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After the Bay of Pigs fiasco which planted egg on the face of President Kennedy and the entire US foreign policy, there were numerous terrorist attacks perpetrated by the exiled Cubans living in Miami and funded by the CIA. Operation Mongoose was approved by then President Kennedy in November, 1961, and implemented by the Pentagon and the CIA until October, 1962, when a halt to all covert actions against Cuba was agreed to by both superpowers. However, the CIA still sent out a terrorist group on November 8, 1962, which blew up a Cuban factory killing 400 workers.
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But the story begins ten months after the Bay of Pigs defeat. The Soviet Union uncovered part of Operation Mongoose, the part that openly discussed the invasion of the island of Cuba in 1962. They informed Fidel of their findings while keeping the source of their information confidential. They asked Fidel what he thought would be the best way to proceed. "Make a public statement that any attack on Cuba would be considered an attack on the Soviet Union," Fidel quickly responded.
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Energetic discussions then proceeded between both sides with the Soviets insisting that such a statement, in and of itself, was useless without some teeth of some kind to back it up. Fidel insisted that the time for the statement was now and couldn't wait for any potential build up to be completed. He then went to consult the National Directorate of the Revolution which consisted of Raà ºl Castro, Fidel's younger brother, Blas Roca, Che Guevara, Dorticos and Carlos Rafael. He informed them that the Soviet Union was not only wishing to protect Cuba against this new American threat, but that they wanted to counter recent American missile build up in Turkey near the Soviet border.
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After several hours of intense debate, it was agreed that Cuba would install 42 medium-range rockets, a regiment of MiG-21 fighter planes, four brigades of motorized infantry with personnel carriers and tanks, missile-equipped patrol boats and a regiment of tactical nuclear arms with the controls given to the commander in charge without the need for approval by anyone else before launch. At the same time, priority was given to the project to push it ahead of all others. If Cuba was going to successfully stave off a subsequent American attack, an attack with an unknown commencement date, there was no time to lose.
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