The CIA and the Cuban Missile Crisis

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses the CIA's failings in investigating the build-up of Soviet missiles in Cuba and President John F. Kennedy's skepticism towards anything coming from the CIA. The paper explains how the intelligence community's failure at the Bay of Pigs made Kennedy less than receptive to any information he received from them. The paper concludes that had Kennedy been more receptive, the Cuban Missile Crisis could have been headed off months earlier.

From the Paper:

"In an article that was published less than three years after the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962, Roberta Wohlstetter comments at length upon the role that intelligence played in the international incident. Specifically, she floats the idea that the U.S. intelligence establishment knew about the missiles long before they chose to act on them. For example, she mentions U.S. Senator Kenneth Barnard Keating and how he asserted in August of 1962 that he had reliable evidence of "cylindrical objects" being transported by flatbed in Cuba, as well as evidence of Soviet motor convoys. Still, despite Senator Keating's public proclamations, the dramatic (and conspicuous) arms build-up in the fall of 1962 seemed to catch U.S. leaders - both military and civilian - by surprise when it became evident that some sort of decisive action was needed."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Frankel, Max. (2002). Learning from the missile crisis. Smithsonian, 33(7): 52-60.
• Garthoff, Raymond L. (1989), Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, p.28, retrieved February 8, 2007 from Questia database <http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=13755306>
• Holland, Max. (1999). A Luce connection: Senator Keating, William Pawley, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Journal of Cold War Studies, 1(3): 147-167.
• Kaplan, Morton A. (2002). Intelligence Failures. World & I, 17(12): 12-13.
• Stern, Sheldon M. (2005), The Week the World Stood Still, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, p.16, retrieved February 8, 2007 from Questia database <http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=108141942>

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