16.2 Active Measures

According to the report, Bradley withdrew from forwarding sensitive information after the Cuban Missile Crisis. In October 1962, an American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft secretly photographed nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviet Union on the island of Cuba in enmity to American placed nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey.

The United States trained a paramilitary force of Cuban exiles and engaged in a campaign of terrorism and sabotage, referred to as the Cuban Project, which went on throughout the first half of the 1960s. In order to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government, the US bombed Cuban airfields two days prior to the launching of the invasion. Brigade 2506 landed on the night of 17^th April 1961, on the beach at Playa Girón in the Bay of Pigs, met by fierce retaliation from the local revolutionary militia. The US-led force was defeated within 3 days by the Cuban forces and surrendered on 20^th April. Seizing this opportunity, the Soviet Union, worried of Cuban drift towards China, reached out to the Cuban leader and both parties agreed to place nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba to deter a future invasion. Construction of missile launch facilities started later that summer.

On 22^nd October 1962, the United States placed a naval blockade around Cuba to prevent further missiles from reaching the island and demanded that the missiles in Cuba be dismantled and returned to the Soviet Union. Tension grew high during the thirteen days as the world stood on the brink of a nuclear war. The leaders of both superpowers recognised the possibility of a nuclear war and the USSR agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a pledge from the USA not to invade Cuba.

In 1963, another blow seized Bradley by surprise when President John F Kennedy was assassinated on 22^nd November while he rode in a motorcade in Dallas. As the motorcade turned southwest on Elm Street and advanced through Dealey Plaza, the president’s convertible passed the 7-storey building of Texas School Book Depository. A moment later, at about 12:30 pm, shots rang out hitting the personage in the limousine. The motorcade rushed to nearby Parkland Memorial Hospital where Kennedy was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after the shooting.

A suspect was hunted down. His name was Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US marine who defected to the Soviet Union in October 1959 and married a Russian girl. He embraced Marxism. In May 1962, Oswald returned to the States with his wife and child after reclaiming his US passport. Oswald settled in Dallas-Fort Worth where he became acquainted with anti-Communist Russians and East European émigrés. In April 1963, he returned to New Orleans, his birthplace, where he associated with Castro sympathisers and took part in certain activities handing out leaflets. Even on the day of the shooting, while search was on, Oswald killed a police officer in cold blood.

Therefore, on his very first private meeting with Alexey in Ibiza, Bradley told him that he could no longer share secrets and this should stop. Alexey agreed and the rutile ore shipments continued with Catai Tours keeping to the orders and transactions while voski miners saw to the delivery.

The KGB might not be happy but border troops of the MVD made no attempt to interrupt a consignment that Alexey arranged through JSC Tbilaviamsheni and via Armenia into American hands at ‘the Dive’ in Lake Sevan where CIA operated a Grumman flying boat in the waters around Sevan Island, in breach of Soviet airspace as it was flown from Port Pahlavi in the Gilan region of Iran in the Caspian Sea.

This covert operation of an airlift that took place between ’59 and ’64 was documented and photographed by undercover KGB agents and described in the next file titled in bold letters; ‘Operatsiya Nebo’.

At any given moment, Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) would have noticeably half a million personnel placed around the globe, including 200,000 at the borders.

The cargo of rutile ore sacks crossed the sea by boat from ports of Zhadnov and Odessa to Batumi Seaport in Georgia; the foremost Russian oil port in the Black Sea with an urbanised network of railway lines linking the South Caucasus known as Trans-Caucasus Railway. All the goods were carried by train, via Tbilisi, to Leninakan (that Salazar referred to as Gyumri) in Armenia and voski miners transport the rutile ore on trucks to Sevan. It took a risky two hours to load the ore to the Albatross painted with an Iranian tricolour ensign.

On the night Alexey stopped the shipment from loading the flying boat at Lake Sevan due to an argument with Jair Sivils, on 23^rd August 1964, there were a dozen border troops of the KGB photographing the scene with night-vision cameras and using infrared films.

When Levan Alexidze ran a random audit on the orders and transactions from the files of Tbilaviamsheni, he could find no discrepancy since a binding agreement was in place between the Georgian company and Kotayk Mining Authorities on behalf of Hankavan Gold Recovery Plant which was a Soviet stronghold and a heavenly place they loaf for convalescence.

In the days that followed, Minister Ram was able to meet Colonel General Yakov on an inspection tour to Tbilisi. Minister Ram asked about the efficacy of the SR-71 flying invisible to radar.

General Yakov replied, “Not true. Our radars can detect it but the innovative design is something worth to invigorate. Its shape minimises radar cross section and it cannot be quickly detected. They may have used another kind of fabrication. I noticed that they placed two vertical stabilisers inwards by fifteen degrees. Highly effective in every manner but the real magic is its speed and altitude. At three times the speed of sound, over 85,000 feet up in the sky, I know nothing that can stop it. Quite ingenious. I must say, they have advanced in metal fabrication. You see, its airframe will expand by several inches at extreme temperatures. Now, how did they manage to do it?”

“Do you have an answer?” asked Minister Ram.

“No. We know by theory but that’s not it. There’s something else. It is something non-metallic, perhaps, a rubber coating. That aircraft is lightweight and holding together in one piece. Kelly knows something I don’t. I’m always fascinated by Amerikanskaya inzheneriya…”

“Enough said, Comrade! Let’s have a drink!”