Michael Dobbs - One Minute to Midnight

Spreading revolution was not simply an ideological issue for Castro. It was a matter of political survival. The United States had done everything it could to undermine his regime, from armed invasion to a trade embargo to numerous acts of sabotage. Ever since his days as a young revolutionary, Castro had been convinced that the best form of defense was attack. As he explained to his Soviet patrons, “The United States will not be able to hurt us if all of Latin America is in flames.”

The Kennedy administration leaked word of the intercepted Cuban radio message to reporters as part of a larger effort to depict Castro as the number one danger to the stability of Latin America. Of course, the United States was hardly an innocent party. The previous week, the president had personally signed off on a series of acts of terrorism on Cuban soil, including a grenade attack on the Chinese Embassy in Havana, the demolition of a railroad in Pinar del Rio, and attacks on oil refineries and a nickel plant. Implementing these plans had proved impractical for the time being, but that did not mean the Kennedys had given up on sabotage as an instrument of policy. At the Mongoose meeting on Friday, Bobby Kennedy had approved a CIA plan to blow up twenty-two Cuban-owned ships in foreign ports.

It did not take long for Castro’s sympathizers in Latin America to answer the call from Havana. Within hours, there was a spate of small-scale bombings against U.S. companies in Venezuela, the most pro-American country in the region. A series of explosions shattered the calm of Lake Maracaibo, a huge inlet off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. Three men in a motorboat threw sticks of dynamite at electric power-distributing stations along the eastern shore of the lake, cutting power supplies to an oil field owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey. The saboteurs inadvertently blew up their own boat while attacking the fourth substation. The skipper was killed instantly and two other men in the boat were seriously wounded. Security guards discovered them clinging to an oil derrick in the water.

The Venezuelan government immediately blamed Cuba for the attacks, claiming they had been carried out by a “Communist sabotage ring” on instructions from Havana. The Cuban government indignantly denied the charge, but reported the bombings with great relish, saying they constituted a “first reply of the Army of Venezuelan Liberation to the military mobilization decreed by the puppet Romulo Betancourt.”

Operation Bugle Call was ready to go. Sixteen F-105 fighter aircraft were on alert at McCoy Air Force Base outside Orlando to bombard Cuba with a leaflet headlined LA VERDAD (THE TRUTH). One side of the pamphlet showed a picture of one of the Soviet missile bases taken by a U.S. reconnaissance plane, with labels identifying missile-ready tents, launch stands, and fueling equipment. The other side provided a map of the Soviet missile bases and a Spanish-language explanation for the American naval blockade.

“The Russians have secretly built offensive nuclear missile bases in Cuba. These bases endanger Cuban lives and world peace, because Cuba is now a forward base for Russian aggression.”

The pamphlets—all 6 million of them, roughly one for every adult Cuban—had been printed at the U.S. Army’s psychological warfare unit at Fort Bragg. They were then packed into fiberglass “leaflet bombs” bound with detonating cord that would explode over Havana and other Cuban cities, showering drops of verdad onto the populace below. Operation Bugle Call was awaiting the president’s final approval when a last-minute hitch developed. The skies over Cuba had suddenly become much more dangerous.

The six Navy Crusaders took off from Key West at 3:41 p.m. and flew southward over the Florida Straits, under the level of Soviet radars. Approaching the Cuban coastline, they split off in different directions, heading westward to photograph the airfield at San Julian and the missile sites of Pinar del Rio, and eastward to check out the modern MiG-21s at Santa Clara Airfield and an R-14 site at Remedios.

Captain Edgar Love, an eight-year veteran with the U.S. Marine Corps, was the lead pilot for the mission over central Cuba. He entered Cuban territory near the elite beach resort of Varadero and headed southeast along the coast, following a railroad line for orientation. After about eight minutes’ flying time, he could see a low humpbacked hill rising above the sugarcane fields to his left. This was the R-12 missile site at Calabazar. He shot some oblique pictures of the missile site, and headed on to Santa Clara. As he passed the airfield, he saw a squadron of MiG fighter jets about to land. He veered out of their way, banking steeply toward his left. For a moment, he thought the MiGs might try to pursue him, but they ignored him, and he turned northward toward Remedios.

As Love popped up to take his photographs, he saw the puff of antiaircraft fire. It was difficult to tell where it was coming from exactly, somewhere off to the right. His wingman zoomed in close, making it difficult to maneuver. He veered sharply left, almost colliding with his wingman.

“Move it out!” Love yelled to his wingman over the radio, as he switched on his afterburner. “You’re too close.”

Antiaircraft guns also opened fire on the Crusader reconnaissance planes overflying San Cristobal. The Cuban crews had been on alert ever since being taken by surprise earlier in the day. This time, the pair of U.S. Navy jets approached from the west, from the direction of the village of San Diego de los Banos. The jets had overflown the site known to the Americans as San Cristobal MRBM Site No. One, photographed by Commander Ecker on October 23, and were following the ridgeline of the Sierra del Rosario. A Cuban antiaircraft unit stationed outside the entrance of the missile site fired at the two Crusaders as they headed toward MRBM Site No. Two, three miles to the east.

From inside their cockpits, the pilots on Blue Moon Mission 5025 could see telltale puffs of smoke in their rearview mirrors. The cameras housed in their bomb bays were still clicking away methodically. When he glimpsed the first puff of smoke, the lead pilot yanked his steering column to the left, but quickly pulled level. His forward camera captured a sweeping panoramic view of MRBM Site No. Two that would later be released by the Pentagon as evidence of Soviet missile activity in Cuba. Launch stands and erectors were clearly visible on the left side of the picture, a few hundred feet from freshly dug personnel trenches, at the base of the heavily wooded mountains. A fraction of a second later, the pilot saw another puff of smoke. A series of previously unpublished photographs taken at the moment when the Crusader was fired upon is included on page four of the third insert. This time, the pilot did not hesitate. He banked sharply to the left, and headed over the Sierra del Rosario mountains for home.

News that the U.S. Navy jets had run into trouble began reaching the White House soon after the start of the afternoon ExComm meeting. McNamara reported that two Crusaders had “aborted” their mission and were “returning to base” because of “mechanical” trouble. Twenty minutes later, a message arrived that two other planes had been “fired on…by what appeared to be a 37 mm antiaircraft gun.”

The attacks on the low-level planes appeared to represent a significant escalation by the Soviets, particularly when combined with the apparent loss of Major Anderson’s U-2 over Cuba that morning. The latest developments made Kennedy wonder whether it was a good idea to go ahead with the previously scheduled night surveillance flights. The acting director of the United States Information Agency, Donald Wilson, had been planning to broadcast a warning to the Cuban people about “harmless” explosions in the dark.