To better understand the significance of intelligence provided by Oleg Penkovsky during the Cuban missile crisis, it is of utmost important to examine the climate of the intelligence community in the United States leading up to the crisis. On September 19th, 1962, about a month before the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) on “The military Buildup in Cuba” considered the possibility of the Soviet’s deployment of medium and intermediate-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs and IRBMs) to Cuba. The intelligence community came to a unanimous agreement that based upon previous Soviet actions and foreign policies, that they would not do so. Even though it was widely known that such action would provide the
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Although he was not able to alert the U.S. about the deployment of missiles to Cuba, the documents he provided played an instrumental role in the decision making by President Kennedy. In the midst of growing speculation of Soviet’s military movement into Cuba, President Kennedy signed National Security Action Memorandum(NSAM) 181, “calling for study and action in light of evidence of new [Soviet] bloc activity in Cuba” on August 23rd. However, Khrushchev’s intentionally deceptive statements regarding the speculation, “no missile capable of reaching the United States will be placed in Cuba”, in combination with the lack of concrete intelligence that led the U.S. intelligence community to erroneously conclude such action was unlikely, the Kennedy administration initially took a more relaxed approach to the situation. The sole senior member who believed in the probability of such action was CIA director John McCone. On August 10th, after he had examined the “U-2 photographs and secret intelligence reports that included Penkovsky’s material and Cuban agent’s sighting of what appeared to be missiles being uploaded and moved on trucks”. McCone expressed his concern of a real possibility of Soviet missiles being transported to Cuba. Due to the general belief around the administration that “they [the Soviet Union] had never put a missile outside of their own territory”, it wasn’t until October 14th that the U.S. launched the U-2s over the Cuban airbase to conduct a photoreconnaissance mission. The photos that were taken were cross-examined with the SS-4 missile manuals that were provided by Penkovsky back in 1961, and were subsequently confirmed as sighting of SS-4 medium-range missiles. Following the revelation, the CIA prepared a detailed memorandum on the SS-4 missile sites in Cuba, where they relied heavily upon the large
Although he was not able to alert the U.S. about the deployment of missiles to Cuba, the documents he provided played an instrumental role in the decision making by President Kennedy. In the midst of growing speculation of Soviet’s military movement into Cuba, President Kennedy signed National Security Action Memorandum(NSAM) 181, “calling for study and action in light of evidence of new [Soviet] bloc activity in Cuba” on August 23rd. However, Khrushchev’s intentionally deceptive statements regarding the speculation, “no missile capable of reaching the United States will be placed in Cuba”, in combination with the lack of concrete intelligence that led the U.S. intelligence community to erroneously conclude such action was unlikely, the Kennedy administration initially took a more relaxed approach to the situation. The sole senior member who believed in the probability of such action was CIA director John McCone. On August 10th, after he had examined the “U-2 photographs and secret intelligence reports that included Penkovsky’s material and Cuban agent’s sighting of what appeared to be missiles being uploaded and moved on trucks”. McCone expressed his concern of a real possibility of Soviet missiles being transported to Cuba. Due to the general belief around the administration that “they [the Soviet Union] had never put a missile outside of their own territory”, it wasn’t until October 14th that the U.S. launched the U-2s over the Cuban airbase to conduct a photoreconnaissance mission. The photos that were taken were cross-examined with the SS-4 missile manuals that were provided by Penkovsky back in 1961, and were subsequently confirmed as sighting of SS-4 medium-range missiles. Following the revelation, the CIA prepared a detailed memorandum on the SS-4 missile sites in Cuba, where they relied heavily upon the large