News 8-31-06

INSIDE THE CUBN MISSILE CRISIS
Speaker: Gene Poteat

I would like to suggest a new name for the Cuban Missile Crisis ... “The World’s largest, and dumbest, covert action in history—The Soviet attempt in secretly emplace nuclear missiles in Cuba.”
Just look at what the Soviet planned to do:

First, emplace SAM missiles around the planned strategic missiles sites,
Then emplace 48 Medium range SS-4 missiles, 1,020 mile range, three-megaton warheads, and
32 IRBM SS-5s, 2,200 mile range, 3 megaton R
7 Golf class ballistic nuclear missile submarines at Mariel, Cuba.
Frog missiles, 25 mile range, 100 kilotons nuclear warheads.
Cruise missiles, with nuclear capabilities.
A fleet of Il-28 bombers, with 12 kiloton bombs, 600 mile radius range.
2 Cruisers
2 Missile destroyers
7 Golf class strategic nuclear missile submarines
2 Squadrons of mine warfare vessels
4 long-range diesel attack submarines, equipped with nuclear torpedoes
40,000 troops. The deception included the issuing of Arctic gear for the troops to keep them from knowing where they were going—talk about American naiveté!!

Gads, the small island of Cuba would have glowed in the dark.
Just why Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev decided, in May 1962, to secretly place strategic nuclear missiles in Cuba, and keep it a secret, remains a matter of conjecture. But my take on it is that the Soviets had good reason to believe the United States would be an easy push-over, and they could get away with it. For example, the Soviets had already stolen every secret we and our Allies had, starting with the atomic bomb, which turned their third world country, with its second class citizens, into a first class military power with nuclear weapons that allowed them to challenge the U.S. Stalin knew about our Atomic Bomb even before Harry Truman. They had easily placed their spies at the very top of our Government, including the White House, the State Department, Treasury, the Congress, the OSS, and even inside our code-breaking operations—while the U.S. had no spies inside the Soviet Union.

At Yalta, the Soviets had already conned Roosevelt into ceding Soviet dominance over all of Eastern Europe—and George Kennan’s attempt to counter it was a miserable failure. President Truman, however, had instituted the Marshall plan to save Western Europe from Communism, and then dispatched the newly formed CIA to Italy, Greece and Turkey where they successfully countered Communist takeovers, so the U S was beginning to be the only hindrance to further Soviet expansion. Khrushchev had tried earlier to force the U.S. out of Berlin, but had failed since the U.S., at that early time, had strategic nuclear superiority over the Soviets, and both we, and they, knew it -- and so Khrushchev had to back down.
The way we knew we had military superiority from the information gathered from our U-2 spy plane flights over the Soviet Union—but it was shot down over Sverdovlosk on May Day, 1960, leaving us temporarily blind to what was going on in the Soviet Union. Then there was the disastrous Bay of Pigs attempt to overthrow Castro, and Khrushchev saw that the Kennedy administration had not supported the attempt. The Bay of Pigs probably spelled the end of Covert Action as a means to stemming Soviet expansion. And the Kennedy had had also pushed Project Mongoose. And there were the usual contingency plans for military action against Castro, leaving the Soviets to believe the U.S. might well attack Cuba. Khrushchev had also met President Kennedy in Vienna, and sized him up as a young, weak, and inexperienced President. I think that Khrushchev was still smarting over having to back down in Berlin and thought he could gain military superiority over the U.S. by sneaking his nuclear missiles into Cuba, undetected until they were operational, and then he would have check-mate over U.S. military superiority by holding Washington, New York and other strategic targets. It was a gamble, and the Russians considered themselves the world’s best chess players.
So on May 12, 1962 Khrushchev made his fateful decision, and Operation Anadyr was underway. Anadyr had been the name of Stalin’s 1950 plan to stage a million-man army from the Siberian town of Anadyr to invade Alaska if the Cold War turned hot.
The first shipments to Cuba started in July, 1962. A total of 129 shipments were planned, 94 of which had already arrived in Cuba—virtually unnoticed by the Americans—with 35 still in route in September, and others waiting on the docks in Russia. All shipments were expected to be on their way to Cuba by October 20, with everything in place before the U.S. Congressional elections on November 5th. The cover for the shipments was to be “Massive Aid to Cuba.”
However, there were early clues that something fishy was going on in Cuba:

First, a U.S navy ship spotted a Soviet ship in the Mediterranean, came along side, and signaled “What is your ship, your cargo, and where are you headed?” The Soviet ship replied “…… agriculture machinery to Havana.” But the Americans could see the partially disassembled IL-28 bombers on deck, and reported this up their chain of command.
The CIA had also received reports from their agents inside Cuba that massive shipments were coming into Cuba; the freight was so large that the Cubans were removing street lamps so the large items could be towed around tight street corners.
CIA agents had also seen Soviet trucks leaving Mariel, heading west, carrying missile like cargoes, 20 meters in length.
Now get this, Thyraud Vosjoli, a French intelligence liaison officer assigned to Washington, told DCI John McCone, that he had recently visited Cuba and learned that the Soviet build up in Cuba included strategic missiles.
And the U.S. Air Force were flying the U-2 spy plane peripherally around Cuba—but not over the sites where the strategic missiles were being installed. The reason was that President Kennedy had forbidden direct overflights since another U-2 had strayed over a Soviet Far East Island and another U-2 had been shot down over China and the State Department didn’t want another diplomatic flap. Earlier U-2 flight had, however, photographed the defensive SAM missile sites in Easter Cuba—which didn’t seem well placed to be protecting anything special.

Only two people, however, thought the SA-2 sites were probably located to protect future strategic missiles sites; Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst, Col. John Wright, who compared the SA-2 sites to similar patters in Russia that protected ICBM sites, and Director of CIA John McCone.
The CIA’s Board of National Estimates reviewed the evidence and released a special report that concluded the Soviets would not place offensive missiles in Cuba—because it just wasn’t logical. Later on, when the offensive missiles were confirmed, they released another report that concluded that even if the missiles are in Cuba (which they were); the Soviets wouldn’t dare use them. So much for intelligence analysis—paralysis!!
DCI John McCone, a widower, had remarried and was on his honeymoon on the French Riviera, and the vast number of messages coming from France , now referred to as the “honeymoon cables,” caused many in Washington to question if he knew what he was supposed to be doing on his honeymoon. The CIA Honeymoon cables are now declassified, and make great reading. They are in a book on sale in the lobby.
Under pressure from McCone, President Kennedy finally agreed the Air Force U-2s should fly over western Cuba. On October 14th, a U-2, taking 1000 photographs, confirmed that offensive missile sites were well along under construction. We know that Maj. Anderson’s U-2 was shot down, and the Russians were told that if it happens again, all SAM sites will be bombed into oblivion. Major Anderson’s U-2 was shot down because the Air Force U-2s were not equipped with electronic countermeasures to protect them from the SAMS. So the Air then borrowed the CIA’s U-2s which did have this protection.
If you have ever seen any of these U-2 photos, you would understand why it took specially trained interpreters to know what was there. It was finally decided that the best, and safest, way to constantly photograph the missile sites was from low flying aircraft—at tree-top level. You could now count the rivets on the missiles and see the Russians hand gestures. These low-flying planes didn’t have the special missile radar warning receivers to alert their pilots if they were being tracked by the Russian SAM’s radars. The CIA had such receivers and offered to loan them to the Navy and Air Force flying these dangerous missions. We stuffed them into the cockpits of the planes, flying out of Key West, using masking tape. The first pilot to use one of these receivers was furious after his short flight over the missile sites, saying that when the receiver alerted him the SAM radar was tracking him, he quickly banked away and the receiver broke loose and kept floating and banging around the cockpit, distracting him. That night we found an all-night supermarket, where we bought all the dog collars in their pet corner, and a box of napkins. We then strapped the receivers to the pilot’s leg with the dog collars, using the napkins for padding. The pilot came back smiling, saying this time they didn’t have to dodge the missiles and the floating receiver.
Even so, the Russians quickly put up a smoke screen of deception and disinformation:

Khrushchev sent Soviet ambassador Dobrynin to tell Attorney General Robert Kennedy that Soviets would create no trouble for the U.S. during the 1962 congressional elections. Two days later the same message was reiterated to presidential counsel Ted Sorenson.
Another Soviet message was sent to the White House that “No missile capable of reaching the United States would be placed in Cuba.”
Tass, speaking for the Soviet government, stated Soviet missiles were so powerful “there was no need to place them beyond the boundaries of the Soviet Union.”
Khrushchev told the American ambassador the build-up in Cuba was purely defensive.
Soviet foreign minister Gromyko visited the White House and told Kennedy the Cuban build-up was “by no means offensive.”

By now, however, the Kennedy administration knew the truth; the Soviets were caught with their pants down. We know what happened next. Kennedy made his speech to the nation on October 22nd placing a naval blockade around Cuba to stop further Soviet shipments. Kennedy would, once again, call Khrushchev’s bluff, as he did in Berlin in 1960, since he, and Khrushchev, knew the U.S. still had military superiority over the Soviets.
The CIA also held another ace; they had all the technical details of the Soviet missiles, which they had obtained from Oleg Penkovsky, a Soviet GRU colonel working for the CIA and British MI-6. It was from the Soviet missile manuals, provided by Penkovsky that included details on constructing and setting up the missile sites for operational use. By comparing the daily U-2 and low-level aircraft photos with the construction details in the manuals, we knew exactly how long it would take for the missile sites to become operational—which is the famous “13 Days” on which the movie was based. So the President had only 13 days to reach a solution to the crisis. On the same day that Kennedy announced the blockade; the Soviets arrested Penkovsky and later executed him.
We all know the outcome of the crisis; Khrushchev agreed to remove the offensive missiles from Cuba, under inspection for verification, and Kennedy agreed to remove our Jupiter missiles from Turkey—but wanted the part of the deal kept secret from the American public for at least 6 month. But Khrushchev extracted one very important concession from Kennedy—a promise to keep hands off Cuba—thus creating the longest living dictator in history. And the world would relax knowing that a nuclear holocaust had been avoided.
But we would not know how close we really came until 40 years later, when the Soviet and American participants in the Missile Crisis sat down together in Havana, the first of six such meetings, to finally discuss what really went on behind the scenes.
In the first of these meetings, in Havana, the Soviets told how they had been given orders that would have permitted them to use their nuclear weapons if they were under attack by the Americans—and they truly believed we were planning an invasion of Cuba. The reason for these orders were that Moscow did not have reliable communications with their forces so far from home, and needed to give the local commanders the authority to act on their own—an unprecedented action. The real nuclear close encounters, however, occurred at sea. Now the rest of the s tory:
The Soviet Navy’s budding nuclear submarine force was unreliable, just getting underway and fraught with one major disaster after another. The only reliable attack submarines available to send to Cuba were the few long-range diesel attack submarines, under command of Admiral Leonid Rybalko, based in the Arctic, at Polyarny, near Murmansk. Four of these submarines were ordered to sail undetected to the Azores, where they would then open sealed orders which sent them on to Mariel, Cuba for basing. In addition to regular torpedoes, each submarine would carry one nuclear tipped, 15 kiloton torpedo, which would wipe out everything in a 20 mile diameter circle. And none of these submarines had ever test-fired such a weapon. Each submarine had a nuclear specialist, who slept by this torpedo, plus the usual political officer, the infamous Zampolit, to keep an eye on everybody else. Their orders, approved by the Politburo and Secretary Khrushchev, read, “Your rules of engagement are clear. You will use these weapons if American forces attack you submerged or force your units to surface and then attack. Or upon receipt of orders from Moscow.” Incredibly, the submarine captains, like the Soviet commanders in Cuba, had been given virtual authority to start a nuclear war with the United States.
The Russian submarines were the B-130, under command of Captain Nikolai Shumkov, (the B stood for Bolshoi, which means big) the B-36, under Captain Aleksei Dubivko, B-4 under Captain Ryurik Ketov, and B-59, under Captain Vitali Savitsky. The captains were told nothing about Khrushchev’s project Anadyr. But as they approached Cuba, they received a message from Moscow, saying “Abort transit to Mariel and assume combat patrol at (coordinates -----). Maintain covert presence.” They were all shocked. The reason was their SIGINT operators had tuned into American broadcasts and learned about the missile crisis and Kennedy’s blockade, and they found themselves in a hornet’s nest of the U.S. Navy activity enforcing the blockade.
By now, the Soviet scheme was uncovered and the U.S. went into action. The U.S. military went to DEFCON-2, one step short of nuclear war, SAC aircraft were deployed to civilian airfields for protection, the Army was put on alert, a Command and Control station was set up in Florida, and the Navy task force put out to sea, with aircraft carriers and antisubmarine forces. The key ASW Destroyers were the USS Blandy, under Captain Edward Kelley, the USS Cecil, under Captain Charles Rozier, and the USS Cony,
With the blockade notice, the Navy flashed a Notice to Mariners (NOTAMs) signal, broadcast world wide, that read: “U.S. Forces in contact with unidentified submarines, will signal the submarine to surface in order to be identified, by dropping 4 to 5 harmless explosive sound signals, accompanied by the international code signal IDKCA, meaning to rise to the surface on an easterly course.”
The hide-and-seek games began between the Navy’s task force and the four Russian submarines. Moscow had kept their submarines in the dark about the Anadyr operation, and refused to let the submarines know of the Navy’s NOTAM.   But Soviet Admiral Rybalko, thinking it was unconscionable not to let his submariners know of the NOTAM, ignored Moscow’s orders, and transmitted the NOTAM to his submarines. When the subs were finally forced to the surface, they did so on an easterly course, which meant they knew of the NOTAM and would come to no harm from the Americans.
The Cony forced Savitsky’s sub to surface, and signaled him, “What ship are you, and do you need assistance” After sailing side by side for many hours, Savitsky signal the Cony that they would like cigarettes and bread.
Charles Rozier’s destroyer forced Dubivko to the surface, and Kelley forced Shumkov to the surface. But Shumkov’s sub was in real trouble, its engines failing, the internal temperature reaching 150 degrees, and he was being dogged by the Rozier. Shumkov ordered the nuclear weapons officer to load the nuclear torpedo into the tube and ready for firing at the Destroyer—and making sure the political officer heard him giving the order. The nuclear officer fainted, knowing that if the torpedo was fired, they would all die. But Shumkov knew that the political officer would hear his order report to Moscow his heroic actions and willingness to take out the Americans. When he had to surface, Shumkov saw the Blandy’s 5 inch gun turret swing around and point at his sub. He assumed he was about to be fired on. When Kelly realized the gun pointing was a mistake, and quickly had it pointed away from the sub. But Shumkov whispered to his trusted exec that he had absolutely no intention of arming and firing that damned weapon. At least that’s what he told the men from Destroyer Blandy when the met face to face 40 years later.
The American’s never knew how close they came to nuclear disaster. It would be 10 years before the CIA learned that the Soviet submarines were armed with nuclear torpedoes. It would be 40 years before they would learn that that the Sub captains had authority to launch the weapons, if attacked. You can read about these close encounters in Huchthausen ’s book, October Fury, on sale in the lobby.
Only Ketov’s sub escaped being forced to surface, since his SIGINT operators heard of the blockade when tuned to American radio,so he skirted around Cuba and hid in shallower Cuban waters.
When the Crisis was over and the Soviet subs returned to their base in the Arctic, they were not permitted to leave their subs. They were held as virtual prisoners to prevent them from telling their story that would embarrass Moscow. Admiral Rybalko, who violated orders by sending the American NOTAM to his subs, seems to have disappeared and was never heard from again. The Soviets eventually gave out two medals to the submariners, one to Ketov for not being forced to surface, and the other to a sailor who survived an appendectomy while submerged.
When the Crisis was over, Khrushchev would again back down for the same reason as in Berlin, he was still outgunned, and both sides knew it. This would eventually lead to the end of Khrushchev’s career and the Soviets would then go on to build a formidable strategic arsenal that eventually surpassed the United States. In 1980 when Gorbachev met President Reagan, he told Reagan “If we had gone to war against each other, the Soviet Union would have easily won.” The reason was that American traitor, John Walker, had given the Soviets our naval codes which would have permitted the Soviets to know where our missile submarines were at all times, and could have taken them out in a first strike. Fortunately, the U.S. and the Soviet Union would be at a stand off—under MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction)—and nuclear war was avoided, until the Soviet Union finally collapsed when confronted with a new arms race they could neither afford nor win.
The CIA also took another advantage of the Soviet build up in Cuba, when they installed their latest air defense radars. It turned out the CIA was testing their new mach 3.3 aircraft, a replacement for the U-2, called the A-12 or Oxcart.. It was also the predecessor of the SR-71 Blackbird. The most secret part of this aircraft was that it was to be the first ever stealth airplane. But the President had made it plain that it would never fly over the Soviet Union unless the CIA could prove it was invisible to Soviet radars. To get the proof, the CIA had devised an electronic system that could inject false targets into the Soviet radars, simulating an aircraft with a radar cross section of varying size, from a huge bomber, down to a small target the size of a small bird. The spoofing operations were carried out from Navy ship, sitting just over the horizon, with both Spanish and Russian translators onboard to listen to the Soviet communications and reaction to the false targets.   The project was called Palladium.
     During one of the Palladium night operations, the Cubans and Russians launched fighters to intercept the ghost aircraft. The Palladium operators had no trouble always keeping their electronic aircraft just one step ahead of the pursuing fighters, by tweaking the system’s electronic controls. Suddenly, one of the Cuban fighter pilots was heard to say to his controller that he had the intruding aircraft in sight. By now the Palladium operators we were on their feet and leaning over system console. Then the Cuban Pilot requested he be given permission to shoot down the intruder. Permission was granted and the pilot then radioed that he was beginning his firing pass. With that, the Palladium system was switched off. Finally the ground controller radioed the pilot to say that the radar target had disappeared, so the fighter must have shot down the intruder...   Stone silence from the Cuban pilot.
     Most Americans give Kennedy credit for solving the Cuban Missile Crisis. But it was my experience the U.S. Navy, and our military, deserve the real credit. It was their technical expertise, and professionalism, that carried the day.