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Servando González,
The Nuclear Deception:
Nikita Khrushchev and the
Cuban Missile Crisis
(INTELLIGENCE AND ESPIONAGE)
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Published by Spooks Books
(an imprint of InteliBooks)
Softcover, 432 pages, index, more than
1300 footnotes.
ISBN: 0-9711391-5-6
List price: $24.95
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What if most of what you have
ever read about the Cuban missile crisis is not true? See how
pseudo-history has been used to bolster the kind of fears that
translates into corporate profit.
This is the book Fidel Castro, Robert McNamara, the CIA, some
American scholars, and a few Soviet ex-spies, don't want you
to read.
Read one of the book's chapters for free (PDF)
(IMPORTANT NOTICE:This book is protected by International Copyright
©
laws. You can dowload the free chapter and print it for your
own use. You cannot distribute it in printed or electronic form,
make extra copies, or put it on the Web. If you agree with the
terms above, you can download the chapter now.)
About the Book
The event known as the Cuban missile crisis, the greatest
of all Cold War crises, is a milestone in the history of the
Cold War. Some analysts even have concluded that what was called
the Cold War ended in 1962 with the Cuban missile crisis. Yet
there is perhaps no single event in recent history as puzzling
as this one. There are many questions that still remain unanswered.
Why did Khrushchev risk so much? What was his ultimate purpose?
Why did he withdraw so fast? Why did he not retaliate at other
sensitive points, like Berlin? Why did President Kennedy not
seize the heaven-sent opportunity to get rid of Castro? Why did
the Americans permit the shootdown of a U-2 plane over Cuba without
taking retaliatory actions? Who shot down the U-2, and under
what conditions did it happen? Why did Kennedy allow the Soviet
ships to leave Cuba without boarding them, to physically verify
that the canvas-covered objects on deck were actually missiles
and their nuclear warheads on their way back to the U.S.S.R.?
According to the author, the main questions of the crisis have
eluded satisfactory answers, first, because most of the analysts
who have studied it have neglected the true Cuban role in the
event, particularly the Russo-Cuban relations prior to the crisis;
secondly, because a set of preconceived notions -like the one
that assumes that Khrushchev was full of love for Fidel- have
acted as a smoke screen, blurring the whole picture; and, finally,
because the fundamental question about the crisis, namely, why
Khrushchev installed strategic nuclear missiles in Cuba, has
been erroneously formulated. Consequently, it has been impossible
to find the right answer to a question, when the question itself
is wrong.
Author and former Cuban military intelligence officer Servando
Gonzalez has advanced a controversial but well-supported hypothesis
that there were never any nuclear warheads in Cuba at all--that
the Crisis had been an unintended consequence of a May 1962 plan
hatched by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev as a means of getting
the United States to invade Cuba in order to depose Castro, whom
the Soviets were beginning to see as an unstable and troublesome
ally, one who was fast becoming a major political and financial
liability to the Kremlin.
-- Wikipedia
About the Author
Servando González is a Cuban-born American writer.
He received his training as a historian at the University of
Havana. He has written books, essays, articles, and multimedia
on Cuban history, intelligence and espionage, semiotics, hypertext,
and art history. During the Cuban missile crisis he was an officer
in the Cuban army.
González is the author of Historia herética
de la revolución fidelista (San Francisco, 1986);
Observando (San Francisco, 1986), and The Secret Fidel
Castro (Oakland, 2001). His articles have been published
in many magazines, newspapers, and Web sites. Servando is an
Apple Macintosh certified multimedia developer, and has authored
many computer programs, among them: Hypertext for Beginners,
Popol Vuh: An Interactive Text/Graphics Adventure, The Riddle
of the Swastika: A Study in Symbolism, and How to Create
Your Own Personal Intelligence Agency. He has created many
Web sites for himself and for others; among them CastroMania:
The Fidel Watch, FAQs About Fidel Castro, Tyrant Aficionado,
The Swastika and the Nazis, and Memoirs of a Computer Heretic.
BOOK CONTENTS
Acknowledgements xi
Preface xiii
Questions and More Questions xiii
This Elusive Thing We Call "History" xiv
Objectivity and the Historian xvi
A Non-Conventional Approach to History xviii
Note on Style and Sources xx
Introduction 22
The Official Story 22
PART ONE: Living With a Goat
One: Khrushchev's Lies 29
Khrushchev Speaks 29
Fidel Tells his Version of the Story 33
Khrushchev's Schemes 36
Two: Castro's Unexplainable Rush to Communism 40
Latin America and the Soviets 41
The Cuban Communists and Fidel 43
The Russians are Not Coming 49
Fidel Pulls a Fast One 50
Communist "Infiltration" Continues 51
Finally, the Russians are Coming 53
Suddenly, Fidel Becomes a "Marxist" 55
Three: Khrushchev's Problems 58
The U.S.S.R. and Latin America 58
Figuratively Speaking... 63
Khrushchev Backs Fidel 66
Khrushchev Enters Muddy Waters 71
Underdevelopment... But Just a Little 77
Che Guevara's Economic Idealism 80
The Ruble Stops Here 82
Four: Coup d'Ètat Khrushchev-Style 88
The "Escalante Affair" 88
The DGI and the Russians 93
The Enigmatic Kudryavtsev 94
The Revolutionary Instructors and the Rebel Army 97
Castro's Victory 102
Five: Khrushchev's Plan 106
Nikita Gets an Idea 106
Khrushchev's Plan in Action 109
"Deception" and "Stealth" 113
Khrushchev Sends Clear Signals 116
Khrushchev's "Errors" 119
Six: Khrushchev's Spy 124
Penkovsky: the CIA's Greatest Success 124
Was Penkovsky a Soviet Plant? 126
The KGB and Disinformation 129
Penkovsky: a Soviet Deception Exercise? 132
Seven: Khrushchev's Failure 136
None So Blind... 137
McCone's "Hunch" and the "Photographic Gap"139
Confusion in Moscow 141
Khrushchev's "Miscalculations" 143
Eight: The Trigger-Happy Tyrant 149
Fidel's Extraordinary Love for Nuclear Missiles 150
Castro's Attempt to Destroy New York 154
The Russians See Nothing, Do Nothing 154
Who Pushed the Button? 156
Franqui's Bizarre Story 158
Khrushchev and Castro's Even More Bizarre Stories 160
Nine: Khrushchev's Goat 162
A Letter Written in Terror 162
Khrushchev Got Cold Feet 165
Khrushchev's Appeasement Rituals 168
PART TWO: This is Not a Missile
Ten: A Missile is a Missile is a Missile 177
Is "Photographic Evidence" Evidence at All? 177
Missiles and Signs of Missiles 180
Strategic Missiles as Symbols 186
The Treachery of Intelligence Images 188
A Logical Conclusion 191
Eleven: Starry-eyed Historians VS. Hard-nosed Spies 193
Are Historians too Gullible to Write Spy Stories? 194
Historians and Intelligence Analysts 196
The Spy With a Multiple Personality Disorder 198
Twelve: The Blight, Allyn, Welch, et al., Paper Mill 203
Scholars and Intelligence Services 204
The National Security "Archive" 210
The Value of Documents 212
Documents, or Images of Documents? 213
The Outoboros of American Politics 215
Scholars, or Spies? 217
Oral History; But Whose? 219
Dezinformatsia, Inc. 220
PART THREE: Was There Ever a Cuban Missile
Crisis?
Thirteen: Decision-Making in the Kremlin and in the White
House 227
Decision-Making and Decision-Makers 228
Rational and Irrational Decision-Making 229
Khrushchev's Pet Plan 232
Unsound Theories 235
Kennedy's "Irrational" Behavior 237
Little Brother Was Watching Them 243
Eyeball to Eyeball Machismo 244
Fourteen: The Missile Crisis that Never Was 247
What is a "Crisis"? 248
The Notorious September Estimate 251
Was the Cuban Crisis a Real Crisis? 256
Awareness 257
Decision-Making Time 259
Threat 260
The Incredibly Shrinking Nuclear Warheads 263
The Metamorphosis of the Soviet Missiles 267
Kennedy's Politics 271
How Close to the Brink? 273
Was the Crisis a Pseudo-event? 275
Epilogue: More Questions Than Answers 278
The "Lessons" of the Cuban Missile Crisis 279
The Aftermath of the Crisis 282
Two, Three... Many Vietnams 286
A Few Conclusions 291
A Personal Note 293
Appendixes
Appendix 1: The Evaluation of Information 295
Notes 297
Selected Bibliography 395
Index 421
In Place of a Colophon 431
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