After all, according to present calculations, the US numerical superiority in nuclear warheads at the time of the Kennedy administration was somewhere between 9:1 and 17:1.107 The United States had installed, along the border between NATO-member Turkey and the Soviet Union, five launching sites for nuclear-tipped Jupiter medium-range missiles, capable of reaching Soviet cities such as Kiev, Odessa, and even Moscow. The siting of missiles with ranges of 1,100 and 2,200 kilometers at America’s very gates would at a stroke have doubled the number of nuclear missiles directly threatening cities and military targets in the United States, since all the Soviets had had pointed at America until that time had been the well-known intercontinental SS-7s or R-16s.
On May 20 Khrushchev discussed the topic with his deputy Anastas Mikoyan (himself an expert on Cuba), Defense Minister Malinovsky, Foreign Minister Gromyko, Politburo member Frol Kozlov, and the KGB man in Havana closely in touch with Castro who was soon to become Soviet ambassador in the Cuban capital, Aleksandr Alekseev. “Comrade Alekseev,” he said, “we have decided or are about to decide to put medium-range missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba. What will Fidel say about this?” “He will be scared,” came the answer, “and I don’t think he will take them.”108
After the Politburo “unanimously” decided on May 24 to offer Castro the stationing of the missiles, a high-ranking Soviet delegation secretly flew to Havana four days later by a roundabout route through Conakry in West Africa. The group included the man in charge of Soviet strategic forces, Marshal Sergei Biryuzov, disguised as “engineer Petrov.” “He asked me what would be required to prevent a US invasion,” Castro recalled, and they began discussing the option of medium-range missiles. “We were informed,” Castro continued, “that they would deploy 42 missiles.” He discussed the matter among his closest circle.
We did not like the missiles. If it was a matter of our defense alone, we would not have accepted the missiles here. But do not think it was because of the dangers that would come from having the missiles here, but rather because of the way in which this could damage the image of the Revolution in Latin America.109
In the end, it was also a “moral question:” “I thought: if we expected the Soviets to fight for our cause, to take risks for us, and if they were even prepared to go to war for our sake, it would have been immoral and cowardly not to allow the presence of the missiles here.” The next day he informed the emissary from Moscow: “If it serves the purpose of strengthening the socialist camp and also defending the Cuban Revolution, we are prepared to instal the number of missiles … you consider necessary in our country.”110
After Castro’s agreement, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet decreed on June 10, 1962, the hitherto most spectacular military aid program in Soviet history. Khrushchev wanted to make the Caribbean island the first nuclear power outside the Warsaw Pact, albeit with the weapons under Soviet control. The original plan, evidently later revised, envisaged the installation of 40 mobile launching pads: 16 for IRBMs (intermediate-range ballistic missiles) of the R-14 (SS-5) type with a range of 2,200 nautical miles, and 24 for MRBMs (medium-range ballistic missiles) of the R-12 (SS-4) type with a range of 1,100 nautical miles. Each of these installations was to comprise two missiles – one as a reserve – and one nuclear warhead. Each of the warheads would have an explosive power equal to three megatons of TNT, roughly 225 times that of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima (13.5 kilotons). The idea was to send the missiles to Cuba together with an army of 50,874 men (soldiers, officers, military advisers, and instructors from the Soviet armed forces), including four elite motorized units 2,500-strong and 250 armored vehicles, one intelligence regiment, one reconnaissance battalion, one battalion of technicians, two tank battalions equipped with the latest T-55 tanks, one helicopter regiment, one squadron of transport aircraft, one flight of 42 Mig-21 fighters, and 42 light bombers of the Ilyushin-28 type. In the end, a total of 41,902 men were stationed on the island. (According to Defense Secretary McNamara writing 30 years later, the CIA had long assumed that no more than 10,000 men would be based there.111) At that time, according to US estimates, Cuba itself had more than 275,000 soldiers, reservists and militia – which made it the largest military power in Latin America. In addition, the planned shipment from the Soviet Union included “rocket launchers” for 80 tactical cruise missiles to be used for coastal defense, with a range between 25 and 100 miles and explosive power up to that of one Hiroshima bomb, and the Ilyushin-28 bombers were to have carried six 12-kiloton atom bombs along with their conventional bomb load. Then there were 24 anti-aircraft batteries, with 144 conventional ground-to-air SA-2 missiles – the type that shot down U-2 pilot Gary Powers on May 1, 1960, at a height of 23,000 metres over the Soviet Union. Another decision provided for the construction of a naval base for the latest Soviet nuclear submarines. A fleet of 18 ships, including four destroyers, was to patrol the Cuban coast. And, to keep an eye on the US coast, Moscow wanted to deploy 11 submarines, seven of them capable of carrying three medium-range ballistic missiles, each with an explosive power equal to one megaton of TNT.112
In mid-July Moscow began shipments: over the next three months a fleet of 85 cargo and passenger vessels would run at least 150 trips across the Atlantic, carrying troops and matériel to the island nearly 4,500 miles away. It was one of the largest and most secret logistical operations ever undertaken by the Soviet Union; its name, “Operation Anadyr,” so called after a river in North-East Siberia that flows into the Pacific, was supposed to confuse enemy intelligence. Despite all the speculation and rumors, Kennedy trusted the assurances of the Soviet leadership that only weapons of a defensive character would be sent to Cuba. In mid-September, however – as Khrushchev’s deputy Mikoyan later maintained – the CIA received via the West German intelligence service (BND) the first concrete proof of a shipment of Soviet nuclear missiles to the island.113 Khrushchev’s plan of confronting the Americans with a fait accompli after the November Congressional elections had almost, but not quite, worked out.
Right from the start Castro was against Khrushchev’s secretiveness.
It did us a lot of harm. Kennedy trusted in what he was told… . So in the eyes of world public opinion, Kennedy gained moral force.… What other advantage did it give him? That when the missile sites were finally discovered on 14 October, the United States had an enormous advantage … the initiative in the military realm was put in [their] hands. They … could afford to choose one option or another, a political option, a quarantine, or a surprise air attack on those installations.114
Fearing a preemptive strike, Castro sent Che Guevara and his military adviser Major Emilio Aragónes to Moscow. “You don’t have to worry,” Malinovsky told them, “there will be no big reaction from the US side. And if there is a problem, we will send the Baltic fleet.”115 Khrushchev did not yield.
The only thing that was eventually made public, on September 2, was a mutually agreed communiqué on Soviet arms aid to Cuba. This stated that, because of “imperialist threats,” Cuba had asked the Soviet government for arms supplies and technical instructors, and that Moscow had acceded to the request. Two days later, to be on the safe side, President Kennedy told his press officer Pierre Salinger that the United States would regard the stationing of “offensive weapons of any kind” on Cuba as a threat to American security and would under no circumstances tolerate it. On September 13 he once more personally reaffirmed this stance, despite the fact that two days previously a Soviet government statement had declared that “the arms and military equipment sent to Cuba are intended solely for defensive purposes.”116
The Soviet ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, who had not been kept filled in by Khrushchev, later wrote that the Soviet leader “grossly misunderstood the psychology of his opponents.” “Had he asked the embassy beforehand, we could have predicted the violent American reaction.… It is worth noting that Castro understood this.… But Khrushchev wanted to spring a surprise on Washington; it was he who got th
e surprise in the end.”117 Looking back on the events, Kennedy’s special adviser, Theodore Sorensen, and his security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, indirectly confirmed Castro’s reading of the situation at the time. A publicly admitted stationing of Soviet missiles in Cuba, in response to the stationing of US missiles in Turkey, would, in Sorensen’s words, have made it “much more difficult [for Kennedy] to mobilize world opinion on his side.”118
Thirteen days on the brink of a third world war
On October 4, Robert Kennedy hauled over the coals “Operation Mongoose” chief Edward Lansdale. “Nothing is moving forward,” he yelled.119 The overthrow of Castro had been planned for that very month, but CIA analyses suggested that the popular uprising against Castro which it saw as a precondition for US military intervention was more unlikely than ever to happen. On the same day, the Soviet freighter Indigirka put in at Mariel near Havana; it had on board 45 nuclear warheads for medium-range missiles, 36 warheads for cruise missiles, 12 nuclear warheads for tactical Luna missiles (subsequently added to the delivery schedule), and 6 atom bombs for the Ilyushin-28s. A total of 114 shipments had reached Cuba since July, and another 35 were due. Already delivered were 36 R-12 (SS-4) medium-range missiles.
Four days later, Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticós warned the UN General Assembly in New York against making Cuba the trigger for a new world war. “If we are attacked, we will defend ourselves; we have sufficient means with which to defend ourselves.” And he added a remark that must have made everyone sit up and take notice: “We have indeed our inevitable weapons, the weapons which we would have preferred not to acquire and which we do not wish to employ.”120 After Dorticós’s return to Havana, Castro confirmed – as if to subvert Khrushchev’s secretive approach – that the Americans could no longer mount an invasion with impunity. “They could begin it,” he said, “but they would not be able to end it.”121 On October 10 the Republican senator from New York, Kenneth Keating, finally made the claim that nuclear weapons were already in Cuba; it would appear that CIA chief and fellow-Republican John McCone, or someone in his circle, had supplied him with secret service reports not yet available even to President Kennedy. In contrast to the White House, McCone gave no credence to the Soviet smooth talk; he was convinced that the unusually high traffic in the shipping lanes did not have an innocuous, conventional explanation, but indicated that Soviet nuclear missiles were being installed in Cuba. Nevertheless, McCone does not seem to have had tangible proof at that time.
On October 13, 1962, shortly before midnight, Major Richard S. Heyser left on a U-2 spy flight from Edwards Air Force Base in California to check Keating’s claim. More than six weeks had elapsed since the last such mission over Cuba, and that had suddenly revealed the existence of bases for conventional Soviet SA-2 ground-to-air missiles. But, in order to avoid giving Castro the opportunity to shoot down another U-2, further flights had been temporarily suspended. Finally, on October 14, Major Heyser’s glittering jet flew over a cloudless Western Cuba and photographed especially the area around San Cristobál, where agents on the ground had reported activity by sizeable Soviet units within large sealed-off zones. Late the next afternoon, when the miles of film were developed and studied by experts at the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in Washington, they confirmed the worst fears: the Soviet Union had indeed been building a nuclear weapons base in the backyard of the United States. Further U-2 flights would reveal the construction of nuclear launch pads at other places on the island.
On the morning of October 16, the president’s security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, suddenly showed up in his bedroom at the White House and presented the U-2 photographs. Amid great secrecy the President’s circle of advisers, which has gone down in history as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (or Ex Comm, for short), met shortly afterwards in the Cabinet Room of the White House for its first crisis session. “Now, as the representative of the CIA explained the U-2 photographs that morning,” Robert Kennedy later recalled, “we realized that it had all been lies, one gigantic fabric of lies.… We had been deceived by Khrushchev, but we had also fooled ourselves.”122 During the next 13 days, between Thursday, October 16 and Sunday, October 28, 1962, the world confronted – to quote Defense Secretary Robert McNamara – “the greatest danger of a catastrophic war since the beginning of the nuclear age.”123
Five options came up for debate among the 15 to 20 members of Ex Comm: (1) an immediate air strike to destroy all the known missile sites; (2) more extensive air strikes against the missile sites as well as other military installations; (3) the second option plus the landing of American troops, the occupation of the island and the overthrow of the Castro regime; (4) instead of immediate military attacks, a complete blockade on all military sea transport to Cuba, until all strategic weapons were dismantled and withdrawn; (5) talks with the Soviet Union to reach a political “deal,” trading the withdrawal of US medium-range missiles from Turkey and Italy for the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.
Given the unfavorable nature of the general political situation, the first three options carried a great risk of rapid escalation up to nuclear war. Option five, involving a negotiated solution, was rejected on the grounds that Soviet duplicity over the stationing of the missiles had severely damaged the basis for trust. Option four seemed to be a feasible middle way, which, if the Soviet Union tried to break the blockade, still left room for options one to three. While Defense Secretary McNamara argued for a blockade, his Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) voted for an immediate military attack. One group wanted this to be limited to the 52 missile installations and warhead depots already located, while another group favored surprise attacks on all 2,002 military targets, including some 1,500 defensive positions.
For five days the president and his advisers fought it out to find the right solution, favoring now one and now another option. Kennedy found himself sorely tested in the process. On Thursday, October 18, Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko arrived on a long-planned visit to the White House. During talks lasting more than two hours, he announced that, after the US Congressional elections, the Soviet Union would feel “compelled” to take a harder line over Berlin. At the same time, Kennedy voiced his concern over the growing Soviet military presence in Cuba, while Gromyko emphasized its defensive character and expressed his own worries about a US invasion of Cuba. The president had difficulty keeping his composure. He noted indignantly to his advisers:
Gromyko, in this very room not over 10 minutes ago, told more barefaced lies than I have ever heard in so short a time. All during his denial that the Russians had any missiles or weapons, or anything else, in Cuba, I had the low-level pictures in the center drawer of my desk, and it was an enormous temptation to show them to him.124
But since it had not yet been decided how the US would react, he kept what he knew about the missiles to himself.
After a vote in the Ex Comm group, John F. Kennedy followed the majority recommendation of a “quarantine.” Two further considerations strengthened his resolve in that direction. First, the head of the tactical air force pointed out that, even with a surprise attack from the air, it could not be said with certainty that all the missile sites and nuclear weapons would be destroyed.125 Second, Kennedy thought that an attack on the missile sites or even an invasion of Cuba would provoke a Soviet riposte in Berlin. “They can’t, after all their statements, permit us to take out their missiles, kill a lot of Russians, and then do nothing.”126
After Congressional leaders and the NATO and OAS allies had been informed, the president gave a radio and television address explaining the situation to the public. His speech on Monday evening, at 7 o’clock Washington time, sent the world into shock. First he reported that launch pads for nuclear missiles had been built in Cuba, and asserted that the Soviet Union had thereby deceived the world with false assurances, violated the Charter of the United Nations and threatened world peace. Then he announced a military blockade of the island, which woul
d be lifted only after all nuclear weapons had been withdrawn. Finally, he warned Moscow that a missile attack from Cuba on any other country in the Western hemisphere would inevitably result in a nuclear attack by the United States on the Soviet Union. He called upon Khrushchev to end “this reckless and provocative threat to world peace.”127
In parallel with the blockade, an order was made for the worldwide mobilization of US forces. All strategic missile units went onto the highest level of alert, and 250,000 men (including 90,000 ground troops) were placed on standby for a landing in Cuba – an eventuality which the US general staff estimated would result in 25,000 casualties, even if only conventional weapons were used. In fact, Washington knew nothing of the battlefield nuclear weapons with which the Soviets and Cubans intended to fight off an invasion. Nor did the US President and his advisers have any idea that, already in July, Khrushchev had told his commander in Cuba, General Pliyev, to use his own judgment in employing these “minor” nuclear devices.
“The crisis erupted on the night of 22 October, and defense preparations occupied almost all of our time after that,” Castro recalled 30 years later.128 Within 72 hours, 420,000 soldiers and militia were ready to repel an attack.129 The naval blockade on all military transport to Cuba, meanwhile endorsed by the Organization of American States, came into force at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, October 24, 1962. Now it was clear. If Soviet freighter captains tried to break the blockade, or if they used the armed support of their escort submarines to resist inspection of their cargo, hostilities would erupt between the world’s two superpowers. Tension began to mount all around the world. People grew extremely worried and spent their time sitting in front of radios or televisions, or emptying supermarket shelves to lay up reserves. Governments made provisions for evacuation and other emergency measures. Millions of dead were predicted in the event of a nuclear war.
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