The Untold Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Popular accounts of major historical events have mostly been inaccurate as they have either been incomplete or have been twisted to suit the biases of the author (for whatever purposes).

Historian Eric Margolis narrates of untold story of the Cuban Missile Crisis where covert horse trading between the governments of the US and the USSR led to its resolution thereby averting a nuclear holocaust.

Writes Mr. Margolis at the LewRockwell.com 

HAVANA – The black, sinister-looking Soviet SS-4 intermediate-ranged missile on display at Havana’s La Cabana fortress looks old, roughly finished, and rather primitive.

But this missile, and 41 others (including some longer-ranged SS-5’s) terrified the United States during the October 1962 missile crisis – 13 days that shook the world. Each of them could have delivered a one megaton warhead onto America’s East Coast cities, starting with Washington DC. One megaton is a city-buster.

When the Cuban missile crisis erupted 50 years ago this month, I was a student at Washington’s Georgetown University Foreign Service School. Cuba was headline news. The Cold War was at its peak.

A CIA-operation to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro’s Marxist government had spectacularly failed at the Bay of Pigs. The new, inexperienced US president, John Kennedy, got cold feet on the last minute and called off vital air cover for an invasion by Cuban exiles. Deprived of air cover, most were killed or captured. Kennedy should have either call off the amphibious operation or provided it air cover.

The Pentagon then urged a full-scale US invasion of Cuba, backed by massive naval and air power. The Kennedy administration wavered.

Soviet Chairman Nikita Khrushchev seized the moment by sneaking 42 medium-ranged missiles and smaller tactical nukes into Cuba, right under the nose of the Americans. He gambled the Soviet nuclear-armed missiles would forestall a US invasion of Cuba, which Moscow intended to use as a base to expand its influence in Latin America.

When US U-2 spy planes finally spotted the Soviet missile bases all hell broke loose.

US forces went to DEFCON 3, then DEFCON 2 – the highest readiness stage before all-out war. Six US army and Marine divisions moved to South Florida and Georgia. Nearly 600 US warplanes were poised to attack.

On 25 Oct. nuclear weapons were loaded onto US B-47 and B-52 bombers. Seventy five percent of the Strategic Air Command’s bombers were airborne or poised to attack the USSR. Curiously, the Soviets did not go to maximum readiness.

In an act of madness, Fidel Castro furiously demanded Khrushchev launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US. Decades later, Castro admitted this was a terrible mistake. Fortunately, the Soviet leadership said "nyet!" A nuclear exchange in 1962 between the US and USSR would have killed an estimated 100 million people on each side.

As Soviet freighters steamed towards Cuba, the Kennedy White House imposed a naval and air blockade on Cuba. But it was called a "quarantine" since under international law, a blockade is an act of war. Today, in Washington’s undeclared war against Iran, the favored term is "sanctions."

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