[iwar] [fc:Soviet.Deception.inthe.Cuban.Missile.Crisis]

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Learning from the Past
Soviet Deception inthe Cuban Missile Crisis
James H. Hansen


Moscow's surreptitious dispatch of nuclear-capable SS-4 and SS-5
surface-to-surface missiles to Cuba in 1962 upset the strategic balance in
an alarming way.1 The resulting showdown‹which the Russians call the
"Caribbean Crisis" and the Cubans call the "October Crisis"‹ brought the
world to the brink of nuclear war. From its inception, the Soviet missile
operation entailed elaborate denial and deception (D&amp;D) efforts. The craft
of denying the United States information on the deployment of the missiles
and deceiving US policymakers about the Soviet Union's intent was the
foundation of Nikita Khrushchev's audacious Cuban venture. Piecing together
the deception activities from declassified US, Russian, and Cuban accounts
yields insights that can help us anticipate and overcome the D&amp;D efforts of
a growing number of foreign adversaries today.

Maskirovka

Moscow has always had a flair for D&amp;D, known in Russian as maskirovka. Its
central tenet is to prevent an adversary from discovering Russian intentions
by deceiving him about the nature, scope, and timing of an operation.
Maskirovka covers a broad range of concepts, from deception at the strategic
planning level to camouflage at the troop level.2 Russian military texts
indicate that maskirovka is treated as an operational art to be polished by
professors of military science and officers who specialize in this area.

DIA analysis preceding the missile crisis noted that the Soviet Army had
probably employed large-scale battlefield deception "more frequently and
with more consistent success than any other army."3 The Soviets practiced
extensive maskirovka before their move into Czechoslovakia in 1968. Moscow
also trained foreign forces to apply deception, including North Vietnamese
units before the Tet offensive in 1968 and Egyptian forces before crossing
the Suez Canal in 1973.

Close-hold Planning

Gen. Anatoli Gribkov‹then a senior member of the Soviet General
Staff‹provides revealing insights into the early planning of the operation.
He says that, after Nikita Khrushchev decided to emplace the missiles in
Cuba in the spring of 1962, the General Staff detailed only five
officers‹four generals and a colonel‹to serve as the center of the military
planning apparatus. Col. Gen. Semyon Ivanov, chief of the General Staff's
Chief Operations Directorate, was in overall charge.4 During that summer,
the circle of collaborators and contacts expanded to include members of each
of the relevant service branches, but secrecy and need-to-know prevailed.
The most senior officers brought into the plan were at least told that Cuba
was involved in the operation, but only a few were informed of the exact
nature of the mission.5

The top civilian and military officials conceptualizing the operation did
not see eye-to-eye about the likelihood of pulling off a successful
deception. At the very center of those making the decisions stood First
Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan, Presidium member Frol Kozlov, Defense
Minister Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, and Marshal Sergei Biryuzov, commander
of the Strategic Rocket Forces.6 Alternate Presidium member Sharaf Rashidov
was brought in as well, possibly for the cover that he later provided for
traveling delegations.7 Biryuzov and his experts believed that the
deployment could be made expeditiously and secretly, without the US
discovering the missiles. Mikoyan was surprised at this judgment and
believed the marshal to be a fool.8 Rashidov was confident that the missiles
could be hidden, claiming that they could be placed so as to blend in with
the palm trees. Gribkov held that only somebody inexperienced in military
matters could reach such a conclusion, given the extensive preparations
needed for each missile site.

Throughout the early planning stage, no secretaries were used to prepare
final typed texts. A colonel with good penmanship wrote the proposal that
the Defense Council adopted. It grew into a full-fledged plan, still
handwritten, which was approved by Malinovsky on 4 July and Khrushchev on 7
July.9 From May through October, for reasons of security, no communications
about the proposed, planned, and actual Soviet deployments in Cuba were
sent, even by coded messages. Everything was hand-carried by members of the
small coterie of senior officials who were directly involved.10

Developing A Cover Story

The General Staff's code name for the operation‹ANADYR‹was designed to
mislead Soviets as well as foreigners about the destination of the
equipment. Anadyr is the name of a river flowing into the Bering Sea, the
capital of the Chukotsky Autonomous District, and a bomber base in that
desolate region. Operation ANADYR was designed to suggest to lower-level
Soviet commanders‹and Western spies‹that the action was a strategic exercise
in the far north of the USSR. Promoting the illusion, the troops that were
called up for the Cuban expedition were told only that they were going to a
cold region. Those needing more precise instructions, such as missile
engineers, were informed that they would be taking ICBMs to a site on Novaya
Zemlya, a large island in the Arctic where nuclear weapons had long been
tested.11

To strengthen the concealment, many units were outfitted with skis, felt
boots, fleece-lined parkas, and other winter equipment.12 Moreover, perhaps
to further backstop the cover plan, Moscow tapped four ground forces
regiments from the Leningrad Military District in the north for dispatch to
Cuba. The deception was so thorough that it fooled even senior Soviet
officers sent to Cuba. One general there asked Gribkov why winter equipment
and clothing had been provided. The general admonished him to "think like an
adult," and explained, "It's called ANADYR for a reason. We could have given
away the game if we had put any tropical clothing in your kits."13

Getting the Cubans On Board

Secrecy surrounded the first Soviet delegation that went to propose the
audacious plan to Fidel Castro and other Cuban leaders. The officials
arrived in Havana with little fanfare on 29 May, amidst a delegation of
agricultural experts headed by Rashidov. The group included Col. Gen. Ivanov
and several missile construction specialists and other military experts,
whose job it was to determine whether the missiles could be deployed in
secrecy.14 Ambassador Aleksandr Alekseev took Cuban Defense Minister Raul
Castro aside to explain that "Engineer Petrov" in the group actually was
Marshal Biryuzov, and that he needed to meet with el lider maximo without
delay. Only three hours later "Engineer Petrov" was shown into Fidel
Castro's office.15 The Cuban leadership unanimously and enthusiastically
gave its approval in principle.16

Soviet maritime policy began to shift in accordance with these first trips.
In June and July, the USSR began to charter Western ships to carry general
cargo from the Soviet Union to Cuba, reserving its own freighters for
carrying military cargo.17

During 2-17 July, a Cuban delegation led by Raul Castro traveled to Moscow
to discuss Soviet military shipments, including nuclear missiles. Khrushchev
met with the Defense Minister on 3 and 8 July. Raul Castro initialed a draft
treaty with the Soviet Defense Minister that governed the deployment of
Soviet forces to Cuba. This pact was not to be publicly revealed until a
visit that Khrushchev planned to make to Cuba in November.18

The Russians began to dispatch officers and specialists covertly to Cuba by
air. On 10 July, Gen. Issa Pliyev, traveling under the name "Pavlov,"
arrived in Cuba to command the Soviet contingent.19 Two days later, 67
specialists touched down. They journeyed as "machine operators," "irrigation
specialists," and "agricultural specialists." Their covers, however, could
not have withstood probing‹they had been assigned to occupations about which
they knew nothing. They were urged to consult the few genuine specialists
traveling with them to gain some rudimentary knowledge of their ostensible
jobs.20 On 17 July, Havana announced that Cuba and the USSR had signed an
agreement establishing a regular Moscow-Havana civil air route. US
intelligence analysis at the time speculated that the new Tu-114 flights
were bringing Soviet military officers and sensitive electronic and
signal-monitoring equipment to Cuba.21

Then-Minister for Industry Ernesto "Che" Guevara and the head of the Cuban
militia led another delegation to Moscow during 27 August-2 September. The
purpose was to introduce Fidel Castro's revisions into the draft treaty. The
Cubans proposed that the deployment be made public in order to head off any
American overreaction; Khrushchev, however, successfully argued for
continued secrecy.

Keeping The Secret At Home

In the Soviet Union, the men and equipment destined for Cuba were assembled,
loaded, and moved by rail at night under reinforced guard. The train routes
and final destinations were kept secret. Mail and telegrams along the way
were strictly prohibited.22

To mask the immensity of the overall effort, the shipments to Cuba left from
eight ports‹four in the north (Kronstadt, Liepaya, Baltiysk, and Murmansk)
and four on the Black Sea (Sevastopol, Feodosiya, Nikolayev, and Poti).23
Western access to these ports was closed off. It was normal for the Soviets
to close ports when munitions were being loaded, but this time the
surface-to-surface missiles were being put on the ships under tight security
and cover of darkness.24

The troops were housed at nearby military facilities during the two or three
days required to load a ship. Guards were posted to prevent anyone from
leaving the area. No letters, telegrams, or telephone calls were permitted,
a rule that also applied to the officers.25 The ships' crew members, some of
whom made more than one run to Cuba, were forbidden shore leave and
correspondence.26 Secrecy was so strict that couriers carried all messages
between the ports and the Defense Ministry in Moscow.27

On board, the Soviets applied the same maskirovka measures that they had
adopted when they first began to send weapons to Cuba. Packing crates or
special shipping containers concealed and protected weapons carried as deck
cargo. Certain telltale military equipment was boarded up with planks to
make it look like the ship's superstructure. Even on-deck field kitchens
were disguised.28 The Soviets shielded crated military hardware‹such as
missiles and launchers‹with metal sheets to defeat infrared photography.29
They stored other combat and specialized equipment below, out of sight.
Ordinary automobiles, trucks, tractors, and harvesters were placed on the
top deck to convey the impression that only civilian and agricultural gear
was being transported.

The freighter Poltava, which sailed to Cuba in September, was a good
example. No external signs indicated that it was carrying missiles. On deck
were cargo trucks, none of which were associated with the missiles.
Nonetheless, some US experts speculated that the ship might be carrying
ballistic missiles deep in its hold, because the Soviets tended to use
large-hatch ships of the Poltava and Omsk classes to deliver such
missiles.30

The ship captains were not told where their cargoes were to be delivered.
Before casting off, the captain and the troop commander jointly received a
large sealed envelope. Unfastening it, they found a smaller envelope to be
opened only at a certain set of geographic coordinates in the Atlantic
Ocean. When they reached the designated point, an officer from the KGB's
Special Department joined them for the opening of the envelope. The
instructions told them to proceed to a Cuban port and authorized them to
inform the ship's company of the destination.31 The concern for secrecy
permeated the process. The last sentence of the captain's letter read:
"After familiarizing yourself with the contents of this document, destroy
it."32

Every ship involved in Operation ANADYR carried thick folders, prepared by
Defense Ministry staff officers, which contained background information on a
number of countries with which the USSR had good relations. The study
materials on Cuba were buried in these packets, so that not even the
compilers would know the real focus of the operation.

Secrecy In Transit

The Soviet ships made false declarations when they exited the Black Sea and
the Bosporus. Cargo records were altered and the tonnage declared was well
below what was being carried.33 The ships would declare from Odessa,
although they had loaded at other ports. Often ships going to Cuba listed
Conakry, Guinea, as their destination. When the volume of traffic increased,
a number of ships did not give their destinations but simply stated that
they were carrying "general cargo" and "awaiting orders."34

Transit through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles Straits presented a special
challenge. Not only were the soldiers kept below decks, but the captains
were under orders to prevent any foreigners from boarding, even the Turkish
pilots who usually guided civilian ships through those tricky waters.
Whenever the pilots approached the Soviet ships, the Soviet crews would
lower bulging parcels of vodka, brandy, caviar, sausages, and other
delicacies. Gribkov noted that this transparent bribery worked well:
"Everyone likes to get presents, even pilots."35

The captains were instructed to take all possible evasive action in the
event of attacks or an effort to board their ships. Should evasive action
fail, they were to "destroy all documents with state and military secrets,"
take measures to protect the personnel, and sink the ships.36 Should their
vessels experience mechanical failure en route, the captains were to explain
to ships offering assistance that they were exporting automobiles.37 Had
this occurred, it might have provided clues‹the USSR had few cars of any
kind and was not recognized as an automobile exporter.

Moscow also resorted to diplomatic means to reduce US reconnaissance of the
ships en route. In July 1962, the Soviets described US reconnaissance
missions in international waters as "harassment," and requested through
their GRU officer in Washington, Col. Georgi Bolshakov, that these flights
be stopped for the sake of better bilateral relations.38 In retrospect, this
overture clearly appears to have been an effort by Khrushchev to delay the
discovery of weapons related to Operation ANADYR. Bolshakov met with
Attorney General Robert Kennedy more than a dozen times.

Most of the voyages lasted from 18 to 20 days. Due to strict maskirovka
measures, the troops were kept below decks except for a few minutes at night
when small groups were allowed to exercise and get some fresh air.39 During
the tropical days, heavy tarpaulins covered the hatches to the lower decks
where the troops were berthed. With little air circulation, the inside
temperature climbed to 120 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. Rations were issued
twice a day and only in darkness.40 Many of the troops on board swore that
they would never again set foot on a ship.

Although the restrictions made conditions on board nightmarish, the
deceptions worked. Gen. Gribkov states that "US intelligence discovered
neither the true significance of the surge in Soviet shipping to Cuba nor
the mission of our troops on the island until nearly all the men had come
ashore and, still moving in large numbers only by night, had been deployed
to their assigned positions."41

Unloading in Cuba

As the Soviet troops arrived, Cuban officials took steps to support Moscow's
maskirovka plan. In early fall, they began to exert control over the
movements of all foreigners on the island. News reporters and foreign
embassy personnel were forbidden to travel outside Havana. In the city,
Cuban agents surveilled and harassed foreigners, especially British embassy
officials.42

The planners had selected 11 Cuban ports to receive the Soviet ships:
Havana, Mariel, Cabanas, Bahia Honda, Matanzas, La Isabella, Nuevitas,
Nicaro, Casilda, Cienfuegos, and Santiago de Cuba.43 They earmarked three of
them‹Bahia Honda and Mariel on the northwest coast and Casilda on the south
coast‹to receive the surface-to-surface missiles and nuclear warheads.44

Even before the Soviet ships approached Cuban ports, a number of maskirovka
precautions had been implemented. At Mariel, for example, the Soviets built
a large cinder-block wall around the unloading area so that none of the port
activity could be observed by land-based agents.45 As the ships lay in port,
KGB officers kept watch on deck. All Cubans, even militiamen, were barred
from the port areas.46 Local inhabitants within a mile of the waterfront in
Mariel had to evacuate their homes.47

The first SS-4 missiles arrived in Mariel on board the Omsk on 8 September.
The Indigirka brought the initial shipment of nuclear warheads on 4
October.48 According to one source, this ship carried 99 nuclear
charges‹some two-thirds of all nuclear weapons sent to Cuba and over 20
times the explosive power dropped by all Allied bombers on Germany
throughout World War II.49

Most of the military technicians also came ashore at Mariel. Deception
activities throughout the transit stage and the strict security measures at
Mariel hindered the ability of US intelligence agencies to estimate the
number of Soviet troops. The plan for ANADYR that was approved in early July
had called for moving 50,874 men. That total included personnel for field
hospitals, bakeries, mechanical workshops, and other support units, all with
a three-month supply of food and fuel. During September, the plan was
revised to eliminate submarine and surface ship squadrons, due to potential
resupply problems and concerns that their presence might sound an alarm bell
in Washington. By late October, the size of the contingent in Cuba had
reached about 41,900 personnel‹quadruple the size that US intelligence
agencies figured.50

Nonetheless, in the hectic initial days in Cuba, secrecy created more than a
few glitches. The General Staff had neglected to provide passwords to
facilitate communication between the arriving transport ships and the Cuban
greeting parties. Accordingly, some ship captains and on-board troop
commanders had difficulty accepting orders to reroute their ships from their
originally assigned ports. The captain of one ship even turned back out to
sea rather than allow a Cuban patrol boat crew to come aboard to guide him
to his anchorage.51

Usually two or three days were required to unload a ship with military
cargo, and maskirovka requirements invariably complicated the work.
Equipment that had at least a superficial resemblance to agricultural
machinery was unloaded in broad daylight, but weapons and other military
equipment could be unloaded only at night. From the docks, specialized
equipment was stored in sheds or moved directly to designated bases along
back roads at night.52

All this time, Radio Moscow was claiming that the USSR was only giving Cuba
"machine tools, wheat, and agricultural machinery," along with "some 7,000
tons of various fertilizers."53 This description was consistent with the
false identities provided to many of the Soviet military specialists and
also with the daytime unloading activity.

Movement to Field Sites

The maskirovka measures were not air tight. In the initial stages of the
operation, the United States received reports from friendly nations,
newspaper correspondents, and other sources indicating that hundreds of
Russian troops in fatigues had been seen in Havana and in seemingly endless
convoys along Cuba's main highways. Many young Russian men also had been
observed sightseeing in the Cuban capital in checked, cotton shirts and
cheap trousers.54 Although the Soviets and Cubans took extra precautions to
keep gawkers away from the wharves and moved the nuclear cargoes away under
black canvas and escorted by heavy guard, the chatty Cubans gave a steady
stream of clues to US SIGINT collectors.55

At the same time, the Soviets and Cubans mounted a major campaign using
HUMINT channels to bolster the overall deception effort. The planners leaked
accurate information about the deployment so as to mask it. The information
was funneled through counterrevolutionary organizations and their press in
the United States, especially in Miami. The CIA discounted the information,
because it did not consider the groups and people peddling it to be
credible. This strategy was highly effective, according to a former Cuban
intelligence officer.56

The deception campaign that exploited the émigrés' lack of credibility was
unwittingly backstopped by correspondence between Cubans and their friends
and relatives in the United States. From June to September, Cuban
intelligence intercepted some 17,000 letters that had something to say about
the deployment of Soviet troops and missiles in Cuba. In late September,
Cuban authorities permitted those letters to arrive in Miami as part of the
deception campaign. Just as Havana expected, the CIA paid no attention to
these letters.57

For US intelligence analysts, the amount of "noise" from Cuba grew
deafening. Reports flooded in from Cubans, tourists, foreign diplomats in
Cuba, and newspaper officials reporting in a private capacity. At the CIA
focal point at Opa-Locka, Florida, intelligence officers screened countless
reports and debriefed Cubans who had fled the island.58 Most of the reports
from Cuba were exaggerated or imaginary‹some were so outrageous that they
were laughable and made all the others suspect. There were far-fetched tales
of African troops with rings in their noses, lurking Mongolians, and even
Chinese troops. These accounts followed earlier erroneous reports of Soviet
military equipment secreted away in caves, underground hangers, and concrete
domes. The previous reports had cast doubt on the reliability of sources, so
US analysts found it easy to dismiss the stream of reports of Soviet
missiles.59

From the port areas, the canvas-covered SS-4 missiles were moved in night
convoys, under tight security, to sites in the interior of the island.
Security was tightened so that the troops disembarked dressed as civilians,
and their escorts‹Soviet personnel who had arrived earlier‹were required to
wear Cuban military uniforms and issue commands along the convoy routes only
in Spanish.60 On the march or bivouacked, Soviet military men remained
dressed in civilian clothing and were forbidden to mention their military
designations or the ranks of their commanders. Moreover, all communications
between the Soviet military headquarters in Havana and units in the field
had to be made in person, not written or sent by radio. Except for very
brief hookups and equipment tests, Soviet troops maintained total radio
silence in order to mask their identity, location, and troop strength from
US intelligence.61

In retrospect, some Soviet and Cuban officials found it remarkable that the
operation remained secret for a full month after the missiles arrived in
Cuba.62 The missile carriers were too big to go unnoticed on the back roads
of the island for long. As they rumbled through the little Cuban towns, they
left a trail of downed telephone poles and mailboxes. When a peasant's shack
had to be moved or knocked down to allow a missile carrier to turn a tight
corner, those who witnessed the event were bound to talk. Soviet and Cuban
efforts to discredit such anecdotal accounts paid off.

Disingenuous Diplomacy

Soviet spokesmen kept up a steady stream of denials and disinformation in
September. On 4 September, Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin sought out Robert
Kennedy and stated that he had received instructions from Khrushchev to
assure the President that there would be no surface-to-surface missiles or
offensive weapons placed in Cuba. Dobrynin also added that the Attorney
General could assure his brother that the Soviet military buildup was not of
any significance.63 On 6 September, Theodore Sorenson, special counsel to
President Kennedy, met with Dobrynin, who reiterated his assurances that
Soviet military assistance to Cuba was strictly defensive in nature and did
not represent a threat to American security. The following day, Dobrynin
assured US Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson that the USSR
was supplying only defensive weapons to Cuba. On 11 September, TASS
announced that the USSR neither needed nor intended to introduce offensive
nuclear weapons into Cuba.64

In late September, Khrushchev embarked on a barnstorming tour in the Turkmen
and Uzbek republics. This high-profile trip, which extended into the first
week of October, emphasized agricultural themes. In none of Khrushchev's
many speeches during his travels was there any reference suggesting
aggression or threats to the United States.65

The pattern continued. On 13 October, a high State Department official,
Chester Bowles, questioned Dobrynin on whether Moscow intended to put
offensive weapons in Cuba; the Ambassador denied any such intention. On 17
October, GRU Col. Bolshakov brought Robert Kennedy a personal message
directly from Khrushchev to President Kennedy that "under no circumstances
would surface-to-surface missiles be sent to Cuba." The next day Foreign
Minister Gromyko met with President Kennedy for two hours. Gromyko assured
him that the Soviet aid to Cuba "pursued solely the purpose of contributing
to the defense capabilities of Cuba and to the development of its peaceful
economy."66

Denouement

The missile sites themselves could never have remained hidden for long. They
were constructed in areas expropriated from Cuban landowners, had no fences
or walls, and were exposed to aerial observation.67 Standard maskirovka
doctrine gave preference to deployment in wooded areas, yet Cuba's forests
were generally sparse, consisting of a few clusters of palm trees or a thick
undergrowth of bushes. Such vegetation could not cover all of the missile
equipment.68 SS-4 launchers are anchored to large concrete slabs and
surrounded not only by the missiles, but also by multiple buildings, fuel
trucks and tanks, and hundreds of meters of thick cable. To try to maintain
secrecy, Soviet commanders forbade their troops from taking any leave from
their deployment sites and ruled out using Cuban labor. Nonetheless, Soviet
commanders and planners knew that although the tractor-trailers and
associated large objects could be covered by canvas, their masses could not
be shrunk.69 Heavy equipment might obscure part of the missile site
signature from ground-level, but from above it stuck out markedly.70

On 14 October, a U-2 aircraft photographed the area of San Cristobal, where
the first missile unit was being deployed. In only six minutes, US Air Force
Maj. Richard Heyser snapped 928 photographs that yielded the first
confirmation of offensive missiles in Cuba.71 Washington stepped up
intelligence collection of all kinds, readied massive air attack and
invasion plans‹including sending nuclear-armed B-52s aloft‹and engaged in
extensive policy deliberations in the Executive Committee. On 22 October,
President Kennedy revealed the missile buildup to the world. Confronted with
the photographic evidence, the Russians informed Raul Castro that more
attention would have to be paid to concealing the site work and camouflaging
the missiles and other heavy equipment.72 The Soviet units stretched
tarpaulins and nets over the missiles, and daubed paint or mud across the
canvases. This marked the first time that they tried to conceal their
missiles from the air, probably hoping to mask the total number of missiles
and protect against sabotage.73 By 28 October, however, the confrontation,
including Kennedy's imposition of a naval and air quarantine on the shipment
of offensive military equipment to Cuba, led Khrushchev to agree on a
formula to end the crisis. The Russians began to dismantle their bases.

In Conclusion

Photo: U2 photograph of SS-4 missile site in Cuba.

U2 photograph of SS-4 missile site in Cuba.

The Soviet deception effort was comprehensive, but not free from
shortcomings. The early, overly optimistic assessments by Marshal Biryuzov
and Rashidov evidently went unchallenged. Some cover arrangements were
slapdash. Many of the slips occurred not in the USSR but in Cuba, when
Soviet units had to unload their weapons, transport them to the field, and
set them up. The operation might have been enhanced by the presence of
maskirovka specialists in all Soviet units in Cuba. In the 1980s, a special
maskirovka directorate was created within the General Staff. Such an
organization would have played a vital role had it existed in 1962.74

On 4 February 1963, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
issued a major postmortem report over the signature of its chairman, James
R. Killian, Jr. The Killian report described the introduction and deployment
of Soviet strategic missiles in Cuba as a "near-total intelligence
surprise."75 It concluded that the Intelligence Community's analysis of
intelligence indicators and its production of current intelligence reports
"failed to get across to key government officials the most accurate possible
picture of what the Soviets might be up to in Cuba" during the months
preceding 14 October. The report took the Community to task for inadequate
early warning of hostile intentions and capabilities; failure to provide
senior policymakers with meaningful, cumulative assessments of the available
intelligence indicators; and failure to produce a revision of the erroneous
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE 8-3-62) of 19 September 1962.76

Nowhere does the 10-page Killian Report mention adversarial denial and
deception. Within US intelligence organizations, the awareness and
systematic study of foreign D&amp;D had not been developed, and would not emerge
until some 20 years later. It is likely that with a trained, well-staffed,
and deception-aware analytic corps, the United States could have uncovered
Khrushchev's great gamble long before Maj. Heyser's revealing U-2 mission.

Only now, four decades later, can we uncover the extent of the use of
deception in the events leading to the Cuban missile crisis. To paraphrase
Sir Winston Churchill, perhaps the least-explored aspect of the crisis was
the Soviet effort to cloak the truth of its strategic missile deployment
within a body-guard of lies, on a scale that most US planners could not
comprehend.

Footnotes

1. Cuba is approximately 145 kilometers from US shores. The SS-4
medium-range ballistic missiles, which were deployed first to Cuba, had a
range of up to 2,500 kilometers. The SS-5 intermediate-range ballistic
missiles had a range of up to 5,000 kilometers.

2. Jennie A. Stevens and Henry S. Marsh, "Surprise and Deception in Soviet
Military Thought," Military Review, July 1982, pp. 25-35.

3. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Soviet/Warsaw Pact Ground Forces
Camouflage and Concealment Techniques, DDI-1100-161-78, January 1979, p.
vii.

4. Gen. Anatoli I. Gribkov and Gen. William Y. Smith, Operation ANADYR: US
and Soviet Generals Recount the Cuban Missile Crisis (Chicago, Berlin,
Tokyo, and Moscow: edition q, inc., 1994), p. 24. This is a vital source,
given Gen. Gribkov's role in planning and implementing the operation.

5. Ibid.

6. Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis, revised
edition (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1989), pp. 12-13.

7. Dino A. Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban
Missile Crisis (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 84. The author was a key
figure at the National Photographic Interpretation Center in 1962.

8. Garthoff, p. 17.

9. Gribkov and Smith, p. 24.

10. Garthoff, p. 17.

11. Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, "One Hell of a Gamble":
Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964 (New York and London: W. W.
Norton &amp; Company, 1997), p. 191. This valuable source relies on material
from Soviet/Russian archives.

12. Gribkov and Smith, p. 15.

13. Ibid.

14. Garthoff, p. 15; also, Gribkov and Smith, p. 14.

15. Fursenko and Naftali, p. 186.

16. James G. Blight, Bruce J. Allyn, and David A. Welch, with the assistance
of Davis Lewis, Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the
Soviet Collapse (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), p. 8. This source draws
extensively on input from key Soviet/Russian and American officials who had
a hand in the crisis.

17. Brugioni, p. 92.

18. Gribkov and Smith, p. 21.

19. Fursenko and Naftali, p. 192.

20. Gribkov and Smith, pp. 37-38.

21. Brugioni, p. 93.

22. Gribkov and Smith, p. 56.

23. Ibid., p. 29.

24. Brugioni, p. 149.

25. Gribkov and Smith, p. 30.

26. Ibid., p. 56.

27. Ibid., p. 29.

28. Ibid., p. 30.

29. Ibid., p. 56.

30. Brugioni, pp. 149-150.

31. Gribkov and Smith, p. 31.

32. Ibid.

33. US SIGINT revealed that Soviet vessels were making false port
declarations and listing less than their known cargo-carrying capacity. By
late August, the National Security Agency noted that 57 voyages to Cuba had
taken place in a little over a month and that some ships were on their
second voyage in that period of time. See: National Security Agency, NSA and
the Cuban Missile Crisis (Fort Meade, MD: NSA Center for Cryptologic
History, 1998), pp. 3-4.

34. Brugioni, p. 149.

35. Gribkov and Smith, p. 57.

36. Fursenko and Naftali, p. 192.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid. , p. 193.

39. Gribkov and Smith, p. 35.

40. Ibid., p. 56.

41. Ibid.

42. Brugioni, p. 148. The Cubans probably knew that the British were helping
the United States, which did not have formal representation in Havana.

43. Gribkov and Smith, p. 38. Gribkov's map puts Nicaro in the wrong
location, apparently confusing it with Niquero on the Southeast coast.

44. Fursenko and Naftali, p. 216.

45. Brugioni, p. 150.

46. David Detzer, The Brink: Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 (New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell, 1979), p. 69.

47. Ibid., p. 57.

48. Gribkov and Smith, p. 52.

49. Fursenko and Naftali, p. 217. There is conflicting source information on
the number of warheads specifically for the SS-4 missiles. Gribkov states
that 36 such warheads were introduced. This issue cannot be resolved based
on current evidence, but 36 appears to be a likely figure as that tracks
with Soviet doctrinal requirements for refire missiles.

50. Gribkov and Smith, p. 28.

51. Ibid., pp. 38-39.

52. Ibid.

53. Detzer, p. 57.

54. Brugioni, p. 101.

55. NSA, op. cit., pp. 2-3. The US SIGINT ship Oxford was hugging the Cuban
coastline at that time.

56. Domingo Amuchastegui, "Cuban Intelligence and the October Crisis,"
Intelligence and National Security, Volume 13, Number 3, Autumn 1998, p.
101. This is a special issue on intelligence and the missile crisis, edited
by James G. Blight and David A. Welch. It is a unique collection of articles
on the roles played by different intelligence services.

57. Ibid.

58. Detzer, p. 59.

59. Ibid., p. 60.

60. Gribkov and Smith, p. 39. This maskirovka requirement is comparable to
that used during the Korean conflict, when Soviet pilots were instructed to
speak in Chinese while flying missions to try to fool US SIGINT units.

61. Ibid..

62. Ibid., p. 52, and Amuchastegui, p. 101. A cautionary note here is that
this article is the only published account by a former Cuban intelligence
officer thus far.

63. Brugioni, p. 115.

64. Blight, Allyn, and Welch, pp. 463-464.

65. Brugioni, pp. 157-158.

66. Blight, Allyn, and Welch, pp. 465-466.

67. Brugioni, p. 150.

68. Gribkov and Smith, p. 40.

69. Ibid., p. 55.

70. Ibid., p. 40.

71. The details of the U-2 mission are found in Volume XI: Foreign Relations
of the United States, 1961-1963, Cuban Missile Crisis and Aftermath, edited
by Edward C. Keefer, Charles S. Sampson, Louis J. Smith, and David S.
Patterson (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1996), p. 29.
Although uncertain about the status of the weapons in Cuba at the time of
discovery, we now know that only some of the nuclear-capable delivery
systems were ready for action in late October. Of the 36 SS-4s deployed, for
example, only about half were ready to be fueled‹an 18-hour process‹and not
one had been programmed for flight. See Gribkov and Smith, p. 63.

72. Gribkov and Smith, p. 53.

73. Detzer, p. 194.

74. This revelation comes from a former GRU officer who wrote under the pen
name of "Viktor Suvorov" and produced books and articles on the Soviet
military and intelligence forces in the 1980s.

75. Central Intelligence Agency, CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis
(Washington, DC: CIA, 1992), p. 367.

76. Ibid., pp. 367-368.

James H. Hansen, has served in both CIA and DIA. 

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