Unleash the U-2s!

Seventieth Chapter in a Series Chronicling the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962

October 1: Pentagon Intelligence Briefing

On October 1, 1962, Army Colonel John R. Wright of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA briefed Secretary of Defense McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the agency’s most recent human intelligence from Cuba.

• SA-2 missile sites outlining a triangular area in Pinar del Rio Province could not be logically connected to any known military installation.
• A large trapezoidal area in the province cleared of Cuban residents was being heavily guarded by Soviet troops. The area appeared to be empty except for the guards.
• Soviet personnel were starting to concentrate in western Cuba.
• A CIA source had identified about 20 Soviet SS-4 missiles in a truck convoy at an airfield just west of Havana (Campo Libertad). See Chapter 61 in this series for a detailed discussion of that source’s and other human source reports from Cuba (http://napavalley.patch.com/blog_posts/cia-agents-reports-from-cuba-late...).
• If Soviet SS-4 missiles were deployed in the trapezoidal area, they would be able to reach Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Fort Worth-Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Mexico City, all of Central America, the Panama Canal, and the Lake Maracaibo oil fields in Venezuela—not to mention Washington, D.C.

Since Cuban agents’ written reports took as long as two weeks to get to Washington, this news was old. Much might have happened in Pinar del Rio since the agents sent off their reports.

DIA’s Theory

These developments had spawned a theory:

a)     The Soviets were doing something unusual in, or planning something unusual for, western Cuba’s Pinar del Rio Province.

b)    This “something” possibly involved missiles.

October 3: At the CIA’s National Photographic Intelligence Center

Some time before October 3rd, Arthur Lundahl, director of the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC,) had asked his staff to work up a map depicting the CIA’s reconnaissance of Cuba since September 5. According to Dino Brugioni, as he and his NPIC colleagues mapped that coverage, they found not only that the two recent in-out missions had avoided Cuba’s interior but that the high hills surrounding the interior would shield anything behind them from the limited missions’ cameras.

When Director of Central Intelligence John McCone (now back from his month-long honeymoon) saw this map, he grabbed it and said, “I’ll take this.”

October 4th: Special Group Meeting

Fifty years ago today, at a meeting of the Special Group (Augmented), McCone stated, more or less forcefully, that the two in-out missions flown since Sept. 5 meant that the CIA didn’t know whether or not the Soviets were deploying offensive weapons in Cuba.

McCone also reportedly asserted that shying away from Cuba’s interior was unnecessary since the SA-2 sites were not yet active. This statement was so uncomfortably like those made with recently by Republicans that the Attorney General became quite offended.

Movement Toward Over-flights Begins

Though partly stormy, this October 4th meeting began, as Max Holland put it, “nudging the surveillance regime in the direction that McCone was determined to move it,” i.e. towards a resumption of over-flights of Cuba’s interior, SAM sites or no SAM sites.

According to McCone’s notes of the October 4th meeting, an agency whose name has been blacked out—almost certainly the Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance, or COMOR— “was instructed to prepare and present to the Special Group on next Tuesday [October 9th]… alternate recommendations for over-flights. These to include the use of U-2s on complete sweeps (as contrasted to peripheral or limited missions)…”

But Also on October 4th…

While McCone was laboring to get the SGA to resume over-flights of Cuba’s interior, the Soviet vessel Indigirka docked at the port of Mariel just west of Havana carrying:

• 36 1-megaton warheads for the R-12 (NATO SS-4) missiles.
• 36 14-kiloton warheads for FKR tactical cruise missiles, which can wipe out an invading army or navy. These cruise missiles are stationed at Mariel, west of Havana, and near the Guantanamo Naval Station at the eastern end of the island.
• 12 2-kiloton warheads for Luna rockets, which are also tactical battlefield weapons positioned near beaches where Americans are likely to come ashore.
• 6 12-kiloton atomic bombs for the six Il-28 bombers equipped to carry them.

The Nuclear Status Quo in Cuba

Since the Sept. 5 U-2 flight,

• Three regiments of Soviet SS-4 medium range strategic missiles had arrived in Cuba and been trucked to their sites. Work on their sites was nearing completion.
• Twenty-four surface-to-air (SAM) missile sites ringing Cuba’s coast had been completed or nearly completed.
• Nuclear warheads for two regiments of FKR coastal defense cruise missiles had arrived in Cuba, as had warheads for the SS-4 missiles.
• Four Soviet motorized rifle regiments, three equipped with nuclear-tipped FROG (LUNA) missiles had arrived or were on their way.
• Six nuclear-capable IL-28 jet bombers were being assembled in Cuba. Their six atomic bombs had just arrived.
• Four Soviet FOXTROT attack submarines had left Polyarni for Cuba on October 1st. Each was carrying a 10-kiloton nuclear torpedo

As of 5 October, the U.S. intelligence community knew about only the SAM sites. They had spotted the FKR sites in early September but did not know they were for nuclear cruise missiles nor that the nuclear warheads had arrived in Cuba. The U.S. Navy would track the Soviet subs almost every foot of their long trip to Cuba but had no idea they were carrying nuclear torpedoes. Nor did they know that some of the Il-28s being assembled in Cuba were nuclear-capable.

Washington Still Clueless

The danger of a nuclear confrontation had increased immeasurably since Sept. 5th—and Washington policy-makers still knew nothing about it.

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

Sources and Notes

Details of the October 1 briefing appear in document #1 in Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume XI, Cuban Missile Crisis and Aftermath (http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/frusXI/01_25.html).

Dino Brugioni’s account comes from p. 159ff of his Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of The Cuban Missile Crisis (Robert F. McCort, ed.). New York: Random House, 1991.

The Special Group was a committee of the National Security Council which oversaw clandestine intelligence operations. “Special Group (Augmented)” was a term coined to recognize that the Attorney General chaired the Special Group’s management of Operation MONGOOSE, the clandestine program of anti-Castro sabotage and subversion being conducted primarily by the CIA with support from State and Defense. This series does not cover Operation MONGOOSE.

The Max Holland quote concerning the October 4th SGA meeting comes from p. 9 of his “The ‘Photo Gap’ that Delayed Discovery of Missiles.” Central Intelligence Agency, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 94, No. 4, first posted on the CIA’s website at “Center for the Study of Intelligence” in April 2007. Brugioni also describes this meeting on p. 159ff of his Eyeball.

McCone’s record of the October 4th SGA meeting is document 41 in Mary McAuliffe, ed., CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962. Washington, D.C.: October 1992.

The arrival of Indigirka with her deadly cargo of nuclear warheads at Mariel is documented by a transcript of a “Handwritten Note for the Record by Colonel General S. P. Ivanov dated 5 October 1962” of a telephone call he made to Khrushchev. In the same note Ivanov noted that he had asked Khrushchev to allow the Aleksandrovsk to sail for Cuba with another load of nuclear warheads. According to Ivanov’s notes, Khrushchev told him, “Send the Aleksandrovsk.” This transcript is document 6 in Raymond L. Garthoff, “New Evidence on the Cuban Missile Crisis: Khrushchev, Nuclear Weapons, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.” Bulletin 11, The Cold War International History Project, Winter 1998, p. 261.