edy’s administration itself had informed him that the missiles were there and even showed him photographs. When he did view the photographs he denied any expertise in rocketry. “I have never seen anything like these photographs,” complained Bolshakov, “and cannot understand what is on them.” He even suggested that they just might be baseball diamonds. The Americans however were not pleased with these results.(Blight & Welch p.197)Bolshakov however did not prove to be totally useless to the Kennedy administration in resolving the missile crisis. On October 23, Frank Holeman revealed to Bolshakov, that the United States was willing to make a swap, Soviet nuclear ballistic missiles on the island of Cuba, in exchange for American ballistic nuclear missiles in the NATO State of Turkey on the borders of the Soviet Union. Kennedy was looking to remove the missiles in Turkey anyway for they had become obsolete upon the development of a larger quantity of higher quality missiles.(Cheney p.94) However GRU office in Washington chose to sit on the information and not reveal it to Khrushchev and the Soviet presidium just yet. Through Kennedy’s Bolshakov connection, it was first revealed that the Kennedy administration was willing to make a swap of missile installation in respective Soviet and American allied states.(Brugioni p.224)Bolshakov proved valuable in the months before the missile crisis to both the White House and the Kremlin. Both used him as a source of intelligence regarding the other superpower’s plans. Bolshakov was Bobby Kennedy’s initative in dealing with the Soviet Union. Ultimately, however, Khrushchev and the Soviet Union used the Kennedy-Bolshakov channel in a deceitful manner, deceiving the intelligence agent himself. Bolshakov was used to cover Soviet-Cuban covert operations in the Atlantic Ocean and to reassure the Kennedy administration that the Soviets had no plans ...
