One minute to midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the brink of nuclear war

by Michael Dobbs

  Lundahl set up his easels in the Oval Office after the Friday morning ExComm meeting. He had brought along some of the latest low-level photography, and was eager to show the president the evidence of the rapid Soviet buildup. He reported that the ground was so drenched from recent rainstorms that the Soviets had erected catwalks around the missile sites, and were laying power cables on raised posts.

  "Now this is interesting," interrupted John McCone, pointing to the photograph of the suspected FROG missile launcher. The CIA director explained that analysts were still "not sure" of the evidence, but it was possible that the Soviets had deployed "tactical nuclear weapons for fighting troops in the field."

  But Kennedy's thoughts were elsewhere. He was already several steps ahead of the briefers. The more he learned about the scale and sophistication of the Soviet deployment on Cuba, the more doubtful he became of a diplomatic solution to the crisis. He needed to explore other options. Earlier that morning, he had listened to a CIA proposal to smuggle Cuban exiles onto the island in submarines for a sabotage operation against the missile sites. He wanted to know if it was possible to blow up a fuel trailer with a "single bullet."

  "It would be fuming red nitric acid, sir," Lundahl replied. "If they're opened up, they might make some real trouble for those who are trying to contain it."

  Kennedy noted that it would be much more difficult to destroy the FROGs, which operated on less combustible solid fuel.

  "No, you couldn't shoot them up," agreed McCone, a former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.

  As the photo interpreter collected his materials, the president and the CIA director were still debating the options for getting rid of the missile sites. Though he had little faith in diplomacy, Kennedy feared that an air strike and invasion would end up in "a very bloody fight" that might provoke the Soviets into firing the missiles. Neither option was very appealing.

  "Invading is going to be a much more serious undertaking than most people realize," McCone acknowledged grimly. "It's very evil stuff they've got there.... They'll give an invading force a pretty bad time. It'll be no cinch by any manner of means."

  President Kennedy wanted the news about the Marucla to be put out "right now." His advisers believed that the successful boarding operation would help "restore our credibility" with disgruntled Pentagon admirals. His chosen vehicle for getting the Marucla story out was an increasingly controversial figure in Washington, Arthur Sylvester.

  During the first week of the crisis, the Pentagon spokesman had infuriated reporters with his tight-lipped approach to the release of information. He restricted himself to cautiously worded press statements, dictated over the phone by Kennedy or one of his aides. For both JFK and Sylvester, information was a "weapon," to be used deliberately and sparingly to promote the goals of the administration. Since the purpose of the exercise was the removal of the Soviet military threat to the western hemisphere, the ends clearly justified the means.

  By Friday, reporters were complaining loudly that they were getting virtually zero information out of Sylvester. The two-a-day, sometimes three-a-day, news briefings were so uninformative that a journalist placed a tin can in the corner of the Pentagon press room labeled "automatic answering device." It was filled with slips of paper with Sylvesterisms such as "Not necessarily," "Cannot confirm or deny," and "No comment."

  The frustration of the newsmen--there were no women covering the Pentagon on a regular basis--was understandable. The world appeared to be on the edge of nuclear annihilation, but it was difficult to find out what was really going on. This was a new kind of conflict, a shadowy, antiseptic confrontation with a largely unseen enemy. The stakes were huge, but there was no front line from which the reporters could report, no equivalent of Pearl Harbor or Okinawa or the beaches of Normandy. Reporters had been kept away from the most obvious news locales, such as the naval base at Guantanamo Bay or the ships enforcing the blockade. In reporting the gravest threat to international security since World War II, they were almost completely dependent on the scraps of information thrown their way by the administration.

  Now that he finally had some news to divulge, Sylvester was determined to make the most of the opportunity. He updated reporters throughout the day on the status of the Marucla. He relayed minute-by-minute accounts of the boarding process, the names and addresses of military personnel involved, the cargo, tonnage, and precise dimensions of the Lebanese ship, the firepower of the American destroyers. But the reporters wanted more. They always wanted more.

  1:00 P.M. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26 (NOON HAVANA)

  As Sylvester was describing the search of the Marucla, another little drama was unfolding in the Straits of Florida, far from the gaze of the news media. An American destroyer stationed fifty miles from the Cuban coast spotted a Swedish freighter that had somehow slipped through the quarantine line.

  "Please identify yourself," signaled the destroyer, the Newman K. Perry, by flashing light.

  "Coolangatta from Gothenburg."

  "What is your destination?"

  "Havana."

  "Where are you coming from?"

  "Leningrad."

  "What is your cargo?"

  "Potatoes."

  The captain of the Coolangatta was a Swedish sea salt named Nils Carlson. He had the reputation in his company of being "temperamental and headstrong." The potatoes were beginning to rot, because of poor handling and packaging. He was disgusted with the Russians for their incompetence. But he was also irritated with the Americans for interfering with his right of free navigation. As he later told a Swedish journalist, he did not think that his run-down ship could be of any possible interest to the U.S. Navy.

  The Perry had stationed herself about fifty yards off the starboard side of the Coolangatta. Carlson recorded the next signal from the American warship in his log as "Will you stop for inspection?" But his radioman was young and inexperienced in interpreting Morse. For all Carlson knew, the signal might have been an instruction rather than a question.

  At any rate, he decided not to respond. After three weeks at sea, he was impatient to get to Havana. He gave the order for "full steam ahead."

  Uncertain about his authority, the captain of the Perry cabled his superiors for instructions. The answer came back:

  1. STAY WITH SWEDISH SHIP AND TRAIL.

  2. DO NOT VIOLATE CUBAN WATERS.

  Later that afternoon, McNamara issued an order to "let her go." The U.S. ambassador in Stockholm was instructed to raise the matter with the Swedish government, which seemed "puzzled why there was no conventional shot across bow." The ambassador worried that the "seeming vacillation on our part" would send a bad signal to neutrals. The anti-Kennedy faction at the Pentagon groused in private about the administration's fecklessness in enforcing the blockade.

  For the time being, however, the dissidents held their tongues in public. Apart from a few unhappy admirals and generals and some befuddled diplomats, no one in Washington knew about the Coolangatta. It was as if the incident had never happened.

  The next day's headlines were all about the Marucla.

  Fidel Castro had summoned the Soviet ambassador to Cuba, Aleksandr Alekseev, to his command post in Havana. He wanted to share some alarming news he had just received from the Cuban state news agency in New York. Prensa Latina reporters, who all had close ties with Cuban intelligence, were picking up rumors that Kennedy had given the United Nations a deadline for the "liquidation" of Soviet missiles from Cuba. If the deadline was not met, the assumption was that the United States would attack the missile sites, either by bombing them or by a paratroop assault.

  Castro liked and trusted Alekseev. Their relationship went back to the early months after the revolution when the tall, bespectacled Alekseev arrived in Havana as an undercover KGB agent posing as a TASS reporter. At that time, the Soviet Union did not even have an embassy in Cuba. The first Soviet citizen to be granted a visa to Cuba, Alekseev was an unofficial Kremlin envoy to the new regime, bringing Cas
tro gifts of vodka, caviar, and Soviet cigarettes. The two men hit it off immediately. After diplomatic relations were established between Moscow and Havana, Castro made it clear that he much preferred dealing with the informal spy to the stodgy bureaucrat who served as the first Soviet envoy to Cuba. Khrushchev eventually recalled the ambassador and appointed Alekseev in his place.

  As a KGB agent, and later as Soviet ambassador in Havana, Alekseev had a privileged view of the growing rift between Cuba and the United States and Castro's own metamorphosis from nationalist to Communist. He was standing on the podium in the Plaza de la Revolucion when Fidel announced on May Day, 1961, shortly after the Bay of Pigs, that the Cuban revolution was "a socialist revolution." "You are going to hear some interesting music today," Castro had told Alekseev mischievously as a Cuban jazz band struck up the Internationale, anthem of the worldwide Communist movement. A few months later, Castro declared that he was a Marxist-Leninist and would "remain one until the last day of my life."

  At first, Soviet leaders did not quite know what to make of their new-found Caribbean friend. His boldness and impulsiveness made them nervous. Khrushchev admired Castro's "personal courage," but worried that his fiery Communist rhetoric "didn't make much sense" from a tactical standpoint. It would antagonize middle-class Cubans, and "narrow the circle of those he could count on for support" against the seemingly inevitable U.S. invasion. On the other hand, once Castro had declared himself a convinced Marxist-Leninist, Khrushchev felt duty-bound to support him. In April 1962, Pravda began referring to Castro as tovarishch, or "comrade."

  Fidel had "unlimited confidence" in the power of the country that had used its "colossal rockets" to put the first man into space. He believed Khrushchev's boasts about the Soviet Union churning missiles out "like sausages" and being able to hit a "fly in space." He did not know precisely "how many missiles the Soviets had, how many the Americans had," but he was impressed by the image of "confidence, certainty, and strength" projected by Khrushchev.

  The initial Soviet reaction to Kennedy's speech on Monday evening had pleased Castro. Khrushchev had sent him a private letter denouncing the "piratical, perfidious, aggressive" actions of the United States and announcing a full combat alert for Soviet troops on Cuba. There seemed no possibility that Moscow would back down. "Well, it looks like war," Fidel told his aides, after reading the letter. "I cannot conceive of any retreat." He had concluded long ago that hesitation and weakness were fatal in dealing with the yanquis--and that uncompromising firmness was the only way of averting an American attack.

  Although Castro still trusted Khrushchev, he was beginning to have doubts about his resolve. He disagreed with Khrushchev's decision to turn around Soviet missile-carrying ships in the Atlantic. He felt the Soviets should be much firmer in halting American U-2 overflights of Cuba. And he could not understand why the Soviet delegate to the United Nations, Valerian Zorin, was still denying the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. The way Fidel saw it, the denials made it seem as if Moscow had something to hide. It would be far better for the Soviet Union and Cuba to publicly proclaim their military alliance.

  Castro shared his concerns with Alekseev, who in turn reported them to Moscow. American low-level overflights of Soviet and Cuban military installations were becoming increasingly brazen. The Americans would probably use the reconnaissance missions as a cover for surprise air attacks. Up until now, Cuban antiaircraft units had refrained from shooting at American planes to avoid undermining the diplomatic negotiations at the United Nations. Castro wanted Soviet leaders to know that his patience was limited.

  Most troubling to Castro were signs that the Americans were trying to drive a wedge between him and his Soviet allies. He was amazed by American press reports suggesting that U.S. officials had grossly underestimated the numbers of Soviet troops in Cuba, and accepted Moscow's description of them as "advisers" or "technicians." It was hard to believe that the CIA knew less about these troops than it knew about the missile sites. To Castro's suspicious mind, the Americans must have an ulterior motive for playing down the Soviet military presence. By talking about Cuban troops rather than Soviet troops, they were hoping that the Soviet Union would not defend Cuba against an American attack.

  With both his brother Raul and Che Guevara out of Havana, Fidel's closest adviser during this period was Osvaldo Dorticos, the Cuban president. Dorticos participated in Fidel's meeting with Alekseev. The more the two Cuban leaders thought about it, the more they convinced themselves that time was running out.

  An American attack is "inevitable," an emotional Dorticos told the Yugoslav ambassador later that afternoon. "It will be a miracle if it does not come this evening, I repeat this evening."

  2:30 P.M. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26

  Bobby Kennedy was a chastened man. At the start of the missile crisis, he had demanded a much more aggressive sabotage effort against Cuba. He had persuaded his brother to approve a long list of targets, such as the Chinese Embassy in Havana, oil refineries, and a key railroad bridge. He had even talked about blowing up an American ship in Guantanamo Bay, blaming Castro, and using the incident as a pretext for invading Cuba. But the threat of nuclear apocalypse had caused him to rethink his views.

  With the world on the brink of nuclear war, it was necessary to bring some order into the dysfunctional Mongoose operation. It was sometimes difficult to tell who was in charge of the clandestine effort to topple Castro. The nominal "chief of operations" was Edward Lansdale, but he was an impractical visionary, mistrusted and ridiculed by the CIA and some of his Pentagon colleagues. The CIA part of the operation was led by Bill Harvey, who had made his reputation in Berlin in the early fifties overseeing the construction of a tunnel that tapped into communications cables in the Soviet sector of the city. It later turned out that "Harvey's hole" had been blown from the start by a Soviet double agent, but this did nothing to stop his ascent through the cloak-and-dagger world. "So you are our James Bond," JFK had said with an ironic smile, when first introduced to the bald and paunchy Harvey.

  By the time of the missile crisis, the Harvey legend had been dented somewhat by an excessive fondness for double martinis. He was barely on speaking terms with Lansdale, and made little secret of his disdain for the Kennedys, dismissing them as "fags" because they lacked the guts to take on Castro directly. He regarded Bobby as an interfering amateur, referring to him behind his back as "that fucker." He was not much more respectful to his face. When RFK talked about taking anti-Castro Cubans out to his Hickory Hill estate in order to "train them," Harvey asked, "What will you teach them, sir? Babysitting?"

  RFK, meanwhile, felt no compunction about going behind Harvey's back to establish his own contacts with the Cuban exile community in Miami. He had learned about a CIA plan to send sixty Cuban exiles to the island by submarine from an exiled Cuban leader, Roberto San Roman.

  "We don't mind going, but we want to make sure we're going because you think it's worthwhile," San Roman had told him. Bobby discovered from Lansdale that three six-man teams had already been dispatched and seven more would soon be on their way. Another ten teams were being held in reserve. He was furious at Harvey for "going off on a half-assed operation" without his approval.

  To sort matters out, RFK convened a meeting of the top Mongoose operatives in the windowless Pentagon war room known as "the Tank." The session soon degenerated into bureaucratic sniping, with Harvey as the pinata. The CIA man was unable to explain who had authorized him to send in the teams. Bobby questioned the strategy of "using such valuable Cuban refugee assets to form teams to infiltrate Cuba at a time when security would be exceedingly tight...operational results questionable, and losses high." Orders were issued to recall the three teams already on their way.

  Reversing his earlier decisions, Bobby ruled out "major acts of sabotage" against Cuba as long as tensions were at boiling point. But he was not opposed to smaller-scale incidents that would be difficult to trace back to the United States. He agreed to attacks on Cuban-own
ed ships. "Sink in Cuban or [Soviet] Bloc ports, or high seas," Lansdale's memo read. "Sabotage cargoes. Make crews inoperative." The attacks would be carried out by "CIA assets" on board Cuban vessels.

  Harvey's problems were compounded by General Maxwell Taylor, who asked about the sabotage operation against the copper mine in Matahambre that everybody else had forgotten about. Harvey did not have a satisfactory answer. The CIA had not heard from the two agents since their infiltration into Cuba on the night of October 19. Harvey muttered something about the men being "presumed lost."

  Since it was after lunch--and his customary double martinis--Harvey was not at his most articulate. He managed to hide his condition from most members of the Special Group, but he struck an old CIA colleague as "obviously plastered." When Harvey had been drinking too much, he would settle his chin on his chest and mumble into his stomach in a deep voice, oblivious to everyone else in the room. He failed to appreciate the danger signal when Bobby announced that he had exactly two minutes to hear his explanation.

  Two minutes later, Harvey was still droning on. Bobby picked up his papers and walked out of the room.

  "Harvey has destroyed himself today," CIA director McCone told his aides upon returning to Langley. "His usefulness has ended."

  McCone's comment would prove prescient. There was, however, one piece of unfinished business of which he was entirely unaware. It involved Harvey, the Kennedy brothers, Fidel Castro, and the Mafia.

  The FBI had been searching for John Roselli, an underworld boss under investigation for racketeering. The so-called "dapper don" was believed to be the Mafia's representative in Las Vegas, making sure that the mob got its cut of the immensely lucrative casino revenues. The bureau had bugged his Los Angeles apartment and recruited informers to track his movements, but Roselli had somehow managed to slip away on October 19. The FBI lost track of him until the morning of Friday, October 26, when he flew into Los Angeles aboard a National Airlines flight from Miami under an assumed name.