Timothy Naftali, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of History
Director of the Presidential Recordings Project
Miller Center of Public Affairs
University of Virginia"Conversations with Fidel: Marking the 40th Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis in Havana"
December 18, 2002

In October 2002, Timothy Naftali traveled to Havana to participate in a conference marking the 40th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. George Washington University's National Security Archive and Brown University's Watson Institute for International Affairs sponsored the conference, in cooperation with the Cuban regime. Cuban President Fidel Castro hosted the conference and participated in its sessions, along with delegates from the United States, Cuba and Russia.

Timothy Naftali: Fidel had invited us to relive one of the most important moments in his life. We were big players in a remarkable fit of nostalgia, provided, sponsored, and acted in by Fidel Castro. The conference sessions were organized chronologically, beginning with the background of the crisis, the crisis itself, the long resolution of the crisis in November of 1962, and the lessons learned.

For each session, the organizers had selected veterans from various sides to speak. With the exception of Robert McNamara, the U.S. veterans spoke extemporaneously, recapitulating arguments made long ago in their biographies of J.F.K. It was, however, exciting to see Schlessinger make the case for how Kennedy had learned from the Bay of Pigs and had been deceived by the CIA, or Sorenson explaining that Kennedy had had no intention of invading Cuba in 1962. But there was nothing new in these settled beliefs, long captured in fine books and oral histories.

The new ground might come from the Cubans or the Soviets. The Soviet veterans were largely military officers. Of all the archives in Moscow, the most tightly held are the military archives. We really do not know that much about Soviet military doctrine in the Cold War. The details of the movements of ships, rules of engagement--none of these things are clear. They are all fuzzy in most histories, even the best of that period. The Cuban contributors would also, perhaps, provide us with something new. The Cuban archives are absolutely closed. What could they tell us about efforts to overturn Castro that we did not know, about their reaction to receiving the missiles, about their reaction to the outcome of this event, about their real expectations for revolution in Latin America.

I am not naïve. I did not expect much. But, I am saying that there was a lot that we could learn. Of the many things that drew me to this conference, the most important was the opportunity for me to see Fidel. It was like visiting a museum. Imagine--I had spent much time trying to figure this man out and there he was--living, breathing. Actually able, perhaps, to answer questions about his motives. It is very difficult for historians to recreate the past. The best historians are not locked into a set of documents--they have to recreate the psychology, the climate, the ideas of the time. Here he was. And here, arrayed around him, were the people who were fundamentally most important at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. There was, in a sense, an oral history project right there for the grasping. And, I would not be disappointed.

Fidel would fully meet my expectations for a dictator with energy and self-regard. Of the eleven hours of conference, split over two days, Fidel Castro must have spoken for over four of them. Every session began when Fidel entered the room. For some inexplicable reason, all of us--the scholars, the U.S. administration veterans, heck, even the Russians--stood when Fidel entered the room. All we needed was someone playing Hail to the Chief for the gathering to be completely disorienting.

Born either in 1926 or 1927 (no one really knows for sure and Fidel is not telling), Castro has been in power since New Years Day, 1959. Somewhere in the 1990's, he gave up his all drab commandant's uniform for conservative suits. He may wear the military dress on occasion, but his preferred dress is that of a retiring corporate lawyer. His hair is gray and wispier, but he looks remarkably like the young buck who challenged the world in the 1960's. The only signs of age are his fingers, which, though long, are gnarling, and his ill-fitting dentures, which seem to move in different directions from the rest of his mouth.

Castro's performance illustrated, I fear, the debilitating effect on judgment of too many years as a dictator. Frankly, Castro cannot remember the last time that he really had to listen to anyone. In Cuba, one lives on Castro Time. The way the sessions work was the following: the U.S., Soviet and Cuban veterans would speak, a few academics would chime in with questions, and then the big man would respond to everyone. Castro would begin his comments with approximately an hour left in the proceedings and then he would talk, and talk, and talk, staying on the topic at first and then diverging into other subjects. At times, these diversions were absolutely delightful.
In response to a Russian intervention, he went on about how he still lives with Soviet aerotechnology. "You know, I am the last head of state who travels in a Lucian 62" (which happens to be a horrible plane). "Do you know why?" he asked all of us. Some of us wondered why we cared, but we listened. "Because I have one and because I need to take care of our fuel economy." He then began to laugh. Whether his own little joke was about the plane's fuel economy or something else, we just could not tell. But, he continued, "so if you offered me a Boeing, I would not take it." Well, no one was about to offer him a Boeing. But, he felt he had to say that. And, if Fidel wanted to say it, he said it.

In listening to these detours, I began to wonder what it would be like to live in an authoritarian state where the authority was slipping into dementia. I am not saying that he is developing Alzheimer's, but frankly, how could one tell given that he has been rambling for four decades. No one behind Castro dared slow him down and no one interrupted him. The entire Cuban delegation wore the same frozen tired expression. The younger they were, the harder they tried to look interested. The older ones did not care anymore, with the exception, of course, of the boyish looking young foreign minister who was always chewing his fingernails. At one point, the punitive Cuban co-chair of the conference, Vice President Jose Fernandez, tried to remind Castro that lunch time was approaching: "Fernandez tells me that I have another ten minutes if we are to make our scheduled lunch break. Or, I can continue, and lunch will wait," Fidel answered. "So lunch will wait. I can assure you that it will not run away." Lunch, indeed, was served one and a half hours later.

By the way, his relationship with the punitive chief of this conference was absolutely wonderful. Jose Maria Ferndandez is about Castro's age, he just shows it a little bit worse than Castro. Fernandez was the chief of the militia forces at the time of Bay of Pigs. I went to the Museum of the Cuban Revolution and Fernandez's role in destroying the American-sponsored beach head is quite built up. He was also on a series of military purchasing missions that bought weapons for the Cubans in the early days after the revolution. But, Fidel treated him as if he were Ed McMahon, turning to him, almost in a way saying to people, "I know he is the titular head of this conference, but I am, after all, in charge."

He would taunt Fernandez, "Oh, Fernandez did you understand what I just said?" "Oh, Fernandez, you are looking a little tired." "Oh, Fernandez, don't worry. I'll finish when I have finished." My favorite was absolutely out of the blue. Fidel began to tell a story about the Bay of Pigs. He said, "you know, during the Bay of Pigs Fernandez decided that he was going to shoot on the American armada, and there he was shooting off three canons without my approval. That was very bad, Fernandez. You should never have done that. Fernandez learned from this experience. He knew that this was not a good thing. Right, Fernandez? Right?" We could not figure out why he felt he had to belittle this man. Again, what was humorous and amusing forty years later must have been terrifying in the 1960's and 70's when, clearly, Fidel was not willing to share the spotlight with anyone.

There was an incredibly intense charisma about Castro. It was astounding how electric the proceedings became when he was engaged. Not when he was in the fiftieth minute of his long discussions. Like I said, he would begin to ramble. It made sense, but there was just too much information. We were not there to learn about Cuban sugar production and Cuban educational reform and all of the things he felt he had to wrap up into his omnibus responses to questions like, "what did you think of Nikita Kruschev's decision on December 27 and the crisis?" kind of thing. But, when he became engaged, when he responded to an idea that was unfamiliar to him, as opposed to recapitulating ideas that he has known and thought about for a long time, then one could see the magic that must have drawn people to Castro during the revolution and at the height of the Cuban experience.

There was an absolutely astounding moment when Dick Goodwin began to recount his visit with Che Guevara in 1961 at the Punta El Este Conference. This was one of those accidents of history. Goodwin--self-possessed, still rather arrogant man--was a major player with the American delegation to the OAS Conference. Che lead the Cuban delegation before the Cubans were thrown out of the OAS. Che was intrigued by Goodwin and some Latin-American ambassadors thought that it would be good for Goodwin and Che to meet. So they conspired to arrange a meeting between these two unlikely interlocutors. This meeting was set up with, as most things regarding Cuba, the sharing of a cigar. Che sent a box of cigars to Richard Goodwin, and this opened up the possibility for a discussion.

Goodwin is a wonderful storyteller and managed to tell the story as if he was at the center of it, and that is fine--it is good theatre. But, what made this electric was that Fidel decided to respond. I do not know about you, but given the storied history of these Cubans and the effect that they have had on national politics, listening to Fidel Castro talk about Che Guevara is quite an exciting experience. And Fidel, I think, has completely forgotten this story so he was therefore responding to other people's memories of it.

The first thing he said was, "Che was not given instructions to meet you, but it was probably wise of Che. How interesting. Tell me more. How was Che, what did he say to you?" Castro said, "you have to understand, we were beginning our period in office. We were not writing everything down. I will ask the people in the archives." And, he turned to these nameless archivists sitting in the back and said, "have you seen evidence of this meeting between Che and the American?" They said that they did not have any evidence of the meeting. It was as if Fidel was learning about it for the first time. As he discussed Che and how Che did things sometimes on his own, you could see there that he was recalling a personality, even if he could not recall the actual event itself.

Fidel stuck to three basic themes in his talks, in the four hours that he dominated. He talked about the betrayal of Cuba by the Soviets. His statements about the United States were muted. One could see that his "charm offensive" dictated some of what he would say about us. But about the Soviets, he did not hold back. He lambasted Kruschev for having forced the missiles upon them. The Cuban position is that they never wanted the missiles. And then in a dramatic and humiliating fashion, to decide to remove them without consulting the Cuban Government at all. When Castro spoke, the passion of his anger was genuine. This was not theater. You could see it--he shook a little bit. His voice increased and his timbre changed. This man is still angry, forty years later, at the Soviets.

The second great theme was that he was the defender of Cuban sovereignty, and that, of course, is linked to this sense of betrayal. There some of the most interesting admissions were made. Fidel explained why he was willing to risk escalating this crisis by shooting down American planes without Soviet approval. On October 26 and later in November, angry at the state of the crisis and its resolution, Fidel ordered his own men to use their anti-aircraft guns against American planes that were flying low-level reconnaissance missions. The Soviets did not ask him to do this. The Soviets did not want him to do this. In fact, the Soviets sent an envoy just to tell him to stop. But, it did not matter because Fidel felt himself the embodiment of Cuban sovereignty and he was going to do whatever he pleased to show that Cuba would not be stepped on by either super power. This was a constant theme in our discussions.

It was important for us to take a dispatchment view and to realize that crisis management--that almost bloodless thing that we talk about occasionally. Fidel was not thinking about the dangers of war. He was not engaged in these rather technical and abstract thinking about nuclear war in a nuclear age you could actually do certain things. He was concerned about Cuban sovereignty. It was clear that Soviet apprehensions had been correct--Fidel was prepared to throw the two super powers into an even more dangerous crisis if he felt it necessary to ensure Cuban sovereignty. There was no doubt when he spoke that that was how he felt. The documents pretty much confirm that that was what he felt then.

As I said his statements on the United States were muted. There was but one hint of some of what he was really thinking in 1962. Again, it always came when Fidel was surprised or forced out of an old narrative. This occurred when one scholar mentioned the fact that at one point in the crisis, John Kennedy was looking desperately for ways to get out of this diplomatically and he thought that one way might be to approach Castro. He was sending messages to Kruschev and it was not working. So he decided to have a letter written for Castro that said, "Castro, you will be betrayed by the Soviet Union. Their interests and yours are not the same. You may not like us, but we understand better than you, I fear, the nature of your relationship with the Soviet Union." This letter was worked over and it was decided to send to Castro via the Brazilians.

The scholar asked Castro, "did you ever get this?" And he said, "No, I never saw this letter." We were all waiting, fearful actually, that he would go on about a missed opportunity. But he did not. He did not engage in such speculation. He simply said, "it did not matter. It would not have mattered." He explained his anger at Kennedy and his anger at the United States. There, one could see the charm offensive dissipate and the real Castro emerge. Again, as I have said, we sensed that we were actually watching him recount history. As in much of this conference, we had a sense that he was not lying, but engaging in a propagation of certain myths that have become close to him and that he has found acceptable.

Besides observing Fidel Castro, there were two issues regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis that I wanted to learn something more about when I was there. The first time you study a crisis, you study the presidents and the generals. You study the great themes and that is how you do it. But, at a certain point you have to study what the crisis was like for the dough boys and the grunts. That is what has happened in our understanding of World War II and that is why Stephen Ambrose, at the end of his career, was helping us look again at WWII.
No one really thought that one needed to do the same thing with the nuclear crisis. Again, our training was to view nuclear crisis as centrally-directed events. Once you understood what the two leaderships were thinking, you understood the crisis. What is becoming clear in the last few years is the extent to which this crisis was out of control at the level of the grunts and the dough boys. The lack of the control at that level actually had implications in a nuclear crisis--even greater than the implications they might have in a conventional war.

In my mind, the great symbol of the lack of control has to be the story of the Soviet submarines. We knew that the Soviets sent submarines to accompany the missile boats. We also knew that these Foxtrot Diesel Submarines had one nuclear-tipped torpedo out of the twenty-two in their complement. But what I did not understand until I got to the dirty, gritty details of how this worked was how unbelievably dangerous this was. I do not know what you know about submarine technology, but it is not easy to communicate with a diesel submarine. Why? Because diesel submarines have to go up to the surface every so often to recharge its batteries. It is an internal combustion engine--it needs oxygen. The way that it runs under water is that it runs on the basis of batteries.

So, these creaky diesel submarines would occasionally have to go up to recharge their batteries. But, when they are surrounded by American ships, they cannot go up unless they want to be captured, so they have to be submerged. They would stay and it would get very hot. These submarines were not built for tropical climates. The temperatures in these submarines would reach sixty degrees centigrade. These were sweat-boxes. They would fill with carbon monoxide and they could not communicate with home because the only way to communicate with home was to put your radio antenna out. To do that you had to be no more than ten meters below the surface of the water. If you are in the middle of a pursuit with American ships, you cannot get that close to the surface of the water. What does that mean? It means that these submarines during the Cuban Missile Crisis were largely in communicato and it also raises questions about what sorts of instructions these people received.

It turns out that Nikita Kruschev, in the beginning of the crisis, decided to turn the missile ships around but did not decide to turn the subs around. He kept the subs moving toward Cuba, moving towards the blockade--towards the largest blockade of American ships ever put in front of the east coast. The consequence was that these ships got caught in cat and mouse games, meaning that they could not go up to the surface as often as they needed to, it meant that air quality in these submarines were poor and, as we have learned from a submarine veteran, that in one case a Soviet commander got so overcome by the cat and mouse game that he said, "I am going to fire this and destroy that destroyer. I am going to use the nuclear torpedo. Enough. I will defend the honor of the Soviet Union. I am not going to take this anymore." For hours he had been "pinged," which is anti-submarine warfare.

We learned that in another case a submarine almost collided with the hull of an American destroyer. Both of these events happened on October 27, and I dare say that would have ratcheted up the tension enormously if there had been an incident at sea. The truth of the matter is that Moscow was not controlling, and could not control, these submarines.

The other proof of the lack of control was that it turned out that the commander of Soviet forces on the island, on his own initiative, decided to move the warheads closer to the missiles and to mate the missile warheads--the nuclear warheads--to the missiles, without approval from the Soviet Union. Again, nothing came of it, but it indicates that what happens on the ground should be as important as the decisions in the rarified atmosphere of the Excom or the Kremlin.

The other issue of great interest to me was the Cuban objectives at the end of the crisis. The one question that I was able to ask Fidel Castro, because the academics were allowed a question, was about Cuba's desire to hold onto the short range nuclear missiles after the crisis. When Alexander Forsanko and I did our book, we discovered to our chagrin that the Soviet policy on removing the big missiles was different from their policy on removing the small missiles. The small missiles could not hit Miami, but they could absolutely devastate a beach head. If Rommel had had five of these short missiles, he could have prevented the establishment of the second front in Normandy. Each of these would have created a crater of a half kilometer size and a ring of radioactivity around it that would have killed every single soldier, if not immediately, within a year of the blast.

The Soviets gave twelve of these to the Cubans and fully intended to train the Cubans to have them. The Soviet intention was that Cuba would become a nuclear power, that weapons of mass destruction--as we call them--would be in Cuban hands by the end of 1962. I wanted to confirm this. This was not a good time to be asking a third world country whether they once wanted weapons of mass destruction, I must tell you. The Cubans are especially concerned about being viewed as part of the Axis of Evil. But, I was able to ask the question. Though Castro's initial answer was good for CNN, as he continued to ramble, it became clear that indeed the Cubans had wanted to hold onto nuclear weapons. They did not believe that John Kennedy meant that he would stand by his non-invasion pledge. They felt that the Soviets were naïve in believing that the threat to them was over. They looked forward to being able to destroy, with nuclear weapons, any American attempt to attack them.

As it turns out, because of Fidel Castro's misbehavior in November, the Soviet's changed their policy and by the end of November, the Soviets decided to remove all nuclear warheads from Cuba. The one thing that was true in 1962 and it's true today is that you cannot detect nuclear warheads without being close to them. You need a Geiger counter to pick up the radioactivity and unless you are standing next to it, it is very hard to do. The United States was never able in 1962 to detect all the warheads. There was no way for the Kennedy Administration to know if the Soviets had pulled out their warheads. Soviet materials now make clear that they did, despite what Cuba had hoped for.

I am not wrong in seeing the Cuban Missile Crisis as the most dangerous thing of the war. In fact, I would correct myself in saying that it was more dangerous than I had assumed. Fidel has not changed. We learned a lot from him.