How 1962 “Noise” Obscured Cold War Danger Signals

Thirty-sixth Chapter in a Series Chronicling the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962

This series on the Cuban Missile Crisis stresses how difficult it was for the Cold War antagonists to understand each other’s words, actions and intentions. A major cause of that difficulty was “noise,” “the… irrelevant or inconsistent signals, signs pointing in the wrong directions, that tend always to obscure the signals pointing the right way.” 

In July of 1962, a blizzard of “noise” drew Western observers’ attention away from the big increase in Soviet shipping bound for Cuba. Here are four examples of that noise.

1. Berlin Noises

On July 11, 1962, a front page New York Times article reported that Khrushchev wanted to replace the forces garrisoning Berlin’s four sectors with “troops from the small nations in the North Atlantic and Warsaw alliances.”

This outrageous proposal was obviously intended to be rejected. The impossibility of Khrushchev’s demand and the effort of crafting a rejection would keep Washington focused on Berlin, the Kennedy administration’s perennial nightmare, and thus away from the increase in Soviet shipping to Cuba. In rejecting the proposal, moreover, Kennedy would be handing Khrushchev yet another opportunity to keep the Berlin pot boiling.

He promptly did so. On June 25, in one of his deliberately confusing about-faces, Khrushchev told the departing U.S. Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson that he wanted the Berlin matter settled so the U.S. and the USSR could begin to co-exist peacefully. Then he said he was also afraid that the U.S. military might try to seize control of the United States government and begin a war over Berlin.

As Thompson left, Khrushchev told him, “Go home and tell President Kennedy what I said.”

2. Nuclear Supremacy Noises

On July 17 the Times reported that Khrushchev had told a group of American editors that “the Soviet Union has an anti-missile missile that can hit ‘a fly in space.’

What nonsense! Soviet short-range missiles were secretly going to Cuba precisely because the USSR had few long-range missiles capable of hitting anything anywhere, let alone “a fly in space.” But Americans would read about Khrushchev’s boast on p. 1, all too many would believe it, and the Kennedy administration would have yet another well-publicized Soviet thrust to parry.

3. Nuclear Testing Noises

The Soviet noises kept coming. Five days later the Times reported that the USSR was going to start a new round of nuclear tests “in reply to the current series of United States tests.”

Once again the United States would have to point out that it was the USSR that had unilaterally restarted nuclear tests in 1961, thereby forcing the United States to resume its own tests or fall behind in the arms race. This “noisy” story also made p. 1 headlines and created more distractions for the Kennedy administration.

4. Maskirovka Noises

On July 13 the Hartford Courant reported that a “giant Soviet TU-114” aircraft carrying “a number of Soviet technicians” had landed at Havana’s José Marti airport, “ending a survey flight for a direct Moscow-Havana run.” The “huge” Soviet airliner returned to Moscow nine days later.

The “technicians” aboard the outbound TU-114 did not make the return flight, however. Soviet General Issa Pliyev and his staff, wearing civvies and carrying false documents, remained in Cuba to comand the Soviet Group of Forces which would establish Soviet missile bases there.

The Soviets’ maskirovka worked perfectly. No Westerners discovered who the “technicians” were or why they had gone to Cuba.

As of late July 1962, therefore, ANADYR remained a secret Soviet mission screened from Western observers by distracting noises.

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Sources and Notes

The quotation about “signs pointing in the wrong direction” comes from Roberta Wohlstetter’s “Cuba and Pearl Harbor: Hindsight and Foresight.” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Jul., 1965), pp. 691-707. She first explored the “noise-signal” theory in her award-winning 1962 book Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision, published by the Stanford University Press. Pearl Harbor was favorably reviewed in the New York Times of September 16, 1962.

While “noise” can be deliberately created to confuse, it can also be created by day-to-day events. A major domestic “noise” during the Cuban Missile Crisis was the growing civil rights movement. The U.S. economy also created domestic “noise”—labor disputes, for example.

The July 11 Times article concerning Khrushchev’s outrageous Berlin demand was written by Theodore Shabad: “Khrushchev Urges Smaller Nations Garrison Berlin.” New York Times, July 11, 1962, p. 1. The interpretation of that demand as maskirovka is mine. I add that Berlin remained a constant source of controversy and danger throughout the Cold War’s 45-year history.

Khrushchev’s June 25  message to Kennedy via Ambassador Thompson is described in Michael R. Beschloss, The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991, p. 409. As to Nikita’s fear of a U.S. military coup in Berlin: the Kremlin was very aware that the rabidly anti-Communist U.S. military of this era desperately wanted an excuse to attack the USSR before the Kremlin could developed intercontinental nuclear weapons. A major impetus behind ANADYR was establishing such a nuclear deterrent by placing shorter-range missiles on America’s doorstep.

I add that the ultra-right activities of the U.S. military were making their own headlines in the early 1960s, thus constituting another major source of “noise” for the Kennedy administration. See chapters 29, 30, and 31 in this series on “Civilian Control of the U.S. Military.”

Khrushchev’s “fly in space” boast is described in Theodore Shabad’s “Khrushchev says Missile Can Hit ‘Fly in Space.’ ” New York Times, July 17, 1962, p. 1.

The Tass announcement about the USSR’s resumption of nuclear testing appears in Theodore Shabad’s “Soviet to Start New Atom Tests in Reply to U.S.” New York Times, July 22, 1962, p. 1. The Tass statement is printed verbatim on p. 15 of that issue.

The Hartford Courant’s very brief article on the TU-114’s outward flight to Havana originated with the Associated Press.

The Times July 22 article on closer connections between Moscow and Havana was an unsigned special headlined “Soviet Stresses Links to Cuba; Assails U.S. ‘Spying’ at Base” (the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba).

This series has constantly referred to the centuries-old Russian practice of maskirovka, or “denial and deception.” As of mid-July 1962, all of the maskirovka which obscured Operation ANADYR had been “deception.” In early September, we will see the Soviets begin to practice “denial,” in this case a euphemism for “lying.”