General Gordon Blake Case

Lieutenant General Gordon Blake, the then-Director of NSA, led his organization in responding to the crisis. He had ascended to the leadership of NSA just three months before, bringing with him advance knowledge in communications and intelligence. Most of the burden of day-to-day management of the organization fell on the shoulders of the Operations Department, under the leadership of Mrs. Juanita Moody. Her office was tasked with updating the government on the status of Cuba’s military and producing up-to-date information in a timely fashion. The first response was to increase the size of the workforce in response to the additional work. To make sure that unanticipated demands for signals intelligence were met on time, the director created the first-ever round-the-clock command center at NSA. Additionally, Lieutenant General Blake made it his responsibility to ensure the delivery of the agency’s product to the presidency and walking decision-makers through its indicators, which were occasionally arcane. Most of NSA’s capacity was deployed to the regions around Cuba. For instance, signals intelligence was used for the gathering of critical information from stations based on the ground as well as aircraft buzzing around the border of the country, a few miles

The accumulation of weapons and changes made to the defense system in Cuba was a source of concern and attracted the attention of the presidency and the top brass of the military in eliminating the threat presented by Cuba way before its eruption. In the course of the crisis, the President relied heavily on the intelligence system for the much-needed information to enable the making of informed decisions, all of which functioned to rescue the nation from the most serious crisis since the conclusion of the Second World