The Soviet Plan to Destroy Guantanamo Naval Base - October 1962

[Make7]

 

Washington, DC, June 4, 2008 - Soviet nuclear-tipped cruise missiles were ready to destroy the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo had the U.S. military persuaded President Kennedy to invade Cuba during the missile crisis in 1962, according to a new book by Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs (citing documents and interviews posted here today by the National Security Archive).

The documents show that U.S. intelligence listed the Soviet weapons as "unidentified artillery" pieces, when they were actually cruise missiles armed with Hiroshima-sized nuclear devices. They were deployed to within 15 miles of the Guantanamo base on the same day -- October 27, 1962 -- that the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended an all-out U.S. invasion of Cuba to destroy the Soviet missile bases. President Kennedy rejected the advice of his military advisers in favor of a diplomatic solution to the crisis that included a secret understanding between his brother and the Soviet ambassador.

The new book, One Minute to Midnight, draws on the National Security Archive's long-standing documentary work on the Cuban Missile Crisis. Dobbs conducted extensive interviews with Soviet combat veterans and discovered previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence documents that explode the myth of successful crisis management and offer new insights into how a U.S. president makes decisions at a time of grave international crisis.

Nikita Khrushchev alluded to the nuclear threat hanging over the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo during a meeting in the Kremlin on October 24, 1962, with the president of Westinghouse, William Knox. According to Knox’s notes on the meeting, Khrushchev said he was not interested in the "destruction of the world" but it was up to the Americans "if you want us to all meet in hell." He told Knox that the Guantanamo naval base would "disappear the first day" after a U.S. invasion of Cuba.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/dobbs/index.htm

-Make7