I was 14 when the 1962 13 days in October Missile Crisis occurred. Since age 12 I had worked summers and sometimes weekends with my father in his Electrical Contracting Business. A very wealthy lady we were working for in her 30s or early 40s was panicked one day in October, (likely a Saturday) and she said she was going to the High Sierras to her Cabin so she would survive the week.
I asked my father if we were going to be okay and in typical fashion he said, "That's BS, we are going to be okay. We survived World War II and we will survive this too!" No more was said after that intense retort but I knew something was wrong. That this lady was so panicked she couldn't really speak well told me something. And so, likely this was the single most terrifying 13 days in October 1962 that the U.S. experienced than anything else I can remember since I was born in 1948. If you can imagine people somewhere between 10 and 100 times more terrified than they were from 9-11, then you get the picture of what life was like back then. It wasn't just terrorist assassins we were worried about those days. It was the end of life on earth! Approximately 1 year later Kennedy was assassinated and the most likely assassins were likely paid by Castro and Kruschev. Castro stayed in power but I think secretly Kruschev got the blame and fell from power not long after all this happened then. However, we here in the U.S. went from the horror of this to the horror of President Kennedy's assassination to the horror of the Viet Nam War, Bobby Kennedy's assassination, Martin Luther King's assassination etc. Things didn't ever feel normal or even begin to start to feel sane at all until Nixon resigned as President in 1974. Crazy Crazy times that started with the Cuban Missile Crisis. So, this was the beginning of what one might call "12 years of complete insanity for the people of the U.S. and the world".
News: Cuban missile crisis: The other, secret one
The Associated PressBBC News - 21 hours agoContrary to popular belief, the Cuban missile crisis did not end with the agreement between the US and Soviet Union in October, 1962.The Associated Press - 17 minutes agoCuban missile crisis: The other secret one
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2944273/postsSkip to comments. Cuban missile crisis: The other secret one · BBC News ^ | 13th October 2012 | Joe Matthews. Posted on 10/13/2012 8:09:00 AM PDT by the ...Cuba Missile Crisis Tactics Linger After 50 Years
www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/.../cuba-missile-crisis-_n_1963845.ht...4 hours ago – On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, historians now say it was .... Cuban missile crisis: The other, secret one ...Cuban missile crisis: The other, secret one | Hacker News
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46485728 hours ago – Anastas Mikoyan is an interesting character. He was one of the few Old Bolsheviks who managed to avoid being purged by Stalin, but also got ...end quote from Google.12 October 2012 Last updated at 21:18 ETCuban missile crisis: The other, secret one
How the second missile crisis unfoldedContrary to popular belief, the Cuban missile crisis did not end with the agreement between the US and Soviet Union in October, 1962. Unknown to the US at the time, there were 100 other nuclear weapons also in the hands of Cuba, sparking a frantic - and ingenious - Russian mission to recover them.In November 2011, aware that the 50th anniversary of the most dangerous few weeks in history was less than a year away, my Russian colleague Pasha Shilov and I came across several new accounts that changed our perspective on the Cuban missile crisis and how much we thought we knew about it.
Growing up in Berkshire, England, through the nuclear paranoia of the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan's Cruise and Pershing missiles stationed only 30 miles away from my family home, I was inculcated with a keen awareness of Cold War brinkmanship.
Pasha grew up in Moscow and described how it was from the Soviet point of view - equally frightening by his account.
But what we've now learned about the chilling events of October and November 1962 has put our own experiences into perspective - and maybe given rise to a few more grey hairs along the way.
Continue reading the main storyNuclear disaster averted
- Cuban missile crisis ignites when, fearing a US invasion, Castro agrees to allow the USSR to deploy nuclear missiles on the island
- The crisis was subsequently resolved when the USSR agreed to remove the missiles in return for the withdrawal of US nuclear missiles from Turkey
Our investigations took us to St Petersburg and the Soviet Submariners Veterans' Society via the National Security Archive in Washington DC, where Svetlana Savranskaya, the director of the Russian archives, told us an incredible story.There had been a second secret missile crisis that continued the danger of a catastrophic nuclear war until the end of November 1962.
This extended the known missile crisis well beyond the weekend of 27-28 October, the time that had always been thought of as the moment the danger finally lifted with the deal between Kennedy and Khrushchev to withdraw the Soviet missiles in exchange for a US promise not to invade Cuba.
The secret missile crisis came about through an unnerving mix of Soviet duplicity, American intelligence failures and the mercurial temperament of Fidel Castro.
The Cuban leader, cut out of the main negotiations between the superpowers over the fate of the long range Soviet missiles stationed in Cuba, began to cease cooperation with Moscow.
Fearing that Castro's hurt pride and widespread Cuban indignation over the concessions Khrushchev had made to Kennedy, might lead to a breakdown of the agreement between the superpowers, the Soviet leader concocted a plan to give Castro a consolation prize.
The prize was an offer to give Cuba more than 100 tactical nuclear weapons that had been shipped to Cuba along with the long-range missiles, but which crucially had passed completely under the radar of US intelligence.
Khrushchev concluded that because the Americans hadn't listed the missiles on their list of demands, the Soviet Union's interests would be well served by keeping them in Cuba.
Kremlin number two, Anastas Mikoyan, was charged with making the trip to Havana, principally to calm Castro down and make him what seemed like an offer he couldn't refuse.Continue reading the main story“Start Quote
Mikoyan was forced to use the dark arts of diplomacy to convince Castro”Mikoyan, whose wife was seriously ill, took the assignment knowing that the future of relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union were on the line. Shortly after arriving in Cuba, Mikoyan received word that his wife had died, but despite this, he pledged to stay in Cuba and complete negotiations with Castro.In the weeks that followed, Mikoyan kept the detail of the missile transfer to himself while he witnessed the mood swings and paranoia of the Cuban leader convinced that Moscow had sold Cuba's defence down the river.
Castro particularly objected to the constant flights over Cuba by American surveillance aircraft and, as Mikoyan learned to his horror, ordered Cuban anti-aircraft gunners to fire on them.
Knowing how delicate the state of relations were between the US and Russia after the worst crisis since World War II, US forces around the world remained on Defcon 2, one short of global nuclear war until 20 November.
Mikoyan came to a personal decision that under no circumstances should Castro and his military be given control of weapons with an explosive force equal to 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs.
He then extricated Moscow from a seemingly intractable situation which risked blowing the entire crisis back up in the faces of Kennedy and Khrushchev.
On 22 November 1962, during a tense, four-hour meeting, Mikoyan was forced to use the dark arts of diplomacy to convince Castro that despite Moscow's best intentions, it would be in breach of an unpublished Soviet law (which didn't actually exist) to transfer the missiles permanently into Cuban hands and provide them with an independent nuclear deterrent.Anastas Mikoyan (far right, in 1938) took the all-important mission
Finally after Mikoyan's trump card, Castro was forced to give way and - much to the relief of Khrushchev and the whole Soviet government - the tactical nuclear weapons were finally crated and returned by sea back to the Soviet Union during December 1962.
This story has illuminated a chapter in history that has been partially closed for the past 50 years.
But it leaves us with a great respect for Mikoyan and his ability to judge and eventually contain an extremely dangerous situation which could have affected many millions of people.
Joe Matthews is a producer for Wild Iris TV, which has made a short film about the "secret" Cuban missile crisis
end quote from:
News: Cuban missile crisis: The other, secret one
Saturday, October 13, 2012
The Secret Cuban missile Crisis 1962 and after
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