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Notes
1 Arnold H. Horelick and Myron Rush, Strategic Power and Soviet Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 141.
2 The plan was not revealed until four decades later. See Fred Kaplan, “JFK’s First-Strike Plan,” The Atlantic, October 2001, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/10/jfks-first-strike-plan/376432/
3 “Nuclear Folly: Serhii Plokhii’s Latest Book Examines the Cuban Missile Crisis,” 7 April 2021, https://huri.harvard.edu/news/nuclear-folly-serhii-plokhiis-latest-book-examines-cuban-missile-crisis
4 The Central Intelligence Agency estimated the R-12 could not reach New York City.
5 The Soviets stationed medium-range nuclear missiles targeted on Western Europe in 1959. See Wolfgang Bayer, “Geheimoperation Fürstenberg,” Der Spiegel, 17 January 2001, pp. 42–46.
6 American photo-interpreters used the term trapezoid. John T. Hughes with A. Denis Clift, “The San Cristobal Trapezoid,” Studies in Intelligence (1992), pp. 44-45, https://www.cia.gov/static/e6c45c1d09549c73e56fae89751ff69e/the-san-cristobal-trapezoid.pdf
7 For details, see ibid., pp. 42–43.
8 Max Holland, “The ‘Photo Gap’ that Delayed the Discovery of Missiles,” Studies in Intelligence. Vol. 49, No. 4 (2005), p. 6, http//www.cia.gov/static/df2ab56225a9cbc6dbc634699e15d768/Photo-Gap-Delayed-Discovery.pdf
9 Horelick and Rush, Strategic Power and Soviet Foreign Policy, p. 144.
10 Plokhy does not the term, which was coined by journalist Max Holland. For Holland’s account see “The ‘Photo Gap’ that Delayed the Discovery of Missiles,” pp. 13–30.
11 Holland, “The ‘Photo Gap’ that Delayed the Discovery of Missiles,” p. 4.
12 Ibid., pp. 3–4.
13 Sherman Kent, “A Crucial Estimate Relived,” Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1 January 1964), https://www.cia.gov/static/f547ed3bcd5793ff5456dc381c2df789/A-Crucial-Estimate-Relived.pdf. This article is not paginated. See also Michael Douglas Smith, “The Perils of Analysis: Revisiting Sherman Kent’s Défense of SNIE 85-3-62.” Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 51, No. 3 (2007), pp. 29–32, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol51no3/index.html
14 See Benjamin B. Fischer, “‘We May Not Always Be Right, But We’re Never Wrong’: US National Intelligence Assessments of the Soviet Union,” in The Image of the Enemy: Intelligence Analysis of Foes since 1945, edited by Paul Maddrell (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015), pp. 93–128.
15 Horelick and Rush, Strategic Power and Soviet Foreign Policy, p. 133.
16 Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk and Stefan Wolle, Roter Stern über Deutschland (Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag GmbH, 2010), p. 114.
17 In 1947, the Soviet Union, United States, Britain, and France signed multilateral peace treaties with Nazi Germany’s allies but not with either of the two German successor states.
18 Hughes, “The San Cristobal Trapezoid,” p. 45.
19 Ibid., p. 46.
20 The term precious days comes from Holland, “The ‘Photo Gap’ that Delayed the Discovery of Missiles,” p. 16.
21 Hughes, “The San Cristobal Trapezoid,” p. 45.
22 Ibid., p. 50.
23 Plokhy cites a secondary source, and a memoir by the commander of the missile forces.
24 Plokhy says that Khrushchev sent six IL-28s, but that it probably a typographical error. The actual number was 42.
25 Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997), p. 243.
26 Ibid., pp. 1–2.
27 Hughes, “The San Cristobal Trapezoid,” pp. 43, 56.
28 Ibid.
29 The task force included an aircraft carrier, two cruisers, 22 destroyers, and two guided missile frigates plus naval aircraft.
30 Raymond L. Garthoff, A Journey through the Cold War: A Memoir of Containment and Coexistence (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001), p. 187.
31 Michael Dodds, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), p. 300.
32 Plokhy contradicts himself regarding the arming of the nuclear torpedo. On p. 268, he says that the Soviet commander ordered it to be armed and prepared for firing while the submarine was still submerged. But on p. 270, he says that the order “concerned regular torpedoes.”
33 Steven J. Zaloga, The Kremlin’s Nuclear Sword: The Rise and Fall of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Forces, 1945–2000 (Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002), p. 101.
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Benjamin B. Fischer
Benjamin B. Fischer, the former Chief Historian of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is a specialist in Eastern European and Soviet affairs. He served for nine years in the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence as an analyst of Soviet issues, fifteen years in the Directorate of Operations in the United States and abroad, and ten years on the History Staff at the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence, where he edited several of the agency’s classified publications on Cold War events, some of which have been partially or fully declassified. The author can be contacted at [email protected].