WHAT TO DO ABOUT CUBA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000200930086-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 17, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 4, 2000
• Sequence Number: 86
• Publication Date: February 19, 1963
• Content Type: NSPR

WASHINGTON F E B 1 9 19 b '
DAILY. NEWS
Approved For Release 2000/08/27 : CIA-RDP75-001
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Do About Cuba
MOUNTING public concern over U. S.
policy as to Cuba is completely mis-
understood, in our opinion, by J. Wil-
liam Fulbright, chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee.
And he misstates his case when he
implies criticism mainly is prompted
by partisan Republican motives. High-
ranking Democrats also are numbered
among the critics.
Sen. Fulbright discounts Cuba as a
military threat to the United States
and there isn't a great deal of argu-
ment about that. The 17,000 to 20,000
Soviet troops on the island would be
overwhelmed by U. S. forces in event
of armed conflict. Repeated emphasis
on this military threat, or the lack ' of
it-offensive or defensive missiles-
serves merely to distract attention from
the real menace of communist Cuba.
That menace is the establishment of
a hostile foreign power almost within
sight of U. S. soil. It is the existence
of a communist police state within the
Americas- something President Ken-
nedy once said we would not tolerate.
We do not know why the Soviets
maintain this large military force on
Cuba but believe it to have two pur-
poses: To hold over the Cuban people
the threat of Soviet tanks, as in llun-
gary, if they try to revolt against the
Castro tyranny; to train subversive
agents for sabotage and revolution in
the Latin American states, carrying ex-
plosives and small arms, trans-shipped
from this bristling arms depot.
This subversive campaign isn't a the-
ory. Castro boasts of it. The effects
are plain in, for instance, Venezuela
where there have been communist-led
riots, dynamitings and, most recently,
the hijacking of a Venezuelan ship by
communist pirates. Cuba is Tittle more
than a rowboat ride from the island
of Hispaniola, occupied by the bitterly
misruled nation of Haiti and the Do-
minican Republic, the latter struggling
to establish democratic rule after a long
generation of vile dictatorship.
These only hint the dangers inherent
in a communist Cuba. The imminent
menace extends to the militarily weak,
small nations of Central America, to
economically troubled Brazil-in fact to
most of Latin America.
Among those urging "highest pri-
ority" to forcing the Soviet troops out
of Cuba is John Stennis, a Democrat
and head of the Senate Preparedness
sub-committee investigating the Cuban
military buildup.
He does not urge invasion. In our
opinion few would approve t hat at, at.
least at this time. But there are effec-
tive measures the Administration could
take, short of invasion. These call for
tough economic and diplomatic sanc-
tions to isolate Cuba, with reimposition
of the blockade as a next-to-last resort.
Naturally these steps involve dan-
gers; but doing nothing, or next to
nothing, involves still worse dangers.
Basically we think growing U. S. dis-
content is inspired by a feeling that the
Administration, after vigorous blockade
action, has gone soft on Cuba-that it
is submissive to repeated Soviet af-
front, that it even has relaxed the
sternness of measures in preparation
before the big missiles were photo-
graphed.
By one method or another this in-
creasingly dangerous infection must be
rooted out of the Americas and the
longer we delay the wider it will spread.,
Approved For Release 2000/08/27 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000200930086-7