Behind The Scenes In Cuba Crisis

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30511, 5 August 1964, Page 17

Behind The Scenes In Cuba Crisis

(N Z Press Assn. —Copyright) WASHINGTON, Aug. 4. The former director of the United States State Department’s intelligence division, Roger Hilsman, credits

a Washington journalist, John Scali, with playing a key role which led to the solution of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Mr Hilsman. now a professor at Columbia University, disclosed in an article to be published this week-end in the magazine “Look” that Scali, of the American Broadcasting Company, served as a vital link in transmitting the Russian formula which ended

the nuclear threat. At a time when the Russian and American leaders were exchanging messages in general terms and feeling their way towards a peaceful solution, Scali was contacted by a top Soviet intelligence official, Mr Hilsman said.

He said that on October 26, Scali "received an urgent telephone call from a senior Soviet official” in the Russian Embassy in Washington, and was asked for “an immediate appointment.” The Soviet official, described by Mr Hilsman only as “Mr X,” later met Scali at a local restaurant and asked him “to find out immediately from his high-level friends in the State Department whether the United States would be interested" in a four point solution to the crisis.

These were: 1. Agreement by Russia to dismantle and remove intermediate range missiles from Cuba.

2. United Nations inspection to verify removal. 3. A Soviet pledge not to reintroduce ballistic missiles to Cuba.

4. A United States promise not to invade Cuba.

These were eventually agreed upon. Mr Hilsman said Scali “came directly to me” and typed out a report of “his conversation with Mr X.”

After some deliberation by United States officials, Mr Hilsman said, it was the Secretary of State, Mr Dean Rusk, “who saw the full possibilities in an entirely unofficial ex-

change of views with the Soviet Union, and who saw the opportunity the approach seemed to present.” He called Scali before him and told him, according to Mr Hilsman, that the Mr X

approach “was our first direct word that the Soviets might be thinking of a deal.” Mr Hilsman said that Mr Rusk then asked Scali to go back to the Russian and tell him the United States was interested but that time was

“very, very short... no more than two days.”

Scali met Mr X again, and passed on this information to

him. Later, Mr Khrushchev’s long cable letter to Mr Kennedy, not made public, began to come in.

Mr Hilsman wrote that the cable from Mr Khrushchev and the mesage from Mr X

“were clearly related.” The next day, however, hopes of a peaceful settlement were dashed when Moscow Radio broadcast a second message from Mr Khrushchev, offering to trade Russian mis-

sites in Cuba for American missiles in Turkey. At that, Mr Hilsman said, Mr Rusk called Scali to his office and asked him to have another meeting with Mr X to find out what was going on. Scali reportedly told the

Russian that he knew a CubaTurkey deal was “completely.

totally and perpetually unacceptable."

Scali said tonight that he had refrained from disclosing his part in the affair at the insistence of the late Presi-

dent Kennedy and, after his death, at the behest of other officials.