Castro joked, JFK firm in 1962 missile crisis

PARIS (Reuter) - President Fidel Castro cracked jokes as the world hovered on the brink of nuclear war during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis between Washington and Moscow, according to official documents published Thursday.

The French daily Le Monde carried what it said were the most extensive excerpts ever published of Castro's account of the crisis and of White House meetings during the stand-off over Soviet nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba.

Recently declassified recordings of the White House meetings also show President John F. Kennedy resisting intense pressure from hawkish generals to invade the Communist-ruled island.

Vincent Touze, a French academic who obtained a copy of Castro's secret account in Cuba and found the Kennedy passages in newly declassified tapes, told Le Monde the documents showed how little control Castro had over Soviet arms and the crucial role Kennedy played in avoiding a nuclear war.

The crisis, which could have been the opening to a third world war, began Oct. 15, 1962 when U.S. spy planes spotted Soviet missiles on Cuba and ended Oct. 28 when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev said they would be withdrawn.

Castro, in a secret 1968 speech to his communist party's central committee, said: ``We were in the antechamber of the holocaust and we were cracking jokes...Of course we knew that we would be made to play the part of the dead man, but we were determined to play the part.''

Castro was less sure about his ally Khrushchev, who he says bungled from the start the risky bid to deploy missiles just off the Florida coast, and admitted the Cubans were naive.

``We did not know what a missile of that type looked like, nor where it should be installed,'' he said.

``If we had known what the missiles looked like, and if the problem of camouflaging the equipment had been left to us, how easy it would have been to...camouflage everything,'' he said.

Castro said the Soviet troops' failure to hide the missiles was so blatant some Cubans suspected it was done on purpose.

``I can assure them that this is completely wrong: it was a disaster, a total lack of foresight,'' he said.

Castro said he suggested 1,000 missiles when a Soviet field marshal visited Havana to propose deploying the weapons. But Moscow offered 40, with some more aboard submarines.

Castro said he had wanted to inform Washington of the Soviet-Cuban defense agreement before the missiles could be spotted. But Khrushchev rejected the suggestion in July 1962.

Castro's defense minister and brother Raul, who made the suggestion on a trip to Moscow with the late Ernesto ``Che'' Guevara, told the Central Committee: ``Khrushchev, who was very rude, said 'Don't worry, I'll grab Kennedy by the balls'.''

The White House tapes, declassified in October 1996, showed leading U.S. military men pressing hard for an invasion of Cuba and civilian advisers torn between intervention and the naval blockade Kennedy finally chose.

``I just don't see any other solution except direct intervention -- right now,'' U.S. Air Force chief Curtis Le May is quoted as telling Kennedy on Oct. 19.

``In my judgment, from a military point of view, the lowest risk course of action, if we are thinking of protecting the people of the United States against a possible strike on us, is to go ahead with a surprise air strike, the blockade and invasion,'' said U.S. Army chief Earle Wheeler.

``If you want to take over the place, and really put in a new government that is non-Communist, then you will have to invade the place,'' said Marine Corps head David Shoup, pounding the table. ``Don't frig around, go and take the missiles out.''

When Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman William Fulbright offered a similar view to the president three days later, Kennedy replied:

``Some people would say, 'Let's go in there with an air strike'. You'd have these bombs go off and blow up 15 cities in the United States, and they would have been wrong.''

Kennedy, backed by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, announced instead a blockade of Cuba Oct. 22, and Soviet ships carrying strategic missiles to the island turned back two days later.

The excerpts show that Kennedy was still considering bombing or invading Cuba as late as Oct. 26 but preferred to stick to a diplomatic showdown. The crisis ended Oct. 28 with the Soviet leader backing down.

Le Monde has posted transcripts and audio excerpts of the Kennedy tapes on its Internet site (www.lemonde.fr).

Christian Ostermann of the Cold War International History Project said the tapes, though available to scholars and journalists since October, had been slow to come to public attention primarily for technical reasons.

``Most of them have not been transcribed. Most are extremely hard to understand. It's a major transcription job,'' he said in a telephone interview from Washington.

01:35 08-15-97