Fear, Terror Behind the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962

THE 55^TH ANNIVERSARY OF CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS OF OCTOBER 16-28, 1962

John W. Spring

As the American whose analytic reports revealed the early stages of construction for the nuclear missile launch sites at Pinar del Rio Province where intermediate-range ballistic missiles would be deployed in northwestern Cuba that could reach within a radius of 2,200 nautical miles or at least 2,532 miles with thermonuclear warheads that could destroy all U.S. retaliatory facilities in America without any warning so that Soviet ICBMs deployed in Siberia could have devastated and obliterated the entire continental United States that would have killed 170 million American people, if I were unable to connect the pieces of that diabolical puzzle together in time, no longer would there be an America today except for a land of nuclear waste. That was in the fall of 1961.

While I was proud of my accomplishment at the age of 22 years, and very grateful for the short letter that was written and signed by President John F. Kennedy, which was followed by two more letters that were sent on behalf of the President from the Department of State and Pentagon, it also placed me with the need for mandatory secrecy in order to survive in a diabolical world that plays for keeps. So during the rest of the Cold War and beyond, I had kept a very low profile about my earlier findings, later confirmed by U-2 aerial reconnaissance flight photos that were analyzed by U.S. Naval Intelligence, which then became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Cuban Missile Crisis during October 16-28 in 1962 became a great success for JFK and also a humiliating failure for Soviet Chairman Nikita S. Khrushchev, who was not only determined to find the person responsible for uncovering his diabolical plot to “bury” America, but to also later assassinate the President of the United States who had received my report of his clandestine plan.

Because apparently it was unthinkable that an American private citizen could have analyzed such a secret plan without access to a high-ranking Soviet official, the Kremlin focused its search for spies in the former Soviet Union. Russian GRU military officer Colonel Oleg Penkovsky was arrested by Soviet KGB, severely tortured and executed on May 16, 1963. In November 22, 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Soviet KGB agents from Mexico City in Mexico that was only 811 nautical miles or 933 miles from Dallas, Texas in the United States.

So you can imagine what might have happened to me if the KGB had become aware of me and it was the reason I had to keep silent about the proudest moments of my life for staying alive.

JWS