Soviet Deception and U.S. Intelligence Failures in the Cuban Missile Crisis

Introduction

The world came to a standstill about five decades ago in late October when people learned that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had built nuclear missile installations in various clandestine locations in Cuba. This tension lasted until the Cuban Missile Crisis was officially ended — though, unknown to the American public, the resolution was only official in a limited sense (Chomsky 2012).

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the United States (U.S.), the Soviet Union, and Cuba that began in October 1962. In September 1962, after several U.S. operations — including "Operation Mongoose" and the "Bay of Pigs" invasion — had failed to overthrow the Cuban regime, the Cuban government and the Soviet Union secretly began to build several medium- and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear-armed missiles capable of striking and destroying most of the continental United States. Soviet participation was partly a response to the earlier deployment of Thor intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) in Great Britain under Project Emily in 1958, as well as the further deployment of Jupiter IRBMs in Turkey and Italy. These deployments placed more than a hundred U.S.-built nuclear-armed missiles within striking distance of most of Western Russia. The crisis officially began on October 14, 1962, when a United States Air Force (USAF) reconnaissance aircraft captured photographic evidence of Soviet nuclear bases being constructed in Cuba (Saylor Academy n.d.).

The Cuban Missile Crisis and the infamous Berlin Blockade are two of the major confrontations of the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis is also regarded as the moment during that conflict when the world came closest to nuclear war. The crisis led to the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) becoming a central factor in discussions of major international arms agreements (Saylor Academy n.d.).

This paper describes the crisis in detail and examines instances in which U.S. military officials or politicians may have erred in the period leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis. It addresses their miscalculation of the USSR's ability to effectively deploy nuclear-armed missiles in neighboring Cuba. It also describes the Soviet response during the crisis and identifies instances in which U.S. military officials and politicians were cognitively biased in their analyses. Among these are the missed signals that, had they been properly reported and analyzed, might have enabled the United States to prevent the Soviet deployment of nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba — and thereby significantly altered the course of the conflict.

U.S. Intelligence Errors in the Build-Up to the Crisis

The first relevant estimate was issued on January 17, 1962, in an article by a Big-Think group that analyzed threats to the continental United States from the Caribbean region over the next two decades. The group's intelligence estimates regarded the spread of communism throughout the region as "very likely" over the next ten years. However, the group also concluded that it was very unlikely that the U.S.S.R. would build bases in Cuba in the near future, reasoning that the psychological and military value of such bases would not be sufficient to justify the risks involved (Zegart 2012).

The second intelligence estimate was issued on March 21, 1962. This estimate detailed the situation on the ground in Cuba and analyzed the links between the Castro-led Cuban government and the U.S.S.R. and other Latin American countries over the following twelve months. This estimate also proved to be a miscalculation, significantly underestimating the possibility of the U.S.S.R. intervening to defend the Castro regime or placing ballistic missiles in Cuba. The estimate described how the U.S.S.R. had avoided making any firm military commitment, despite Castro's repeated attempts to obtain Soviet guarantees of protection for Cuba. Later intelligence estimates, written in more confident language, stated that the Soviets would most probably not respond by deploying their own troops (Zegart 2012).

The second estimate maintained that Soviet policy was fundamentally unchanged. Faced with the political threat of a stronger communist republic in the Western Hemisphere, the estimate assessed the likelihood of a Soviet military offensive and dismissed it. It concluded that the construction of nuclear-armed ballistic missile installations in Cuba would be inconsistent with Soviet policy. The reasoning offered was that deploying nuclear-armed weapons even in other Soviet-aligned nations — apart from Russia itself — would create significant and unwanted command-and-control challenges. Such weapons would also necessitate the visible deployment of a large number of Soviet servicemen in Cuba, an action the Soviets would almost certainly recognize as one likely to provoke a severe response from the United States (Zegart 2012).

The growing number of military activities between Cuba and the U.S.S.R. was perceived by American analysts as routine military exercises. When Soviet military experts were being flown to Cuba via a newly established passenger air route from Moscow to Havana, U.S. intelligence knew that the new Tu-114 passenger flights carried not only Soviet military experts but also sensitive military equipment to Cuba (Brugioni 1991, as cited in HC Blog 2013). The belief that only conventional military expertise would be stationed in Cuba was widespread within the U.S. intelligence community. In reality, however, many of these experts were nuclear ballistics specialists traveling in disguise as agricultural workers and machine operators (HC Blog 2013).

Conclusion

Saylor Academy. "Cuban Missile Crisis." n.d. http://www.saylor.org/topics/cuban-missile-crisis/ (accessed May 18, 2015).

Zegart, Amy. "The Cuban Missile Crisis as Intelligence Failure." Hoover Institution Policy Review, 2012.