Operation Anadyr

Perhaps the most fundamental deception in Operation Anadyr was the code name itself. To an American intelligence analyst poring over intercepted Soviet military communications, "Anadyr" would suggest anything but a movement of Soviet troops to the Caribbean. The Anadyr is a river that flows into the Bering Sea, and also the name of a Soviet district capital and a remote bomber base, both in the far east of the Soviet Union. Thus, both American analysts and rank-and-file Soviet soldiers, prone to starting rumors and leaking information, would most likely have expected the operation to be a military exercise in the northern vastness of the USSR.[7]

In the early planning stages of Operation Anadyr, only five senior officers on the General Staff were privy to the details of the deployment or its actual location. They alone prepared every feature of the enterprise, enough work to keep scores of staff busy for weeks, but so stringent was the demand for secrecy that no one else was allowed into this small coterie. The plans were handwritten to deny knowledge of the operation to even a single secretary.[8]

The logistical preparations for Anadyr were equally covert. Men and matériel were moved by railway to four northern ports and four on the Black Sea. Foreigners were barred from the ports during this period, and most loading occurred under the cover of darkness. Troops awaiting the voyage were restricted to barracks and denied contact with the outside world. The same restrictions were placed on the sailors of the transport ships. During the wait, Soviet soldiers kept busy by constructing false superstructures with plywood to hide the ships' defenses, and even on-deck field kitchens. Metal sheets were placed over missiles and missile launchers, which were too large to be stored below decks on most vessels, to prevent detection by infrared surveillance. Other military equipment was stored below decks. Agricultural equipment and other non-military machinery was placed on deck to add to the subterfuge. Once underway, the Soviet troops were not allowed on deck, except at night, and even then only in small groups.[9]

Instructions to the troops and ship crews were carried by special couriers to prevent Western intelligence services from intercepting electronic communications regarding the operation. The ships' captains received their instructions, which revealed their final destination, only after they had put out to sea. The instructions were given to them by a KGB officer aboard who had been entrusted with the envelope prior to departure. Every vessel carried thick folders of information on various countries for the officers aboard to review. Only after the destination was revealed were they specifically instructed to study Cuba.[9]

Soviet denial and deception measures were equally rigid upon the ships' arrival in Cuba. The vessels unloaded at eleven ports to complicate adversarial surveillance. While non-military equipment was unloaded in daylight, matériel with obvious military qualities was unloaded and transported to its end destination only at night. The same applied to major troop movements, and Soviet military positions were generally in sparsely populated areas of the island. The Soviet troops were even forbidden to wear their uniforms, in order to make the Soviet military presence deniable. Instead, they wore civilian attire. Simultaneously, as a false explanation for the presence of the men and equipment, the Soviet media trumpeted the massive agricultural assistance that the Soviets were ostensibly providing to their Cuban comrades.[10]

The Soviets employed an equally extensive array of diplomatic ruses to disguise their activities in Cuba. Khrushchev embarked on a tour of the Soviet republics in Central Asia for much of the duration of Anadyr. During this time, he explicitly avoided all hostile references to the United States.[11]

The Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, was a primary instrument in transmitting diplomatic assurances that only defensive weaponry was being supplied to Cuba. On September 4, 1962, for instance, Dobrynin personally asked Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to inform President Kennedy that no ballistic missiles or other offensive armaments had been transported to Cuba. Dobrynin was repeating a message from Khrushchev himself. Later, he would again deny the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba.[11][12][13]

A KGB officer posted at the Soviet embassy, Georgi Bolshakov, was another source of disinformation. Bolshakov met regularly with Robert Kennedy, who believed him to be an honest diplomat and a discreet communications channel to Khrushchev. Robert Kennedy seemed to personally trust Bolshakov, and President Kennedy came to rely on his information. Throughout the duration of Operation Anadyr, Bolshakov assured the Kennedy brothers that Moscow had no aspirations of turning Cuba into a forward strike base. Bolshakov lost their trust only when the president was shown photographs, taken by a Lockheed U-2 surveillance aircraft, of Soviet ballistic missiles on Cuban soil.[14]

The Soviet media also disseminated misinformation to the public and the world's political leaders. On September 11, the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union claimed that the USSR was supplying exclusively defensive weaponry to Cuba to deter American aggression, and that it had no need to place offensive weapons outside of its own soil. Pravda, the official newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party, even censored elements of a speech made by Cuba's leader, Fidel Castro, that hinted at the Soviets' ability to strike the United States from Cuba.[11][15]

Kennedy was not the only president whom the Soviets attempted to deceive. They also fed false information to the Communist Party of Cuba, overstating the American threat to Cuba, to persuade Cuban leaders to allow Soviet nuclear weapons to be deployed to the island.

Some non-Soviets, however, were privy to accurate information regarding both the American threat and Soviet intentions. The KGB waged a deception campaign in support of Anadyr that involved feeding partially or even wholly correct information to the Cuban émigré community in Miami, Florida. The Soviets knew that information from Cuban exile organizations was perceived by the American intelligence services as highly unreliable. They assumed, correctly, that the Americans would discount warnings from the community as lies that the Cuban émigrés hoped would prompt an American invasion of Cuba and an overthrow of the Castro regime.[16][17][18] This assessment was bitterly remembered by the Cuban exile community in the United States. Cuban expatriates, particularly the Truth About Cuba Committee, later condemned the Kennedy administration for its failure to perceive Soviet activities in Cuba despite accurate reports.[18]

U-2 image of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba.

The Soviet denial and deception campaign was highly effective, but the eventual discovery of the missile emplacements, which occurred after they were operational, was almost inevitable. American imagery analysis of the Soviet vessels sailing for Cuba had proven fruitless; no indication that the ships carried anything other than non-military equipment was visible. Some American analysts speculated that some of the larger ships might be carrying nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in their holds, but no definitive evidence existed until those missiles were already on Cuban soil.[19] Finally, on October 14, an American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft photographed Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba. President Kennedy received the images two days later. On October 23, six Vought F-8 Crusader reconnaissance aircraft gathered clearer images from a lower altitude that provided definitive proof of the deployment of Soviet nuclear weapons. The following morning, President Kennedy authorized the blockade that began the actual crisis.[20]