Joint Chiefs Studied 'Contrived Incidents' to Spark Military Action in Cuba
By Roy Castellano ·
Government censors have scrubbed the specifics of a 'contrived incident' meant to provide a casus belli, leaving only the blueprint for armed recovery of pilots expected to be shot down.
Brass Knobs. Peg Leg. Grey Wolf. Blue Moon.
These are not the names of sailors or street gangs, but the operational labels for the eyes and ears of the United States military during a period of extreme tension in the Caribbean. According to a document from the Foreign Relations of the United States (State Dept) series, specifically "662. Tab 7 to printed Document 320," these were the military contingency plans approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The document is a short, two-page summary. Much of it is gone, stripped away by the black ink of government censors. The first page is largely a void; the first three sections are almost entirely not declassified, leaving the reader to wonder what foundational assumptions the Joint Chiefs were operating under before they got to the tactical specifics.
"Brass Knobs" and "Peg Leg"
When the ink clears on page two, we find the reconnaissance plans. "BRASS KNOBS" refers to high-level reconnaissance via the U-2. For those of us who spent years watching the East, the U-2 is a known quantity—a fragile, high-altitude bird that provided the only real clarity in a fog of Soviet deception.
Below that is "PEG LEG," designated as low-level reconnaissance. Low-level flights are a different breed of risk. While the U-2 flies above the reach of most early-sixties defenses, low-level assets trade altitude for stealth, skimming the terrain to avoid radar. The planners clearly anticipated that this trade-off would come with a price. They included a third plan, "GREY WOLF," specifically described as "Armed reconnaissance to search for missing PEG LEG aircraft."
In the clandestine service, you learn that the existence of a search-and-rescue or recovery plan is a tacit admission of the expected casualty rate. "GREY WOLF" was not a contingency for a rare accident; it was a planned response to the high probability that a PEG LEG pilot would be shot down or go missing. The addition of the word "Armed" suggests these recovery missions were not intended to be passive. They were designed to go in with teeth.
Case II: Contrived Incident
Beyond the flights, the record lists "Plans or Studies under Review and Development." Here, the Joint Chiefs move from monitoring to manipulation. The document outlines two specific "Courses of Action Related to Cuba."
Case I is described as a "Spontaneous Revolt." This is the ideal scenario for any intelligence officer: a domestic uprising that provides a clean window for intervention or support. It is the organic collapse of a regime from within.
Case II, however, is more candid. It is labeled a "Contrived Incident."
In the professional language of the era, a contrived incident is a provocation. It is the staged event—a flag, a flare, or a shot—designed to provide the necessary casus belli for military action. The Joint Chiefs were not merely waiting for the wind to blow in their favor; they were studying how to create the wind. While critics might find the notion of a staged incident distasteful, the reality of the Cold War was that the Soviet Union and its satellites rarely provided a polite, legal invitation for U.S. intervention. Statecraft often requires a spark to ignite the powder keg.
Latin American Forces
The final item in the list concerns the "Consideration of the Use of Latin American Forces." The plan suggests utilizing regional allies in connection with U.S. contingency plans to assist nations "Which May be Seriously Threatened by a Communist Takeover."
This reflects a strategic preference for multilateralism in the hemisphere, however thin the veneer of that multilateralism might have been. By framing the intervention as a regional effort to stop a "Communist Takeover," the U.S. could mitigate the appearance of unilateral imperialism. It was a standard application of the Monroe Doctrine updated for the missile age: keep the contagion contained, and if you have to use force, bring a few neighbors along to help hold the line.
The 4/23/63 Meeting
The document itself is undated, but a footnote connects it to a Standing Group Meeting held on April 23, 1963, as recorded in the Kennedy Library. This puts the planning in the wake of the October 1962 crisis, suggesting that the "quarantine" mentioned in the "BLUE MOON" reconnaissance plan was not a one-time event, but a capability the military intended to maintain and refine.
We know from other archival indices, such as those held by the NSArchive and the State Department's FRUS volumes on the Cuban Missile Crisis and Aftermath, that the dialogue between the White House and the Joint Chiefs remained fraught throughout 1963. The tension existed between those who wanted a surgical strike and those who feared a global thermonuclear exchange.
What remains missing from this record are the results of the "Studies under Review." We see the headings for Case I and Case II, but the actual operational details—the how and the who—remain redacted or filed elsewhere. The document leaves us with the blueprint for a provocation, but it does not say if the Joint Chiefs ever pressed the button on a "Contrived Incident."