ABSTRACT
Nikita Khrushchev, who acted as his own intelligence analyst, gave Soviet intelligence little opportunity to inform policy, tasking it neither to estimate the prospects for a successful covert deployment of nuclear weapons to Cuba, nor to estimate the likely American reaction. By all indications, Khrushchev did not even inform his intelligence services of his scheme. During the crisis, Soviet intelligence was largely unable to provide the Kremlin with useful information. The poor performance of Soviet intelligence in the Cuban missile crisis may be attributed in part to a paucity of informed and reliable sources close to the White House; in part to technical incapacity; but, perhaps most importantly, to bureaucratic constraints and a limiting institutional ethos.
