The New York Review of Books

Aleksandr Alekseev, who had been Soviet ambassador to Cuba in 1962, remembers his shock when Khrushchev told him of the decision to send missiles. “I didn’t know how to react. Finally I said, ‘I don’t think Castro will agree because the Cubans regard solidarity with other Latin American countries as their best protection. If Cuba accepts nuclear missiles, other Latin American countries will turn against Cuba.’ ”

But Khrushchev was convinced that the missiles could be sent out in secret. He told Alekseev that, after the midterm American election in November, “I will travel to Cuba and tell the world about the operation. The Americans will have to swallow our missiles, as we have had to swallow their missiles.”

At this point Castro, who has been listening carefully and occasionally taking notes, calmly interjects: “The Soviets had far more military experience, so we had unlimited confidence in them. When we had an opinion, we offered it, but we thought they knew better than we did. I remember Nikita saying, ‘We have missiles that can hit a fly.’ ”

Fidel now speaks with emotion and with eloquent gestures. When Raúl Castro as minister of defense went to Moscow in July to work out the military agreement, he continues, Fidel told him to ask Khrushchev just one question: “What will happen if the operation is discovered?” “Nothing to worry about,” Khrushchev replied. “If anything happens, we will send over the Baltic fleet as a show of support.”

Castro was not wholly reassured. He had not asked for nuclear missiles and accepted them only because Khrushchev argued that Soviet missiles in Cuba would strengthen the “entire socialist camp.” “What was protecting us,” Castro notes, “was the global might of the Soviet Union—not the rockets stationed in Cuba.” But why not, he then proposed to Khrushchev, go public? “We were not outlaws. We had every sovereign right to accept missiles. We were not violating international law. Why do it secretly—as if we had no right to do it? I warned Nikita that secrecy would give the imperialists the advantage.” Castro smiles and adds with an affable nod to the Americans, “Today I would put it differently. I would say, ‘Give our adversaries the advantage.’ ”

The Americans wonder among themselves what, if Khrushchev had followed Castro’s advice, we would—or could—have done. It would have required elaborate legal reasoning to justify recourse to the Rio Treaty of 1947 and its provisions against extra-continental threats to the Americas.

Friday, January 10. We discuss the grimmest day of the crisis, the shooting down of the U2. General Gribkov says that the order to shoot had not come from Moscow; in fact, Moscow had rejected requests from the commanders in Cuba for authority to fire at the U2s. Nor had the order come from Castro. The Soviet units were under Soviet command; the Cuban units under Cuban command. The U2, the general says, was shot down by a Soviet battery on an order from the Soviet commander in the field.

Castro’s hands, with their long, white, tapering fingers, are in constant motion, pointing, making fists, squares, supplicative praying gestures, as he talks. It is still a mystery, he observes, what led the Soviets to shoot down the U2. His own interpretation is that when the Cubans started firing against low-level American over-flights, the Soviet command decided out of comradely solidarity to go after the U2s.

Nikita later accused us of having shot down the U2. I don’t know whether he thought that we had brought it down directly or that our example had led the Soviets to do it. But he got that idea fixed in his mind and even wrote it in his memoirs….³ Still I was totally in favor of shooting down the plane. I assume full historical responsibility.

(One gets the impression from this recital and from the testimony of Gribkov and Alekseev that, whatever the technical division of command, Castro had acquired psychological command of all the forces in Cuba. He plainly fascinated and apparently dominated both the general and the ambassador.)

Khrushchev, Castro continues, also was confused about “my letter”—the letter he wrote on October 26, which Krushchev read as recommending a preventive nuclear strike. “He really believed this.” Why was Krushchev confused? Because, Castro says, “I dictated the letter at the Soviet Embassy late that night.” The letter was translated into Russian as he dictated. (Alekseev, who helped translate, later said that his knowledge of Spanish was not perfect; his translation may have introduced ambiguities.)

As for the letter itself, Castro says, “I knew Nikita well and was sure he was extremely anxious about the situation. My aim was to encourage him, to strengthen his position from a moral viewpoint. I remembered how Stalin had refused to believe that the Nazis were planning to attack in 1941. I did not want Nikita to make the same mistake. I wanted to be sure that the Soviet forces were ready for anything. I was convinced that an invasion of Cuba would lead on to nuclear war against the Soviet Union. My recommendation for a preventive strike was not in case of an American air attack but in case of invasion and occupation. Actually my letter had no effect. By the time it arrived Khrushchev and Kennedy were already moving toward a solution. Nikita could have sent us copies of his letters to Kennedy. But we were told nothing.”⁴

Edwin Martin, who in 1962 was assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, then bluntly explains US hemisphere policy, emphasizing the need felt in Washington to offset Cuban “subversion” against other Latin American states. The Cubans show their irritation. General Fabian Escalante, vice minister of the interior and a top man in the secret police, responds by reciting, as he had at Antigua, a litany of the awful things that the CIA had done or contemplated in its notorious Operation Mongoose—the hit-and-run raids, the sabotage teams, the attempts to contaminate the sugar crop and to burn down mills and to spread rumors that Castro was the antichrist and the Second Coming was imminent. McNamara responds, as he did at Antigua, that Mongoose was “reprehensible” and “stupid” but then demands that the Cubans reflect on what might have driven “otherwise intelligent people to be associated with such actions.”

During the luncheon interval we consider what to do if the Cubans won’t go beyond their Antigua fulminations about the sins of the CIA, We discuss walking out—and do so loudly enough for microphones to pick this up. We want the Cubans to understand that they face a choice as to whether or not they wish the conference to succeed.

After lunch Castro joins the argument. He is on the attack, but, as he goes on, he seems somewhat responsive to the aims of the conference. He begins by bridling at the word “subversive”; he prefers “revolutionary…. Of course we wanted revolution. Of course we were prepared to help the revolutionaries. And if we became interventionists in Latin America, it might have been because we had a great teacher: the United States. Which country has violated more international standards: the US or Cuba?” But Cuba, Castro insists, was not exporting revolution; it was supporting revolution, often against governments that were joining in the effort to destroy the Cuban Revolution. “Yes—we admit it. We supported the revolutionary movements, and we believe that a country assailed and harassed as Cuba was had every right to do so.”

(On Saturday I ask him why he attacked democrats like Betancourt. “You call me a ‘subversive,’ ” he says. “Betancourt was a ‘subversive’ too. He also supported revolutionaries—as against Trujillo. Betancourt was a man of the left, but he never sympathized with our movement. Relations were not good between us. For whatever reason, we just didn’t get along. He became an enemy of the Cuban Revolution. Perhaps he was jealous of the great reception I received when I visited Caracas. Nor will I deny that the ideological factor had an influence.” Here he apparently refers to the difference between communism and social democracy. “Moreover, Betancourt had strong opposition on the left. We did not organize that opposition. But we supported it.” He adds, “You can’t imagine the reprimand the Soviet Union sent us because of our aid to the revolutionary movement in Venezuela,” by which he evidently means the weapons and support Cuba gave to the Venezuelan guerillas.)

“If you ask me if we still support revolution in Latin America, if that is Cuba’s policy today, I tell you, ‘No’…. Have we changed? Yes, we are more mature, more realistic. We have learned from experience. We have changed. Latin America has changed. The world has changed.” The calm in Latin America today, he says, is deceptive. The relative stability will not last. Deep social problems remain. But, “if those countries become destabilized, we are not going to promote the destabilization. We are not going to take advantage of the objective conditions to promote anything. That is a policy of a different era…. We wanted revolutionary change. We still do. This doesn’t mean that we are going to help anybody do it.”

But then he bursts into an attack on North American “slanders” about violations of human rights, calling them “disgusting lies.” People do not disappear in Cuba, as they did in Argentina or Chile. Police do not fire on students. Is there anywhere in the world where more is done for basic human rights—for health, education, employment? There are no beggars in Cuba, no poverty, no starvation, no racial discrimination, no discrimination against women, no prostitution. “You defend your blockade on the ground of human rights, but you imposed no blockade on Pinochet, on Somoza, on South Korea, on South Africa….”

Concluding that Castro was determined to get such views on the record before the conference went any further, McNamara says his statement that Cuba has abandoned the support of revolution is welcome and we should move on to other matters. The next time Castro speaks he seems in a relaxed mood. Everyone is relieved.

Saturday, January 11. The schedule now calls for Castro to make his major statement. “We must begin,” he says, “by analyzing personalities. Khrushchev and Kennedy were men for whom I have great respect. Khrushchev did many things for our country. Whenever we requested anything, he did his best to meet our request. I had the feeling that I was dealing with a wise, intelligent peasant; very audacious, very courageous.

“Kennedy was talented and courageous. He made mistakes, but he also had great successes. He was a man with new ideas, some brilliant, like the Alliance for Progress, a policy with a content, with a social direction. It’s a miracle they didn’t call Kennedy a communist when he proposed the Alliance for Progress.⁵