Ireland agreed to a US request to search Cuban and Czech aircraft passing through Shannon airport in the wake of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, previously secret documents released Friday showed. Prime minister Sean Lemass personally gave neutral Ireland's go-ahead to US ambassador Mathew McCloskey for the inspections and the data handover to US officials, said a memo.
Information handed over included details of cargo and its weight and passengers and their nationalities, according to the National Archives material. The searches continued until 1970 when a US official said in a letter to Ireland's Department of External Affairs that they "may be discontinued immediately". The Cuban missile crisis erupted after Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev vowed to support Fidel Castro's regime by arming it with nuclear missiles capable of striking targets in the United States.
In response, in October 1962, US president John F. Kennedy imposed a naval blockade on the island nation. The stand-off led to the biggest crisis of the Cold War and brought the world the closest it had come to a nuclear conflict. As the crisis unfolded, a US embassy counsellor in Dublin visited the Department of External Affairs and said Washington was seeking information about planes stopping over in Shannon on Prague-Havana flights.