US Reveals Secret Documents on Cuban Missile Crisis

HAVANA TIMES — The National Security Archive (NSA), an independent US research center, released about 2,700 pages of declassified documents on Friday related to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, reported the Cubaencuentro website.

These include the draft of a letter that was sent to Fidel Castro with a warning that by deploying the missiles the Soviets “had created serious issues for Cuba” and that keeping them on the island would cause the US to take “measures of vital importance for the future of Cuba.”

The letter “set off a chain of events that led to complex behind the scenes diplomacy between Washington and Havana,” said NSA in one statement.

Among the documents are also notes by the then attorney general Robert F. Kennedy and his brother, President John F. Kennedy, on the so-called “Black Saturday” (October 27, 1962), when it was feared that a nuclear war would break out between the two superpowers.

The details of the “rapprochement” between the Kennedy administration and Castro were a state secret for 40 years, until 2004, when their diplomatic efforts were reported for the first time.