On the Oxford, in the eye of the hurricane, many of the crew were stunned. "I was thinking, Jesus Christ, we're going to blow up the world here," said acting operations officer Keith Taylor who was down in the Sigint spaces. "After the president's announcement there was shock on the ship," said intercept operator Aubrey Brown. "What the hell was going to happen. Next time they come out they will put a torpedo up our ass."
Also worried about the Oxford was John McCone, who ordered the ship pulled back. "Right after the announcement they moved us out to twelve miles," said Brown. "We were then moved out to a twenty-five-mile track" offshore." Still worried, officials instructed the Oxford to do its eavesdropping safely off Fort Lauderdale.
But much of the mission's work could not be done from that distance. "You could run some of the operations from Fort Lauderdale but not the bulk of it," said Brown. "You could do all the Morse code stuff but the Elint you couldn't do.... The next day they decided to send us back to Cuba." Brown added, "You could get some microwave sitting off Havana depending on where it is coming from and where it is going."
Within hours of Kennedy's address, intercepts began flowing into NSA. At 10:12 P.M., an NSA listening post intercepted a Flash precedence message sent from the Soviet eavesdropping trawler Shkval, near the submarine patrol, to the cargo vessel Atlantika. The Shkval then sent another message to the Alantika for retransmission to Murmansk, the home port of the submarines. Although they were unable to read the encrypted message, the US. intercept operators noted the significance of the Flash precedence in the report they quickly transmitted to Fort Meade. "This type of precedence rarely observed," said the intercept report. "Significance unknown." The network of listening posts was able to pinpoint the Shkval a few hundred miles south of Bermuda; the Alantika was about 150 miles off the US. East Coast, near Philadelphia.
In the early morning hours of October 23, other Soviet ships likewise began calling for instructions. The Soviet cargo vessel Kura, just off Havana harbor, relayed an urgent message to Moscow through another Soviet vessel, the Nikolaj Burdenko, which was approaching the US. Virgin Islands. The Russian passenger ship Nikolaevsk, approaching the eastern end of Cuba, sent Moscow a worried message: US. war vessel Nr. 889 was following her on a parallel course. Throughout the Caribbean and the North Atlantic, whenever a Soviet ship sent a weather request, indicating its position, an NSA listening post picked it up and noted its location.
At NSA, as the world awaited Moscow's response to the US. ultimatum, a report was issued indicating that the Soviets were taking ever greater control of the skies over Cuba. Sixty-three MiG pilots took to the air in a single day, and of that number more than half spoke Russian or spoke Spanish with a heavy Slavic accent. Around the world, NSA listening posts were ordered to install armed patrols around their facilities. Even in tiny Cape Chiniak, on Kodiak Island in Alaska, the threat was taken seriously. Communications Technician Pete Azzole was watching the messages rattle in the Communications Center when his eyes grew wide: "A Flash precedence message began revealing itself line by line," he recalled. "My eyes were fixed on the canary yellow paper, watching each character come to life." The more the message revealed, the more nervous Azzole became. It read:
1. A NUCLEAR ATTACK HAS BEEN LAUNCHED AGAINST THE EAST COAST OF THE UNITED STATES ...
After a few agonizing seconds, Azzole realized that the message was a practice drill.
At the White House, President Kennedy was deeply troubled over the possibility of nuclear retaliation against the United States if there was a strike against Cuba. A Pentagon official told him that the area covered by the 1,100-mile-range Soviet missiles involved 92 million people. Fallout shelters were available, though not equipped, for about 40 million. When Kennedy asked what emergency steps could be taken, the official was less than encouraging. Shelter signs could be put up and food could be repositioned. But McCone concluded that whatever was done would involve a great deal of publicity and public alarm.
Throughout the day, NSA listening posts on both sides of the Atlantic focused on about a dozen Soviet ships en route to Cuba and suspected of transporting missiles or associated equipment. Inside a listening post hidden in a snake-infested swamp in the town of Northwest, Virginia; a chilly cove in Winter Harbor, Maine; an airfield near Miami, Florida; a rolling field in Edzell, Scotland; and other locations, intercept operators triangulated every signal sent from the ships. Among those was the Urgench, which at 3: 10 P.M. was about five hundred miles from Gibraltar, sailing west toward Cuba.
But when the Urgench was next plotted, at midnight, it had reversed course and was sailing back toward the Straits of Gibraltar. Immediately, the NSA Command Center flashed word of the possible retreat to the CIA Watch Office. Harry Eisenbeiss, the watch officer, checked with the Office of Naval Intelligence, which had also received NSA's report, but ONI could not confirm the change of course and thought it might be a Soviet ploy.
In the meantime, the network of listening posts had spotted other ships also making 180-degree turns. The Bolshevik Sukhanov, which was carrying seven large crates on its deck, suspected to contain aircraft, "has altered course and is probably en route back to port," said another intercept report. Still another followed: '''HFDF [high-frequency direction finding] fix on the Soviet' cargo ship Kislovodsk, en route to Cuba, indicates that the ship has altered course to the North."
At 10:38 A.M. on Wednesday, October 24, with the Urgench continuing its retreat, another message was flashed to NSA headquarters. A copy was quickly forwarded to CIA, which in turn passed the message to the White House. An aide walked into the Executive Committee meeting and passed the note to McCone, who smiled broadly and made the announcement: "Mr. President, we have a preliminary report which seems to indicate that some of the Russian ships have stopped dead in the water." Kennedy was surprised. "Stopped dead in the water? Which ships? Are they checking the accuracy of the report? Is it true?" The NSA report convinced McCone. "The report is accurate, Mr. President. Six ships previously on their way to Cuba at the edge of the quarantine line have stopped or have turned back toward the Soviet Union."
President Kennedy ordered that "no ships be stopped or intercepted" for at least another hour, while additional information was obtained. "If the ships have orders to turn around, we want to give them every opportunity to do so..... Give the Russian vessels an opportunity to turn back. We must move quickly because the time [before the United States must act] is expiring."
Although some ships were still heading toward the barricades, the good news from NSA spread fast. National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy telephoned Under Secretary of State George Ball. "Have you got the word on what is happening at sea?" Bundy asked. Ball had not. "The six most interesting ships have turned back. Two others are turning. We are starting over here in a thinking session as to what might be done, which will be going on all afternoon. If you want to come, it would be helpful to have you.... Will you alert anyone else you wish to alert?" "I'll be over," said Ball.
The next day, Thursday, October 25, Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., met with Under Secretary of State Averell Harriman to discuss the latest developments. "Khrushchev," said Harriman, "is sending us desperate signals to get us to help take him off the hook. He is sending messages exactly as he did to Eisenhower directly after the U-2 affair. Eisenhower ignored these messages to his cost. We must not repeat Eisenhower's mistake." Among the key signals, Harriman told Schlesinger, was "the instructions to the Soviet ships to change their course."
Harriman continued: "In view of these signals from Khrushchev, the worst mistake we can possibly make is to get tougher and to escalate. Khrushchev is pleading with us to help him find a way out.... We cannot afford to lose any time. Incidents --stopping of ships, etc. -- will begin the process of escalation, engage Soviet prestige and reduce the chances of a peaceful resolution. If we act shrewdly and speedily, we can bail Khrushchev out and discredit the tough guys around him -- the ones who sold him the Cuban adventure on the theory that Americans were too liberal to fight."
When the offensive missiles had been discovered, the formal approval process for U-2 missions was ended. Now the Strategic Air Command had blanket approval to fly as many missions as needed to Cover Cuba completely. Although it was time consuming, the formal notification process had had the advantage of allowing NSA listening posts to support the flights. Intercept operators would scan the frequency spectrum in search of any hostile activity before and during the mission. If they picked up a warning indicator, they could send a message to NSA headquarters, which would notify SAC. But now that U-2 missions were being launched without notice, NSA had no way of knowing when a plane was over Cuba.
But by Friday, October 26, the results of low-level photography indicated that the Russians and Cubans were rapidly attempting to complete the four medium-range-missile site. "Although no additional missiles or erectors had been seen,~' said a Joint Chiefs report, "neither was there evidence of any intention to move or dismantle the sites. Camouflage and canvas covering of critical equipment was continuing."
At the same time, however, NSA reported that three Soviet ships suspected of being missile carriers were now steaming east, back toward Russia, as were all except one of the Soviet dry cargo ships. Only one Russian dry cargo ship was still moving toward the quarantine line; it was expected to reach there in three days.
At thirty-eight minutes past midnight on Saturday, October 27, an NSA listening post intercepted signals from three radar installations. After checking and double-checking, the intercept operators determined that the radar was "Spoon Rest," and therefore that three more SAM sites had become active. "DF line bearings indicate emitters located at Mariel," said the intercept report, which was Flashed to headquarters, "Havana east, and poss. Matanzas sites. Emitters remain active." Once again, Castro raised the stakes for the American reconnaissance pilots.
"On the twenty-seventh," said Parish, "it was kind of a tight situation -- it was a scary situation, as a matter of fact. It was a scary time, especially for those of us who had a little bit of access to information which wasn't generally available.... We worked that week and pulled our watches, nobody was off."
Later that morning, Major Rudolf Anderson took off in a U-2 from McCoy Air Force Base at Orlando, Florida. The routine flight was expected to last about three and a half hours. Over Cuba, Anderson pushed his plane northward toward the town of Banes.
At an afternoon Executive Committee meeting, Secretary of Defense McNamara made a routine report on the day's daylight reconnaissance mission. "One mission aborted for mechanical reasons, according to preliminary reports," he said. "One plane is overdue and several are said to have encountered ground fire." He then recommended a number of night missions. But President Kennedy held off on a decision until more details could be obtained on the day's reconnaissance. He then ordered that missions be flown the next day without fighter escort. "If our planes are fired on," he said, "we must be prepared for a general response or an attack on the SAM site which fired on our planes. We will decide tomorrow how we return fire after we know if they continue their attacks on our planes."
An aide quickly walked in and handed a note to Joint Chiefs Chairman Maxwell Taylor. Major Anderson's U-2 had been shot down near Banes. "The wreckage of the U-2 was on the ground," Taylor was told; "the pilot had been killed." Taylor recommended an air attack on the SAM site responsible. McNamara said that we must be ready to attack Cuba by launching 500 sorties on the first day. Invasion, he said, had "become almost inevitable."
At NSA, data were immediately called in from air, sea, and ground eavesdropping platforms in an attempt to discover the details of the shootdown. Director Blake ordered new rules, as follows: As a first priority, every listening post was to monitor in real time all reactions to U.S. reconnaissance flights. "Any time the Cubans scrambled a flight," said Hal Parish, "we were supposed to tell ... why they scrambled and who they were after -- very often they were after U.S. aircraft along the coast.. "When we were still flying the U-2s and we got what appeared to be Cuban threats to the U-2s with MiG aircraft, we had it arranged.... we would call General [John] Morrison [at NSA] first to get his okay, then we would call SAC ... and they would contact the aircraft."
Once a warning was received, the reconnaissance flight would immediately break off from the mission and fly to Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C. There, NSA analysts would meet the plane and debrief the crew. "You'd debrief in the airplane off the end of the runway," said Parish. "Pick. up all the tapes and bring them out to the building and put our linguists to work all night long working on those tapes in order to provide an assessment of whatever happened that day [and have it out] by six o'clock."
In order to further protect the pilots, electronic countermeasures needed to be developed that could jam or deceive the Soviet SA-2 missile. But to develop these countermeasures, NSA would first have to intercept the missile's telltale fusing signals, which activated the warhead. That, however, required forcing the Cubans to fire off one more of their missiles. To accomplish this, DC-130 aircraft began launching high-altitude Ryan 147 drones over the island. The Ryans were equipped with electronics that made them appear larger than they actually were, about the size of a U-2.
Each drone also carried onboard equipment to collect the critical fusing signals and retransmit them, in the few seconds before it was blasted from the sky, to a specially equipped type of RB-47 Strato-Spy codenamed Common Cause. One of the RB-47s was constantly in the air off the Cuban coast. "The plan was to lure the Cuban missile sites into firing at the drone," said Bruce Bailey, an Air Force signals intelligence officer, "thus providing the desired electronic intelligence to the RB-47." But the Cubans refused to fire any more missiles. "The Cubans had been assured that such a site or base would be struck immediately," said Bailey. "Obviously they believed that and refused to fire. The mission soon became more appropriately known as 'Lost Cause.'"
At 7:15 on the evening of October 30, as the crisis grew hotter, Robert Kennedy asked Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to meet with him in his office at the Justice Department in half an hour. "In the last two hours we had found that our planes flying over Cuba had been fired upon," Kennedy told the ambassador, as he noted in a top secret memo to Dean Rusk. "One of our U-2's had been shot down and the pilot killed.... This was an extremely serious turn of events. We would have to make certain decisions within the next twelve or possibly twenty-four hours. There was very little time left. If the Cubans were shooting at our planes, then we were going to shoot back." Dobrynin argued that the U.S. was violating Cuban airspace, but Kennedy shot hack that if we had not been violating Cuban airspace then we would still have believed what he and Khrushchev had said-that there were no long-range missiles in Cuba. "This matter was far more serious than the air space over Cuba and involved people all over the world," Kennedy added.
"I said that he had better understand the situation and he had better communicate that understanding to Mr. Khrushchev," Kennedy later noted in the long secret memorandum. "Mr. Khrushchev and he had misled us. The Soviet Union had secretly established missile bases in Cuba while at the same time proclaiming, privately and publicly, that this would never be done. I said those missile bases had to go and they had to go right away. We had to have a commitment by at least tomorrow [October 31] that those bases would be removed. This was not an ultimatum, I said, but just a statement of fact. He should understand that if they did not remove those bases then we would remove them. His country might take retaliatory action but he should understand that before this was over, while there might be dead Americans there would also be dead Russians."
Dobrynin asked Kennedy whether he was proposing a deal. "I said a letter had just been transmitted to the Soviet Embassy which stated in substance that the missile bases should be dismantled," Kennedy wrote, "and all offensive weapons should be removed from Cuba. In return, if Cuba and Castro and the Communists ended their subversive activities in other Central and Latin American countries, we would agree to keep peace in the Caribbean and not permit an invasion from American soil." But Khrushchev had earlier proposed a swap: take the American missiles away from his doorstep in Turkey, and he would take the Soviet missiles from Cuba. Dobrynin once again brought up that proposal. "If some time elapsed," Kennedy said, mentioning four or five months, "I was sure that these matters could be resolved satisfactorily."
But Kennedy emphasized that there could be no deal of any kind. "Any steps toward easing tensions in other parts of the world largely depended on the Soviet Union and Mr. Khrushchev taking action in Cuba and taking it immediately." According to his memorandum, "I repeated to him that this matter could not wait and that he had better contact Mr. Khrushchev and have a commitment from him by the next day to withdraw the missile bases under United Nations supervision for otherwise, I said, there would be drastic consequences."
Shortly after Kennedy left, Dobrynin sent an enciphered cable to Khrushchev. "'Because of the plane that was shot down, there is now strong pressure on the president to give an order to respond with fire if fired upon,'" he wrote, quoting Kennedy. "'A real war will begin, in which millions of Americans and Russians will die.' ... Kennedy mentioned as if in passing that there are many unreasonable heads among the generals, and not only among the generals, who are 'itching for a fight.' ... The situation might get out of control, with irreversible consequences."
Then the ambassador relayed Kennedy's proposal. "The most important thing for us, Kennedy stressed, is to get as soon as possible the agreement of the Soviet government to halt further work on the construction of the missile bases in Cuba and take measures under international control that would make it impossible to use these weapons. In exchange the government of the USA is ready, in addition to repealing all measures on the 'quarantine,' to give the assurances that there will not be any invasion of Cuba.... 'And what about Turkey,' I asked R. Kennedy. 'If that is the only obstacle ... then the president doesn't see any unsurmountable difficulties in resolving this issue.... However, the president can't say anything public in this regard about Turkey,' R. Kennedy said again. R. Kennedy then warned that his comments about Turkey are extremely confidential; besides him and his brother, only 2-3 people know about it in Washington.... R. Kennedy gave me a number of a direct telephone line to the White House." Once again Do brynin quoted Robert Kennedy. "'Time is of the essence and we shouldn't miss the chance.'"
Robert Kennedy returned to the White House, where the members of the Executive Committee held a late-night session. McNamara recommended, and the president approved, the call-up of twenty-four air reserve squadrons, involving 14,200 personnel and 300 troop carriers. President Kennedy then said that if, the reconnaissance planes were fired on the next day, "then we should take out the SAM sites in Cuba by air action."
At a late-night meeting at the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended that "unless irrefutable evidence of the dismantling of the offensive weapons in Cuba were obtained," an air strike should be launched no later than October 29.
Shortly before midnight, Hal Parish entered NSA for his midnight-to-eight A.M. shift. "When I reported in," he said, "there was a note there to have by six o'clock the following morning in the hands of the White House .the wrap-up of the U-2 shootdown. Wasn't hard to do-we had about two minutes, three minutes of tracking on it ... just some tracking coming in from just north of Guantanamo ... seemed to be a SAM that brought him down.... There was nothing that I ever saw in communication indicating who (whether a Soviet or a Cuban) pushed the button.... About two years later, from some intercept that was picked up on one of the aircraft carriers, we got the entire tracking sequence of the shootdown. We got the whole mission tracking from the time he hit Cuba all the way down until he made his turn over Guantanamo and then the tracking sort of ceased...."
On Sunday morning, October 28, a new message from Khrushchev was broadcast on Radio Moscow. "The Soviet government," said the announcement, "has issued a new order on the dismantling of the weapons which you describe as 'offensive,' and their crating and return to the Soviet Union." The crisis was over.
***
As the Russians began withdrawing, NSA continued its intensive watch. "I remember during the period from the time I went down in October," Hal Parish recalled, "there was not a day 1 did not come to work until Christmas. Then I just took part of Christmas Day off." For the eaves droppers, things changed dramatically. Suddenly the need for the Russians to hide their presence on Cuba disappeared, so in addition to Spanish, many Russian-language communications were being intercepted. "All the communications that we had that were Cuban turned Soviet and we had what had to be called the Soviet forces in Cuba," said Parish. "Suddenly, these Spanish-speaking pilots disappeared and were replaced by Russian pilots. The [Soviet] ... communications in the HF [high-frequency] area at that time appeared again virtually overnight."
Intercept operators listened as the ballistic missile sites were dismantled and the SAM sites were turned over to the Cubans. "After the offensive weapons were removed, some of the supportive weapons were also removed," Parish said. Each time a SAM site was turned over to the Cubans, various signals changed. "So we were able through Elint to tell when the Soviets were pulling out of a given SAM site. We got an entire training schedule in Havana where they were talking about how they were going to train the Cubans."
As the Soviets pulled out, NSA detected tense relations between them and Cuban forces. According to Parish, one telephone conversation involved a very large shipment of tainted meat that the Soviets had sent the Cubans. Castro himself was intercepted saying "very, very bad things about the Russians," Parish said. "And in fact we were required to read that over the telephone to -- I'm not sure who it was, State Department, CIA, DIA -- but we had to have a translator read this sort of verbatim over the line and he [Castro] had some very, very, harsh and bad things to say about the Russians. I do recall the gentleman turning red as he was reading this because they wanted a verbatim translation of it." In fact, the original transcript sent to the White House contained deletions in place of Castro's expletives. Almost immediately Robert Kennedy called NSA and demanded that they send the uncensored version -- blue language and all.
"During the crisis," said Parish, "I have no doubt they [the missile sites] were under Soviet control, and in fact we pretty well know they were totally Soviet manned." According to another NSA official, "There were times when the Cubans and the Soviets were -- I don't mean fighting literally, but contesting each other as to who was in charge of the missile site, and you'd hear Spanish cursing in the background and Soviet unhappiness."
At the time of the crisis, neither the NSA nor the CIA knew whether the Soviets had any nuclear warheads in Cuba. "We had photographs of missile launchers," said Robert McNamara, "but we thought the warheads were yet to come." It was only in the 19905 that the truth was discovered. "It took thirty years to learn there were 161 nuclear warheads there, including 90 tactical warheads to be used against an invasion," McNamara said. Then, holding two fingers a fraction of an inch apart, he added, "And we came that close to an invasion ... We came so close-both Kennedy and Khrushchev felt events were slipping outside their control.... The world came within a hair breadth of nuclear war."
***
As Soviet ships navigated through the Caribbean on their long voyage home, their decks crowded with hastily crated missiles and launchers, Khrushchev may have been chuckling. While the United States focused on the offensive ballistic missiles brought to Cuba, none of which were likely ever to have been used, Khrushchev had been monitoring the progress of a far more secret and far more useful construction project on the island. It was to be a major Soviet intelligence coup. In a sparsely populated area known as Lourdes, just southeast of Havana, Soviet technicians continued work on one of the largest eavesdropping bases ever built.
NSA surrounded the Soviet Union with listening posts and ferret flights during the 1950s and early 1960s. Every time a new monitoring station was built, Khrushchev felt the electronic noose grow tighter. In Germany, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Japan, Korea, and elsewhere, intercept operators noted every time an aircraft took off or a ship left port. Telemetry was collected from Soviet missiles, and telephone conversations were snatched from the air.
Khrushchev knew he could not reciprocate. There were no Soviet allies along America's borders to accommodate Russian eavesdroppers. Thus the USSR was forced to send antenna-covered trawlers crawling along America's coasts. It was a cumbersome and expensive proposition. For every trawler bobbing in the waves, five thousand miles from home, a fleet of support vessels was needed because the trawlers could not pull into port. Fuel had to be supplied, equipment had to be repaired, food had to be delivered, and the endless tapes had to be brought back to Moscow to be analyzed and translated. Castro solved all Khrushchev's problems and provided Moscow with an electronic window on the United States into the twenty-first century.
Over a vast area of twenty-eight square miles, Soviet engineers and signals intelligence specialists erected acres of antennas to eavesdrop on American communications. Diamond~shaped rhombic antennas, pointing like daggers at the US. coast only ninety miles away, tapped into high-frequency signals carrying telephone calls as far away as Washington. Large dishes were set up to collect signals from American satellites. High wires were strung to pick up the very-low- frequency submarine broadcasts. Giant rectangular antennas, like drive-in movie screens, were erected to intercept microwave signals. Windowless cement buildings were built to house the intercept operators, the codebreakers, and the walls of printers that would rattle out miles of intercepted data communications. Khrushchev might have lost a fist, but he had gained an ear.
***
With the crisis over and the threat of nuclear war now abated, attention once again turned toward covert operations within Cuba. Earlier, shortly after learning of the offensive missiles on October 15, an angry Robert Kennedy had called a meeting of the Operation Mongoose cabal. He opened the meeting by expressing "the general dissatisfaction of the President" with the progress of Mongoose. He pointed out that the operation had been under way for a year, that the results were discouraging, that there had been no acts of sabotage, and that even the one that had been attempted had failed twice.
Richard Helms, the CIA's deputy planning director, later commented: "I stated that we were prepared to get on with the new action program and that we would execute it aggressively." NSA, however, discovered that among the sabotage targets of Operation Mongoose were several key Cuban communications facilities-the same facilities that NSA was eavesdropping on, deriving a great deal of signals intelligence. Officials quickly, and loudly, protested. "We suggested to them that it was really not the smartest thing to do," said Hal Parish.
In fact, in the days following the crisis, NSA did everything it could to secretly keep the Cuban telecommunications system fully working. The more communications equipment broke or burned out, the less NSA could intercept, and thus the less the U.S. intelligence community knew about Cuba. Adding to, the problems was the economic embargo of Cuba, which kept out critical electrical supplies such as vacuum tubes for military radios. NSA devised a covert channel by which to supply these components to the Cuban government.
"The tubes would burn out, requests would come in, and backdoor methods had to be utilized in order to get the necessary tubes in to keep this RCA-designed system on the air so we could continue to collect it," said Parish. "I think a lot of them were channeled through Canada at the time, because the Canadians had relations with the Cubans. "When the tubes would wear out -- these were not small tubes, these were large tubes and components -- they would make contact with somebody and the word would reach us and they would come to see the agency, the right part of it, and we would insist that those things be provided."
***
As the danger of nuclear war with Russia receded like a red tide, Cuba once again came into full view and the Kennedy administration returned to combat mode. NSA continued to listen with one ear cocked toward Russia and the other toward Cuba. Just before Christmas 1962 McCone wrote to McGeorge Bundy, "NSA will continue an intensive program in the Sigint field, which has during recent weeks added materially to all other intelligence."
On Havana's doorstep, the civilian-manned USNS Muller relieved the Oxford, and ferret flights kept up their patrols a dozen miles off the Cuban coast. Because the Muller was civilian, its crew got less liberty time than a military crew would, so the ship was able to spend a greater percentage of its time at sea -- about twenty-five days a month -- than Navy ships such as the Oxford. It was home ported in Port Everglades, the commercial port for Fort Lauderdale.
"Duty station for the Muller was seven miles off Havana," said Bill Baer, the operations officer on the ship at the time. "We and Castro recognized the six-mile limit, so seven miles was a small safety valve. We traveled back and forth on a six-mile track parallel to the coast. The major reason for this particular spot was a multichannel UHF national communications system that RCA had installed. It ran from Havana, east and west, along the spine of the island and connected Havana with each city in the country." Traveling slowly hack and forth, the Muller had a direct tap into much of Cuba's communications.
But the spy ship was no secret from Castro and he would occasionally vent his anger. "We only had a selection of small arms including M-l rifles, carbines, shotguns, and so forth," recalled Baer. "We took this responsibility very seriously because we knew the Cubans knew who we were and they used to do things to harass us."
In an unusual move, Baer was made operations officer on the ship even though he was an Army officer. He had been stationed at NSA when he heard of the opening and volunteered. Another Army intercept operator on board. was Mike Sannes. "Since they used microwave, we had to be [in] line-of-sight," Sannes explained. "Castro used to call us the 'big ear.' One time we knew he was going to crash a small plane into us and then board us in an 'act of mercy.' We had a spotter in the mast -- remember this is a civilian ship and had no [large] guns -- he saw the plane approaching and we were monitoring on the hand-held radio. Suddenly everything went quiet. A few minutes later he came running in saying, 'I'm not staying up there. He's going to hit us!' They scrambled some jets from Key West who were on alert, and they chased him off."
Sannes said Cuban harassment was common. "Often they sent gunboats out to harass us, sometimes every few hours so we couldn't sleep. Occasionally they shot across our bow. We had a real gung-ho skipper. We had scuttles fore and aft. We would have sunk the boat if we were in danger of being boarded.. Once the engine quit and we started drifting into shore. It was very early on a foggy morning. We drifted close enough into Havana harbor that we were looking up at the hotels on the beach. We got the engine working and headed back out to sea. They never noticed us."
To assist the CIA's covert operations in Cuba, NSA intercept operators were assigned to monitor the communications of anti-Castro forces. On January 16 one of these technicians picked up a conversation from an individual in downtown Havana who said, "It would be a good idea to assassinate Fidel on El Cocuyo Road." The intercept operator noted on his report, "This group must be penetrated."
Amusingly, one of the most important pieces of information to come along came not from an NSA intercept of a diplomatic cable to Moscow but from a ten-hour interview Castro gave to Lisa Howard, a reporter for ABC News. In the interview, Castro clearly indicated for the first time that he was hoping for a rapprochement with the United States. The CIA acquired a transcript of the interview secretly, through an NSA intercept before the broadcast.
Upon receiving the information, the CIA's John McCone became extremely worried that word would leak out about their possession of it. On May 2, 1963, CIA Deputy Director Marshall Carter wrote to Bundy:
Mr. McCone cabled me this morning stating that he cannot overemphasize the importance of secrecy in this matter and requested that I take all appropriate steps along this line to reflect his personal views on its sensitivity. Mr. McCone feels that gossip and inevitable leaks with consequent publicity would be most damaging. He suggests that no active steps be taken on the rapprochement matter at this time and urges most limited Washington discussions, and that in these circumstances emphasis should be placed in any discussions on the fact that the rapprochement track is being explored as a remote possibility and one of several alternatives involving various levels of dynamic and positive action. In view of the foregoing, it is requested that the Lisa Howard report be handled in the most limited and sensitive manner.
Throughout the summer of 1963, there were endless discussions of sabotage -- which targets to strike, what kind of explosives to use, whether the strike should come from inside Cuba or outside it, whether local volunteers or paid agents should be used. But even while the CIA hawks were plotting their campaign of sabotage, a group of Kennedy administration doves, including UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, were working on another track. Attached to Stevenson's UN mission in New York was William Attwood, who had previously served as U.S. ambassador to Guinea in West Africa. Attwood had met Castro and spent considerable time with him on a number of occasions while practicing his earlier profession as a journalist. A Guinean diplomat had told him of a recent meeting with Castro in which the Cuban leader had expressed his dissatisfaction with his status as a Soviet satellite and was looking for a way out. The diplomat told Attwood of Castro's receptiveness to changing course and moving toward nonalignment. Attwood received a similar message from another friend, Lisa Howard.
As the CIA continued to plot sabotage missions, President Kennedy began to explore Castro's apparent olive branch. He approved a quiet approach by Attwood to Dr. Carlos Lechuga, Cuba's ambassador to the UN, using ABC's Lisa Howard as a go-between. On September 23, a small party was arranged at Howard's New York City apartment and both Lechuga and Attwood were invited. The diplomatic matchmaking was successful. "Lechuga hinted that Castro was indeed in a mood to talk," Attwood said later in a secret memorandum. "Especially with someone he had met before. He thought there was a good chance that I might be invited to Cuba if I wished to resume our 1959 talk." Robert Kennedy thought the idea had some merit but was against Attwood traveling to Cuba; he saw the trip as "risking the accusation that we were trying to make a deal with Castro." Kennedy preferred that the meeting take place either in New York, during a visit by Castro to the UN, or in a neutral country, such as Mexico.
Howard, continuing in her role as unofficial intermediary, mentioned Attwood to Major Rene Vallejo, a Cuban surgeon who was also Castro's right-hand man and confidant. On October 31, Vallejo called Howard, telling her that Castro would very much like to talk to Attwood anytime and appreciated the importance of discretion to all concerned. Castro, he said, would therefore be willing to secretly send a plane to Mexico to pick up Attwood and fly him to a private airport near Veradera where Castro would talk to him alone. The plane would fly him back immediately after the talk. In this way there would be no risk of identification at Havana airport.
Vallejo sent a further message to Attwood, through Howard, on November 11. "Castro would go along with any arrangements we might want to make," Attwood wrote in a memorandum. "He specifically suggested that a Cuban plane could come to Key West and pick up the emissary; alternatively they would agree to have him come in a U.S. plane which could land at one of several 'secret airfields' near Havana. He emphasized that only Castro and himself would be present at the talks and that no one else -- he specifically mentioned [Che] Guevara -- would be involved. Vallejo also reiterated Castro's desire for this talk and hoped to hear our answer soon."
But President Kennedy insisted that before any U.S. official travel to Cuba, Vallejo or some other Castro representative come to the United States to outline a proposal. He also demanded absolute secrecy concerning the discussions. "At the President's instruction I was conveying this message orally and not by cable," McGeorge Bundy told Attwood, extremely worried about a leak or a written record. He added in a memorandum for the record, "The President hoped he [Attwood] would get in touch with Vallejo to report that it did not seem practicable to us at this stage to send an American official to Cuba and that we would prefer to begin with a visit by Vallejo to the U.S. where Attwood would be glad to see him and to listen to any messages he might bring from Castro."
Attwood passed the message through Howard to Vallejo, and a few days later they spoke together on the telephone for the first time. One Friday, he sent a memorandum to the White House detailing the conversation. "Vallejo's manner was extremely cordial," Attwood noted. "He said that 'we' would send instructions to Lechuga to propose and discuss with me 'an agenda' for a later meeting with Castro. I said I would await Lechuga's call."
But President Kennedy did not see Attwood's memorandum. At the moment it arrived he was traveling in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.
***
That Friday, November 22, 1963, was much like any other day at NSA. In the early morning hours, Cuban intercepts from the ferret ship USNS Muller had ricocheted off the moon and down to NSA. The backlogged Cuban analysts and cryptologists of B Group were only now putting out translations of messages intercepted weeks earlier. One of those was a report by a Cuban official on the country's internal problems with rebels. "I believe that the approaching Presidential elections in the United States will strengthen reactionary forces from within and without," said the worried official. "Therefore, there is a need for a strong gorilla [sic] collar around Cuba."
In the courtyard in front of the main building, a powerful yellow steam shovel was scooping up tons of dirt for the large basement of the new nine-story, 511,000-square-foot headquarters tower as the agency continued to expand. Other heavy equipment was clearing dense woodlands for more than 1,200 new parking spaces.
In Room 1W040, the cover for the next edition for the NSA Newsletter was being laid out. It was a drawing of Santa Claus jumping out of a fireplace, with the headline "Sixth NSA Annual Family Christmas Program, Dec. 8, 2:00 PM." A line of employees, getting ready for the weekend, was forming at the NSA Federal Credit Union, which had grown to 5,647 members. At 11:30 A.M., in Room 1W128, the NSA Sun, Snow and Surf Club was holding its second annual Ski Fashion Show. As part of the show, the main lobby of the Operations Building contained a large display of the latest skis, boots, and other equipment. Later that night, the NSA Drama Club was scheduled to present the rueful comedy The Pleasure of His Company at the Fort Meade Service Club.
That Friday was slow in the NSA Sigint Command Center. The duty officer logged some messages in; Sergeant Holtz arrived at ten o'clock to pick up a few tapes; at 1:30 P.M. a Strategic Air Command surveillance mission codenamed Brass Knob sent a preflight message. Five minutes later, couriers assigned to secretly collect cables from Western Union and the other communications companies over the weekend were briefed.
Then, at 1:36, a bulletin flashed over the radio. Don Gardiner of the ABC radio network cut into a local program to report that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. NSA Director Gordon Blake was sitting at his desk in his third- floor office when he heard the news. At the White House, crowded around a large circular table in the West Basement's staff mess, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board was deep in debate following a late lunch. Across the Potomac, General Maxwell Taylor and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were meeting in the Pentagon's Gold Room with the commanders of the West German Bundeswehr. Down the hall in his E-Ring office, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara was discussing the $50 billion budget with a half-dozen aides.
At the CIA, Director John McCone was finishing lunch with a small group of fellow spies in his private dining room. His deputy, Marshall Carter, was quail shooting at the Farm, the secret CIA training facility on the York River near Williamsburg, Virginia. "When this monstrously terrible thing happened," Carter wrote several days later, "we returned at once.... He was a great and good and totally dedicated, totally selfless man -- our national blessing is that President Johnson is too."
At fourteen minutes past two, General Blake sent out a message alerting all NSA stations and listening posts. Twenty-two minutes later he sent out another message over NSA's restricted communications links. "President Kennedy is dead." At the eavesdropping base at Kamiseya in Japan, the operations center suddenly went quiet. George Morton stopped what he was doing. "Thousands upon thousands of miles away," he later said, "someone had shot my commander-in-chief. I could not believe it. Neither could anyone else." In South Africa, NSA's spy ship the USNS Valdez was docked in Capetown. One of the crewmembers, Dave Ball, who had once served as a cook for President Kennedy, held a moving memorial service.
As the world mourned, NSA continued to eavesdrop. Immediately after the assassination, NSA initiated a large-scale manual and computer review of all. available signals intelligence information, including all traffic between the United States and Cuba. At the time, NSA was intercepting about 1,000 messages ~ day worldwide. Suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's name was entered into the computer search. A short time later, additional names provided by the FBI from Oswald's address book were added. At the same time, between twenty-five and fifty analysts manually reviewed all traffic between Cuba and New Orleans and Cuba and Dallas, and some traffic between Cuba and Russia.
Fifteen hundred miles to the south, Navy intercept operators, monitoring both Cuban and "Soviet Forces Cuba" communications, listened in as Cuban military forces were placed on high alert. "A state of alert is ordered for all personnel," said the intercepted message. "Be ready to repel aggression." A message intercepted from the Polish embassy in Havana indicated that "military units are being relocated" and a new military draft was called. Intercepts flooded in from other listening posts. Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia also suddenly went on alert. One foreign ambassador in Havana cabled home a report of a large movement of troops, adding a note about Castro: "I got the immediate impression that on this occasion he was frightened, if not terrified."
From early intercepts of Cuban diplomatic communications, it was clear that, far from being involved, Castro's people were as mystified by the assassination as the rest of the world. "The assassination of Kennedy," said one message from Havana to its embassy in Mexico City, "was a provocation against world peace, perfectly and thoroughly planned by the most reactionary sectors of the United States." An intercept of a message from Brazil's ambassador to Cuba back to his Foreign Office indicated that Cuban officials "were unanimous in believing that any other president would be 'even worse'" than Kennedy.
Many of the intercepts to and from foreign embassies in Washington were acquired as a result of secret agreements between NSA and the major U.S. telecommunications companies, such as Western Union. Under the NSA program codenamed Shamrock, the companies agreed to illegally hand over to NSA couriers, on a daily basis, copies of all the cables sent to, from or through the U.S. This was the preferred method of communications for most of the foreign diplomatic establishments in Washington and New York. Highly secret messages were sent the same way, but written in code or cipher. The NSA's Vint Hill Farms Station eavesdropped on those diplomatic facilities that used their own high- requency equipment to communicate. Still other intercepts flowed into NSA from the agency's worldwide listening posts.
In the hours and days following the assassination, a wide variety of intercepts poured into NSA. The diplomatic wires were heavy with speculation about America's future and details concerning preparations for the funeral. Shortly after the assassination, NSA intercepted a message between Chile's ambassador to Washington and his Foreign Ministry in Santiago. "In diplomatic circles," he noted, "it is believed that, in the absence of other Democratic figures of the first rank who could aspire to the presidency in the November 1964 election, the present Attorney General becomes, with the death of President Kennedy, the first choice to succeed him for the presidential term which will begin in January 1965." He added, "News has just arrived that at 1438 [2:38 P.M.] (Eastern time) Lyndon Johnson took the oath of office as President of the United States before a federal district judge."
Egyptian diplomats speculated that Kennedy was assassinated as a result of his stand on racial equality. Dutch intercepts showed uncertainty over whether foreign ambassadors would be invited to the funeral. The Argentine ambassador told Buenos Aires that the assassination "will considerably weaken in the next few months the international policy of the West, particularly with regard to the USSR." He then said, for NSA, the worst words imaginable. "1 shall continue to report via air mail." A listening post eavesdropping on Turkish diplomatic communications picked up a comment by the American ambassador to Turkey fixing blame for the murder. "After signing the register which is open in the American Embassy [in Ankara] on the occasion of the death of Kennedy, I saw the [American] Ambassador. He is of the opinion that Russia and Cuba had a finger in the assassination."
The United Nations was also an important target for NSA. In a message transmitted back to the Middle East, a delegation of Palestinians blamed the assassination on a Jewish plot: "Behind the mysterious crime is a carefully plotted Zionist conspiracy. The late President was likely to win the coming presidency elections without supplicating the Zionist sympathy or seeking the Jews [sic] vote. Aware of the fact that their influence and power in the United States are based upon the Jews vote, the Zionists murdered the courageous President who was about to destroy that legend of theirs. His assassination is a warning to the rest of the honorable leaders. Reveal their conspiracy to the supreme judgement of the world. Be careful, you are the hope of the Palestinians." Likewise, the Italian ambassador to Syria cabled Rome saying that the government in Damascus saw Zionism behind the murder.
A diplomat in Leopoldville, in Congo, reported: "Certain ill-intentioned persons are rejoicing over the death of the President of the United States of America, considering that grievous event a sign of victory for them." The Argentine ambassador to Budapest reported that the Hungarian people "were deeply touched," and that the government attributed the killing to "fascist elements inspired by racial hatred." The Polish ambassador to the United Nations expressed his concern to War saw over the "alarming ... anti-Communist hysteria that has been turned on."
The day after the assassination, intercept operators picked up a statement by Castro: "In spite of the antagonism existing between the Government of the United States and the Cuban Revolution, we have received the news of the tragic death of President Kennedy with deep sorrow. All civilized men always grieve about such events as this. Our delegation to the Organization of the United Nations wishes to state that this is the feeling of the people and of the Government of Cuba." This was a generous statement, considering that Kennedy had spent the past two years waging a secret war against him and that CIA agents had plotted his murder.
In the aftermath of the assassination, Meredith K. Gardner, one of NSA's top Soviet codebreakers, was assigned to examine a number of items taken from assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and suspected to contain codes or ciphers. The Warren Commission, charged with investigating the assassination, was particularly intrigued by a Russian novel, Glaza Kotorye Sprashivayut ("Questioning Eyes"). Oswald had apparently cut eight letters out of page 152. But this was too little to go on. "The manner of perforating only a few letters," wrote Gardner, "does not conform to any known system.... We believe, nevertheless, that it is most likely that the letters were cut out for some purpose related to Oswald's photographic experiments."
Oswald's Soviet-made portable radio receiver was also examined, "with negative results." Also, wrote Gardner in his internal NSA report, "the names appearing in Lee's and [his wife] Marina's address books have been checked against NSA files but no Comint references have been discovered.... In addition to the information on the addresses developed in the personality check, a separate study of NSA address files is being made. "While this study is not yet complete, results have so far been negative and there is no reason to expect that anything beyond what the personality check has already turned up will be discovered."
Finally, Gardner noted, "The appearance of the term 'micro dots' on page 44 of Lee Oswald's address book aroused our suspicions, particularly in that it was associated with the address of the photographic firm where he was once employed."
The mention of NSA's Comint files and the possibility of microdots became a sensitive issue within NSA. Frank Rowlett, special assistant to Director Blake, hid any reference to them from the final report sent to the Warren Commission. In a memorandum to Deputy Director Tordella, Rowlett wrote, "I have eliminated two items from the original Memorandum for the Record.... These are the references to 'micro dots' ... and the Comint reference." He added, "I suggest that you informally (possibly by telephone) call the Commission's attention to the appearance of the term 'micro dot' on page 44 of Oswald's address book. You might indicate that this reference aroused our suspicion but that we do not feel competent to make an exhaustive examination of the materials for the presence of micro dots -- such an examination should be conducted by the FBI or CIA. If micro dots are actually found, we would be happy to collaborate to the fullest degree required in the analysis of these dots."
Rowlett was also worried about letting the commission know of NSA's highly secret communications intelligence data base. "I do not believe a statement that we have checked the names against the NSA files needs to be made since .. it identifies the existence of sensitive Comint records." Tordella agreed, and the sanitized report was sent to the commission.
***
Shortly after the assassination, Lisa Howard told Attwood that she had been contacted by Dr. Lechuga. Lechuga said that he had received a letter from Castro authorizing him to have the discussion with Attwood earlier requested by Kennedy. Howard passed the message on to Attwood, who later that day met with Lechuga for the first time. After expressing his condolences, Lechuga confirmed that he had been authorized to begin preliminary talks with him; however, he made no mention of the letter from Castro. Then, in light of the assassination, Lechuga inquired as to how things now stood. Attwood said he would have to let him know.
Gordon Chase of the National Security Council later discussed the matter in a memorandum to Bundy. "The ball is in our court," he wrote. "Bill owes Lechuga a call. What to do? Bill thinks that we have nothing to lose in listening to what Castro has to say; there is no commitment on our side. Also, it would be very interesting to know what is in the letter. I am also dying to know what's in the letter and two weeks ago I would not have hesitated. But things are different now, particularly with this Oswald business. At a minimum, such a talk would really have to be a non-event. I, for one, would want to think this one over carefully. They also agreed, that from this point on, there was no further need to use Lisa Howard as an intermediary."
"I assume you will want to brief the President," Chase wrote in another memorandum to Bundy. It now seemed a million years since Kennedy had given his okay to the peace feeler. Chase was convinced that any hope for normalization had died with the late president. "The events of November 22 would appear to make accommodation with Castro an even more doubtful issue than it was," he said. "While I think that President Kennedy could have accommodated with Castro and gotten away with it with a minimum of domestic heat, I'm not sure about President Johnson. For one thing, a new President who has no background of being successfully nasty to Castro and the Communists (e.g. President Kennedy in October, 1962) would probably run a greater risk of being accused, by the American people, of 'going soft.'"
The Cubans, too, knew that the moment Kennedy died, so did any chance of reestablishing normal relations with the United States. "Lechuga," Attwood wrote Chase, "and the Cubans in general, probably feel that the situation has changed since President Kennedy's assassination. Deep down, they probably don't expect anything hopeful from us." If contacts were to continue, Attwood said, he wanted to call Lechuga within a couple of weeks; otherwise, the matter "would lose momentum and wither on the vine."
But Lyndon Johnson had no interest in accommodation. Instead, he moved the entire issue of Cuba back to square one. In a memorandum following his first meeting with the new president, CIA Director John McCone noted, "He asked.. how we planned to dispose of Castro." Johnson later approved a return to the bankrupt and ineffective policies of sabotage and covert action.
Two weeks later, on New Year's Day, 1964, ABC News aired an exclusive interview with Fidel Castro. Among those watching was the French ambassador to Washington. On January 3, he wired a summary of the interview back to Paris: "Until the tragic death of President Kennedy, he [Castro] thought that the normalization of Cuban relations with the American administration was possible.... He appeared 'full of hope' as to the future of his relations with President Johnson." The message was intercepted by NSA and passed on to the White House.