Cuban Missile Crisis

I n November 1960, U.S. senator John F. Kennedy (1917– 1963) of Massachusetts defeated Vice President Richard M. Nixon (1913–1994) in the presidential election. Kennedy was taking on a difficult job: U.S. relations with the Soviet Union were declining, and the world seemed to be proceeding deeper into crisis and conflict. A prime example of this was displayed on the evening of October 22, 1962, when Kennedy addressed the nation via television. The president had undisputable evidence that Soviet-built nuclear missiles capable of reaching the United States and many Latin American countries were in place in Cuba, 90 miles (145 kilometers) from the U.S. shoreline.

As noted in the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, in his televised address, Kennedy said, "Should these offensive military preparations continue … further action will be justified. I have directed the Armed Forces to prepare for any eventualities [possible action].… It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.… No one can foresee precisely what course it [the retaliation] will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred." In the following decades, especially during the 1990s as Soviet documents became available, records revealed that in late October 1962, the world was indeed at the brink of a nuclear holocaust. The intersection of the careers of a U.S. president and a newly established leader of a small nearby island, Fidel Castro Ruz (1926–), would keep the world's population on the edge of their seats for many days.

A young Fidel Castro

Born in Mayarí, Cuba, in 1926, Castro grew up in a solidly middle-class home. He graduated from the University of Havana in 1950 with a law degree. During most of Castro's early years, Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (1901–1973), an oppressive dictator (a leader who uses force and terror to maintain control), ruled Cuba. Batista had been in complete control of the island since 1933, either directly or through other presidents. Batista's economic policies helped establish light industries, such as canneries, and allowed foreign companies, many from the United States, to build their businesses in Cuba. U.S. corporations dominated the sugar industry, oil production, and other key aspects of the island's economy. Most of Cuba's wealth was owned by a tiny percentage of the population; most Cuban citizens lived in dire poverty. Under these circumstances, Cuba was ripe for revolution, and Castro, the handsome, intense young lawyer, proved to be a charismatic leader.

In 1953, Castro attempted to overthrow Batista and was sent to prison. After his release in 1955, Castro went to Mexico and immediately gathered rebels together. In December 1956, Castro and his men landed in Cuba and carried on guerrilla, or irregular and independent, attacks against Batista's army for the next few years. The people of Cuba, especially the many who lived in poverty, increasingly supported the young revolutionaries, or those seeking radical change. On January 1, 1959, Batista fled Cuba. Within weeks, Castro established himself as premier.

Initially, the United States supported Castro, who was not a communist at the time. Communists believe that the best economic system is one that eliminates private ownership of property. Under this system, the goods produced and the wealth accumulated are, in theory, shared equally by all. A single party, the Communist Party, controls government and almost all other aspects of society. Communism is in direct contrast with the values of democratic, capitalist countries such as

the United States. A democratic government system requires government leaders and others who hold public office to be elected by the citizens in general elections. Candidates represent different political parties—and ultimately, all the people who vote for them. Capitalist economic systems allow private ownership of property and businesses. Competition in a free, or open, market determines prices, production, and distribution of goods.

The American media, including Life and Reader's Digest magazines, hailed Castro as an educated, daring, determined soldier. Castro wanted to lift Cubans out of poverty. He cut rents, proposed improved education and health care, and instituted farming reform, or dramatic change. He broke up large estates into smaller parcels for common citizens to farm. He also sought to end America's domination of the Cuban economy. However, Castro made no movement toward setting up free elections, which he had earlier promised to do. Appalled at Castro's actions, many middle-class and wealthy Cubans fled to the United States. From there, they began an anti-Castro campaign aimed at influencing the Cubans who stayed behind. To Castro's dismay, the United States did nothing to stop the anti-Castro effort. When Castro sought aid for his reforms from the United States, he was refused. During 1960, Cuba's relations with the United States rapidly slid downhill. The Soviet Union was ready and able to step in, signing a trade agreement with Castro in February 1960.

Moving toward communism

During mid-1960, Castro nationalized, or took control and ownership of, a billion dollars' worth of U.S. businesses in Cuba, including American oil refineries and banks. In response, U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969; served 1953–61) halted U.S. importation of Cuban sugar, but the Soviet Union quickly agreed to buy the surplus. The Soviets also agreed to supply petroleum products to Cuba. In September 1960, Castro met Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) at the United Nations in New York City. Khrushchev warmly received Castro and privately gloated that communism had its first toehold in the Americas. Castro publicly aligned his country with the communist Soviet Union. On January 3, 1961, the United States and Cuba broke all diplomatic ties. For the most part, the American populace of the early 1960s believed that no leader would voluntarily turn toward communism; they figured that the Soviets must have been behind Castro all along. They overwhelmingly supported a hard-line anti-Castro policy.

President Eisenhower had early on suspected that Castro would take Cuba down the communist path, so in March 1960 he had secretly authorized the use of $13 million to train Cuban exiles, the people who had fled Cuba, to carry out an invasion of Cuba and oust Castro. Approximately fifteen hundred exiles volunteered to be trained for this job by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The top-secret training took place in the Central American countries of Guatemala and Nicaragua.

The Bay of Pigs fiasco

When President Kennedy took office, he inherited the Cuban problem. He had been briefed by Eisenhower's administration about the plans to remove Castro. Surprised, Kennedy nevertheless allowed the CIA and the Cuban exiles to proceed. However, knowing that it would look bad for a powerful nation to invade a tiny island, he refused to involve the American military; U.S. military aircraft would not be allowed to provide cover for the invasion. Kennedy hoped it would appear that the United States had played no part. The CIA and the fifteen hundred exiles, sure that the Cuban people would rise up and aid their effort against Castro, went ahead with their invasion on April 17, 1961, at a swampy beach area known as the Bay of Pigs.

Castro had gotten word of the planned invasion through informants who knew some of the exiles and had

his army ready with Soviet-made tanks. The defeat of the invading exiles was swift and complete. It was clear the failed invasion was backed by the United States, because the band of exiles could have never become so organized or bold otherwise. Kennedy was publicly embarrassed by the failure. He vowed that in the future he would consider more carefully the advice of those surrounding him.

The Cuban people had not risen up to overthrow Castro as expected. Instead, the Bay of Pigs invasion seemed to increase their support of Castro. Now firmly in the communist camp, Castro railed against American imperialism. (Imperialism is the practice of taking over other countries by force for economic or political gain.)

By this time, the Castro that Americans constantly saw on television was an eccentric-looking character: He always dressed in a military uniform, he had a scruffy beard, and his cigar seemed to be permanently attached to his mouth. Convinced that Castro was a serious threat to the United States, President Kennedy ordered Operation Mongoose, a top-secret plan to oust Castro. Operation Mongoose encompassed various plots, from placing hallucinatory drugs in Castro's drinking water to assassinating him. However, Operation Mongoose never materialized.

Communism on the march

Khrushchev was eager to maintain the forward progress of communism in the Western Hemisphere. By the spring of 1962, he had already sent many advisors and arms to Cuba. The Soviet investment in the island was substantial. Cuba's locale was a logistic dream for Khrushchev and a nightmare for the United States. Khrushchev fumed over the fact that U.S. missiles with nuclear warheads were openly located in Turkey, Italy, and the United Kingdom, within easy striking distance of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev admitted that those warheads scared the Soviets. The Soviets had never placed nuclear weapons outside their country's boundaries, because the weapons positioned inside the Soviet Union had the capability of annihilating Western Europe and reaching the United States. Nevertheless, Khrushchev knew that if he stationed nuclear weapons in Cuba, only 90 miles from the U.S. coastline, it would cause Americans a great deal of anxiety.

When approached with the idea, Castro was not convinced that he wanted his island to be an outpost of Soviet nuclear weapons. But he soon agreed, and sent his brother Raúl and a Cuban military delegation to Moscow to work out the details. Castro wanted the missiles openly placed on Cuba, with the full knowledge of the international community. He hoped this would raise his status among Latin American leaders. But Khrushchev insisted on secrecy; he believed that once the missiles were in place, the United States could not act without the possibility of provoking war. So in secrecy the Soviets planned to install forty missile launchers in Cuba. Of the forty, twenty-four would be SS-5 medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) launchers, each armed with two missiles. Each missile, armed with a nuclear warhead, had an explosive power equal to 1 million tons (907,000 metric tons) of TNT. At the end of World War II (1939–45), the city of Hiroshima, Japan, had been leveled in minutes by the equivalent of 13,000 tons (11,791 metric tons) of TNT. The MRBMs had a

range of 1,100 miles (1,270 kilometers), so Washington, D.C.; Dallas, Texas; and all the southeastern states were at risk. The other sixteen missile launchers would be long-range, capable of sending missiles northward to Canada and south into Latin America. Calculations showed that the only major U.S. city they could not reach was Seattle, Washington.

In July 1962, Soviet ships sailed toward Cuba with their cargo of missile equipment. Also headed for Cuba was the latest Soviet military equipment plus over forty thousand Soviet troops. Soviet fighter planes known as MiG's, some bombers to be assembled in Cuba, and surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) to protect the nuclear missile sites all moved across the Atlantic Ocean to Cuba. The size of the undertaking was enormous. All the while, the Soviet government consistently assured the United States that the arms buildup in Cuba was purely defensive in nature—that the Soviet Union had no need to station missiles outside its own territory. These assurances would soon prove to be lies.

Revelations of October 14, 1962

Alarming intelligence reports from the National Security Agency (NSA) began late in 1960 and continued in 1961. The NSA was America's prime intelligence organization that listened to and analyzed foreign communications. Through intercepted messages, the NSA determined that Cuba was significantly building up its weapons, with the Soviet Union's help.

Additionally, the NSA heard Spanish being spoken on a surveillance tape from Czechoslovakia, an Eastern European nation under Soviet control; it turned out that Cuban fighter pilots were being trained in Czechoslovakia by the Soviet military. The NSA also intercepted messages that indicated that Soviet ships headed for Havana, Cuba, had no cargo listed—a quiet method of concealing the equipment they carried. The NSA reported on construction of SAM sites and new radar installations of air defense systems in Cuba. They also spotted Cubans training on Russian military equipment. U.S. officials in Washington, D.C., grew increasingly worried. Nevertheless, all these systems could be categorized as defensive systems, and Soviet authorities continued to insist that everything they provided to Cuba was purely defensive. U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, secret planes that gathered information, flew at high altitudes over Cuba, and the pictures they brought back did not indicate any offensive weapons sites in Cuba.

Then on October 14, 1962, a U-2 mission returned with chilling photographs. Processed and analyzed on October 15, the photos showed the first clear evidence of medium-range ballistic missiles at construction sites in an area known as San Cristóbal. The photographs arrived on the desk of the president's national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy (1919–1996), on the evening of October 15. The MRBM installation appeared almost complete; the longer-range equipment looked as if it would not be ready until the end of the year. Knowing that sleep would be hard to come by for a while, a grim Bundy decided to let the president sleep that night.

At 9 a.m. the next morning, Bundy showed and explained the photographs to President Kennedy. Kennedy immediately called together a small group of senior cabinet members, security officials, and military leaders to assess the situation and advise him. The group became known as Ex-Comm, short for Executive Committee of the National Security Council; it stayed almost continuously in session for the next two weeks. (The National Security Council is part of the executive branch of the U.S. government. The council advises the president on matters of foreign policy and defense.) With an eye cast toward historical documentation, Kennedy secretly had all the brainstorming discussions of Ex-Comm tape-recorded.

The following days brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war. When the Ex-Comm tapes became available in the 1990s at the close of the Cold War, they confirmed that there were several moments when one more command or one slight move on either country's part could have unleashed a nuclear holocaust. On October 16, 17, and 18 Ex-Comm discussions included a variety of proposals, from doing nothing, at least not immediately, to staging an invasion of Cuba. Members of the committee divided into two camps: hawks and doves. Hawks favored immediate military strikes to take out the missiles and Castro's communist government. Key hawks were General Maxwell Taylor (1901–1987), chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other military leaders at the Pentagon. Doves, fearing massive casualties, favored a strategy of diplomacy and less aggressive tactics. Key doves were Secretary of State Dean Rusk (1909–1994) and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (1916–). At the outset, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968), the president's brother, joined the Joint Chiefs of Staff in supporting an invasion or a surprise air strike. However, after further discussions, he decided an air strike was not in the best interests of the United States. In fact, many Ex-Comm members changed their minds—supporting one position, then another—as ideas were discussed.

All Ex-Comm members agreed from the start on one objective: The missiles must be removed from Cuba one way or another. President Kennedy and Ex-Comm could not permit this armed Soviet intrusion into the Americas, within

easy reach of North, Central, and South America. If the United States did not respond, the committee reasoned, Khrushchev would push for more communist influence in the region; this would undermine U.S. leadership in the Western Hemisphere and cause a massive negative reaction among the American public. Kennedy's political future would be in doubt, and fear of eventually being surrounded by Soviet-controlled communist states would increase.

President Kennedy addresses the American people

On Thursday, October 18, intelligence reports given to Ex-Comm indicated that medium-range missiles were almost ready, capable of being launched from Cuba in about eighteen hours. That afternoon, Soviet foreign minister Andrey Gromyko (1909–1989), in the United States for a United Nations meeting, met with President Kennedy at the White House. Kennedy did not reveal his proof of the missiles. Gromyko still insisted that Soviet military assistance for Cuba was only defensive. Late that night, Ex-Comm decided against immediate invasion of Cuba and settled tentatively on a more cautious plan—a naval blockade around Cuba that would prevent any additional Soviet ships and their military cargo from reaching Cuba.

President Kennedy did not want to announce the grave situation to the American public until a plan of action was decided upon, so he continued his planned schedule of campaign appearances as if nothing was amiss (the purpose of these appearances was to support various candidates for the upcoming November midterm elections). As plans favoring the blockade firmed up, he cancelled the rest of his campaign appearances. Kennedy thought the blockade most likely would not trigger immediate war. While demonstrating that the United States would not tolerate the missiles, the U.S. response still gave Khrushchev a way out and time to withdraw from the situation. Because blockades were against international law, the term "quarantine" was used instead.

Once the decision for a quarantine was made, Kennedy requested that the television networks clear out a prime-time evening slot on Monday, October 22, for an urgent address to the nation. Anatoly Dobrynin (1919–), the Soviet ambassador to the United States, who knew nothing of the offensive missiles, was handed the text of Kennedy's speech shortly before airtime. Dumbfounded, he quietly went back and sat in his embassy office, attempting to gather himself before relaying Kennedy's message to Moscow's leaders.

Addressing the American people, President Kennedy explained the situation fully. As noted in the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Kennedy announced that the quarantine was scheduled to begin the morning of October 24, that the U.S. military was on full alert and prepared for any scenario, and that any nuclear missile launched would require a "full retaliatory response." Kennedy called for immediate meetings of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations Security Council. (All the nations of North, Central, and South America make up the OAS, which was created to ensure mutual protection and cooperation in the Western Hemisphere.) Kennedy called "upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine [secret], reckless, and provocative threat to world peace and to stabilize relations between our two nations." Kennedy called on Khrushchev "to move the world back from the abyss [pit or depth] of destruction." As Kennedy spoke, the Joint Chiefs of Staff put the level of U.S. military alert worldwide at DEFCON 3, heightened state of preparedness for nuclear war. DEFCON, short for Defense Condition, is a rating system describing progressive alert levels used within the military; DEFCON 5 is normal peacetime readiness, while DEFCON 1 is maximum force readiness (for instance, an enemy's missiles are in the air and a nuclear war is imminent). For the first time in history, all planes of the U.S.

air defense system were armed with nuclear weapons. U.S. nuclear submarines took up assigned positions, and nuclear missiles located in the United States were readied for firing.

To the brink of nuclear war

On October 23, Khrushchev denounced the quarantine as a violation of international law. Khrushchev vowed that his ships would continue on course, that any American ship trying to stop them would be fired on by Soviet submarines stationed around Cuba. Those Soviet submarines had each been armed with a nuclear warhead, and their crew members had orders to fire if provoked. It appeared Moscow would push to the brink of nuclear war. The secretary general of the United Nations issued a plea to the United States and the Soviet Union, asking them not to push the world into war.

On the morning of October 24, the U.S. quarantine went into place, and the U.S. military went to DEFCON 2, the last level before nuclear war. This alert level was reached at no other time in history. Then U.S. intelligence reported an amazing development: It appeared that the Soviet ships had halted in the ocean. Secretary of State Rusk made his famous statement, "We're eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked," as noted in Dino A. Brugioni's Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet Khrushchev did not back down entirely. He relayed a message to President Kennedy calling the quarantine an aggressive act, and the missiles already in Cuba remained. However, on October 25, the Soviet vessels carrying military equipment turned around. Those with no military equipment proceeded; they were searched and then allowed to go on to Havana.

Meantime, at President Kennedy's request, Robert Kennedy was having secret "backdoor" meetings with Soviet ambassador Dobrynin. On the evening of October 26, a long emotional letter from Khrushchev offered to remove the missiles from Cuba if the United States vowed not to invade Cuba. Dobrynin and Robert Kennedy met, and Dobrynin brought up the offensive U.S. missiles located in Turkey. The next morning, October 27, before President Kennedy could respond to Khrushchev's first letter, a second, more demanding letter insisted that the United States agree to remove the missiles in Turkey if the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles in Cuba. Events that Saturday—known as Black Saturday because many felt it was the day the world came closest to annihilation—turned even uglier. A U.S. U-2 flight over Alaska drifted into Soviet airspace, and the Soviets regarded it as a test of their defense system. The U-2 simply drifted out of Soviet airspace without incident, but it caused much tension among Soviet leaders. Then in Cuba, another American U-2 was spotted and brought down with a surface-to-air missile. The pilot was killed. Amid the worsening situation, the U.S. military command was clamoring for a fight. In their book Cold War: An Illustrated History, 1945–1991, Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing report that Secretary of Defense McNamara walked out of the White House that evening into the open air and thought he would never live to see another Saturday.

Robert Kennedy advised the president to simply ignore Khrushchev's demands in the second letter and accept the terms of the first letter. President Kennedy agreed. Robert Kennedy then met with Dobrynin and informed him that the United States would halt the quarantine and not invade Cuba if the Soviets would pull out the missiles. When Dobrynin asked about the missiles in Turkey, Kennedy assured him that those missiles would be removed after the crisis was over. However, Kennedy insisted that this agreement be kept secret, because the United States could not appear to withdraw protection for Western Europe for its own purposes. Dobrynin relayed this information to Moscow. Soviet leaders did not realize that the United States considered the missiles in Turkey outdated and had intended to remove them soon anyway. The next morning, October 28, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba. Immediately both sides breathed easier. DEFCON was reset at alert level 5, the lowest concern level. Khrushchev proceeded to bring the Soviet missiles back to the Soviet Union.

Both Khrushchev and President Kennedy could claim their diplomacy halted the crisis when it appeared to be spiraling out of control. Castro, on the other hand, gained no advantage from their agreement; he was outraged over the missiles being removed, angered because he was totally left out of the negotiations by Krushchev and not even consulted about their removal, but he could do nothing about it. Despite the appearance of defeat, Khrushchev's main goal was to keep Cuba communist, and in the early twenty-first century, Cuba remained a communist country.

By the spring of 1963, the United States had removed all its missiles from Turkey. Press reports never mentioned that their removal had anything to do with the Cuban Missile

Crisis. Few people knew that the missiles in Turkey had been replaced by much more effective missiles on a Polaris submarine.

The world had been to the brink of nuclear war, but at that point, having scared themselves mightily, the super-powers compromised. Sobered leaders in Washington, D.C., and Moscow began serious talks to start the process of bringing nuclear weapons under control with a test-ban treaty. In June 1963, a direct hot line was set up between Washington, D.C., and Moscow to help reduce the chance of nuclear war occurring because of miscalculation or misunderstanding.

For More Information

Books

Allison, Graham T., and Philip Zelikow. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. 2nd ed. New York: Longman, 1999.

Brubaker, Paul E. The Cuban Missile Crisis in American History. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2001.

Brugioni, Dino A. Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Random House, 1991.

Chang, Laurence, and Peter Kornbluh, eds. The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive Documents Reader. New York: New Press, 1998.

Chrisp, Peter. Cuban Missile Crisis. Milwaukee, WI: World Almanac Library, 2002.

Finkelstein, Norman H. Thirteen Days/Ninety Miles: The Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: J. Messner, 1994.

Fursenko, Aleksandr, and Timothy Naftali. "One Hell of a Gamble": Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000.

Huchthausen, Peter A., and Alexander Hoyt. October Fury. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2002.

Isaacs, Jeremy, and Taylor Downing. Cold War: An Illustrated History, 1945–1991. Boston: Little, Brown, 1998.

Kennedy, John F. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President, 1963. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963.

Kennedy, Robert F., and Arthur Schlesinger. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. W. W. Norton, 1999.

Lynch, Grayston L. Decision for Disaster: Betrayal at the Bay of Pigs. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 2000.

May, Ernest R., and Philip D. Zelikow, eds. The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002.

Medina, Loreta M., ed. Cuban Missile Crisis. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2002.

Thompson, Robert S. The Missiles of October: The Declassified Story of John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.

Triay, Victor Andres. Bay of Pigs: An Oral History of Brigade 2506. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001.

Web Sites

George Washington University. "The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: The 40th Anniversary." National Security Archive.http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/ (accessed on August 4, 2003).

National Security Agency. NSA and the Cuban Missile Crisis. http://www. nsa.gov/docs/cuba (accessed on August 4, 2003).

U.S. Air Force. "Cold War History: 1949–1989." USAF Museum.http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/history/coldwar/cw.htm (accessed on August 4, 2003).

Washington Post. "Reliving the World's Most Dangerous Days." Cuban Missile Crisis. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/digital archive/index.html (accessed on August 4, 2003).

Other Sources

Kenny, Charles, ed. John F. Kennedy: The Presidential Portfolio—History as Told through the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. Compact disc (audio). New York: PublicAffairs, 2000.

Words to Know

Bay of Pigs: Failed U.S.-backed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs by fifteen hundred Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro, on April 17, 1961.

Capitalism: An economic system in which property and businesses are privately owned. Prices, production, and distribution of goods are determined by competition in a market relatively free of government intervention.

Communism: A system of government in which the nation's leaders are selected by a single political party that controls all aspects of society. Private ownership of property is eliminated and government directs all economic production. The goods produced and accumulated wealth are, in theory, shared relatively equally by all. All religious practices are banned.

Cuban Missile Crisis: A showdown in October 1962 that brought the Soviet Union and the United States close to war over the existence of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba.

Democracy: A system of government that allows multiple political parties. Their members are elected to various government offices by popular vote of the people.

National Security Agency (NSA): The United States' premier organization assigned to protect U.S. information systems and listen in on and analyze foreign intelligence information.

Quarantine: A blockade; during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States installed a buildup of naval ships around Cuba, with the intent of preventing any additional Soviet ships and their military cargo from reaching Cuba. Because blockades were against international law, the term "quarantine" was used instead.

People to Know

Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (1901–1973): Cuban dictatorial leader, 1933– 44, 1952–59.

Anatoly Dobrynin (1919–): Soviet ambassador to the United States, 1962–86.

Fidel Castro Ruz (1926–): Cuban premier/president, 1959–.

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969): Thirty-fourth U.S. president, 1953–61.

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963): Thirty-fifth U.S. president, 1961–63.

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968): U.S. attorney general, 1961–64.

Nikita S. Khrushchev (1894–1971): Soviet premier, 1958–64.

Kennedy's Favorite Spy Photograph

Mounted on a wall in President Kennedy's office was a photograph of a Cuban launch site for Soviet SAMs, surface-to-air missiles. The picture clearly shows roads in a six-pointed star pattern connecting the launch sites. The picture was taken at an altitude of less than 500 feet (152 meters), at 713 miles (1,147 kilometers) per hour, by a U.S. Air Force RF-101C. Kennedy liked the photograph because of the clarity of the geometric design of the missile installations.

The Inside Word

The response of the U.S. intelligence system during the Cuban Missile Crisis helped President John F. Kennedy navigate the ominous days of late October 1962. Three groups played key roles in providing information from surveillance and reconnaissance missions. (Surveillance and reconnaissance refer to examination and survey of enemy territory and activities.) The groups included the Signals Intelligence, the Strategic Air Command, and the Tactical Air Command.

Signals Intelligence, or SIGINT, is part of the National Security Agency (NSA). NSA is America's premier organization assigned to protect U.S. information systems and listen in on and analyze foreign intelligence information. NSA is the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States; NSA employees are often referred to as the "codemakers and codebreakers." SIGINT has a long and fabled history: In World War II (1939–45) SIGINT broke the codes of the Japanese military, helping bring an end to the war. SIGINT monitored the Soviet arms buildup in Cuba at its earliest stages, in mid-1960. SIGINT listened in on and analyzed Soviet communications discussing the operation to supply Cuba with weapons; they also heard messages from Soviet ships headed for Havana. Then they intercepted Cuban discussions about the arrival of "Russian equipment" at the unloading docks.

By May 1961, SIGINT listened to radio chatter from Cuba about special ship cargo—defensive radar systems associated with antiaircraft weapons. Then in August and September 1962, SIGINT picked up information that SAMs, surface-to-air missiles, had arrived on the island. Subsequently it reported that fifteen SAMs were operational, most likely in position to protect secret operations. In other words, the SAMs were in position to shoot down U.S. Air Force reconnaissance flights.

The Strategic Air Command (SAC) of the U.S. Air Force operated the high-flying U-2 aircraft that photographed various portions of Cuba. In October 1962, photographs taken on U-2 missions revealed definite construction of bases for intermediate-range ballistic missiles only 90 miles (145 kilometers) from the U.S. coastline.

While U-2s continued their high-altitude photography, the Tactical Air Command (TAC), also part of the U.S. Air Force, used the RF-101C aircraft to take low-level photographs of Cuban missile sites and of the docks where Soviet ships brought their cargo. The crews of the RF-101Cs directed photography on daring flights that traveled at 700 to 1,000 miles (1,126 to 1,609 kilometers) per hour, often at treetop level. U-2 and RF-101C aircraft continued making reconnaissance flights throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis. On October 27, one U-2 was lost over Cuba when it was shot down by a SAM.

SIGINT provided round-the-clock information to senior military and political leaders. The SIGINT command center was under the direction of Juanita Moody, who had served as a cryptanalyst (codebreaker) during World War II. She and Lieutenant General Gordon Blake took the responsibility of overseeing the staff of the command center and getting information to the White House. It was SIGINT, through interception of radio messages from Soviet vessels, that first notified President Kennedy on October 24 that the "quarantine" appeared to be working. Mapping the location of the Soviet vessels, SIGINT confirmed that the ships appeared to be stopped in the water outside the ring of American ships.

SIGINT, along with U-2 and RF-101C aircraft, continued surveillance and reconnaissance as the Cuban missiles were dismantled and shipped back to the Soviet Union.