CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962

CIA History Staff, 1992

The book contains a large selection of declassified documents on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Includes intelligence reports, briefing papers, and materials related to Operation MONGOOSE, a program aimed at destabilizing the Castro regime.

Foreword:

The Central Intelligence Agency is pleased to declassify and publish this collection of documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis, as the First Intelligence History Symposium marks the thirtieth anniversary of that event.

To help carry out this openness program, the Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA's focal point for research and publication on intelligence since 1975, has been reorganized, expanded in size and mission, and placed in the Office of the DCI. The Center now includes the CIA History Staff, first formed in 1951, and a new Historical Review Group, which has increased both the scope and pace of the program to declassify historical records that DCI William Casey established in 1985.

Dr. Mary S. McAuliffe, Deputy Chief of the History Staff, has located and compiled the documents in this collection. Dr. McAuliffe, who has recently completed a study of John A. McCone's tenure as DCI, graduated from Principia College, took a Ph.D. in history from the University of Maryland, and taught at Iowa State University before joining CIA and the History Staff in 1986. She is the author of Crisis on the Left: Cold War Politics and American Liberals. 1947-/954 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978).

The Historical Review Group declassified the documents that Dr. McAuliffe selected, using new guidelines prepared by a special CIA task force and approved by the DCllast spring. We are especially grateful to the principal reviewer who handled this difficult process-including coordination with other departments and agencies-with great skill and dispatch.

We should also acknowledge the invaluable help of our History Assistant, Ms. Diane Marvin, and of the members of the Directorate of Intelligence's Design Center and Publication Center, and of the Directorate of Administration's Printing and Photography Group, who prepared and produced this book with remarkable speed and virtuosity.

A number of documents in this collection have been excerpted, some to reduce their length, and others to speed the declassification of missile crisis information by omitting irrelevant material. When the Historical Review Group systematically reviews these and other missile crisis records for declassification and release to the National Archives, we expect that most of the material omitted for reasons of length or relevance in our published excerpts will be declassified and made available to the public.

J. Kenneth McDonald
Chief. History Staff
II September 1992

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Cuban Missile Crisis: Information From Answers.com

Encyclopedia:

Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, major cold war confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. After the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the USSR increased its support of Fidel Castro's Cuban regime, and in the summer of 1962, Nikita Khrushchev secretly decided to install ballistic missiles in Cuba. When U.S. reconnaissance flights revealed the clandestine construction of missile launching sites, President Kennedy publicly denounced (Oct. 22, 1962) the Soviet actions. He imposed a naval blockade on Cuba and declared that any missile launched from Cuba would warrant a full-scale retaliatory attack by the United States against the Soviet Union. On Oct. 24, Russian ships carrying missiles to Cuba turned back, and when Khrushchev agreed (Oct. 28) to withdraw the missiles and dismantle the missile sites, the crisis ended as suddenly as it had begun. The United States ended its blockade on Nov. 20, and by the end of the year the missiles and bombers were removed from Cuba. The United States, in return, pledged not to invade Cuba, and subsequently secretly removed ballistic missiles it had placed in Turkey.

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