Despite this initial positive evaluation, by the end of 1959 the U.S. government had turned against Castro. Fidel Castro’s October 1959 nomination of his brother, Raúl, to lead the newly created Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces provoked a series of high-profile military defections in Cuba that created deep concern in Washington. The defectors revealed that Raúl was employing veterans of the Spanish civil war to train a Marxist cadre within the Cuban armed forces. The White House knew that Raul was a hard-core Communist, as was Che Guevara, but had not been sure of their influence and that of the PSP over Fidel. These changes in the Cuban military seemed to presage a Communist takeover. In early November President Eisenhower decided that the United States had no choice but to remove the Castro regime. “There is no reasonable basis,” explained the State Department in a memorandum clarifying the issue for the president, “to found our policy on a hope that Castro will voluntarily adopt policies and attitudes consistent with minimum United States security requirements and policy interests.”37 Consequently, argued the State Department, “the prolonged continuation of the Castro regime in Cuba in its present form would have serious adverse effects on the United States position in Latin America and corresponding advantages for international communism.” President Eisenhower agreed.
Within a month of this change in U.S. policy, Allen Dulles and the CIA prepared proposals for bringing an end to the Castro regime. The agency even called for “thorough consideration [to] be given to the elimination of Fidel Castro.” In formally recommending assassination as an option, the agency stated: “None of those close to Fidel such as his brother Raul or his companion, Che Guevara, have the same mesmeric appeal to the masses. Many informed people believe that the disappearance of Fidel would greatly accelerate the fall of the present government.”38
Eisenhower, however, did not believe it was time to force the issue. Despite his suspicions of Castro, the president set the CIA’s plans to one side. As of early 1960, the White House was watching to see what direction events took on the island.
THE EISENHOWER administration also adopted a wait and see approach to the Congo, though this was less because of high-level uncertainty than because of a general lack of concern about the Belgian colony. Washington had only a vague opinion of Patrice Lumumba, and the president and his top foreign policy advisers were not at all engaged in thinking about the Congo’s political future. By early 1960 Washington had received reports that Lumumba was receiving money from the Soviets, but those following the issue were not sure whether this was proof of ideological commitment or rank opportunism.
Lumumba actively sowed some of this confusion. In late February 1960 he met the U.S. ambassador in Brussels after consultations with the Belgian government. “[A] highly articulate, sophisticated, subtle and unprincipled intelligence,” wrote Ambassador William Burden in describing Lumumba for the State Department.39 Lumumba, who arrived half an hour late and kept the meter running in a taxi left standing outside the embassy, struck Burden as thoroughly opportunistic and extravagant. “[He] would probably not meet the famous definition which was given a century ago of the honest politician as one who, when bought, stayed bought.”40
The Congolese was indeed playing a game. He tried to convince the Americans that the Soviets had approached him first, not the other way around. Complaining to Burden about the Kremlin’s pressure on him, Lumumba wove a fanciful story of a stream of invitations to visit Moscow, all of which he “had turned…down because he believed that these influences from the East were very bad from the point of view of the Congo.”41 Lacking any contradictory information, the U.S. ambassador did not reject Lumumba’s denial out of hand. “It seems clear that if Lumumba is receiving any specific support from the East, he is perfectly prepared to betray these supporters to the fullest extent that suits his purposes.” When Lumumba asked for an invitation to visit the United States, Burden endorsed the idea in a cable later sent to Washington.
Lumumba’s meeting with Burden did not spark any action by Washington, and there was no subsequent invitation to visit the United States. The administration had not yet decided that the Congo was a contested spot in the Cold War.
CASTRO WAS THE FIRST of Khrushchev’s new allies to increase East-West tensions. On March 4 La Coubre, a French ship bringing Belgian weapons to the Cuban Army, blew up in Havana Harbor, killing more than a hundred aboard the ship and along the shore. This tragic and mysterious explosion set off a chain of events that committed Khrushchev and the Soviet Union more deeply than ever to Cuba and brought a strong reaction from the Eisenhower administration.
The blast shook Castro’s assumptions about the security of his regime. Although he admitted that he didn’t have any “juridical proof,” he told the KGB’s Alekseyev, “I am absolutely certain that the United States blew up the ship.”42 He assumed that the CIA had been behind the attack. On March 5 he publicly blamed the United States for the tragedy, a charge that Washington immediately denied in a statement to the press.43 Indeed, although U.S. intelligence later did engineer quite a few explosions in Havana, there has never been any credible evidence to link it to La Coubre.
Castro’s conviction that Washington was responsible eliminated his reluctance to request military assistance directly from Moscow. He now assumed that the destruction of La Coubre was just the opening salvo in a war against his regime. “The Americans are deciding on extreme measures,” Castro confided to Alekseyev at a private lunch on March 6. “Could [Cuba] count upon the help of the USSR with supplies of goods and weapons in the case of a blockade or [U.S.] intervention?” He asked Alekseyev to send an immediate cable to Khrushchev inviting the Soviet Navy to send submarines to assist Cuba. “We have here very many caves and all are unoccupied,” he added as a suggestion for a secret port. Despite this request, the explosion did not eliminate all of Castro’s inhibitions in dealing with Moscow. There was still no Soviet Embassy in Havana, the reason why Alekseyev was the key link between the regimes. Castro told Alekseyev that he considered it premature to reestablish formal diplomatic relations. He wanted his government’s alliance with the Kremlin kept confidential until he was certain that the Cuban people would not overreact.
Khrushchev acted quickly when he received a report on Alekseyev’s meeting with Castro. To that time he had not been in direct communication with Castro, but on March 12 he sent a personal letter to the Cuban leader, offering both advice and weapons.44 Reflecting his general optimism about a coming détente with the United States (the ill-fated Paris summit was still two months, away and Francis Gary Powers had not yet set off in a U-2 over Russia), Khrushchev cautioned Castro not to assume the worst about the Eisenhower administration. “In spite of the difficulty and growing tension of the situation, the USA is today content to restrict itself to measures designed to further the favorable development of international relations, and will under no circumstances cross the line to undertake an open intervention against Cuba.” Khrushchev’s opinion reflected the assessment of the KGB, which had collected information indicating that the Eisenhower administration would attack Cuba only if provoked.45 What would provoke it? The KGB suggested either an attack on the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo, on the eastern tip of Cuba, or the establishment of a Soviet missile base anywhere on the island.
Although Khrushchev did not share Castro’s new fears about an imminent U.S. attack, he was prepared to sell the Cubans whatever weapons they believed they needed. The letter invited Castro to request arms shipments from Czech or Soviet manufacturers and said nothing about price. The Cubans had paid for the Soviet bloc weapons they received previously. This time they would not be expected to. The letter closed with an invitation for the Cuban leader to make his first visit to Moscow.
“Could you write down the Spanish translation for me?” asked Castro excitedly when Alekseyev read a hasty translation of the letter a few days later in Havana. Castro could not have been happier and told the Soviet representative that this letter would be placed in a bo
x of keepsakes that he had stashed away in the mountains. With the letter came an odd Soviet offer to pay Castro for the “rights” to his speeches. Initially the honoraria were a few hundred U.S. dollars, but by 1961 Castro would be receiving eight thousand U.S. dollars for a set of his speeches.46 This was just a little bonus for Castro to use as he wished.
CASTRO’S PUBLIC REACTION to the explosion also removed any remaining doubts in Washington. Although the administration had been discussing the removal of Castro since November, there had been little urgency to implement this policy. Castro’s campaign to associate the administration with the Coubre incident accelerated U.S. activity against Castro. “The Country Team is of the unanimous opinion there is no hope that US will ever be able to establish a satisfactory relationship with the Cuban government as long as it is dominated by Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, Che Guevara and like-minded associates,” wrote the U.S. Embassy in Havana on March 8 after canvassing the opinion of the local CIA representative as well as those of the resident diplomats.47
The White House’s high-level advisory group, including the president’s national security adviser, Gordon Gray, met to discuss Cuba the same day the report from the embassy arrived in Washington.48 An NSC meeting, chaired by the president, was scheduled for the next day. The advisory group accepted that the United States could not live with Castro but suggested four reasons why a U.S. military invasion was inadvisable: the lack of any alternative to Castro, the concern that an attack would solidify Castro’s government, the need to coordinate with Latin American countries, and the effect on world opinion. As an alternative to invasion, the group suggested economic and diplomatic measures against Castro’s regime.
The discussion at the NSC on March 10 was more bellicose. The U.S. military believed that Washington had to consider an invasion. The navy, in particular, feared that Castro would try soon to close the U.S. base at Guantánamo. In a paper prepared for the meeting, the chief of naval operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke, argued that should covert action “fail to bring a solution in time…the United States [should] be prepared to take military measures.”49
Despite the rising concerns, expressed alarmingly by his military advisers, Eisenhower refused to rush to solve his Castro problem. He dismissed any immediate threat to Guantánamo and assured his team that if any of the ten thousand U.S. citizens in Cuba were “in danger,” he would order an intervention. Instead he wanted his advisers to think about an alternative to Castro. He did not want to topple the regime in Havana without having a favorable replacement in the wings. Otherwise, he warned, “we might have another Black Hole of Calcutta in Cuba.”50
The effect of these discussions was a renewal of administration interest in covert solutions. On March 16 the 5412 Committee of the NSC, which oversaw the planning of covert action, discussed specific plans for “the replacement of the Castro regime with one more devoted to the true interests of the Cuban people and more acceptable to the US in such a manner as to avoid any appearance of US intervention.”51 Responding to Eisenhower’s concerns at the NSC meeting, the group stressed that the first objective was to create “a responsible, appealing and unified Cuban opposition to the Castro regime.”52
Assassination plans were frozen. At the moment the administration was merely entertaining schemes to embarrass Castro. The CIA plotted to spray with LSD a cigar that an agent could hand him minutes before he was to give a major public speech. It also worked on a depilatory powder that would make his beard fall out; captured perhaps by the legend of Samson, the CIA believed that Castro’s personal charisma would disappear with his whiskers. The agency took this ludicrous notion seriously enough that it looked around for appropriate agents so that the next time Castro went abroad, a hotel attendant could be recruited to dust the Cuban leader’s shoes with the powder when they were left outside his suite to be shined overnight.53
IN THE WEEKS after La Coubre Castro took a series of steps to radicalize the Cuban Revolution and bring his relationship with Khrushchev into the open. In May, Cuba established formal diplomatic relations with Moscow, allowing the Soviets to open an embassy in Havana. That month Castro also informed U.S. oil companies operating in Cuba that they would have to refine the three hundred thousand tons of crude oil the Soviet Union had promised to sell Cuba. He expected the U.S. companies to say no, and on June 10 the Cuban government nationalized the refineries.54 When Cuba’s foreign-owned electric utilities refused to operate using Soviet oil, Castro nationalized them too.
Castro was not yet free of his fear of the United States. Although he had no precise knowledge of the CIA’s plotting, it did not take him long to develop cold feet about the extent to which he was publicly identifying his regime with Moscow. In late spring 1960 Castro began to notice an increase in opposition to his regime. Some counterrevolutionaries had taken up guns and were going into the mountains as his July 26 Movement had done in the mid-1950s. Statements by U.S. officials had also become sharper of late.
In this climate Khrushchev’s invitation to visit Moscow was unhelpful. At first Fidel thought he might just send his brother, who was expected to leave in the spring of 1960 on a tour of major Eastern European capitals and Beijing. But by late June Fidel thought that even a visit from Raúl would be too dangerous for his regime. “At this time, when an intervention is being prepared,” Castro told Alekseyev on June 24, “Raúl’s visit would be seen by our enemies as evidence of a new orientation of Cuba under the military assistance of the USSR.”55
The postponement of Raúl Castro’s visit came at an awkward time for Khrushchev. The great wave of decolonization had increased Sino-Soviet tensions. The Chinese disapproved of Moscow’s cautious approach to the social movements in Africa and the Caribbean. Mao and his colleagues believed that the Kremlin’s aversion to using violence as a political tool was causing it to miss opportunities to spread the gospel of socialism. This disagreement spilled out into the open just at the moment that Castro postponed his brother’s visit. In early June 1960, at a meeting of international trade unionists in Beijing, the Chinese and their allies—the Burmese, North Vietnamese, Sudanese, Somalis, Argentines, Ceylonese, Japanese, and Zanzibaris—had raised doubts about Khrushchev’s leadership of the international Communist movement. They berated Moscow for not being revolutionary enough, for promoting a doctrine of peaceful coexistence that appealed to bourgeois nationalists more than to Communists and weakened the possibility for revolutionary activity. Khrushchev answered his critics in Bucharest two weeks later. It was not enough to read Marx, he declared. “One must also correctly understand what one had read and apply it to specific conditions of the time in which we live, taking into consideration the situation and the real balance of forces.”56
Khrushchev saw significant value in a public visit by Raúl Castro in July, and the postponement worried him. The Soviet leader, who doubted that a U.S. military invasion of Cuba was either imminent or likely that summer, regarded Castro’s explanation as a poor excuse. Moreover, the latest Soviet information was that Raúl intended to go ahead with the other stops on his planned foreign tour, including Prague. Khrushchev wondered if the postponement might actually be linked to the events in Beijing or Bucharest. Reports had come to the Kremlin that Raúl and some of the other Cuban revolutionaries were somewhat attracted to Beijing’s more radical line. Khrushchev decided not to waste time in removing any doubts, his own or those of the Chinese, that Cuba viewed Moscow as its principal socialist ally.
The KGB predicted more U.S. covert action but assured the Kremlin that the Eisenhower administration was no more likely to launch a military attack on Cuba now than it had been months earlier.57 Assuming that the risks were low and the potential benefits high, Khrushchev chose a public forum to reassure the Cubans that their security was a vital Soviet interest. Before a group of Soviet teachers on July 9, he announced that the Soviet Union would defend Cuba with nuclear weapons, if need be. He said: “It should be borne in mind that the United States is now not at such an u
nattainable distance from the Soviet Union as formerly. Figuratively speaking, if need be, Soviet artillerymen can support the Cuban people with their rocket fire should the aggressive forces in the Pentagon dare to start intervention against Cuba. And the Pentagon could be well advised not to forget that, as shown at the latest tests, we have rockets which can land precisely in a preset square target 13,000 kilometers away. This, if you want, is a warning to those who would like to solve international problems by force and not by reason.”58
This extraordinary statement—the first time the Soviet Union had rattled its nuclear missiles in defense of a third world nation since the Suez crisis in 1956—achieved the goal Khrushchev set out for it. Fidel Castro was so appreciative that he decided to let his brother go to the Soviet Union.
Raúl Castro arrived in Moscow on July 17 for what turned out to be a warm and productive visit. The young revolutionary was eager to express his brother’s and his own gratitude for the Soviet diplomatic support. They were convinced that Khrushchev’s July 9 statement had altered U.S. calculation and forestalled an attack.
Khrushchev's Cold War Page 41