TRY TO TAKE YOU BACK TO WHEN YOU FIRST CAME BACK TO WASHINGTON FROM TAIPEI IN JANUARY OF '62 AND YOU TOOK OVER AS DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF INTELLIGENCE. WHAT WAS THE MOOD IN THE WHITE HOUSE AT THAT TIME CONCERNING CUBA AND CASTRO?

In early '61 when the president had just taken office, the mood was ebullient, generally. The new frontier was confident and anxious to demonstrate its knowledge and its power and its confidence. Their preoccupation with Cuba was impressive to me in my first brief contacts with the group when they had taken office because they felt that earlier authorities had erred in allowing Castro to become, in a sense, a Soviet agent, a Soviet surrogate in the Caribbean. And they were very anxious to find some way to get rid of what was essentially a strategic danger to the whole western hemisphere in their view.

WHY DO YOU THINK THE KENNEDY'S WERE SO HYPED ON CUBA? WHAT WAS IT?

Well In 1961 the idea of what in the Monroe Doctrine was called an 'alien political system' being established very close to the United States in a position to influence other American republics was unheard of. It seemed very wrong for us to allow a dictatorship, a Leninist system of government to establish itself just as a hundred years earlier people, or longer ago, people had thought it was wrong to allow arbitrary monarchies to maintain their rule over American colonies. So there was a almost instinctive reaction among these people with a certain sense of history that Eisenhower...had been a little slipshod in allowing Fidel Castro to set himself up as essentially a surrogate or model performer playing the role that was of benefit to the Soviet Union.

ALLOWING IMPLIES A SENSE OF DIVINE RIGHT OR SOMETHING. CAN YOU HELP US UNDERSTAND THE MOOD OF THAT TIME?

...Well, Well, I think the mood was reflected in Jack Kennedy's inaugural speech. That it was our fate to, and by our I mean the generation that he and I both belonged to--our fate to conduct a long twilight struggle with a totalitarian system of government which was embodied in the Soviet Union that was just as bad for people everywhere as the Nazi system of government had been in Europe. And this generation had just fought a long war and the attitude I think was, If we were careful to prevent the proliferation of this kind of political system and its spread to new areas, that we could avoid the hazard of a third world war which perhaps could have been avoided which was of the same nature that could have been avoided when WWII broke out. What was wanted was a prophylactic measures to forestall crises before they came to showdown — wide scale military hostilities.

YOU CAME BACK FROM TAIPEI IN JANUARY OF '62 AND TOOK OVER AS...AFTER THE BAY OF PIGS...

Yes...I'd...Actually I came back frequently in that period but I took over, I think, in April of '62. I was in Washington a lot in the spring of '62 on consultation about taking over.

WHAT WAS THE MOOD THEN ABOUT CASTRO NOW THAT WE HAD THE BAY OF PIGS...

Well...the Bay of Pigs made all the difference in the world. Instead of self-confidence and exultation the new frontier crowd most of whom were my friends were angry a little bitter that they had made mistakes impressed with the difficulty of running the US government and making wise decisions. And more than ever impressed that they had a firm adversary, a person who would cause trouble for the best interest of the United States and its friends for a long time unless he was opposed, contained at a minimum, and if possible removed from office.

WHAT WAS THE OPERATION TO REMOVE HIM FROM OFFICE?

Well at...In the conversations I had what they were trying to do was to organize political opposition within Cuba and to encourage the emigration the many Cubans who had left Castro Cuba and lived in this country to organize politically, to oppose him if necessary infiltrate the country and overthrow him politically. Or as if they had tried, they were willing to contemplate allowing Cubans to direct military operations against the Castro regime. But by the time they had failed in the Bay of Pigs, they were thinking primarily of economic sanctions, economic sabotage, economic warfare. The underground still uncertain campaign that at least tolerated or sanctioned the idea of assassination of Castro was something that was not openly discussed. It was not something I ever heard discussed in those days. And I think that even in their own minds the Kennedy's and others didn't clearly say to themselves Go assassinate Fidel Castro. It was much more like murder in the Cathedral when they said, Won't somebody get me rid of these this scourge in my life. And people were trying to do it. But not very systematically or effectively. The main campaign against Cuba in 1962 was economic. It was containment and restrictions of growth on the part of the Communist government in Cuba.

CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT SOME OF THESE ECONOMIC MEASURES THAT WERE TAKEN?

Well, I recall a few...

COULD YOU START THAT ANSWER AGAIN?

I recall a few of the operational concepts that were being employed in the post Bay of Pigs period '62 and for several years. They involved trying to damage the sugar industry, the nickel mining operations and to prevent shipping to Cuba of important economic products. This involved in many cases, simply diplomatic and political pressure on countries that were doing business with Cuba not to do business with Cuba. But there were also some operations involving teams of Cubans Cuban exiles who would go ashore on the Island and use explosives to blow up a piece of machinery to find a way where it was possible to put an abrasive in lubricants in key machines to do so to contaminate shipments of oil or whatever industrial components were going to Cuba on the seas or in ports. It was quite an elaborate campaign to do damage without hurting people, but doing damage to the Soviet support of the Cuban economy.

YOU TOLD ME LAST TIME ABOUT SQUARE BALL BEARINGS AND THINGS LIKE THAT...

There were a lot of ideas. I'm not sure how many of them were actually carried out to put to put ball bearings that would fail into machinery that needed them was certainly one of the efforts. Square ball bearings or simply flaky ones that would fall apart. These were simple ideas. The real operational problem was to find when and where shipments of these kinds were going to be made and get access to the material. I don't think a very widespread campaign was successfully mounted, but it was part of the concept to make sure that Castro did not succeed economically in exploiting the kind of economic aid he was getting from the Soviet Union and there-by appear a success to other Latin countries.

THERE WAS A HUGE OPERATION BUILT IN MIAMI. CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT THAT?

Well, I can't tell you very much about it. But it was a...an organization of the exiles who left Cuba in huge numbers --about 10 percent of the population did leave Castro's Cuba boating with their feet to get out of that kind of country. And they were, for the most part, welcomed in southern United States. And many of the more young and active people wanted still to find some way to discredit and if possible eliminate Castro's rule in Cuba. There were all kinds of groups. The CIA was instructed covertly to keep in contact with them. They authorized some limited operations behind the inside the shores of Cuba. But

I UNDERSTOOD THE...

...On the whole the momentum for that sort of thing trailed off fairly rapidly after the Cuban missile crisis of '62. It was largely prior to that in the year between the Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis that these operations were popular.

...AFTER YOU WERE DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF INTELLIGENCE AND BEFORE THE MISSILE CRISIS STARTED, I UNDERSTOOD THAT THE MIAMI OPERATION WAS VERY WELL FUNDED...

It was extensive and

(INTERRUPTION)

There...there was a very extensive network of Cuban groups who were interested in damaging Castro and the CIA operation in the Florida area was extensive and well funded and it H and S clearly had the authorization of the President and all his advisers to try to do what I described, sabotage the success of the Castro regime in Cuba...I think, perhaps, people have an exaggerated concept of the scale of the activities We supported a lot of people as I understand it, but they were divided They had different programs and some of the more active groups who were wanting to conduct essentially military operations were not supported because clearly after the Bay of Pigs, we'd given up the hope of a military invasion, a military infiltration that would succeed in toppling Castro. We were trying to make him unpopular and unsuccessful. Many of the Cubans wanted to assist in that. Of course we wanted to collect information from all the Cubans so the CIA contact with them was extensive, but it was not all sabotage and harassment operations.

THERE WERE SEVERAL HUNDRED CIA OFFICERS IN MIAMI WORKING ON THE CUBAN...

Well, in the... in the southern camps there...Yes. They were scattered around in different locations in Florida. And I would say several hundred yes.

CAN YOU PUT THAT INTO A SENTENCE FOR ME? IN FACT I THINK YOU DID AN INTERVIEW WITH BILL MOYERS WHERE YOU TALKED ABOUT SIX OR SEVEN HUNDRED...

I think that probably is about right.

CAN YOU PUT THAT INTO...

Sure, sure. Well, attempting to keep in contact with this vast Cuban refugee system took a lot of people. And much of it was simply collecting information. I would guess, if I recall correctly that there were maybe six or seven hundred people. It was a very large investment of effort, but it reflected the concern of the Kennedy administration to know everything about the situation in Cuba and about the degree of feasibility of opposition to Castro.

THIS IS UNUSUAL FOR A CIA OPERATION OF THIS SIZE TO BE WORKING IN THE UNITED STATES.

Yes, it was it was an unusual case and it did reflect the preoccupation of the Kennedy administration with Cuba. However, it was set up, essentially, like a foreign base. It was isolated, insulated from American people and localities. They simply were occupying some real estate in the continental United States. But the whole method of operation was as if they were in a foreign country and their dealings with the Cubans were very secretive and intended to be protective of American political interests. So that the secrecy was still a concept even though some of the operations were pretty obvious and a lot of the newspaper men began to find out what was going on. It was a kind of a beginning of the problem this country has always had with covert operations, is that quite a few people have to know about them for them to take place and Americans are not very good at keeping secrets.

ISN'T THAT ILLEGAL FOR THE CIA TO BE OPERATING IN THAT...

No...I th...

I THOUGHT THAT THEIR MANDATE WAS ONLY TO OPERATE COVERTLY OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES...

That is their mission, but the law which sets them up, that's the National Security act of 1947, makes clear they will not have law enforcement responsibilities in the United States and they will not be involved in domestic intelligence activities, which is the prerogative of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the FBI. But, obviously an intelligence agency who is going to operate abroad, has to train people, recruit people... do all sorts of things in the United States so that...the kind of black and white concept that they shouldn't do anything in the United States is wrong. And it was not illegal to conduct these operations against Cuba from American shores anymore than if they'd simply moved down to Guatemala or Nicaragua or someplace. It would still be an American covert operation.

WHO WAS PRIMARILY PUSHING THIS?

Well, I believe that the most concerned person in Washington in that '62 period was Bobby Kennedy. He personally took an enormous interest in it and through the through the period, at least until his brother's death, he felt that it was his job to monitor activities against Castro, to do his best to see that Castro's dreams of surviving and flourishing in Central America and doing damage to the Americans were frustrated.

SOME PEOPLE HAVE SPECULATED THAT THE MISSILE CRISIS WAS IN PART PROVOKED BY ALL THESE SORTS OF OPERATIONS...

Well, I think there's a small element of truth in that. Castro was looking for reassurance. And his brother Raoul, who was a communist and close to the Soviet Union as was Fidel, began trying to get Soviet help to be sure that no drastic operation against Cuba would succeed. But that's not the main story. I think the main story was that the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union at that time was shifting. It had to do with missile strength. Many people thought that the Soviet Union was ahead in missile strength because they had started the missile age, but in fact they knew that the United States had rapidly recovered and had built up to a superiority in missiles by 1962. So it was an end run to put short range missiles in Cuba where they could reach the United States just as well as long range missiles could reach the United States from farther away. I believe that simple military logic was very important to the Soviet thinking. Not everybody took it so seriously, but I still think the Soviet Union is dominated by rather simple political military concepts and one of them is get the... with the mostest and they wanted the United States to be under fire, under threat from as many missiles as they could bring to bear on our continent.

LAST TIME WE WERE SPECULATING ON A POST BAY OF PIGS ATTITUDE OF CASTRO TOWARDS THE UNITED STATES YOU KNOW HE MIGHT OF FELT THAT HE REALLY NEEDED SOME BETTER SECURITY...

Well I think Castro's fears probably were more exaggerated than the reality warranted. There was clearly flirtation with the idea of assassination. There were all of these contacts with Cuban exiles. I must say, looking at it from Havana, it was a rather massive anti-Cuban disposition of activity and forces. But on the other hand I think that he was playing his own game and was playing the Soviet card. And Moscow was playing his game. Now, Castro himself may have felt that there was a personal vendetta of Jack and Bobby Kennedy. And in many ways they were really obsessed, really preoccupied, not in an abnormal way, but in a concentrated way with frustrating Castro's ambitions. He may have felt that he would be in real trouble the rest of his life unless he could do something to turn off this movement. It is hard to find evidence that is persuasive as to whether or not Castro might have had something to do with Jack Kennedy's death. There certainly is a lot of suspicious circumstance and you can find statements he made suggesting that if the US activities against Cuba continued he would take violent action against the President of the United States. On the other hand, there's no clear evidence that he in fact did have something to do with Oswald's activities. It's a very murky period in which I'm unable as a historian, as well as someone who remembers the period very well, to come to a conclusion as to whether Castro actively helped organize the death of the President. There's no doubt in my mind he was very relieved by the death of the President.

WHAT WAS IT IN THE KENNEDY CHARACTER ABOUT CASTRO?

Well, I think that Jack Kennedy was a very practical tough guy. He had been through WWII. Was wounded. Nearly lost his life. He he had a combative side to his character that was usually beneath the surface. He was a very genial man. But as many people have said, he was taught by his father who was not such a genial type Don't get mad, get even. If you're crossed by somebody make sure you hold your own and get even with them. I think that Jack Kennedy somewhat accurately, felt Castro had been the occasion of his first major disaster in his administration and might well have ruined it. And that He couldn't blame Castro entirely for that. There were lots of mistakes made on the American side. But I think that's why both Jack and Bobby felt they had to correct the historical tract. They to remedy the mistake that they had made in '61 by doing something better. Now my belief is that they were playing around with all of these covert operations without being to clear that they could bring them to any very successful conclusion, And that after the successful counteraction in the strategic missile crisis after they succeeded in getting the Russians to withdraw their missiles from Cuba, somehow they felt they had evened the score and they did begin to relax and the operations began to lose intensity in 1963 and were desultory if not unimportant after the President's death.

WHAT WAS IT ABOUT BOBBY? WAS HE KIND OF TRYING TO ASSUAGE HIS BROTHER'S...

Bobby was very loyal to his brother and particularly determined to create an image of a successful Kennedy presidency that would live in history. I think it's pretty clear that even in '62 he was thinking about the possibility that somehow events might lead to his succeeding his brother. But essentially he was the man who always tried to think out the tough problems and take care of the details and the dirty work for Jack so as to make him a successful president. In a sense at that period, Bobby saw himself taking the low road to political organization and efforts to protect his brothers reputation while. Jack took the, high policy road.

TELL US ABOUT THE FAMOUS MCCONE HONEYMOON CABLE.

Well John McCone who became Director of CIA at the same time practically that I became the Deputy Director for Intelligence was a very fine intelligence mind. He was not a professional intelligence officer. He was a businessman and administrative executive in government. But he understood the need to penetrate to the bottom of evidence and to think about the analysis of events in a long-range perspective. Now when he was worrying about Cuba, which he did through all the time I knew him in those years, '61, '62, but especially in the middle of '62 when we all were worried about what was happening in Cuba. Why these military shipments? And what did they portend. McCone, in my view, had the clearest vision of anybody. And as he himself said, he didn't have the evidence to support it. He just had an instinct that if Castro was getting all of the support from the Soviet Union, there was something big in it for the Soviet Union. They weren't doing it because they liked Castro's eyes. And they were intending to get a strategic game. So purely, abstractly, John McCone reasoned to me, and I discussed it with him. I helped him write memos which went to the President before his famous honeymoon suggesting that the modern anti-aircraft missiles which were going into Cuba, could only be sent there if the Soviet Union intended to use them to protect the secrecy of their placement of another surface to surface missile which would threaten the United States. Everybody said to him, There's no clear evidence of that and there's no precedent for it. And he said, Yeah, I know that, but it's what's going to happen. And he turned out to be right and it was on the record all the time. He did make his…his wedding plans for the period of the crisis and was away. But he was thinking. And when he saw the, it all the time about this problem and kept sending back messages along the lines of analysis that there must be an in point for the Russians of surface to surface missiles, offensive missiles in Cuba. We in the agency reported his views. I think they were faithfully reflected, but the majority view clearly was the Soviet Union would not take the risk of doing that because the CIA people knew we would find out about it. We knew Jack Kennedy would be mad as hell. And we felt the United States would certainly react in a very strong way against such a move. So that my analyst friends in the DDI, Deputy Director for Intelligence part of CIA said, Look Khrushchev made a mistake in putting the missiles in Cuba. We didn't think he was stupid enough to do it. So we made a mistake in analyzing what was going to happen. John McCone just guessed the heart of the problem that Khrushchev would do it and hope that he could get away with it.

THERE'S A FAMOUS CIA, WHAT'S IT CALLED...?

Board of National Estimates.

BOARD OF NATIONAL ESTIMATES SEPTEMBER 18TH, I'VE GOT A LITTLE BIT OF IT HERE...

I remember it. I remember it.

DID YOU WRITE THIS OR WHO WOULD...

No. I approved it. It was written by the Board of Estimates which worked very independently but under my general supervision. And John McCone approved it to. I mean, John McCone said, The analysis is correct. The...what an intelligence agency should do is talk about the historical record and the evidence we have. But he said, I think they're going to do something unusual here, and we've got to put it on the record. But what the estimate really says is, they might be going to build missile bases in Cuba. They might be going to build submarine bases in Cuba. They were thinking of the really dangerous things. So it's ridiculous to say this estimate was reassuring. It was not. But they said, On balance. The probability is the Soviet Union will not take the political and strategic risk involved in making that kind of investment in Cuba. It turns out that...in a sense they were right. The Soviet Union lost strategically in that move. But they did take... they did take the chance and the warning was far from clear, except for John McCone because the professional intelligent analyst felt that the Soviet Union would see the situation as a loser and would not take that risk. The Soviet Union did it. It teaches you that you must expect the unprecedented, the illogical in behavior of governments sometimes just as we sometimes see it in our own.

I BROUGHT ALONG A COUPLE OF U-2 PICTURES. DO YOU REMEMBER... THIS IS PROBABLY THE MOST FAMOUS ONES.

That's San Cristobal.

DO YOU REMEMBER AT ALL WHEN ART LUNDAHL GAVE YOU...

Yes. I say these only in the White House. The morning of the 16th of October. But Art Lundahl called me on the...late in the afternoon of the 15th of October to say that the pictures taken on the previous day, Sunday, showed missiles in Cuba. And I said, Good God. That means everything will hit the fan tomorrow. Are you sure and insisted that they review the whole evidence. I didn't go look at the pictures. I trusted Lundahl and his people so well that I only wanted to be sure that a number of eyes and a number of minds worked over this problem. And also that our intelligence analysts who were not photo interpreters, but missile experts had studied the same data and came to the same conclusion. All of that happened by early evening of the night when I learned in the afternoon. When I learned about it, I called McGeorge Bundy. I arranged with General Carter who was the acting DCI at the moment for McCone to brief the senior officials in the pentagon. He was going to see them anyway. And I called the Director of Intelligence for the State Department. The whole intelligence community was alerted that night. And we met in the White House early the following morning.

WHAT WERE THE FIRST REACTIONS?

Well, I was in the meeting with Bobby Kennedy and Mac Bundy and Secretary Dillon and some of the others. In fact we...Mac Bundy carried the pictures in to the President himself. The reaction of the group though,...was real dismay. Real concern that we were in a serious crisis and that the President, who had warned very specifically at our suggestion on the basis of earlier intelligence about what was happening in Cuba, the Soviet Union should not put offensive weapons in Cuba. It was going to look awfully foolish unless he did something strong. Bobby Kennedy, who had been out on the campaign trail with the President was really dismayed. Felt that it was a terrible crisis and that it was up to his brother to do something drastic and dramatic and successful. Which I think they believe they finally did.

WAS ROBERT KENNEDY CONCERNED WITH THE DOMESTIC POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS?

Partly. I think, throughout the discussions that I heard --and I only heard part of them of course, the President was conducting formal meetings many of which I listened in on, but some of which I didn't. And he had many personal meetings which of course I wouldn't have known about at the time. I think Bobby Kennedy, in my presence, kept reflecting the view that this was the watershed crisis of the Kennedy administration. A time of truth. A chance to redeem himself from clear...clearly what had been mistakes in the Bay of Pigs. But that it was essential that he do so in a way that would leave him a hero and a moral leader for the United States. Bobby, at the very first formal meeting that I attended, voiced this concern that it made a lot of sense to go destroy those missile sites immediately, but that he didn't want his brother to go down in history as the Pearl Harbor attacker, all of the Japanese in 1941. So in his mind, always I think, was the historical, political image that the President would leave, and yet there was a great concentration on dealing with the crisis effectively, not seeming to be weak and ineffective.

WHAT WAS JACK KENNEDY'S FIRST VIEW OF THOSE PICTURES?

My impression is that from the beginning Jack Kennedy saw these pictures as the concrete evidence that Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders had been lying to him. That he was again in danger of being made a real patsy, a man who didn't face up to the tough part of international relations. And he was very determined not to let it happen. I recall when Gromyko came to the White House in the middle of that week and was given the last chance to suggest that somehow they were willing to admit that they were putting the missiles in Cuba, which might have changed this feeling of outrage which President Kennedy had. But when I heard the translator's account that Gromyko had denied everything and in the most plain words simply lied to the President, I know Jack Kennedy was going to get those missiles out of Cuba. He was I think very willing in the end, after exhausting other lesser remedies, to mount a military operation. "That's controversial. Some people think yes, some people think no. But at least in the beginning on the occasions when I heard about his views, he was speaking...

YOU WERE QUITE EXCITED ABOUT FINALLY GETTING THIS EVIDENCE THEN?

Oh, yes. You see, I had been briefing the President...

(INTERRUPTION)

I was excited, of course, about the evidence. It was the most important strategic confrontation with the Soviet Union we had since the Berlin blockade back in the '40s and the Korean War. And I had been briefing the President personally during the summer. I'd been keeping everybody informed that there was some critical activity going on in Cuba and we were going to try to find out what it was. When we finally found out that it was indeed the offensive missiles that John McCone had suspected but we couldn't prove up to that point I knew that the intelligence community had done a pretty good job of zeroing in on a critical crisis, telling our President what the situation was when he still could think what to do before the leaders of the Soviet Union knew that he knew. That's a very unusual situation in such a major crisis and I believe that it was an unusually successful, though not unflawed, intelligence performance and it led to one of our more successful strategic policy programs. It did not end up entirely as successful years later as we might have liked. But at the time, it was pretty well handled.

I UNDERSTAND YOU HAD A ROLE IN WRITING THE OCTOBER 22ND SPEECH.

Well, I got see the drafts and I did draft some paragraphs on the actual situation, what we would call the intelligence report, which were in the first two or three paragraphs. I helped prepare one of the early drafts of that. I was working through McGeorge Bundy's office. My point of departure in the White House was the National Security Advisor to the President, Mac Bundy, who was an old friend and a very clever man. And I liked to explain to him the detailed implications of what I thought our intelligence findings were. And he gave me an opportunity to help draft and comment on some of that text.

YOU WERE NOT A BLOCKADER AT FIRST?

No. I belonged to one of the three schools. The diplomatic action school was one. The blockade as a short-time remedy was the second. The surgical strike was the third. I felt there was a real danger that the Soviet Union would somehow outmaneuver us in the political arena unless we made the surgical strike. I think, however, the decision was really "two and a half." It was the blockade, to be followed by a massive strike if necessary. So it was not something I disapproved of or disagreed with. I felt that in some ways you could deal better with Castro and Khrushchev by moving and presenting them with a fait accompli. That in a sense, that would remove any danger that they would feel compelled to counter attack. And there was such a danger, but I also felt we had to move.

YOU HAD A NICE ANECDOTE ABOUT IKE'S DICTUM ON SAC...

What was that?

THAT THEY WOULD...THAT IF YOU GOT THEM TO FORTIFY...

Oh. I told you... I told when I was working for Eisenhower when he was Chief of Staff of the Army, before he was President, which was in after WWII in the '40s. I had discussed some military plans for WWII with him and he said, "Well you got to remember that if you refer matters to the Army," which of course he was the most distinguished alumnus of, "they will want to begin any military operation by fortifying the moon." That was his statement. And in some sense that's true. I felt that that really reflected the attitude which caused our defense department to propose such a huge operation against Cuba in the military field if it was necessary so as to be absolutely sure that they would wipe out every missile if there.... if they were attacked. Those of us who felt a surgical strike would be useful, successful, quick, settle the issue for once and all were confident that our air force, in a fairly sizable but not country wide raid could have destroyed all of the missiles that were operational in the early stage of the attack. It was only a handful. The defense department insisted that they couldn't be absolutely sure. And of course statistically they kept saying, well, you have a 94 percent chance but you might miss three-fourths of a missile. I don't think that really meant very much. If they had put on multiple targeting, they would have destroyed all the missiles. But other considerations led the President give the blockade a try rather than to take that smaller attack. And he had in his mind, I think, this army and air force concept that if you're really going to take out those missiles, you had to saturate the island with military attack, military force and see if you were going to fortify the moon.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ARE THE LESSONS TO BE LEARNED FROM THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS?

Well I think in the intelligence field the lesson is...

(REPEAT QUESTION)

Looking back, the lessons of the Cuba Missile Crisis are of several different kinds. One kind is in the field of intelligence. There the only mistake we made was expecting too much rationality, too much conformity to precedent and previous behavior on the part of the Soviet Union. In other words we should have in the early stages, analyzed the Soviet intentions with more probability of doing what in event they actually did, take big risks and do something new. However, I think it's important to say, and this is another lesson. Don't let your estimates of what's going to happen prevent you from looking for the hard evidence. And that we didn't do. The CIA and all the intelligence agencies went after the photography, after the agent reports. And we did get the combination of agent reports, debriefing of refugees and pictures which proved the case as to what was really happening. The other lesson is, in my mind, in the policy field. And there the first phase of the lesson is, be sure you have good intelligence and have time to digest it before you make decisions. That happened in this case and that's why the decisions were...were reasonable and...and well carried out. The second lesson, though, is where we don't look so good in my opinion. Think of the consequences of your policy decision in a long-range perspective. What will happen after the crisis is dissolved. After you have dealt with it. And there I have misgivings because I think the Kennedy administration leaders all became so euphoric over having won a strategic victory in confrontation with the Soviet Union that they simply were not prepared for the fact that the Soviet Union would try to get even. They got mad and they did eventually get even by installing in Cuba a major military base with intelligence capabilities, with missiles. With everything except the particular type of missile which me made them take out and have presented a formidable menace to the security of the Caribbean despite our victory in '62. So looking back on it, the strategic victory we didn't focus on. We only thought of it as the tactical victory.

DO YOU THINK YOU SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN RID OF CASTRO AT THE TIME?

Well...In some ways, as I say, I look back on the Cuba Missile Crisis as having been fortunate in getting the missile out but being a missed opportunity to discredit and destroy the Castro regime. If we had surgically destroyed the missiles or if we had in fact invaded the island in order to make the missiles inoperative, Castro would have been finished. We didn't do that and everybody pretty well congratulated themselves that they'd done it with so little damage, so little violence. Which is of course, a desirable thing. But 20 years later it ended up with some dangers to neighboring countries and to the southern United States in the form of aircraft and other weapons and infiltration of subversive and terroristic active...active people. With the danger as great or greater than the threat of the offensive missiles of that day.

YOU MENTIONED LAST TIME THAT PERHAPS WE WOULDN'T HAVE THE NICARAGUAN SITUATION OR THE ANGOLAN SITUATION.

Cuba has been since 1962 a source of infection politically and in terms of guerrilla warfare against stable governments and against governments friendly to the United States ever since. And Fidel Castro, deliberately, provided the focus of expansion of hostile governments, governments hostile to the United States, in Central America as his main object in life. And he has succeeded in causing a great deal of difficulty particularly in recent years in Nicaragua where you have a Sandinista government that is in many ways a spawn, a throw off, a model built on the Castro model.

SO IS IT WRONG PERHAPS FOR AMERICANS TO THINK IN RETROSPECT THAT THE MISSILE CRISIS WAS KIND OF A VICTORY OR KIND OF A...

No. I think it was a victory. I think it was an unexploited victory. It was a victory that we lost sight of as being important. And that came not as a result of faulty thinking about Cuba, but about being diverted to the problems of Vietnam and failing with our strategic objectives in Vietnam and then sort of sitting on our hands and letting a rather major expansion of the influence of the Soviet Union and its client states in all parts of the world — Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, the Middle East and Africa.

MANY PEOPLE SAY THAT AS A RESULT OF THE MISSILE CRISIS THE SOVIETS BUILT UP THIS ENORMOUS ARSENAL. I THINK IT'S KUZNETSOV WHO'S REPORTED TO HAVE SAID...

Yes. I heard that immediately of Kuznetsov's remark...

CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THAT?

After the...the missile crisis had subsided and the...the final arguments and counterarguments disposing of the situation had taken place a very high ranking Soviet official named Kuznetsov told John McCone that there would never again be a confrontation in which the United States had all of the cards in their hands, the military superiority: nuclear, and local, conventional, so that they had to play a political game against adverse odds. And I noticed immediately almost, in...about a year later, the beginning of these massive bases being built in the Soviet Union with new missiles. And I recall within a couple of years after that saying to my colleagues and people in the administration, Look, this wonderful strategic superiority which we had and enabled us to deal with the Cuba situation fairly effectively, however effectively in the long run, is a vanishing asset. We will not have that situation once the Soviet Union builds all of the missiles that it clearly was beginning to build in 1964 and '65. You could foresee that 10 years later the situation would be quite different. And it was. Now that was the fulfillment, I think, of Kuznetsov's promise that we would never meet them again on such favorable strategic terms.

HOW CLOSE DO YOU THINK THE WORLD CAME TO NUCLEAR WAR IN THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS?

I think the world was not very close to nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis because the superiority of American nuclear forces which were then mainly aircraft delivery vehicles, but included more missiles than the Soviet Union had, meant that the Soviet Union would never go to the last resort of playing a game of blackmail over nuclear war. In the second place, our conventional military strength was so great in the Caribbean, much closer to us than the Soviet Union, that there was no real contest if it came to a conventional war. So we had all...all the blue chips. And that's why we managed to win. If we had not had that magnificent superiority in strategic capabilities it would have been a much harder game to play. But we were lucky and we'll never be that lucky again.

YOU DON'T THINK THIS IS A POST FACTO...DURING THE ACTUAL DAYS OF THE CRISIS...WERE YOU SCARED?

...During the actual... No. Well, I was scared that... As I say, I was always scared that somebody would be crazy. Somebody would do something utterly irrational. After all they had...done something pretty irrational, in my view, in putting the missiles in Cuba in the first place. But I was very confident personally and I assured everybody I talked to that we had 6-, 7-, or 8-to-1 superiority in...deliverable nuclear weapons against the two countries. And that the Soviet Union only in some mad mood would resort to the ultimate in military crisis. So I was very confident all through the crisis that we could achieve what we wanted if we were coherent and articulate and if we explained to our own population and our allies what we were doing. And that was part of the job we had to do. And again, we provided the intelligence which made it pretty successful.

BUT YOU ONLY NEED ONE MISSILE TO BE LAUNCHED FROM CUBA BY ONE...

One nut... Well that's why there was a danger of a missile or a nuclear explosion. But there was not in my view a very serious danger of a full exchange. There were only about 50 or 60 missiles in the Soviet Union at that time. That's why the appearance of 80 or so in Cuba would have made a difference in the balance of strength. We had around 200 and we had many hundred airplanes which could be used against Cuba. We would not have gone to nuclear response over one missile if we knew exactly what was happening. It was always the possibility of irrational action and too panicky response that made you a little bit scared. And it was nervous making, but in my view, the odds were so great that we would be able to deal with this without any war at all and certainly without a nuclear war. That it was a strategic game worth playing to the hilt and winning. Which we did.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH.