Soviets Add Denials to Deceptions: Late August 1962

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

In late August 50 years ago, reports continued to pour in from Cuba concerning the hugely increased Soviet presence there. Some of the reports were hard intelligence, but secret; some of the reports were unverified HUMINT (human intelligence); some were rumors; while others were, inevitably, down-right lies.

Spotting the truth among all the noise was the U.S. intelligence community’s challenge —and the challenge of the American press.

The American Press in Late August 1962

As the Soviet activity in Cuba increased, so did news reports about that activity.

On August 25th, three major American newspapers reported on p. 1 that the Soviet government had stepped up “the flow of arms aid” to the Castro regime. The three reports, with very similar content, cited only unnamed “U.S. officials” as sources.

The Times article reported in three separate articles,  

• “Moscow’s broadcast explanation has been that its ships are carrying machine tools, wheat, agricultural machinery, tinned goods, combine harvesters, fertilizers, and cereals.

• “However, forty-foot crates indicate to observers that the contents are equipment not used in agriculture or on household tables.…

• “There is no evidence that troops from the Soviet bloc or nuclear warheads have arrived in Cuba.”

All three articles mentioned nuclear weapons—in the sense that they had apparently not been sent to Cuba.

American News Reports = Warnings to the Kremlin

We know now that the Kremlin desperately wanted to conceal the true nature of the Cuban gamble not only from the U.S. government but from the American people. The Soviets knew very well that when something arouses Americans, they call or write their Congressmen. These news reports might well be that stimulus. The last thing the Kremlin wanted was for Congressmen to begin asking questions about Soviet activity in Cuba.

Soviets’ First Denial

The next day, August 26th, the New York Times reported that the Soviet news agency Tass had accused the United States “…[of] ‘whipping up a noisy anti-Cuban campaign.’ [Tass] said American newspapers were spreading ‘fabrications’ about Soviet ships taking troops and rocket installations to Cuba. [Tass] asserted they were in fact taking food and farm machinery.”

The Tass statement was the first published denial I am aware of in the USSR’s campaign to conceal its Cuban missile deployment from U.S. observers.

The Soviet Government and the News

Tass was, of course, the Soviet government’s mouthpiece. All news about the USSR originated with the Soviet government and was disseminated by state-controlled news agencies.There was no “free press” in the Soviet Union throughout its 69-year existence.

The Soviets could never believe that U.S. newspapers and broadcast networks were not controlled by the U.S. government, as theirs were. That may explain why the Tass statement followed so quickly on the heels of those page 1 stories. It appears to have gotten very little attention, however.

In the next chapter we will look at the relationship between the United States government and American news agencies.

Email your questions to phufstader@sbcglobal.net or post a comment!

Sources and Notes

The three August 25 articles that might have triggered the August 26 Tass accusation:

• Joseph A. Loftus, “The Russians Step up Flow of Arms Aid to Castro.” New York Times, p. 1.
• Associated Press, “Soviet Arms Again Flow Into Cuba.” Los Angeles Times, p. 1
• United Press International, “Russia Pours Men, Equipment into Cuba—Possibly Missiles.” Boston Globe, p. 1.

That same day the Hartford Courant published an Associated Press article titled “Are Russian Solders Really Massing in Cuba?” The article is essentially an uncannily timely essay exploring the Russian penchant for maskirovka—denial and deception. In this case, the unnamed writer speculated that recent Soviet “noise” over Berlin might have been intended to mask events in Cuba. Chapter 32 in this series explores maskirovka used to conceal Operation ANADYR ().

The August 26 Tass story was a one-paragraph Reuters release, “Soviet Chides U.S. on Cuba.” New York Times, p. 4.

Western news reports from Russia since the collapse of the USSR in 1991 suggest strongly that the Russian press today is no more “free” than it was before the collapse. The means of repression today are simply different—including the murder of overly-inquisitive reporters. See, among other sources, C. J. Chivers, “Killer of Russian Journalist is Known, Editor Says.” New York Times, October 8, 2007;  Associated Press, “Russia: Reporter Who was Beaten Says Media Freedom is Shrinking.” New York Times, November 29, 2010; David M. Herszenhorn, “Russian Official Apologizes for Threatening Journalist.” New York Times, June 14, 2012.

The Russian journalist whom Chivers wrote about was Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative reporter who a Times backgrounder describes as “a strident critic of the Kremlin [who] was murdered in 2006.”