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Health & Fitness

The U.S. Explores Its Cuban Options: Late August 1962

After 17 days without U-2 photos of Cuba, President Kennedy explores his options.

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

The Situation in Cuba: August 22, 1962

A CIA Current Intelligence Memorandum (CIM) released 50 years ago today describes not only the military nature of the Soviet cargoes arriving in Cuba but the secrecy surrounding the shipments (emphasis added).

  • As many as 5,000 Soviet bloc personnel had arrived in recent weeks wearing dirty, slept-in red-checked shirts and blue trousers.
  • As many as 20 Soviet vessels had arrived in Cuba since late July with military cargoes. Five more Soviet vessels had left Black Sea ports and appeared to be en route to Cuba with military equipment.
  • Reports on these cargoes cited a lot of transportation, electronic, and construction equipment including communications and radar vans, trucks, mobile generators, tracked and wheeled prime movers, cranes, trailers, and fuel tanks.
  • This equipment was transported to embarkation ports [in the USSR] at night. Town street lights were turned off as the convoys went through towns on the way to the ports and in the ports themselves.
  • Soviet personnel unloaded their cargo in Cuba themselves (normally Cuban militia personnel would do the unloading)
  • Refugees reported construction at sites in north coastal Cuba where cargo from these ships had been taken. Families had been moved out of the areas where the construction sites were located.
  • The precise purpose of the construction, which included leveling operations, was not known. It could be for SAM sites, or for ELINT or COMINT units.
  • Whatever the purpose, “these developments amount to the most extensive campaign to bolster a non-bloc country ever undertaken by the USSR.”

Kennedy Explores Cuban Options: August 23

Fifty years ago this Thursday, President Kennedy ordered National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy to issue National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 181. It required the White House, the Defense Department, the State Department, the CIA, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to conduct eight studies related to recent Soviet activities in Cuba.

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  • The first study concerned ways to get the Jupiter missiles out of Turkey.
  • The second and third studies would explore turning public opinion against Castro’s regime both at home and abroad.
  • The fourth study concerned the secret anti-Castro campaign of subversion and sabotage known as Operation MONGOOSE.

The next four studies demonstrated clearly the seriousness with which high-level policy-makers were taking McCone’s prediction about strategic missile bases in Cuba.

  • The fifth study would examine the military, political and psychological impact if the Soviets established in Cuba either surface-to-air or surface-to-surface missiles capable of reaching the United States
  • The sixth study would examine the advantages and disadvantages of issuing a statement that the U.S. would not tolerate the Soviets’ establishing any military force in Cuba which could launch a nuclear attack on the United States
  • The seventh study would examine “the various military alternatives which might be adopted in executing a decision to eliminate any installations in Cuba capable of launching nuclear attack on the U.S. What would be the pros and cons, for example, of pinpoint attack, general counter-force attack, and outright invasion? (Action: Department of Defense)”
  • The eighth study would examine whether the U.S. should “liberate Cuba by blockade or invasion or other action…in the context of an aggravated Berlin crisis.”

Mum’s the Word!

Not one word about these very serious, high-level deliberations appeared in public statements. Answering two questions at an August 22 news conference, President Kennedy said Soviet personnel landing in Cuba appeared to be technicians, not troops, and Soviets were not sending similar shipments to other Western Hemisphere nations.

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None of the White House press corps asked about missiles in Cuba, and the President certainly did not volunteer any comment on that dangerous subject.

Human Intelligence Still the Only Source on Cuba

As of August 23, 1962, 18 days of bad weather forecasts had grounded the U-2s. Throughout that period the U.S. intelligence community had received no photographs of Soviet activity in Cuba.

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Sources and Notes

The August 22 Current Intelligence Memorandum is printed as an attachment to document 383 in Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume X, Cuba (http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/frusX/376_390.html).

National Security Action Memorandum 181 is printed as document 386 in the same sub-volume of FRUS X.

Those Jupiter Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBM) in Turkey were a major source of friction between the United States and the Soviet Union. Khrushchev took their presence just across the Black Sea from his dacha in Georgia as a personal affront. Though Washington policy makers could not have known it in late August 1962, the Jupiters were an important factor in the Premier’s April decision to send Soviet missiles to Cuba. If the U.S. could put its missiles in Turkey, then the USSR could do the same in Cuba, and there would be nothing Kennedy could do about it once they were operational. Or so Khrushchev thought.

The Times buried an Associated Press report on President Kennedy’s August 22 news conference on p. 9 of its August 23 issue. The transcript of the news conference was printed on p. 14. The two questions reporters asked about Cuba were Q. 21 and Q. 26. The President replied to 29 questions all told.

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