I found an article in a 1994 edition of Studies in Intelligence (p. 105) based on U.S. military attaches’ observations about their time in Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis. Obviously, historians and other experts have written much about this issue since the article originally appeared in 1966, but I think it’s worth reading what observers had to say at the time. Here’s a decent summary of the article:

Read the whole thing, but here’s the conclusion:

I very much like this anecdote concerning the post-crisis diplomatic environment;