388 ChaPter^7
Cuban-U.S. relations were at the forefront of global politics in that period,
and never more so than in October 1962. Castro increasingly feared another
Bay of Pigs type invasion so throughout 1962 held discussions with Krushchev
about putting nuclear-tipped SS-4 Soviet missiles in Cuba. Though the Cubans
saw these missiles as defensive, they did have the capability to reach the east-
ern half of the U.S. [they had about an 1100 mile range], and the Soviets
started to build launchers for the nuclear bombs. Even U.S. Secretary of
Defense Robert Strange McNamara later admitted, “if I had been in Moscow or
Havana at that time, I would have believed that Americans were preparing for
an invasion.” And in fact, they were. General Edward Lansdale, an expert in
psychological warfare, was in charge of “Operation Mongoose,” which hoped
to ignite a revolt against Castro inside Cuba, and in fact the U.S., since early
1962, had been conducting military maneuvers off the Cuban coast to put the
fear of an all-out invasion into Castro’s head. So the Cubans saw the Soviet
missiles as an important way to stop the U.S. from attacking, and, in reality,
they did not change the balance-of-power in North American at all [as we
noted, the U.S. had over a 20,000 to 1600 advantage in nuclear weapons] but
when American U-2 Spy Planes took photos of the missile sites under con-FIGuRE 7-11 Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev, 1960