Did Any Americans Foresee Khrushchev’s Cuban Missile Gamble?

Forty-second Chapter in a Series Chronicling the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962

Yes—many, starting soon after Castro took power.

The Geopolitical Significance of the Caribbean

Castro seized power on January 1, 1959.

In late April 1959 a Latin American specialist pointed out that “Without bases in the Caribbean islands and without the Panama Canal, the United States would be wide open to invasion. If one could conceive of missile bases in Mexico or Central America, the peril would be obvious.”

The Dangerous Potential of Soviet-Cuban Cooperation

In February 1959, James Reston asked whether Washington could “tolerate” a Soviet-Cuban mutual defense pact like the NATO agreement that allowed the U.S. to place nuclear missiles in Turkey and Iran, right on the USSR’s southern border. The USSR and Cuba established diplomatic relations on May 7, 1960.

A General Connects the Dots

On August 1, 1960, Army Lieutenant General Arthur Trudeau told an audience of scientists that “The Soviet Union could conceivably ship missiles to Cuba that could reach most major cities in the southeastern part of the United States…” The first Soviet Bloc military shipment arrived in Cuba in September, 1960.

Predictions in 1961 and 1962

Congressman Victor Anfuso

On January 6, 1961, two weeks before John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, the New York Times reported that “anti-Castro sources” had told this New York Democrat “that Premier Fidel Castro planned to let the Soviet Union install missiles on secret launching pads in Cuba.” A State Department spokesman told a reporter that the department “had heard reports of this kind for some time but had no information to support them.”

James Reston

Less than two weeks before the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion, Reston wrote in the New York Times that the Kennedy administration did not assume “that the Soviet Union wants to establish a missile or military base in Cuba. Any such attempt would undoubtedly be met directly with military intervention by the United States.”

Robert F. Kennedy

On April 20, 1961, just three days after the Bay of Pigs invasion disintegrated, the attorney general wrote his brother a memorandum exploring courses of action that would “prevent that island from becoming Mr. Khrushchev's arsenal.” Bobby Kennedy ended his memo,

“The time has come for a showdown for in a year or two years the situation will be vastly worse. If we don't want Russia to set up missile bases in Cuba, we had better decide now what we are willing to do to stop it.”

Walt W. Rostow

On April 24, 1961, Rostow, then McGeorge Bundy’s aide at the White House, warned Defense Secretary McNamara that the chief threat posed by the Castro regime was the possibility that “It might join with the USSR in setting up an offensive air or missile base.”

Hiatus?

Press reports about Soviet missiles in Cuba waned after June 1961. In mid-July 1962, however, the dramatic increase of Soviet shipping to Cuba began and with it new speculation about what the Soviets were up to there.

CIA Director John McCone Nails It

On August 10, 1962, fifty years ago tomorrow, McCone told a meeting at the State Department that “the Soviet Union had in Cuba an asset of such importance that ‘the Soviets will not let Cuba fail.’ To prevent such a failure McCone expected that the Soviet Union would supplement economic, technical, and conventional military aid with medium-range ballistic missiles, which they would justify by reference to U.S. missile bases in Italy and Turkey.”

General Maxwell Taylor

Dino Brugioni writes that General Maxwell Taylor told him “later…that no one [at the State Department meeting] was shocked at [McCone’s] idea and that it had certainly gone through [Taylor’s] mind and had probably occurred to most of the policymakers.”

Taylor also told Brugioni that McCone “had no proof” to back up his August 10 prediction.

Waiting for Proof

No proof as of August 10, that is. But then it is difficult to get proof of something that has not yet happened. Given the Soviets’ skill at deception, and given that the 23-day August photo gap had just begun, hard proof of Soviet activities in Cuba would be some time in coming.

While the intelligence community waited for Cuban skies to clear, the policymakers either had to wait too—or try to read Khrushchev’s mind. McCone had already done that.

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Sources and Notes

The Latin American specialist quoted in the first paragraph of this chapter was Herbert L. Matthews, a member of the editorial board of the New York Times: “Why Latin America is Vital to Us.” New York Times, April 26, 1959, SM17. Ironically, Castro was finishing a tour of the United States when the Matthews article appeared.

The first James Reston article cited in this chapter is “Cuba’s Drift to the Left. Capital Views Closer Ties to Soviet as Grave Threat to the Hemisphere.” New York Times, February 19, 1960, 6.

The article on General Trudeau’s speech originated with the UPI: “Missile Range is Cited. Army Aide Says Southeast Could Be Hit from Cuba.” New York Times, August 2, 1960.

The January 6, 1961, Times article describing Congressman Anfuso’s allegation originated with United Press International and was headlined “U.S. Doubts Cuban Pact. Report on Soviet Missile Site Is Received Skeptically.”

Bobby Kennedy’s memo to his brother is printed as document 157 of Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume X, Cuba: http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/frusX/151_165.html.

In the April 5, 1961, issue of the Times, Reston seems to be saying that in making policy toward Cuba, the Kennedy administration assumed that however much the Soviets might want to establish missile bases on America’s doorstep, they wouldn’t do it because they feared American retaliation.

As we saw in the twenty-third chapter in this series (), however, Khrushchev was counting on the Soviets’ ability to hide ANADYR from American eyes until the missiles were operational, at which point there would be nothing the Americans could do about them. Any attempt to “remove” them would result in a Soviet nuclear strike against the United States from Cuba.

Walt Rostow’s memorandum to McNamara is printed as document 172 of Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume X, Cuba, http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/frusX/166_175.html.

One July 1961 wire service report alleging Soviet missiles in Cuba was triggered by an article in something called the Insider’s Newsletter. A wire service report picked up by two major papers a few days later was triggered by remarks of the national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars citing “reliable sources in Washington” whom he “was not at liberty” to reveal.

McCone’s prediction quoted above comes from a State Department editorial note printed as document 371 of Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume X, Cuba, http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/frusX/361_375.html. McCone was predicting that the Soviets would justify their decision to put missiles in Cuba by saying they were only doing what the U.S. and its NATO allies had done in Europe, as Reston had predicted two years before. In other words: if the U.S.-led NATO could aim missiles into the USSR from neighboring nations as a deterrent, why couldn’t the USSR aim missiles into the United States from Cuba—as a deterrent?

Brugioni’s conversation with Gen. Taylor is described on p. 96 of his Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of The Cuban Missile Crisis (Robert F. McCort, ed.). New York: Random House, 1991.

I have not read any commentary pointing out that as of August 10, when John McCone shared his ballistic missile theory with a select group of policymakers, he was effectively contradicting his own agency’s two recent National Intelligence Estimates concerning “The Situation and Prospects in Cuba”—both of which McCone had approved, the second just ten days before. NIE 85-2-62 is discussed in the 40th chapter in this series ().

A facsimile of NIE 85-2-62’s cover page appears at the head of this chapter. It bears the statement “Submitted by the Director of Central Intelligence” and “Concurred in by the United States Intelligence Board overleaf.” The contents of the overleaf (second page), recording the approval or disapproval of the member agencies of USIB, is entirely blacked out. Thus we can’t tell how many of the member agencies actually approved this NIE. I obtained a heavily redacted copy of NIE 85-2-62 from www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000028764/DOC_0000028764.pdf. My copy of the original 85-62 is, by contrast, not redacted at all.