of these, uh, really kind of wacky ideas start coming forth. Um, some not quite so acky, like the Mercury mission was about to happen with John Glenn later that month, and they were like, Hey, if anything goes wrong with this thing, we could basically manufacture proof that Cuba was behind it and that would give us a reason. Yeah, that was one of the more reasonable things, and it really was. There was Operation Free ride. The idea that they were going to drop one way tickets to um like Mexico City over Havana was just like, just leave, that's amazing. I guess that was when if Castro had no one to rule, then maybe he would just leave himself. Castro would just shut down the airports or something. Yeah. Yeah, And that was not very well thought out. It wouldn't have worked. Now. There was also Operation Good Times too, which was they were going to produce a fake photo and this is at a time when it was hard to do that, at least make a convincing one of Castro presumably naked, hanging out with with beautiful women in a bunch of food at a time when you know, the Cubans were having a lot of trouble putting food on their own plates. And this picture was gonna have Castro surrounded by food and women and they were going to caption it my ration is different. And they thought that that would just that would be yet for cast Strow. So yes, these are the ideas that they were coming up with. But when they when they kind of turned there, I think when they said, like, wow, these are the ideas were coming up with. This stuff's not gonna work. There's no counter revolutionary insurgency to spark in Cuba, Like, what are we gonna do? We need to figure out how to how to get our army in there, right, get army in there, and then uh, that kind of set the table, all of us set the table for Operation Northwoods, which was put forward by Army General. It's so funny. I'm glad that that Olivia mentioned, uh, Doctor Strangelove, which had not come out yet, because some of the names in this are very like you can kind of tell that Kubrick and the writer were very much influenced by like real stuff that was going on, some of the ridiculous names from Dr Strangelove. And then you know later on when we get to like what was actually in Northwoods that you can only hear it as if it was read from Georgie Scott, General Buck Turgenson, like you can hear him saying these things. But Army General Lyman lim Nitzer was this guy's name, and he was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in nineteen sixty. Very hawkish to say, the least right wing guy who uh, I mean, this guy he wanted to attack everybody at all times. He wanted a preemptive nuclear war launched against the Soviet Union. At one point that was a proposal that he took to Kennedy. He proposed that in writing. He said, we here's a plan to to for a surprise attack against the USSR. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. He was that kind of guy. He was one of those ones that I mentioned earlier. Fight communism everywhere it pops up, any time it pops up, Just invade and take over. That's that was like, is his plan. And this guy's running the Joint chiefs of Staff. So Kennedy the head, No, he was Eisenhower appointee. Kennedy didn't like him, and he didn't like Kennedy, especially after the Bay of Pigs. He was one of the people that Kennedy did not trust. And then he thought Kennedy was reprehensible for not ordering an air strike to back up the Bay of Pigs exile invaders. Um. So there was no love lost. But Landsdale was It sounds like kind of appropriately the guy to come up with Operation Northwoods, which was, as far as we have is in documentary evidence, the only false flag operation the United States ever came up with. Okay, is that true documented evidence? I don't think there's ever been evidence of anything like this. I mean, there's a there's a historian who wrote about it later, a journalist who said it was probably the most corrupt document the United States government has ever come up with, which is really saying something. I mean, I'm not so I'm not Pollyanni here. I don't think the US government as of course clean hands and is just you know, looking out for the good of everybody at all the time. Like I think it's done some deeply shady stuff. But I also personally think that Operation Northwoods may have been, as far as planning goes, the pinnacle of that shape. Yeah, I believe it too. March five, the Joint chiefs uh Lansdale issued requested them to provide a quote brief but precise description of pretext which they would consider would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba. Was passed along on March five. I'm sorry, marulimnitz Or passes it to Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, and uh, this is something that McNamara, you know, years later was kind of like, I don't know, was that a thing? I don't really remember that. Yeah, he said, I'm not sure that was true. He was a scumbag himself too. Yeah. I recommend the Great Great documentary by Errol Morris when he talks to Robert ma namera basically before Yeah, for nine minutes straight or however long it is. It's crazy what he got him to say and to and he tried to get him to see and McNamara is like, does not compute to It was really fascinating stuff, it really was. I didn't realize that was Errol Morris. I should have guessed though. Yeah. Um, alright, so the Midnight Cowboy, what I wanted to throw you? I wanted to sniff you off the case. You sure did. Uh. So this memo was called Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba. That was the official title, uh, signed by limnitz Are in the Joint Chiefs. And you know this, this was basically, uh here, what do you think of this plan? Um? It's you might think it's wacky and we've never done anything quite like this officially, but here it is President Kennedy. Right. Kennedy said, or um, let me see that ain't no bad no that us so, um, he looked it over and said, nope, thank you very much. I appreciate you going all this trouble, but I reject this out of hand. We're not going to to create some sort of UM mayhem, blame it on the Cubans and then use it as a pretext to evade We're just not doing that. And right when that happened, right when he realized that that this is not going to UM, not going to be implemented, limits are UM, tried to get all documentation of this destroyed. He wasn't successful, as we'll see obviously because we're talking about it now, but he was, oh god, I signed that thing. I thought we were all going to do this. And in fact, in the Operation Northwood's memo, he talks about how he anticipates that other agencies that were all part of Operation Mongoose Task Force UM would be submitting similar proposals, which are basically ideas for how to make it look like Cuba attacked the United States so that we can invade Cuba. Turned out he was the only one who put his name on a document that he then handed into the president that was that it's sort of like the scene in like an army movie where they asked for volunteers, and everyone but one person takes a step back and then one guy's left standing there. Have you ever seen there's a video of some dogs that did that to another dog. There's three dogs, I think they're all little poodles, and one of them, Peter pooped on the staircase and there the mom was making the video is asking them like who did this? And right when she says who did this, the other two look at the third one, and then she said who did it? And they take a step back and the ones is standing there still. It's one of the most amazing dog videos I've ever seen. I saw the Nature video the other day that was a deer, uh that you know how they had like fake deer and things in the woods. That was a real deer that had mounted one of these fake deer. Have you seen that? I've seen pictures, you know, on the internet. So it has mounted this deer and it's kind of going at it, and the fake DearS um sort of from the neck up, it's piece together, that whole section falls off. This deer jumps off of the back of that thing, and like I wish there was like a human narration going on. Because it looks at like it's kind of circling this thing, looking at it like, yeah, what was I just doing? Uh this thing too, so we figured out it was fake. I killed you. I'm sorry. It's good stuff here, Yeah, Uh, should we take a break before we can get into the absurdity of Operation Northwoods? All right, we'll take our second break and we'll talk about some of these crazy wacky ideas right for this, Chuck, I think you know, we're we're calling these crazy wacky ideas, and they are crazy wacky ideas, like you shouldn't do stuff like false flag operations and in vague countries based on them. Um, but they're also I think only crazy wacky because they were in the sixties, they were directed at Cuba, which makes it seem even wackier in hindsight now today. And then lastly, um, they weren't implemented. Had they been implemented, they would there be in no way, shape or form crazier wacky. They'd be you know, abhorrent. But we're kind of laughing about this stuff now, but it's really not funny. No, That's what I'm trying to do. Stop laughing. Yeah, sorry, I'm in a good mood. I'm glad to hear it. All right, So let's talk about some of these false flag operations again signed by General Liman Limnitzer. That's right. We already talked about sort of attacking Guantanamo. Uh, there are things called over the fence attacks, which were uniformed Cubans basically, you know, riding near the bases, throwing fire bombs inside the base, setting aircraft on fire. Uh, kind of giving the illusion that that Guantanamo is under direct attack. And these would probably be exile Cubans who were sent from Florida down to Guantanamo to pose as Cuban nationals under Castro who were attacking. Um. But they would be paid and then remember that movie Wag the Dog. Oh sure they would probably be whacked afterward. Yeah, that's the thing though, And this is if you read, if you read the fine print, Aside from one of them, these are all basically elaborate ruses where no one actually dies. Yes, that's very important that I know a lot of people believe. I was gonna say suspect, I think believe is as much more correct word that that September eleven was a false flag attack. Um, some people that. I mean, I get that, I get I get believing that and why you would believe that. Um, but if you look at Operation north Woods, they they go out of their way to basically stage death. People don't actually die. They weren't part of the plan killing people. And then let alone the idea of killing thousands of Americans, the just the fact that that many people died. I don't believe that anyone has ever held power in America that is capable or willing to kill that that many Americans all at once. I just don't believe it. I don't. I don't think the world works that way. I think the world can be a very very dark place. I don't think it's that dark at least that there's like that depth of betrayal from you know, the American government to the American people. I just I don't believe it. I agree, So I just thought we probably we should at least mentioned in two thousand one is a false flag operation, that's right. Another one from this era was the remember the Main incident, which was basically, let's just blow up one of our ships in Guantanamo Bay or or another vessel um near Cuba. We could like they they proposed sinking ships and all kinds of crazy plans like that. The one that really speaks to me as far as George C. Scott reading it from uh DR Strangelove is this direct quote, we could sink a boatload of Cubans on route to Florida, real or simulated like they could they it could be dummies, or we could actually really do this with real humans. That was the one that I was like, Okay, there's not there's not like like they're that actually does overtly say yeah, we could kill some people. The other ones, the ones that I'm like, Okay, they're really going out of their way to make sure nobody is actually hurt, are ones like um. There was one where they were going to uh um, send a like a charter plane, like actually like a commercial airline or from the US, probably from Florida en route to somewhere, carrying um American tourists off to vacation like Jamaica, Venezuela, Guatemala, all the vacation hotspots, right, and they were going to release actually two planes at once, identical planes, except one of them was going to be a drone remote controlled plane. And then they were going to reroute the one with the actual people in it and then send the drone along over Cuban airspace and blow it up and then blame it on the Cubans. Yeah. So if you'll notice in that plan there's like all those people are safe, they're all fine, Like they're all they're they're safe. This is all a decoy um, Like that's that's that's what this this operation was was, Like it's still wouldn't just they wouldn't say or they weren't. They weren't saying like, yeah, we'll just blow up a planeful of tourists, Like it just doesn't happen. That doesn't happen. Yeah, But I mean some of the stuff to me, like has the could serve as setting the stage for things getting out of hand and leading to real bloodshed, Like they had ideas for a simulated Cuban backed assault on like Dominican Republic or something using fake aircraft, you know, painted up to look like Cuban aircraft. Uh. I mean, all of a sudden, something like that gets out of hand and real lives are being lost when it's misinterpreted. Yes, And I mean that's a really good point. And also, like the whole basis of this is like, so we can invade Cuba, and when we invade Cuba, there's going to be a lot of loss of life and bloodshed from that invasion too. So even if we went out of our way to make sure that people who were in the false flag operation didn't actually get hurt, somebody's eventually going to die because of this false flag. The idea is that this guy came up with. Yeah. Another idea was a fake attack on a plane, like a US Air Force plane in international waters. So basically that would be a pilot who was flying, as you know, under an alias. They would broadcast over the radio that they've been jumped by MIGGS, which was I guess this the Soviet fighter jets, I saw top gun, I know this stuff. Uh, And it would fly I guess under the radar at a low altitude and land uh safely and then stored. The pain would be um, repainted, given a new tail number, and then a submarine would drop plane parts into the water where it supposedly happened so they could like pull those things out of the ocean show the world again. Totally fake, totally fake. Um. There were other ones where like they're like well, maybe we could injure Cuban exiles in Miami, like assault them and blame it on the Cubans, um, etcetera, etcetera. Like basically anything you could think of, uh, that could give America a reason to say, look, this Castra regime is unpredictable, unstable, and they're now attacking us. Um, we're going to have to invade. Uh. That was the point of Operation Northwood's ideas. But it had a bit of a stroke of genius that was kind of hidden in there, A little bit that I thought was was kind of well put. It was using a number of these different things making them seem through you know, a separation of of in time and space, making them seem like un related events. Also staging other events too that didn't necessarily have anything to do with anything, that kind of like give cover and camouflage the actual events and the goals um. And that if you put it all together, the US could be like, look at how crazy this Castra regime is, We're going to have to invade. I thought that was as far as unhinged documents go. I thought that was a little bit of sanity shining in it. Yeah, I mean I think they should have dropped those one way plane tickets. That was that was my favorite idea and all this stuff. Uh, so you know, we know that Kennedy didn't accept this proposal. The Cuban missile crisis unfolds in October sixty two and Operation Mongoose was sort of fully laid to rest and Lansdale for his efforts. He was replaced um by a man named Sterling Cutrell, who was, um, he wasn't like an insider for the for the Kennedy clan, and so he was a little more cautious about everything. Um, they were still you know, I think the Joint chiefs had the idea, Like they didn't put this idea to bed completely. They put Operation Mongoose, Operation Mongoose Mongoose down, but they still didn't like put to bed the idea that like, hey, maybe we should still provoke Cuba and see if we can like set them up to invade. Um, like that went through sixty three. All the way through three, the Hawks were just trying to figure out how to get it done. Uh and it it obviously didn't happen. And what's somebody pointed out in one of these the articles that were the sources for Olivia's article was like Castro's still there. He outlived all these guys. Uh. And I think it was in like the nineties or the early two thousands when the article was written. There like he's still there, He's still giving seven hour speeches and like all these people are long dead. Um. And that I mean, that's the case. Like America and Cuba just entered this kind its own, like kind of mini Caribbean Cold War with tons of sanctions against Cuba and um limits on travel, um. And you know, I think the average American would just not really understand why. They just know that you that Castro was a communist, and you know that was all you needed to know to play sanctions on Cuba. Um. And we even further would have no idea whatsoever that Operation Northwood ever happened, was ever proposed if it wasn't for Oliver Stone movie movie JFK. And that a neat little bizarre footnote. Yeah, it really is, because like he said, limits are tried to get this thing completely destroyed, not even like hey can we bury this, Like let's destroy it. There was an investigative reporter named James Banford who wrote a lot about this to call it the most corrupt plan ever created by the U. S. Government. And if not for Oliver Stone sort of that JFK movie is so popular, uh for like Americans after that calling for the release and like opening of records. Um, we we may never have known. So hey yeah Alie Stone, Yeah, he got an Act of Congress passed through his movie. That's how popular that movie was when it came out. It'd be like like passing the Hobbit Act or something back in like two thousand seven. To never make another Hobbit movie would be that act o um or another eight hour be Eatles documentary. How about that ouch? Uh? Well, since Chuck said out everybody, that's it for Operation Northwoods, which means it's time for a listener mail. And I mean just hostility to the Beatles there at the end. You didn't see that coming on? Outright hostility. I get to Peter Jackson link. But all right, I'm gonna call this from a night shift nurse doing great work. Hey guys, my husband recently introduced me to your podcast about two years into the backlog and loving it. I started with your most recent pod, uh and work backwards. But my husband scrolls through and picks one at random Russian roulette style, which seems insane to me. I've been trying to figure out if our listening style says anything about our personalities. I would say I'm a little more methodical and he's more spontaneous in life, So maybe there's something to that. So lindsay, uh, one percent. I mean your husband is flying by the seat of his pants. It sounds like fast and loose. He's like, yeah, let's hear what they have to say about stupid grass. Yeah, you know what we had to say A lot we did. That was a long episode, and you know what, we've talked about this before. We there is no wrong way to listen to any show, including stuff you should know. I we personally sort of endorsed the sandwiching idea, which is, if you're new to the show, listen to the most recent release because that way, sometimes they're timely, but um, at least you're in the know about current jokes and things were referencing and uh, if we have live shows going on, like people miss out on kind of information release uh, and then see sandwich. So you listen to the most recent and then you pick one from the back back catalog, the deep Web. No, no, no, not the deep Web. No, so we've endorsed that. But there's no wrong way to listen. You can be one of those two times as fast play our voices, two times as fast weirdos. I think that's wrong. That's the too. But someone that's wrong just hit download, you know, I'm just teasing. No, it's right. However you listen. It's great. It's weird. I think to listen to us as if we were the chipmunks. But yeah, I think it's funny though too. If that's your jam, then go for it, I says, I think it's funny though too. It's gonna be like four times when they get to happen, right, or maybe we should do this, would you, John Wayne? No, but it sped up at two times. It sound like myself, right, Yeah, that wasn't John Wayne. That was great. You just brought a smile to my face. Good, all right, let me finish this up anyway. I'm a night shift nurse. I listen to podcasts, especially on my way and from work to decompress for my shift. Thank you for keeping company on my drive, keeping me awake after working these long hours. Fund your voice of soothing yet engaging. Really admire that, uh you can do that and admit when you were wrong as well, which is such a hard thing to do in these polar se times. That is from Lindsay Johnson MSN r N nice. Thank you, Lindsay doing God's work out there. We appreciate you, and we appreciate your husband also for introducing you to us. I don't know what he's doing, but hey man who whatever he's doing is fine with me. Agreed. Um, If you want to be like Lindsay and get in touch with us, we would love that. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.