One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

Esche Podnimalos' Plamya (Moscow: Intervesy, 1997), 79–80, for reminiscences of a Soviet missile officer at Baikonur. The R-7s at Baikonur were brought to Readiness Condition 2, like the missiles in Cuba.

By Pentagon calculations: Kaufmann memo, Cuba and the Strategic Threat, OSD. The U.S. figure includes 144 ICBMs and 96 missiles based on Polaris submarines. The Soviet figures are from Karlov, the Strategic Rocket Forces historian, based on official Soviet data. The Soviet figure includes thirty-six R-16s and four R-7s, based at Plesetsk, plus the two reserve R-7s at Baikonur, which were not on permanent duty. The disparity in long-range bombers was even more pronounced, around 1–5 by most estimates. The CIA and State Department believed that the Soviet Union had sixty to seventy-five operational ICBM launchers, somewhat less than the Pentagon estimate, but still higher than the official Soviet figure cited by Karlov ? Garthoff, 208.

In Havana, it was still: Oblizin interview; notes of Col. Vladimir Rakhnyansky, head of ballistic division, MAVI.

'cost the Soviets millions': Blight et al., Cuba on the Brink, 109-11.

for 'an important meeting': Alekseev message to Moscow, November 2, 1962, NSAW Cuba. Transcript of missile crisis conference in Moscow, January 1989. Bruce J. Allyn, James G. Blight, and David A. Welch, eds., Back to the Brink: Proceedings of the Moscow Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis, January 27–28, 1989 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992), 159. See also Blight et al., Cuba on the Brink, 117-22.

He was full of complaints: Putilin, 108.

'took it for granted': Blight et al., Cuba on the Brink, 252.

'con suprema dignidad': Castro letter to Khrushchev, October 28, 1962, Cuban document submitted to 2002 Havana conference.

'strengthen the Socialist camp': Blight et al., Cuba on the Brink, 345; Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble, 187.

'very complex and excessively sensitive': November 2, 1962, dispatch, NSAW.

dictated a holding telegram: NSAW Cuba.

'the brightest light': Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1986), 672.

'I'd be a jellyfish': Sakharov, 217.

'Fucked again': Dallek, 429.

The weather on Novaya Zemlya: G. G. Kudryavtsev, Vospominaniya o Novoi Zemlye available online at www.iss.nillt.ru; V. I. Ogorodnikov, Yadernyi Arkhipelag (Moscow: Izdat, 1995), 166; author's interview with atomic veteran Vitaly Lysenko, Kiev, May 2006.

To confuse American intelligence: Kudryavtsev article.

'Gruz poshyel': Ogorodnikov, 155-8; Pavel Podwig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 503.

'I wouldn't pull': Unpublished Maultsby memoir, made available to the author by Jeanne Maultsby. History of 4080th Strategic Wing (SAC), October 1962, FOIA.

'Your mind never relaxes': Heyser interview. See Michael Dobbs, 'Into Thin Air,' WP Magazine, October 26, 2003.

'They had decided to settle': Fursenko, Prezidium Ts. K. KPSS, 623, Protocol No. 62.

His intelligence folder on Friday: Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble, 261- 2.

'Robert Kennedy and his circle': Ibid., 249.

Khrushchev understood the Lippmann column: Soviet envoy Anastas Mikoyan later told the Cubans that this column had prompted Khrushchev to propose the Cuba-Turkey swap. See memorandum of conversation with Cuban leaders, November 5, 1962, NSAW Cuba. See also Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble, 275. Lippmann's column appeared in WP and other newspapers on October 25.

'You are worried about Cuba': Problems of Communism, Spring 1992, author's trans. from the Russian.

'It is categorically': Malinovsky message to Pliyev, October 27, 1962, 1630 Moscow time, NSAW.

The Americans 'know very well': Gromyko message to Alekseev, October 27, 1962, NSAW. A former Khrushchev aide, Oleg Troyanovsky, has claimed that the Presidium had 'no idea' that publication of the Turkey- Cuba offer would create problems for Kennedy ? see Troyanovsky, 249. However, the instructions to Alekseev make clear that the struggle for public opinion was an important part of Khrushchev's strategy.

'Who gives you the right': Theodore Shabad, 'Why a Blockade, Muscovites Ask,' NYT, October 28, 1962. See also 'The Face of Moscow in the Missile Crisis,' Studies in Intelligence, Spring 1966, 29–36, CREST.

a 'training ground on which': Petr Vail' and Aleksandr Genis, Shesdesyatiye ? Mir Sovetskovo Cheloveka (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2001), 52–60.

'amused, disturbed': Report from Eugene Staples, U.S. Embassy, Moscow, October 30, 1962, State Department Cuba files, NARA.

Soviet 'state interests': Malinovsky message to Khrushchev, October 27, 1962, MAVI.

'Cuba, give us back': Vail' and Genis, 59.

'quite intricate phrases': Alekseev, November 2, 1962, NSAW dispatch.

'Dear Comrade Khrushchev': Castro letter to Khrushchev, October 26–27, 1962, NSAW Cuba, trans. by the author.

'Razvernut'sya!': Roshva interview. For details of the deployment, see Gribkov et al., U Kraya Yadernoi Bezdni, 89–90, 115-19; interview with Vadut Khakimov, former PRTB officer, in Vremya i Denghi, March 17, 2005.

Inside the naval base: GITMO intelligence reports.

'The U.S. authorities in Guantanamo': December 6,1962, report from M. B. Collins in Cuba Under Castro, Vol. 5, 565. The CIA subsequently misidentified the FKR cruise missiles at Mayari Arriba as coastal cruise missiles known as Sopkas. The two missiles were similar to each other in appearance, but the Sopka did not carry a nuclear warhead and was intended for use against ships ? see the discussion in CWIHP, 12–13 (Fall-Winter 2001), 360-1.

CHAPTER NINE: HUNT FOR THE GROZNY

were 'fully operational': CIA memorandum, The Crisis: USSR/Cuba, October 27, 1962, CREST.

Ham radio operators along: Reeves, 92.

'a war room for the Cold War': Michael K. Bohn, Nerve Center: Inside the White House Situation Room (Washington, DC: Brassey's, 2003), 30.

There was a continuous clatter: Salinger, With Kennedy, 253.

'a pigpen': Bohn, 32.

Communications intercepts started: NSA and the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1998 monograph, published by NSA.

Contrary to later myth: Bouchard, 115. See also Graham Allison, Essence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 128.

A tactical strike force: JCS Scabbards message 270922Z, JFKARC; Cuba Fact Sheet, October 27, 1962, NSAW.

mobilized 'at a rapid rate': CIA memorandum, The Crisis: USSR/Cuba, October 27, 1962, CREST; JCS Scabbards report, October 28, 1962, Cuba National Security Files, JFKL.