Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation against the Cuban government that originated within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other U.S. government operatives to both stage and actually commit acts of terrorism against American military and civilian targets, blaming them on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba. The possibilities detailed in the document included the possible assassination of Cuban immigrants, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes to be shot down or given the appearance of being shot down, blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The proposals were rejected by President John F. Kennedy.
George John Tenet is a former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the United States Central Intelligence Agency as well as a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.
Robert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist. He has worked for The Washington Post since 1971 as a reporter, and is currently an associate editor.
The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) was the head of the American Central Intelligence Agency from 1946 to 2005, acting as the principal intelligence advisor to the President of the United States and the United States National Security Council, as well as the coordinator of intelligence activities among and between the various U.S. intelligence agencies.
Plan of Attack is a 2004 book by the American author and investigative reporter Bob Woodward. It was promoted as "a behind-the-scenes account of how and why President [George W.] Bush decided to go to war against Iraq".
The Special Activities Center (SAC) is a division of the United States Central Intelligence Agency responsible for covert operations and paramilitary operations. The unit was named Special Activities Division (SAD) prior to 2016. Within SAC there are two separate groups: SAC/SOG for tactical paramilitary operations and SAC/PAG for covert political action.
Joseph Cofer Black is a former CIA official who was appointed Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism by President George W. Bush and led the Office of Counterterrorism in the U.S. State Department until his resignation in 2004. Previously Black served in the Directorate of Operations at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Director of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center (CTC).
The Church Committee was a U.S. Senate select committee in 1975 that investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church (D-ID), the committee was part of a series of investigations into intelligence abuses in 1975, dubbed the "Year of Intelligence", including its House counterpart, the Pike Committee, and the presidential Rockefeller Commission. The committee's efforts led to the establishment of the permanent U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
A false flag is a covert operation designed to deceive; the deception creates the appearance of a particular party, group, or nation being responsible for some activity, disguising the actual source of responsibility.
The Plame affair was a political scandal that revolved around journalist Robert Novak's public identification of Valerie Plame as a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer in 2003.
Shkin is a town in Gomal District, Paktika Province, Afghanistan, located about a kilometer west of the newer town and bazaar of Angur Ada in the Barmal District of Paktika. As with the area immediately to the north, the Barmal Valley, the Gomal region is primarily populated by ethnic Pashtuns who share many of the same characteristics of their neighbors in the South Waziristan Tribal Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT). As one of the principal members of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States.
State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III (ISBN 0-7432-7223-4) is a book by Bob Woodward, originally due to be published October 2, 2006, that examines how the George W. Bush administration managed the Iraq War after the 2003 invasion. It follows Woodward's previous books on the Bush administration, Bush at War and Plan of Attack. Based on interviews with a number of people in the Bush administration, the book makes a number of allegations about the administration.
The Special Collection Service (SCS), codenamed F6, is a highly classified joint U.S. Central Intelligence Agency–National Security Agency program charged with inserting eavesdropping equipment in difficult-to-reach places, such as foreign embassies, communications centers, and foreign government installations. Established in the late 1970s and headquartered in Beltsville, Maryland, the SCS has been involved in operations ranging from the Cold War to the Global War on Terrorism.
Richard Lee Armitage is an American former naval officer who served three combat tours of duty in the Vietnam War as an advisor in contexts of riverine warfare. This experience and his acquired fluency in Vietnamese made him useful to the United States Foreign Service after the war. A Republican, he was appointed the 13th United States Deputy Secretary of State at the State Department, serving from 2001 to 2005 under President George W. Bush.
The War Within: A Secret White House History (2006–2008) is a non-fiction book by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that was released by publisher Simon & Schuster on September 8, 2008. It is the fifteenth book written by Woodward, the fourth in a series of books about President George W. Bush and his administration's foreign policy including Bush at War, Plan of Attack, and State of Denial. The book discusses the debate within the administration about the controversial Iraq "surge" strategy implemented in 2007. Simon & Schuster editor Alice Mayhew said in an official statement that "There has not been such an authoritative and intimate account of presidential decision making since the Nixon tapes and the Pentagon Papers. This is the declassification of what went on in secret, behind the scenes."
The lead-up to the Iraq War began with United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 and subsequent UN weapons inspectors inside Iraq. This period also saw low-level hostilities between Iraq and the United States-led coalition from 1991–2003.
Since 2007, the United States military has targeted militant groups, mainly Al-Shabaab, within Somalia using airstrikes including targeted drone strikes and missiles launched from naval ships alongside special forces raids and advising. By March 2017, airstrikes have ramped up dramatically under the Trump administration and further targeting the Islamic State.
Fear: Trump in the White House is a non-fiction book by American journalist Bob Woodward about the presidency of Donald Trump. The book was released on September 11, 2018. Woodward based the book on hundreds of hours of interviews with members of the Trump administration. The book's publisher Simon & Schuster announced that it had sold 1.1 million copies in the first week of its release, making it the fastest selling opener in the company's history.
