He attracted notoriety among the American public during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis at the beginning of his ambassadorship, when he denied the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. However, he did not know until days later that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had already sent the missiles and that the Americans already had photographs of them. Between 1968 and 1974, he was known as the Soviet end of the Kissinger–Dobrynin direct communication and negotiation link between the Nixon administration and the Soviet Politburo.