The CIA & the Cuban Missile Crisis   Term Paper ID:27776 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: A number of arguments exist concerning the exact nature of the Cuban missile crisis, & how close the world came to nuclear war; this argument states that the CIA was deeply involved in these events, and perhaps contributed to the crisis.... More...

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Paper Abstract: A number of arguments exist concerning the exact nature of the Cuban missile crisis, & how close the world came to nuclear war; this argument states that the CIA was deeply involved in these events, and perhaps contributed to the crisis. Paper Introduction: INTRODUCTION The end of the Cold War came with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union. This was an occasion for some rejoicing in the West as well as some reflection about what it might mean. It was also a time for recollection and reassessment of the different problems encountered over the forty year period of the Cold War, and one of the events that occupied much of this reassessment was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which many see as the closest the world came to open conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, and perhaps the closest the world came to nuclear war. The period was one of considerable tension, and the United States was at the time still awash in fear of possible nuclear attack, seen in the number of people building fall-out shelters in their basements or backyards. Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. THE COLD WAR AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CIA The end of World War II led to the beginning of a different kind ofwar, the Cold War, an enduring ideological battle between the democraticWest and the Soviet bloc. From theirexperience in the years between the two world wars, they developed threestrong convictions that would be the basis for their policies once theycame to power. There were signs of tension between the U.S. The agency was reconstituted at Donovan's urging with thecreation of the Central Intelligence Group and a year later the CentralIntelligence Agency. The operationsside gathers the information: Typically, the analysts want to disseminate material obtained by the operations side, and the operations officers object because they are afraid it will expose a source. and had been at least since thelaunching of Sputnik; it was that event which showed the West that it hadto hurry in order to prevent the Soviets from taking over space and rainingmissiles down on their enemies. CONCLUSION The CIA was not as effective at gathering information as it has oftenclaimed to be in different situations, and the data that was used by theadministration during the Cuban Missile Crisis was only partial and onlypartially correct. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989.Blum, William. There was also a scientific raceunder way between the Soviets and the U.S. The attempted invasion may even have convincedKhrushchev that Cuba needed Soviet protection from another U.S. U.S. had been outsmarted bythe British and the French in the postwar settlement and had reacted bywithdrawing to continental boundaries; they were determined that thiswould not happen again. (Roche, 1989, 5) McNamara remembers that the reports of the CIA were not considered allthat trustworthy at the time. London: Zed Books, 1986.Kessler, Ronald. This was an occasion for somerejoicing in the West as well as some reflection about what it might mean.It was also a time for recollection and reassessment of the differentproblems encountered over the forty year period of the Cold War, and one ofthe events that occupied much of this reassessment was the Cuban MissileCrisis of 1962, which many see as the closest the world came to openconflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, and perhaps theclosest the world came to nuclear war. John P. intelligence was that there were 1 , Soviet and 4 , Cuban troops on the island. The third conviction was that democracy was aviable governing alternative, and the idea that the people could gettogether and make deals based on idealism and pragmatism appealed to themon a number of different levels. "The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited." The New Leader (March 6, 1989), 5. had also senttroops into the Soviet Union at the end of World War I, and the Sovietsbelieved this was to overthrow their system. There was also antipathy to reports ofSoviet brutality. The missile crisis developed when it was clear thatthe Soviets were placing nuclear missiles in Cuba and were preparing tobring in more. This was prudent at the time, but the historical record should be opened. This office evolved into the OSS, andthis would become the model for the CIA. First, the United Statesbelieved that the Soviets were placing nuclear missiles in Cuba to counterthe American installation of warheads in Turkey. CIA information served to indicate the potential threatfrom Cuba and particularly the threat of Soviet missiles that might befired from Cuban soil. The Agency. The missile crisis had its immediate origins in the Bay of Pigs fiascoand in the arms race between the superpowers. Americans were hostile to the Soviet invasion of Finlandand the Baltic states in 1939. Many facts were known at the time tothe U.S. Donovan headed the Office ofStrategic Services (OSS), and in 1941 Donovan submitted to the president aplan outlining the need for a government-wide organization that would pooland coordinate existing intelligence. government, and had those facts been collected in one place andproperly analyzed, the "surprise" might not have been a surprise at all: If such an intelligence estimate had been presented to the president, defensive action would almost certainly have been taken. and David A. documents released by the CIA. The Allies did not invade until two years after Stalinwanted, and the Russians suffered terrible casualties in the meantime. Yet what might seem irrational to one country may seem perfectly logical to another country that has different goals, values, and traditions. This was accomplished through the useof Cuban agents, spy planes and satellites flying over Cuban territory, andthe monitoring of ships, planes, and other outside means of travel andcommunications. In 1961,Kennedy unveiled a program known as the Alliance for Progress, conceived asa direct response to Castro's Cuba. inmissiles, bombers, and deliverable nuclear warheads. The headquarters had a permanent staff in excessof 3 Americans directed a few thousand Cuban agents in different actions,with a budget of more than $5 million a year (Blum, 1986, 21 ). This has been the brief outline ofthe events that transpired, but more and more it is being noted that thisis not the whole story and that much more was involved than was reported atthe time: The real history of the missile crisis has been coming out bit by bit for years, partly from Soviet sources and now from secret U.S. It would also become part of the ongoing CIAeffort to discredit the Cuban government, an effort that would continuelong past the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Blum, 1986, 214-215). Roche recently wrote about the missile crisis and about thereassessments of that issue taking place over the last several years andfinds much to argue about with those who are attempting to revise historyor who have forgotten the reality of the original event. (Kessler, 1992, 1 ) CUBA AND THE CIA The existence of a Communist regime only a few hundred miles from thecoast of the United States was a matter of special concern for the CIA fromthe time of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. PresidentKennedy invoked the Monroe Doctrine and told the Soviets to keep theirhands off the nations of this hemisphere, and ultimately the Soviets didback down. All thesemen had experienced the excitement and hopes of World War I. air and land forces had movedto the southeastern United States in the early fall of 1962, and aninvasion was proposed to Kennedy as a serious option, which he rejected.Still, Robert McNamara, Kennedy's Secretary of Defense, states that aninvasion was never planned. It is also the story of remarkable dedication and competence within the U.S. McNamara said the administration put little trust inthe CIA estimates of when the missiles would be operational and that thedecision to go ahead was because it was believed that taking a chance wouldbe too great a risk (Blight and Welch, 1989, 55). At the time, analystsbelieved that the Soviets had no more than 44 operational intercontinentalballistic missiles and 155 long-range bombers, while the United States had156 such missiles, 144 sub-launched Polaris missiles, and 1,3 strategicbombers: Deploying medium-range missiles in Cuba gave Soviet forces a significant increase in the number of warheads that could reach the United States--though it is unlikely that Khrushchev had nuclear war in mind. It has since been revealedthat 2 warheads were indeed in Cuba and that they could have been fittedwithin hours on missiles targeted for Washington, New York, and other majorAmerican cities. (Morgenthau, 1992, 356)What Khrushchev wanted was parity with the United States, or at least theillusion of it, and the Cuba gamble was the easiest way to redress thenuclear balance. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a case inwhich the President of the United States took a direct stand against anaction by the Soviets, the action of sending missiles to Cuba. Americanhostility toward the Soviet Union began with American animosity towardcommunism. The United States emerged from the war as thestrongest power in the world, and the Soviet Union intended to challengethat strength. Americans had also been unhappy with the many attackson the American capitalist system, and such attacks were particularlyunwelcome in the 193 s when capitalism was in trouble. But the government had no central agency for marshaling all the information, making sense of it, and presenting strategic assessments to the president. The first was that in 1919 the U.S. Soviet hostility toward the UnitedStates also had deep roots. America also had an image of the Soviets as a government thathad negotiated a separate peace with Germany in 1917, leaving the West tofight the war alone. In fact, the alliance between the Soviets and Americans during the warwas an aberration from the norm since the Russian Revolution. Kennedy made a televisionaddress to the nation on October 22 outlining what was taking place, and onOctober 24 the media confirmed that Soviet ships were approaching the U.S.Navy's mid-Atlantic quarantine line and had stopped, apparently awaitingfurther instructions. It is a story of blunder, miscalculation and dumb luck. THE HAWK'S CAY CONFERENCE In 1989, with the opening up of the Soviet Union to a degree neverknown before, American and Russian analysts came together to discuss theCuban Missile Crisis. On October 28, Russian radio announced that Khrushchev hadordered the missiles removed from Cuba. World War IIseemed to bring the two together, but events in the war also more deeplyseparated them. Actually, the Soviets had4 , troops stationed in Cuba, and the Cuban army numbered 27 , . Soviet ships withmissiles of a longer range were spotted and stopped: The Kennedy Administration, presumably to maintain the sense of emergency both here and in Latin America, generated the myth that we were all in the target zone. The CIA and other agencies knew that Russian claims were spurious.The spy satellite Discoverer had spotted fewer than 2 SS-7 railmobileICBMs on spurs of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and this ended the missilegap which had been created by Khrushchev's boasts. Roosevelt followed thisrecommendation and created a Coordinator of Information as part of theExecutive Office of the President. A report from October 27 refers to themissiles as being "fully operational" without making any explicit referenceto nuclear warheads. The CIA monitored activity in Cuba and attempted to assess themilitary capabilities of the Cubans. Taken as a whole, that history is far less reassuring than the more familiar version. Ever since that time, there have been arguments as to preciselywhat happened, how these events occurred, and how close the world came tonuclear war. It was now made knownthat the Soviet missiles had been intended in part to neutralize the threatof a U.S. The second was related to the events of Munich in1938 when Hitler was let loose by the tired, dispirited, cynicalpoliticians of the old empires, after which the aggressor gained step afterstep with little opposition. Welch. The CIA was involved in this issue from the first, and partof the debate has been over the role of the CIA, the value of data providedby that agency, and the degree to which the CIA can be held responsible forthese events reaching crisis proportions. These were the convictions that supportedthe attitudes and activities of the governing elite from 1941 until thelate 197 s (Ranelagh, 1987, 34-35). (Kessler, 1992, 98) The failures apparent in the onset of World War II and during thecourse of the war led indirectly to the creation of the CIA in 1947.During World War II, Colonel William J. The CIA: A Forgotten History. Inside the CIA. TheDefense Intelligence Agency would be created in 1961 to focus more ontactical questions, and it did indeed reflect the biases of a military thatconstantly sought bigger budgets. He notes firstthat while there may have been no objective evidence from the CIA regardingwhether or not the Soviets had warheads in Cuba, it is clear that theadministration believed they did, for Kennedy and his associates certainlydid not believe the Soviets might fire missiles at the United Stateswithout such warheads. The agency was established by the National SecurityAct of 1947, with the new agency absorbing the institutional values of theOSS. This is the analytical side of the house, made up ofeggheads rather than spies, with analysts who openly identify themselves asCIA employees and who contribute to academic publications and attendconferences in their field just like university professors. CIA files had been declassified to a great degree sothat much more was being revealed about the role of the CIA, about theextent of its knowledge, and about other details of the time. On the Brink. The generation that brought the United States into internationalespionage and covert action and that established the CIA was rising topower by 1941 and included Dean Acheson, secretary of state under Truman;Robert Lovett, lawyer, and banker who served as Truman's secretary ofdefense and later an adviser to Kennedy; James Forrestal, secretary of thenavy under Roosevelt and secretary of defense under Truman; John FosterDulles, lawyer and secretary of state to Eisenhower; Allen Dulles, a lawyerand the longest-serving director of the CIA; and Walter Bedell Smith, chiefof staff to Eisenhower during World War II, ambassador to the Soviet Union,third director of the CIA, and later undersecretary of state. Before and after Pearl Harbor, the idea of a centralized intelligenceagency had been opposed by many in the War Department who saw it as aninfringement on their turf, and it was now considered important that thenew CIA be independent and not tied to the interests of the military. Those officials who did look at the question of Japanese intentions decided that Japan would never attack, because to do so would be irrational. (Kessler, 1992, 98)The only intelligence agencies existing at the time were operated by themilitary, and they were often seen as no more than the dumping ground forthe least qualified military personnel. The archivesof the Russians were also now being opened to reveal more information aboutactions on that side of the confrontation. Some of the reassessments that have been made ofactions taken at that time seem based on faulty memory and even a desire tojustify actions after they have been taken, but it is clear that while theCIA did not have all the data it needed, the estimates the CIA made wereimportant in prompting the administration to take action and do somethingabout the missiles in Cuba before they became operational. Ifthey United States had invaded, casualties would have been much higher thanwhat was then estimated ("A Near Tragedy of Errors," 1989, 4 ). invasion of the island, and both Khrushchev and Fidel Castrobelieved such an invasion was imminent. The period covered some 15days, from October 14 through October 28, 1962. Third, the estimate by U.S. The tensions increased after the war.There is disagreement on the precise beginning of the Cold War, but theCold War is seen as deriving from the historic background of Soviet-American relations and from the specific events of 1945 through 1948. invasion.The primary motivation was strategic, however, for Khrushchev knew, as didthe United States, that the Soviet Union was far behind the U.S. The CIA had an operationsheadquarters in Miami seen by many as a state within a city because it wasover, above, and outside the laws of the United States as well as of theinternational community. THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS The news media of the time reported on the missile crisis as itdeveloped in the days before, during, and immediately after theconfrontation between Kennedy and Khrushchev. The Stalinistpurges of the 193 s were also remembered, as was the short-lived pactbetween Stalin and Hitler in 1939. Photographs taken by a U-2 spy plane were presentedto the United Nations the next day proving that there were missiles beingtaken to Cuba. As the data was broughttogether and compared, it became more evident that much of what wasbelieved on both sides in 1962 was false or misleading, and the degree towhich luck was involved in the outcome of the confrontation was apparent.There were a number of misperceptions on the American side because the dataprovided by the CIA was wrong or misleading. It was intended to prove that genuinesocial change could take place in Latin America without the need forrevolution or socialism. These missiles were medium-rangeballistic missiles with a range of about 75 miles. intelligence community and the stunning contribution of an almost forgotten Soviet traitor (Morgenthau, 1992, 36). and the SovietUnion before the end of the war. The concept of a centralizedintelligence agency, one bringing together all the available information ona subject and analyzing it objectively, is embodied in the Directorate ofIntelligence, which with 3, employees is the smallest of the CIA'sdirectorates. Second, Roche points out that we certainly knewthat the Soviets were not producing missiles at the rate they claimed theywere. Russia had been excluded fromworld affairs after World War I until World War II, and this was resented.Most Russians also deeply distrusted industrial capitalism. Each of the services was battlingthe others, and fiefdoms developed within the services that oftensuppressed whatever intelligence assessments were made: The government had no tradition of assessing the intentions--as distinguished from the capabilities--of other countries. INTRODUCTION The end of the Cold War came with the tearing down of the Berlin Walland the breakup of the Soviet Union. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987.Roche, John P. The Soviets remembered American opposition tothe revolution in 1917, and the refusal by America to diplomaticallyrecognize the new Soviet government until 1933. "At the Brink of Disaster." Newsweek (October 26, 1992), 36-39.Ranelagh, John. During the war the OSS organizedresistance movements and sabotage operations behind enemy lines and alsotried unsuccessfully to centralize intelligence functions within thegovernment through an analytical section known as Research and Analysis.When the OSS disbanded after the war, the State Department absorbed many ofits functions. ReferencesBlight, James G. Third, the missilesplaced in Cuba did not have the range to reach Washington in spite ofrhetoric to the contrary on both sides. The Bay of Pigs occurredsome two years previously and convinced Khrushchev that Kennedy would backdown if confronted. The period was one of considerabletension, and the United States was at the time still awash in fear ofpossible nuclear attack, seen in the number of people building fall-outshelters in their basements or backyards. The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was another impetus for thecreation of an intelligence agency. New York: Pocket Books, 1992."A Near Tragedy of Errors." Time (February 13, 1989), 4 .Morgenthau, Tom. Second, Kennedy and his advisers never knew for certain whether or notthere were nuclear warheads already in Cuba in October 1962, for the CIAcould not find this information at the time. The U.S. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

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