LIBRARY RELEASES CUBAN CRISIS TAPES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000303190015-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 16, 2010
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: October 27, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

3 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/16: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303190015-1
YORE: TD S
C! =;.; f~'~ 3 27 October 1983
McNamara Role Dominant
In the view of Mr. Moss, the tapes
show that the dominant actor in th
e
CUBAN CRISIS TAPES first day of meetings Robert S.
McNamara, Secretary of Defense.
"McNamara took a leading role in the
disuusions and tried to get people to
focus on the issues," Mr. Moss coin.
mented.
nnedy Archive Calls Timing it was Mr! McNamara, the tran.
script shows, who first defined three
pf Its Disclosure of Secret possible reponses. The first was politi.
cal or diplomatic, to - consult with
LIBRARY RELEASES
By FOX BL'TTERFI#LD
.. SpStldtoTS.N,wywtTlmK
BOSTON, Oct. 26- In the first hours
after discovering that the Soviet Union
was weedy amissiles in nd his advisee7s eel-i i
dent .
ously discussed air strikes against
Cuba, according to secret White House
tapes released today.
-q don't think we got much time on
these missiles," Kennedy said at a
meeting Oct. 16, 1962, shortly after
being shown aerial reconnaisance
photographs of the newly discovered
Soviet missiles sites.
"We're certainly going to do No. 1,"
the President told his top aides. "We're
going to take out these missiles."
The tapes, along with transcipts of
the'White House talks, were made pub.
e
=T. Cuban leader Fidel Castro and the
M
eanutg alarge President s papers to the library.
Moss, chief archivist of the Library, I number Of Russian fighters that had re- But it ended in la
said 20 percent of the material had -cently also been Shipped to Cuba. "1V was not censored:
been deleted by f he officials for se. 3 is invade," he said. Mr. Moss said that future release of
ct=n y reasons. material on the Cuban missile crisis
T
C
Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev
ample warn g that Washington would
not accept the missiles in Cuba.
When Mr. McNamara described this
as "a nonmilitary action," others in the
meeting laughed, the transcript shows.
The second course, Mr. McNamara
suggested, was a naval blockade t
o
.
keep. all further Russian offensive
weapons from Cuba. It might can
Gen.-Maxwell W. Taylor, the chair.
man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well
as Mr . McNamara, favored a surprise
attack to hit both the missile sites and
the airplanes.
The transcipts show Kennedy closely
questioning officials of the Central In-'~
telligence Agency on how they know
the small objects in the photographs,
taken by a L'-2 plane, were really Rus.
sian medium-range missiles. Their an-
swers speak of a comparison with
photographs of Soviet missiles dis-
played on parade in Moscow.
At one point in the first meeting,
after he learned about the missiles,
Kennedy mused on why the Russians
decided to put the weapons in Cuba
after publicly declaring they would not.
There "must be some major r ejLson for
the Russians to set this up," he said.
"Must be that they're not satisfied with
their ICBM's."
"we search eve m Dean Rusk, the Setet State,
McNamara said. Th s was the option it then recalled that a fewweeks of before
ultimately selected John McCone, the Director of Central
The third choice, which both the intelligence, warned that Khrushchev
President and most of his officials might put missiles in Cuba because "he ,
seemed to favor on the first day, was a knows that we have a substantial nu-
milita y attack to remove the missiles. clear superiority."
Kennedy Enumerated Them Minutes before the first meeting, the
transcript reveals, Kennedy chatted
Kennedy himself refined the military. cheerfully over the phone with his
would spos be just three options. "One daughter Caroline. The conversation
taking out these mis. between father and daughter has been ,
siles," he said in the
i
d
meet
ng in the
eleted in accordaceith th
,,n we condi.
here after review by national aecuriry Cabinet Room. "No. 2 would be to take lions of the Kennedy family's gift of the
officials in Washington. William W out all the airplanes 11
,
atedal a Coincidence ' America's allies and give both th
apes
over Two Meetings
would be very slow. He noted that all
the tapes had first to be transcribed,
which took 100 to 150 hours of work for
each hour of recording. Then the tran.
scripts had to be sent to Washington for
clearance.
With these difficulties, and the Ken-
nedy Library's shortage of money, he
estimated that only three hours of
recording could be prepared for review
each year.
.The 87 pages of transcript and 33
minutes of tapes released today cov.
eyed only two meetings on the Cuban
missiles, both on Oct. 16, 1962, the first
day of the 13-day crisis.
in June the Kennedy Library made
public a? first selection of materials
from tapes secretly recorded by Ken-
nedy. They involved the integration of
the University of Mississippi in 1962
and discussions of Administration tax 1
policy. The tapes' existence was first
announced in 1973.
Mr. Moss said the timing of this re-
lease, on the day after the United
States invasion of Grenada, was coinci.
denial. It happened because the library
only recently got the material back
from Washington, he said.
-Mr. Moss said the material on the
Cuban missile crisis Contained "no sur.
Prises." He said, "it doesn't change
anything. There is nothing new of sub-
stance."
But he added that "it gives us the
voices" of the participants in the cru.
cial meetings and may provide histo-
rians with a more accurate sense of the
personalities involved.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/16: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303190015-1