July in Focus

The events leading up to the Cuban missile crisis as the Soviet military buildup in Cuba gathered momentum exactly half a century ago.

BY RACHEL DOBBS | JULY 17, 2012

July 13, 1962

A CIA agent based in Cuba overhears a Che Guevara associate state that "he [possibly Fidel] has a desperate plan to ask the Soviet Union to locate in Cuba an atomic base, which would be like a buckle in the belt of bases surrounding the USSR."  

National Archives

 

Rachel Dobbs is a research assistant with the Cuban Missile Crisis +50 project. You can follow the project on Twitter at @missilecrisis62.