Were going to start with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cuban missile crisis was 1962. It took place over 13 very, very stressful days in october 1962. The United States at that point had long been flying High Altitude surveillance flights over the nation of cuba, but on october 14th, 1962 a u2 surveillance flight picked up imagery in cuba of something that started that whole crisis, started that whole standoff. Its interesting. The Cuban Missile Crisis is very precisely identified in all the history books as having started on october 16th. Two days after that u2 spy plane captured those images in cuba. But the crisis didnt start on october 16th because something happened that day, because there was some overt act by cuba, there was some provocation there or some announcement by them, it didnt start because on october 16th there was some act by the
soviet union or some announcement by the soviets that kicked off this crisis. The reason we can be so specific about when the Cuban Missile Cris
flower, while it is at its most terrifying and not at all resolved and it seems like we might be having a nuclear war after this issue, on october 22nd, oleg was walking down the street in moscow and the kgb snatched him off the street, arrested him and figured out he was a double agent. we don t know how they got him, if they were able to reverse engineer what information the u.s. had about the site or maybe a american double agent knew about penkovsky being this important asset for the western allies and maybe some american or british double agent gave this guy s name to the kremlin, we don t know. in the middle of the crisis before any diplomatic resolution was in reach, oleg gets snatched
soviet union or some announcement by the soviets that kicked off this crisis. the reason we can be so specific about when the cuban missile crisis started on october 16th is because that crisis began when the united states had a revelation. the united states realized and figured out with high confidence exactly what it was looking at in those photos that had been taken two days earlier. the way the united states was able to identify exactly what they were looking at in those photos, the way the kennedy administration was able to look at those photos and come to the conclusion that, in fact, this was a new secret deployment of nuclear weapons by the soviet union, they could get specific about what kinds of missiles and missile launchers and equipment they were looking at, the reason the cuban missile crisis started is because the u.s. was able to make that identification. the reason they were able to make that identification is because of this man. his name is oleg penkohski.