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Bulletin New Evidence on The 58 COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN NEW EVIDENCE ON THE USING KGB DOCUMENTS: negotiations. The famous proposal for end- superpower intelligence services sponsored THE SCALI-FEKLISOV CHANNEL ing the crisis, which Robert Kennedy later by Crown Publishers, Inc.4 IN THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS recalled as having made his brother “for the To understand better what can be learned first time hopeful that our efforts might pos- from these documents, it is helpful to revisit by Alexander Fursenko sibly be successful,” had not come from him, the standard account of the role of the Scali- and Timothy Naftali but rather had come out of the blue from Feklisov channel in the resolution of the Scali. Scali, who was also present in Mos- Cuban Missile Crisis. From the time that former State Depart- cow, vigorously disputed Feklisov’s ac- According to the traditional version, ment official Roger Hilsman revealed in count.2 Scali received a call at his Washington office 1964 that ABC News television correspon- Feklisov’s surprising assertion3 and from Feklisov on Friday, October 26. Scali dent John Scali had served as an intermedi- Scali’s immediate rejection of this revision- had been meeting off and on with this Soviet ary between the U.S. and Soviet govern- ist history posed three questions for students Embassy official for over a year. From the ments at the height of the Cuban Missile of the crisis: FBI, which Scali had alerted from the outset Crisis, scholars have had to consider the role a) Did the Soviet government use the about his meetings with Feklisov, the jour- that Scali and his contact, Aleksandr Feklisov KGB to find a way out of the crisis on 26 nalist learned that this man was no ordinary (alias Fomin), played in the resolution of the October 1962? diplomat. Aleksandr Feklisov (“Fomin”) was conflict.1 Until 1989, it was generally as- b) Did Feklisov act on his own or did the KGB Resident, or chief of station, in sumed that the Kremlin had used Feklisov, Scali suggest a settlement for his own gov- Washington. On this particular Friday, with a KGB officer based at the Soviet Embassy ernment to consider? the likelihood of US military action against in Washington, to float a trial balloon at the c) What effect, if any, did the Scali- Cuba seemingly mounting, Feklisov asked most dangerous moment of the Cuban Mis- Feklisov meetings have on the endgame of for an urgent meeting with Scali. Scali sug- sile Crisis because meaningful communica- the Cuban Missile Crisis? gested the Occidental Restaurant near the tion between the two governments had Materials consulted in the archives of Willard Hotel. The lunch was set for 1:30 ground to a halt. the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service, the p.m. But at a conference of scholars and new name for the First Chief Directorate of “When I arrived he was already sitting former officials in Moscow in January 1989, the KGB), resolve some, though not all, of at the table as usual, facing the door. He Feklisov argued that Western historians had these questions. Documents on the Scali- seemed tired, haggard and alarmed in con- gotten his role in the crisis all wrong. The Feklisov meetings have been opened as part trast to the usual calm, low-key appearance Kremlin, he said, had not injected him into of a multi-book project on the history of the continued on page 60 Russian Foreign Ministry Documents previously published but were of lesser import substantial addition to our documentary base and On the Cuban Missile Crisis than those already obtained.] some contribution to our understanding of the The 21 documents initially released com- crisis. Introduction by Raymond L. Garthoff prise selections from six categories of material. These materials expand on the earlier re- First are three cables from, and one message to, leased messages between President Kennedy and Among the new archival materials on the Soviet Ambassador Aleksandr Alekseyev in Ha- Prime Minister Khrushchev. There are, however, Cuban Missile Crisis recently made available by vana sent shortly prior to or during the crisis; no materials on Foreign Ministry evaluations or the Russian government are the first batch of second are seven cables sent from Ambassador other interagency deliberations in Moscow, in diplomatic documents, a selection of 21 docu- Anatoly Dobrynin in Washington and one to him, contrast to the extensive releases of comparable ments totaling 147 pages; extensive translations also all prior to or during the crisis, and one from materials by the United States. of these materials (as well as of two other docu- Soviet official Georgii Zhukov, also sent from Some of the Foreign Ministry documents ments released from the former CPSU Central Washington; third are one message from Ambas- have been lightly sanitized, and a number of them Committee archives) follow this introduction. sador Valerian Zorin, Soviet representative to the are only excerpts, but excisions are not noted While certainly welcome, this represents only United Nations in New York, and one to him (and except where there is an internal blank space in a about twenty percent of a file of 734 pages of to Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Kuznetsov) paragraph. Documents are not identified by their Foreign Ministry (MID) documents declassified from Moscow; fourth are two messages from original designators (such as telegram numbers), in the fall of 1991 and in early 1992. Moreover, Foreign Minister Gromyko to Moscow just before nor by their Foreign Ministry archive file loca- many documents remain classified. Still, it is an the crisis broke; fifth are three messages from tions. important step forward. Havana to Moscow reporting on First Deputy The precrisis reports of Ambassadors The documents were acquired through the Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan’s negotiations Alekseev and Dobrynin help to set the stage, but efforts of the author and of the National Security with Prime Minister Fidel Castro and other Cuban they do not add much to what has been known. Archive (NSA), a non-governmental, privately- leaders as the crisis was being ended; and finally, Gromyko’s cabled report of his meeting with funded research institute based at George Wash- the sixth is a single message from Deputy Foreign President Kennedy (detailed in his memoir) is not ington University in Washington, D.C. [Ed. Minister Kuznetsov after his meeting with Presi- included, but his account of the discussion of note: Shortly before presstime, a second group of dent Kennedy on 9 January 1963, in effect closing Cuba in his meeting that same evening with declassified Foreign Ministry documents reached the post-crisis diplomatic negotiations. A few of Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and a message NSA; however, these consisted mostly of previ- these have been released earlier, in particular one giving Gromyko’s evaluation of the situation on ously-published Kennedy-Khrushchev corre- on Mikoyan’s talks with Castro. Nonetheless, October 19, are included. Both are quite reveal- spondence and other materials that were not they are all of interest and together they make a continued on page 63 CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN 59 “DISMAYED BY THE ACTIONS OF communist leader from 1953 to 1971, was requirements of Soviet domestic constitu- THE SOVIET UNION”: not merely a Soviet puppet, but, since the ents and forces (elites, bureaucratic services, Mikoyan’s talks with Fidel Castro and late 1950s, made his needs and agendas propaganda and ideology, latent public opin- the Cuban leadership, November 1962 increasingly present in the minds of the ion). In the events leading to the Cuban Kremlin policy-makers. As Hope Harrison missile crisis, the considerations stemming by Vladislav M. Zubok has convincingly shown, there are substan- from this axis had a part at least as important tial reasons to analyze Soviet-GDR ties not as the interests and concerns flowing from The talks between Anastas I. Mikoyan, only as a relationship of submission and the dynamic of U.S.-Soviet relations.3 member of the CC CPSU Presidium, and the subservience, but also as a relationship in The Historic-Documentary Department revolutionary leadership of Cuba in Havana which at times “the tail wagged the dog far of the Foreign Ministry had declassified on 3-12 November 1962, were a lesser more than the West realized.”1 Similarly, documents on the Soviet-Cuban talks, like known, but nonetheless dramatic episode in new Russian archival documents presented many others related to the Cuban missile the story of the Cuban missile crisis, and also by Kathryn Weathersby have disclosed in crisis, in late 1991. But officials of the marked a watershed in the history of rela- new detail how North Korean leader Kim Il Department withheld them (in a manner that tions between the Soviet superpower and Sung was also able to press his militant unfortunately has become a recent pattern), one of its closest non-European allies. agenda on an even stronger Soviet leader, allowing only a few to have a peek at them at Thanks to declassified documents from Joseph Stalin, with disastrous consequences, their discretion. One of them, Sergei U.S. archives, researchers have begun to in the run-up to the Korean War.2 Khrushchev, gives a dramatic, albeit short appreciate the significance and nuances of The documents on the Mikoyan-Castro description of Mikoyan’s visit in his Rus- U.S.-West German, U.S.-Iranian, and other talks from the Archive of Foreign Policy of sian-language book, Nikita Khrushchev: key patron-client relationships that were vi- the Russian Federation (AVPRF) in Mos- Crises and Missiles.4 Some were also made tal to American conduct during the Cold cow, published in this issue of the CWIHP available to the makers of television docu- War.
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