Cuban Missile Crisis into Cuba. On October 13, Dobrynin was questioned by former Undersecretary of State Chester Bowles about whether the Soviets planned to put offensive weapons in Cuba. He denied any such plans. On October 17, Soviet embassy official Georgy Bolshakov brought President Kennedy a personal message from Khrushchev reassuring him that "under no circumstances would surface-to-surface missiles be sent to Cuba." As early as August 1962, the US suspected the Soviets of building missile facilities in Cuba. During that month, its intelligence services gathered information about sightings by ground observers of Russian-built MiG-21 fighters and Il-28 light bombers. U-2 spyplanes found
Cuban Missile Crisis in a "Memorandum for the President" describing the "Post Mortem on Cuba." Kennedy's Oval Office telephone conversation with Eisenhower soon after Khrushchev's message arrived revealed that the President was planning to use the Cuban Missile Crisis to escalate tensions with Khrushchev and in the long run, Cuba as well. The President also claimed that he thought the crisis would result in direct military confrontations in Berlin by the end of the next month. He also claimed in his conversation with Eisenhower that the Soviet leader had offered to withdraw from Cuba in exchange for the withdrawal of missiles from Turkey