Before "The Missies of October": Did Kennedy Plan a Military Strike against Cuba?

Was the Kennedy administration moving toward a military attack on Cuba in the fall of 1962, even before it discovered Soviet strategic missiles on the island? Recently declassified evidence and fresh controversy compel a new look at this infrequently examined question. Although this article does not offer a definitive answer, it presents new information, interpretations, and hypotheses regarding U.S. behavior in the period leading up to the Cuban missile crisis.

It is now clear that throughout the first ten months of 1962, Operation Mongoose, the Kennedy administration's secret program of covert operations against Cuba, was closely coordinated with enhanced Pentagon contingency planning for possible U.S. military intervention to bring about Fidel Castro's downfall. During this period, U.S. officials actively considered the option of sparking an internal revolt in Cuba that would serve as a pretext for open, direct military action. Top officials in the U.S. government initially shied away from the idea of overt military involvement in Cuba prior to the missile crisis.

But the Pentagon, acting at the direction of the president and the secretary of defense, dramatically accelerated contingency planning for military action against Cuba in late September and early October 1962, just as the president was ordering a sharp increase in anti-Castro covert operations. Although the ultimate purpose of these intensified military preparations remains unclear, I argue that one can no longer breezily dismiss, as have some commentators and former officials, the possibility that, under domestic political pressure and even before they learned in mid-October that Soviet nuclear-capable missiles were in Cuba, top U.S. policymakers seriously considered conventional military action—including, if necessary, a full-scale invasion—to overthrow the Castro regime.