This incident reminded me of a story I learned about in a 2005 documentary film about 9/11.

In 1962, General Lyman Lemnitzer presented to the U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, a plan designed to prepare public opinion in the U.S. and globally for an armed invasion of Cuba to overthrow Castro.

One of its points involved staging the crash of a civilian aircraft. In reality, federal agents were supposed to fly disguised as ordinary passengers—students.

a. "An aircraft at Eglin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone.

b. Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a r...