Page "Cuban missile crisis" Paragraph 21

As early as August 1962, the United States suspected the Soviets of building missile facilities in Cuba.

During that month, its intelligence services gathered information about sightings by ground observers of Russian-built MiG-21 fighters and Il-28 light bombers.

U-2 spyplanes found S-75 Dvina ( NATO designation SA-2 ) surface-to-air missile sites at eight different locations.

CIA director John A. McCone was suspicious.

Sending antiaircraft missiles into Cuba, he reasoned, “ made sense only if Moscow intended to use them to shield a base for ballistic missiles aimed at the United States .” On August 10, he wrote a memo to President Kennedy in which he guessed that the Soviets were preparing to introduce ballistic missiles into Cuba.

On August 31, Senator Kenneth Keating ( R-New York ), who probably received his information from Cuban exiles in Florida, warned on the Senate floor that the Soviet Union may be constructing a missile base in Cuba.