One minute to midnight

by Michael Dobbs

  Photograph of nuclear capable FROG/Luna missiles near Remedios, taken by Lt. Coffee on Blue Moon Mission 5012 on October 25. As a result of this photograph, U.S. estimates of Soviet troops on Cuba rose sharply. President Kennedy was briefed about the photograph on the morning of October 26. [NARA]

  CHAPTER NINE

  Hunt for the Grozny

  6:00 A.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

  The news reaching the White House Situation Room was alarming. Five out of six medium-range missile sites in Cuba were "fully operational," according to the CIA. The sixth would "probably be fully operational" by Sunday. This meant that a large swathe of the southeastern United States was already within range of twenty 1-megaton nuclear warheads. Washington, and possibly New York, could be totally destroyed within ten minutes of the missiles lifting off from Cuba. In the event of a surprise Soviet attack, there would barely be time to evacuate the president from the White House.

  Located in the basement of the West Wing, the Situation Room was a Kennedy innovation. JFK had been intensely frustrated by the lack of information available to him during the Bay of Pigs. Ham radio operators along the east coast heard about the disaster unfolding on the beach from intercepted radio transmissions hours before the commander in chief. He had to rely on unclassified telephone lines to find out what was going on at the CIA and the Pentagon. This must never happen again. He needed an information "nerve center" at the White House that would serve as "a war room for the Cold War."

  The space used for the Situation Room had previously served as a bowling alley. The president's naval aide brought in Seabees to convert the area into a complex of four rooms that included a conference room, a file room, and a cramped watch center for the officers on duty. Communications circuits were installed in the West Wing, circumventing the need for hand-carried messages. There was a continuous clatter of teletypes outside the windowless conference room. The walls were covered with huge maps of Cuba and its sea approaches. Armed guards stood outside the door.

  The maps apart, the conference room resembled a family den in a Washington suburb. It was decorated with functional Scandinavian-type furniture, including a flimsy-looking dining-room table and uncomfortable low-backed chairs, with recessed lighting and a couple of overhead spotlights. Kennedy described the warren of basement offices as "a pigpen." Nevertheless, the Situation Room fulfilled its purpose, providing him with a continuous stream of information that had traditionally been jealously guarded by semiautonomous government bureaucracies. The watch officers, who worked twenty-four-hour shifts followed by forty-eight hours off, all came from the CIA.

  A wealth of information was flowing into the Situation Room by the time of the missile crisis. The president could listen to conversations between Navy Plot and the ships patrolling the quarantine line over single sideband radio. The White House received drop copies of the most important State Department and Pentagon telegrams. In addition to the news agency teletypes, there were also tickers for the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which provided rush transcripts of Soviet government statements over Moscow Radio. Communications intercepts started arriving direct from the National Security Agency following complaints from Kennedy and McNamara about the delay in reporting the turnaround of Soviet ships.

  Contrary to later myth, Kennedy refrained from issuing orders directly to the ships enforcing the blockade. Instead, he used the traditional chain of command, through the secretary of defense and chief of naval operations. Nevertheless, the fact that the White House could monitor military communications on a minute-by-minute basis had major implications for the Pentagon. The military chiefs feared that the very existence of the Situation Room would reduce their freedom of action--and they were correct. The relationship between the civilians and the military had undergone a profound change during the two decades since World War II. In the nuclear age, a political leader could no longer afford to trust his generals to make the right decision on their own, without close supervision.

  From the Situation Room, duty officers kept track of the latest news from the blockade line. Plans were in place for a massive air attack against Cuba, followed by an invasion in approximately seven days. A tactical strike force of 576 warplanes, based at five different air bases, awaited the orders of the commander in chief. Five jet fighters were constantly in the air over Florida, ready to intercept Soviet war planes taking off from Cuba, while another 183 were on ground alert. Guantanamo was an armed garrison, guarded by 5,868 Marines. Another Marine division was on its way from the west coast, via the Panama Canal. More than 150,000 American troops had been mobilized for the ground invasion. The Navy had surrounded the island with three aircraft carriers, two heavy cruisers, and twenty-six destroyers, in addition to logistic support vessels.

  But the Americans understood that the other side was ready as well. The CIA had reported that Cuban forces were being mobilized "at a rapid rate." All twenty-four Soviet SAM missile sites were now believed to be operational and therefore capable of shooting down high-flying U-2s. Low-level photography had provided the first concrete evidence of nuclear-capable FROG launchers on the island. Half a dozen Soviet cargo ships were still heading for the island--despite an assurance by Khrushchev to the United Nations that they would avoid the quarantine zone for the time being.

  The Soviet ship closest to the barrier was called the Grozny.

  After permitting the Vinnitsa and the Bucharest to sail through the quarantine line, the ExComm wanted to show it had the resolve to stop and board a Soviet ship. The best candidate for interception appeared to be the 8,000-ton Grozny. She had a suspicious-looking deck cargo and had hesitated in the mid-Atlantic following the imposition of the blockade before eventually resuming her course. This "peculiar" behavior suggested that the Kremlin was unsure what to do with the ship.

  Precisely what the Grozny was transporting in her large cylindrical deck tanks was hotly debated within the Kennedy administration. McNamara had told the president on Thursday that the tanks "probably" contained fuel for Soviet missiles on Cuba. In fact, the consensus at the CIA was that the vessel had nothing to do with the missile business and was instead delivering ammonia for a nickel plant in eastern Cuba. CIA experts had made a careful analysis of the nickel factory at Nicaro, which was one of several installations in Cuba targeted for sabotage under Operation Mongoose. They had kept a close watch on the Grozny, which had made several previous journeys to Cuba, unloading ammonia at Nicaro.

  The ExComm was more interested in the public relations advantages of "grabbing" the Grozny than debating the contents of her deck tanks. The turnaround earlier in the week of obvious missile carriers like the Kimovsk had left a shortage of Soviet vessels to board. As Bobby Kennedy complained, only half in jest, "there are damned few trains on the Long Island Railroad." By Saturday, McNamara had changed his mind about the Grozny, telling the ExComm that he no longer believed she was transporting "prohibited material." But he thought the ship should be stopped anyway. To permit the Grozny to sail through to Cuba without an inspection would be a sign of American weakness.

  The Air Force had managed to locate the Grozny on Thursday one thousand miles from the blockade line. But the Navy had been unable to keep track of the tanker, and had again asked the Air Force for help. Five RB-47 reconnaissance planes belonging to the Strategic Air Command had methodically combed the ocean on Friday, replacing each other at three-hour intervals. That search produced no results, and another five planes were assigned to mission "Baby Bonnet" on Saturday. They belonged to the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, whose motto was "Videmus Omnia" ("We see everything").

  Captain Joseph Carney took off from Kindley Field on Bermuda at dawn, and headed south toward the search area.

  6:37 A.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

  Three more reconnaissance planes were preparing to take off from Bermuda to join the search. The first RB-47 on the runway was piloted by Major William Britton, who had participated in the effort to locate the Grozny on Thursday. H
is crew included a copilot, a navigator, and an observer.

  As Britton's plane moved down the short runway, heavy black smoke poured from its engines. The aircraft seemed to have trouble accelerating and did not become airborne until it reached a barrier at the end of the runway. Its left wing dropped sharply. Britton struggled to gain control of the aircraft, and succeeded in bringing his wings level. The plane cleared a low fence and a sparkling turquoise lagoon. On the opposite shore, the right wing dropped and grazed the side of a cliff. There was a loud explosion as the plane crashed to the ground, disintegrating on impact.

  A subsequent investigation showed that the maintenancemen at Kindley had serviced the aircraft with the wrong kind of water-alcohol injection fluid. They were unfamiliar with the requirements of the reconnaissance planes, which normally flew out of Forbes Air Force Base in Kansas. The injection fluid was meant to give the engines extra thrust on takeoff, but the servicing actually reduced the thrust. The plane lacked sufficient power to get airborne.

  Britton and his three crew members were all killed. The pilots of the other two planes aborted when they saw the fireball on the other side of the lagoon. As it turned out, the mission was unnecessary. Out in the Atlantic, six hundred miles to the south, Joseph Carney had just spotted a ship that looked like the Grozny.

  6:45 A.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

  Carney had been assigned a search area measuring fifty by two hundred miles. The procedure was to locate a ship by radar, and then drop down for surveillance and recognition. The RB-47 dived in and out of the clouds as the navigator pointed out possible targets. Among the vessels spotted by Carney was an American destroyer, the USS MacDonough, which was also searching for the Grozny.

  After turning away from the MacDonough, Carney climbed back up to fifteen hundred feet. Another ship was visible on the horizon. He descended to five hundred feet. The forward and aft decks were covered with silvery cylindrical tanks. A hammer and sickle was emblazoned on the side of the smokestack. The name of the ship--GROZNY--was clearly visible in Cyrillic lettering. Carney made repeated swoops on the vessel, photographing it from different angles with a handheld camera.

  Carney spotted the Soviet ship at 6:45 a.m. and relayed her location to the MacDonough. Two hours later, the captain of the MacDonough sent a message to Navy Plot reporting a successful intercept:

  1. TRAILING AT 18 MILES

  2. AM COMPLETELY PREPARED TO INTERROGATE OR BOARD AS DESIRED.

  The Grozny was now about 350 miles from the quarantine line. At her current speed, she would reach the barrier around dawn on Sunday.

  As dawn rose on Saturday morning, Andrew St. George was feeling "weary and discouraged." The Life reporter had set off six days earlier from Miami on an armed raid into northern Cuba organized by the fiercely anti-Castro group Alpha 66. The adventure had turned into a disaster.

  The goal was to blow up a Cuban sugar barge, but rough weather, darkness, and the lack of a depth finder had caused the would-be saboteurs to crash one of their two speedboats into a reef. They wrecked the second boat while attempting to salvage the first. After three days wandering through mangrove swamps and surviving on crackers, St. George and his friends stole a battered sailboat and some food from a Cuban fisherman. They headed back for Florida without a compass, battling fifteen-foot waves and bailing water constantly to keep their leaking craft afloat. One by one, they resigned themselves to their fate. St. George could sense "the rising whistle of death" in the howling wind and sea.

  A propagandist more than a reporter, St. George was the modern-day equivalent of the journalistic adventurers who covered the Spanish-American War for William Randolph Hearst. "You furnish the pictures," Hearst had told his star cartoonist in 1897, "and I'll furnish the war." Within a year, each man had fulfilled his side of the bargain. The artist Frederic Remington drew a shocking picture of demure Cuban ladies being strip-searched by brutal Spanish policemen--and Hearst helped persuade a wavering President McKinley to declare war against Spain.

  Journalists working for Hearst did not just report on the war in Cuba. They actively promoted it and even fought in it. "A splendid fight," enthused the publisher, after a visit to the battlefield, with a revolver in his belt and a pencil and notebook in his hand.

  "A splendid little war," agreed future secretary of state John Hay, in a letter to his friend Theodore Roosevelt.

  More than six decades later, the American press had shed much of its jingoistic, "yellow journalism" character. But there were still publishers and reporters in the Hearst tradition who enthusiastically campaigned for a showdown, this time with the Soviet Union. The role once played by Hearst was assumed by the Time-Life empire of Henry and Clare Boothe Luce, which accused the Kennedy administration of "doing nothing" to prevent a Communist takeover of Cuba. Clare Luce received an admiring note from Hearst's son after she wrote an editorial in Life magazine denouncing the president's handling of Cuba in early October, a few days before the crisis broke. "A hell of a fine piece," enthused William R. Hearst, Jr. "Wish I'd written it."

  Like the older Hearst, Luce went well beyond writing bellicose editorials attacking government inaction over the Soviet buildup in Cuba. By her own account, she channeled emigre information about Soviet missile sites to Senator Kenneth Keating that the New York Republican used to embarrass Kennedy. She subsidized Cuban exile groups seeking to overthrow Castro and sent reporters along with them on their hit-and-run raids. Life agreed to pay St. George $2,500 for a story about the attack on the Cuban sugar barge, complete with photographs.

  A self-described descendant of Hungarian royalty, St. George had a murky past, using his charm and connections to pass from one ideological camp to another. The CIA suspected him of providing information to Soviet intelligence in Austria after the war, but had also used him as an informer. He had a knack for showing up where the action was. During the anti-Batista uprising, he had trekked into the Sierra Maestra to interview Castro and Che Guevara, but had fallen out with the barbudos, and now supported exile groups like Alpha 66, which had elected him an "honorary member."

  As he lay facedown on the wet planks of the stolen fishing boat, St. George found himself wondering whether it had been worth it. After a lifetime of excitement, he was reminded of a line in a book by Andre Malraux, quoting a disillusioned revolutionary: "When you have only one life, you should not try too hard to change the world."

  The moment of despair did not last long. A few minutes later, the weary rebels caught sight of a rock rising from the water. As their "creaking, water-soaked old lady" tacked toward the shore, they could see the Union Jack fluttering in the breeze from a lonely building. They had reached the tiny British island of Cay Sal.

  "Andrew, you're one of us," the leader of the ill-fated expedition told an exhausted, exhilarated St. George. "Help us get some new boats and we'll go back to Cuba."

  The two Cuban exiles dispatched by the CIA to sabotage the Matahambre copper mine had been hiking back across the hills for three nights. They slept during the day so as not to attract attention. They were within sight of the mangrove swamps of Malas Aguas where they had hidden their catamaran. But every step was becoming more difficult for Miguel Orozco, the team leader. He was feverish and dizzy. The stabbing pain in his abdomen increased as he walked.

  The two saboteurs were expecting to be exfiltrated from Cuba early the following day, Sunday. The plan called for them to radio a CIA ship waiting offshore, retrieve the catamaran from its hiding place, and use the almost noiseless electric engine to reach the rendezvous point. If there was a problem on either side, they would make further attempts to meet up on Monday and Tuesday. They had no idea what had happened in Matahambre. The sound of controlled explosions from the area led them to believe the mission had been successful.

  Pedro Vera did everything he could to help his friend, carrying most of the equipment and offering him a hand over rocks and fallen trees. He thought Miguel might be suffering from stomach flu or an intestinal prob
lem, possibly caused by something they had drunk or eaten. But they had brought most of their own water with them, and had used pills to purify the water they collected along the way from running streams. As they trudged on, with his friend in more and more pain, he wondered if it might be appendicitis.

  What neither man knew at the time was that the CIA, on instructions from Bobby Kennedy, had ordered a halt to all infiltration and exfiltration operations of Cuban agents.

  7:00 A.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27 (11:00 A.M. LONDON, NOON BERLIN)

  It was nearly midday on the other side of the Atlantic, in London, where protesters were gathering in Trafalgar Square for a big anti-American demonstration. A few hundred yards away, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was meeting with his defense chiefs at Admiralty House, his temporary residence while 10 Downing Street was being renovated. Chants of "Hands off Cuba" and "Up Fidel, Kennedy to hell" floated down Whitehall as the British officials discussed how to help their American ally.

  The events of the past week had seriously rattled Macmillan, who prided himself on his coolness in a crisis. As a schoolboy at Eton, he had learned never to show much emotion. He was the master of the stiff upper lip, the arched eyebrow, the languid upper-class drawl. He had reacted with aristocratic disdain when Khrushchev interrupted a speech he was making to the UN General Assembly in September 1960. Angered by criticism of Soviet foreign policy, Khrushchev pounded his desk with his fists, waved his arms in the air, and started shouting something in Russian. "I'd like that translated, please, if you will," was Macmillan's only comment.