The civilian-airliner scenario on printed pages 10–11 is specific about deception. It proposes duplicating a civil aircraft associated with a CIA proprietary organization. Selected passengers would board under aliases. The passenger aircraft and a drone would rendezvous south of Florida; the passenger aircraft would descend and land at an auxiliary field at Eglin, where its passengers would be evacuated. The unmanned aircraft would continue on the filed route. [1]
Over Cuba, the drone would send a distress message describing an attack by Cuban MiGs and then be destroyed by radio signal. The plan anticipated international monitoring stations relaying the apparent attack, reducing the need for Washington to sell the story directly. The document mentions a college group or another plausible charter party as a possible cover for the journey. It does not describe unsuspecting students remaining aboard the aircraft that would be destroyed. [1]
This is a consequential correction, not an excuse. The proposed deception would falsely represent a civilian aviation catastrophe as Cuban aggression to support war. It also does not make the rest of Northwoods nonviolent: the refugee and urban-terror passages independently contemplated actual harm. Accurate reading keeps both propositions. The airliner paragraph should not be inflated into a documented plan to murder its passengers, and its passenger evacuation should not erase the real-violence alternatives elsewhere. [1]