The Cuban Missile Crisis is one of the most documented events of the 20th century, with multi-lateral proof confirming its authenticity. Authenticity is supported by declassified documents from all three major participants: the US, the Soviet Union, and Cuba. Thousands of low-altitude and U-2 spy plane photographs clearly showed Soviet R-12 and R-14 ballistic missiles at launch sites across Cuba. Decades later, survivors from the US, USSR, and Cuba met in a series of conferences to reconcile their accounts, all confirming the extreme tension and near-nuclear conflict of October 1962.

However, there is often a misunderstanding of real, declassified government documents that surfaced decades later. It is common for conspiracy theories about 1960s Cuba to be conflated with Operation Northwoods.

Operation Northwoods: In 1962, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed a series of "false flag" operations - such as staging the hijacking of planes or sinking a US ship - to blame on Cuba as a pretext for an invasion. President John F. Kennedy rejected this plan. However, the declassification of these documents in the 1990s led some to believe that if the government was willing to fake a crisis to start a war, they might have actually done so with the missile crisis.
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Is it really true (i.e. not exaggerated) that the NATO (US) missiles in Turkey were obsolete and had already been designated for removal even before the Cuban Missile Crisis? Or was the US just planning to replace them?
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The claim that the Jupiter missiles in Turkey were already designated for removal before the Cuban Missile Crisis is partially true but often overstated. While the Kennedy administration viewed them as a liability, they were actively being installed right up until the crisis began. The Jupiters in Turkey actually became fully operational only a few days before the crisis began in October 1962.

The Technical Reality: The Jupiter missiles were technically and strategically flawed by the time they reached Turkey: They were liquid-fueled, requiring hours to prep for launch while sitting in the open, making them easy targets for a preemptive strike. The US was already transitioning to Polaris nuclear submarines, which were mobile, hidden, and far more effective as a deterrent. Even President Eisenhower, who originally authorized the deployment, worried they were "extraordinarily provocative" - like placing missiles in the US "backyard".

President Kennedy had internally suggested removing them as early as 1961, but his State Department faced stiff resistance from Turkey, who viewed the missiles as a symbol of US commitment to their defense. Because Kennedy feared that pulling them out unilaterally would make the US look weak to NATO and the Soviets, he allowed the deployment to continue. The missiles were ultimately removed as part of a secret "quid pro quo". Kennedy’s representatives told the Soviets that the US was "planning to remove them anyway" to save face and avoid making it look like a public trade. This allowed Kennedy to frame the removal in early 1963 as a routine modernization of NATO forces rather than a concession to Khrushchev.