Cuban Missile Crisis: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 05:37, 23 April 2007

Revision as of 05:37, 23 April 2007

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[[Premier of the Soviet Union|Soviet Premier]] [[Nikita Khrushchev]] had publicly expressed his anger at the Turkish deployment, and regarded the missiles as a personal affront. The deployment of missiles in Cuba &mdash; the first time Soviet missiles were moved outside the USSR &mdash; is commonly seen as Khrushchev's direct response to the Turkish missiles. [[Nikita Khrushchev]] had previously expressed his doubts to the poet [[Robert Frost]] about the readiness of the "liberal" United States to fight over tough issues.<ref>[http://www.whitehousetapes.org/transcripts/jfk_2_pub/10_sept10.pdf The Presidential Recordings of John F. Kennedy, Sept 10 1962, p111 ]</ref>

==Leadup==

I love you so much it makes me fart

It was in this environment that Cuba and the Soviet Union agreed to place nuclear weapons in Cuba, with the understanding that an invasion would potentially be met by a nuclear response. Khrushchev devised the deployment plan in May of 1962, and by late July, over sixty Soviet ships were on route to Cuba, some of them already carrying military material.

[[John McCone]], director of the CIA, had recently been on a honeymoon to [[Paris]] where he had been told by [[Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage|French Intelligence]] that the Soviets were planning to place missiles in Cuba, so he warned President Kennedy that some of the ships were probably carrying missiles; however, the President—along with [[United States Attorney General|Attorney General]] [[Robert F. Kennedy]] (his brother), [[United States Secretary of State|Secretary of State]] [[Dean Rusk]], and [[United States Secretary of Defense|Secretary of Defense]] [[Robert McNamara]]—concluded that the Soviets would not try such a thing. Kennedy's administration had received repeated claims from Soviet diplomats that there were no missiles in Cuba, nor any plans to place any, and that the Soviets were not interested in starting an international drama that might affect the [[United States House election, 1962|U.S. elections]] in November.

A [[Lockheed U-2|U-2]] flight in late August photographed a new series of [[Surface-to-air missile|SAM]] (surface-to-air missile) sites being constructed, but on [[September 4]] [[1962]], Kennedy told [[United States Congress|Congress]] that there were no ''offensive'' missiles in Cuba.

On 4 September, Robert Kennedy met with Soviet Ambassador [[Anatoly Dobrynin]]. During the meeting Kennedy stated the U.S.'s concerns about weapons that were in Cuba. The Ambassador assured Kennedy that they were strictly defensive and that the military build-up was of absolutely no significance. A few days later, U.S. spy planes discovered a fairly sizable [[Submarine pen|sub pen]] being constructed under the guise of a fishing village. On 11 September the Soviets publicly stated that there was no need for the distribution of nuclear weapons to anywhere outside the Soviet Union including Cuba. That same day, a personal communiqué was received from Khrushchev to President Kennedy stating that there would be no offensive weapons placed in Cuba.<ref name=bbc>[http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A563852 The Cuban Missile Crisis, BBC]</ref>

==U-2 flights and discovery==