THE HARDENING SOVIET BASE IN CUBA

THE rumors and accusations about the massive Soviet buildup in Castro's Cuba had to be answered. New York's Republican Senator Kenneth Keating vowed to eat his hat if his charges were not right. And it was to force such critics as Keating to a diet of fried fedora that President Kennedy last week ordered Defense Secretary McNamara and CIA Chief John McCone to an unprecedented public report on the state of Cuba's military strength. Never before had a nation displayed in such detail its secrets of intelligence-gathering over an unfriendly country.

In two hours over national TV, John Hughes, special assistant to the chief of the Defense Department's intelligence service, used a photographic memory and a wandlike pointer to explain blowups of more than 65 aerial pictures daringly taken over Cuba since last August. As flashed onto a 20-ft.-wide screen the photographs, some of them in color, told an intensely dramatic story.

They showed how, after Khrushchev's backdown, the Soviet Union's "offensive" missiles and bombers were, stage by stage, dismantled, crated, hauled to Cuban ports, loaded onto freighters and shipped back toward Russia.

The Pentagon's exposition refuted beyond reasonable doubt the hysterically high estimates (up to 70,000) of Soviet military manpower in Cuba; McNamara also plucked to pieces the notion that the Russians have kept in Cuba all sorts of missiles capable of carrying nuclear devastation to the U.S. heartland.

But in the very thoroughness of McNamara's presentation there was positive evidence of a chilling fact: no matter that the Russians have removed their medium-and long-range nuclear missiles from Cuba, no matter that they have taken away their IL-28 bombers --they still have impressive military strength in Cuba.

The visual evidence of the Soviet withdrawal of long-range weapons was overwhelmingly convincing. But also shown were photographs taken in the reconnaissance flights that have continued since. And they gave the U.S. small cause for comfort.

As of now, Cuba is heavily ringed with conventional antiaircraft batteries. There are at least 24 emplacements of Russian ground-to-air missiles, the SA2, with a capability of reaching 80,000 ft. into the sky. There are more than 100 MIG fighters, including at least 42 MIG-21s able to carry atomic weapons for short ranges at speeds of better than 1,000 m.p.h. Castro's Cuba also now has at least twelve "Komar" patrol boats armed with 10-to 15-nautical-mi.-range missiles that can carry atomic warheads.

Aside from all that, there are at least 17,000 Russians in Cuba. The Kennedy Administration makes a great point that this represents a decrease from the peak strength of about 22,000 reached last October; hardly mentioned is the fact that the 5,000 who left were specialists sent to handle the medium-and long-range missiles that Khrushchev pulled out.

Of the Russians who remain, about 5,000 are organized in four battalion-strength combat units--highly mobile armored task groups with assault guns, the latest T-54 tanks, tactical rocket launchers, ground-to-ground missile transporters and launchers, and antitank weapons including a new-type rocket called the Snapper.

Beyond these elite combat outfits, the other 12,000 Russians in Cuba man ground-to-air missile sites, service fighter planes, maintain communications, instruct Castro's native troops, etc.

What is the possible purpose of such a Soviet establishment in Cuba? As both President Kennedy and Secretary McNamara insisted last week, it is certainly far too small to be regarded as an offensive threat against the U.S. mainland. But from Russia's viewpoint, it has other advantages.

Obviously, it makes any invasion of Cuba a tremendously difficult matter--not only because of the strength it adds to Castro's armament, but because of the possibility that an invasion might involve a major shooting war between U.S. and Russian troops. The Soviet force also frees at least some of Castro's Cubans for subversive and aggressive adventures throughout Latin America.

Most important, the Soviets, by reason of their military presence, have truly effective control over Cuba. If, for example, Fidel himself became expendable, the Russians could easily do away with him and install someone of their own choice. And the Soviet presence makes immensely less likely the chance for any successful internal uprising of Cubans against Castro.

There comes the real rub. It was in that context that President Kennedy at his press conference last week referred to the Russians in Cuba as, in a sense, "police units." Yet present U.S. policy toward Cuba is, in the words of one top Administration official, "not containment; it's getting rid of Castro." The U.S. intends to keep on applying all the economic and political pressures it can. It also counts on increasing disaffection among the Cubans themselves, based on their lack of food and their lack of liberty.

The logic of this policy is that at some point the Cubans will rise against Castro. What if this were to happen? Is the U.S. really ready to go to their aid--even at the expense of undertaking military action against the Cuba-based Russians? During the Kennedy-Khrushchev dialogue that arose in the October crisis, the President warned that the U.S. would not tolerate a Budapest in Cuba. What he meant was that the U.S. would intervene if Russia attempted to put down, as it did in Hungary, a Cuban revolt against Castro.

Probably the first U.S. response would be diplomatic: to persuade the Russians of the advantages of pulling out and the risks of staying. (The Soviet-U.S. duel over Cuba currently goes on under strange rules: the U.S. tolerates Soviet antiaircraft weapons, which in turn do not fire on low-flying U.S. reconnaissance planes.) But a real uprising in Cuba would not be like a Bay of Pigs invasion financed from abroad. It would be a cry for help which the U.S. could not afford to ignore.

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