In October 1962, in what is widely known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, Washington pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war. The events brought to a head the drive by the U.S. rulers to invade Cuba and overthrow the revolutionary government there (see box).

Released on the 40th anniversary of these events, the Pathfinder book October 1962: The "Missile" Crisis as Seen from Cuba, by Cuban author Tomás Diez Acosta, tells the story of what really happened.

The Militant has been printing excerpts from the new book. The one below is the fifth chapter, titled, "The Secret and the Deception."

In July 1962 the Cuban and Soviet governments signed a mutual defense pact that included deployment of Soviet missiles to Cuba. The deployment was code-named Operation Anadyr. This was the third such military agreement signed between the two governments, over the course of 11 months, to provide military equipment and resources to Cuba in response to Washington’s invasion plans.

The author describes the disagreements between the Soviet and Cuban leaderships over Soviet premier Nikita Krushchev’s insistence on keeping the mutual defense pact secret, and how Washington, after discovering the missiles, sought to take advantage of Moscow’s stance to step up its preparations to attack Cuba. The Cuban leadership argued from the beginning for the public announcement of the pact, including the missiles, and the right of the Cuban people to defend themselves against U.S. aggression. Copyright © 2002 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission. Subheadings are by the Militant.

Click here for Background to 1962 ‘missile’ crisis in Cuba
 

Despite repeated warnings from Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev stubbornly insisted the operation should not be announced until it was an accomplished fact, which the U.S. would then have to accept. This determined two different stances--Cuban and Soviet--toward the news media campaigns and pressure from the United States.

If Khrushchev had proceeded as the Cuban leadership--with a clear view of the problem--repeatedly suggested, the crisis might have been avoided, or at least might have followed a course less dangerous for humanity.  
 
‘Why not make the agreement public?’
The Cubans’ opinion on the difficulty of concealing Operation Anadyr began to be confirmed in early August. Reports of the arrival of Soviet troops in Cuba circulated in the U.S. press beginning August 8. U.S. authorities discounted those reports as exaggerated, even though they admitted that more Soviet ships were traveling toward Cuba.

The first reports that came to light in the U.S. press were based on correspondence between Cuban émigrés in the United States and their relatives in Cuba, as well as from Western diplomatic personnel and journalists stationed in Havana. They referred to caravans of military vehicles moving in the middle of the night, with large trucks transporting what appeared to be missiles covered with tarps. There were also reports of construction and repair of roads along various routes where the convoys moved, and reports confirming transfer of the civilian population from some of those rural areas.

As already noted, the intelligence services of Great Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany, which maintained constant surveillance of maritime traffic through the Straits of Gibraltar and the Dardanelles, warned the U.S. government of unusual movements of Soviet ships headed for the Atlantic. So Washington stepped up its surveillance of sea lanes leading toward Cuba, with continuous reconnaissance flights from the Azores.¹

In his book Presidents’ Secret Wars, John Prados recounts that CIA Director John McCone asked Philippe Thyraud de Vosjoli--the chief of French intelligence in Washington and an expert on this kind of weaponry--to travel to Cuba to verify on-the-ground reports of the presence of Soviet missiles. In August the expert carried out that mission. He found evidence of antiaircraft missile emplacements, but not of other types of missiles.

Nevertheless, U.S. intelligence services subjected Cuban territory to intensive scrutiny. Kennedy adviser Theodore Sorensen wrote that beginning in August movements of Russian personnel and equipment in or toward Cuba were the subject of secret meetings and reports in the White House. Naval forces and aircraft photographed every Soviet ship headed toward Cuba. Reconnaissance flights covered all of Cuban territory twice a month. According to Sorensen, beginning August 27 the intelligence services prepared special daily reports devoted exclusively to Cuba.

On August 29 aerial photography by U-2s detected antiaircraft missile sites in western Cuba, which led the intelligence services to pay special attention to that area.

Days before, on August 11, Aleksandr Alekseev had arrived in Havana as the new ambassador, bringing with him the draft of the military agreement. When Fidel Castro examined the draft he found major political lapses in it. Since in Castro’s view the problem was fundamentally political, the agreement needed to be, in his words, "clear, precise and concrete." From that standpoint, the top Cuban leader made the corrections he considered necessary.

The first thing he modified was the title of the accord. He proposed three alternatives. The one that in his opinion best fit the essence of the accord was: "Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Cuba and the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on military cooperation and mutual defense." Since the goal was not only "the defense of Cuban territory," as stated in the initial draft, but also "military cooperation and mutual defense" between the two countries, this would express the spirit of solidarity in the agreement.

According to the text of the document, the Soviet military contingent was to be directly subordinated to the Soviet government, and was to cooperate with the Cuban armed forces in the event of external aggression. The USSR was to cover the expenses of its forces and all the supplies its troops required. For its part, the Cuban state would assist the Soviet forces and provide the necessary facilities for their deployment.

The agreement also established that the Soviet armed forces had to respect Cuban sovereignty and Cuban law. They thus had no rights to occupy territory or do anything aside from their assigned functions. The agreement was to be valid for five years, although either side could terminate it giving one year’s notice. The agreement also stipulated that the installations built would be turned over to the Cuban government when the troops withdrew.  
 
Fierce U.S. propaganda against Cuba
Meanwhile, in the United States, rumors of the presence of Soviet missiles touched off a fierce media campaign against Cuba and the Soviet Union, which was manipulated by the inner circles of power in that country for their own political interests. There were more and more public statements about the military buildup in Cuba by high officials of the government, Congress, and political parties, as well as by leaders of the counterrevolutionary groups based in the United States.

The top Cuban leadership considered this political atmosphere to be quite dangerous, and thought it necessary to make an immediate, strong response. In late August, the Secretariat of the ORI National Directorate analyzed the situation and concluded that the propaganda campaign unleashed in the United States was an unmistakable sign of a new crisis brewing. Faced with that reality, the Secretariat thought it best to take the initiative by making public the military accord.

The Secretariat decided to send two of its members--Commander Ernesto Che Guevara and Captain Emilio Aragonés Navarro--to Moscow with the corrected draft of the military agreement, in order to propose personally to Khrushchev that it be made public. The final decision, however, was to be up to the Soviet side.

Aragonés and Guevara were in the Soviet Union from August 26 to September 1. According to Aragonés, during their exchange of ideas Khrushchev agreed with the corrections Fidel had made to the military agreement, but he did not think it was yet time to make it public. "Be calm," he recommended. "For the Americans a rumor is not the same as real proof of the missiles’ existence."

Che repeated their concern that the missiles might be discovered before they were operational, and that the United States might take advantage of the situation to attack. Khrushchev asserted with great assurance, "Relax, I don’t think they will find out. When they do find out, they will have no choice but to accept the situation."

Besides, the Soviet leader thought an announcement of the agreement right then would interfere with Kennedy’s political activity in the midst of the off-year election campaign. Khrushchev may also have been influenced by the fact that the missile divisions’ main weapons had not yet arrived in Cuba. Perhaps he considered it better to publicize the agreement after the missiles had been installed, and in that way present it as a fait accompli. He concluded by repeating to Che and Aragonés what he had said previously to Raúl Castro: "You can relax. If any problem should occur, if we have to send the Baltic fleet over there, we’ll send it."

Those talks resulted only in getting a paragraph included in a joint communiqué on the visit publicly expressing Soviet willingness to contribute to the reinforcement of Cuba’s defense against the threats of external aggression. It stated: "As long as threats against Cuba by the above-mentioned circles persist, the Republic of Cuba will be fully entitled to adopt measures to guarantee its security and the defense of its sovereignty and independence, and all sincere friends of Cuba will have the full right to respond to those legitimate requests."

Meanwhile, in the United States, the campaign around Soviet weapons in Cuba was becoming more bellicose. The most reactionary politicians demanded immediate action against Cuba. A group of congressional Republicans headed by Senators Homer E. Capehart, Kenneth Keating, and Barry Goldwater was publicly pressing the Kennedy administration to do something. Those statements were directly linked to the November 1962 off-year elections, which drew numerous congressmen into the debate.

Some Latin American governments joined the campaign. The Venezuelan foreign minister, for example, predicted that if Cuba carried out aggression, his country would be the first target. Argentina and Peru also expressed alarm over what was happening on the island. In Central America other governments supported the idea of an invasion, as well.

On September 4 President Kennedy revealed that a reconnaissance flight over Cuba on August 29 had detected surface-to-air missiles and an increased number of Soviet military personnel. He warned Moscow that he would not tolerate the installation of offensive weapons on the island. On September 7 he requested congressional approval to call up 150,000 reservists to active duty if necessary to be able to respond quickly and effectively "to challenges in any part of the Free World."

A week later, on September 13, with his government under political pressure, the U.S. president stated in a press conference that if the growth of communism in Cuba should at some point endanger or interfere in any way with the security of the United States and other nations of the Western Hemisphere by turning the island into an important offensive base for the Soviet Union, he would do everything possible to protect their security. He also warned that if he were to take military action against Cuba, all the weaponry and military advisers provided by the communists would not be able to change the outcome.

On September 26 the U.S. Congress adopted Joint Resolution 230, presented by the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees. This resolution authorized the president to take armed action against Cuba over its supposed aggressive and subversive activities in the hemisphere, and also authorized the use of force to prevent the establishment or use of military power on the island that might endanger the security of the United States.²

A meeting of Latin American foreign ministers on October 3 adopted a communiqué, at the request of the U.S. State Department, condemning the secret military buildup in Cuba and calling on OAS member countries to take individual or collective action to prevent the spread of communism in the hemisphere.  
 
Two different positions
In face of the U.S. campaigns, Cuba’s stance was to defend the country’s sovereign right to take the measures necessary for its defense, while the Soviet Union’s position was to turn to deception to keep the operation secret. Compare, for example, statements made by both countries at the time.

Cuban president Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, in a meeting with workers leaders on September 7, said this about the U.S. campaign against Cuba: " What they are trying to do is deny us the right to defend ourselves.... Cuba has the legitimate right to use all means necessary for its defense, and Cuba’s friends have the right to respond to our requests as needed for defense."

That same day in Washington, Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, speaking on behalf of his government, assured the U.S. representative to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, that the Soviets were giving only defensive weapons to Cuba.

Three days later, speaking to the Third National Congress of Municipal Education Councils, Fidel Castro sounded the alarm about pressures on the U.S. administration to attack the island, and pointed out: "An invasion of Cuba by U.S. military forces would place imperialism outside international law, as vulgar violators of the rights of the peoples, as perpetrators of genocide."

He also warned the U.S. rulers: "We have said on other occasions that we do not want imperialism to commit suicide on our account. We proclaim our desire to live in peace. We proclaim our desire that good judgment and the most elementary common sense should govern the destiny of that country."

On September 11, 1962, the Soviet news agency TASS broadcast a statement by the government of the USSR reaffirming its intention to provide needed military assistance to Cuba in the event of aggression. But paradoxically, the statement denied the existence of strategic weapons on the island: "The Soviet Union does not need to transfer to any other country--Cuba, for example--the means it possesses to repel aggression, to strike back. Our nuclear resources are so powerful in their explosive force and...we have such powerful missiles for delivering nuclear warheads that we have no need to look for a place to deploy them anywhere outside the boundaries of the USSR."  
 
Cuba responds to U.S. slanders
In response to the joint congressional resolution authorizing President Kennedy to use armed force against Cuba if it threatened U.S. security, the Council of Ministers of the Cuban revolutionary government released a statement September 29 reaffirming Cuba’s principled policy:

"Do we not have the rights that international norms, laws, and principles recognize for every sovereign state in any part of the world?

"We have not surrendered nor do we intend to surrender any of our sovereign prerogatives to the Congress of the United States.

"If the U.S. government harbored no aggressive intentions toward our country, it would not care about the quantity, quality, or type of our weapons.

"If the United States could give Cuba effective and satisfactory guarantees with respect to our territorial integrity and would cease its subversive and counterrevolutionary activities against our people, Cuba would not need to strengthen its defenses. Cuba would not even need an army, and we would be happy to invest all the resources this implies to the nation’s economic and cultural development.

"Cuba has always been ready to hold discussions with the U.S. government and to do everything possible on our part, if only we were to find a reciprocal stance by the U.S. government of reducing tensions and improving relations."

This is how the revolutionary government expressed itself in response to the slanderous campaigns being whipped up in the United States. Cuba steadfastly maintained this principled stance and never vacillated in the slightest in the face of all types of pressures. Nor did Cuba negate its sovereign right to possess whatever weapons might be necessary to confront military aggression, and it warned of the consequences such aggression could bring.

In assessing the information supplied and the position taken by Soviet officials, the testimony of Georgi Bolshakov is very interesting. Bolshakov was a press officer in the Soviet embassy in Washington, and at that time acted as a secret "channel" of communication between Kennedy and Khrushchev. "The U.S. had already installed their missiles right under our noses, in Turkey, some time ago," he commented. "That was not secret. The whole world knew it, including the Soviet Union. However, our own deliberate secrecy was hindering Soviet diplomacy, because whenever the topic of Cuba came up, the question arose: ‘Are there Soviet missiles in Cuba?’ The fact that we denied it was used in the only possible way: ‘They lie.’ That idea took hold easily in the minds of the American people, sowing mistrust of our intentions. Perhaps this is why President Kennedy managed to secure support in advance for a planned invasion of Cuba from the Organization of American States and from several European countries, such as Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, and France."

Years later, Fidel Castro explained the major mistakes made by the Soviet government, not only keeping the operation secret--which certainly didn’t help--but also their repeated denial of the presence of missiles in Cuba. He analyzed how Khrushchev, in his eagerness to cover up the strategic character of those weapons, used the categories Washington had contrived of "offensive" or "defensive" weapons. Khrush–chev always made assurances that the weapons sent to Cuba were defensive in character. For the U.S., the distinction depended on whether the weapons could reach the continental United States, not on the purpose for which they were intended. Consequently, to define the weapons in this way was a highly dangerous political error by Khrushchev. It made things easy for Kennedy, because when nuclear missiles were discovered, Kennedy presented himself as a man who had been lied to, which gave him the moral high ground in public opinion. Unlike the Soviet government, the Cuban government maintained a principled stance on the matter. "We refused to play that game," Fidel said, "and in the public statements of the government, and then at the United Nations, we always said that Cuba considered that it had the sovereign right to have the kind of weapons it considered convenient, and that no one had any right to establish what kind of weapons our country could or could not have. We never denied the strategic character of the weapons. We did not want to play that game."

² On September 25, the Congress also approved President Kennedy’s request to call up 150,000 reservists to active military service.  

After Cuban workers and farmers overthrew a U.S.-backed dictatorship and began a deep-going revolution in 1959, Washington took increasingly aggressive actions to try to overthrow the new revolutionary power. In April 1961, Cuba’s revolutionary militias and armed forces crushed a U.S.-organized mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs.

In the spring and summer of 1962, in face of escalating preparations by Washington for a full-scale invasion of Cuba, the revolutionary government signed a mutual defense pact with the Soviet Union. In October U.S. president John Kennedy demanded removal of Soviet nuclear missiles installed on the island. Washington imposed a naval blockade of Cuba, stepped up preparations for an armed assault, and placed its armed forces on nuclear alert.

In face of the mobilization of Cuban workers and farmers to defend their national sovereignty and revolutionary gains, the U.S. government backed off its invasion plans. Following an exchange of communications between Washington and Moscow, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, without consulting Cuba, announced his decision to remove the missiles on October 28.  
 
 
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