LET'S TAKE YOU BACK TO WHEN YOU FIRST SAW THESE THESE PICTURES. AND IF YOU CAN TELL ME WHAT YOUR INITIAL REACTION WAS, WHEN THESE CAME INTO YOUR HANDS.

Oh, the initial was great surprise because we had never seen a MRBM Base outside of the Soviet Union, and there it was with all of the components that we had clearly identified from separate looks elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Not only the missile transporters, but the cherry pickers, the Nuclear Weapons, the, the vans, the warhead vans, the whole panoply of equipment. There was about fourteen or fifteen different items that were clearly laid out for this particular site at San Cristobal in Cuba.

COULD YOU MOVE THAT A LITTLE CLOSER TO YOU, ART?

Sure .

DO YOU SEE ALL THOSE THINGS, IN THAT ONE, IN THAT FIRST...

Yes, it isn't easy to see without the magnification and when we looked at them, we had them as transparencies, not as prints. And we were looking at light that comes through them, and we vary the magnification and you can see the stuff very clearly down through the trees that way.

WHAT DO YOU SEE ON THAT PICTURE THERE, DO YOU REMEMBER THAT?

Yeah, I see some transporters which are, arrayed side by side here at the edge of this clearing. There are lots of trucks parked over here, there's recent track activity, there are personnel moving around in the trees down in here, there are tent-covered shelters where the missiles are actually readied for launching--that is, being prepared. And then when they are prepared, they're taken over to the launching point and erected. But this is all in the preparatory stages for firing. And they were not ready to fire at the time we looked at them here

WERE YOU SURPRISED WHEN YOU FIRST SAW THEM?

Yeah, really surprised, because we knew the Soviets weren't moving all of those SA to the sand sites in there to defend in the cane fields, something important was going on, but we weren't sure. Was it going to be submarine bases, what was going to happen in Cuba? So we were ready for almost any eventuality, but this one was a real surprise for us.

FINALLY YOU HAD EVIDENCE IS THAT HOW YOU...

Yes. Real evidence and of course there were a lot of people who were just, thunderstruck, as we were, because it was estimated that the Soviets would never do such a thing as this. But here it was right before our eyes. Now the question came, how many of these things are here, and are there other bigger things? These are medium range ballistic missiles MRBMs with a range of about eleven hundred miles. Are there bigger missiles? And looking at it a few days later with additional coverage, sure enough, IRBM sites. But they were going to take more time to complete. They were going to have a range of about twenty-one hundred miles, and that way they'd cover all of the United States except the tip way up, near and, the, northwest part of the state of Washington.

BEFORE WE GET TO THE IRBMs, LET'S, CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THE MEETING, WHEN YOU MET PRESIDENT KENNEDY?

Yes as you know there were...

YES, GO AHEAD. CAN YOU START OVER, START THAT OVER AGAIN I'M SORRY.

Yes, President Kennedy was to be briefed in the White House in the morning of October the 16th, which was a Monday 1962, and we had several pre-briefings first, I had to do a big briefing at CIA and then a pre-briefing in the White House for Mr. McNamara, for Bobby Kennedy, C. Douglas Dillon, and other famous people of the cabinet at that time. And when the buzzer rang, we went up to the President's office. He was sitting on the opposite side of the long boat-shaped table. And I had briefed him before, he knew who I was. And I asked him, I said Mr. President, may I come around on your side of the table? I wanted to make sure he saw this, and he said, he waved me over. So I stood behind him and I lay the pictures in front of him and pointed out these things that I'm pointing out to you. The missile transporters, the nuclear warhead vans, the vans, the separate transporters which had tent enclosures where the missiles could be worked on. Mind you there was a lot of rain in Cuba at that time so they had to protect themselves while working. So I went over about fourteen or fifteen of these items in detail with a big magnifying glass. And when the President heard all this, he kind of straightened up and he turned back and he looked me right in the eye, and he said "Are you sure of all this?" And I said to him, "Mr. President, I am as sure of this as a photo interpreter can be sure of anything. And I think you might agree that we haven't mislead you on the many other subjects we've reported to you today." And he said, "Well that's right." And so then he turned in his chair, and he started to order his aides to immediately cover all of the rest of Cuba within this next seven working days. I don't know how many missions a day. Two or three a day were going to go. But all of Cuba was going to be covered so we had the totality of the threat in hand by a week from that day.

WHAT WAS KENNEDY, APART FROM SAYING YOU KNOW, ARE YOU REALLY SURE OF THIS...WHAT WAS HIS FIRST QUESTION? WHAT WAS HIS FIRST CONCERN?

Well, he up to that time, had been steadily briefed on the build up of defensive weaponry in Cuba. The MiG-21s, the MiG-19s, the Guided Missile PT Boats, the short-range cruise missile sites along the coast, and on and on and on. And he had said well that's all right. I understand that, that's defensive missilery. But when anything comes in here, which is going to threaten the United States, I want to know about that right away. Well there we were telling him right away, and there was no doubt about this, this was not defensive missilery. This was offensive missilery. So the fact was in the fire and the President knew it right at that point.

HOW DID HE REACT, WAS HE, WAS IT UH, DETERMINATION? WAS IT AN ANGER, WAS IT UH...

No, he wasn't angry, he was a very, very determined person. He wanted to know the facts, he asked us questions quickly, he recorded the answers in his mind quickly, he sought out a couple of different views. But generally, it was a one on one, I talking to the President, with all of the other advisers, sitting around the table and as the President finished looking at these briefing aids, they were moved around the table so the others were seeing what the President had just seen a few minutes before.

WHAT WAS ROBERT KENNEDY'S REACTION? I UNDERSTAND HE WAS KIND OF PACING AROUND.

He, well he was very much more excitable...

COULD YOU START THAT AGAIN AND SAY ROBERT KENNEDY, OR THE PRESIDENT'S BROTHER?

Yes. Robert Kennedy was far more excitable. He stopped around the room and I was never quite sure what he was going to do. He kind of snorted like a prize fighter does when he's walking around the ring. And he uttered a couple of bitter epithets. And he had a far more emotional response to it, than the President, who was very, very cool, in the way he responded and took on this information.

AS THE, AS THE DAYS WENT ON, THERE WERE OTHER, THERE WERE OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS THAT CAME TO YOU. THIS, COULD YOU EXPLAIN WHAT THIS IS HERE, JUST SORT OF SHOW IT TO ME, SHOW IT TO THE CAMERA.

Yeah. Well this is a uh, one of these long....

YOU SHOULD PICK UP THE BACK OF IT AS SHOW...

Sure. Sure, a little bit like that..

YEAH, THAT'S BETTER.

Well, this is, these are all trees in in this kind of jungle terrain down there. And roads freshly scoured out with all kinds of truck and track activity around here, and those are transporters of various kinds, but the big thing of course is this long tent. It's been set up, and inside that tent in our interpretation, there's no question about it, there's a missile. And they were working on it in there checking out all the joints and checking out all the connectors, and making sure that everything was in readiness to fire. And elsewhere off the edge of this picture was a firing point. That had been surveyed in, on which would set a blast deflector. So when that missile was wheeled out this tent, and erected into the vertical position over the blast deflector, and everything was ready to go, it would fire and all firing tables were in order and it would go on its way.

LET'S DO A WIDE SHOT AND HOLD, HOLD THE WIDE SHOT ON THIS NEXT ANSWER. WHEN, WHEN I LOOK AT THIS UM, AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH, I MEAN ALL ALL AN ORDINARY PERSON SEES, AN UNSKILLED PHOTO INTERPRETER AH, AH, LIKE MYSELF, I JUST SEE YOU KNOW, SOMETHING THAT LOOKS LIKE A TENT...

Sure.

WHAT, WHY WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT TENT AND SAY THERE'S A MISSILE IN IT?

Because we have been looking at thousands of pictures, and we've seen all kinds of tents, we've seen all kinds of missiles, we've seen all kinds of transporters, trucks and track activities, and there's a peculiar configuration, collection, which immediately spells missile to us. The man on the street couldn't be expected to call this right off. For example the President himself, when we had it all outlined for him, was not sure. And he wanted to be reassured. And that is, is certainly to be expected. This is not the way you do photo interpretation at discovery. You're looking at transparencies, you're varying magnification, but you have an enormous background of experience from having looked at these things in many other contexts. And when you get them all together in the gestalt, that sells, tells you right away that you've got a base, a sight that's being prepared to fire. Mind you these were not yet ready to fire. A few days away.

LET'S LOOK AT SOME OF THESE OTHER ONES NOW. THIS IS AN INTERESTING PICTURE WITH A LOT OF PEOPLE. CAN YOU SORT OF SHOW IT.

Ya, this was an antiaircraft sight. It was not too far away from San Cristobal. There's a radar position in the middle, and there's separate firing positions on the outside. And they were readying to defend these things if they had to use them, or if they were going to be attacked before they used them. They were ready to defend against aircraft. Not only low-flying aircraft, but high-flying aircraft.

BUT YOU CAN SEE ACTUALLY, YOU CAN ACTUALLY SEE MEN RUNNING...

Oh, yes. They're moving around here. There's several score of them, they're all undoubtedly Russians who were manning these things. And who had the know-how, and undoubtedly those were Russian troops that were handling the positions in here. Mind there had been over twenty surface-to-air missiles sites, SA-2s put into Cuba in the months before this thing, and so we were seeing just a steady build-up of defensive armament, before the real offensive threat came into being.

THIS IS A GRAPH, THIS A LEONI GAVE ME THIS...

Yeah...

APPARENTLY YOU USED THIS IN, IN SOME OF YOUR LATER BRIEFINGS...

Oh, yes

THE IRBMs WERE...

Yes , uh.. .

CAN YOU SHOW US, HOLD IT UP AGAIN...

Sure...Sure ...

HOLD IT QUITE CLOSE TO YOUR BODY....

Okay, sure. Okay...

WE'RE GOING TO START TO SHOW IT. IF YOU COULD START A LITTLE BIT CLOSER...

Yeah, the uh...

JUST A SECOND ART, WE'RE JUST GOING TO FOCUS AND GET READY.

Sure... okay.

OKAY, GO AHEAD.

Okay, this is Cuba down in here, and there are two circles drawn around San Cristobal. This one, and this larger one. Now this, this smaller circle has a radius of approximately eleven hundred nautical miles. That means the range would reach just beyond Washington, D.C. from San Cristobal. The one which was at twenty-one hundred miles, reaches all the way across the United States and except for a little corner up in the northwest of Seattle in there. Other than that the rest of the US would have been within range of the IRBM sites. Now they were going to longer to build because they had to pour a lot of concrete, and do a lot more to ready those. But the MRBMs, they were going to be ready in a, in a couple of days.

WHAT WAS THE EVIDENCE THAT...LET'S GO WIDER AGAIN. WHAT WAS THE EVIDENCE THAT YOU HAD THAT YOU HAD IRBMs. I'M NOT SURE IF I HAVE ANY, ANY IRBM PHOTOGRAPHS HERE, BECAUSE THESE ARE ALL THE MIRVs, BUT MAYBE YOU CAN JUST TELL ME WHAT WAS...

Well the main evidence was the kind of...

START, START THAT AGAIN. I'M SORRY I WAS UH. . .

Yes, sure. The main evidence for the IRBMs was again, our study of these very same kinds of missiles in the Soviet Union we had seen them at Kapustinar(?), and we saw that they would have to lay some concrete around the pad area. This is not something you erected like a firecracker and shot off, this needed a lot of handling. This was a big piece of equipment that was going to go a long way. So to get it ready to fire, you needed to take some weeks and... undoubtedly would have been well on in to November or even later before they were ready to fire the IRBMs. But we had no doubt about them, and we clearly call them to the President as soon as we saw them.

LET'S GO BACK TO THE FIRST COUPLE OF U-2 PICTURES....

Sure.

LET ME ASK YOU A COUPLE OF MORE DETAILS. THIS ONE HERE, NOW, HOW CAN YOU, HOW CAN YOU KNOW THAT THAT IS A, IS A MISSILE? IS IT THE LENGTH, IS IT SOMETHING THAT YOU SAW PULL THROUGH RED SQUARE...

Yes. ..

CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT SOME OF THE....

Oh, yes, you see the missiles had very, very fixed characteristics. Their length, the shape of their fins, the taper, the kind of supporting equipment that went with them, the transporters and so forth. And we had seen these things at other places, and so we were quite uh, convinced. Now the business of getting real dimensions on the real world, from the measurement off of pictures, is in the science of photogrammetry. And we have crackerjack photogrammetrists, very precise measuring equipment that measures to a micron, and we can enlarge, and there's no doubt in our mind what the dimensions of these things are. So that verifies the size and the shape and the dimensions, very, very sharply pinned down the fact that we were dealing with an MRBM or an IRBM.

JUST KEEP HOLDING THAT...

Yup...

COULD YOU START ON THAT PETER? RIGHT ON THE MISSILES, HERE.

Uh hum, yeah...

AND MAYBE ART THAT'S RIGHT, IF YOU COULD POINT AT THEM... NOW, IF YOU COULD POINT AT THOSE ART,

Yeah...

AT THE MISSILES THERE...

Yeah, there you go...

AND, AND TELL ME NOW AGAIN, HOW YOU COULD DETERMINE THE LENGTH OF THESE THINGS, AND WHY YOU FIGURED THEY WERE MISSILES.

When you look to a, an object called a stereo comparator. And it's a cursor with cross fares in it, and you precisely set the cross fare at one end, and then you traverse that cross fare to the other end of the missile and you take the readings in both cases, you run it through a photogrammetric transform, and out comes the number. You run it several times and you're right on the money time after time. You may vary by a half a foot or so, but you're right on it. So there was no problem with the dimensions, we knew exactly what these were and we knew they were exactly like the dimensions of the MRBMs we had seen in the Soviet Union. But mind you, this was the first time we had ever seen offensive missilery outside of the Soviet Union. We had seen other things, but this was the first time we'd seen big stuff; MRBMs, the smallest, IRBMs the next, outside of the Soviet Union.

LET'S JUST STOP FOR A SECOND.

Uh hum, sure.

UHM, I WANT TO DO A LITTLE MORE, JUST A SORT OF DIFFERENT LEVEL OF STUFF, SO WE COULD CERTAINLY, IF YOU WANT TO DO ANYTHING LIKEWISE, NOW THAT WE'VE LOST THE, WHY DON'T WE STOP AND DO THAT. YOU WERE EXPLAINING TO ME WHAT A U-2, WITH THE TECHNOLOGY OF U-2, THE CAMERA AND THE, THE HEIGHT THAT IT'S FLYING ABOVE THE EARTH, THE TYPE OF CAMERA, COULD YOU...

Yes, the camera used was called a B Camera, it had 36 inch focal length lens, and the scale of a photograph is determined by the focal length of the lens, divided by the altitude. So 36 inches, three foot over seventy thousand feet, you've got something like one over twenty-three thousand, for the contact scale. Then you enlarge from there, but how much you can enlarge of course, depends upon the resolution of the pictures. And in the U-2 pictures, they were characteristically better than sixty line per millimeter, in contrast to something like fifteen lines per millimeter that we would get in World War II. So you had a real good medium to work with. You could enlarge four, five, six, eight, ten times and still see people and small details on the ground six, eight inches or so, and have plenty of detail for interpretation.

MUST BE A GREAT TOOL FOR A PHOTO INTERPRETER TO WORK WITH.

Yes. . .

THAT AIRPLANE AND THAT TECHNOLOGY...

Yes, they were very, very fond of it, and the men who flew it were very fond of it too because it was very, very low vibration, it the cameras seemed to work without any difficulty and the resultant photography was extremely good.

WHAT'S THAT PHOTOGRAPH YOU'VE GOT THERE?

Well, this is a good one. That's uh,

COULD YOU HOLD IT UP THERE CLOSER...

Sure. Sure. Well this is a, it's a

THAT ONE MY KIND SIR... THIS IS A...

This is a concrete tunnel, if you will. It's made of arches one after the other which are bolted together. You can see the separate segments one after the other all the way across, and after that is all segmented together, they bury it in earth, they cover it with sod, and now you got a concrete shelter, if you will, buried with sod, so it's going to be difficult to see if you didn't see it under construction. And there inside, you could store your nuclear warheads, your weapons, until the time came when you were ready to use them. So this was a very, very ominous continuation of the story. The missiles that were not just going to be dropping high explosives, they were going to be carrying nuclear materials. And this was a clear indication that a nuclear shelter was under construction right near the sites.

AS A PHOTO INTERPRETER, YOU KNOW, AND SOMEONE WHO WAS DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN THIS WHOLE CRISIS, AND WHO SPOKE TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ABOUT IT, WHAT DO YOU THINK ARE THE ESSENTIAL LESSONS OF THIS CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS?

Oh, I think the essential lesson is that the United States, for that matter, any nation in the world, has to be vigilant. And has to keep track of the kinds of threats which surround it. Now how you do that is each nation's responsibility. But aerial reconnaissance has proven itself over and over and over again. For example, in World War II, aerial reconnaissance provided somewhere between eighty and ninety percent of our total military intelligence which is a tremendous amount. And in a world that is as dangerous as the world is today, we may never survive another Pearl Harbor, so the, the name of the game is to keep Pearl Harbors from happening. To keep aware of these threats, and then start political action before the threat has actually invoked upon us.

DID YOU EVER FEEL THROUGH THAT, THOSE THIRTEEN DAYS, THAT...WE WERE ON THE EDGE OF A NUCLEAR WAR...

Oh yes. I, ah, my people and I were so busy with work that we had little time for concern, shall we say, about weapons landing on the city. We felt that if we worked rapidly and provided the information accurately to our leaders, that they would have what they needed for the decisions that came. And so although we were working under considerable pressure, the lights never went out in our building, we were not frightened. We were determined that we were going to win for the USA and keep that flag flying on the hill, like they say here.

I UNDERSTAND THAT LET'S DO THAT AGAIN CLOSE...IF YOU COULD TELL ME THAT QUES... THAT ANSWER AGAIN, YOUR RESOLUTION AND YOUR PATRIOTISM IN A SENSE DURING THIS.

Yes, well the the attitude of the photo interpreters, a wonderful bunch of troops, most of them trained in World War II, was that we far rather have some small role in the making of history, than a seat on the fifty yard line watching it being made by somebody else. And here was our big chance. We were now right in the front line, if you will our findings were moving within a matter of minutes, to the attention of the President of the United States. We had to be right, we had to be swift, and we had to be very, very careful about the information we gave to our leaders. We didn't want them to run off half-cocked, neither do we want them to run off misinformed, or partially informed. So it was a very trying time for the interpreters, but we enjoyed every minute of it because that was our beginning in history.

WHAT UM...KENNEDY'S BEEN QUOTED AS SAYING HE THOUGHT THAT THE WORLD WAS...SOMEWHERE, YOU KNOW THAT THE CHANCES OF NUCLEAR WAR WAS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN ONE AND THREE AND EVEN OTHERS LIKE ROBERT MCNAMARA WHO WE SPOKE TO YESTERDAY SAID THAT THERE WAS ONE NIGHT I THINK IT WAS SATURDAY NIGHT, THE LAST, THE DAY BEFORE KHRUSHCHEV ANNOUNCED HE WAS GOING TO WITHDRAW THE MISSILES, THAT HE THOUGHT MAYBE HE'D SEE HIS LAST SUNSET AND THAT SORT OF THING. DID YOU EVER FEEL THAT IT WAS THAT CRITICAL...

Well...

THAT YOU WERE REALLY ON THE EDGE OF A NUCLEAR WAR?

I didn't feel it as strongly. If I'd been sitting home with my carpet slippers on reading all the news dispatches or looking at TV, I might have been wrapped around the axle. But I wasn't. We were working eighteen hours a day, right up against the stops with every new mission that was coming, and coming out with information, and we knew that things were going on, that troops were moving, and airplanes were moving and the country was mobilizing. There was no question about that. But we didn't have time to reflect on that. We had to do our part, or all the rest of it was going to be in vain.

WHAT WAS YOUR IMPRESSION OF KENNEDY THROUGH ALL THIS, DO YOU THINK HE...

Well I was tremendously impressed. John F. Kennedy was a, a marvelous person to brief, you could pour information at a, at a tremendous rate and he'd never let a drop of it hit the ground. He would soak right up and then readily come right back at you with questions which were right on target. Very precise and very penetrating and very useful. He was a delight to brief because he could take on information so fast. There were other people that we briefed who could not. They either could not understand, or you'd spend too much time explaining or expanding, but not with Kennedy. He was very, very cool, I never saw him swear, or heard him swear, I never heard him raise his voice. He was well modulated, he was in command at all times and of course, he had enormous respect from his cabinet and everybody who had anything to do with him. He'll linger in my mind as as a marvelous president and one that I was delighted to have had a chance to serve.

YOU TOLD ME LAST TIME ABOUT THIS WHOLE TIME OF THE SURGING OF THE, OF THE ACTIVITY. CAN YOU, CAN YOU TELL ABOUT THAT, THIS IS THE END OF THE FIRST WEEK --

Yeah, I'd say the times were the tension that you're talking, but, got to me even a little bit, was during the moments I was waiting in the wings at the White House with my briefing package and I had nothing to do to wait, but to wait until my number was called. And at that moment I could hear the clack of heels. I could hear the clack of teletype machines in various directions. I could hear people running a piece of teletype material being torn from a machine and somebody running down the hall and somebody utter something that sounded like an oath, a door would slam, two or three other people would uh move... and so the histrionics which were attaching it, which I had to sit there and look at while I was waiting to go into the arena, were the things that probably stirred me up far more than anything else during the crisis.

LET'S GO TO A WIDE...SO WE SEE THE PICTURES... OKAY. THERE WAS A MOMENT NEAR THE END OF THAT FIRST WHEN, WHEN YOU WERE STUDYING THESE PICTURES, I GUESS EVERY MORNING THEY WERE COMING IN...

Yes, yeah.

EVERYDAY THEY WERE COMING IN. AND YOU COULD SEE THAT SUDDENLY THE SOVIETS HAD, WHAT, WHAT YOU CALLED LAST TIME SURGED THE CONSTRUCTION OF THEM THAT THERE WAS THIS ENORMOUS SPEED UP IN ACTIVITY AND IT LOOKED LIKE THEY WERE RUSHING TO GET THEM READY. DO YOU REMEMBER THAT?

Oh yes. We could see that they were trying very hard to get these things ready to fire. They had troubles down there. Mind you this was the rainy season in Cuba, the heavy cables, the electrical connectors and so forth had to be the, the cables had to be lifted off the ground with Y shaped supports. And they were every type, everyday you looked at a base, you could see more track activity. More scouring and, and scraping of the ground. And it was quite clear that they were trying as hard as they could to get these things ready to fire, as quickly as possible. And the mediums were very close to, being ready to fire. The intermediates, that was a longer story because you had concrete and you had a lot of other heavy equipment to go in there. So the mediums were the first concern. The intermediates were next.

DID THAT SURPRISE YOU, THE SPEED AT WHICH THE, THESE THINGS WERE BEING ASSEMBLED?

Yes. It did me because when you...

SORRY. I'M SORRY...WE'RE NOT GOING TO USE MY QUESTION SO IF YOU COULD USE THE WORD SURPRISE IN THERE, IF, IF YOU DID FILL UH...

Yeah. We, we were surprised at the speed with which they were moving. Not completely surprised, but when you see them do things as we had in an R and D sense, things move slower. Now we were looking at them in an operational sense. Where a lot of great national prestige and importance was hanging in the outcome and the speed with which they worked was impressive.

COULD SEE THAT

Yes, Yes. From day to day we'd see a lot of progress being made. And we knew that uh, they had been working through the nights in many of these cases under lights, and otherwise, they were working just as hard at their end as we were working at our end. There was no question about that.

TODAY, BRINGING THIS WHOLE STORY UP TO DATE, HERE WE ARE AT TWENTY THREE YEARS LATER I GUESS, DO YOU THINK THE... I WAS GOING TO WAIT FOR THE PLANE TO GO BY SO I'LL JUST KEEP TALK, BABBLING HERE FOR A MINUTE...BUT, ESSENTIALLY MY QUESTION IS, YOU KNOW THE LAST PART OF EACH OF THESE FILMS WE'RE MAKING IS TRYING TO BRINGING THE, THE PERIOD OF HISTORY THAT WE'RE DEALING WITH UP TO DATE...

Right...

THERE ARE THIRTEEN FILMS THAT WE'RE MAKING, THIS IS JUST ONE OF THEM. UP TO DAY, IN THE SENSE OF WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM, FROM THIS EPISODE IN HISTORY, AND, AND MAYBE A BIT OF YOUR ASSESSMENT IF WHETHER YOU FEEL TODAY, THE PEOPLE WHO ARE IN THE ADMINISTRATION, UHM, YOU KNOW, NOT JUST THE UNITED STATES BUT ELSEWHERE, HAVE LEARNED THE ESSENTIAL LESSONS, HAVE REMEMBERED THE ESSENTIAL LESSONS OF THE, OF THAT TIME.

Yeah...

GO AHEAD.

I think we've learned a great deal from this particularly the enormous importance of photographic intelligence for the welfare and survival of the United States. Up, we learned a lot about it in World War II, but it was in the hands of military commanders. But here, we are not right at the lap of the president of the United States in "peacetime", quote unquote in which the importance of the military information on a military subject, to put it that way, was so high, that I don't think any president in the future will ever want to make his decisions without knowing what the photography has revealed to them. Whether the photography comes from aircraft or from satellites, or from whatever means available to us at that time, we're going to have to have this kind of information. There's no question about that.

HOW ABOUT THE, THE NUCLEAR AGE ITSELF. IS THIS, HAS, HAS, HAS THE ADVENT OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THIS ENORMOUS EXPANSION IN THE SIZE OF THE NUCLEAR ARSENALS, HAS THAT CHANGED THE IMPORTANCE OF THE...

The nuclear age has greatly intensified the need for intelligence. In the ancient days, before the nuclear age, you could fall flat on your face, get up, mobilize your troops, march in with all your supplies, and no matter how many early rounds of the fight you lost, your over-productivity could win the fight. In the nuclear age, the first round of the fight, or part of that, may be the total fight. And if you're not ready for it, either to avoid that fight, or to preempt the battle, you're lost. And therefore, the premium on intelligence is greater now than it ever has been in history, as far as I know, and the premium in that total intelligence on photographic intelligence, is right at the very top.

THIS MUST BE A VERY PROUD MOMENT IN YOUR CAREER, THE, THE BUSINESS OF THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS. IS IT SOMETHING YOU LOOK BACK ON, THAT PERIOD, WITH PARTICULAR CLARITY AND WITH PARTICULAR PRIDE?

Well, it was because we were, like any good athlete, preparing ourselves for the big game. For the big battle, whatever it was. We had trained, we had studied, we had honed our equipment we developed our techniques, we knew what we were doing, most of us were trained in World War II and, and here was a great chance to, to serve our country in a way we never thought we would have a chance, and we did. And not only did we serve, but we cast a model forward, which will not be lost. All of the presidents since Kennedy, right on down to the present time, clearly realize how important this resource is and it's never going to be lost again. So it's not just what we did in Cuba, but what we did to the psyche of the United States leadership as far as future confrontations are concerned, to prepare them so they demand this kind of resource before they make decisions.

THANKS VERY MUCH. THAT'S VERY GOOD. WE'LL HAVE TO BE QUIET FOR ABOUT FIFTEEN SECONDS. START ROOM TONE PLEASE... THERE'S SOMETHING ELSE I WANTED TO ASK YOU... THERE'S SOMETHING ELSE I WANTED TO ASK YOU ABOUT ART, WHILE WE STILL HAVE A BIT OF TAPE LEFT HERE...

Sure.

THERE WAS A CURIOUS THING THAT HAPPENED DURING IN TERMS OF THE HOW THE SOVIETS SET UP THEIR BARRACKS AND THE PAINTED FLAG STEMS, AND THAT SORT OF THING...

[Laughs]

IS THAT, IS THAT SOME THINGS, THAT'S A PERMANENT BASIS THERE HOW MUCH DOES THAT SURPRISE YOU THAT...HAVE YOU SEEN THAT IN PICTURES TAKEN OVER THE SOVIET UNION?

No, no, we never did...

WHERE ARE WE SEEING THAT WITH...

Well, we're looking at an MRBM launching site, this is number three. And there's a whole bunch of associated equipment there, track activity, vehicle activity, missile activity, but the things that I would like to expand on for just a moment, is the fact that the Soviets were a long way from home, and they had interests, aesthetic and otherwise, and so they sometimes would plant the regimental insignia in the petunias or in the flower beds, and as we would be looking at this low altitude photography, we'd suddenly start reading off ground order of battle, in these very clear designators in flowers, as it were. Other peculiar things they did, they carried their own tents in there which were different configures, different configurations, to the Cuban tents. So we had a good means for separating who were the Cubans, and who were the Russians at any one of these complexes. There was no doubt at a base like this, that these are Russians. This is complex equipment. No Cubans were handling that, at that stage in history. But the association of the barracks and the encampments around there, were sometimes questionable in these little things. Like the plantings, and the paintings, and the configurations that they did oh, uh, trees, and things like that, gave us leads that we would not have been able to hope for in any other way.

I, I DON'T UNDERSTAND, I MEAN, YOU LOOK AT A PICTURE LIKE THIS...

Uh hum...

WHY, THE SOVIETS KNEW YOU HAD U-2s, THEY KNEW YOU WERE FLYING OVER, THE, THE PLANES WERE SCREAMING OVERHEAD, THE LOW LEVEL ONES...

Yeah...

WHY DIDN'T THEY TRY TO DISGUISE THESE THINGS A LITTLE?

Well, you see, when they started to put these things in, it was the rainy season. Heavy weather. Now there aren't many days that are CAVU (Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited). And you could be flying many, many places in this, in the Cuban territory, and if the weather conditions were not right, you might not see the ground in those locales. Okay. They were going to get these things in, they were going to be covered as this one here is with canvas, they were going to paint the canvas, and give it the uh, usual vegetation effect just like in that nuclear warhead storage site they covered it with sod. So I would pre, predict that an extensive camouflage effort was going to go on. They all the while hoping that we wouldn't either detect or react, until it was neatly covered over and then they could say, what are you talking about? There's no such thing down there. But when you catch it under construction, every stage, and you them naked in, in the open, there is no way of saying it is not there. Particularly like Mr. Dobrynin at the United Nations when they, he wouldn't even look at the pictures, and Adlai Stevenson saying "I'm prepared to wait for your answer till hell freezes over." Well, it was these naked examples that we're talking about, that there's no denying or no hiding from. There were going to camouflage but they didn't have enough time.