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Blind over Cuba: The Photo Gap and the Missile Crisis (Volume 11) (Foreign Relations and the Presidency) Hardcover – September 1, 2012

by David M. Barrett (Author), Max Holland (Author)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 12 ratings
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In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, questions persisted about how the potential cataclysm had been allowed to develop. A subsequent congressional investigation focused on what came to be known as the “photo gap”: five weeks during which intelligence-gathering flights over Cuba had been attenuated.

In Blind over Cuba, David M. Barrett and Max Holland challenge the popular perception of the Kennedy administration’s handling of the Soviet Union’s surreptitious deployment of missiles in the Western Hemisphere. Rather than epitomizing it as a masterpiece of crisis management by policy makers and the administration, Barrett and Holland make the case that the affair was, in fact, a close call stemming directly from decisions made in a climate of deep distrust between key administration officials and the intelligence community.

Because of White House and State Department fears of “another U-2 incident” (the infamous 1960 Soviet downing of an American U-2 spy plane), the CIA was not permitted to send surveillance aircraft on prolonged flights over Cuban airspace for many weeks, from late August through early October. Events proved that this was precisely the time when the Soviets were secretly deploying missiles in Cuba. When Director of Central Intelligence John McCone forcefully pointed out that this decision had led to a dangerous void in intelligence collection, the president authorized one U-2 flight directly over western Cuba—thereby averting disaster, as the surveillance detected the Soviet missiles shortly before they became operational.

The Kennedy administration recognized that their failure to gather intelligence was politically explosive, and their subsequent efforts to influence the perception of events form the focus for this study. Using recently declassified documents, secondary materials, and interviews with several key participants, Barrett and Holland weave a story of intra-agency conflict, suspicion, and discord that undermined intelligence-gathering, adversely affected internal postmortems conducted after the crisis peaked, and resulted in keeping Congress and the public in the dark about what really happened.

Fifty years after the crisis that brought the superpowers to the brink, Blind over Cuba: The Photo Gap and the Missile Crisis offers a new chapter in our understanding of that pivotal event, the tensions inside the US government during the cold war, and the obstacles Congress faces when conducting an investigation of the executive branch.

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  1. Print length
    240 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Texas A&M University Press
  4. Publication date
    September 1, 2012
  5. Dimensions
    6.4 x 0.9 x 9.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1603447687
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1603447683
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Anyone interested in the Cold War, the Kennedy Administration, intelligence, or the Congress will want a copy of this fascinating book."--Loch K. Johnson, editor, Intelligence and National Security, and author, National Security Intelligence (Polity, 2012)

 



"Anyone interested in the Cold War, the Kennedy Administration, intelligence, or the Congress will want a copy of this fascinating book."--Loch K. Johnson, editor ofthe journal Intelligence and National Security, and author of National Security Intelligence (Polity, 2012)

-- Loch K. Johnson Published On: 2012-02-17

"Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Barrett and Holland provide new information and insights from recently declassified documents, as well as explore the perspectives of previously ignored participants in the historic Missile Crisis. This book is an absolute must for scholars of American foreign policy, national security and intelligence, and historians. But it also deserves to enjoy an expansive audience in general readership circles, as well. Barrett and Holland have written what is no doubt the definitive account of the Cuban Crisis."--William J. Daugherty, professor emeritus of government at Armstrong Atlantic State University

-- William J. Daugherty Published On: 2012-06-05

"Rarely has a book focused its attention with greater precision on the single most painful question about a great historical event than Blind over Cuba does in its careful study of the role of intelligence in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The story told by Barrett and Holland makes for a riveting book which will stand for many years to come as a classic account of slippery efforts to manipulate credit and blame. It is short, it is convincing, and there is nothing else like it."--Thomas Powers, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, author of The Man Who Kept the Secrets (1979), one of the most highly-regarded books ever written on US Intelligence; his most recent book is The Killing of Crazy Horse, published by Alfred Knopf in November 2010

-- Thomas Powers Published On: 2012-06-14

". . . magnificent scholarship . . . an important book."--Dr. Nicholas Dujmovic, CIA History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence -- Dr. Nicholas Dujmovic Published On: 2012-12-03

“The hearings, the charges, and the administration’s defenses are present in remarkable detail throughout Blind over Cuba.”—Robert D. Chapman, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
-- Robert D. Chapman ― International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence Published On: 2013-03-12

“Barrett and Holland have done excellent research, and this book, with its extensive detail and voluminous notes, should be of great value to scholars and practitioners.”—A. Klinghoffer, Choice

-- A. Klinghoffer ― Choice Published On: 2013-05-07

"...the book is well written and the research is excellent...a new and important piece to our understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis."―Richard M. Filipink, Western Illinois University -- Richard M. Filipink, Western Illinois University ― The Historian Published On: 2014-05-19

About the Author

DAVID M. BARRETT, a professor of political science at Villanova University, is the editor of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vietnam Papers: A Documentary Collection (Texas A&M University Press, 1997) and the author of The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy (University Press of Kansas, 2005).MAX HOLLAND is the editor of Washington Decoded, an independent, online monthly magazine. He also serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence and is a contributing editor for Wilson Quarterly and The Nation. He previously served for five years as a research fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Texas A&M University Press (September 1, 2012)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1603447687
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1603447683
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.08 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.4 x 0.9 x 9.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 12 ratings

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  1. Max Holland

    Max Holland

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    Max Holland is a journalist, author, and editor of Washington Decoded, an online publication.

    A 1972 graduate of Antioch College, he is a contributing editor to The Nation and the Wilson Quarterly, and sits on the editorial advisory board of the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence. He is the author, editor, or co-author of six books, most recently Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat (University Press of Kansas, March 2012) and Blind over Cuba: The Photo Gap and the Missile Crisis (Texas A&M University Press, September 2012).

    His articles have appeared in a variety of general and scholarly publications, including the Atlantic Monthly, American Heritage, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, Studies in Intelligence, the Journal of Cold War Studies, Reviews in American History, and online at History News Network. He has also received numerous grants in support of his research and writing, including fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, National Endowment for the Humanities, German Marshall Fund, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

    In 2001, Holland won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, bestowed jointly by Harvard University's Nieman Foundation and the Columbia University School of Journalism, for a forthcoming narrative history of the Warren Commission, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf. That same year he won a Studies in Intelligence Award from the Central Intelligence Agency, the first writer working outside the US government to be so recognized. In 1989, Business Week named his first book, When the Machine Stopped, one of the top ten business books of the year.

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  2. David M. Barrett

    David M. Barrett

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Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
12 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

George W. Strother
5.0 out of 5 stars More archives and more cynicislm
Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2014
Verified Purchase
I have been reading numerous narratives by multiple historians for over 40 years. This narrative is more detailed ,than others,
concerning the months after the crisis. I hope historians will never tire of exploring this episode of our military and foreign
affairs history. My long term cynicism of our elected federal officials continues to be reinforced.
6 people found this helpful
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BGG
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2015
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P-Review
3.0 out of 5 stars I think the author had an agenda
Reviewed in Canada on October 7, 2021
Verified Purchase
Readable and informative, but I felt the author was bending over backward to discredit JFK. The two key points were to criticize the administration for (a) failing to conduct surveillance for a period of time and in a region of Cuba where the Soviet missiles were being installed; and (b) trying to limit the public's knowledge of the missing surveillance. The author magnifies the impact of these two aspects and diminishes the main point - that the world could have lurched into war if not for cool-headed rational thinking and appropriate action. As we now know from audio recordings of high-level US meetings, military leaders wanted to strike pre-emptively - perhaps with nuclear weapons. Not being cowed by the Joint Chiefs was JFK's big challenge and he succeeded. We're lucky it was he in the Oval Office and not some other president.
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