MISSILE CRISIS
Unsung Cuban heroes
BY BRIAN LATELL
afterfidel@aol.com
Forty-seven years ago this month, President John F. Kennedy revealed
that the Soviet Union was secretly installing strategic nuclear-armed
missiles in Cuba. More than 40 were to be emplaced, capable of
obliterating nearly every major American city. The two superpowers
confronted each other at the brink of nuclear holocaust.
Much has been written about the 13 days of the missile crisis, and the
heroes who helped avert Armageddon. Certainly Kennedy was one. He
skillfully forced Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to capitulate by
devising a patient strategy of carrots and sticks. Several members of
the president's team of advisers have also been heralded. John McCone,
the intrepid CIA director, notably among them.
There were Russian heroes. Khrushchev, except for the fact that he had
belligerently provoked the crisis in the first place, might be thought
of that way; he recognized that retreat, and the disgrace that
accompanied it, were preferable to war. His disarmingly personal
correspondence with Kennedy during and after the crisis reflected a man
deeply troubled by what he had wrought.
Another Russian, Oleg Penkovsky was indisputably one of the heroes of
those frightening days. A colonel in military intelligence, he was ``the
spy who saved the world'' according to the authors of a book by that
title. Penkovsky's contribution was, in fact, monumental. He provided
American and British intelligence with blueprints and detailed
information about Soviet missile systems.
So, when CIA analysts studied U-2 photography taken on Oct. 14, 1962,
they knew almost immediately, and with certainty, that the vague
tracings of a large excavation near San Cristobal in Pinar del Rio
province in western Cuba had all the earmarks of a missile base under
construction.
Yet for many years, students of the crisis wondered why the U-2, soaring
for just a few minutes over a thin slice of Cuban territory, was
directed to that exact location.
Elie Abel, a New York Times reporter who wrote the first substantial
book about the missile crisis endeavored to unlock the mystery. In an
oral history recorded for the Kennedy Library in Boston, he recalled that:
``It took me something like four months to persuade the CIA to talk to
me at all about the missile crisis. When they did, I was not surprised
to discover that it was McCone himself who wanted to talk to me; he
would not leave it to a subordinate. I submitted at his request a series
of written questions . . . One of the things that I was troubled by was
why had that U-2 plane been sent to that particular location on a
particular day, the fourteenth of October.''
McCone would not answer. The secret he was protecting would be kept for
many more years, and the full details would not be disclosed by the CIA
until 1992. It turned out the epochal U-2 flight had nothing to do with
Penkovsky or elaborate technical intelligence collection systems.
Rather, the secret of San Cristobal was broken by three Cuban heroes,
arguably the most indispensable of all the heralded figures of those 13
days. The Cubans remain anonymous. Their identities have not been
revealed by the CIA, and they have never come forward to claim the fame
and respect they earned.
One was a covert CIA agent, a resident of Havana, identified only as
``Julio'' in a book by the CIA's chief officer in Miami at the time.
Julio communicated by secret writing, and in September 1962 told of ``a
large zone in Pinar del Rio . . . heavily guarded by Soviets.'' He
identified four towns that formed the corners of a trapezoid. San
Cristobal was one.
Soon, two Cuban refugees with corroborating information arrived in Miami
and were interviewed at the Opa-locka debriefing center manned by
bilingual intelligence officers. One described a Soviet military convoy
he had seen before departing Cuba. It included a 65- to 70-foot-long
trailer, ``the longest I have ever seen.'' He believed it was carrying
``large missiles.''
The third anonymous Cuban hero had observed a similar tableau before
emigrating. Traveling from his home in Havana to Pinar del Rio, he also
saw a large Soviet military convoy. There were ``flatbed trailers, seven
of which were carrying what looked like huge tubes.''
With such specific information, from three independent sources, the CIA
scheduled the U-2 specifically to photograph the San Cristobal area as
the suspected location of a strategic Soviet missile installation. The
rest is history.
Sadly, however, the identities of the three Cubans -- arguably among the
most important heroes of the missile crisis -- remain, even today,
locked away in CIA archives.
Brian Latell is senior research associate, Cuba Studies, University of
Miami and author of After Fidel: Raul Castro and the Future of Cuba's
Revolution.
Unsung Cuban heroes - Other Views - MiamiHerald.com (27 October 2009)
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1301618.html
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