THIRTEEN LIES: KENNEDY AND THE 1962 CUBAN CRISIS
PART 1
By Servando Gonzalez
TNA News with Commentary
The New Australian
Australia
La Nueva Cuba
Some time ago I found on the Web a joker's site with suggestions about
deductions you can legally claim to lower your taxes. One of them was,
go watch a
Kevin Costner movie and deduct it as a charitable contribution. Last week
I followed
the guy's advice and saw Thirteen Days. Believe me, it was not worth the
effort.
Next time I'll rather pay my taxes in full.
Though we are used to Hollywood's freedoms in telling history, I always
watch a
movie for entertainment. If I want to know about history I read it in a
good book.
Initially, film makers never made any claim that what they were creating
was
nothing other than fiction, and I never had a problem with that. Lately,
however,
there is a growing trend to pass some of Hollywood's fiction as history,
and this is
something I don't like one bit.
As a card-carrying compassionate Liberal, Kevin Costner feels a strong
attraction
for starring in politically correct movies. When applied to history, however,
political
correctness is equivalent to the distortion of the past to justify the
politics of the
present; that is, lying. Thirteen Days, Costner's latest film about the
Cuban missile
crisis, is a politically correct movie.
THE LIES
Thirteen days is as full of lies as Robert Kennedy's homonymous book in
which the
film is mostly based. The rest of the lies come from some recent studies
about the
crisis made by "serious" historians. Among the most flagrant lies depicted
in the
film are:
1. In some scenes, soldiers jump from trucks to ready intermediate range
missiles.
Unless the Soviets had implemented affirmative action at the time and had
enlisted
some Africans as privates, one must assumethat the soldiers manning the
missiles in the film are Cuban. It is true that some Cuban troops had been
authorized to work on the installation of the SAM bases. But, with the
exception of
Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro, and Ché Guevara (none of which
are black), the Cubans
were strictly forbidden to access the strategic missile bases, or even
come close
to their perimeter guarded by seasoned Soviet special troops.
2. Kennedy and his close associates were surprised and shocked with the
unexpected discovery of strategic Soviet missiles in Cuban soil. It seems
that their
surprised was faked, because as early as August, 1962, the word was out
in
Washington that the Soviets were building missile launchers for weapons
already in
Cuba. Between August 31 and October 12, 1962, Senator Kenneth Keating made
ten Senate speeches and fourteen public statements about the developments
in
Cuba. He was merely saying publicly what the American intelligence community,
apparently his source of information, was muttering as loudly as they could.
Cuban refugees, leaving the island in drones, had been reporting sightings
of Soviet
army trucks carrying extremely long cigar-shaped objects covered by tarpaulins.
Some of the refugees strongly suspected that the cigar-shaped objects they
had
seen riding on Soviet trucks on Cuban highways were not Siberian Cohibas
for
Castro. But, instead of paying attention to the growing concern, White
House press
secretary Pierre Salinger criticized the television networks for giving
Keating the air
time to express his concerns
3. We were more close to the brink than ever before. During the crisis
President
Kennedy ordered to defuse the nuclear warheads of the American missiles
in
Turkey, allegedly to avoid an accident. It was also reported that, even
during the
most dangerous moments of the crisis, Kennedy didn't alert the civil defense
or
show any curiosity about learning how to use the secret codes to unleash
a
nuclear attack. Strange behavior indeed for the commander-in-chief of a
country at
the brink of a nuclear attack.
But one of the most striking things of the Cuban missile crisis is that
the Soviets
never placed their troops, nor the civilian defense, under alert. This
astonishing fact
is mentioned in most of the early accounts of the crisis. Recently declassified
top
secret CIA documents confirmed the fact. At 10:00 in the morning of Tuesday
the
23rd of October, CIA Director John McCone reported a strange thing to the
ExComm: no signs of a general alert of Soviet forces in Cuba or around
the globe
had been reported
A top secret CIA memo of October 25 clearly states that "We still see no
signs of
any crash procedure in measures to increase the readiness of Soviet armed
forces." A top secret memo of October 26 gives the first indications of
a state of
alert, but in some European satellite countries, not in the Soviet Union.
As late as
Friday, October 26, American intelligence reported from Cuba, from Moscow,
and
from the United Nations, that the Russians were not ready for war. It is
only on
October 27 that a top secret CIA memo clearly acknowledges that "No significant
redeployment of Soviet ground, air or naval forces have been noted. However,
there
are continuing indications of increased readiness among some units."
Surprisingly, even at that late date, the Soviets had made no attempt to
mobilize
their civil defense nor to prepare the population for the eventual use
of fallout
shelters. This was quite significant, because the Soviets had devoted considerable
effort toinstructing their civilian population in civil defense and had
invested
considerably in fallout shelters.
4. Now it can be told: we were even more closer to the brink than most
people may
think. During a three-day meeting that took place in Havana with the presence
of
Cuban, Soviet, and American scholars and officials, among them Robert S.
McNamara, new declassified documents of the crisis from the different parties
involved were made available to the scholars. It was during this meeting
that a
Soviet official, Army General Anatoly Gribkov, who allegedly was responsible
for
planning the operation in 1962, dropped a bombshell when he confirmed the
presence of both strategic and tactical nuclear warheads on Cuban soil.
Gribkov
provided no evidence to support his claims.
However, notwithstanding Gribkov's unsubstantiated claims, one has to be
very
naive to believe that the Soviet Union could commit nuclear suicide in
defense of a
small island lost in the Caribbean whose leader was an unstable, self proclaimed
"Marxist." That would have been a totally foolish decision. But Nikita
Sergueyevich
Khrushchev — a.k.a. the "Butcher of Budapest," and the "Hangman of the
Ukraine"-- was anything but a fool.
5. The Soviets had deployed 32 nuclear warheads in Cuba in 1962. The American
intelligence never confirmed the presence of nuclear warheads on Cuban
soil. They
never found evidence of nuclear warheads in Cuba and Kennedy gave specific
orders about not verifying the extraction of nuclear warheads by boarding
and
inspecting the Soviet ships leaving Cuba after the crisis.
Lately, perhaps enticed by juicy grants from American foundations, some
of the
ex-Soviets have engaged in a fierce competition to tell some Americans
what they
love to hear. In 1989 Gen. Volkogonov revealed that 20 nuclear warheads
were in
Cuba. In 1992, Gen, Gribkov raised the number of nuclear warheads in Cuba
to 48.
In 1996 Lt. Col. Anatoly Dukuchaev raised the ante to 162 nuclear warheads
in
Cuban soil in 1962. Like rabbits, the nuclear warheads in Cuba keep multiplying.
If
this fierce competition keeps heating up fueled by American money, one
of these
funny Russians may end up by claiming that there were more nuclear warheads
in
Cuba than the number the Soviets actually had at the time.
The main force behind this concerted effort in proving that nuclear warheads
were in
Cuba is Robert McNamara, whose main goal has been to find justifications
for his
absurd policies as Secretary of Defense during the Kennedy administration.
Recently McNamara found support for his theories from none other than his
former
executive action target, Fidel Castro, and from a group of Russians, among
them,
Sergei Mikoyan, an old KGB hand. But McNamara, Castro, and the ex-KGB
operatives are very questionable sources of intelligence.
6. The Soviet officers in the field in Cuba had an open hand to use nuclear
weapons
without further authorization from Moscow. According to Gribkov, General
Pliyev,
the Soviet military commander in Cuba, had been given authorization to
fire nuclear
devices against an American invasion force if he considered it necessary,
without
further authorization from the Kremlin.
However, it is very difficult to believe, as some American researchers
and retired
senior Soviet officers now claim, that Russian field officers in Cuba had
been
authorized to use tactical nuclear warheads without further authorization
from
Moscow. Such an action would have been tantamount to mass suicide, since
a
single nuclear warhead fired by Russian troops in Cuba would had been equivalent
to a declaration of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet
Union.
One has to be very naive, or have had as many vodka bottles as Gribkov,
to believe
that the Kremlin, whose zeal over the control of nuclear devices bordered
paranoia,
would have committed that act of sheer madness.
7. The plan was Khrushchev's idea to protect Castro from an American invasion.
In
his memoirs Khrushchev claims that the main reason for sending strategic
missiles
to Cuba was because Castro feared an American invasion. But it is very
difficult to
believe that Khrushchev planned to install missiles in Cuba to protect
Castro just a
few days after Khrushchev had tried to overthrow the Cuban leader by force.
Actually, in April of 1962, after Castro discovered and neutralized the
plot, he
expelled from Cuba Soviet Ambassador Kudryatvsev (who also moonlighted
as a
senior GRU officer) and a group of his embassy thugs.
Moreover, simple logic dictates that no great power is going to give missiles
to any
newcomer who just asks for them. The USSR installed missiles where it wanted,
and nowhere else. When Mao asked for missiles the Soviets turned him down
flat.
Neither before 1962, nor after, did the Soviets deploy nuclear warheads
beyond
their borders. It was not until many years later, only after they had developed
reliable devices to control its arming, that the Soviets allowed a limited
number of
nuclear warheads to cross their borders, and always under strict control
of KGB's
special troops.
If the Soviets didn't trust their own army, why, then, would they risk
placing nuclear
missiles so close to the unstable, trigger-happy Castro? If anything, what
Khrushchev would have loved was having the Americans doing the dirty job
he
failed to accomplish, by invading Cuba and helping him getting rid of the
unreliable
Fidel Castro.
The Soviet commitment in Cuba had proved to be a calamitous failure. As
seen
from the Kremlin, Castro was unpredictable, volatile, undisciplined, and
often
nonsensical. His wholesale executions, mass arrests, and terrorist adventures
against his Latin American neighbors, together with the sight of hundreds
of
thousands of Cubans attempting to flee his rule, raised the very Stalinist
specter
Khrushchev was trying to dispel. Moreover, Castro was making a shambles
of the
Cuban economy and neglected to pay attention to "suggestions" coming from
Moscow
In such circumstances the sensible course for Khrushchev was to cut his
losses
and get out of the game, particularly considering that the Soviet lines
of supply to
Cuba were long and extremely vulnerable. But to leave Cuba voluntarily
would have
been tantamount to an admission of failure and would had involved substantial
loss
of face. If, however, Castro could be eliminated as a result of American
"aggression," then Khrushchev and the USSR could retreat from Cuba, their
honor
relatively untarnished. After an American invasion of the island the failure
of
Communism in Cuba could be blamed not on deficiencies in Soviet-style
communist management of Cuban affairs, but on "Yankee Imperialism."
*Servando Gonzalez is a Cuban-born American writer. He was an officer in
the
Cuban army during the missile crisis. His upcoming book The Secret Fidel
Castro:
Deconstructing the Symbol will appear this Spring.
Copyright © 2001. All rights reserved.