CRUDE TRICKS AT CIENFUEGOS

By Henry Kissinger

"In foreign policy," writes Kissinger, "crude tricks are almost always self-defeating." The Russians tried to get away with a grand deception in Cuba during the summer of 1970 (just as they may have tried again, this time to the discomfiture of the Carter Administration, which is negotiating this week over a brigade of Soviet troops identified last month in Cuba). On Aug. 4, 1970, the Soviet charge in Washington called on Kissinger with an inquiry from Moscow: Was the 1962 Kennedy-Khrushchev understanding on Cuba, reached in the wake of the missile crisis, still in force? The timing of the question puzzled Kissinger, but he checked with Nixon and reported back that the understanding, which barred emplacement of any offensive weapon or offensive delivery system on Cuban soil, was indeed still in effect. Some three weeks later Kissinger discovered why the Russians were suddenly so interested.

On Cuba's southern coast there is a port named Cienfuegos. Its harbor can be reached only by a single channel leading to a bay dotted by a number of small islands, on one of these islands, Cayo Alcatraz, a U-2 on Aug. 26 photographed new construction activity that had not been evident during a flight eleven days earlier. All that could be definitely identified was work on a wharf and on some new barracks. In itself this was not unusual. What made it of more than passing significance was another piece of intelligence: a flotilla of Soviet ships was heading toward Cuba; a submarine tender, a guided-missile cruiser, a guided-missile destroyer, an ocean-going salvage tug, a heavy salvage ship, a merchant tanker and an amphibious landing ship carrying two 80-ft. barges. The tender and the barges were of a type normally used for servicing nuclear submarines. The composition of this task force was so unprecedented that something more than a courtesy visit seemed to be involved. Suddenly, a succession of events over the better part of a year began to take on a new significance.

In July 1969 the Soviets undertook their first naval visit to Cuba. In November 1969, the Soviet Minister of Defense, Andrei Grechko, visited Cuba. In the months that followed, Soviet military activity in and around Cuba gradually increased--almost certainly to get us accustomed to a Soviet naval presence in the Caribbean.

The latest Soviet flotilla reached Cienfuegos on Sept. 9. Daily U-2 reconnaissance flights were ordered, and the Cuban reaction to them showed that something unusual was afoot. MiG fighters scrambled after our first flight. A U.S. Navy antisubmarine aircraft was shadowed for 60 miles while a MiG made several strafing passes. I was sufficiently concerned to warn the Soviet Union publicly on Sept. 16 that operating missile-carrying submarines or nuclear weapons from Cuba or servicing them from there would have grave consequences. Since we did not yet have any concrete evidence, I stopped just short of making a direct charge.

As it happened, conclusive evidence was being collected that very day by a U2. What the photography showed was that two new barracks, administrative buildings and recreation faculties had quickly risen on the island, including a soccer field. In my eyes this stamped it indelibly as a Russian base, since as an old soccer fan I knew Cubans rarely played soccer.

More important, the tender was moored in permanent fashion to four buoys in the bay and was in a position to service submarines. On the mainland, there had arisen a new dock, a fuel storage depot, and the early stages of a major communications facility, undoubtedly the radio link to Moscow, guarded by antiaircraft missiles and surveillance radar. What we saw, in short, had all the earmarks of a permanent Soviet naval base.

The Washington Special Action Group met on Sept. 19. All agreed that a base capable of servicing nuclear submarines was being built and that the Soviets were seeking to skirt the Kennedy-Khrushchev understanding by placing most of the facilities offshore. I reminded the group that in 1962 President Kennedy had reacted not because the deployment of Soviet missiles to Cuba had been "illegal"--it was, in fact, then technically "legal"--but because he considered it a threat to the security of the U.S.

I saw the Soviet move as part of a process of testing. I strongly favored facing the challenge immediately lest the Soviets misunderstand our permissiveness and escalate their involvement to a point where only a major crisis could remove the base. But the President decided on a very low-key public posture, confined to noting that we were aware of what was happening and were watching. I was extremely uneasy. I thought the longer we waited the more difficult would be the decisions both for us and for the Soviets when we challenged them.

A few days later a Pentagon spokesman, asked by a newsman about Cienfuegos, gave out full details. The officer had misunderstood his instructions, which were to acknowledge the construction there but to offer as little elaboration as possible. In any case, the low-key posture had been blown out of the water.

I told the President that we had no choice now except to face the Soviets down, but in a manner that gave them a way out. I proposed to use a briefing already scheduled on Nixon's Mediterranean trip to issue a strong warning to the Soviets against building a sub base in Cuba; I would leave open whether the base already existed, so that a clear line of retreat was available. I would then call in Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin and confront him directly, telling him that we considered Cienfuegos an offensive base and would insist on its dismantlement.

When options were starkly defined, Nixon was always decisive. He approved my recommendation and suggested that a destroyer be moved near Cienfuegos to emphasize our warning.

At my briefing, when the predictable question on Cuba came up, I said, among other things: "The Soviet Union can be under no doubt that we would view the establishment of a strategic base in the Caribbean with the utmost seriousness."

Two hours after my briefing, I met Dobrynin in the Map Room. I told him that we considered the construction at Cienfuegos unmistakably a submarine base; we would view continued construction with the "utmost gravity"; the base could not remain. We would not shrink from other measures if forced into it; if the ships--especially the tender--left Cienfuegos, we would consider it a training exercise.

Dobrynin, usually genial, was all business. Were we claiming that the 1962 understanding had been violated? I dismissed this as a legalistic quibble. Cuba, to us, was a place of extreme sensitivity. We considered the sequence of events as acts of extremely bad faith. The installations had been completed with maximum deception; they could not remain. Whatever the phraseology of the 1962 understanding, its intent could not have been to replace land-based with sea-based missiles.

The Soviets took us seriously. We returned to Washington on Oct. 5 from Nixon's trip. Dobrynin came in the next day with a message that concluded with a precise commitment that no base was being built in Cuba.

The Soviets' reply was clearly positive. After my press statement, construction of port facilities ceased. But nothing with the Soviets ever works this simply. The Soviet sub tender and salvage tug left Cienfuegos on Oct. 10, but rounded the island and arrived once again in Cienfuegos on Nov. 7. I protested angrily to Dobrynin on Nov. 14 and told him later that servicing submarines in or from Cuban ports would "lead to the most grave situation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union."

The tender quit the Caribbean on Jan. 3, 1971--only to be replaced by a second tender that arrived in Cuba on Feb. 14 with another Soviet naval task force, including a nuclear-powered attack sub. I handed Dobrynin a note on Feb. 22 saying that the presence of a tender in Cienfuegos for 125 of the last 166 days was inconsistent with the understanding. The tender and sub left. In May, a tender and a nuclear-powered cruise-missile sub made a visit. Every conceivable combination was being tried --except the most important one, the presence of a tender in conjunction with a nuclear-powered ballistic missile sub. We lodged another sharp protest. The tender left once more.

Rather than a dramatic confrontation on the order of 1962, we considered that quiet diplomacy was best suited to giving the U.S.S.R. an opportunity to withdraw without humiliation.

We could not forget, of course, the deception that had been attempted. Nor would we be oblivious to the reality that Soviet restraint, when achieved, resulted only from our forcing of the issue and determined persistence.

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