Word: castros
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Despite initial Cuban attempts to hide it. and official U.S. denials that it was going on, there was no mistaking the Russian buildup when it began six weeks ago. Refugees fleeing Castro's miserable island brought the first reports; U.S. intelligence agents and members of the Western diplomatic corps filled out the story. Ships-some Russian, some chartered from such NATO nations as Britain, West Germany and Norway-were pouring into Cuba carrying heavy loads of Russian military equipment and Russian soldiers...
Twin Bivouacs. Castro bars most U.S. newsmen from his Communist police state, and it was not until Keith Morfett of the London Daily Mail hired a car and went looking southwest of Havana that the West last week got an eyewitness description of the Russian presence. Just past the village of El Cano, eight miles from the capital, Morfett came to a high hedge and a wire fence stretching for about two miles. Then, at a break in the hedge, "there were the Russians." They numbered in the hundreds, Morfett said, and wore coarse denim trousers and cheap checked shirts...
Gratuitous Slap. Thus, for the first time since he reached power, Castro had on hand flesh-and-blood soldiers...
CONVERSION of Fidel Castro's Cuba to a Communist island fortress in the Caribbean began with the arrival of Czech-made ZB R-2 .30-cal. rifles from Baltic ports in August of 1960. By mid-1961, the U.S. Defense Department was estimating that Castro had received $100 million worth of Soviet-bloc armaments. Since then, the estimate has jumped to $175 million at the minimum. The sheer bulk of arms is staggering: 400,000 tons. A study of Castro's arsenal, based on the best available intelligence...
...Castro's newest weapons are short-range guided missiles. On land, he has the Soviet's stubby SA-2 antiaircraft rocket, a solid-fuel ground-to-air missile similar to the U.S.'s Nike-Ajax. A nest of six SA-2s is already installed and operational under camouflage at Bahia Honda, 45 miles from Havana. Radar guided, the antiaircraft weapons can reach targets within a 3O°-slant range of from 25 to 27 miles, or as far straight up as 60,000 feet. Another SA-2 site is reported under construction in Matanzas, 60 miles east...