by Barry Hastings
In the summer of 1962, New Y
ork’s U.S. Senator Kenneth Keating was growing concerned by stories reaching him from Cuban refugees who’d recently fled their homeland for the U.S. They spoke of a large increase of shipping form the U.S.S.R, to Cuba.
Raul Castro, Cuba’s war minister, was known to have been in the Soviet Union earlier in the summer. In July, a large number of Russian seagoing freighters began leaving ports in the Black Sea, steaming directly to Cuba. Their port-of-call was Mariel, a well developed deep-water port on Cuba’s northern coast. Though the cargo carried was unknown, the ships were stirring American interest as they rode high in the sea (so weren’t heavily loaded), and they had very-much over-sized cargo hold covers. Keating’s Cubans also reported each vessel off-loaded many Soviet technicians.
By the first of September, American intelligence officers believed there were, “at least 5000 Russians in Cuba.” At the same time, refugees began reporting truck convoys carrying long, large-diameter tubular objects. Then a CIA officer who’d been operating in Cuba, undercover, returned and reported seeing a tail-piece on one of the tubes, and brought back a drawing. The very same week, CIA received a report Castro’s personal pilot was overheard in a Havana watering hole, boasting about Cuba, “now having long-range missiles with nuclear warheads.” Early in October came a report to agents interviewing refugees, of activities, “probably related to missiles,” in Pinar del Rio province in the country’s north.
Through Cuban refugees he’d shown confidence in, Senator Keating was obtaining a great deal of information about what was happening in Cuba. In early October he made a series of speeches in which he claimed the Russians were, “Involved in a major arms buildup” in Cuba. On Oct. 10, he said his Cuban informants, “who’d proven 100 percent reliable in the past,” told him Russians were constructing, “Nuclear weapons capable, intermediate range missile sites on the Island nation.”
The first reaction of President Kennedy was, “skepticism,” since the Russians had never put missiles in other countries, not even in their bordering satellite states. He noted that even Kruschev viewed Castro as, “a loose cannon.” Was it possible he’d trust such a man with weapons that could fire a world conflagration? And especially knowing that doing so would cause a most violent reaction in the U.S. (It was possible, and did cause a most violent reaction here.)
On Sunday, Oct. 14, McGeorge Bundy (The President’s special assistant for national security) was asked about Keating’s charges. Knowingly, or unknowingly, his answer was far from the truth of the matter. “I know there is no present likelihood, that the Cubans, and the Cuban and the Soviet governments, would, in combination attempt to install a major offensive capability.”
At the time, that was Bundy’s belief, and the belief of most CIA, and other intelligence types. And they were all wrong — nearly dead wrong. In fact, they all believed Senator Keating was being misled by unhappy and unreliable Cubans. Among themselves, almost all agreed the missiles were certainly SAMs anti-aircraft missiles like the one that brought Francis Gary Powers back to earth two years before. The official finding of the experts: “The missiles are SAMs, defensive in nature.”
CIA Director John A. McCone, had recently married, and been on a trip with his bride. Returning to D.C., right in the middle of the missile discussion, he noticed there’d not been any aerial surveillance of Cuba for a month. (After what had happened to Powers over Russia, no one wanted to risk another U-2 over Cuba, where Castro was known to possess SAMs. On Oct. 4, McCone ordered a complete aerial reconnaissance of the island, with special attention paid the western end. Bad weather delayed flight by U-2’s (a fragile high-flier) for some time, but on Oct. 14, two departed for Cuba to look things over with high-altitude cameras. On returning, their film was processed, then given to the Army for enlargement, and thorough study of every frame.
At shortly after 7 p.m. Oct. 15, the phone rang in the apartment of the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Roswell Gilpatrick (Secretary McNamara was out of town). The call was from the commanding General of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Senator Keating (and his unreliable Cubans) were vindicated..
At another D.C. dinner party, Secretary of State Dean Rusk was entertaining German Foreign Minister Gerhard Schroeder. His phone rang (as phones were doing all across D.C). The caller was Assistant Secretary of State Roger Hilsman. After hearing Hilsman’s message, Rusk asked, “Do you think this is ‘it’?” His caller replied, “There has only been preliminary analysis, but from what I get over the phone, there doesn’t seem to be much doubt!”
Next day, following night-long examination, and re-examination, analysis and re-analysis of the U-2 prints. McGeorge Bundy went to President Kennedy’s bedroom (where the President was reading morning newspapers). “Mr. President,” he began, “There is now hard photographic evidence, which you will see a bit later, that the Russians have offensive missiles in Cuba.”
The President directed Bundy to “immediately” set-up a meeting of Kennedy administration officials, at 11;30 in the Cabinet Room. The meeting would consist of 21 administration officials, plus three civilians – Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, long-time adviser John McCloy (a prime mover for Japanese resettlement in early World War II), and Robert Lovett, a long-time democratic spin doctor. ‘Those three would pass into history as “The Executive Committee of the National Security Council,” more casually, ‘the Ex Comm.’
Reports from the photo interpreters told defense officials missiles at the San Cristobal site would be ready to fire in ten days, and that completion of the firing site would cut our warning time from roughly 15 minutes, to between two and three minutes. Keeping notes on the meeting, Robert Kennedy noted, “a general feeling of shocked incredulity,” around the Cabinet Room. There was also a widespread feeling that the immediate answer was, “air strikes against the sites.” RFK passed a note to his brother, reading, “Now I know how Tojo felt planning Pearl Harbor.” In hope of keeping the nation calm, the President spent all day Oct. 17, campaigning for Democrats.
The Ex Coram however, spent the day looking at, and contemplating, new, fearsome U-2 photos from flights over Cuba. Soviet technicians were working around the clock, and missiles were now visible in the photographs. Ex Comm later told the President, “Sixteen, perhaps Thirty-two sites, will be ready for firing inside a week.” Worse yet, while the first missiles identified were capable of medium-range types (1,000 miles), now the U-2s had photographs of inter-mediate range missiles, capable of reaching targets up to 2,200 miles from launch sites.
The photos were taken from above Remedios in Eastern Cuba, and between Havana and San Christobal. Their estimate was the missiles would be ready for launch by Dec. 1. They added, U.S. military and intelligence experts estimate the Russians will be capable of launching forty (40) nuclear weapons against American cities, as far West as Montana, by Dec. 1.
The Ex Comm were discussing several possible plans, everything from ‘doing nothing overt,’ to ‘sending a message to Kruschev to air attack or an invasion. Invasion was set aside as a future possibility, but only after careful planning and elaborate preparation.
(At this point in the potentially deadly-to-millions chess match, American intel and defense officials were estimating the Soviet Union may have committed at least half of their nuclear weapons capability in Cuba. If so, and if they were fired, at least 80,000,000 Americans would be incinerated within a few minutes of launch. The same experts then warned the first missile could be, “ready to launch, ” in 18 hours.)
The steadiest people in the room were President Kennedy, and SECDEF McNamara.The latter was trying to form a group within the committee to push for a naval blockade of the island. Air Force General Curtis LeMay was actively pushing to, “Launch an all-out air attack.” Kennedy told him, if such an attack killed Russians, Kruschev would be forced to retaliate. The blockade group was gaining strength.
In the Ex Comm meeting of Thursday, Oct. 18, A blockade was further discussed, and since ‘blockades’ are acts of war, the committee decided (after some legal research) on the term quarantine, to define the blockade they were settling on.
On Friday, Oct. 19, the Joint Chiefs of Staff quietly placed the entire South Atlantic, and Caribbean military commands on full alert. The committee worked through the night of the 18th and into the 19th, and through the night again. Full support for a quarantine was agreed on. The entire committee split into small groups to write position papers on possible, or probable problems. They proposed soliciting support from the “Organization of American States” on the 20th, which shortly came about, and the group also agreed to support the critical term “quarantine.”
Secretary McNamara kept the Joint Chiefs in D.C., without stirring media interest, by publicly asking them to stay in town for six weeks, to discuss budget matters. By Oct. 21, some 180 navy ships were deployed in strategic locations for rapid institution of the quarantine. It was all done just in time because some newspaper men were beginning to smell a big story due to a sense of urgency permeating the city. The U.S. B-52 nuclear bomber force, was in the air, around the clock. Meanwhile, U.S. Army forces were moving (at night only) toward embarkation points, should invasion of Cuba have become necessary
On Monday morning, Oct. 23, Presidential Press Secretary, Pierre Salinger, announced to the nation’s broadcasters and print journalists, the President, would address the nation at 7 p.m. His subject, Salinger said, “would be of the greatest urgency.”
(I remem
ber this event so well. I was three years out of the Coast Guard, and selling furniture and floor covering at the Hastings Montgomery Ward store on Jefferson Street, 50 or 60 feet from the “main drag. ” The announcement came in the middle of an evening sale, and the store was pretty full of friends and neighbors. As the President opened his remarks, a swarm of people entered, bunching up in the front where six or eight TVs were blaring. The people were completely hushed. Tension though, was visible on the faces of every adult person there. Most people seemed well-aware we’d been waiting for this day since the Russians exploded their first nuclear bomb. I was about a month past my 24″ birthday (plus a few days), had a wife, and a young son. Next morning, early on, I placed a phone call to the U.S. Coast Guard District Headquarters in Cleveland, and while my wife cried, volunteered for a return to active duty, if needed. Fortunately, it didn’t take Chairman Kruschev long to wise up. . . , or chicken out, and the crisis ended relatively quickly. (Whatever ended it was certainly better than what Trump’s leading us toward.)
During the day leading up to the President’s address to the nation, Larry O’Brien phoned 20 congressional leaders of both parties, telling them the President wanted them in D.C., forthwith.. Those who couldn’t catch commercial flights, were picked-up by air force planes, some of them in jet fighters. The congressional leaders turned into his hardest people to deal with throughout the entire crisis, condemning the ‘quarantine’ as “too soft.” He walked out on them in a rage. Talking to his brother, later, he recalled that, “Though the response of congressmen is now more militant than his, it’s also about what his was when he first learned of the missiles six days earlier.” His speech that evening was masterful, and the country quickly formed up behind him. Next he warned Kruschev that any attack launched from Cuba, “will be regarded as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United and will be met by the full retaliatory response of the U.S. against the Soviet Union.”
In Cuba, next day, Russian and Cuban planes were lined up on airstrips, like ours were in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941. There was no indication of further work on launchers or missiles.
On Wednesday, Oct. 24, the blockade/quarantine line was drawn. American warships raced to close all five navigable entries through which ships can enter Cuban waters. Twenty-five Russian vessels, freighters, not warships, approached them, coming right to the line, then slowed, turned and sailed Eastward. For all practical matters, it was all over.
(Grateful acknowledgment is made to (the now deceased) William Manchester, writer, historian, and U.S. Marine (Pacific Theatre, WWII) for some heavy research he did regarding day to 4ay events of the Ex Comm people, and to the people in our military who responded, as always, as their civilian commanders commanded,, during the Russian Missiles in Cuba Crisis, October, 1962. Graci
as, Amigos.)