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 ...
later
Ping for later read.
I was in 3rd grade. We practiced atomic bomb drills and the basement of the school was full of Civil Defense survival barrels.
You do know that Smith’s rag makes stuff up, leaves out important details and is generally not a credible source for anything historical, but is good for starting a fire, wrapping fish, lining a birdcage?
Fascinating article, thanks....
He told me he thought that we were going to war, and for a short time, that his crew were part of the walking dead.
I was stationed in Germany and we were on alert and figured it was only a matter of time before a shooting war began.
The fear was that the red tanks would come across the Chec/Kraut border and we knew we were going to be the "holding force" i.e. cannon fodder.
The Sunday Masses were well attended during that period, the fear of immanent death brings out the latent religious beliefs in most people.
I'm sure us low life peons will never know how close we really came to the big bang, the secrets lie with JFK, his crew and his Russian counterparts.
My dad was the XO of a Gearing class destroyer that participated in the Cuban Blockade...
Bookmark for later read. My family was in Guantanamo Bay then. I was in the fifth grade. I will never forget the minute my class was told we were being evacuated, and we were in a wartime situation.
So don’t read the article. Use the subject as a starting point for your own research.
An interesting read.
Thank you for what you do.
One of her Fort Meade colleagues told me that a gaggle of young staffers, nearly all of them men, could frequently be seen trailing Moody down the halls, scribbling notes while she spoke.
The dream of feminism
Not necessary to read the article since Smithsonian Mag is garbage. Should not be allowed to post anything from it on FR.
The article you provided an English translation for was already in English. The link in post #1 is the article that is in Spanish.
I know.
I went to Gitmo in the 1980’s. It was the only place I had ever been that had a swimming pool with water too hot to swim in.
A good article about Signals Intelligence and how it works.
ASA Vet, I recommend you sent it to your ASA/Intel ping list.
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