Posted on 08/30/2021 2:41:11 AM PDT by Oshkalaboomboom
On the brink of nuclear war, America’s bold response to the Soviet Union depended on an unknown spy agency operative whose story can at last be told
n the morning of Sunday, October 14, 1962, Juanita Moody exited the headquarters of the National Security Agency, at Fort Meade, Maryland, and walked the short distance to her car, parked in one of the front-row spaces reserved for top leadership. The sky was a crystalline blue, “a most beautiful day,” she recalled later. Moody had just learned that the U.S. Air Force was sending a U-2 spy plane over Cuba to take high-altitude photographs of military installations across the island. Moody was worried for the pilot—twice already in the past two years a U-2 spy plane had been shot out of the sky, once over the Soviet Union and once over China. She was also worried for the country. Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were worsening by the day. President John F. Kennedy, American military leaders and the intelligence community believed that the Soviet military was up to something in Cuba. Exactly what, no one could say. “I went out and got into my old convertible at the precise moment I had been told this pilot was going to get into his plane,” Moody said.
What unfolded over the next two weeks was arguably the most dangerous period in the history of civilization. Close to 60 years later, the Cuban Missile Crisis is still considered a nearly catastrophic failure on the part of America’s national security apparatus. How America’s top agents, soldiers, diplomats, intelligence analysts and elected officials failed to anticipate and uncover the buildup of a nuclear arsenal on America’s doorstep, less than 100 miles off the coast, is still being studied and debated.
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
JFK and the democrats screwed up as usual. Lots of dead people to come because of their stupidity. The democrats never have stopped their stupidity and their policies have killed millions.
We didn’t overlap, but I heard her name a lot.
I had a typesetting shop then, and wrote most of the “crisis” news off to the typical (even then) Media B/S. I started to get nervous though, when they started playing martial/patriotic tunes on the radio. They don’t do that unless war is imminent.
I remember well the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis. During the whole hullabaloo I went about my business as if it were just another day. I knew even then hero of the Bay of Pigs Kennedy didn’t have the stones to really do anything even if the stories of Soviets moving nuclear missiles into Cuba were true. Subsequently I was proven correct, despite all the ridiculous propaganda about Kennedy’s courage and heroism which followed.
Recommend by List member GreyFriar
Smithsonian is not a reliable source - had a subscription once and every story had either wrong information, disinformation, out right lies, and major omissions - some were mostly wishful thinking.
The school's duck and cover drills had a special sense of urgency for us on a military air station in the south east, 20 miles from Yemassee...
Good point.
I don't think it will be all that long before we 'hear the music' again...
...in ‘honor’ of Gen Milly, and his ilk, I suggest they start by playing ‘when the capons go rolling along’!
Yes, capons.
Thanks for this link.
Interesting time then.
Thanks for the ping.
Cuban exiles with sources still in the country reported that the Communists were building hidden missile sites in the mountains but no one seemed to believe them.
Thank God for the US pilot who got these photos to show where the missiles were parked. I believe he was the one who was shot down by the Reds but somehow managed to get his photos back to US intelligence receivers.
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