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Materials from the 40th Anniversary Conference
Havana, Cuba
10-12 October 2002
The tip of a Soviet R-12 (SS-4) medium-range missile, now a museum piece, points into the Havana sky
The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
A National Security Archive Documents Reader
Edited by Laurence Chang and Peter Kornbluh
Ordering information for this book is available at the W.W. Norton & Co. website. Or by phone:
800-233-4830 (U.S.)
717-346-2029 (Outside U.S.)
Follow this link for a list of US and Soviet veterans of the Cuban Missile Crisis attending the conference.
Reconnaissance photos and other images from the crisis leading up to the discovery of Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM) in Cuba on 14 October 1962.
Read the press release from 11 October 2002, 1:00 PM, including documents from the period before the crisis and U-2 and US Navy low-level photos of Soviet MRBM's and nuclear warhead bunkers from 14-23 October 1962.
Read the press release from 11 October 2002, 5:00 PM, including documents and photographs from the height of the crisis on 27 October 1962.
Read the press release from 12 October 2002, 1:00 PM, including documents from the November crisis.
NEWS RELEASE
10 October 2002
 For more information, contact:
Thomas S. Blanton or
Peter Kornbluh 202 / 994-7000
  • VETERANS OF CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS ARRIVE IN HAVANA;
  • CUBAN VICE PRESIDENT GREETS McNAMARA, SORENSEN, KENNEDYS;
  • CONFERENCE TO FEATURE NEW CUBAN, US, SOVIET SECRETS
Havana, Cuba, 10 October 2002 - Senior surviving veterans of the Cuban missile crisis arrived today in Havana for a historic 40th anniversary conference co-organized by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. At an airport arrival ceremony, Cuban vice president Jose Ramon Fernandez greeted former US secretary of defense Robert McNamara, JFK speechwriter and counsel Theodore Sorensen, JFK aide and Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Gen. William Y. Smith (USAF), JFK aide Richard Goodwin, CIA analyst Dino Brugioni, and other US veterans and scholars. Also attending the conference as honored observers are several members of the Kennedy family spanning three generations. Earlier this week, a distinguished delegation of Russian veterans arrived in Havana from Moscow, including former deputy foreign minister Georgy Kornienko, missile deployment planner Gen. Anatoly Gribkov, former defense minister Dmitry Yazov, and KGB officer Nikolai Leonov.

This historic conference - titled "La Crisis de Octubre: una vision politica 40 anos despues" - begins at 10 a.m. on Friday, October 11, and will feature four panels: (1) from the Bay of Pigs to the missiles, (2) the missiles and the October crisis, (3) the November crisis and aftermath, (4) lessons from the crisis. At the center of discussions will be thousands of pages of newly declassified documents - from the Cuban government itself, from the CIA, the Pentagon and the White House, from the Soviet Foreign Ministry and the Politburo, and from Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Canada, Great Britain, and Mexico - providing for the first time the Cuban and multi-national perspectives on a crisis previously seen only in superpower terms. Archive director Thomas Blanton said, "The conference room will echo with words that resonate today, such as 'intelligence failure,' 'pre-emptive strike,' and 'weapons of mass destruction.'"

On Sunday, October 13, conferees will visit the last surviving structure from the Soviet deployment in 1962, a nuclear warhead bunker at the San Cristobal missile site west of Havana. On Monday, October 14, participants will depart Havana. On this day in 1962, a high-altitude U-2 spy plane took the first photographs of the Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba - at San Cristobal. The conference will meet at the Palacio de Convenciones in Havana, Cuba. Most participants will be housed at the Hotel Palco next door. Phone: 011-53-7-337235. Fax: 011-53-7-337236. The conference room itself is closed to the press, except for the opening ceremony at 10 a.m. on October 11; but the organizers will hold daily press briefings each afternoon summarizing the discussion and releasing key documents addressed that day. The visit to the missile site is open to the media.

The National Security Archive co-organized with Cuban institutions the highly successful 40th anniversary Bay of Pigs conference last year in Havana; this year, the Archive is also working in partnership with Brown University's Watson Institute. Peter Kornbluh directs the Archive's Cuba project.
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