Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation which originated within the Department of Defense of the US government in 1962. The proposals called for CIA ​operatives to both stage and commit acts of terrorism against US military and civilian targets, blame them on the Cuban government, and use them to justify a war against Cuba. 

The possibilities detailed in the document included the remote control of civilian aircraft which would be secretly repainted as US Air Force planes, a fabricated 'shoot down' of a US Air Force fighter aircraft off the coast of Cuba, the possible assassination of Cuban immigrants, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, exploding a US ship, and orchestrating terrorism in US cities. ​The proposals were rejected by US President John F. Kennedy.

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.

  
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.

If this false flag plan was not rejected, it wouldn't be declassified and most people would still blame Cuba for the attacks