AS SOON AS Steve Heyser touched down at McCoy Air Force Base in Orlando, technicians removed the film, all 6,000 feet of it, and sealed it in a special shipping container. Brigadier General Dale Smith, Strategic Air Command director of intelligence, then took control of it, boarded a waiting air force aircraft, and flew directly to Washington, DC. There, an armed guard drove Smith and the film to a used-car dealership on the corner of Fifth and K Streets, which secretly housed the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC).
As the film was making its way to Washington, Heyser was being debriefed. He had no idea what the footage contained; his job was to fly the aircraft and manipulate the cameras. He described his mission most nonchalantly: “A piece of cake—a milk run.”1 Later, in an interview, he explained that although he was well aware of the significance and danger of his flight, his training and years of preparation allowed him to focus on the mission and not worry. And he gave credit to the spy plane itself, saying, “At least we weren’t concerned about the basics, as to whether or not the airplane would perform. Over a period of months and years, several hundred hours of flying time, we’ve got an idea what our own capabilities are.”
After the debriefing, Steve went to bed. He and Rudy Anderson would likely be flying again the very next day, and this time they would be covering a much bigger swath of Cuba, flying over even more of the surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) pointed skyward.
ON RECEIVING THE film, analysts at the NPIC in Washington immediately began the task of painstakingly reviewing every feature of 928 images. Led by Arthur Lundahl, director of the NPIC, the specialists needed hours to scrutinize the film. Several sets of eyes had to identify and confirm suspicious vehicles, equipment, buildings, and anything potentially related to the military; certain photos had to be enlarged and labeled. Special optical devices magnified the details, which, for film shot from thirteen miles up, were quite clear. You could make out objects as little as two feet wide.
However, the larger objects on the ground in San Cristobal first caught the analysts’ attention and then took their breath away. Photo interpreters found what they were searching for and feared: hard evidence that the Soviets were installing medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) sites. At approximately 4:30 p.m. on Monday, October 15, one of the interpreters announced, “We’ve got MRBMs in Cuba.”
The analysts counted eight unmistakable missile transporters and four erector-launchers. Canvas covers on the trailers hid the missiles, but the cloaked cargo fit the length of SS4 MRBMs (sixty-seven feet), a missile more than capable of reaching Washington, DC, or New York City. The photos also showed long tents, large enough to accommodate more ballistic missiles. No one knew if the nuclear warheads were also there. (In fact, by October 15 some warheads were indeed in Cuba.) The launchers were in tentative firing position.
Surrounding the missile sites were several military vehicles and smaller tents to serve as barracks for the missile teams. SAM sites were spread further out. Analysts reviewed the images again and again, comparing the length of the missiles not only to photos of ballistic missiles taken by U-2s over the Soviet Union but also to photos smuggled out of the Soviet Union by a spy, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky. The colonel also gave the CIA field manuals and technical documents regarding the installation of ballistic missiles. This information was so useful that analysts could identify missile support equipment and even roughly determine the installation’s readiness and status.
When all experts at the photographic center agreed that the images in fact showed ballistic missiles and their launch sites, Lundahl presented their findings to deputy CIA director Marshall Carter. (John McCone was now on the West Coast at the funeral of his stepson.) Carter asked the staff at NPIC to double-check all their work. More experts on nuclear missiles were marshaled to review the photos: if they were going to tell the president that the Soviets had offensive missiles in Cuba, they had to be absolutely sure. Analysts even compared the canvas-covered missiles at San Cristobal with those in the Moscow May Day parade. Finally, by early evening, every expert agreed: it was time to tell the White House what Steve Heyser’s photos revealed.
National Security Advisor Mac Bundy received the startling news by phone while hosting a dinner party at his Washington, DC, home. CIA deputy director Ray Cline spoke cryptically over a secure line. “Those things we’ve been worrying about,” he told Bundy. “It looks as though we’ve really got something.”
“You sure?” Bundy asked.2
Cline assured Bundy it was true.
Marshall Carter then contacted Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, a forty-six-year-old “whiz kid” from California and former president of the Ford Motor Company. On the evening of October 15, for the first time key Kennedy administration officials knew for sure that the Soviets were establishing a nuclear beachhead less than a hundred miles from the shore of the United States.
As bad as the situation was, it could have been worse. Had Heyser and his U-2 not undertaken the risky mission over San Cristobal, the United States might not have learned about the missiles until they were fully operational and equipped with the nuclear warheads. JFK would have been trapped. He could have done nothing, or if he tried to destroy the missiles, the Cubans and Soviets would have managed to fire some before all were destroyed. And that would have begun a nuclear war.
It fell to Bundy to alert the president, and in a controversial decision, he opted not to do so immediately. JFK had just spent a long day stumping for Democratic congressional candidates in New York State, and knowing the president would not make a spur-of-the-moment decision on his own, Bundy reasoned he needed a good night’s sleep before being thrust into the eye of a storm that would surely consume him for days to come. Bundy later explained, “To remain a secret everything should go on as nearly normal as possible. In particular there should be no hastily summoned meeting Monday night. This was not something that could be dealt with on the phone.”3
WHILE WASHINGTON PHOTO analysts were hard at work poring over the film on October 15, McCoy Air Force Base in Orlando was also a hub of activity. Two more missions over Cuba’s interior had been ordered. There was no question which pilots would go: the two with the most experience, Heyser and Anderson. Heyser had only accumulated the minimal amount of rest between flights, but he was cleared to fly, and both men started their preflight preparation early in the morning. This included breathing pure oxygen for an hour to eliminate nitrogen bubbles in the blood. Just as a deep-sea diver can get the bends, the U-2 pilots would experience the same crippling pain if not for the prebreathing of oxygen.
At this time of year cloud cover could be expected over much of Cuba, but the pilots were fortunate; October 15 was a mostly clear day. Rudy Anderson took off in the late morning, and Steve Heyser launched just a few minutes later. These flights were even more dangerous than the one Heyser had just undertaken. Instead of crossing over a small section of Cuba, the two pilots would cover far more territory, greatly increasing their exposure to SAMs.
The Soviets tracked the flights but ordered the men on the ground who controlled the SAMs to hold fire. Khrushchev knew he was only days away from having the missiles operational and calculated he could have them completed before the young president made his move. In fact he predicted Kennedy would be indecisive, but the downing of a US plane might prompt him to act. Better to withhold fire and get the missiles up and running.
Steve Heyser later said of the flights, “With the two sorties, we made several passes back and forth across the island and covered pretty much all of it. It was an exceptionally good weather day.”4 Rudy’s flight was the longer of the two, lasting five hours and fifty-five minutes, while Heyser’s reconnaissance mission lasted five and a half hours.
The two pilots knew their assignments were important, but neither could guess the extent to which a group of the nation’s most powerful men would use those photos in decision-making that could very well have led to the end of the world as we know it.