The Cuban Missile Crisis

Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between the Under Secretary of Defense (Gilpatric) and the Under Secretary of State (Ball)

166\. Washington, November 9, 1962, 2:15 p.m.

Gilpatric said AES wanted him to tell Ball that the emergency meeting Kuznetsov called was simply for the purpose of registering a protest about the way three naval ships were acting in intercepting the Russian ships. They were trying to stop the ships, and one ship wasn't even on the list--Alexandraska. They wanted us to do something about it and Gilpatric said they were. It was an over-zealous Commander. They thought it was going very well this morning. There was no word about Mikoyan's return, and the Russian Ambassador made a fine speech about Mrs. Roosevelt this morning, which is interesting.

Ball asked if they pulled the tarps off and Gilpatric said they have been pulling the tarps off, getting down to what they call the rubber pants, which is enough to get an identification. Ball asked if the picture looked good enough to be persuasive and Gilpatric replied they thought so; they haven't received them yet. They show, for example, fins and they show where the conduits were run. He thought they would correspond with the Red Square pictures sufficiently. The dimensions are right. They think it is going along pretty well.

Source: Department of State, Ball Files: Lot 74 D 272, Telephone Conversations--Cuba. No classification marking.