American Policy and Cuba,

In the Department of State finally released the two FRUS volumes on Cuba
policy in the Kennedy administration. At the end of the department
released a microfiche supplement. The set is distinguished by a new level of
editorial assistance and especially broad research across the archival holdings
of agencies and collections of papers. The result is authoritative. The volumes
provide an excellent foundation for understanding U.S. policy on Cuba during
this period, if complemented by the contents of the secret White House tape
recordings of meetings on Cuba available elsewhere.
If Cuba is the subject, State Department documents are obviously not
sufficient. So these FRUS volumes became a test case for securing the interde-
partmental documentary access commanded by the law passed to support
the Foreign Relations series. The volumes pass the test. Indeed, the majority of
documents in these two volumes come from outside State. Large numbers are
from the White House and CIA, of course. But Defense Department records
also provided a treasure trove of material, especially for the Bay of Pigs and
other developments in . The microfiche supplement provides even more

. President Kennedy decided which discussions to tape. An amateur historian, he made the
tapes for his later personal use, probably for his planned memoirs. All the evidence tends to show
that Kennedy never planned to make the tapes public; they are full of material that was then highly
classified as well as material that would have been politically devastating to him and to his brother.
The taping system was installed at the end of July to record discussions only in either the
Cabinet Room or the Oval Office. Kennedy was apparently careful to tape practically all the
discussions on Cuba that he attended and considered important, including all or part of every
meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House during the Cuban missile crisis. He plainly
viewed the system as a kind of novel, electronic diary for recording his policy actions, meetings,
and deliberations domestic and foreign. The missile crisis tapes are available in Ernest May and
Philip Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge,
MA, ) (an expanded and revised edition, exploiting newly available tapes and new applications
of sound engineering to the recordings, will be published in ). A set of three volumes covering
these and all other recordings from July through October , including other discussions of
Cuba, will also be published in .
The JFK Library had earlier released partial transcripts for Cuba meetings on and
October (but not the full recordings). These Library transcripts are excerpted in the FRUS
volumes. Those excerpts contain numerous errors, however. The National Security Archive
attempted a transcript of the meeting on October, which is posted on their website, but it is full
of serious mistakes. In some recent FRUS volumes on the Johnson and Nixon administrations,
State Department editors have begun making their own transcripts of small excerpts from the
Johnson and Nixon tapes in order to be able to include some especially significant material.

D H, Vol. , No. (Spring ). The Society for Historians of American

Foreign Relations (SHAFR). Published by Blackwell Publishers, Main Street, Malden, MA,
, USA and Cowley Road, Oxford, OX JF, UK.

CIA and Defense material, some of which like the report on the Bay of Pigs
by the CIAs inspector general was extricated with the help of prodding from
the National Security Archive (especially Peter Kornbluh).
The State editors of these volumes primarily Louis Smith, but also Edward
Keefer and Charles Sampson also provide exceptional editorial notes. They
summarize intervening events and records in order to knit the story together
and even judiciously cite other published sources that are necessary comple-
ments to their account. For example, an especially important note accompany-
ing one of the only documents on assassination plots against Castro provides
critical information on the background and uses of that document, as well as
citations to the treatment of this issue by the Church Committee in the s.
Such editorial aid is welcome.

The Bay of Pigs

The failed invasion of Cuba in April by a U.S.-trained brigade of Cuban
refugees was the most ill-judged and disastrous single policy venture under-
taken by the U.S. government since the end of the Second World War. Later
administrations would add even more notable examples of folly, but in few
of the top officials had experienced such public pain and embarrassment. That
this happened to an administration that prided itself on its wit and perspicacity,
and to a president accustomed to an unbroken record of political success, only
deepened the feelings of humiliation and even puzzlement.
To Kennedys credit, immediately after the failure he ordered a thorough,
and top-level internal investigation into what went wrong. This was the secret
Cuban Study Group, chaired by Maxwell Taylor. No administration since has
analyzed one of its own failures so promptly and seriously. The reward for
todays scholars is an excellent set of records, the equivalent of a detailed
autopsy record with all the lab reports from the pathology department. All the
important papers are well presented (with valuable cross-referencing) in the FRUS
volume, along with (in the microfiche supplement) another self-examination, the
scathing internal CIA report and the defensive replies it provoked.
Scholars too may be puzzled. As the Eisenhower administration was leaving
office in January , top CIA and military officials wrote intelligent papers

. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, (Washington, ),

:.
. The internal scrutiny also carried over to the scathing report of CIAs inspector general,
Lyman Kirkpatrick. That report, and the revealing replies it prompted, is included in the FRUS
Microfiche Supplement. The entire collection is also published in Peter Kornbluh, ed., Bay of Pigs
Declassified (New York, ). Nor was the Taylor Study Group the last remarkable example of
White House self-examination. After the more modest but still painful Skybolt fiasco in Anglo-
American relations in December , Kennedy commissioned an internal study of the matter by
a well-connected outsider, Richard Neustadt, and gave Neustadt a writ that has never been
bettered before or since. The background and fine results, which Kennedy saw just before his death,
are now available in Richard E. Neustadt, Report to JFK: The Skybolt Crisis in Perspective (Ithaca, ).
It includes Neustadts current reflections.
 American Policy and Cuba :

that analyzed the planned operations dilemmas with professional clarity. But
somehow, after the Kennedy administration came into office, these same offi-
cials, such as JCS Chairman General Lyman Lemnitzer, signed off on docu-
ments that no longer saw these points at all, or obscured them, or cloaked them
with the wishful and unanalyzed belief that even if the invasion failed the
Cuban rebels could melt into the Cuban hills as guerrillas. This is hard to
explain.
One explanation may be the lulling Guatemala precedent. That opera-
tion was almost as feckless, but had still won out against a regime that panicked
and bolted. The Bay of Pigs record certainly reflects a large measure of wishful
self-deception, pushed along by quick military analyses performed by relatively
junior officers with a narrow field of vision.
Another hypothesis is that some officials, perhaps including Lemnitzer along
with Richard Bissell and Tracy Barnes at CIA, worried that Kennedy and his
new people did not want to face the hard choices about U.S. intervention, so
these advisers did not lay out the dilemmas too plainly. They might not have
trusted Kennedy to make the right choices in advance but instead hoped that,
if things went wrong, Kennedy would be cornered into doing the right thing.
As it became clearer in the days before the invasion that President Kennedy
was firmly opposed to overt U.S. military intervention, perhaps the proponents
wishful thinking merged with some fatalism. After the catastrophe it is easy to
understand why some generals, and Bissell, might scapegoat Kennedys sup-
posed gutlessness rather than accept their own terrible burden of guilt for the
deaths of so many brave soldiers.
There was plenty of blame to go around. The crisis only made Robert
McNamaras inexperience painfully apparent. McGeorge Bundy fostered or
perhaps mirrored President Kennedys own deadly ambivalence about the
project. That ambivalence led Kennedy to make decisions that compromised
the planned invasion even further. President Kennedy, however, was steadfastly
and somewhat courageous as he stuck to his prior, firm guidance that U.S.
military forces would not intervene.

. See, for example, Hawkins to Esterline, January , FRUS, : (especially on

not compromising the air strike plan); DOD Staff Study (under leadership of MG David Gray)
and discussion of the study, January , ibid., (note the substance of the analysis); Barnes
to Esterline, January , ibid., (on how Barnes and MG Gray expected U.S. military
intervention as culmination of an effective plan); memcon of meeting with President Kennedy,
January , ibid., (especially Lemnitzers explanation of how the plan would work); JCS
to McNamara, JCSM--, U.S. Plan of Action in Cuba, January (esp. para ), ibid., ;
and Lemnitzers debrief on his advice in the January meeting with President Kennedy, ibid.,
n. (located by the FRUS editors in Navy records). The turning point, prompted perhaps by a
realization that unless JFK started hearing a different tune the operation would be vetoed, first
seems evident in JCS to McNamara, JCSM--, Military Evaluation of the Cuban Plan,
February , which for the first time states: This operation as presently envisaged would not
necessarily require overt U.S. intervention. Ibid., .
. Interestingly, Eisenhower privately offered Kennedy some support for such noninterven-
tion. Kennedy discussed the Bay of Pigs with Eisenhower at Camp David on April and the
former president said the American people would never approve direct military intervention by
 :

As the volumes show, controversy persists about whether Kennedys last

minute faltering resolve, evident in the cancellation of the D-Day air strikes,
ruined an operation that otherwise might have succeeded. The evidence shows
that these decisions, driven more by Bundy and Rusk, did make a military
difference. Castro himself thought so. But the plan had other mortal weak-
nesses that would have become manifest anyway.
Did Kennedy think one of the flimsy schemes to kill Castro with the help
of mobsters would succeed and thus bail out an otherwise doomed invasion?
Seymour Hersh has taken that argument as far as the evidence will permit, and
then some. But nothing indicates that Kennedy had, or should have had, firm
expectations that Castro would be killed by mid-April . So any guess that
Kennedy relied on this belief (and those are the guesses of Hershs CIA sources,
unsupported by evidence emanating from the Kennedys themselves) would
just reveal still more wishful thinking, like the vain hope that the invading rebels
could melt into the hills as guerrillas or the vain hope that the invasion would
instantly spark a general uprising.
Robert Kennedys place in this early story does him little credit. His reaction
to the failure was, as one of the objects of his temper noted, to go slamming
into anyone who suggested that we go slowly and try to move calmly and not
repeat previous mistakes. One initial impulse was to invade Cuba, an impulse
that produced contingency plans but no action until, later in , a new CIA
plan was ordered that would sponsor infiltration and sabotage with the hope of
overthrowing Castro. Robert Kennedy was always dissatisfied with [Opera-
tion] Mongoose, Arthur Schlesinger perceptively observed, adding: He

their own forces, except under provocations against us so clear and so serious that anybody would
understand the need for the move. Eisenhower memorandum of his meeting with Kennedy,
April , FRUS Microfiche Supplement, Doc. , Fiche , .
. This issue divided the Taylor Study Group, officially called the Cuban Study Group. Taylor
and Robert Kennedy argued that the beachhead could not have survived long without substantial
help from the Cuban population or without overt U.S. assistance. The report included a dissenting
footnote from the other two members, Admiral Arleigh Burke and Allen Dulles, arguing that if
the rebels had been able to keep their ammunition (destroyed by Cuban air attacks) and air cover,
they could have held the beachhead for a longer time and that this local success could well have
caused a chain reaction of success throughout Cuba. Memorandum No. from the Cuba Study
Group to President Kennedy, Narrative of the Anti-Castro Cuban Operation Zapata, June
, in FRUS, : n. .
. Probable CIA memo for Taylor (found in Taylors papers at National Defense University),
Comments by Fidel Castro and June on the Invasion of April , FRUS,
:.
. Seymour M. Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (Boston, ), . Readers should be careful
in using this work. Although Hersh has interviewed some excellent sources, some are not so
excellent. All are used without discrimination. In using the sources Hersh constantly takes
evidence and quotations out of their original context in order to make his desired point. In the
best case, this is because he does not understand the original context. A more careful summary of
the evidence is in Kornbluh, Bay of Pigs Declassified, .
. Chester Bowles notes on th meeting of the National Security Council, April ,
FRUS, :. In one of many examples of their enterprise, the FRUS editors retrieved the
interesting Bowles material by researching the Bowles Papers at Yale University.
 American Policy and Cuba :

wanted it to do more, the terrors of the earth, but what they were he knew not.
Yet even as Cuban rebels were being rounded up on the beaches of the Bay of
Pigs, Robert Kennedy confided to his brother a prescient fear. If left alone, he
thought Cuba would become a much more serious problem in a year or two,
when the island would become Mr. Khrushchevs arsenal.

Soviet Missiles Go Into Cuba

There is no need to review all the evidence here about why the government
of the Soviet Union decided in May to place nuclear missiles in Cuba.
Yet the FRUS volumes do shed powerful light on several of the key issues,
starting with the question of Soviet fears about a likely U.S. invasion of Cuba.
Mongoose could dispatch agents to Cuba and mount some low-level sabo-
tage operations, but most officials including at CIA thought an internal
revolt would never succeed on its own. The rebels would have to be bailed out
by a U.S. invasion. Contingency plans for that were kept in readiness. Yet, as of
the spring of , many of Kennedys advisers (especially at the State Depart-
ment and the White House) were opposed not only to an invasion but even to
fomenting a Cuban revolt that might entangle the United States in a possible
invasion. On the one occasion in the spring of when President Kennedy
plainly expressed his own view of the matter, in a closely held April conversation
with the leader of the Cuban exiles, Kennedy did not say what the exile leader
wanted to hear. Echoing views his national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, had
conveyed a month earlier, Kennedy secretly said he would not back up a revolt with
U.S. troops. The leaders of the Cuban exiles were predictably dismayed and
cynical about the U.S. governments intentions. Recently a former Cuban official
has written that the Cuban government had penetrated these groups and also
concluded that a US invasion of Cuba was becoming less likely all the time.

. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston, ), .

. Robert Kennedy to President Kennedy, April , FRUS, :.
. See Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile
Crisis, d ed. (New York, ), .
. On March the head of the Cuban government-in-exile, Jose Miro Cardona, met at the
White House with McGeorge Bundy. He pleaded for enough help to invade Cuba and overthrow
Castro. Bundy replied that such action would have to involve U.S. armed forces. This would mean
open war against Cuba which in the U.S. judgment was not advisable in the present international
situation. Cardona did not like this answer. Memcon of meeting between Cardona and Bundy,
March , FRUS, :. Cardona then met with President Kennedy on April.
Kennedy, like Bundy, rebuffed Cardonas pleas for a U.S. commitment to intervene in support of
a revolt. Passavoy to record, Topics Discussed during Meeting of Dr. Miro Cardona with the
President, April , and Goodwin to President Kennedy, April , both in National
Security Files, box , Cuba: Subjects, Miro Cardona, Material Sent to Palm Beach, John F.
Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts. The FRUS editors unfortunately missed these docu-
ments, which record the sole meeting between President Kennedy and the leader of the
Cuban exiles. Others present at that meeting were Ernesto Aragon, Robert Kennedy, and Richard
Goodwin.
. On the atmosphere among the Cuban exile groups see, for example, Nestor Carbonell,
And the Russians Stayed: The Sovietization of Cuba (New York, ), . The State Department
 :

It is very hard today to recapture the mood of pessimism in the United States
about the future outcome of the Cold War. American superiority in strategic
missile power had, by early , become a great consoling factor. So at the first
meeting with his advisers during the missile crisis, on the morning of October,
the very first speculation about Soviet motives came from President Kennedy
and looked for an explanation in the strategic balance of power. Must be some
major reason for the Russians to set this up, he mused. Must be that theyre
not satisfied with their ICBMs. Maxwell Taylor, newly moved from the post
of Kennedy adviser to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thought Kennedys
guess was on the mark.
These issues thus intersect with the two most important issues in U.S.-Soviet
relations throughout : Berlin and nuclear testing. U.S. belief in strategic
missile superiority was the essential premise in U.S. strategy for the simmering
Berlin crisis, a strategy that threatened to start a nuclear war if the Soviet Union
used its greater conventional military power to cut off or seize West Berlin, that
Western outpost in the midst of East Germany.
Certainly the Americans did not fully grasp how worried Khrushchev and
his colleagues might feel about their position of strategic inferiority. In March
and April the one aspect of the nuclear standoff that certainly engaged
Khrushchevs full attention was an intense set of negotiations, centered in
Geneva, about the possibility of banning any further test explosions of nuclear

officer running the Cuban desk wrote on April of the deep sense of frustration and impatience
in the Cuban exile community over what it considers inactivity regarding the overthrow of the
Castro regime. The exile leaders have become the objects of considerable criticism for having
failed to convince the United States to embark on a military operations program. Cardona was
debating whether to resign. Hurwitch to Martin, The Cuban Exile Community, the Cuban
Revolutionary Council, and Dr. Miro Cardona, April , FRUS, :. On the Cuban
intelligence assessment of the U.S. threat see Domingo Amuchastegui, Cuban Intelligence and
the October Crisis, in Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis, ed. James G. Blight and David A.
Welch (London, ), . Amuchastegui notes Soviet insistence on the threat of U.S. invasion,
insistence that he says the Cubans eventually regarded as motivated by a Soviet wish to convince
the Cubans to accept Soviet missiles. Other evidence indicates that even the Soviet intelligence
estimates on the likelihood of a U.S. invasion, in the spring of , were either equivocal or
indicated that an invasion was unlikely. Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Soviet
Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis, in Blight and Welch, eds., Intelligence and the Cuban
Missile Crisis, . But perhaps Amuchastegui is remembering the way Soviet political officials
advocated their case to the surprised Cubans.
. May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes, .
. The top secret U.S. plan for Berlin contingencies, the seriousness of which is indeed
disguised by its wonderful code name Poodle Blanket, envisioned a crisis intensified by Soviet
blockage of Western access to Berlin. The West would take diplomatic action, curtail East-West
trade, and build up military forces for a possible war. If the Soviets persisted or escalated the
blockage, the West would use conventional military forces to try and break it. If the Soviets then
chose to resist, defeating Western action with their larger conventional forces, the United States
planned for the onset of nuclear military action, initiated by the West, starting with limited uses
of weapons to signal the extreme gravity of the situation. For overviews see National Security
Action Memorandum No. , U.S. Policy on Military Actions in a Berlin Crisis, Poodle
Blanket, October , FRUS, (Washington, ); and Bundy to President Kennedy,
NATO Contingency Planning for Berlin (BERCON/MARCON Plans) and the Conceptual
Framework of Poodle Blanket, July , FRUS, (Washington, ), :.
 American Policy and Cuba :

weapons. After the talks failed the United States began setting off test blasts in
the Pacific. Days later Khrushchev began privately exploring the idea of
deploying missiles to Cuba. The Soviets, like many U.S. defense officials,
equated nuclear testing with status in the arms race.
The Americans later suspected that the Soviets intended to develop Cuba
into a full-scale strategic base. They were correct. In addition to the land-based
missiles (and the deployments might not have been the last), the operation
also included a plan to build a submarine base in Cuba that would become the
home port for an initial deployment of eleven submarines, including seven
submarines carrying submarine-launched ballistic missiles with megaton
yield nuclear warheads.
Still, when some of his advisers explained how the missiles might indeed
change the strategic balance, Kennedy was still unsatisfied. Why was Khrush-
chev taking this risk? Surely the missiles were not so valuable just for their own
sake. He burst out with the comment that we never really ever had a case where
its been quite this. President Kennedy still did not get an answer.
For President Kennedy, at least, the answer dawned on him shortly afterward.
It must be Berlin. Khrushchev would use the missiles to win a final victory in
the ongoing crisis over Berlin. After the Wall had been built, Khrushchev
stepped back from his latest ultimatum to allow the completion of intense
negotiations that culminated in talks between his foreign minister, Andrei
Gromyko, and the U.S. secretary of state, Dean Rusk, during March and April
. Yet in letting the negotiations take their course Khrushchev made clear
he was not trying to play better the next fall-back position as diplomats call
it. The United States and its allies had to give up their position in Berlin. You
have to understand, I have no ground to retreat further, there is a precipice
behind.
As the negotiations over Berlin foundered again into public stalemate in
April , a process traced well in the FRUS volumes on that subject, Khrush-
chev again started increasing the pressure on Berlin. When Khrushchev met

. After the Soviets resumed above-ground testing in September the United States had
resumed underground testing at its Nevada test site. The issue in the spring of was
above-ground testing, which was much more controversial and garnered much more press
attention. For Rusks report on his talks with Gromyko see minutes of meeting of the National
Security Council, March , FRUS, (Washington, ), :; see also memcon of
meeting between Rusk and Dobrynin, April , ibid., . The U.S nuclear test series, Dominic
I, involved thirty-six detonations in the Pacific, in the vicinity of Christmas Island and Johnston
Island, beginning on April. The Soviets followed with a further series of their own atmospheric
tests, beginning in August .
. Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and
Kennedy, (New York, ), .
. May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes, . After Kennedy left the meeting, Undersecretary
of State George Ball mentioned to others that the State Department experts disagreed about
whether Khrushchev had thought that this was a low risk operation. Some asserted that Khrush-
chev had thought he was taking a low risk and just miscalculated. Others, notably Llewellyn
Thompson, thought the Soviet leader had knowingly taken a very high risk.
. Khrushchev to Kennedy, November , FRUS, :.
 :

with a member of Kennedys cabinet, Stewart Udall, on September, he warned

that he would settle the Berlin issue once and for all. If the Americans wanted
to start a nuclear war, that would be their choice. He warned, Its been a long
time since you could spank us like a little boy now we can swat your ass. So
lets not talk about force. Were equally strong. You want Berlin. Access to it
goes through East Germany. We have the advantage. If you want to do anything,
you have to start a war.
Khrushchev then set another deadline, for the third and last time. On
September Khrushchev, writing to Kennedy, told him that we will do
nothing with regard to West Berlin until the elections in the U.S. After the
elections, apparently in the second half of November, it would be necessary
to eliminate this dangerous hot-bed which spoils our relations all the time.
Soviet foreign minister Gromyko traveled to the United States in October and
met with Kennedy on October (after Kennedy had learned of the missiles in
Cuba, but before Gromyko was aware the missiles had been discovered).
Again, Gromyko warned that the Berlin issue would be renewed in Novem-
ber to get concrete results. If there should be no such understanding, the
Soviet Government would be compelled, and Mr. Gromyko wished to empha-
size the word compelled, to conclude a treaty with East Germany that
formally liquidated Allied rights. Gromyko said he would be frank: The
NATO military base and the occupation regime in West Berlin represented a
rotten tooth which must be pulled out. It was the great issue. If the Berlin
question could be solved, there would remain no other questions on which our
two states were at loggerheads, with the possible exception of disarmament.
When the missiles were discovered, Llewellyn Thompson (now recalled
from Moscow to serve as the State Departments special adviser on the Soviet
Union) solved a puzzle. [H]es [Khrushchevs] not a fool I was always curious
as to why he said he would defer this [confrontation on Berlin] until after the
election. It seems to me it is all related to this [move of missiles into Cuba].
President Kennedy agreed. Khrushchev played a double game, Kennedy
explained a few days later to the British prime minister. You remember that
he kept saying he was coming over here after the [U.S. congressional] election
and would do nothing to disturb the situation until after the election. He said
that the weapons were defensive, that they werent moving any missiles there and
all the rest. And obviously he has been building this up in order to face us with a
bad situation in November at the time he was going to squeeze us on Berlin.

. Memorandum of conversation between Udall and Khrushchev, Petsunda, September

, FRUS, :.
. Khrushchev to Kennedy, September , FRUS, (Washington, ), :;
memorandum of conversation for October meeting between Kennedy and Gromyko, Germany
and Berlin; Possible Visit by Khrushchev, ibid., :, . The Cuba FRUS volume includes
only the portion of this conversation that dealt with Cuba. Berlin was Gromykos lead subject.
. A fine review of how the Berlin crisis was coming to a head in the fall of can also be
found in Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement,
 American Policy and Cuba :

So, for Kennedy, he did not just face a choice between war and peace,
between starting a nuclear crisis over Cuba or letting it go. He could either have
a nuclear crisis over Cuba now, when the onus of starting a nuclear war would
be on Khrushchev, or he could have a nuclear crisis the next month, in Berlin,
when this time the U.S. strategic position would be much worse and the burden
of initiating a nuclear war would be on Kennedy. Kennedy explained this
reasoning repeatedly to several different audiences. To the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
on October, he explained that our problem is not merely Cuba but it is also
Berlin. And when we recognize the importance of Berlin to Europe, and
recognize the importance of our allies to us, thats what has made this thing be
a dilemma for days. Otherwise, our answer would be quite easy. He went on:
On the other hand, weve got to do something. Because if we do nothing were
going to have the problem of Berlin anyway. That was made clear last night [by
Gromyko]. Were going to have this knife stuck right in our guts when the
missiles in Cuba become operational. In a way, he admired Khrushchevs move.
The advantage is, from Khrushchevs point of view, he takes a great chance
but there are quite some rewards to it.
Evidence about Soviet decision making offers considerable evidence to
support Kennedys and Thompsons Berlin hypothesis. A revealing item in the
FRUS volume is that, in his October meeting with Gromyko, Kennedy twice
volunteered that his government did not intend to invade Cuba and he offered
to give the Soviets a pledge that there would be no invasion of Cuba, either by
Cuban refugees or by U.S. forces. If the Soviets deployed the missiles to gain
such a pledge, here it was. But even more significant is the fact that Gromyko,

(Princeton, ), esp. . For Thompsons comment on October see May and Zelikow, The
Kennedy Tapes, . For Kennedys October conversation with Prime Minister Harold Macmillan
(drawn from the British stenographic record), see ibid., . Thompsons conclusion, summa-
rized in writing for the benefit of overseas posts, was that, When Soviet action in arming Cuba
with offensive nuclear missiles became evident, it was because of developments [on Berlin over
the summer and fall] that this Government tended believe Soviet action was probably primarily
geared to showdown on Berlin, intended to be timed with Khrushchevs arrival in US and
completion or installation of these missiles in Cuba. State telegram, October , FRUS,
:. FRUS editors placed this telegram, explaining developments in Cuba, in the
Berlin volume. Incidentally, British experts in the Foreign Offices Northern Department submit-
ted a very similar opinion. Yet if Khrushchev was to bring things to a head fairly soon over Berlin
something must be done urgently to rectify imbalance if Soviets would be negotiating politically
in an inferior military position. Khrushchev may well have calculated that once Cuban missile
complex completed he could frighten Americans off taking determined action in Berlin by
pointing to their own vulnerability to attack from his Cuban base and thus obtain heavy leverage
in negotiations on Berlin which he has been planning for the end of year. London , October
, conveying the estimate that had been provided to the British Cabinets Joint Intelligence
Committee, in Cuban Missile Crisis Files, Releases Box, National Security Archive, Wash-
ington, DC.
. Kennedy elaborated this understanding of Khrushchevs strategy at length on at least four
occasions, to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on October, and on October in different discussions
with the National Security Council, congressional leaders, and Macmillan. For the quotations
from the October meeting with the JCS see May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes, . For the
last quotation, from the October meeting with congressional leaders, see ibid., .
. See Allison and Zelikow, Essence of Decision, and fig. -.
 :

well knowing what was happening and what really mattered to Khrushchev,
ignored Kennedys offer and did not even consider the matter important enough
to mention it in his cabled report to Moscow.

What to Do About the Missiles, and Cuba?

In every sense, the crisis arose in an intensely political environment both
inside and outside of the executive branch. When President Kennedy referred
to Cuba as his heaviest political cross, he referred to the inside of his
administration as well as to the outside.
Operation Mongoose had not been making much progress. The CIA, led by
McCone, pressed to expand the U.S. sponsorship of guerrilla operations and
sought a U.S. commitment to support these efforts, if necessary, with an
American invasion of Cuba. The White House refused to make such a commit-
ment; on this matter Bundy could count on backing from Rusk and others at State.
As the spring of turned to summer, the Mongoose program and other
U.S. efforts aimed at Cuba were reaching a crossroads. Mongoose itself had
become too big to ignore, while too weak to have much chance of unseating
Castro. CIAs representatives wanted to stimulate a revolt, but recognized the
rebels would have to be bailed out by an American invasion. State was inclined
to stay with the limited status quo and avoid engaging U.S. prestige openly in
operations, the success of which may be doubtful.
This was the decision-making context, then, as reports began to stream in about
Soviet shipments of conventional arms and military advisers to Cuba. In August
director of central intelligence John McCone began warning not only about a
Soviet base but about Soviet deployment of ballistic missiles to Cuba. As the reports
of arms shipments piled higher, McCone used them in this small group that
oversaw the Mongoose program in order to press his case for much more vigorous
action. Again, McCone tried to help his cause by warning that the Soviets might
be deploying ballistic missiles, but he was also a policy advocate, and his policy
position was unpopular (Robert Kennedy was McCones only, half-hearted ally).
PresidentKennedydidattend,though,toMcConeswarningaboutSoviet missiles
in Cuba. He wanted more study of the danger and of possible countermoves. That

. See memorandum of conversation for meeting between Kennedy and Gromyko, Cuba,
October , FRUS, (Washington, ), :; Gromyko report to Central Commit-
tee of the CPSU, October , Russian Foreign Ministry Documents on the Cuban Missile
Crisis, Cold War International History Project Bulletin (Spring ): .
. Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York, ), .
. On the status of Mongoose in the spring of , see, for example, Guidelines for Operation
Mongoose, March , and Harvey to McCone, Operation Mongoose, April , both in
FRUS, :, .
. See Joint Staff paper, Blockade of Cuba in reprisal for Soviet Actions in Berlin, DJSM--,
May , FRUS, :. Lansdale (?) to Special Group (Augmented), US Policy in the
Event USSR Establishes a Base(s) in Cuba, May , ibid., ; see also Lansdale to Special Group
(Augmented), Status of Requested Studies, Operation Mongoose, June , ibid., .
. Hurwitch paper, Political and Economic, August , attachment to Lansdale to
Special Group (Augmented), Stepped Up Course B, August , FRUS, :.
 American Policy and Cuba :

was National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) , which directed

McNamara to work on ways to get the Jupiter missiles out of Turkey, asked for
a broad analysis of the threat that might be posed by Soviet ballistic missiles in
Cuba, and ordered review of two options, a diplomatic warning to the Soviets
and military ways of eliminating any installations in Cuba capable of launching
nuclear attack on the U.S. Kennedy also wanted to know the pros and cons of
invading Cuba in the context of an aggravated Berlin crisis.
Each week seemed to bring more worrisome news. The Republican oppo-
sition in Congress was pounding the Cuba drum. Soviet surface-to-air missile
(SAM) sites were firmly identified. Bundy urged President Kennedy to make a
public statement saying that he knew what was going on in Cuba, but it did not
pose a new threat to the United States that would justify a major military
operation against the island. The United States would only act if there were
certain things we would not tolerate. In partial response to his NSAM
order, Kennedy was given analysis from Bundy arguing that Soviet ballistic
missiles in Cuba would indeed present a very significant military threat to
the United States. The Defense Department came to the same conclusion but,
unlike Bundy, urged Kennedy not to tie himself down with a warning limited
only to deployment of Soviet nuclear weapons.
On September Kennedy chose to take Bundys advice. He issued (though
his press secretary, Pierre Salinger) the public warning drawing the line at any
Soviet deployment of offensive weapons, which everyone (including the
Soviets) understood meant systems able to deliver nuclear weapons against the
United States. As Bundy had explained to Kennedy, the White House statement
was as significant for what it said Washington would tolerate. That statement
was, therefore, also highly meaningful to administration insiders for the ongo-
ing debate about the future of Mongoose. Kennedy had taken a dovish stand.
His best hope was to overwhelm the critics with a barrage of official statements
disclaiming any Soviet provocation in Cuba, thus deflating the oppositions case.
So the administration mounted a forceful campaign of denial, with the
president himself manning the front line. Again Bundys advice was critical.
President Kennedy would be giving a press conference on the th and Cuba
was bound to come up. On September the Soviet government declared
unequivocally that Moscow saw no need to send nuclear missiles to Cuba. So,
on the th, Bundy urged Kennedy to repeat the line his press secretary had put

. See McCones record of the meetings on August (at State) and August (at the White
House) and NSAM , FRUS, :, , .
. Bundy to President Kennedy, Cuba, August , FRUS, :. In sum, the
analysis concluded, the expectation is that any missiles will have a substantial political and
psychological impact, while surface-to-surface missiles would create a condition of great alarm, even
in the absence of proof that nuclear warheads were arriving with them. Such missiles would, Bundy
noted in his cover memo, be a matter of elemental national security. It is not the same as missiles in
Turkey. I myself believe that if we make it clear that short of war we have done everything we can
and that war is not justified by antiaircraft installations, we shall be on fairly solid ground.
. New York Times, August .
 :

out on September. Bundy opened the memo by telling Kennedy that, if he

wanted to invade Cuba, he should reject Bundys advice, because Bundy wanted
JFK to downplay the Soviet threat. (Unfortunately this revealing document
was left out of the FRUS volume.) Bundy, one of the few people in the action
channel for preparing a presidential press conference, got exactly what he
wanted: President Kennedy went before the press and publicly drew a line that
accepted what was already discovered and excluded what the Soviets had just
promised they would not do.
But as September turned to October with new kinds of Soviet arms being
discovered in Cuba almost every week, an increasingly worried president was
keeping an eye on accelerated contingency planning by State and Defense for
some kind of military action against Cuba.
A few days later, however, on Sunday, October, on ABCs Issues and Answers,
McGeorge Bundy was denying the presence of Soviet offensive missiles in
Cuba just as a U- was taking its first pictures of them. Kennedy later told
McCone: You certainly had the situation sized up, but I was one of those who
did not think the Soviets would put missiles in Cuba. It was Bundy, though,
who came up with the idea of solving the political problem by drawing a line
the Soviets were not expected to cross. It was Bundy, too, who would see how
Kennedys press statements would help him win his bureaucratic battles against
McCone and any other advocates of a more aggressive policy against Castro
(like the presidents own brother). Bundys strategy had now backfired.
Once the missiles were found the White House plunged into weeks of
intense deliberations (and Bundys influence visibly diminished). The story of
those deliberations is detailed elsewhere. The FRUS volumes have some vital
new evidence, including the minutes of the and October NSC meetings
that rejected the two air strike options and then chose the blockade/ultimatum

. Bundy to President Kennedy, Memorandum on Cuba for the Press Conference,

September , in National Security Files, box , Cuba General Sept . Bundys introduction
to the memo comes quickly and clearly to the point: . The Congressional head of steam on this
is the most serious that we have had. It affects both parties and takes many forms. . The immediate
hazard is that the Administration may appear to be weak and indecisive. . One way to avoid this
hazard is to act by naval or military force in the Cuban area. . The other course is to make a very
clear and aggressive explanation of current policy and its justification. Bundy then outlines his
approach, the last option, which begins with: The threat is under control. [emphasis in original]
Neither Communist propaganda nor our own natural anger should blind us to the basic fact that
Cuba is not and will not be allowed to become a threat to the United States.
. Kennedy met with the chiefs on September and was already wondering about the
feasibility of an air strike against SAM sites. On September he reminded McNamara about the
need to keep the plans up to date. On October, prodded by the chiefs, McNamara offered them
an expansive list of contingencies for possible action, led by a move on Berlin or the Soviet
deployment of offensive systems to the island. See Kennedy to McNamara, September ,
FRUS, :; McNamara to Taylor, October , ibid. :.
. McCone to record, Meeting with the President : p.m. March , March ,
FRUS, :.
. May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes. See also Allison and Zelikow, Essence of Decision, ,
, .
 American Policy and Cuba :

approach instead of the blockade/negotiate strategy. The lead advocate for the
negotiation strategy was not Adlai Stevenson, the man later tarred for having
advocated such an appeasing course. McNamara had been the lead spokesman for
that option, with Stevensons backing. The approach that prevailed was developed
and backed by a coalition consisting of Robert Kennedy, a career diplomat
(Thompson), and the NSCs only two Republican members, McCone and Dillon.

NATO and The Deal

Until October the U.S. decisions could be acted upon without the prior
concurrence of any official outside the executive branch of the government. This
changed when Khrushchev publicly demanded that any deal on Soviet missiles in
Cuba had to include the Jupitermissilesin Turkey(underjointTurkish and American
control). Now the NATO alliance was embroiled in the bargaining. As President
Kennedy put it, so far all that really gets involved are us, the Russians, and Cuba.
Beginning with the offer on Turkey, then theyre [the Allies] really in it. The missiles
in Turkey had been sent there as part of a NATO decision. If the Americans wanted
to accept Khrushchevs deal, they could not act unilaterally. The Turks would have
to agree; so would the other members of the Alliance represented at NATO.
Khrushchev had used the Jupiters in Turkey effectively, Kennedy thought,
as a negotiating ploy for public consumption. But Kennedy discovered a
conflict between his agenda and the agenda of an organization, this time the
Department of State. The department had painstakingly devised and organized
an effort to persuade European countries to abandon the goal of national
nuclear deterrence and take part in some form of multilateral nuclear force.
When the Jupiter issue arose again, officials at State saw an opportunity to add
this issue to their existing program. They would phase out the Jupiters in
Turkey once the multilateral force they were planning was agreed, established,
and ready to be an acceptable substitute for the Turks. All three affected bureaus
jointly presented this approach to Rusk on October. Perhaps because the
editors did not see the interconnection of the nominally disparate issues, this
action memo is not included in the FRUS volume.
But this was a program geared to a timetable of months, not days. So when
Kennedy raised the issue with State on the morning of October, the department
had nothing to report except a preliminary sounding taken from the U.S.
ambassadors to Turkey, Italy, and NATO. Kennedy was angry.

. See Tyler, Rostow, and Talbot to Rusk, Cuba, October , Cuban Missile Crisis Files,
Releases Box.
. The most important of these was the thoughtful response from Ambassador Raymond Hare,
in Turkey, that had begun arriving the previous day and was continuing to come in during the day
on the th. (Longer cables were transmitted in sections, each of which would arrive separately;
then the whole message could be assembled. Many scholars have noticed the first section of Hares
cable; few have commented on the subsequent sections that arrived and were read on the th.) See
Ankara , October , National Security Files, box , NATO-Weapons-Cables-Turkey.
This telegram is also included in the FRUS Microfiche Supplement, Doc. , Fiche .
. May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes, .
 :

After hours of difficult arguments, President Kennedy gathered a small

group in the Oval Office. He wanted to talk over an oral message Robert
Kennedy should deliver to Dobrynin, to accompany the public letter to
Khrushchev that was already being publicly announced. Everyone quickly
agreed that one part of the message should tell the Soviets bluntly that the time
had come to agree on the American terms. No more bargaining. Otherwise
further American action was unavoidable. Bundy remembered that the presi-
dent in particular was clear and insistent on this part of the message.
Rusk proposed another part to the message, picking up an idea he had read
earlier in the day buried in the text of the cable from the American ambassador
to Turkey, Raymond Hare. This was a simple U.S. statement that the missiles
in Turkey would eventually be withdrawn, but that this would occur after the
crisis was resolved. This way there would be no formal trading just a unilateral
statement that foreclosed more bargaining. Rusks idea offered a way to avoid
getting tangled up in arguments about reciprocal treatment for all bases in Cuba
and Turkey. It also cleverly finessed the need to obtain a hurried, awkward
NATO agreement to the deal. Ambassador Hare thought this plans flaw was
that the Soviets might not keep it secret. So Robert Kennedy was instructed
to make it plain to Dobrynin that the same secrecy must be observed on the
other side, and that any Soviet reference to our assurance would simply make
it null and void. Robert Kennedy executed his instructions.

. McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New
York, ), .
. Ibid., . Rusk had referred to Hares cable earlier in the day. Bundy, too, appears to have
read Hares cable. See ibid., and n. . For Hares suggestion (in sections two and three of the
cable, which arrived during the th), see Ankara , cited above.
Twenty-five years later Rusk said that during the evening President Kennedy had talked
privately with him about another diplomatic maneuver. Rusk would telephone the president of
Columbia University, Andrew Cordier. Cordier was close to UN secretary general U Thant.
Cordier would suggest that Washington might be receptive to a proposal involving the Turkish
missiles in order to gain removal of the missiles in Cuba. The details are repeated, with perhaps
excessive editorial zeal, in an editorial note in FRUS, :. Mark White has argued,
using British evidence, about an analogous Rusk-Cordier contact, that Rusk had forgotten that
he had talked to Cordier on October but that the idea concerned the UN monitoring of
Turkish missile sites in exchange for UN monitoring of Cuban missile sites to be sure they were
inoperable. Mark J. White, The Cuban Missile Crisis (London, ), . Given the sophistica-
tion of the discussion about how to approach the Turks we think that, even if Rusks memory is
true, the idea would have been both preceded and followed by prolonged, skeptical discussion
in the ExComm. Even had Thant broached the idea, such a proposal would not have settled the
dilemmas that the ExComm was discussing on October.
. Robert Kennedy to Rusk, October , FRUS, :. Kennedys account in
this memo (declassified in ) is substantively identical to the report of the talk sent back to
Moscow that night by Dobrynin. CWIHP Bulletin (Spring ): . On the circumstances that
prompted Kennedy to write this note to Rusk see Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, .
Schlesinger quotes some of Kennedys handwritten notes on the matter, also accurately describing
the substance of the discussion on Turkish missiles. Since the memo does not appear in Rusks
files, and the original is in the JFKL in the Presidents Office Files, it is possible that Robert
Kennedy drafted the memo to Rusk, showed it to his brother, and that the president then kept the
memo in his files, so that it was never sent to Rusk.
 American Policy and Cuba :

When the ExComm reconvened, Rusk outlined the three alternatives for
dealing with the NATO part of the problem: () Since the United States was
rejecting the public Soviet offer and thereby accepting the possibility of war, it
ought to urge NATO to stand firm. Alternative (), from McNamara, was to
pull the missiles out immediately as preparation for an attack on Cuba.
Alternative (), from Ball, was to accept the trade Khrushchev was offering. In
this session no one mentioned the fourth alternative, Rusks idea, that Robert
Kennedy had just tried out with Dobrynin. After all, the existence of that
alternative could not be confided to NATO. Anyway, the Soviets might insist
on keeping the Jupiters on the table. In that case President Kennedy wanted
the NATO allies to accept some responsibility for what might happen next. He
explained: We dont want it to look like thats where we urged them and
therefore they have accepted, some reluctantly, some eagerly, the United States
opinion. Then it goes bad, which it may well. Then they say: Well, we followed
you, and you bitched it up. . . . [T]he way its escalating, if they [the Soviets]
hit Turkey and if they hit Berlin . . . if they want to get off, nows the time to
speak up.
The message was, accordingly, sent out warning allies that the United States
would continue to press for a solution in [the] Cuban framework alone,
leaving it open for the allies to suggest alternatives. The allies were further
warned that the United States might find it necessary within a very short time
to take military action. Then the Soviets gave in. The Jupiter issue was
eventually handled by the Americans just as they had privately promised, going
through NATO, as part of broader reviews of NATO nuclear force posture.

The Castro Problem

The U.S. diplomacy during the crisis focused on Khrushchev, not Castro.
The Kennedy administration correctly judged that Khrushchev had caused the
problem, and thought Khrushchev should solve it. Still, the administration
seriously considered a high-level approach to Castro and finally cleared a
message to be delivered through a Brazilian emissary. But by the time the
Brazilians got it the message had been overtaken by events. There is no evidence
that Castro, on the other side, thought much about trying to talk to the
Americans.
Castros behavior in this period defies easy comprehension. At first he had
dismissed the possibility of an American invasion, but by October his mind
had gone to a state of full alarm. The Soviet commander reported that the
Cubans expected the air strike to come at any moment and were preparing to
fire at U.S. aircraft if there was an attack. Khrushchev asked his envoy to

. May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes, . See also Kennedys earlier explanation of this
point in ibid., .
. State telegram ToPol , October , FRUS, :.
. Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble, .
 :

caution Castro against any rash actions. But Castro had already ordered his
air defense forces to start shooting at U.S. planes entering Cuban airspace.
Castro had discussed the plan with Soviet commanders on the scene and this
was reported to Moscow too. On October Khrushchev sent instructions
suggesting that Castro rescind the order but, by then, it was too late, even had
Castro wished to heed the advice.
The Cubans, expecting an attack, fired first at U.S. reconnaissance aircraft
flying low-level missions within range of the Cuban antiaircraft guns. When a
U- came over, well beyond the range of any Cuban guns, it too was apparently
and falsely perceived as a threat. Authority to fire had been delegated to
Soviet field commanders in the event of a U.S. attack. The local Soviet air
defense officers chose to interpret their instructions liberally in order to aid
their excited Cuban comrades. A Soviet SAM shot down the U-, killing its
pilot, Major Rudolph Anderson.
This episode was quite dangerous. But before the United States and NATO
had to make the final decisions about military action, Khrushchev moved. The
events of October certainly punctured any complacency in Moscow. Khrush-
chev received another message from Castro, sent on October. The Cuban
leader thought a U.S. attack in the next twenty-four to seventy-two hours is
almost inevitable. If the Americans came, Castro hoped Khrushchev would
consider elimination of such a danger, referring to use of Soviet nuclear
weapons. However difficult and horrifying this decision may be, Castro wrote,
there is, I believe, no other recourse.
Unnerved by such recklessness, Khrushchev opened the Presidium session
on the morning of October by informing his colleagues that they were face
to face with the danger of war and of nuclear catastrophe, with the possible
result of destroying the human race. He went on: In order to save the world,
we must retreat. The new assessment was not apparently based on the added
news of Robert Kennedys talk with Dobrynin, replying to Khrushchevs public
demand for a trade that included the U.S. Jupiter missiles in Turkey with a
secret promise to take the missiles out of Turkey, unilaterally, in several months.
It was only after Khrushchev made his declaration to the Presidium that word
came in of the cable from Dobrynin in Washington. The threat of war in that
message seemed ominous to the group, and only reinforced the decision
Khrushchev had already announced. The man who relayed Dobrynins message

. Anatoli I. Gribkov, The View from Moscow and Havana, in Anatoli I. Gribkov & William
Y. Smith, Operation ANADYR: U.S. and Soviet Generals Recount the Cuban Missile Crisis (Chicago, ),
; Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble, .
. Fursenko and Naftali One Hell of a Gamble, .
. Alexeev to Foreign Ministry, October , and Castro to Khrushchev, October ,
both in collection of cables obtained by the Cold War International History Project and translated
under my supervision at Harvard; Gribkov, The View from Moscow and Havana, .
. Khrushchev to Castro, October , in released correspondence at JFKL; Gribkov, The
View from Moscow and Havana, .
. Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble, .
 American Policy and Cuba :

recalled that the entire tenor of the words by the Presidents brother, as they
were relayed by Anatoly Dobrynin, prompted the conclusion that the time of
reckoning had come. Khrushchev explained later to Castro that the Cuban
leaders warning of an imminent U.S. attack had been confirmed by other
sources, so he, Khrushchev, had hurried to prevent it.
Had the crisis not been settled, Castro expected a U.S. attack on his country.
He certainly realized that Cuba would be devastated in such a conflict. He
foresaw the possibility of a nuclear exchange, to the point that Khrushchev
thought Castro was advocating a nuclear war. It is hard to see how the people
of Cuba would have survived such a conflagration.
But instead of rejoicing at the resolution of the crisis that saved the lives of
so many of his people, or at least sighing with relief, Castro was enraged. Why?
Surely he did not think the Americans would acquiesce without a fight he
had just written to Khrushchev predicting a U.S. attack. He had fatalistically
accepted the fact that he and his nation would become the catalyst and
battlefield in a superpower war. Did he expect some final, fiery glory? Cubans
should shiver a little if they reflect on the puzzle of why Castro was so
disappointed, so bitterly disapppointed, when the war he predicted did not
happen.
The crisis over Soviet missiles in Cuba passed the moment of maximum
tension when Khrushchevs message was broadcast to the world on Sunday,
October. The crisis, however, was not over. The FRUS volumes again come
into their own in documenting the story of the post-crisis crisis. Since these
White House meetings were also secretly recorded by Kennedy, the FRUS
material will allow an authoritative account of the November crisis to come
out once those tapes are declassified and released. The documents already
suggest, though, that Cuba had been essential to the Soviet end of the bargain
(which called for international inspectors in Cuba). Since the angry Cubans
had thwarted the original deal, the Americans felt they were released from any
formal noninvasion pledge. Cuba was back to enjoying only those protections
the Americans would grant to any country in the hemisphere. Still, Kennedy
was no more anxious to invade Cuba than he had been three or six months
earlier.
Some covert harassment of the Castro government resumed, spurred by
discoveries of new Cuban attempts to subvert the governments with spectacular
sabotage operations in Venezuela and other South American countries. By the
summer of the CIA operations against Castro had returned to about what
they had been in the spring of , before the Soviet arms shipments began.
Washington was again back to a policy judged to have low risk and a low return

. Khrushchev to Castro, October , and Oleg Troyanovsky, The Caribbean Crisis: A

View from the Kremlin, International Affairs [Moscow], AprilMay , .
. See Bundy to Ball, enclosing draft memo, Future Policy toward Cuba, December ,
FRUS, :.
 :

petty harassment that was probably not enough to bring down Castro, but
also not enough to drag the United States into an open or direct intervention
in Cuba. There U.S. policy would stay, for years to come.