One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

by M. Dobbs

  The delivery of the warheads meant that Sidorov could now launch eight R-12 nuclear missiles against the United States, with a total payload of at least 8 megatons, an explosive force equivalent to all the bombs ever dropped in the history of war. The power of the 1-megaton nuclear warhead would compensate for the missile's lack of accuracy. Sidorov had four more missiles plus warheads in reserve for a second salvo, but little chance of firing them, given the certainty of massive American retaliation.

  Like the other missile positions, the Calabazar site was surrounded by a series of defensive rings. The first line of defense was made up of Cuban antiaircraft batteries, deployed a mile to the west of the launch pads. The next consisted of forty supersonic MiG-21 fighter-interceptors, stationed seven miles to the south, at Santa Clara Airfield. Rugged, lightweight, and highly maneuverable, the MiG-21s were a formidable competitor for heavier, more sophisticated American fighters. The final defensive circle included the SAM sites along Cuba's northern coast and a motorized rifle regiment twenty miles to the east, equipped with tactical nuclear missiles.

  The weak link in this defensive system lay at the very center. Sidorov's troops had the power to destroy several American cities with their missiles, but were unable to defend themselves against an airborne assault. Their defensive weapons consisted of a few machine guns and pistols for the officers. The ground was so rocky and hard that they had not been able to dig proper trenches, even with the help of explosives. The best they could manage were a few foxholes near the launching positions, where they spent the night and rested during the day.

  Combat-scarred veterans toured the defense positions, offering advice to anxious youngsters. Where to run if the enemy attacks. What to take with you. Major Troitsky drew from his experience in the Great Patriotic War.

  "Don't worry," he told the neophytes cheerfully. "The lucky ones will survive."

  The regiment was formally on a "heightened" state of alert, Readiness Condition 3. Sidorov's men had practiced the final countdown many times: transfer the warhead to docking trolleys. Mate the warhead with the missile. Bring the missile to the launch pad. Raise it to the vertical position. Fuel it. Fire it. By cutting some corners, Sidorov could now launch his missiles against the United States within two and a half hours of receiving an order.

  Although Sidorov did not have the authority to fire the missiles by himself, it was possible to conceive of circumstances in which they would be fired without an order from Moscow. There were no electronic locks on the missiles to prevent their unauthorized firing. The firing mechanism was under the control of the commander of each individual launch pad, a major. Communications links with division headquarters outside Bejucal were still unreliable. Specialists had not finished installing a sophisticated microwave network that would allow coded orders to be sent directly from Moscow to Bejucal to Calabazar and Sagua la Grande. Radio transmissions varied with the weather: sometimes the quality was good; at other times the messages were unintelligible.

  Responsibility for timing the final countdown lay with a young lieutenant, Viktor Yesin, who would later rise to become chief of staff of the Soviet Union's Strategic Rocket Forces. As he reflected on his Cuba experience decades later, he was troubled by the thought of the likely result of a U.S. airstrike.

  "You have to understand the psychology of the military person. If you are being attacked, why shouldn't you reciprocate?"

  3:30 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

  The CIA had long suspected that Castro would respond to an American attack on Cuba by lashing out against the United States wherever he could. The agency had intercepted coded letters to Cuban agents in Central America warning them to prepare for "a coordinated wave of terrorism and revolution to be started the moment Cuba is attacked." It had information that "at least a thousand" citizens of Latin American countries had traveled to Cuba in 1962 "to receive ideological indoctrination or guerrilla warfare training or both." Typically, the trainees reached Cuba by roundabout routes, stopping off in an Eastern European city such as Prague before traveling on to Havana. The training program meant that Castro had a network of loyal agents in countries like Venezuela, Peru, and Bolivia who were ready to defend the Cuban revolution.

  On Saturday afternoon, the CIA intercepted a message from "a transmitter somewhere near Havana" instructing Castro supporters in Latin America to destroy "any kind of yanqui property." Any American business or government-owned property was a legitimate target, from mines to oil wells to telegraph agencies to diplomatic missions. U.S. embassies and CIA stations around the world were immediately put on alert.

  "Attack yanqui embassies and seize the largest possible number of documents," the message instructed. "Principal objective is the physical elimination of counterrevolutionary scum and the destruction of their centers. The less important ones you can beat up…. Keep the material secured from the yanqui embassy in a safe place until receipt of further instructions…. We shall know the results through the press. Viva America Latina libre! Patria o muerte!"

  Since his final break with Washington in January 1961, Castro had made little secret of his desire to ignite a revolution throughout the continent. In February 1962, he issued what amounted to a declaration of guerrilla war against the U.S.-backed governments of Latin America. "It is the duty of every revolutionary to make the revolution," he declared. "It is improper revolutionary behavior to sit at one's doorstep waiting for the corpse of imperialism to pass by." A secret plan known as Operation Boomerang called for Cuban intelligence agents to blow up military installations, government offices, tunnels, and even moviehouses in the New York area if the Americans invaded Cuba.

  Spreading revolution was not simply an ideological issue for Castro. It was a matter of political survival. The United States had done everything it could to undermine his regime, from armed invasion to a trade embargo to numerous acts of sabotage. Ever since his days as a young revolutionary, Castro had been convinced that the best form of defense was attack. As he explained to his Soviet patrons, "The United States will not be able to hurt us if all of Latin America is in flames."

  The Kennedy administration leaked word of the intercepted Cuban radio message to reporters as part of a larger effort to depict Castro as the number one danger to the stability of Latin America. Of course, the United States was hardly an innocent party. The previous week, the president had personally signed off on a series of acts of terrorism on Cuban soil, including a grenade attack on the Chinese Embassy in Havana, the demolition of a railroad in Pinar del Rio, and attacks on oil refineries and a nickel plant. Implementing these plans had proved impractical for the time being, but that did not mean the Kennedys had given up on sabotage as an instrument of policy. At the Mongoose meeting on Friday, Bobby Kennedy had approved a CIA plan to blow up twenty-two Cuban-owned ships in foreign ports.

  It did not take long for Castro's sympathizers in Latin America to answer the call from Havana. Within hours, there was a spate of small-scale bombings against U.S. companies in Venezuela, the most pro-American country in the region. A series of explosions shattered the calm of Lake Maracaibo, a huge inlet off Venezuela's Caribbean coast. Three men in a motorboat threw sticks of dynamite at electric power-distributing stations along the eastern shore of the lake, cutting power supplies to an oil field owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey. The saboteurs inadvertently blew up their own boat while attacking the fourth substation. The skipper was killed instantly and two other men in the boat were seriously wounded. Security guards discovered them clinging to an oil derrick in the water.

  The Venezuelan government immediately blamed Cuba for the attacks, claiming they had been carried out by a "Communist sabotage ring" on instructions from Havana. The Cuban government indignantly denied the charge, but reported the bombings with great relish, saying they constituted a "first reply of the Army of Venezuelan Liberation to the military mobilization decreed by the puppet Romulo Betancourt."

  Operation Bugle Call was ready to go. Sixteen F-105 fig
hter aircraft were on alert at McCoy Air Force Base outside Orlando to bombard Cuba with a leaflet headlined LA VERDAD (THE TRUTH). One side of the pamphlet showed a picture of one of the Soviet missile bases taken by a U.S. reconnaissance plane, with labels identifying missile-ready tents, launch stands, and fueling equipment. The other side provided a map of the Soviet missile bases and a Spanish-language explanation for the American naval blockade.

  "The Russians have secretly built offensive nuclear missile bases in Cuba. These bases endanger Cuban lives and world peace, because Cuba is now a forward base for Russian aggression."

  The pamphlets ― all 6 million of them, roughly one for every adult Cuban ― had been printed at the U.S. Army's psychological warfare unit at Fort Bragg. They were then packed into fiberglass "leaflet bombs" bound with detonating cord that would explode over Havana and other Cuban cities, showering drops of verdad onto the populace below. Operation Bugle Call was awaiting the president's final approval when a last-minute hitch developed. The skies over Cuba had suddenly become much more dangerous.

  3:41 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

  The six Navy Crusaders took off from Key West at 3:41 p.m. and flew southward over the Florida Straits, under the level of Soviet radars. Approaching the Cuban coastline, they split off in different directions, heading westward to photograph the airfield at San Julian and the missile sites of Pinar del Rio, and eastward to check out the modern MiG-21s at Santa Clara Airfield and an R-14 site at Remedios.

  Captain Edgar Love, an eight-year veteran with the U.S. Marine Corps, was the lead pilot for the mission over central Cuba. He entered Cuban territory near the elite beach resort of Varadero and headed southeast along the coast, following a railroad line for orientation. After about eight minutes' flying time, he could see a low humpbacked hill rising above the sugarcane fields to his left. This was the R-12 missile site at Calabazar. He shot some oblique pictures of the missile site, and headed on to Santa Clara. As he passed the airfield, he saw a squadron of MiG fighter jets about to land. He veered out of their way, banking steeply toward his left. For a moment, he thought the MiGs might try to pursue him, but they ignored him, and he turned northward toward Remedios.

  As Love popped up to take his photographs, he saw the puff of antiaircraft fire. It was difficult to tell where it was coming from exactly, somewhere off to the right. His wingman zoomed in close, making it difficult to maneuver. He veered sharply left, almost colliding with his wingman.

  "Move it out!" Love yelled to his wingman over the radio, as he switched on his afterburner. "You're too close."

  Antiaircraft guns also opened fire on the Crusader reconnaissance planes overflying San Cristobal. The Cuban crews had been on alert ever since being taken by surprise earlier in the day. This time, the pair of U.S. Navy jets approached from the west, from the direction of the village of San Diego de los Banos. The jets had overflown the site known to the Americans as San Cristobal MRBM Site No. One, photographed by Commander Ecker on October 23, and were following the ridgeline of the Sierra del Rosario. A Cuban antiaircraft unit stationed outside the entrance of the missile site fired at the two Crusaders as they headed toward MRBM Site No. Two, three miles to the east.

  From inside their cockpits, the pilots on Blue Moon Mission 5025 could see telltale puffs of smoke in their rearview mirrors. The cameras housed in their bomb bays were still clicking away methodically. When he glimpsed the first puff of smoke, the lead pilot yanked his steering column to the left, but quickly pulled level. His forward camera captured a sweeping panoramic view of MRBM Site No. Two that would later be released by the Pentagon as evidence of Soviet missile activity in Cuba. Launch stands and erectors were clearly visible on the left side of the picture, a few hundred feet from freshly dug personnel trenches, at the base of the heavily wooded mountains. A fraction of a second later, the pilot saw another puff of smoke. A series of previously unpublished photographs taken at the moment when the Crusader was fired upon is included on page four of the third insert. This time, the pilot did not hesitate. He banked sharply to the left, and headed over the Sierra del Rosario mountains for home.

  4:00 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

  News that the U.S. Navy jets had run into trouble began reaching the White House soon after the start of the afternoon ExComm meeting. McNamara reported that two Crusaders had "aborted" their mission and were "returning to base" because of "mechanical" trouble. Twenty minutes later, a message arrived that two other planes had been "fired on…by what appeared to be a 37 mm antiaircraft gun."

  The attacks on the low-level planes appeared to represent a significant escalation by the Soviets, particularly when combined with the apparent loss of Major Anderson's U-2 over Cuba that morning. The latest developments made Kennedy wonder whether it was a good idea to go ahead with the previously scheduled night surveillance flights. The acting director of the United States Information Agency, Donald Wilson, had been planning to broadcast a warning to the Cuban people about "harmless" explosions in the dark.

  "I think we had better wait," Kennedy told Wilson. "I don't know whether tonight is the night to do it."

  "We ought to evaluate certain things before we let them go," agreed Maxwell Taylor. The USIA chief left the room in a hurry "to make sure that nobody does anything wrong on this one."

  The president turned his attention to a draft response by the State Department to Khrushchev's private letter of Friday evening and his public proposal earlier in the day for a Cuba-Turkey missile trade. Kennedy felt the State Department draft failed to adequately address the Soviet leader's offer and its likely appeal to international public opinion. He proposed softer language, saying the United States would be "glad to discuss" other matters once the Soviets halted work on their missile sites in Cuba.

  "Otherwise, he's going to announce that we've rejected his proposal," Kennedy reasoned. "And then, where are we?"

  Dean Rusk predicted that the Soviets would make "a big blast" about the U-2 overflight of the Soviet Union. The secretary of state read out a draft statement saying that the U-2 had been engaged in "routine air sampling operations," but "went off course" as a result of "an instrument failure."

  Kennedy preferred not to say anything "if we can get away without having some leak." He remembered the embarrassment suffered by President Eisenhower in May 1960 following the downing of a U-2 over Siberia. He did not want to be caught in a series of conflicting explanations about what the U-2 was doing over the Soviet Union that would undermine his "credibility" with Khrushchev.

  "It gives him a story tomorrow and makes us look like we're the offenders."

  More details were coming in from the Pentagon on the afternoon reconnaissance flights. McNamara erroneously reported that one of the Crusaders had been "hit" by a 37mm shell. The pilot was okay and was returning to base, but there had obviously been "quite a change in the character of the orders given to the Cuban defenders." The defense secretary did not think it wise to "confuse the issue" by publicly acknowledging the American overflight of the Soviet Union.

  "I agree," Kennedy said firmly. "Let's let it go."

  5:40 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

  Dean Rusk found the conflicting signals from Moscow difficult to understand. On Friday, he had received what appeared to be a backchannel message from Khrushchev via the ABC reporter John Scali, offering to pull Soviet missiles out of Cuba in return for a U.S. promise not to invade the island. Today, the Soviet leader had upped the ante by demanding the withdrawal of American missiles from Turkey. The secretary of state asked Scali to find out what happened.

  Late on Saturday afternoon, Scali asked Aleksandr Feklisov to come to the Statler-Hilton Hotel, where they had met the previous evening. This time, the reporter and the KGB rezident went up to the deserted ballroom on the mezzanine level. Scali was furious with his source, and did not want to be overheard.

  "This is a stinking double-cross," he protested when they were alone. "The formula mentioned by Radio Moscow has nothing to do
with what we discussed last night."

  Feklisov tried to calm Scali down. There had been no "double-cross," he insisted. He conceded that his message to Moscow might have been delayed by the "heavy cable traffic" back and forth. He also pointed out that the idea of a Turkey-Cuba swap was hardly new. Even Walter Lippmann had mentioned it in his column.

  "I don't give a damn if Walter Lippmann or Cleopatra mentioned it," the newsman exploded. "It is completely, totally, and utterly unacceptable. It is unacceptable today, it will be unacceptable tomorrow. It will be unacceptable until infinity. The American government just won't consider it."

  Feklisov explained that he and Ambassador Dobrynin were just "small fry." Khrushchev was receiving advice from many different people. They were waiting for a message back from Moscow in response to their cable of the previous evening.

  Saying good-bye to Feklisov, Scali walked the three blocks up Sixteenth Street to the White House. The deputy chief of intelligence at the State Department was waiting for him. It was 5:40 p.m. Thomas Hughes had been attending a matinee performance of The Mikado when one of the actors appeared on stage, in Japanese imperial regalia, and told him to call his office. His boss, Roger Hilsman, had retired to bed exhausted. Hughes was assigned the job of escorting Scali to the president's private office for a meeting with Rusk.

  Rusk was mystified by the latest developments. One reason why the U.S. government had put so much stock in the private Friday letter from Khrushchev was the concrete proposal received via Feklisov. The original Khrushchev message had been very vague, saying merely that the "necessity for Soviet specialists" in Cuba would disappear in the event of a noninvasion pledge from Washington. Without the extra information provided by Feklisov, the original Khrushchev letter was "twelve pages of fluff," in McNamara's phrase. "There's not a single word in it that proposes to take the missiles out…. That's no contract. You couldn't sign that, and say we know what we signed."