◆ SpookStack

36. [Richard Lehmanj, Excerpt from Memorandum for Director of Central Intelligence, “CIA Handling of the Soviet Buildup in Cuba,” 14 Noventber 1962 (Excerpt: K,. The Targeting of San Cristobal 40. Although the sites thenselves were closed to ground observation; the movement of equipnent to then from the ports was in fact seen by CIA agents and by a nunber of individuals who later fled to the US. The agents reported this inforna~ tion as soon as they were able, but in nost cases had to de- pend on secret writing for communication. Fence, there was a lag of several days at least before their information became available. Refugee reports were delayed considerably longer for other, and uncontrollable, reasons--the tine of the /in- dividual's decision to leave Cuba, his discovery of means for going so, and his delivery to an interrogation center. Many of the reports so received dealt with unidentifiable construc- tion activity. Many of then, because of the tine-lags noted above, did not arrive in Washington until after 14 October, and some are still coming in. 41. Nevertheless, by about 1 October, the San Cristobal area had been pinpointed as a suspect RBM site and photographic confirmation had been requested. ‘This represents 2 consider— able technical:achievement.. To understand why, it is again necessary to back-track in time. Since the moment of Castro's triumphal march into Havana, the Intelligence Community had been flooded with reports of Soviet weapons shipments and miS- sile installations in Cuba. There were several hundred such reports, claiming the presence of everything from-Small arms to ICBUS, before August 1960, i.e., before the USSR had sup- plied Cuba with any weapons at all. More specifically, CIA's files contain 211 intelligence reports (this does not include press items) on missile and missile-associated activity in Cuba before ‘1 Jan 1962. All of these were either totally false or misinterpretations by the observer of other kinds of activity. CIA analysts had naturally come to view all such reports with a high degree of suspicion. 42. ° On 15 February 1962 an interagency:interrogation-center was established by CIA at Opa Locka, near Miami, to handle Cu~ ban refugees-and improvethe quality of intelligence collected from them. It was manned by trained bilingual’ interrogators from the arned services and CIA. The establishment of Opa Locka coincided with a sharp drop in reports of Sile activity re- ceived in Washington. When the defensive phase of the Soviet beildup began, the volume of Opa Locka reporting rosé very rapidly, and provided good information on the types of equip- ment coming in, on the use of Soviet personnel and on the se~ curity precautions imposed by the Soviets on this operation. (Such reports 7 the Che: t ite cited in para 9). -23-