Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 SECRET I 25X1 I STUDIES INTELLIGENCE • 111 i-- 11 VOL 16 NO 2 CENTRAL SPRING 1972 INTELLIGENCE ARCHIVAL RECORD t £ _ ' N AGENCY 14 9 9 PLEASE RETURN TO GENCY ARCHIVES ir m c c _c -oc y ___ __ 25X1 Approved For Rele 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP 8T03194A000300010013-8 Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A0003 e %913-8 No Foreign Dissem Inside Story THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS OF 1962 PRESENTING THE PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE ABROAD Sherman Kent It was 0737 in the morning of Sunday 14 October 196 when Major Richard Heyser began the crossing of Cuba in his U-2 He flew almost due north-on a course some 60 miles to the west of Havana-and passed over the northerly beaches six minutes later In that brief timespan he took 928 pictures which covered a swath 75 miles wide The resolution of his best shots was a matter of three feet Once past the target he headed for McCoy Air Force Base near Orlando Florida There the exposed film was transferred to special shipping containers loaded into a courier aircraft and flown with all deliberate speed to the Naval Photographic Interpretation Center at Suitland Maryland It was late in the day when the film arrived from then on and through the night the Center developed the original negatives and began making duplicate positives--not the usual kind of photoprints on opaque paper as we amateurs might think but a special kind of print on clear acetate that the pro's could study over a light table The first of these duplicates reached the National Photographic Interpretation Center NPIC just before 1000 on the morning of 15 October By 1600 that afternoon the photointerpreters PI's were almost certain that they had identified large surface-to-surface missiles in another hour or so they were sure enought for Arthur Lundahl the Director of NPIC to pass the word to CIA Headquarters Headquarters in turn reached McGeorge Bundy about 2100 that evening It was his decision to give the President a night's rest and the PJ's a night's more labor before putting the earth-shaking evidence before his chief SECRET 19 Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 MORI HRP PAGES 19-42 ApRroved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A00030Q010013-8 SECRET Missile Crisis The President and his principal advisors were informed the next morning 1 This left the question of what to do-a matter which was resolved after five days of debate and deliberation in favor of a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba Once the President reached this basic decision he had a myriad of second-line but still important decisions to make J u st to touch on one-and incidentially the one that triggered the rnbject of this essay--consider that word quarantine The President used it to avoid the more provocative word blockade but no matter what he called it the other man was free to take grave offense Neither would go down easily with the USSR In fact it was possible that the quarantine and i'ts enforcement would lead to that well-known series of actions and reactions so often cited in intelligence papers as the unintentioned stairway to general conflict Though the odds favoring this progress of events were small they were by no means negligible Even if events stopped a long way short of the cataclysm there was still room for a thundering crisis the outcome of which would depend in significant measure upon the way in which our allies would respond-whether they would support us or back away During the seven days between the President's learning of the Soviet's emplacement of medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba and his speech announcing it a few score principal officers of the Executive Branch worked endlessly and in unpenetrated secrecy Except for the President the members of the so-called Ex Comm the ad hoc executive committee of the NSC and the top echelon of the intelligence community few indeed of our fellow countrymen knew what was going on and why and practically no one in the governments of our allies Until the President was ready to act the Russians must not know that we knew their secret and when we were ready to act our allies should know our chosen course before our adversaries It was to this end that the Ex Comm drafted for the President's approval a time-table of consecutive actions which included the briefings of the chiefs of government of our principal allies t A good bit has been written on the subject of the missile crisis The best full account is still Elie Abel 'l'he Missile Crisis Philadelphia and New York 1966 Mr Abel's material comes in very large part from oral testimony-taken while events were still frnsh in mind-from most of the major American policy officers and a few of the British llobert Kennedy's 'l'hirteen Days New Yark 1969 is an important firsthand account O SECRET Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 Approw cJ5 Jj9 ase 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A0003 si't1R 13-8 At A hour of D day a time which became 1900 EDST Monday 22 October the President was to tell publicly what was wrong in Cuba and what the US government proposed to do about it At about A minus 12 the British were to receive formal advance notice about four hours later the French and the Germans and later still the Canadians 2 Our ambassadors were to call upon the chiefs of government deliver personal letters from the President and a copy of the speech to be delivered that night and make whatever oral comment was appropriate Each of them was also to have copies of the air photos and for the presentations to the British French Germans and Canadians an intelligence officer from CIA headquarters to brief and answer questions as necessary Of our ambassadors to the UK France the Federal Republic and Canada only Mr Bruce was at his post in London Mr Dowling was not in Bonn he was in Georgia on compassionate leave Mr Bohlen our ambassador-designate to Paris was on his way on a boat in mid-Atlantic 3 and Mr Butterworth the ambassador-designate to Ottawa was not to assume his functions until after the New Year In Mr Dowling's case there was a remedy a speedy termination of his leave as for Mr Bohlen and Mr Butterworth there was no remedy but that of finding worthy substitutes For the group heading for Europe there was to be a presidential aircraft Air Force One which would transport Mr Dowling Mr Acheson the substitute for Mr Bohlen the documents the pictures and their CIA security courier Edward Enck and the three CIA men to do the intelligence briefing Chester Cooper who had had a tour of duty in London was to be with Mr Bruce R Jack Smith who was AD CI at the time was to go on to Bonn with Mr Dowling and I had the honor to be with Mr Acheson In place of the absent Mr Butterworth the President called from private life Mr Livingston Merchant who a few months earlier had resigned as our ambassador to Canada and left the Foreign Service He and William Tidwell his CIA intelligence briefer made their separate ways to Ottawa There is some evidence that first planning in the Ex Comm did not envisage that the intelligence briefing of the chiefs of government 2 The Turks and Italians were also to receive advance notice Between ambassadorial assignments Mr Bohlen had been keeping Soviet matters under special scrutiny for the benefit of the President and Secretary of State His appointment to Paris had come only shortly before the discovery of the missiles in Cuba After this turn of events President Kennedy was torn between keeping Bohlen at his side in Washington or releasing him to take up his duties in France The result was some temporizing which led to Mr Bohlen's late departure 3 SKRR Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A0003000f0013-8 Ap roved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A0003D0010013-8 SECRET Missile Cr1S1s would take place simultaneously with the ambassadors' presentations of the case Rather the technical intelligence colloquy was to take place on a wrvice-to-service basis soon after the principals had met l mention this to indicate that the Ex Comm did consider the intelligence aspects of the multi-national maneuver and came to attach a high importance to it Whether the Ex Comm worried about the credibility of photographic evidence it was the only solid evidence there was I do not know but I do know that a few very important officers of the Agency did Accordingly Cooper Smith Tidwell and I were urged to pay particular attention to the way in which our audiences responded to the photographs and to record these reactions in our memos for the record We were also urged to make these memos as full and detailed as other demands on our time would permit CoopPr and I did find the time to write up our experiences at length Smith who did not spent some time -last June 1971 giving me the benefit of his remembrance of the events almost nine years back Tidwell wrote only a short memo of which more later since the magisterial Memorandum of Conversation which Mr Merchant filed with the Department of State covered the subject with depth and thoroughness In these communications there is much of interest to the intelligence calling But let the memos speak for themselves First from a shortened version of Chester Cooper's Memorandum for the Record of 29 October 1962 The Prime Minister n Monday 22 October 1230 London time J accompanied the Ambassador to the Admiralty to assist him in briefing Mr Macmillan on the situation in Cuba The letter from the President had been sent to the Prime Minister's office earlier in the day We delayed our session with the Prime Minister for half an hour hoping to bring with us an advance draft of the President's nw - sage The Prime Minister was alone except for his Private Secretary It wa evident that the Prime Minister had some advance genPral knowledge of the developing situation in Cuba as indeed he - hould have since we had briefed various members of the British intelligence community several days before in Washington However Mr Macmillan obviously had no idea of the extent or precise nature of Soviet offensive capabilities in Cuba His first reaction which he addressed more to himself than to the Ambassador was to the effect that the British people who had been SECRET Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 ApprMietjlt -fielease 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000 013-8 living in the shadow of annihilation for the past many years had somehow been able to live more or less normal lives and he felt that the Americans now confronted with a similar situation would after the initial shock make a similar adjustment Life goes on somehow The Prime Minister was obviously aware that this might be misinterpreted and went to considerable length to explain to the Ambassador that this was more of a philosophical commentary on human nature than any indication on his part that ho was not sympathetic with the US position or shocked at the nows After my recitation of the present Soviet offensive strength in Cuba Mr Macmillan said that if the President were convinced that a meaningful offensive capability were present That was good enough for him He did not spend more than a few seconds on the photographs Although the Prime Minister did not develop this theme in my presence in detail he did indicate that he felt that a blockade would be difficult to enforce and that the US would have problems in getting solid UN support He also ruminated about whether it would not have been better to have confrnnted Khrushchev privately with our evidence and given him a private ultimatum Lord Home then joined the Prime Minister and the Ambassador for a discussion of policy matters and I was excused I was quickly followed by the Private Secretary who stressed the necessity for making our evidence as convincing as possible to the British public Members of the Shadow Cabinet Cooper also briefed Hugh Gaitskell and George Brown of the British Shadow Cabinet He Ambassador Bruce and two embassy officers met with them on Tuesday evening Cooper told the story and showed the photographs Gaitskell who up until that time had feared that the President was confusing the issue of the Soviet buildup by making it appear that surface-to-air missiles were offensive weapons confessed his earlier apprehensions and acknowledged that they were ill-founded He was visibly shaken by the evidence of the long-range missiles He made much of the analogy between Cuba and Turkey and brushed aside most of the standard arguments about the difference between the two However he seemed much impressed with the fact that the Cuban missiles were outside the BMEWS sys- SECRET 23 Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 App for Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194 8JQ W51P013-8 tern He felt that this did in fact represent a change in the status quo and in the balance of terror question George Brown was concerned as to whether the United States had deployed more or fewer Jupiter missiles in Turkey than the Soviets were putting into Cuba and as to the Soviets' capability for early warning of the firing of these missiles Cooper said he would try to get enlightenment for Brown on both matters Brown's point and one to which Gaitskell assented was that if the United States did indeed have fewer missiles in Turkey than the Soviets would have in Cuba and if the Soviets did have an early warning capability the argument about the equivalence of the Turkish and Cuban bases would be weakened aitskell said that he had been with the Prime Minister just prior to our discussion and that the Prime Minister expressed annoyance about the lack of advance knowledge of US actions I pointed out to Gaitskell in fairly strong terms that there were two aspects to the question of advanced knowledge one was the developing situation in Cuba and the other was US intentions with respect to Cuba In connection with the former I told Gaitskell that we had occasion to discuss Cuba with several important people in the British intelligence community who happened to be in Washington during the week of 15 October and that several of them had been given a formal briefing on Friday 19 October We could only assume that they notified their government of the developing situation in Cuba With respect to US intentions I noted that we had hoped to get an advanced copy of the President's statement to the Prime Minister 12 hours before the broadcast but that this was not possible because the President himself had not decided on the precise language of his statement until fairly late in the day This was unfortunate but in the nature of the circumstances was all that could have been done The British Intelligence Community 25X1 Ambassador Bruce and Cooper agreed that it would be wise to give the briefing to the British Joint Intelligence Committee and __ __ got in touch with Sir Hugh Stephenson the JIC Chairman who set the time for 1000 Tuesday morning ______ D There was no evident skepticism of the validity of our evidence but it was clear that the Air Ministry was anxious to get the photo take for analysis by their own PI's a team of Air 24 SECRET Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 25X1 Appr flB°t rfmlease 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000 @P13-8 Ministry officers was provided an opportunity for closer examinination of the photos later in the afternoon There was naturally considerable speculation as to Soviet motives To the extent that there was any consensus in the JIC it was very much along the line propounded by Sir Dick White the previous evening Namely that the Soviet aim was to confront the President late in November with a fail accompli in Cuba a vantage point from which Khrushchev could bargain for a definitive settlement of the Berlin question and the question of US foreign bases in general The Press Because of the adverse or skeptical press reaction to US claims that the USSR had offensive missile bases in Cuba the Ambassador and the Public Affairs Officer were anxious to have a press briefing as early as possible on Tuesday At 5 00 p m Tuesday a press conference was held for representatives of all the dailies BBC and ITV The conference was chaired by Evans the PAO and attended by Minister Jones and myself After indicating the ground rule backgrounder no attribution etc Mr Evans briefly described the situation in Cuba and indicated that I a Department of Defense consultant would show the photographs and explain some of the background of the build-up I did this guided by the instructions I had received from Washington The questions which followed were friendly and I had the feeling after the conference was over it lasted about an hour that the press representatives were genuinely convinced of the US case I released the photographs without the identification of their precise locations to the press A fuller description of the circumstances of the release of the photographs is attached at Annex Later Tuesday evening both the BBC and ITV had major programs dealing with the Cuban crises The BBC broadcast the Foreign Minister's speech which indicated strong support for the US position and a condemnation of the Soviet Union and documented his remarks by the use of the photo raphs which I had supplied to the BBC SKRB Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 SECRET Missile Crisis Annex- Release of Pictures to Press 4 The following consideration influenced my decision to release the photographs of the Soviet build-up to the British press Immediately following my briefing of the Prime Minister Philip De Zuluetta the Prime Minister's Private Secretary expressed serious concern about the reception any strong Governrrnmt statement would have in the absence of incontrovertible proof of the missile build-up On Tuesday morning 23 October the British press was almost universally skeptical of the President's claim that the USSR had established offensive bases in Cuba References were made to the forthcoming election and to the failures of past US intelligence efforts re Cuba n Tuesday morning also there was some uncertainty as to whether at the DOD press conference following the President's broadcasL the press was shown the pictures or whether it was given the pictures After my briefing of key Embassy officers at noon on Tuesday the PAO and the Minister urged the necessity of providing the British press with a clear and authoritative story on the build-up I was asked to do this the Ambassador subsequently expressed his own desire that this be done and was also urged to show the pictures on a special BBC television program scheduled 4 J ie A be op cit p 138 has the following comment on the release of the pictures to the British press The last line is in conflict with Cooper's testimony as well as the fact that the London TV of Tuesday night showed the photographs and the London press of Wednesday morning was loaded with them Sir David and Lady Ormsby Gore had received a pre-crisis invitation to join the Kennedys that evening Tuesday 23 October for a private dinner-dance The dance of course had been canceled But Mrs Kennedy invited the Ormsby Gores to bring to dinner some Embassy guests who had arrived from New York too late to be forewarned of the cancellation The British Ambassador found the President in no mood for social chatter The two went off together for a talk about the day's events and what the morrow might bring Sir David was worried about the skeptical British press reaction Even the President's friend Hugh Gaitskell leader of the Labor Opposition had talked of so-called missiles in Cuba The Ambassador felt it was most important that the missile-site photographs be published especially those that would most readily persuade laymen that the Soviet missiles were indeed installed The President sent for the photographs and together the two re-examined them closely Ormsby Gore's plea reinforcing the direct appeal of Ambassador Bruce in London helped the President decide to publish the pictures next day App ed For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000 6n8 b013-8 Appr M'ied E Selease 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000 13-8 for Tuesday night I refused to appear on television agreed to participate but not sponsor a press briefing and requested Headquarters' permission to have the pictures shown on BBC I received permission to have the pictures shown on television on the basis of the Ambassador's urgent request The localities of the sites were to be removed and the press and the television audiences were to be told that these were typical sites but were not to be informed of the number of sites After consultation with Embassy officials I agreed that since the pictures were going to be shown on television it subsequently developed that ITV as well as BBC was going to have a special Cuba program we could release sanitized versions of the photographs to the press for publication Wednesday morning I informed Headquarters at my first opportunity which was after the Gaitskell briefing at 2100 of this release Sometime after midnight I was in telephone communication with the White House Forrestal and explained briefly the circumstances of release R J Smith in Bonn Air Force One-which had left Cooper at Greenham Common Air Force Base in the United Kingdom and had left Mr Acheson and me at Evreux an air base in France used by the USAF-flew on to Cologne in the Federal Republic and disembarked Ambassador Dowling Edward Enck the courier and R J Smith The time was well on towards Monday's dawn 22 October The meeting with the Chancellor who had been electioneering in Hanover all day did not take place until 1900 Herr Adenauer received Dowling and Smith in the Chancellor's official residence He had provided the interpreter As Smith remembers it Ambassador Dowling gave the Chancellor the personal letter from President Kennedy and with the reason for the meeting clear introduced Mr Smith of the CIA who was to show the evidence for the President's concern The Chancellor's first response was characteristic it showed perhaps his amused annoyance at the Gehlen organization's habit of using pseudonyms even within the official family and certainly something more than a trace of his legendary suspicion of everything Are you sure your name is Smith Perhaps you have two names SECRET 27 Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 Appr oy ed For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194AQ0Q3000 1 0013-8 t C RET M1ss1le Cr1S1s he said just by way of getting things straight at the start 5 Unruffled Smith said that his name was really Smith and began the briefing with the photographs which were contained in an outsized carrying case The Chancellor asked him if he slept in it but Smith pushed on They were seated at a low table Smith and Herr Adenauer side by side with Ambassador Dowling across As the dramatically illustrated story unfolded Adenauer was an attentive listener Seemingly concerned to indicate his general familiarity with the sort of military intelligence being laid before him he asked questions such as one regarding the state of readiness of the surface-to-surface missiles As it came through the interpreter it was to the effect were they warm or cold There was no question but that he was impressed with the evidence Far from showing any incredulity he indicated that he was not at all surprised to hear of these Soviet doings His tone was one of this is what one must expect of them Nor did he leave any doubt in Ambassador Dowling's mind that he would support the President's adopted course of action You may assure your President that I will be useful is the way Smith remembers his reassuring comment 6 5 Some three weeks after the dialogue in Bonn the Chancellor and key members of the German government made a state visit to Washington As R J Smith recounts the incident the White House decided that one of the features of the program for the Germans should be a briefing which would detail for Chancellor Adenauer precisely how the Russian missiles were removed from Cuba Smith was asked to perform this chore the venue for which was the Cabinet Room in full panoply The German Chancellor sat on one side of the table flanked with his defense and foreign ministers President Kennedy sat across from him flanked by Secretaries Rusk and McNamara Smith sat behind the Chancellor and on signal from the President to begin the briefing stood up and placed the first briefing board on the table before Chancellor Adenauer As he did so he said Chancellor Adenauer I am Mr Smith Adenauer looked up his ancient face impassive and said Immer which the translator rendered as still This cracked Smith up and the Chancellor chuckled whereupon Smith felt obliged to explain the joke to the distinguished group The President smiled frostily and urged Smith to continue 6 High officers of our government thought that there would be no harm in reinforcing the Chancellor's decision to be helpful Knowing of his warm personal friendship with Mr Acheson and his high respect for General de Gaulle they asked Mr Acheson to pass through Bonn on his way home and discuss the situation anew and tell of de Gaulle's reaction to the President's chosen course of action This is worth a footnote if for no other reason than to set a woefully confused chronology straight Washington sent a night action cable to Mr Acheson Monday night 22 October it reached his attention in the small hours of Tuesday 23 October He went to Bonn during that very day and with Mr Dowling saw the Chancellor for two hours late in the afternoon Needless to say the mission was a great success Neither the official memorandum of conversation nor Mr Acheson's memory of the interview as reported in C L Sulzberger The Last of the Giants New York 1970 p 931 mentions the photographic evidence 28 SECRET Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 Appr wMief B lease 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000 13-8 Paris-From My Memorandum 25X1 7 Mr Acheson and I with Mr Dowling and Smith flew on from our UK stop to Evrcux where we were met by Cecil Lyon the charge in Paris Ambassador to NATO Mr Finletter and Edward Ryan land an armed courier It was then about 0130 local time Mr Acheson with Messrs Lyon and Finletter proceeded directly to Lyon's residence Ryan the courier and I went to the Embassy to put the materials in the vault About noon Monday 22 October there was an assembly at Mr Lyon's house of high-ranking officers from the Embassy from our delegation to the North Atlantic Council and from among our military men in France I gave the intelligence briefing using the photographs I Meeting with President de Gaulle at the E lysee Palace At 4 40 Laughlin Campbell ___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ and I again appeared at Mr Lyon's residence where two modest automobiles from the Elysee Palace awaited us Mr Acheson and Mr Lyon with a presidential escort officer took one Campbell and I with the photographs the other We entered the Elysee through the regular entrance on the Rue du Faubourg St Honore Once within the first courtyard we followed a tortuous course from court to inner court to inner court and were finally brought up to an unprepossessing doorway under guard 8 We proceeded down small 7 The memo was dictated on 28 and 29 October 1962 and typed up a couple of weeks later 8 In short the French neglected nothing in assuring that Mr Acheson a recognizable man in almost any corner of the world would not be recognized by a casual bystander His meeting with the President had to be kept secret until A hour which would have been about midnight in Paris Mr Acheson's well-known powers as a raconteur were stimulated by the route we took I kept getting playbacks from third parties which became harder and harder to recognize The penultimate version occurs in C L Sulzberger's book already cited p 930 He says he got it from Paul Nitze who said he got it from Mr Acheson and it involved Acheson being smuggled into de Gaulle's office by an underground tunnel from across the street Apparently so high was the credibility of this unlikely story that ace newsman Sulzberger who had lived in Paris some twenty years and knew the environs of the Elysee as well as those of the White House swallowed that secret tunnel without even a footnote If perchance the reader happens to be the studious sort who checks references he may be disturbed to read Sulzberger's two sentences following the one about the tunnel They go Acheson went in alone except for the Elysee interpreter Not even Sherman See footnote on following page SECRET 29 Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 25X1 Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 SECRET Missile Crisis corridors up small corridors up small stairways through more corridors and stairways until we finally arrived at a large room adjoining the President's private office My guess is that if this were not the Cabinet Room it served some such purpose There was a very large oval table which would have seated perhaps 20 people The four Americans and the escort officer were here joined by another Frenchman who turned out to be an emergency interpreter After a few minutes' wait-which would have been a minute or so after---Mr Lyon and Mr Acheson were ushered into the General's office Mr Lyon has reported by cable on what took place Campbell and I waited for perhaps 20 minutes then the two of us were invited in After I had completed the first draft of this memorandum I saw Mr Acheson who told me the following about his discussion with de Gaulle When he had conveyed his message he told the General that there was an intelligence officer waiting outside to brief him on the evidence General de Gaulle's response was that he needed no such evidence he was satisfied with Mr Acheson's account after all President Kennedy obviously would not have sent a man of Mr Acheson's eminence to give him misinformation Mr Acheson said he thought the General would be interested 9 The presidential presence was awesome I was prepared for the height but not for the bulk At the moment of shock he seemed to be about twice the size of normal men His eyes too were somewhat unnerving shielded as they were behind the thick lenses made necessary by the removal of cataracts I can recall a feeling of Footnote 8 continued Kent was allowed_ May I assert that this is another error either Nitze's or Sulzberger's---certainly not Mr Acheson's that I did go in and that the memo for tbe record which you are now reading is not a self-serving fabrication The peak occurs in Kenneth Harris' write-up of an interview with Mr Acheson Life 23 July 1971 p 52 The operative passage runs thus So he IGeneral de Gaulle sent two small French cars and we drove down into thP garage basement of the palace and were led up through the basement past the wine closets There were all sorts of steel doors with little eyelet holes in them and people would look through and give a password I had a very amusing CIA fri md along with the photographs llalfway through this he said D' Artagnan is that saber loose in the scabbard And I said Aye Porthos And he said Be on the alert The Cardinal's men may be waiting Finally we were brought up into the cabinet room where an old friend of ours whosn name was Lebel greeted us 9 1 Jie Abel op cit p 112 has a slightly different version whose primary source was almost certainly Mr Acheson It goes Then Acheson offered to show the photographs De Gaulle swept them aside 'A great government such as yours does not act without evidence ' Apprffited For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194AOOo5 fo R0013-8 Appr W d Jeoc ease 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A0003§@@ 13-8 despair that came with the realization that the evidence which we were about to present was wholly visual evidence As it turned out my fears were groundless As Campbell and I entered he rose from his small desk-not much larger than our photographs-and gravely shook hands He gave me the nod to begin Campbell handed me the large photograph of the map of Cuba which I put before the General Still standing he bent over it as I began to talk about the defensive phase I mentioned first the arrival of large numbers of Soviet personnel quantitites of transportation communications and electronic equipment Next I came to the SAM's pointing out the SAM symbol on the map To my great comfort he at once identified the symbol and with his own finger pointed to a number of the others I then showed him the photograph of a SAM site which he seemingly identified at once I passed on the photograph of Santa Clara airfield pointing out the MIG-21's There was a reading glass which he picked up and put into the proper position looked at the swept-wing aircraft and indicated that this was a remarkable photograph I quickly showed him the Komars and the surfaceto-surface cruise missiles The word cruise was the only technical term which the interpreter did not cope with instantly He snapped a finger in annoyance and then realized that salvation lay on the graphic itself for this photograph had as an inset a diagram of the little winged missile I then took up the offensive phase showed him the IL-28 crates being carried as deck cargo showed him the San Julian airfield pointed out the crates the assembled IL-28 and the two uncrated fuselages Again he picked up the reading glass and examined the picture carefully I then went to MR-1 Medium Range Ballistic Missile site called number one at San Cristobal and the MR site at Sagua la Grande Next came the IR Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile site at Guanajay Coming back to the map again I totted up the number of confirmed sites the number of probables plus the possibles at Remedios I then went over our estimates of degree of readiness and gave him a worst case estimate as of the moment of speaking and another worst case as of early 1963 I discussed briefly nuclear warheads the fact that we could not positively identify any but noted the high degree of probability that they were in Cuba and the highly suspicious storage areas being readied I called his attention to the storage site at Guanajay I noted our estimate of the yield SECRET 31 Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 ApnrD ll dFor Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300Q10013-8 ' tLRET Missile Crisis of these warheads as two to three megatons for the MR's and three to five for the IR's I closed with a reminder that as of early 1963 our worst case estimate could augment present Soviet first strike capabilities with missiles by some 50% Not once in the course of my briefing was there any hint of incredulity on the part of the General If he was not perfectly satisfied that the pictures were scenes from Cuba and the weapons those which I asserted them to be he gave me no inkling of doubt Furthermore if he had expressed doubts to Mr Acheson and Mr Lyon after Campbell and I had left the room I am - ure they would have reported it Meeting with the North Atlantic Council 25X1 I During the day received the USIB-approved briefing note to be read to the N AC Mr Acheson got a copy and had read it Meanwhile we hopefully awaited the full text of the speech which the President would deliver at midnight local time The N AC meeting was scheduled for 10 PM By the time I had to leave the Embassy only Part 1 of 4 had been received The Acting Chairman of the North Atlantic Council was Colonna of Italy He introduced Mr Acheson as needing no introduction to the group noting that he was on a special mission for the President of the US Mr Acheson began by briefly discussing the nature of his mission read some excerpts from the portion of the President's speech that he had at hand and then indicating that he wished to read a statement introduced me as Assistant Director CIA who was there to answer questions when he finished reading his prepared text He then read the text There were a few questions on the estimated performance of the MR's and IR's a general question about their state of readiness and after the meeting an aide of the German permanent representative followed us to Mr Finletter's office to ask the estimated yield of the warheads As per USIB instruction I used no graphics whatever with one exception J passed around an unclassified map It showed what portions of North Central and South America the MR's and I R's could reach Among the metropolitan areas of the US under the gun were New York Philadelphia the District of Columbia Chicago San Francisco etc and in this distinguished company one found Oxford Mississippi It had been spotted on the map by a roguish CIA man to show Robert Kennedy who had wondered out loud if Oxford then 32 SECRET Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 ApproNfH t feoe MJease 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A0003 @@ 13-8 much on Mr Kennedy's mind as the place where bitter racial controversy had enveloped the state's university campus was within range I never recovered the map and have often wondered how some analyst of one of the NA TO intelligence services explained how Oxford Mississippi came to be listed among the great metropolises From the council there were no questions abo1 1t the sources of our information and no questions whatever to indicate any doubt that Mr Acheson's story was not in fact a true story The meeting adjourned just in time for the members to hear the President's speech which began at midnight Paris time Next day Tuesday 23 October under instructions from Headquarters Campbell and I made the trip to the SDECE the French secret intelligence service and briefed the Director General Jacquier and a few of his principal officers Our experience was much like Cooper's with the British JIC There was great interest and no hint of doubt with respect to the genuineness of the photographs There were no questions even about the pictures of the IR site and the surface-to-surface cruise missiles the identification of which required a lot more faith than simple good eyesight The Br iefing of the French Press We returned to the Embassy by about 3 30 to find that USIB had authorized the briefing of the French Press had supplied a briefing text and instructions with respect to the use of the graphics John Mowinkle the Public Affairs Officer under instruction from the charge called the press conference for 10 30 the next morning Wednesday 24 October Mowinkle himself was not to do the briefing but was to entrust the job to an assistant who had a greater familiarity with military matters than Mowinkle himself It was further dlecided and this was entirely satisfactory with me that I would make no appearance before the newspaper men but would confine my activities to reading the assistant in on the subject and making sure that the graphics were keyed into his spoken statement in fool-proof manner It will be recalled that USIB's instructions re this briefing were as follows the briefer was to follow a USIE-approved text which was at hand The briefer was to refer to certain stipulated graphics The number was perhaps no more than half of the total number in the kit All place names locational data and numbers were to be removed from the graphics Members of the press could study the graphics but could not reproduce them Graphics were not to be allowed outside the Embassy building SECRB 33 Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 Apnrql ed For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A_QQ0300p 0013-8 ' it Lt ET M ss le Crisis ln the light of these instructions I personally selected the graphics as indicated cut off the headings at the top of the prints removed the little box in each photograph which contained the orientation map of Cuba with its designating arrow the classification and where indicated obliterated locational information and numbers Two graphics had to be improvised These were a map of the Western Hemisphere showing approximate ranges of the MR's and IR's the map I had not recovered from the NAC and a map of Cuba showing what Cuban air space was under protection of the SAM's I went over the briefing notes carefully patched up a needless obscurity in one paragraph and keyed the graphics to the text 24 October 25X1 With my breakfast arrived a copy of the International edition of the New York Herald Tribune To my very considerable surprise smack in the middle of the top half of the front page and three or four columns wide was the photograph of the SAM site referred to in the briefing note A few minutes later upon arrival at the Embassy I was informed that the whole kit of photographs had been released to the British press the night before that they were appearing in the London papers this morning and indeed had appeared on two British TV programs last night A few minutes later I was shown two Paris morning papers one of which carried the SAM site above mentioned the other the picture of the SAM support area which I had not been authorized even to show to the French Press I conferred with as to the best procedure and we agreed that I should call Washington for permission to release reproductions of the graphics which were to be shown to the French Press at 10 30 this morning There was some difficulty in getting through to Washington and it was not until about 9 50 AM local time that I reached the CIA Watch Office Ten or fifteen minutes later they called back authorizing the release if statisfactory to the charge Ile agreed to the release of four pictures An Embassy pressman accordingly cotch-taped the four pictures in question MRI IR-1 the IL--28's at San Julian and the MIG's at Santa Clara to the floor and photographed them Enlarged prints of these shots went to the French press I lfriefing of Andre Fontaine of Le M onde Andre Fontaine one of the important feature writers of Le M onde France's leading afternoon paper 34 SECRET Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 Appro f 9r fj ease 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A00030 CQiPr13-8 15 had had time to hear and study the President's speech of midnight 22 October and to write an unsympathetic front page column on US policy toward Cuba 10 His articles are usually signed this one was not The second paragraph banged into the credibility of the evidence One would like to be sure of the accuracy of the information upon which the President has acted But unhappily experience shows that the American intelligence services sometimes make mistakes This set the tone Later on he again obliquely challenged the evidence in the fourth paragraph which contains the sentence If the Russians have not really delivered and do not have the intention of delivering In short M Fontaine was from Missouri and had rather persuasively set forth his doubts about the evidence and his vicws totally unsympathetic to the US for the edification of France's best educated and probably most conservative reading elite Mowinkle who knew Fontaine well was most anxious that I see him and go over the script and graphics with him The charge agreed I was presented to Fontaine under a pseudo as a Department of Defense civilian temporarily in Paris Accordingly I gave him the word I began by calling his attention to the fact that neither he nor I were expert enough in the Pl's art to identify the terrain as Cuban or some of the weapons and sites as to what they really were I told him that if he thought that I was about to embark upon a snow job with fabricated graphics I was prepared to call it off right there that if he were willing to take on faith the fact this countryside was Cuban and the weapons in fact were what I said they were we would proceed Interestingly he then said No I am prepared to believe you because Castro himself in a speech of yesterday proclaimed that American aircraft had been violating Cuban air space This is good enough evidence for me to believe that you have been overflying Cuba and photographing it from the air With these formalities over I ran through the exercise with the sanitized pictures Almost the only question he asked was the altitude from which the pictures were taken He presumed that this was secret I indicated that it was indeed secret and let it go at that I left Paris before Le M onde dated 26 October was printed 10 This appeared in Le Monde of Tuesday afternoon 23 October For reasons best known to the publisher the paper is dated one day ahead thus this issue of Le M onde is one bearing the date 24 October 1962 SECRET 35 Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 SECRET Missile Crisis In this issue M Fontaine grudgingly acknowledged that the missiles were in fact in Cuba citing that both the British government and his colleagues of the British press believed the photographs and furthermore Castro himself had lent credence to the matter by denouncing American photo reconnaissance fliii hts as violations of Cuban air space William Tidwell in Ottawa Livingston Merchant President Kennedy's special emissary to the Canadian government William Tidwell the Agency officer told off to do the intelligence briefing with the photographs along with our charge d'affaires and __________________---Jmet at 1700 22 October with Prime Minister Diefenbaker and his Secretaries for External Affairs and Defense Messrs Green and Harkness Mr Merchant described the situation in Cuba and handed the Prime Minister the text of the President's speech to be delivered in two hours Mr Diefenbaker read it rapidly and passed it to these two cabinet colleagues He then asked Mr Merchant to summarize the main points which Mr Merchant did and then he read the whole speech aloud Apparently two matters bothered the Prime Minister One was the use of two words dishonest and dishonorable which in the draft speech were applied to Gromyko's statements to the President when the two had met on 18 October the other was the credibility of the evidence of the missiles in Cuba He made an abbreviated note to remind himself of the two points which read l Dishonest and dishonorable withdrawal of Ambassador and 2 How to present proof of threat to UN or OAS 11 The first of these he straightway took up and with repetitions and some vehemence They were unnecessary and provocative words they might result for example in the Soviet Union's withdrawal of its ambassador in the United States he thought He hoped that they would not be used The second he seems not to have got around to Most likely the reason was his viewing of the photographs which 11 Mr Tidwell wrote a memo to the Curator Historical Intelligence Collection which reads in part 2 During the briefing session Mr Diefenbaker made several notes as reminders to himself At the conclusion of the briefing he tore up the notes and I brew them on the floor In the course of my security check of the room after I he briefing I picked up the fragments of his notes They are forwarded with this memorandum for retention in the Historical Intelligence Collection The notes read as I have rendered them above 31' SECRET Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 25X1 Appro i lsf1e ase 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A0003 Bm llfflr13-8 Tidwell presented 12 The three Canadians were clearly impressed and asked a range of questions which far from indicating incredulity were of the sort which showed a ready acceptance of the evidence Indeed it seemed to the Americans that the photographs themselves may have had much to do with a lightening of the Prime Minister's mood which at the beginning had been that of a worried and harassed man At the end he left Mr Merchant with the impression that he would support the President and he complimented Tidwell on the quality of the intelligence briefing Tidwell stayed behind to give the briefing to half a dozen of the next most important officers of the Canadian government involved in the foreign affairs of the country Like similar groups in other friendly states they believed what they saw and they were impressed 12 It may be as Mr Tidwell himself suggests in the memo that Mr Diefenbaker's self-addressed query about how to present proof of the threat to the UN or OAS derived from his half-formulated thought to ask a group from among the eight unaligned members of the 18-nation disarmament committee to 1make an on-site inspection and to furnish a full and complete understanding of what is taking place in Cuba This thought which he quite fully developed only a few minutes later to the Canadian House of Commons he had not even hinted to the Americans They noted that he had not said that he would support the President in the chosen course but they were very considerably surprised at his presentation to the Commons It is perhaps noteworthy that his remarks to the Commons contained no mention of any special audience UN OAS or other Nor did his remarks to the Commons next day when he did a little reconsidering In connection with the suggestion I made last evening that a group of nations might be given the opportunity of making an on-site inspection in Cuba lest there be any doubt about my meaning in that connection I was not of course casting any doubts on the facts of the situation as outlined by the President of the United States in his television address The 11 overnment had been informed of and it believes that there is ample evidence weapons have been constructed in Cuba and exist in sufficient quantities to threaten the security of this hemisphere The purpose I had in mind in suggesting a United Nations his remarks of the previous day made no specific mention of the UN The 18-nation disarmament committee did however have an association with the UN on-site inspection was to be ready to put in motion steps which could be taken in the United Nations general assembly in the event of a Soviet veto or if the Soviet Union denies the existence in Cuba of offensive ballistic missile bases Canada Parliament House of Commons Debates 22 and 23 October 1962 pp 805- 6 and 821 In the light of these utterances it seems to me that Diefenbaker's note a bout convincing the UN and OAS more likely derived from a certain incredulousness which possessed him before a look at the photographs dissipated it SECRET 37 Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 Ap For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T031 UlAP Q 10013-8 The Credibility of Photographic Evidence As a source of information overhead photography has always won high marks From the nineteenth century when daring men took cameras aloft in balloons to our day with its more sophisticated approach all who have worked at the intelligence calling or used its findings have recognized the extraordinary virtues of photographs taken from the air The reception of the U-2's pictures of Cuba in 1962 was proof of more of the same Any viewer of an air photo is likely to bring with him some associative apparatus For example he has seen airfields from above and he can tell the difference between a picture of an airfield and one of of a freight yard he may even be able to tell a parked transport airplane from a puddle jumper Some of the non-PI viewers of the Cuban pictures had had a fairly rich experience with say air photos of Soviet installations in East Germany and when they saw small aircraft known to be Soviet models on Santa Clara airfield in Cuba they could tell the difference between the MIG-l 7's and the deltawing MIG--2l's When they saw a bit of the Cuban landscape marked off in the design of a perfect six-pointed star they instantly recognized the unmistakable signature of the Soviet SAM-the second-generation - urface-to-air missile All viewers however took on faith or on the say o of the purveyors that the pictures were what they claimed to be - cenes from Cuba taken a few days past When it came to photos of less obvious things than the aircraft and t he SAM's all viewers but those indispensable middlemen the photointerpreters had to take virtually everything on faith In the big glossy prints of the surface-to-surface missile sites the privileged but nonetheless amateur viewer could discern a number of man-made objects-some looked like long cylindrical tanks some like oil trucks He could also see bits of equipment parked in or about what appeared to be no more than the clearing of a field for a farm or the basement of a house 13 More than this even the witness who could tell one MIG from another could not possibly tell Of course the PI could and did To begin with what he looked at were better pictures He had the duplicate positives printed on clear acetate that carried what the camera lens had seen minimally degraded by the processing More he could arrange these prints in - tereoscopic pairs on a light table and study them in three dimensions through a multi-power stereoscopic viewer When he found something whose exact dimensions he had to know he could turn to sensitive and 1a 38 Quoted in exactly this context from Robert Kennedy Thirteen Days p 24 SECRET Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 Appro'16a forrRiJlease 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A00039BOIUJD13-8 complicated measuring devices and get the answer in feet and fractions of feet Much more important than all of these was his experience At a glance he would know that some of the objects resembling commonplace things of everyday life just could not be what they seemed Such objects would never occur in these numbers and in this particular constellation of physical surroundings They had to be something else He might remember a similar puzzle in other photographs of another time and place and the way it had been cracked He might recall the process by which he had reduced several competing hypotheses to two and how the final solution had come not with more photography but with a wholly different sort of information With this he had made a confident estimate that the object in question was a large surface-tosurface missile with its carrier If such an experience had not been his perhaps one of his colleagues had a recollection that would help And if not he could begin from scratch summoning from the vitals of a computer the vast wealth of its electronic memory If in the course of the history of his organization's work it had met cognate puzzles everything about them could be speedily put on the table With the deployment of the critical tools the PI's moved from hypothesis to tentative estimate and as they became more confident that what they thought they might be seeing was indeed an all-butdead certainty they were ready to take their judgment to their chief Arthur Lundahl When they convinced him and he convinced himself and when he could answer President Kennedy's question Are you sure that these are offensive missile sites with Mr President I am as sure of this as a photointerpreter can be sure of anything and when the President reminded of the accuracy of past interpretations accepted this one that was it By their actions Mr Macmillan and General de Gaulle underscored this fact As Cooper noted Macmillan did not spend more than a few seconds on the photographs and except as Mr Acheson urged him to have a look General de Gaulle would not have given the photographs even the few seconds Their credibility was not at issue what was was that of Ambassador Bruce and Mr Acheson and especially that of the man who had sent them President Kennedy himself Obviously this elite audience did not think that the President was playing games with them From what we know of the reaction of civil officials a notch or two below the chiefs of government they were much the same as those of their masters For much the same reasons Ormsby Gore the British Ambassador in Washington Lord Home and Sir Burke Trend SECRET 39 Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 ApJlS R For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T0319-M W A9 10013-8 Gaitskell and Brown and others in London and Messrs Green and Harkness in Ottawa accepted the photographs at face We know nothin11 of the reactions of the officials in Paris and Bonn to whom de Gaulle and Adenauer confided With hi11 hly placed foreign intelligence professionals the case was much the same They brought to the pictures a certain amount of critical expertise but still well below that of a card-carrying PI and practically to a man they were both amazed and convinced Sir Kenneth Strong long Britain's first intelligence officer General Jacquier Director of the French SDECE Mr Mccardle the Chairman of the Canadian Joint Intelligence Committee -none of them queried the validity of what they looked at As Cooper notes in his memo intelligence officers of the British Air Ministry apparently wanted copies of the photos for their own PI's to examine But Cooper assures us there was nothing necessarily angular about their request How different the response of those who spoke for others Mr Zuluetta the private secretary of Mr Macmillan according to Cooper's testimony was worried about how a statement of the British government in support of the American decision would go down without incontrovertible proof of the missile build-up Next morning the skeptical tone of the British press showed him to have been on the right track After the release of the first batch of pictures to British newsmen an important British intelligence officer besought American officials in London to release more pictures and more information about the first ones He said he was confronted by a great skepticism on the part of the press which was muttering about possible forgeries and expressing doubt that the terrain was in fact Cuba He felt that the US government should release precise information about the location of the missiles and show a photo of a missile even if it were under canvas All of this to make the case credible The Public Affairs officer in our embassy in Paris was worried about the French press and had very much in mind those snide sentences that Andre Fontaine had written in Le M onde Mr Diefenbaker seemed to have been concerned about how proof of the missiles could be demonstrated to the world 14 How much beseeching the press did in its own behalf and how much in behalf of the world is another story The press usually beseeches 14 The operative sentence in Mr Diefenbaker's remarks of 22 October was As to the presnnce of these offensive weapons the only sure way that the world can secure the facts would be through an independent inspection Canada Parliament House of Commons Debates p 806 40 SECRET Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 ApprO ffl Q fe C Jease 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A0003g ei y13-8 most eloquently when it senses good front-page copy and there could be no doubt about the news appeal of this story The difference between what public relations men ·asked in behalf of the press and what the press asked in behalf of its readershipthe difference between this and what it got let alone what it gaveis of course well-nigh incalculable In the first place the veiry best prints of the most important installations in Cuba those which chronicled the presence of the long-range surface-to-surface missiles conveyed next to nothing in themselves If you were to use a powerful reading glass you might be sure that you perceived some thin S common to your range of normal experience the context might offer some passing difficulty but only if you thought about it but you would have no valid appreciation of their size let alone their ominous function Who for example among the uninitiated could have identified a thing resembling a big tent as the air-conditioned structure necessary for the complicated check-out of the missiles Such being the case what do you think of the chances of the British subject who first got his information from his television set a reporductive process which had robbed the original glossy prints of at least half their definition Where do you rate the chances of the still less fortunate Frenchman He was introduced to the Soviet secrets in Cuba via some half-tones in his morning paper If you had made a half-tone from the original negative the loss of definition would probably be as severe as that via TV Still the Frenchman had no such luck His was the opportunity to look at half-tones made from enlargements of 35 mm shots of the glossy prints The amateur photographer who took the shots probably used a good camera with proper lens and film but he took them in the natural light that filtered through an embassy window and he did not use a tripod In these circumstances the man who saw the pictures in next morning's Figaro even if he were the country's leading photointerpreter might have had trouble telling whether the camera had been pointed down at Cuba from a high-flying aircraft or pointed up a soundly-positioned proctoscope No one can ever know how many of the people whose acquaintance with the Cuban pictures was limited to television and press reproductions felt that they were being had The one thing we do know is that if there were any such people there were not enough of them to cause the slightest political ripple All over the world the great majority of people who knew and cared about such things must have looked at the appallingly deficient copies of the original pictures and concluded that their chiefs of government had acted on the basis of incontrovert- SKRB 4J Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A00030001 013-8 Approved For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194A000300010013-8 SECRET Missile Crisis ible evidence Those who disagreed with the course of action which the US had adopted did so because of the risks which it involved not because they did not believe the story that the pictures told Of the millions of people of many nations who saw the pictures that fourth week of October only a handful and these were Pl's knew exactly what it was that they were looking at lt was their testimony which convinced the high officers of their government and from there on out the credibility of the photo evidence was established What happened in October of 1962 had happened many times before and has happened many times since To paraphrase once again a famous remark-never have so many taken so much on the say-so of so few App ed For Release 2005 02 17 CIA-RDP78T03194AOOC iJtnfiH0013-8