[The_Baron]

I have no doubt the Phoenix program operated. It was conducted by SFOD-B52 under the auspices of the Studies and Observation Group. The assassinations under this program were based on intelligence gathered in part by the CIA but weren't "CIA assassinations", in and of themselves. The primary objective of the Phoenix program and its successors was the disruption of the low and mid-level authority, financial and political infrastructure of the Viet Cong.
If you're asking me if I think it's wrong to pop a round into the head of the local VC regimental paymaster; nope. I not only don't think it's bad, I think it's nearly essential and should have been part of the overt operations being conducted at the time. They should have put out active bounties on members of the Viet Cong power structure. The primary failing of Phoenix was that it was born from the military/intelligence heirarchy who'd been humiliated at the Bay of Pigs. To generate an overt program of planned assassination would have been political suicide for the generals in power at the end of the Kennedy administration and who'd been saddled with Johnson as Commander in Chief. From my perspective, the missions weren't wrong in any way, the fact they were hidden was what caused the problems.
Since I haven't seen the actual documents relating to Operation: Northwoods, I can't really say a lot about it. Do I believe that there is/was a section of the US military/intelligence community who would advocate deliberate acts of violence against US citizens and interests in order to further their view of the overall national interest? Absolutely. I have no doubt about it at all. I've personally known people in both the military and intelligence communities who regularly advocated such actions.
Do I think that nobody in uniform would ever do anything wrong? Calley. Though not in uniform, Aldrich Ames. Until I can actually read the Northwoods OpPlan and formative directives, I can't really give an educated opinion about it.
As for Mr. Bamford. I think he made a name for himself by writing-- The Puzzle Palace-- and is now trying to cash in on that fame. Unfortunately for most conspiracy afficionados, the US intelligence gathering system is both tedius and filled with venal gits just as any other business enterprise. It's very unlikely that there are many terrorist scenarios that haven't been at least discussed somewhere in one of the alphabet agencies. Very likely most of those have been put on paper somewhere and eventually made it to the National Archives. The fact that an overachieving imbecile put pen to page and wrote out a sordid plan for US dominance based on terror directed against US citizens really doesn't do much more than prove that imbecile put the pen to the page. There are literally tens of millions of scenarios in every stage of development from the Post-It note saying, "Hey, what if the following?"; all the way to fully developed War Plans with specific Orders of Battle. The unfortunate thing is the tremendous number of people who want to believe that anything written down by a "spook" must somehow have such horrendous importance. Most of what's written down by the spooks is either make believe or is a badly worded summary of information you can now get from CNN.
I wish Mr. Bamford the best. The NSA weenies I've had opportunity to work with have been universally either computer geeks or telecommunication wonks. Not very spooky at all.