Douglas Dillon and George Ball weighed in with more elaborate and passionate memoranda underscoring the divide among advisers and the momentous consequences of the president’s decision. Dillon saw no room for negotiations and little alternative to military action. He opposed any request to Khrushchev for talks, arguing instead for a blockade and demands for the removal of the missiles. An immediate air strike should follow a Castro refusal. He warned that the nation’s survival depended on the prompt elimination of the Soviet weapons in Cuba. Why the United States could not live with the missiles left in place was left unsaid.
Ball disagreed. He thought the missiles made little strategic difference. He compared a surprise air offensive to Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, which had justified war crime trials against Japanese leaders. Such an attack on Cuba would bring condemnation from world opinion as a violation of American traditions and professed moral standards. Ball urged a blockade that he believed would cripple and bring down Castro’s government.
As the advisers convened in the Cabinet Room at 11:10 A.M., up-to-date reconnaissance photos showed intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) sites, which had twice the range of MRBMs and carried warheads of roughly twice as much yield. Kennedy was told that these more powerful missiles brought the continental United States, except the Pacific Northwest, within range. Rusk and McNamara reacted to the news with anger and assertions that military strikes might need to replace the diplomatic track they had favored earlier. Remembering the appeasement of the thirties, Rusk worried about “the effect on the Soviets if we were to do nothing.” But he feared that the Soviet response to air raids and a possible invasion of Cuba would lead to a dangerous escalation. So, everything considered, he favored discussions with Khrushchev, who “might realize that he’s got to back down.” It could “prevent a great conflict.”
McNamara was more supportive of military action now than Rusk. He said that he had conferred with the Chiefs and shared their conviction that a full invasion might be in order. Kennedy asked McNamara why the new information changed the recommendation. McNamara still believed that the missiles in Cuba did not change the military equation between the United States and the Soviet Union. But he was willing to back the Chiefs’ call for action out of political considerations. If they didn’t act, how could any of America’s allies continue to trust us; or expect Khrushchev to take U.S. deterrence seriously; or expect domestic public opinion to back the administration? While Taylor endorsed McNamara’s support of strong measures, he disputed his assumption that it was strictly or largely a political matter. He shared the Chiefs’ view that Khrushchev was turning Cuba into “a forward base, of major importance to the Soviets.”
Kennedy was not convinced by the advice urging prompt air strikes and a possible invasion—either for military or political reasons. He discounted McNamara’s assertion that the use of force was essential to hold the alliance together. Most allies do not see Cuba as a serious military threat, he said: “They think we are slightly demented on this subject.” They would see an air attack on Cuba as “a mad act by the United States.” Kennedy was also skeptical about the wisdom of landing U.S. troops in Cuba: “Nobody knows what kind of success we’re going to have with this invasion,” he said. “Invasions are tough, hazardous,” as the Bay of Pigs had demonstrated. He leaned toward some kind of diplomatic initiative; he wanted to know what would be the best method of quick communication with Khrushchev. And the more important decision was, “What action we take which lessens the chances of a nuclear exchange, which obviously is the final failure.”
If Kennedy needed support for a political initiative before they resorted to armed force, he found it in the advice of two American Soviet experts, Charles Bohlen and Llewellyn Thompson. The fifty-eight-year-old Bohlen was an American aristocrat. The offspring of a privileged family, he was schooled at St. Paul’s and Harvard. After travels abroad, including a few months in China, he decided on a Foreign Service career with a focus on the Soviet Union. Years of service in the Moscow embassy had led Eisenhower, against Secretary of State John F. Dulles’s wishes, to make him ambassador from 1953 to 1957. Tensions with Dulles over Bohlen’s support for accommodations with the Soviet Union had forced him to leave Moscow, but it gave him standing with Democrats who admired his courage in standing up to right-wing Republicans, including Joe McCarthy, who had failed to block his appointment to Russia. Before Bohlen sailed in October 1962 for Paris, where Kennedy had made him ambassador to France, the president had consulted him about Khrushchev’s motives and how he thought the crisis with Moscow could be resolved.
As he left Washington, Bohlen sent the president a letter saying that the missiles had to be forced out of Cuba by either diplomatic or military means. But diplomacy should be first; this advice reflected Bohlen’s long-standing belief in a shared Soviet-American desire to avoid a war. A message to Khrushchev was an essential first step. Bohlen did not think it would impede later possible military steps. An attack without a prior diplomatic initiative would provoke a war with Cuba that would antagonize America’s allies. “I feel very strongly that . . . a limited, quick action,” he wrote, “is an illusion and would lead us into a total war with Cuba on a step-by-step basis which would greatly increase the probability of general war.” The letter echoed Kennedy’s fears and strengthened the president’s resolve to find an alternative to military action.
Bohlen’s departure for France had provoked some debate. He persuaded Kennedy that his staying in Washington would alert the press to the crisis and that Llewellyn Thompson, ambassador to Moscow, who had comparable expertise on the Soviet Union and held similar views to his, could speak for both of them. Bohlen’s departure, however, infuriated Bobby Kennedy, who later complained that “Chip Bohlen ran out on us—which always shocked me. . . . That wasn’t necessary; he could always have postponed it. We said he could fly over, but he decided to leave this country in a crisis . . . when he had been working with all of us for such a long period of time.” But the president disagreed with his brother’s assessment and let Bohlen go to Paris.
Kennedy was also content to have Thompson as his principal adviser on likely Russian reactions to U.S. initiatives. Thompson had served as Bohlen’s successor in Moscow and had been brought back from the embassy in June to become the State Department’s principal Soviet expert. The fifty-eight-year-old Thompson was respected as a long-serving diplomat without a political agenda. As the U.S. expert who knew Khrushchev better than anyone else, he had a keen sense of his potential reactions to various policies as well as the likely response of others in the Soviet Union, including their interest in restraining Khrushchev. Thompson recalled for Kennedy an incident in 1960 during the U-2 crisis, when Soviet generals made clear to Thompson that Khrushchev was acting rashly. Thompson thought that Khrushchev might again be at odds with his military chiefs and that negotiating proposals might pressure him into conciliatory talks.
Thompson unequivocally supported a blockade. He believed that it would prevent the shipment of additional weapons to Cuba and would ultimately compel Khrushchev to dismantle the existing sites. Kennedy agreed that a blockade seemed unlikely to provoke a nuclear war, but he worried that Khrushchev would move against Berlin. Thompson was convinced that Khrushchev wanted to negotiate. If the United States bombed the missile sites, he said, Khrushchev would retaliate by taking “out one of our bases in Turkey . . . and then say: ‘Now I want to talk.’” Khrushchev’s “whole purpose of this exercise is to build up to talks with you, in which we try to negotiate out the bases.”
Bobby saw problems with a blockade. It not only posed a threat to Berlin, but was also “a very slow death,” with dangers in stopping and examining Russian ships and shooting down Russian planes that tried to land in Cuba. Whatever you do, Thompson advised, he urged Kennedy to make it as easy as possible for Khrushchev to back down. He thought Bobby’s point was weakened by the likelihood that negotiations during the blockade would deter both sides from aggr
essive action.
McCone, who had sat silently, now reported that Eisenhower wouldn’t support anything short of a military response. It was McCone’s trump card for trying to force Kennedy into the sort of actions favored by the Chiefs. But it was clear to Thompson and Bobby that, while Kennedy had his doubts about the effectiveness of a blockade, he was not ready to risk a nuclear war with a full-scale assault. Thompson reinforced the president’s reluctance by predicting that if the United States killed Russians in an attack, it would mean war. And Bobby, reflecting his brother’s doubts, declared, “I think George Ball has a hell of a good point.” “What?” Kennedy asked, eager to hear Ball’s argument again. Bobby replied that the world would ask, “What kind of a country we are. . . . We did this against Cuba.” We had consistently decried the threat of a Soviet first strike. “Now, . . . we do that to a small country. I think it’s a hell of a burden to carry.” Rusk agreed: It would be like carrying “the mark of Cain” on our brows. McNamara concurred, and Thompson said that it was essential that we not reject negotiations, which step would make a war inevitable.
After two days of discussion, they were still without a plan. Although McNamara acknowledged that no one had an ideal solution, he thought they needed to settle on a clear-cut diagram. McNamara tried to sum up their choices as the meeting came to an end: One was prompt military action, and the other was the slow move toward armed attacks, but only after setting up a blockade accompanied by an ultimatum to Khrushchev to remove the missiles. McNamara leaned toward the second option in the belief that it would not shatter any of the country’s alliances and might facilitate an exchange in which the United States removed its missiles from Turkey and Italy at the same time Khrushchev took his out of Cuba.
A series of evening meetings made clear that Kennedy favored a blockade. Robert Lovett, whom Kennedy had brought into the discussions out of an eagerness to hear from the most experienced people he knew, suggested that they follow the State Department’s legal adviser’s suggestion that they call it a quarantine, which would define the action as more of a defensive measure than an act of war. As notes Kennedy made after these talks showed, Lovett especially influenced him: His long experience in government and reputation for moderate good sense helped sway Kennedy. By contrast with Acheson, who urged prompt military action, and Bundy, who opposed either an attack or a blockade as likely to cause the loss of Berlin and divide NATO, Lovett thought the blockade was the best way to resolve the crisis, with force as a last resort.
It is striking that Kennedy had not directly consulted the military chiefs before deciding to introduce a blockade. Should the blockade fail, he would resort to military steps, and so needed the Chiefs on board for that, but, assuming that they would be single-minded in their call for attacks, he held them at arm’s length. Moreover, his memories of the naval officers he had seen in action during World War II and their advice before the Bay of Pigs had deepened his distrust. The Army’s slow response to the Mississippi violence had added to his doubts about the military’s competence. After the Army’s failure to act quickly, Kennedy said, “They always give you their bullshit about their instant reaction and their split-second timing, but it never works out. No wonder it’s so hard to win a war.” It wasn’t until the morning of October 19 that Kennedy finally brought the Chiefs into the discussion, but only for forty-five minutes.
The meeting confirmed his assumption about their views. At the start of the discussion, Taylor said that the Chiefs were agreed on a surprise air strike followed by surveillance to assure against further threats and a blockade to prevent shipments of additional weapons. Kennedy responded by telling the Chiefs that he saw no “satisfactory alternatives” but considered a blockade the least likely to lead to a disastrous nuclear war.
LeMay responded forcefully in opposition to anything but direct military action. Moreover, he dismissed the president’s observation that if the United States hit the Soviet missiles in Cuba, they would respond by taking Berlin. On the contrary, he said, hitting the missiles would deter the Soviets, and a failure to destroy the offensive weapons in Cuba would encourage Moscow to move against Berlin. “This blockade and political action, I see leading into war,” he added. “It will lead right into war. This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich. . . . I just don’t see any other solution except direct military intervention right now.” Admiral George Anderson, the Navy chief of staff, General Earle Wheeler, and Marine Commandant David Shoup voiced the same conclusion: “The full gamut of military action,” as Wheeler put it.
LeMay then commented on “the political factor,” which, he said to Kennedy, “you invited us to comment on . . . at one time.” Reminding Kennedy that he had “made some pretty strong statements . . . that we would take action against offensive weapons, I think that a blockade and political talk would be considered by a lot of our friends and neutrals as being a pretty weak response to this. And I’m sure a lot of our own citizens would feel that way, too. In other words, you are in a pretty bad fix at the present time.” Offended by LeMay’s bluntness and suggestion that he was acting like Britain’s Chamberlain, Kennedy asked: “What did you say?” “You’re in a pretty bad fix,” LeMay replied, refusing to back down. Masking his anger with a contrived laugh, Kennedy said, “You’re in there with me.”
After Kennedy, McNamara, and Taylor left the meeting, the tape recorder caught the Chiefs attacking Kennedy. Shoup told LeMay: “You pulled the rug right out from under him.” “What the hell do you mean?” LeMay asked. Shoup explained: “I agree with you a hundred percent,” adding that escalation by small steps was a terrible idea. “If somebody could keep them from doing the goddamn thing piecemeal. That’s our problem. You go in there and friggin’ around with the missiles. You’re screwed. . . . Either do this son of bitch and do it right, and quit friggin’ around.” Wheeler saw no chance of it: “It was very apparent to me,” he said, “that the political action of a blockade is really what he” wants.
Kennedy was also angry. When deputy defense secretary Roswell Gilpatric saw him after he left the meeting, he thought the president “was just choleric. He was just beside himself, as close as he ever got.” Kennedy then told Kenny O’Donnell, “These brass hats have one great advantage in their favor. If we . . . do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.”
While Kennedy had concluded that a blockade was his best option for removing the missiles without a war, he wanted to ensure a consensus that precluded any public dissent by his advisers, especially the military chiefs, who could wound him politically if the blockade failed to remove the missiles and he had to resort to air attacks and possibly an invasion. The Chiefs could paint him as hesitant to use force and complain about losses resulting from the absence of surprise. Determined to keep the public in the dark until he rather than someone in Congress or the media revealed the crisis, Kennedy left on a campaign trip to the Midwest on Friday, October 19. He instructed Bobby to “pull the group together” to allow him to say later that all hands supported the blockade.
As Kennedy campaigned in Illinois and Ohio, his advisers met at the State Department, where they debated the choice between an air strike and a blockade. When a tentative commitment to a blockade was described as the current state of thinking, Taylor dissented, saying the Joints Chiefs shared his view. Bundy declared his shift from the previous day favoring non-action to air strikes, which he considered much more likely to remove the missiles than a blockade. Acheson predictably chimed in with a plea for a decisive air strike: They needed to understand that they were now dealing with an irresponsible “madman.” “We had better act and act quickly,” he warned. Dillon and McCone agreed, and Taylor predicted that imposing a blockade would mean abandoning an air assault or at least one that could be highly effective. McNamara said that he would order preparations for a prompt air attack but continued to prefer a blockade.
Bobby Kennedy now made clear what the president wanted. Grinnin
g with perhaps the satisfaction of knowing that he was giving marching orders to a group of men unaccustomed to taking rather than giving direction, Bobby explained that he had spoken to his brother that morning and that the president saw no room for a surprise attack. It would evoke memories of Pearl Harbor. A blockade would make clear the administration’s determination to get the missiles out of Cuba, but it would also “allow the Soviets some room for maneuver to pull back from their over-extended position.” After some further discussion, Bobby agreed that a blockade could be a first step with an air strike in reserve if the Soviets did not take out the missiles.
Despite his show of confidence, Bobby called his brother and persuaded him to return to Washington on Saturday instead of Sunday to hammer home what he wanted. Pretending to have a cold, Kennedy returned to Washington to attend an afternoon National Security Council meeting at the White House. The session, the longest yet of the discussions, lasted two hours and forty minutes and included twenty-two officials, among them the president, Bobby, and all the principal advisers from the CIA, the Defense, State, and Treasury departments as well as Taylor, Bundy, and Sorensen. The discussion was essentially a rehash of now-familiar arguments, with Taylor pressing for full-scale air strikes and the president reiterating his preference for a blockade, with air attacks against only missiles and missile sites if the Soviets refused to remove the offensive weapons.
At a second NSC meeting lasting more than two hours the following day, the focus shifted to a presidential address in which Kennedy intended to demand “nothing less than the ending of the missile capability now in Cuba.” He agreed, however, to use the word “quarantine” instead of “blockade” to avoid comparisons with the 1948 Soviet disruption of land traffic into Berlin. He also directed that a letter to Khrushchev be prepared saying how perilous the Soviet leader’s actions were and how eager the United States was “to resume the path of peaceful negotiation.”
Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House Page 34
