ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE DURING THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85G00105R000100040005-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 26
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 21, 1998
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: September 19, 1966
• Content Type: SPEECH

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SPEAKER:
Plenary Session, 19 September 1966
SUBJECT: Role of Intelli ence Durin the Cuban Missile Crisis
It was the fall of 1962, an election year, and a silver-haired senator
of the opposition was taxing the Administration with its failure to "do
something" in light of all the reports he had about Soviet missiles in
Cuba. Asked about this at a news conference, President Kennedy
responded with this statement: ". . . To persuade our allies to come
with us, to hazard... the security... as well as the peace of the free
world, we have to move with hard intelligence. It
How the intelligence community provided the President with hard
intelligence throughout those fateful days in October is the subject
of my talk.
Thi s afternoon I would like, first, to revisit the days of the Cuban
missile crisis and review the unfolding of events in Cuba as we were
able to watch them through the unblinking eye of the airborne camera.
Then I will describe some of the actions taking place within the Washington
intelligence community to meet the extraordinary demands of the President
and his advisers.
We have here in the room men who had an intimate part in the func-
tioning of US intelligence throughout the crisis period: Sherman Kent,
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who accompanied Dean Acheson on the mission to France to inform
DeGaulle of the US actions and the evidence behind them; and Jack
Smith, who together with Ambassador Dowling carried the message
to Chancellor Adenauer. I'm sure both Mr. Smith and Mr. Kent
will be ready to comment and respond to questions after my talk.
Now, let's look back in time.
It was some time in 1961 that the idea of placing strategic missiles
in Cuba began to suggest itself to Khrushchev and the Soviet leadership.
They had several problems that the successful establishment of a
Soviet missile base in Cuba would help to solve: it would improve
the USSR's inferior strategic position; it would push the West toward
some concessions in negotiations, especially on recognition of East
Germany and the status of Berlin; it would ensure control of Cuba and
prevent the US invasion so feared by Castro; and it would demonstrate
to the Communist world the strength of Soviet action as opposed to the
weakness of Chinese words, fierce though they may be.
When did the decision to move take place? We're not able to say
precisely but it probably was late in 1961 or early 1962. Certainly by
the Spring of 1962, the planning was complete. In late July 1962, the
first Soviet arms carriers connected with the buildup began to arrive
in Cuba. This is the Soviet freighter Sovetskaya Gavan as it neared Cuba
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in August with four Komar guided missile patrol boats topside.
The Soviets had ambitious plans for their military presence in
Cuba. Basically, they intended to export a miniature of the Soviet
military establishment at home, with everything from motorized
infantry to strategic missiles. The program as we saw it unfold
was to include the following elements, with a total of at least 20, 000
personnel.
--Four composite ground forces units equipped with the latest
Soviet armor and tactical missiles.
--An air defense system consisting of advanced radars, 24 SA-2
sites, and a regiment of 42 MIG-21s.
--A naval and coastal defense force consisting of four coastal
defense cruise missile units and 12 Komar patrol boats. i
--And a strategic missile force consisting of at least 24 MRBM
launchers and 12 to 16 IRBM launchers located as shown on this
map.
Although the different parts of the program began to develop in
Cuba at different times, the concept basically was the concurrent
deployment of both offensive and defensive systems. The target date
for completion of the program--with the exception of the IRBMs--was
the first half of November.
The first ships to arrive--in late July--brought in the first of the
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SA-2 units and probably many of the general logistics and head-
quarters personnel. We knew the ships were coming in, and we
identified them as arms carriers. We didn't know, however, what
the arms were or that this was just the beginning.
During the month of August about a dozen SA-2 sites were de-
ployed to cover western Cuba. On 5 August a U-2 flew over most of
the island, but it was a day or so too early to catch the first SAM sites
being deployed. The next U-2 mission didn't co Ul the end of
251 4 t, but by the middle of the month refugee
indicated that SA-2 units were being deployed in Cuba.
During the latter half of August equipment for the ground troops
was beginning to come in, and two of the four camps were probably
being set up. The first of the MIG-21s arrived during this period.
At the end of August we began to get a better picture of the size and
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scope of the Soviet effort in Cuba. A U-2 mission on the 29th found eight
SA-2 sites and the eight Komars delivered so far. As this picture from
that mission shows, the sites were quickly laid out.
This mission also photographed the future locations of some of the
Soviet long-range surface-to-surface missile bases, but they were still
woods and farmland with no discernible indications of what they were
shortly to become. Here is what the Guanajay IRBM site west of Havana
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looked like on 29 August.
The program which had begun to shape up in August--both in Cuba
itself and in the eyes of US intelligence--really got rolling in September.
The SA-2 program was well underway, other conventional weapons
were coming in, and the heart of the Soviet program--the strategic
missiles--began to arrive.
A. U-2 mission on 5 September showed us that the Soviets had
brought in MIG-21s to join the earlier MIG models they had given the
Cubans. This picture of Santa Clara airfield was the first to tell us
that there were MIG- 21s in Cuba. From the photography we also deter-
mined that coastal defense cruise missile sites, with relatively short
range capability, were going in.
We think the first MRBMs came to Cuba the first half of September,
possibly as early as the 7th. On the 15th the first confirmed missile
carrier--the Poltava, shown here as it reached Cuban waters- -disgorged
its cargo at Mariel. The ships that carried the MRBMs to Cuba were
new Soviet ships with large hatches--70-80 feet long--built for the
timber trade. As they made their voyage to Cuba, they rode high in
the water indicating bulky equipment below deck.
By the end of September we were beginning to receive agent and
refugee reporting which reflected the deployment of strategic missiles,
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but the missiles were coming in faster than the reporting. By mid-
September construction work was probably under way at all the missile
sites.
U-2 missions took place next on 26 and 29 September. These
showed us the growing extent of the Soviet deployment of the SA-2
system and other conventional forces. Unfortunately these missions gave
us no evidence of the strategic missile deployment, then in its early
stages.
Thus, during September we had had four U-2 flights. One early in
the month showed us some SA-2 sites, but was too early to detect the
strategic missiles. For the rest of the month the overflight program
was hampered by bad weather. The next flight--on the 17th--encoun-
tered heavy cloud cover over virtually all of its targets. The two
missions flown at the end of the month enjoyed good weather, but the
flight patterns didn't take them over the strategic missile deployment
areas.
And so we come to the month of the crunch. By mid-October the
Soviet program was going full blast. U-2 missions were planned for
the 3rd and the 6th, but weather caused the first to be cancelled and
the second failed to reach Cuba because of mechanical difficulties. A
couple of peripheral flights turned up some more SA-2 sites, but mean-
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while time was passing and agent reports were coming in that focused
our attention on the San Cristobal area southwest of Havana.
Finally on Sunday, October 14th, a U-2 mission got off. It flew A
over San Cristobal and this is one of the pictures it took. Here,
scattered about a Cuban field, was the equipment that could mean
only that Soviet MRBMs for the first time had been sent out of the
Soviet Union. Let me call your attention particularly to the oxidizer
tank trailers lined up in the center of the picture; we'll see them again
shortly.
This is one of the pictures that went first to the Acting Director,
Gen. Carter, then to McGeorge Bundy late on Monday, the 15th. Mr.
Bundy made the decision to hold the pictures from the President until
morning. On the 16th, the President saw this picture and the others
from the Sunday flight--and the crisis was on.
As we were soon to discover, two other MRBM units were going
in at San Cristobal and two at Sagua La Grande. The progress being J610
made was brought home by this picture of Sagua La Grande taken on
Wednesday, the 17th. All six MRBM units--a total of 24 launchers--were
about at the same stage of construction, and a couple of sites were
probably already capable of launching some of their missiles. We still
don't know whether the warheads were in Cuba then, but it was an easy
assumption to make at the time.
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The other part of the strategic missile program--the IRBM deploy-
ment--required the construction of fairly elaborate fixed sites. I
showed you earlier a picture of the Guanajay IRBM site taken on 29
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August. Here is part of that field seen from a U-2 on 17 October. Here
at site number one we see four launch pads, control bunkers, and a war-
head storage site under construction. In all, two IRBM units--each with
four pads--were going in at Guanajay. The first of these could have
achieved an initial capability by about mid-November and full readiness
later that month. The other unit at Guanajay wouldn't have been ready
to fire until December. smwm~
One other IRBM unit was going in near Remedios. Its construction
roughly paralled that of Guanajay No. 2. It would also have been ready
in December. If, as seems likely, another unit was planned for the
Remedios area, it wouldn't have been ready until early 1963.
However, the readiness of the IRBM units never became a real
problem in the Cuban crisis, since no IRBM apparently ever arrived
in Cuba. They almost certainly were on the ships that turned back
on 23 October. Some of the support equipment was seen, however.
In the first week after the discovery, 17 U-2 missions covered 97%
of the island area with photography and the scope of the whole Soviet
program was discerned. The Soviets in Cuba must have had some
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inkling of the stepped-up U-2 surveillance after the 14th. However,
they kept on with the slow but steady pace of their program.
The crisis surfaced for the world with the President's speech on
Monday, 22 October. Following the speech, the Soviets in Cuba showed
a little more life. By then, assuming they had warheads for their
missiles, they could probably have launched at least 16 MRBMs at
targets in the US. They were also making some attempts to camou-
flage the sites.
The day after the speech the US began launching extensive low level
reconnaissance flights over Cuba. Our basic picture of the deployments
didn't change, but we saw a lot of details. p //
--Here is a close-up view of the soggy field at San Cristobal No. 1.
This is the same site you saw earlier in the 14 October U-2 photo-
graph. The missile erector is covered for protection against the
rain. The oxidizer tank trailers are still lined up in a row.
--This is how Guanajay site No. 1 looked down close. The greater .012
demands of the IRBM system for fixed installations are evident
in building of the control bunker and the launch pads.
The Soviets hurried to bring their 24 SA-2 sites into operational
status as an air defense system. Bulldozers worked to revet the sites,
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like the one shown here at Bahia Honda with its six launchers surrounding
the guidance control vans and radar.
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By Saturday, 27 October, the SAM system was operational. A
surface-to-air missile brought down one of the U-2s, killing the pilot.
It was Major Anderson who had been the pilot on the historic mission
of 14 October.
From the 23rd to the 28th of October, this was the week that was.
This was the week of standing eyeball to eyeball.
The initial Soviet reaction was to deny that missiles in Cuba served
any but the noblest of defensive purposes. It was not clear for several
days what was going on in the Kremlin, but it became clear on Wednes-
day the 24th that 12 of the 25 Soviet ships heading for Cuba had turned
around and were not going to risk running the US quarantine line. The
messages went back and forth between Moscow and Washington as
Khrushchev tried to get out of his predicament.
On Saturday the 27th, the President sent his letter to Khrushchev
accepting the Soviet "proposal" to remove the offensive weapons
systems from Cuba under appropriate UN supervision. The US for
its part agreed, once adequate UN arrangements were established, to
lift the quarantine and to assure against an invasion of Cuba. "But, "
said the President, "the first ingredient, let me emphasize, is the
cessation of work on missile sites in Cuba and measures to render
such weapons inoperable... "
On a crisp, beautiful October Sunday--two weeks to the day after
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the U-2 took the picture of MRBM equipment present on a field in Cuba--
the message from Khrushchev arrived: "... the Soviet Government...
has given a new order to dismantle the arms which you described as
offensive, and to crate and return them to the Soviet Union. "
Photography on the 29th showed a little change, but some of the
sites definitely still had some operational capability. This is how
one of the sites at San Cristobal looked. Although the erectors had
been drawn back from their launch positions, some construction work
was continuing.
By Thursday, the 1st of November, however, low-altitude missions
found the Soviets quickly packing up and going home. At San Cristobal
two of the missile ready tents had gone, a third was coming down, and
the launch positions were empty.
if.
Another low-flying reconnaissance aircraft found the launch positions
at Sagua La Grande empty and a convoy forming for departure.
By the next Sunday, the 4th of November the equipment from the
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MRBM and IRBM sites had shown up in the Cuban ports. Here at Mariel
we counted four launch stands, 17 missile erectors, and various trucks
and vans.
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One of the aircraft took a picture of its own shadow as it flew over
a Soviet freighter with six missiles on their transporters lashed on the 77
open deck, and personnel lined up waiting to go aboard.
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That put an end--in a manner of speaking--to the strategic missile
episode in Cuba. (Of refugee and exile reports that Soviet strategic
missiles and their warheads remain in Cuba, there is no end. And
the resources of the government and the intelligence community
continue the inspection that Castro denied the United Nations to make.
home. Here is a Navy destroyer inspecting the Vogoles as it leaves
Cuban waters.
The Soviets didn't have any large hatch ships available to take
the missiles back right away, so they loaded them aboard anything
they had in Cuban waters. By Saturday, 9 November, the last of
the MRBMs delivered to Cuba before the quarantine were on their
way out. The well-being of these Soviet ships, their cargo and their A??,,oO
crew, was tenderly watched over by the US Navy practically all the way
Although the removal of missiles was effectively the end of the
Cuban missile crisis, the demand that the IL-28 jet light bombers be
removed kept the Russians on the run, and caused them no end of trouble
with Castro.
The first IL-28s had begun to arrive in the last half of September. 00
However, we didn't know about it in Washington until 10 October, when
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the first photos of IL-28 crates on the Kasimov arrived in town.
(Although the picture was taken on 28 September, when the Kasimov
was still in Mediterranean waters, it was in slower-moving operational
channels and not available for intelligence exploitation until 10 October. )
The IL-28s were apparently intended for the Cuban air force. 6)
Cubans had been training on them in the USSR, and there were several
trainer versions among the 42 aircraft delivered. This was the picture
at San Julian airfield on 27 October as work assembling the Beagles
continued.
The Soviets at first refused to take the bombers out because they
belonged to the Cubans. At the time of the missile crisis, however,
the US considered the question of ownership irrelevant. The US
kept the pressure on and by mid-November the Soviets had stopped
putting the IL-28s together. Activity at San Julian appeared to cease as
Mikoyan argued with an irate Castro.
Finally on 20 November, Khrushchev was able to announce that the
bombers would also be withdrawn, and by 7 December they were all
on Soviet ships going back to the USSR under the watchful eye of the
Navy. The Soviets didn't bother to crate those that had been assembled
but shipped them, as here, as deck cargo.
Today, only some 2, 000 of the original 20, 000 or so Soviet troops
are still in Cuba--these 2, 000 are advisers, instructors, and main-
tenance personnel. All the Soviet weapons that were not withdrawn--
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the Komar missile boats, the cruise missiles, the MIG-21s and the
SAMs, and the ground forces equipment--are now being operated by
the Cuban armed forces.
Let me now turn to some of the things that happened in the intelli-
gence community in Washington before, during, and after the crisis
period. I shall not attempt to recount what took place in the councils
of the most high as the intelligence product was received by them and
acted upon. This has already been done by such authors as Ted Sorensen
and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. , in their "I was there" books. Rather I
want to revisit some of the events and undertakings that made it possible
for US intelligence to play the crucial role that it did in the Cuban
missile crisis.
I think the place to start is with the- realization that the events of
September and October 1962 did not burst upon an intelligence community
only dimly aware of Cuba and the problems it posed. In a way, the
community without realizing it had been gearing itself for the crisis to
come since late 1961. As the result of directives from Mr. McCone,
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flight program was increased from one flight per month to two.
This attention to greater collection of information was matched by
developments within the intelligence producing offices. In the Office
of Research and Reports in CIA, for example, a Cuba Branch was estab-
lished in the Economic Research Area and the Latin American Branch
of Geographic Research Area began to concentrate its efforts almost
entirely on Cuba. The Foreign Broadcast Information Service in-
creased its coverage of Cuban radio broadcasts and began to issue
an analysis of these broadcasts prepared by the Radio Propaganda
Branch. The National Photographic Interpretation Center added to
the number of photo interpreters working on Cuban photographs. And
in March of 1962 the Office of Current Intelligence began to publish a
Daily SummaLy devoted entirely to Cuba. This summary contained
information of all classifications and was designed to bring persons
working directly on Cuban matters all pertinent information. In the
beginning, the Daily Summa y had a rather restricted audience but,
as the number of persons immediately involved in Cuban matters
increased, this changed.
The build-up of analytical capabilities in the community only barely
kept pace with the influx of information. One of the unsolved problems
throughout the pre-crisis period was how successfully to cope with the
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By August an increasing proportion of this flow of reporting was
starting to speak of military cargoes being unloaded under conditions
of security, and of the arrival of large numbers of Soviet personnel.
One response of the community to this reporting was the preparation
of a special national intelligence estimate on the military buildup in
Cuba. The estimate was passed by USIB on 19 September and it concluded,
in brief, that the main purpose of the buildup was to strengthen the
Castro regime against any attempt by the US to overthrow it. The
estimate noted that the Soviet arms would substantially improve the
air defense and coastal defense capabilities of the Cubans, strengthening the
regime and discouraging its opponents at home and in exile. The esti-
mate also noted that the Soviets might be tempted to establish light
bombers or short-range surface-to-surface missiles in Cuba but that
their decision would depend heavily on the Soviet estimate of a US
military reaction. Finally, the estimate observed that the Soviets
would benefit militarily from placing medium and intermediate range
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ballistic missiles in Cuba, or from establishing a submarine base
there. Either development was incompatible with Soviet practice
to date and with Soviet policy as it was then estimated to be. In short,
the thrust of the estimate was that the Soviets would be unlikely to
introduce strategic offensive weapons into Cuba.
The position taken by the USIB on the 19th of September was indeed
the consensus of the community. It was not until shortly after mid-
September that a few ground observer reports began coming in which
were specifically descriptive or suggestive of the arrival of strategic
missiles in Cuba. Before then, the SA-2s, the coastal defense cruise
missiles, and the MIG-21s seemed to indicate only a Soviet intent
to give Castro a formidable defensive capability. That the Soviets
would build Cuba into what the US could only regard as a Soviet stra-
tegic base went against all precedents in Soviet foreign policy.
As Mr. Kent has written in a review of the estimate:
On 15 October we realized that our estimate of the Soviets'
understanding of the mood of the United States and its probable re-
action was wrong. On 28 October we realized that the Soviets had
realized they had misjudged the United States. In between we veri-
fied that our own feeling for the mood of the United States and its
probable reaction had been correct. In a way our misestimate of
Soviet intentions got an ex post facto validation.
As it happened, the research and analytical work which usually
precedes the final coordination of any NIE was going on at the very
time that the first MRBM units were arriving in Cuba. Although a
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few ground observer reports were received that in retrospect appear
to speak of offensive missiles, there was nothing between the USIB
meeting on 19 September and the 14 October photography of San Cristobal
that clearly and unequivocally justified reversing the thrust of the esti-
mate. For one thing, as Mr. Kent has written, "it is not as if these
new data had no egress to the world of policy people except through
National Intelligence Estimates. The information was current intelli-
gence when it came in and it promptly went out to the key customers
as such. "
This brings us to the problem of providing current intelligence and
to what can properly be called the crisis period. At this point all the
staffs and instrumentalities of the intelligence leaders in Washington
organized themselves to do one thing before all others: to provide the
most rapid possible processing, assessment, and publication of intelli-
gence related to the problems of the President. As current as the intelli-
gence was, it was never current enough. Every way was sought to
minimize the time between the arrival of information in Washington and
its presentation--in meaningful form and with judgment--to the President
and his advisers. One of the fastest shows in town throughout this period
was that of the National Photographic Interpretation Center and its peripa-
tetic director, Art Lundahl, as he shuttled back and forth between the
White House, the State Department, USIB meetings, and NPIC, briefing
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on the results of the latest photography. Some of you may recall
seeing him as you entered the Headquarters building at Langley for
the second day of the 1962 Intelligence Methods Conference. He was
leaving with Ray Cline for the first meeting with President Kennedy.
The prescient Mr. McCone, who had suspected strategic missiles
from the first days of the arms buildup, called on 16 October for a
special all-source publication to provide him with all the current
information pertinent to the crisis. This meant not only military
developments in Cuba and the status of Soviet shipping to Cuba, but
also Soviet political and diplomatic developments, the status of Soviet
military forces in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, other develop-
ments in Cuba, and world reactions to the events taking place. As you
can see, this was a most comprehensive undertaking and one that was
to be ready for the Director by 7 o'clock each morning, in time for
his 8:30 meeting with USIB and the 10 o'clock meeting of the Executive
Committee at the White House.
To meet this request of the Director, the Office of Current Intelli-
gence initiated the Cuban Crisis Memorandum on the 17th of October.
The publication was issued at least once a day, and sometimes two, for
about six weeks. The information was current as of 6 o'clock in the
morning and normally included the highlights of the initial findings
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reported by NPIC on the photography taken the day before.
Two subjects were of especially great importance in the first two
weeks of the crisis: the status of Soviet shipping, and the status of
Soviet strategic weapons in Cuba. OCI established a situation room
manned around the clock to bring the analysts concerned with current
reporting on these two subjects together, accessible to each other and
to others needing the information. It was out of this situation room that
much of the material for the Cuban Crisis Memorandum was pulled to-
gether starting about 4 in the morning to meet the 7 o'clock deadline
to the Director.
Soviet shipping and the operation of the US quarantine were the
reporting responsibility of what Mr. McCone called "my shipping
central"--an ORR task force which moved into the OCI situation room
and worked in close cooperation with the Pentagon to maintain continuing
surveillance of Soviet shipping not only on the approaches to Cuba, but
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This task force dealt with
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photography, alongside inspection by
US Naval units, low-level photography and inspection by US military
aircraft supporting the quarantine, and whatever other eyeball information
might help determine the cargo of the suspect ships.
The purpose was to determine as nearly as possible the cargo--
human or materiel--of the ships, and to maintain a 24-hour pinpoint
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track of each ship from its home port to Cuba and back again.
It was one of the analysts on this task force who first alerted the
community to the fact that the Soviet ships heading for Cuba had turned
around after the President's speech of 22 October. You may be interested
in the story behind the story. In the spring of 1962, an expensive auto-
mated system to account for Soviet ship movements had been set up in
Washington. The crisis obviously was the test for this system, for the
Soviet reaction to the US decision to blockade Cuba was crucial to the
next US course of action. As Washington waited anxiously for evidence
of the Soviet reaction, the computer spewed forth reams of data on
Soviet ship operations and positions, but nothing on the direction of
movement. It was an experienced lady analyst on the task force, working
with the same data on the dog-eared 5x8 cards she had been using for
years, who first noted that the key Soviet ships now were headed east
and north, not west and south.
For the essential current analysis of the status of Soviet offensive
systems in Cuba, an unusual development took place: two interagency
committees began to sit in concert practically 24 hours a day. The
Guided Missile and Astronautics Intelligence Committee and the Joint
Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee took up residence together in the
work space of NPIC in downtown Washington. Beginning on the 18th of
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October, the two committees worked throughout the night, reviewing
each day's photography as it came direct from the photo interpreters
next door, and preparing a joint evaluation of the Soviet offensive
forces in Cuba. This report went to the Director in time for his
morning meetings. Portions were summarized for inclusion in the
Cuban Crisis Memorandum being prepared concurrently in OCI in
Langley. There was an extraordinary amount of hurried travel back
and forth between NPIC, the Pentagon, and CIA Headquarters in the
small hours of the night as people strived to meet the deadlines for
publication that the meetings of USIB and the Executive Committee
required.
The joint meetings of GMAIC and JAEIC called together not only
the regular members but also advisory personnel from such outfits
as the Army Missile Command and specialists in such matters as
Soviet merchant shipping. In the early days of the crisis just prior
to and following the President's speech, the main focus of the two
committees was the readiness of the missile sites to fire and the
availability of nuclear warheads. When the withdrawal phase began,
the focus shifted to the substantiation of the actual movement out of
the missiles and their supporting equipment. The committees ended
their excursion into the production of current intelligence on 11 November,
after meeting daily for over three weeks and issuing 22 reports.
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I might note that one of the unique aspects of preparing the daily
Cuban Crisis Memorandum was the desire of the Director that he be
given a document that had all the information the President and the
Executive Committee ought to have. This meant information on US
military dispositions and actions that had a bearing on the Cuban and
Soviet developments being reported. Under the pressure of the times,
the operations and planning parts of the Pentagon were persuaded to
make more information available to intelligence than they ever had
before, at least on a regular basis. This was the beginning of a trend
in the preparation of senior level intelligence publications that continues
today.
Many of the activities that took place during the crisis ended when
it ended. The joint meetings running through the night no longer were
necessary, the situation room wasn't needed 24 hours a day, the special
publications could turn their reporting role over to the regular publications.
Gradually most of the ad hoc machinery of the crisis period was put away,
but not all. The intelligence collection resources were charged with
monitoring the Soviet fulfillment of the agreement with the US. The
failure of U Thant to obtain Castro's agreement to the joint US-Soviet
proposal for United Nations on-site inspection meant that US would 25X1X4
continue its overflights.
With the missiles and IL-28s gone, attention was concentrated on the
status of the other Soviet forces and equipment in Cuba. Slowly the
Cubans were trained in the operation of the SAMs and the MIG-21s
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 ... F* T. Koy.
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and the Komar boats and control of these items passed out of Soviet
hands.
Right up to today, Cuban reporting continues to receive special
attention. Reports of missiles or missile-related activity continue to
come in through a variety of sources, mostly exiles and agents in Cuba.
Now, as then, these reports are carefully checked against shipping re-
ports and the current take of the U-2 overflights. I don't think anyone
expects the Soviets, having been once burned, to be twice foolish, but then
we didn't expect them to be once foolish either.
The words of President Kennedy in mid-December of 1962 as he
reflected on the crisis speak to one of the lessons of the times:
"I think, looking back on Cuba, what is of concern is the
fact that both governments were so far out of contact, really.
I don't think that we expected that /Khrushchev/ would put the
missiles in Cuba, because it would have seemed such an
imprudent action for him to take, as it was later proved.
Now, he obviously must have thought that he could do it in
secret and that the United States would accept it. So that
he did not judge our intentions accurately.
What are some of the other lessons we can draw from the role of
intelligence during the Cuban missile crisis? There are many, but I
will suggest only a few.
One is the importance of enabling intelligence analysts working with
one part of a problem to communicate with those working in related areas.
In the Cuban missile crisis, the shipping analysts had information of
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import to those concerned with military and political matters and the
timely sharing of this information was vital. A more difficult kind
of separation to overcome is that that divides the intelligence analyst
from the collector. This most often occurs where new collection
systems or highly sensitive sources are involved. At times, it almost
seems--to the analyst, at least--that the collector regards collection
as an end in itself. It isn't, of course, and the solution to this kind
of obstacle to intelligence analysis and reporting is the mutual problem
of the collector and the analyst.
Another lesson is the need for great flexibility in structuring the
response demanded of intelligence at the time of crisis. Our normal
organization is designed to insure accuracy and completeness within
operating deadlines. It is in these times that we add to our fund of know-
ledge and expertise. But this normal organization is rarely well-suited
to the kinds of actions necessary to meet a crisis head on. Nor are plans
for crisis management drawn up in advance of the crisis usually of much
help. The crisis imposes its own shape, its own schedules, its own
questions, and its own answers. In short, the intelligence manager
best prepares for crisis by filling up the fund of knowledge and ability
when he can and by using it as efficiently and as imaginatively as he knows
how when the crisis breaks.
Finally, let me return to the question raised at the beginning by
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President Kennedy's statement that "we have to move with hard
intelligence. " I think it is clear that the US Government was able
to act with precision and certainty in the crisis because, at the
crucial stage, its intelligence on military developments in Cuba
and elsewhere was hard. There are some who have interpreted
this to mean that it was photographic evidence. I believe this
exaggerates the role of photography in intelligence reporting, as
important as it is. I believe that one lesson of the Cuban missile
crisis is the absolute indispensability of all sources--human and
technical--and all intelligence techniques and methodologies to the
accomplishment of hard intelligence. If there is one lesson we
should have learned by now, it is the danger of single source intelli -
gence, no matter what the surface promise and attractiveness of that
source may be.
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