One minute to midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the brink of nuclear war
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A drive-through bunker: Cuba Activity Summary, 1963; CIA, Joint Evaluation of Soviet Missile Threat in Cuba, October 19, 1962, LBJ Library; NPIC memorandum, December 4, 1961, "Suspect Missile Sites in Cuba," NPIC/B-49/61, CREST.
The general staff had drawn up: Malinovsky, "Instructions for Chiefs of Reconnaissance Groups," July 4, 1962, LCV. See also Beloborodov memoirs in Gribkov et al., U Kraya Yadernoi Bezdni, 210.
The stress of handling: Romanov death certificate, January 30, 1963, inspected by Karlov.
His principal deputy: Yesin et al., Strategicheskaya Operatsiya Anadyr', 196; author's interview with Lt. Valentin Polkovnikov, who served in the same regiment as Boltenko.
Many of the technicians: Author's interview with Vadim Galev, May 2006; letters from Dr. V. P. Nikolski and Engineer Kriukov, MAVI.
The next night, they feasted: Recollections of Dmitri Senko in Yesin et al., Strategicheskaya Operatsiya Anadyr', 265.
Every precaution was taken: Gribkov et al., U Kraya Yadernoi Bezdni, 234-5.
"an unusual facility": Marshall Carter briefing, White House meeting, October 16, 1962, JFK2, 430.
A more detailed CIA analysis: Joint Evaluation of Soviet Missile Threat in Cuba, October 19, 1962, LBJ Library.
Reconnaissance planes overflew: Photographic Interpretation Reports, CREST.
In hindsight: Dwayne Anderson, "On the Trail of the Alexandrovsk," Studies in Intelligence (Winter 1966), 39-43, available through CREST.
in which he identified: See Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 546-8.
Soviet officers: See, e.g., Gribkov et al., U Kraya Yadernoi Bezdni, 209; Gribkov and Smith, Operation ANADYR, 46. In the latter, Gribkov incorrectly states that the Luna warheads were stored at Bejucal. According to Beloborodov, who was directly responsible for them, they were stored in Managua. The coordinates of the Bejucal bunker are 22deg56'18''N, 82deg22'39''W. The outlines of the bunker and circular road are still visible on Google Earth. The headquarters facility was half a mile south of the bunker, on the northeastern outskirts of Bejucal. The coordinates of the Managua complex (three bunkers) are 22deg58'00''N, 82deg18'38W.
"The experts kept saying": Author's interview with Dino Brugioni, May 2007.
"a double security fence": Joint Evaluation of Soviet Missile Threat in Cuba, October 19, 1962, CREST; Lundahl briefing of JFK, October 22, 1962.
The molasses factory: Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 542. The CIA later correctly concluded that Mariel was an important transit point for nuclear warheads entering and leaving Cuba, but paid little further attention to Bejucal.
"having a hard time": USCONARC history, 154, NSAW.
The invasion plan was code-named: "Alternative Military Strikes," JFKL; "Air Force Response to the Cuban Crisis," 8, NSAW; Blight et al., Cuba on the Brink, 164. When Fidel Castro was informed about these plans at a conference in Havana in 1992, he misheard the number of air strikes as 119,000. He asked for the figure to be repeated, saying it seemed "a bit exaggerated." Told that the number was actually a mere 1,190, he remarked dryly, "I'm more at ease now."
Inevitably, with an operation: USCONARC history, 105, 130, 139, 143; Commanders' conference, February 4, 1963, CNO Cuba, USNHC; Don Fulham interview.
"Soviet Bloc military technicians": U.S. Marine Corps intelligence estimate, November 1962, JFKARC.
As word spread within the upper: See, e.g., CINCLANT message 311620Z, CNO Cuba, USNHC.
The distance from the pre-launch position: Chervonnaya interview with Sgt. Vitaly Roshva, senior aviation mechanic, FKR unit, May 2006. According to U.S. intelligence intercepts, the launch position in Filipinas was at 20deg0'46''N, 75deg24'42''W. The pre-launch position at Vilorio was at 20deg5'16''N, 75deg19'22''W.
Among the Soviet soldiers: Chervonnaya interview with Gennady Mikheev, brother of Viktor, plus family photographs and correspondence, April 2006.
Maltsev called for surgeons: The exchange was intercepted by U.S. intelligence, as reported by Seymour M. Hersh, "Was Castro Out of Control in 1962?" WP, October 11, 1987, H1. The article contains several inaccuracies, including speculation that Cuban troops attempted to storm a Soviet SAM site. This account relies on an interview with Roshva and GITMO intelligence reports.
"dress for dinner": TV reports by Bjorn Ahlander, trans. by his son, Dag Sebastian Ahlander.
"While you are armed": Transcript of broadcast, October 26, 1962, Robert Williams Collection, University of Michigan.
"In the event": Carlos Alzuguray, "La crisis de octubre desde una perspectiva Cubana," Conference in Mexico City, November 2002; Blight et al., Cuba on the Brink, 248.
Nobody "seemed to notice": Halperin, 190.
"by far the worst day": Sorensen OH, JFKL.
CHAPTER EIGHT: STRIKE FIRST
The decision had been taken for security reasons: See, e.g., October 26, ExComm debate, JFK3, 290.
The Cuban navy played a continuous: Author's interview with Aubrey Brown, R Branch, USS Oxford, November 2005.
"diddy chasers": Author's interview with Keith Taylor, R Branch chief, November 2005.
On October 20, T-branchers: Ship logs, Oxford, NARA; author's interview with Dale Thrasher, T Branch chief, November 2005; President's Intelligence Check List, October 22, 1962, quoted in CIA Paper on Intelligence Relationship with JFK White House, 18, record no. 104-10302-100009, JFKARC. Information about the Oxford also supplied by George Cassidy, former T-brancher.
The radar systems at all three sites: NSA Cryptological Museum. The report does not mention the Oxford. Interviews with crew members and the ship logs make clear, however, that the Oxford was the source of the report.
The activation of the radar: "The 1962 Soviet Arms Buildup in Cuba," 77, CREST; Memo from NSA assistant director John Davis, November 1, 1962, JFKL.
The Mars probe was off: Boris Chertok, Rakety i Lyudi: Goryachie Dni Kholodnoi Voini (Moscow: Mashinostroenie, 1999), chapter on Karibskii Raketnii Krizis. See also Ivan Evtreev, Esche Podnimalos' Plamya (Moscow: Intervesy, 1997), 79-80, for reminiscences of a Soviet missile officer at Baikonur. The R-7s at Baikonur were brought to Readiness Condition 2, like the missiles in Cuba.
By Pentagon calculations: Kaufmann memo, Cuba and the Strategic Threat, OSD. The U.S. figure includes 144 ICBMs and 96 missiles based on Polaris submarines. The Soviet figures are from Karlov, the Strategic Rocket Forces historian, based on official Soviet data. The Soviet figure includes thirty-six R-16s and four R-7s, based at Plesetsk, plus the two reserve R-7s at Baikonur, which were not on permanent duty. The disparity in long-range bombers was even more pronounced, around 1-5 by most estimates. The CIA and State Department believed that the Soviet Union had sixty to seventy-five operational ICBM launchers, somewhat less than the Pentagon estimate, but still higher than the official Soviet figure cited by Karlov--Garthoff, 208.
In Havana, it was still: Oblizin interview; notes of Col. Vladimir Rakhnyansky, head of ballistic division, MAVI.
"cost the Soviets millions": Blight et al., Cuba on the Brink, 109-11.
for "an important meeting": Alekseev message to Moscow, November 2, 1962, NSAW Cuba. Transcript of missile crisis conference in Moscow, January 1989. Bruce J. Allyn, James G. Blight, and David A. Welch, eds., Back to the Brink: Proceedings of the Moscow Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis, January 27-28, 1989 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992), 159. See also Blight et al., Cuba on the Brink, 117-22.
He was full of complaints: Putilin, 108.
"took it for granted": Blight et al., Cuba on the Brink, 252.
"con suprema dignidad": Castro letter to Khrushchev, October 28, 1962, Cuban document submitted to 2002 Havana conference.
"strengthen the Socialist camp": Blight et al., Cuba on the Brink, 345; Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble, 187.
"very complex and excessively sensitive": November 2, 1962, dispatch, NSAW.
dictated a holding telegram: NSAW Cuba.
"the brightest light": Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York
, Simon & Schuster, 1986), 672.
"I'd be a jellyfish": Sakharov, 217.
"Fucked again": Dallek, 429.
The weather on Novaya Zemlya: G. G. Kudryavtsev, Vospominaniya o Novoi Zemlye available online at www.iss.nillt.ru; V. I. Ogorodnikov, Yadernyi Arkhipelag (Moscow: Izdat, 1995), 166; author's interview with atomic veteran Vitaly Lysenko, Kiev, May 2006.
To confuse American intelligence: Kudryavtsev article.
"Gruz poshyel": Ogorodnikov, 155-8; Pavel Podwig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 503.
"I wouldn't pull": Unpublished Maultsby memoir, made available to the author by Jeanne Maultsby. History of 4080th Strategic Wing (SAC), October 1962, FOIA.
"Your mind never relaxes": Heyser interview. See Michael Dobbs, "Into Thin Air," WP Magazine, October 26, 2003.
"They had decided to settle": Fursenko, Prezidium Ts. K. KPSS, 623, Protocol No. 62.
His intelligence folder on Friday: Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble, 261-2.
"Robert Kennedy and his circle": Ibid., 249.
Khrushchev understood the Lippmann column: Soviet envoy Anastas Mikoyan later told the Cubans that this column had prompted Khrushchev to propose the Cuba-Turkey swap. See memorandum of conversation with Cuban leaders, November 5, 1962, NSAW Cuba. See also Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble, 275. Lippmann's column appeared in WP and other newspapers on October 25.
"You are worried about Cuba": Problems of Communism, Spring 1992, author's trans. from the Russian.
"It is categorically": Malinovsky message to Pliyev, October 27, 1962, 1630 Moscow time, NSAW.
The Americans "know very well": Gromyko message to Alekseev, October 27, 1962, NSAW. A former Khrushchev aide, Oleg Troyanovsky, has claimed that the Presidium had "no idea" that publication of the Turkey-Cuba offer would create problems for Kennedy--see Troyanovsky, 249. However, the instructions to Alekseev make clear that the struggle for public opinion was an important part of Khrushchev's strategy.
"Who gives you the right": Theodore Shabad, "Why a Blockade, Muscovites Ask," NYT, October 28, 1962. See also "The Face of Moscow in the Missile Crisis," Studies in Intelligence, Spring 1966, 29-36, CREST.
a "training ground on which": Petr Vail' and Aleksandr Genis, Shesdesyatiye--Mir Sovetskovo Cheloveka (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2001), 52-60.
"amused, disturbed": Report from Eugene Staples, U.S. Embassy, Moscow, October 30, 1962, State Department Cuba files, NARA.
Soviet "state interests": Malinovsky message to Khrushchev, October 27, 1962, MAVI.
"Cuba, give us back": Vail' and Genis, 59.
"quite intricate phrases": Alekseev, November 2, 1962, NSAW dispatch.
"Dear Comrade Khrushchev": Castro letter to Khrushchev, October 26-27, 1962, NSAW Cuba, trans. by the author.
"Razvernut'sya!": Roshva interview. For details of the deployment, see Gribkov et al., U Kraya Yadernoi Bezdni, 89-90, 115-19; interview with Vadut Khakimov, former PRTB officer, in Vremya i Denghi, March 17, 2005.
Inside the naval base: GITMO intelligence reports.
"The U.S. authorities in Guantanamo": December 6,1962, report from M. B. Collins in Cuba Under Castro, Vol. 5, 565. The CIA subsequently misidentified the FKR cruise missiles at Mayari Arriba as coastal cruise missiles known as Sopkas. The two missiles were similar to each other in appearance, but the Sopka did not carry a nuclear warhead and was intended for use against ships--see the discussion in CWIHP, 12-13 (Fall-Winter 2001), 360-1.
CHAPTER NINE: HUNT FOR THE GROZNY
were "fully operational": CIA memorandum, The Crisis: USSR/Cuba, October 27, 1962, CREST.
Ham radio operators along: Reeves, 92.
"a war room for the Cold War": Michael K. Bohn, Nerve Center: Inside the White House Situation Room (Washington, DC: Brassey's, 2003), 30.
There was a continuous clatter: Salinger, With Kennedy, 253.
"a pigpen": Bohn, 32.
Communications intercepts started: NSA and the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1998 monograph, published by NSA.
Contrary to later myth: Bouchard, 115. See also Graham Allison, Essence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 128.
A tactical strike force: JCS Scabbards message 270922Z, JFKARC; Cuba Fact Sheet, October 27, 1962, NSAW.
mobilized "at a rapid rate": CIA memorandum, The Crisis: USSR/Cuba, October 27, 1962, CREST; JCS Scabbards report, October 28, 1962, Cuba National Security Files, JFKL.
All twenty-four Soviet SAM: JCS Scabbards message 270922Z, JFKARC.
Half a dozen Soviet cargo: Khrushchev message to U Thant, October 26, 1962, NSAW.
In fact, the consensus at the CIA: See, e.g., CIA memorandum, The Crisis: USSR/Cuba, October 27, 1962, CREST; "Operation Mongoose Sabotage Proposals," October 16, 1962, JFKARC.
"there are damned few trains": ExComm debate, October 25, 1962, JFK3, 254.
Three more reconnaissance planes: History of 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, October 1962, AFHRA.
A subsequent investigation: USAF accident report, October 27, 1962, AFSC; author's interviews with John E. Johnson, navigator on the RB-47 that aborted, and Gene Murphy, electronic warfare officer on backup plane, December 2005.
Carney spotted the Soviet ship: History of 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing; Sanders A. Laubenthal, "The Missiles in Cuba, 1962: The Role of SAC Intelligence," FOIA; MacDonough message 271336Z, Grozny file, CNO Cuba, USNHC.
"weary and discouraged": Andrew St. George "Hit and Run to Cuba with Alpha 66," Life magazine, November 16, 1962. See also CIA memos on Alpha 66, October 30, 1962, and November 30, 1962, JFKARC.
"A hell of a fine piece": Letter from William R. Hearst, Jr., to Clare Boothe Luce, Clare Boothe Luce Papers, Library of Congress.
By her own account: Telephone conversation between William Colby and Clare Boothe Luce, October 25, 1975, CIA files, CREST. A good account of Luce's dealings with Keating appears in Max Holland, "A Luce Connection: Senator Keating, William Pawley, and the Cuban Missile Crisis," Journal of Cold War Studies (Fall 1999).
The CIA suspected him: CIA memo, July 25, 1975, CREST.
an "honorary member": CIA memorandum on Alpha 66, November 30, 1962, JFKARC.
The two Cuban exiles: Vera interview, January 2006.
"Hands off Cuba": NYT, October 28, 1962.
To counter such skepticism: JFK was also "disturbed" by the release of the photos, and demanded an explanation. Bruce told the White House that the CIA had given approval for their release--Bruce message to Michael Forrestal, October 24, 1962, National Security Files, JFKL. A CIA representative in London, Chester Cooper, said he called Washington but "couldn't get anybody," and sent a wire "just saying I was going to do it unless I got a Washington veto"--Chester Cooper OH, JFKL.
"a slight oscillation": Bruce message to Secretary of State No. 1705, October 28, 1962, JFKL and SDX.
to "get close to Jack": Reeves, 291.
In the meantime, Macmillan quietly: Record of conversation between British service chiefs, October 27, 1962, DEFE 32/7, Public Records Office. For discussion of British military moves in crisis, see Stephen Twigge and Len Scott, "The Thor IRBMs and the Cuban Missile Crisis," Electronic Journal of World History, September 2005, available online.
"the most dangerous spot": Beschloss, 217; Reeves, 68.
"soldiers and weapons": Reeves, 250.
The answer was thirty-five hours: JCS memorandum, October 6, 1962, NARA.
The CIA reported on October 23: CIA Office of National Estimates memo, October 23, 1962, JFKL.
East Germans were still fleeing: Reports from Berlin, UPI and NYT, October 27, 1962.
In the afternoon: CIA memorandum, The Crisis: USSR/Cuba, October 28, 1962, CREST.
"We will give": See Taubman, 538-40; Fursenko and Naftali, Khrushchev's Cold War, 457-60.
"We are just beginning": Troyanovsky, 247.
"who took every mission": Author's interview with former U-2 pilot Robert Powell, June 2003.
Anderson was engaged: History of 4080th Strategic Wing, appendix on special operations, October 1962, FOIA.
Initially, Anderson's name: SAC message CNO 262215Z to CONAD, October 26, 1962, CNO Cuba, USNHC.
Eager to rack up more: Heyser and McIlmoyle interviews.
One pilot, Captain Charles Kern: Unpublished Kern memoir; Supplement 8, Joint Evaluation of Soviet Missile Threat in Cuba, October 28, 1962, CREST.
The flight plan: SAC reported various incorrect times for Anderson's takeoff. I have used the time in the original execution order, outlined in SAC message 262215Z, copied to U.S. air defenses, on file at USNHC. This flight plan coincides exactly with the time Anderson entered Cuban airspace, as logged by the Soviets. A map of Anderson's flight route is contained in Supplement 8, Joint Evaluation of Soviet Missile Threat in Cuba, October 28, 1962, CREST.
It was a CIA bird: Anderson's aircraft was the third U-2 to roll off Lockheed's Skunk Works assembly line in Burbank, California, in 1955. It was a U-2A upgraded to a U-2F. Heyser, the pilot who first photographed the Soviet missile sites on October 14, flew in model no. 56-6675, the second U-2 ever produced. The U-2 flown by Maultsby during his overflight of the Soviet Union was 56-6715. All three planes were destroyed in crashes, a fate shared by most of the early U-2s--History of 4080th Strategic Wing, October 1962, FOIA.
"looking for fault": McIlmoyle interview.
He carried photographs: State Department telegram 1633 from New York to Secretary of State, November 5, 1962, SDX.
He was still feeling: Author's interview with Anderson's daughter Robyn Lorys, September 2003; Anderson medical report, October 11, 1962.
"Aren't I doing": Col. John Des Portes OH interview, NSAW Cuba.
"Okay, Rudy": Herman interview; see also WP Magazine article, October 26, 2003.
"Lost Cause": Bruce Bailey, We See All: A History of the 55th SRW (privately published), 111. I am indebted to Rob Hoover, the unofficial historian of the 55th SRW, for putting me in touch with his fellow pilots and ravens.