The Continuing Crisis

Cuba was still there. So was Communist Castro. And there was as yet no positive, on-site assurance that all the offensive weapons provided by Russia had been removed. Thus, although it tended to get lost in the election-week headlines, Cuba remained a continuing crisis.

Swooping low-over the island, U.S. Air Force RF-101 jets and Navy F8U reconnaissance planes returned with pictures indicating that the Russians were dismantling their Cuban missile bases as promised. When subsequent pictures showed missiles being hurriedly loaded aboard nine Soviet freighters, the Department of Defense confidently announced that "the U.S. Government has confirmed that medium-range ballistic-missile and intermediate-range ballistic-missile equipment is being removed from Cuba.''

Bomber Threat. The next day, according to an agreement quietly worked out by the U.S. and Russia, there occurred in the seas off Cuba one of the strangest scenes in maritime history. U.S. warships pulled up alongside homeward-bound Soviet freighters while Russian crewmen obediently pulled back the canvas wrappings that covered the long, cylindric objects on the decks. Assistant Secretary of Defense Arthur Sylvester declared that "responsible people of this Government" were convinced that the ships were indeed carrying missiles back to the Soviet Union.

Originally. President Kennedy had insisted that inspectors must be permitted to enter Cuba to oversee the dismantling of the Soviet missiles. And last week, spokesmen for the Kennedy Administration still pledged that the U.S. would at least insist upon U.N. "presence" in Cuba to seek out any remaining Soviet missiles. But in Cuba, Castro reportedly continued to tell Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan that he would never submit to such inspection.

The U.S. was also becoming increasingly worried about the estimated 70 Il-28 ''Beagle" jet bombers that had been shipped into Cuba by the Soviet Union. Armed with nuclear bombs, the planes have a combat radius of 750 miles--far enough to reach New Orleans, Montgomery, Ala., and Charleston. S.C. The Administration last week was telling the Russians at the U.N. that the planes must go, along with the missiles. But the Russians blandly said that the bombers were Cuban property, and Castro vowed they would never be returned.

Need to Know. As the fog of talk grew thicker the U.S. Navy announced that its ships recently had detected and followed Soviet submarines in the Caribbean and the Atlantic until they surfaced. The subs were allowed to go peacefully on their way. Although the U.S. military buildup continued, the Administration, as far as anyone on the outside knew, had put no strong pressure on the Soviet Union by insisting that U.N. inspectors be allowed into Cuba by a specified deadline--or else. To many, this tolerant attitude suggested that Kennedy may have struck some kind of understanding with Khrushchev in some of their still-secret correspondence. Top Administration officials vehemently denied any such deal, beyond the no-invasion pledge in return for the missile removal.

But there remained the fateful fact of a number of communications between the U.S. and a foreign power on which the U.S. people had not been given the details. These might contain further terms of the contract to which each ruler had committed his country. If so. the sooner the President made them public, the better for him and his nation.

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