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Preface CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 The collection in this volume includes many of CIA’s most important documents on the Cuban missile crisis. It contains the “honeymoon cables” that Director of Central Intelligence (DCJ) John A. McCone sent to Headquarters from France a month before the missile crisis, as well as McCone’s notes taken during the National Security Council Executive Committee meetings at the height of the crisis. It aiso includes intelligence memorandums and estimates, briefing papers, Cuban refugee reports, and memorandums on Operation MONGOOSE, the clandestine program aimed at destabilizing the Castro regime. Many of the evaluations of the missile threat contained here draw upon IRONBARK material, whose source was Soviet Col. Oleg Penkovsky. To the degree possible, the documents in this volume are organized according to the date of subject matter, so that a February 1963 document discussing a September 1962 event will appear among September 1962 documents. In general, support documents follow documents that summa- rize a sequence of events. To conserve space and speed declassification, excerpts have been taken from some of the lengthier entries. In some cases, the summary or conclusion section of a document has been excerpted, while in others, material on topics unrelated to Cuba or the missile crisis has been omitted. All such instances have been noted in the Contents list and in the documents’ headings. All the documents in this volume have been subject to declassification review, and portions of some have been deleted for security reasons. In the weeks immediately preceding the missile crisis, DC] McCone was frequently out of town. During these times, his Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDC), Lt. Gen. Marshall S. Carter, served as Acting Director. McCone was away from Washington on his honeymoon in France from the evening of 23 August through 23 September 1962. He left for Los Angeles on business on the evening of 11 October 1962, coming back late on 14 October. He returned to the West Coast on the afternoon of 15 October, immediately following news of the death of his stepson. The discovery of missiles in Cuba brought him back to Washington on the evening of 16 October, where he remained for the rest of the crisis.