The Soviet Union had never been interested in Latin America before Castro came to power and the Soviet had no political relations or an embassy in the region. After the failure of the U.S. attempt to overthrow Castro in the Bay of Pigs invasion, Khrushchev became convinced that the U.S. would plan another attack to overthrow communist Castro from power given increasing tension between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. over the missiles in Turkey. Khrushchev saw the focus on Cuba as a strategic opportunity to solve many of his problems at once by sending nuclear missile to Cuba. He would "equalize the balance of power and he would teach imperialists a salutary lesson " (Dobbs 46). .
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency soon noticed these Soviet activities and on October 15, U-2 spy plane provided alarming but conclusive evidence that the Soviets were constructing missiles launch sites throughout Cuba. Photograph evidence of suspicious objects were sent to a U.S. intelligence agency, identifying them as Soviet-deployed nuclear missiles heading towards Cuba just "hundred miles from the American shores " (Dobbs 48). .
President Kennedy immediately assembled his national security team, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to determine a course of action. The question was how to respond. Kennedy's first thought was to bomb the missile sites, which would likely have led to a U.S. invasion on Cuba, but he feared Soviet retaliation in Berlin, not wanting to give the Soviets an excuse to take all of Berlin as they had previously invaded Hungary in response to an Anglo-French attack on Egypt in 1956. (Dobbs 216) He instead decided on a fallback position of strict naval quarantine of Cuba, using U.S. navy ships to prevent any further offensive military weapons from being delivered to Cuba.
One of the negative roles of intelligence was when intelligence, including the air force chief Curtis Lemay, made a formal recommendation to the President to attack the missile sites before they made the nuclear missile operational in Cuba.
