During the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, many modes of communication informed American political and military actions. Photographs from U-2 and other reconnaissance aircraft (here a view of Mariel Bay, Cuba) provided clear evidence of Soviet missile equipment and arriving transport ships

The tense military and political face-off between the United States and the Soviet Union in October 1962 was probably the most dangerous moment in the long Cold War. Signals and other intelligence played a central part on both sides of the conflict.

When Fidel Castro took power in Cuba in 1959, he was hailed as a liberator by the Cuban people and became a hero to many Americans as well. Castro soon publicly aligned his country with the Soviet Union. In Havana, one of the consequences of this change was the fear that the United States might intervene against the new Cuban government. That concern was strengthened in April 1961, when Cuban exiles, trained by America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), staged a botched invasion at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs.

Agreements with the Soviet Union were followed by a secret Soviet arms buildup in Cuba in the summer of 1962. The first indications of that buildup came from signals intelligence (SIGINT) when American intercept operators began to hear Spanish along with the usual mix of Slavic coming from airfields in Czechoslovakia, where Cuban pilots were being trained. In response, U.S. intelligence began a closer focus on Cuban information, including U-2 aircraft overflights and radio intercepts. It soon became apparent that the Soviet Union was building nine intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) launch facilities in western Cuba for missiles that could carry nuclear warheads. The sites were about a hundred miles from Florida, and the missiles’ potential range (over 2,000 miles) would take in much of the eastern United States. The National Security Agency deployed a considerable capability around Cuba, including SIGINT from ground-based stations and aircraft circling the periphery of the island, just outside Cuban territorial waters. The USS Oxford, a specially configured SIGINT collection ship, sailed close to the Cuban coastline intercepting radio communications.

On 16 October the CIA produced for President John F. Kennedy hundreds of detailed aerial photographs clearly identifying IRBM sites and anti-aircraft missile support facilities (despite attempts to camouflage them), all nearing completion. Regular aerial photography showed four sites were operational just days later. After a week of intense analysis and policy debate (including bombing or invasion options), Kennedy went public on 22 October with a nationally televised address and announced the placing of a naval quarantine (essentially a blockade) in a ring 500 miles from Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from carrying further missile equipment to the island. U.S. Navy surface and submarine units moved into place to attack any ship crossing the declared line. A week of intensive face-off and direct communications between President Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev followed. On 28 October, the Soviets turned their ships back, a fact first learned from SIGINT from radio messages, and soon dismantled and withdrew the missiles.

The crisis did not immediately end with the Soviet decision to remove its missiles. For three more weeks, tensions between the United States, Cuba, and the Soviet Union ran high over several unresolved issues. Negotiations held in November 1962 finally resolved verification of the missile withdrawal, the U.S. non-invasion “guarantee,” and the question of Soviet jet bombers and troops remaining on the island. The quarantine ended on 20 November.

One later result of the face-off was installation of the soon-famous “hotline” between Moscow and Washington to allow rapid crisis resolution. With the end of the Cold War, some information on both Soviet and Cuban intelligence gathering has also become available. The crisis has become one of the most studied events of the Cold War era.

Sources

Cuban Missile Crisis (various documents)

Federation of American Scientists. “Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Johnson, Thomas R., and David A. Hatch. 1998. “NSA and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Leighton, Richard M. 1978. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962: A Case in National Security Crisis Management. Washington, DC: National Defense University.

National Security Archive. “The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962.”

Welch, David A., and James G. Blight, eds. 1998.Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis. London: Routledge.