General’s 1962 Memo Addresses Nuclear Combat on Cuba

WASHINGTON — In a previously undisclosed memo to President John F. Kennedy in the closing days of the Cuban missile crisis, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff said his forces were prepared to use nuclear weapons in an American invasion of the island if the Cubans used nuclear arms to resist.

The top secret memo from the chairman, General Maxwell D. Taylor, dated Nov. 2, 1962, underscored the continuing danger of a nuclear conflict between the superpowers even after the Soviet Union agreed to remove nuclear missiles from the island.

American military officials advocating an invasion to topple Fidel Castro only suspected it at the time, but Soviet forces in Cuba had nearly 100 smaller tactical nuclear weapons as well, a fact that came to light only three decades later.

“We must accept the possibility that the enemy may use nuclear weapons to repel invasion,” General Taylor wrote. “However, if the Cuban leaders took this foolhardy step, we could respond at once in overwhelming nuclear force against military targets.”

The National Security Archive, a research organization at George Washington University, found the three-page memo in government archives and posted it on its Web site on Monday night.

General Taylor also told the president that military planners were expecting up to 18,500 American troops killed and wounded in the first 10 days after an invasion. But he cautioned that the estimate applied only to a non-nuclear conflict.

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