War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Ray Cline, 1986 [2]

Try to take you back to when you first came back from Washington to Washington from. Taipei in January of 62 and you took over as deputy director of intelligence. What was the mood in the in the White House at that time concerning Cuba. And Castro. In early 61 when the president had just taken office. The mood was a bully and generally the new frontier was confident and anxious to demonstrate its knowledge and its power and its competence their preoccupation with Cuba was impressive to me. And my first brief contacts with the group when they had taken office because they felt that earlier authorities had urged in allowing Castro to become in a sense a Soviet. Agent a Soviet surrogate in the Caribbean and they were very anxious to find some

way to get rid of what was essentially a strategic danger to the whole Western Hemisphere in their view. Do we do anything about this excuse me for a moment. Now we do anything about that. Why do you think the Kennedys were so hip on Cuba. What was it. Well in 1960 when the idea of what. The Monroe Doctrine it was called an alien political system being established very close to the United States in a position to influence other American Republics was unheard of it seemed very wrong for us to allow a dictatorship Leninist system of government to establish itself just as a 100 years earlier before there. Longer ago people had

thought it was wrong to allow arbitrary monarchies to maintain their rule over American colonies. So there was an almost instinctive reaction among these people with a certain sense of history that Eisenhower and had had been a little slipshod in allowing Fidel Castro to set himself up as essentially a surrogate or model performer playing the role that was of benefit to the Soviet Union. Allowing implies a sense of divine right here something I can do. Can you help us understand the mood of that. Well I think the mood was reflected in Jack Kennedy's inaugural speech that it was our fate too. And by our I mean the generation that he and I both belong to our fate to conduct a long twilight struggle with a

totalitarian system of government which was embodied in the Soviet Union. That was just as bad for people everywhere as the Nazi system of government had been in Europe. And this generation had just fought a long war and the attitude I think was if we were careful to prevent the proliferation of this kind of political system and it spread to new areas that we could avoid the hazard of a third world war which perhaps could avoided which was of the same nature that could have been avoided. When World War II broke out what was wanted was prophylactic measures to forestall crises before they came to a showdown with wide scale military hostilities.

You came back from. Taipei in January 62 and took over as after the Bay of Pigs. Yes. I actually I came back and frequently in that period but I took over I think in April 62 I was in Washington a lot in the spring of 62 on consultation about taking over what was the mood then about gaster that we'd have well the Bay of Pigs made all the difference in the world instead of self-confidence and exploitation. The new frontier crowd most of whom were my friends were angry a little bitter that they had made mistakes. Impressed with the difficulty of running the U.S. government and making wise decisions and more than ever impressed that they had a firm adversary a person who would cause trouble for the best interest of the United States and its friends for a

long time. At last he was opposed. Contained at a minimum and if possible remove from office. What were they trying to do to remove him from office. What was the offer. Well in the conversations I had what they were trying to do was to organize political opposition within Cuba and to encourage the emigration. Many Cubans who had left Castro Cuba and lived in this country to organize politically to oppose him if necessary infiltrate the country and overthrowing politically or as if they had tried they were willing to contemplate allowing Cubans to direct military operations against the Castro regime. But by the time they had failed in the Bay of Pigs they were thinking primarily of

economic sanctions economic sabotage economic warfare the under ground still uncertain campaign that at least tolerated or sanctioned the idea of assassination of Castro was something that was not openly discussed. It was not something I ever heard discussed in those days. And I think that even in their own minds the Kennedys and others didn't clearly say to themselves go assassinate Fidel Castro. It was much more like murder in the cathedral and they said well somebody get rid of these this this scourge in my life and people were trying to do it but not very systematically or affected with the main campaign against

Cuba in 1962 was economic it was containment and restriction of of growth on the part of the communist government in Cuba. Tell us about some of these economic measures that were taken. You told me last time. Well I recall a few. Sorry sir could you start that answer. I recall a few of the operational concepts that were being employed in the post Bay of Pigs period 62 and for several years they involved trying to damage the sugar industry the nickel mining operations and to prevent shipping to Cuba of important economic products. This involved in many cases simply diplomatic and political

pressure on countries that were doing business with Cuba not to do business with Cuba but there were also some operations involving teams of Cubans Cuban exiles who would go ashore on the island and use explosives to blow up a piece of machinery to find a way where it was possible to put in a break even lubricants in key machines to do so to contaminate shipments of oil or whatever whatever industrial components were going to Cuba on the seas or in in ports. It was quite an elaborate campaign to do damage without hurting people but doing damage to the Soviet support

of the Cuban economy. You told me last I think about Square ball bearings and things like that. There were a lot of ideas I'm not sure how many of them were actually carried out to put to put ball bearings would fail into machinery that needed them or was was certainly one of the efforts. Squared ball bearings are simply flaky ones that would fall apart. These were simple ideas. The real operational problem was to find out when and where shipments of these kinds of were going to be made and get access to the material. I don't think a very widespread campaign was successfully mounted but it was part of the concept to make sure that Castro did not succeed economically in exploiting the kind of economic aid he was getting from the Soviet Union and thereby appear a success to other Latin countries.

It was a huge operation built in Miami. Can you tell us a little bit about that. Well I can tell you very much about it but it was a an organization of the exiles who left Cuba in huge numbers about 10 percent of the population did leave Castro's Cuba voting with their feet to get out of that kind of country and they were for the most part welcomed and southern United States and many of the more young and active people wanted to still to find some way to discredit and if possible eliminate Castro's rule. And in Cuba there were all kinds of groups. The CIA was instructed covertly to keep in contact with them. They authorized some limited operations behind

or inside the shores of Cuba. But I understood on the whole the momentum for that sort of thing trailed off fairly rapidly after the Cuban missile crisis of 62. It was largely prior to that in a year between the Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis that these operations were popular. Let's talk about the last few months in the years since. You know after you were deputy director of intelligence and before the war but since the crisis started I understood that the Miami operation was a very well-funded. You know it was extensive. And so you know. There was a very extensive network of Cuban groups who were interested in damaging Castro and the CIA operation in

Florida area was extensive and well funded and it has clearly had the authorization of the president and all of his advisors to try to. Do what I described to sabotage the success of the Castro regime in Cuba. But I think perhaps people have an exaggerated concept of the scale of the activities that we supported a lot of people as I understand it but they were divided. They had different programs and some of the more active groups who were wanting to conduct essentially military operations were not supported because clearly after the Bay of Pigs we'd given up the hope of a military invasion a military infiltration that would succeed in toppling Castro we were trying to make him unpopular and unsuccessful.

So many of the Cubans wanted to assist in that. Of course we wanted to collect information from all of the Cubans. So the CIA contact with them was extensive but it was not all sabotage and harassment operations. There were several hundred CIA officers in Miami and I work there working well in the southern camps there. Yes they were scattered around in different locations in Florida and I would say several hundred. Can you put that into a sentence for me. Well I think I can if I can say I think he did an interview with Bill Moyers where he talked about six or seven hundred. I think that he's about right to put that in. Sure. Sure. Well attempting to keep in contact with his vast Cuban refugee system took a lot of people and much of it was simply collecting information. I would guess if I recall

correctly there were maybe six or seven hundred people. It was a very large investment of effort. But it reflected the concern of the Kennedy administration to know everything about the situation in Cuba and about the degree of feasibility of opposition to Castro. This is unusual for a CIA operation of this size to be working inside the United States. Yes it was it wasn't an unusual case and it did reflect the preoccupation of the Kennedy administration with Cuba. However it was set up essentially like a foreign base. It was isolated insulated from American people and localities. They simply were occupying some real estate in the continental United States. But the whole method of operation was as if they were in a foreign country and their dealings with the Cubans were very secret or even

intended to be protective of American political interests. So that the secrecy was still a concept even though some of the operations were pretty obvious and a lot of newspaper men began to find out what was going on. It was kind of the beginning of the problem. This country has always had with covert operations. Is it quite a few people have to know about them for them to take place and the Americans are not very good at keeping secrets. Isn't that illegal for the CIA to be operating. No I think their mandate was only to operate covertly. That is their mission. But the law which sets them up as the National Security Act of 1947 makes clear they will not have law enforcement responsibilities in the United States and they will not be involved in domestic intelligence

activities which is the prerogative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation the FBI. But obviously an intelligence agency is going to operate abroad has to train people recruit people do all sorts of things in the United States so that the kind of black and white concept that they shouldn't do anything in the United States is wrong. And it was not illegal to conduct these operations against Cuba from American shores any more than if they'd simply moved down to Guatemala or Nicaragua or someplace it would still be an American covert operation. Who was there who was primarily pushing this. Well I believe that the most concerned person in Washington in that 62 period was Bobby Kennedy. He personally took an enormous interest in it and through the through that period at least until his

brother's death he felt that it was his job to monitor activities against Castro to do his best to see that Castro's dreams of surviving and flourishing in Central America and doing damage to the Americans were frustrated. Some people have speculated that you know the missile crisis was in part provoked by all these sorts of operations. Well I think there's a small element of truth in that and that Castro was looking for reinsurance and his brother Raul who is a communist and close to the Soviet Union this was Fidel began trying to get Soviet help to be sure that no drastic operation against Cuba would succeed. But that's not the main story. I think the main story was that the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union at that time

was shifting. It had to do with missile strength. Many people thought that the Soviet Union was ahead in missile strength because they had started the missile age. But in fact they knew that the United States had rapidly recovered and had built up to superiority in missiles by 1962. So it was end run to put short range missiles in Cuba where they could reach the United States just as well as the long range missiles could reach the United States from farther away. I believe that simple military logic was very important in the Soviet thinking. Not everybody took it so seriously. But I still think the Soviet Union is dominated by rather simple political military concepts and one of them is get there fastest with the most asked.

And they wanted the United States to be under fire under threat from as many missiles as they could bring to bear on our continent. Let me. Stop Roland. This is building a bomb. You think things just make it upset you the last time I think we were speculating on the sort of post Bay of Pigs attitude of. Castro towards. The United States that you know this might have you know he might have felt that he really needed some better security that another invasion might be imminent. Well I I think Castro's fears probably were

more exaggerated than the reality warranted. There was clearly flirtation with the idea of assassination. There were all these contacts with Cuban exiles. I must say looking at it from Havana it was a rather massive anti Cuban disposition of activity and forces. But on the other hand I think that he he was playing his own game and was playing the Soviet card and Moscow was playing its game. Now Castro himself may have felt there was a personal vendetta of Jack and Bobby Kennedy and in many ways they were really obsessed really preoccupied not in an abnormal way but in a concentrated way with frustrating Castro's

ambitions. He may have felt that he would be in real trouble the rest of his life and last he could do something to turn off this movement. It is hard to find evidence that is persuasive as to whether or not Castro might have had something to do with Jack Kennedy's death. There certainly is a lot of suspicious circumstances and you can find statements he made suggesting that if the U.S. activities against Cuba continued he wouldn't take violent action against the president of the United States. On the other hand there's no clear evidence that he in fact did have something to do with Oswald's activities. It's a very murky period and which I'm unable as a historian as well as someone who remembers the period very well to

come to a conclusion as to whether Castro actively helped organize the death of the president. There is no doubt in my mind he was very relieved by the death of the president. What he what was it in the Kennedy character about Castro. We talked a little bit about their Irish nature. Well I think that Jack Kennedy was a very practical tough guy. He had been through World War Two was wounded nearly lost his life he he had a combative side to his character that was usually beneath the surface. He was a very genial man but as many peoples have said he was taught by his father who was not such a genial type. Don't get mad get even if you're crossed by somebody. Make

sure you hold your own and get even with them. I think that Jack Kennedy somewhat accurately felt Castro had been the occasion of his first major disaster in his administration and might well have ruined it and that he couldn't blame Castro entirely for that. There were lots of mistakes made on the American side but I think that's why both Jack and Bobby felt they had to correct the historical track they had to remedy the mistake they had made in 61 by doing something better. Now my belief is that they were playing around with all of these covert operations without being too clear that they could bring them to any very successful conclusion. And that after the successful

successful counteraction in the strategic missile crisis after they succeeded in getting the Russians to withdraw their missiles from Cuba somehow they felt they had even the score. And they did begin to relax and the operations began to lose intensity in 1963 and were desultory if not unimportant. After the President's death what was it about Bobby. I mean you're talking about. I was kind of trying to assuage his brother's back. Bobby. Bobby was very loyal to his brother and particularly determined to create an image of a successful Kennedy presidency that would live in history. I think it's pretty clear that even in 62 he was thinking about the possibility that somehow events might lead to his

succeeding his brother. But essentially he was the the man who always tried to think out the tough problems and take care of the details and the dirty work for Jack so as to make him a successful president. And in a sense that period Bobby saw himself taking the low road a political organization and an efforts to protect these brothers reputation while Jack took the high policy road. You tell me about the famous McKone hunting game. Well John McCone who became director of CIA at the same time practically it became the depth to your director for intelligence was a very fine intelligence mind you is not a professional intelligence

officer he was a businessman an administrative executive in government. But he he understood the need to penetrate to the bottom of evidence and to think about the analysis of events and a long range perspective. Now when he was worrying about Cuba which he did through all the time I know him in those years 61 62 but especially in the middle of 62 when we all were worried about what was happening in Cuba why these military shipments and what did they portend. McKone in my view had the clearest vision of anybody and as he himself said he didn't have the evidence to support it. He just had an instinct that if Castro was getting all of the support from the Soviet Union there was something big in it for the Soviet Union. They weren't doing it because they like Castro's eyes and they were intending to

get a strategic gain. So purely abstractly. John McCullen reason to me and I discussed it with him and helped him write memos which went to the president before his famous honeymoon suggesting that the modern anti-aircraft missiles which were going into Cuba could only be sent there if the Soviet Union intended to use them to protect the secrecy of emplacement of another surface to surface missile which would threaten the United States. Everybody said to him there is no clear evidence of that. And there's no precedent for it. And he said yeah I know that but it's what's going to happen and he turned out to be right and it was on the record all the time. He did make it as his wedding plans for the period of the crisis and it was a way but he was thinking on his honeymoon all the time about this problem and kept sending back messages along the lines of analysis that there must

be an end point for the Russians of surface to surface missiles offensive missiles in Cuba. We in the agency reported his views. I think they were faithfully reflected. But the majority view clearly was the Soviet Union would not take the risk of doing that because the CIA people knew we would find out about it. We knew Jack Kennedy would be mad as hell and we felt the United States would certainly react in a very strong way against such a move so that my my analyst friends in the DTI deputy director for intelligence part of CIA said look. Khrushchev made a mistake in putting the missiles in Cuba. We didn't think he was stupid enough to do it. So we made a mistake in analyzing what was going to happen. John McCone just guessed the heart of the problem that Khrushchev would do it and hopes that he could get away with it.

There's a famous intelligence CIA called the Bureau of national estimates board of national audit nationalizes September 18th. Right. And I've got a little bit of it here. I remember lying to you. I remember it. What did you write this or who would have know. I approved it. It was written by the Board of Estimates which worked very independently. But under my general supervision and John McCain approved it to mean John McCone said the analysis is correct. What an intelligence agency should do is talk about the historical record of the evidence we have. But he said I think they're going to do something unusual here and we've got to put it on the record. But what the estimate really says is they might be going to build missile bases in Cuba. They might be going to build submarine bases in Cuba. They were thinking of the really dangerous things. So it's ridiculous to say this estimate was reassuring it was not. But they

said on balance the probability is the Soviet Union will not take the political and strategic risks involved in making that kind of investment in Cuba. It turns out that in a sense they were right. The Soviet Union lost strategically in that move but they did take the they didn't take the chance and the warning was far from clear. Except for John McCone because the professional intelligence analysts felt that the Soviet Union would see the situation as a loser and would not take that risk. The Soviet Union did it. It teaches you that you must expect the unprecedented the illogical in behavior of governments sometimes just as we sometimes see it in our own. I brought you two pictures of the president. All right. Well you remember this probably the most famous song from. The first

day first for San Cristobal. You can see the little yeah. You remember it all when our dog gave you the first through. Yeah I saw these only in the White House on the morning of the 16th of October. But Art Lundahl called me on the Late Late afternoon of the 15th of October to say that the pictures taken on the previous day Sunday showed missiles in Cuba and I said good God that means everything will hit the fan tomorrow. Are you sure. And they insisted that they review the whole evidence. I didn't go look at the pictures. I trusted Lundahl his people so well that I only wanted to be sure that a number of guys in a number of minds had worked over this problem and also that our intelligence analysts who were not photo interpreters but missile experts had studied the same data and came to the same

conclusion. All of that happened in my early evening of the night when I learned that afternoon when I learned about it I called McGeorge Bundy. I arranged with General Carter who was the acting DCI at the moment for McKone to brief the senior officials in the Pentagon. He was going to see them anyway and I called the director of intelligence at the State Department. The whole intelligence community was alerted that night and we met in the White House early the following morning. What were the first. I take that back to your head. What were the first reactions. You were in that first meeting with Kennedy and Lundahl and Graybill I think that while I was in the meeting with Bobby Kennedy and Ben Mack Monday and Secretary DILLON and some of the others in fact we Mac Bundy carried the pictures and the president himself

the reaction of the group though was real dismay real concern that we were in a serious crisis and that the president who had warned very specifically at our suggestion and on the basis of earlier intelligence about what was happening in Cuba that the Soviet Union should not put offensive weapons in Cuba was going to look awfully foolish unless he did something strong. Bobby Kennedy who had been out on the campaign trail with the president was really dismayed he just felt that it was a terrible crisis and that it was up to the up to his brother to do something drastic and dramatic and successful which I think they believe they finally did was. Was Robert Kennedy concerned about the political the domestic political implications. Partly and I think throughout the discussions that I've heard I only heard part of them of

course that the president was conducting formal meetings many of which I listened in on but some of which I didn't and he had many personal meetings which of course I wouldn't have known about at the time. I think Bobby Kennedy in my presence kept reflecting the view that this was the watershed crisis of the Kennedy administration time a true chance to redeem himself from clearly clearly what had been mistakes in the Bay of Pigs but that it was essential that he do so in a way that would leave him a hero and a moral leader for the United States. Bobbie at the very first formal meeting that I attended voiced this concern that it made a lot of sense to go destroy those missile sites immediately but that he didn't want his brother to go down in history as the Pearl Harbor

attacker Allah the Japanese in 1941. So in his mind always I think was the the historical political image that the president would leave. And yet there was a great concentration on dealing with the crisis effectively not seeming to be weakened and ineffective. What was Jack Kennedy's first view with those pictures what was my impression. My impression is that from the beginning Jack Kennedy saw these pictures as the concrete evidence that Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders had been lying to him that he was again in danger of being made a real Patsy man who didn't face up to the tough part of international

relations and he was very determined not to let it happen. I recall when Gromyko came to the White House in the middle of that week and was given the last chance to suggest that somehow they were willing to admit that they were putting the missiles in Cuba which might have changed there's a feeling of outrage which President Kennedy had. But when I heard the translators account that Gromyko denied everything. And then the most plain words simply lied to the president. I knew Jack Kennedy was going to get those missiles out of Cuba. He was I think very willing in the end after exhausting other lesser remedies to mount a military operation. That's controversy. Some people think yes some people think no but at least in the beginning on the occasions when I heard about his

views he was quite excited about suddenly finally getting this evidence. Oh yes you see I had been briefing the president. I'm sorry. OK. I was excited of course about the evidence. It was the most important strategic confrontation with the Soviet Union. We had had since the Berlin blockade back in the 40s and the Korean War and I had been briefing the president personally during the summer I'd been keeping everybody informed that there was some critical activity going on in Cuba and we were going to try to find out what it was when we finally found out that it was indeed the offensive missiles that John McCone had suspected. But we couldn't prove up to that point. I knew that the intelligence community had done a pretty good job of zeroing in on a critical crisis telling our president what the situation was when he still could think what to do before the leaders of the

Soviet Union knew that he knew. That's a very unusual situation in such a major crisis. And I believe that it was an unusually successful though not on flawed intelligence performance and it led to one of our more successful strategic policy programs. It did not end up entirely successful years later as we might have liked. But at the time it was pretty well handled. I understand you had a role in writing October 20 seconds. Well I got to see the drafts and I did draft some paragraphs on the actual situation. What we would call the intelligence report which were in the first two or three paragraphs I helped prepare one of the early drafts of that I was working through. McGeorge Bundy his office. My point of

departure and the White House was the national security adviser to the president Mac Bundy who was an old friend and a very clever man and I like to explain to him the detail the implications of what I thought our intelligence findings were and he gave me an opportunity to help draft and comment on some of that text. You are. You were not a blogger. No. Hi. Hi. Belong to one of the three schools the diplomatic action school is one the blockade as a short time remedy it was the second a surgical strike was the third. I felt there was a real danger that the Soviet Union would somehow outmaneuver us in the political arena unless we made the surgical strike. I

think however the decision was really two and a half. It was the blockade to be followed by a massive strike if necessary. So it was not something I disapproved of or disagreed with. I felt that in some ways you could deal better with Castro and Khrushchev by moving and presenting them with a fait accompli that in a sense that would remove any danger that they would feel compelled to counter attack and there was such a danger. But I also felt we had to move. We had a nice anecdote about. Ike's version of Sachs Eisenhower's dictum on sac. There was that they would have gotten to know. I talk to them. I told you when I was working for Eisenhower when he was chief of staff the army before he was president which was in the after world war II in the

40s I had discussed some military plans for world war II with him and he said well you got to remember that if you refer matters to the army which of course he was the most distinguished alumnus of they will want to begin any military operation by fortifying the moon. That was his statement. And in some sense that's true. I felt that that really reflected the attitude which caused our defense department to propose such a huge operation against Cuba in the military field. If it was necessary so as to be absolutely sure that they would wipe out every missile if there was if they were attacked. Those of us who felt a surgical strike would be useful successful quick settle the issue for once and all. We're confident

that our air force in a fairly sizable but not a country wide did could have destroyed all of the missiles that were operational in the early stage of the attack. It was only a handful. The Defense Department insisted that they couldn't be absolutely sure and of course statistically they kept saying well you have a 94 percent chance but you might miss three fourths of a missile. I don't think that really meant very much if they had put on multiple targeting they would have destroyed all the missiles but other considerations led the president to give the blockade a try rather than to take that smaller attack. And he had in his mind I think this Army and Air Force concept that if you're really going to take out those missiles you had to saturate the island with military attack and military force as if you were going to fortify them the other.

Are the lessons you learned from the human lessons that perhaps we've forgotten today let's try to sort of make some sense of it now today. Well I think in the intelligence field the lesson is that I can use my questions so you could say the lessons of how I say you know you're not worried you're not going to get it on the tape. It's terrible. Looking back the lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis are of several different kinds. One kind is in the field of intelligence there. The only mistake we made was expecting too much rationality too much conformity to precedent and previous behavior on the part of the Soviet Union. In other words we should have in the early stages

analyzed the Soviet intentions with more probability of doing well in the event they actually did take big risks and do something new. However I think it's important to say and this is another lesson Don't let your estimates of what's going to happen prevent you from looking for the hard evidence and that we didn't do with the CIA and all intelligence agencies went after the photography after the agent reports and we did get the combination of Agent reports de-briefing of refugees and pictures which proved the case as to what was really happening. The other lesson is in my mind in the policy field and there the first phase of the lesson is be sure you have good intelligence and have time to digest it before you make decisions. That happened in this case and that's why the decisions were reasonable and well carried

out. The second lesson though is where we don't look so good in my opinion. Think of the consequences of your policy decision it in a long range perspective what will happen after the crisis is dissolved after you have dealt with it. And there I have misgivings because I think the Kennedy administration and the leaders all became so euphoric over having won a strategic victory in confrontation with the Soviet Union that they simply were not prepared for the fact that the Soviet Union would try to get even. They got mad and they did eventually get even by installing in Cuba a major military base with intelligence capabilities with missiles with everything except the particular type of missile which we made them take out and have presented a formidable

menace to the security of the Caribbean. Despite our victory in sixty two. So looking back on it the strategic victory we didn't focus on we only thought of it as the tactical victory. You know you should have got rid of Castro at the time and used that as well. In some ways as I say I look back on the Cuban Missile Crisis as having been fortunate and getting the missiles out. But being a missed opportunity to discredit and destroy the Castro regime. If we had surgically destroyed the missiles or if we had in fact invaded the island in order to make the missiles and operate even Castro would have been finished. We didn't do that and everybody pretty well congratulated themselves that they had done it with so little damage so little violence which is of course a desirable thing.

But 20 years later it ended up with some dangers to neighboring countries and to the southern United States in the form of aircraft and other weapons and infiltration of subversive and terroristic act to active people with a danger as great or greater than the threat of the offensive missiles that they mentioned the last time that we perhaps wouldn't have the Nicaraguan situation or the ongoing situation. Cuba has been since 1962. A source of infection politically and in terms of guerrilla warfare against stable governments and against governments friendly of the United States ever since. And Fidel Castro deliberately has provided the focus of expansion of

hostile governments governments hostile to the United States in Central America as his main object in life and he has succeeded in causing a great deal of difficulty particularly in recent years in Nicaragua where you have a Sandinista government that is in many ways a spawn a throw off a model built on the Castro model. So was it wrong perhaps for Americans to think in retrospect that the missile crisis was a kind of a victory or kind of. No I think it was a victory. I think it was an exploited victory it was a victory that we lost sight of as being important. And that came not as a result of faulty thinking about Cuba but about being diverted to the problems of Vietnam and failing with our strategic objectives in Vietnam and then sort of sitting on our hands and letting a rather

major expansion of the influence of the Soviet Union and its client states and all parts of the world Southeast Asia the Caribbean Middle East and Africa. Many people say that this is the result of the missile crisis the Soviets built up this enormous arsenal because they had been hurt by you know. But I think it that's off reporters that yes you know you'll never do this. I heard that immediately because that's all remarked. Then you can you ever. I'm sorry. Can you tell us about that after the the missile crisis had subsided and the at the final arguments and counter-arguments disposing of the situation had taken place. I had a very high ranking Soviet official name because Nemtsov told John McCloy that there would never again be a confrontation in which the United States had all of the

cards in their hands the military superiority nuclear and local conventional so that they had to play a political game against adverse odds. And I noticed immediately almost in about a year later the beginning of these massive bases being built in the Soviet Union with new missiles and I recall within a couple of years after that saying to my colleagues and people in the administration look at this wonderful strategic superiority which we had and enabled us to deal with the Cuba situation fairly effectively. However effectively in the long run is a vanishing asset we will not have that situation once the Soviet Union builds all of the missiles that he clearly was beginning to build in 1964 and

65. You could first see that 10 years later the situation would be quite different. And it was. Now that was the fulfillment I think felt because Nat's office promised that we would never meet them again on such favorable strategic terms. Thanks very much. I think we've kept you going after you. That's all right he said. Oh sure sure sure. So I just just keep still for. OK. This is Room tone for the interview with Dr. Klein down the room. You know one of the arcane parts of this I'm going to sneak in one last question after we do this. All right. Quite forgot to say. How close do you think the world came to nuclear war.

I think. The world was not very close to nuclear war and the Cuban missile crisis because of the superiority of American nuclear forces which were then mainly aircraft delivery vehicles but included more missiles in the Soviet Union had meant that the Soviet Union would never go to the last resort. Playing a game of blackmail over a nuclear war. In the second place our conventional military strength was so great in the Caribbean much closer to us than the Soviet Union that there was no real contest if it came to a conventional war. So we had all all the blue chips. And that's why we managed to win. If we had not had that magnificent superiority and strategic capabilities it would have been a

much harder game to play but we were lucky and we will never be that lucky again. You don't think this is a post-facto. I mean during the actual days of the crisis during that are you scared. No. Well I was scared that as I say I was always scared that somebody would be crazy. I would do something utterly irrational after all they had done something pretty rational in my view and putting the missiles in Cuba in the first place. But I was very confident personally and I assured everybody I talked to that we had six seven or eight to one superiority and a deliverable nuclear weapons against the other two countries and that the Soviet Union homely and some mad mood would resort to the all of that military crisis so I was very confident all through the crisis that we could achieve what we wanted if we were coherent

and articulate and if we explain it to our own population and our allies what we were doing and that was part of the job we had to do. And again we we provided the intelligence which made it pretty successful. But you only need one missile launched from Cuba by one one not one or one so. Well that's why that's why there was a danger of a missile explosion or a nuclear explosion. But it was not in my view a very serious danger of a full exchange. There were only about 50 or 60 missiles in the Soviet Union at that time. That's why the appearance of 80 or so in Cuba would have made a difference in the balance of strength we had around 200. And we had many hundred airplanes which could be used against Cuba. We would not have gone to nuclear response over one

missile if we knew exactly what was happening. It was always the possibility of irrational action and to panic the response that made you a little bit scared and it was nervous making. But in my view the odds were so great that we would be able to deal with this without any war at all and certainly without a nuclear war that it was a strategic game worth playing to the hilt and winning which we did.