![]() ![]() INT: There's been quite a lot of discussion and certainly in your book, General Grimkov talks about the fact that the Soviets had tactical nuclear weapons on Cuba. But I don't think they really thought that was going to happen and therefore they planned to have an invasion of army and marine forces of Cuba that would follow, once it became clear that the air strikes had not succeeded in making Castro surrender. WS: Yeah, the Joint Chiefs, in planning for the invasion of Cuba decided that it would begin with an air strike against all the air defenses of Cuba and all the major military installations that they knew, all of this of course with non-nuclear weapons and they would hope that that destruction of a large portion of Castro's military capability would induce him to say, OK, I give up and then surrender. So what was the Joint Chiefs' first reaction? If you think about the air strikes, what was their plan of attack so to speak? The Joint Chiefs' relations with President Kennedy and the people close to him was damaged very seriously by the Bay of Pigs' invasion, because President Kennedy thought the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not give him direct enough advice on a CIA operation and he actually held the military more responsible than he did the CIA and therefore he did not have that much confidence in the Joint Chiefs going in to the. therefore what the Joint Chiefs recommended, which was often military judgement, because at that time they were not very good military analysts, so they were the Joint Chiefs' relations with Secretary MacNamara were never good. military judgement did not count for much and. ![]() Secretary MacNamara, when he came in, brought in the whiz kids, who believed that everything could be determined by quantitative analysis and that if you could count something, you understood it. WS: Yeah, the relationship between the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs was not good. just moving slightly backwards, what was the relationship like at that time between certainly the Secretary of Defense, MacNamara, and the Joint Chiefs and the Kennedy administration? Once they were told to try to quarantine, they would try the quarantine, but that was not their first option. WS: The Joint Chiefs' reaction to the quarantine was that the time would be better spent by invading Cuba sooner. INT:Ěnd what was the Joint Chiefs' reaction to the quarantine? And they said, OK, change the name and so say we'll have a quarantine of certain military supplies going into Cuba. As they thought about that later, they said, OK, we may invade, but if we do invade there are not many Russians there - we under-estimated how many - but there are some Russians who would be killed, how would the Russians react and therefore the conversation at the Excom came around to what other than invasion can we do? Is there some way we can get those missiles removed without the direct use of military force? And they came up with the idea, they first called a blockade and they said, well look, you know, a blockade's an act of war, you can't have a blockade. the missiles being ready at this point, yes that, you know, we should invade. You know, that's right, we want to get rid of Castro, we're ready, we can invade, we're not worried about. WS: Well, the Excom's reaction at first was, yeah, that's a good idea. INT:Ěnd what was Kennedy's reaction to that? What was Kennedy and the, what later became known as Excom, what was their reaction? And so they were for taking military action against Cuba to get rid of those missiles, but also to get rid of Castro. Now the Russians are putting some missiles in there, they're not yet operational, they will be soon, we can within X number of days invade Cuba, we recommend that you invade Cuba. You told us through the Secretary of Defense, as late as the first of October to be prepared to invade Cuba if we have to. President, you have been telling us for a long time you wanted to get rid of Castro, you have had us as part of Operation Mongoose develop a plan to invade Cuba. What did you find out was the Joint Chiefs of Staff's immediate reaction to the threat of the missiles in Cuba? What did they advise Kennedy's government to do? ![]()
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