Elsewhere progress is smooth. Alexis Johnson has turned out a master scenario schedule of everything which must be done before the President’s 7 P.M. speech Monday—instructions to U.S. embassies abroad, congressional briefings, etc. Acheson, recalled, agrees to tell Macmillan, de Gaulle, and Adenauer. Edward Martin prepares for the OAS meeting. As detailed arrangements are made and legal justifications marshaled, however, more and more government officials are brought into the discussions. As a consequence, word that something big is coming has begun to seep through to the press. Too many trips have been canceled, too many announcements made for odd reasons, too many lights have been burning late in unexpected places, too many high officers in the government have failed to appear at dinner parties or, having appeared, have left, murmuring excuses. James Reston of the New York Times and Alfred Friendly, managing editor of the Washington Post, have begun to stalk the truth, and Reston has most of the essential facts. At the President’s personal request, both agree to publish less than they know until Tuesday.
The Navy has deployed 180 ships in the Caribbean. The B-52 bomber force has been ordered into the air fully loaded with atomic weapons; as one plane lands, another immediately takes its place in the air. Late Saturday night the 1st Armored Division begins to move out of Texas headed for embarkation ports in Georgia. Five other divisions are placed on alert.
***
Sunday, October 21
A golden fall day. In the State Department forty-three letters to heads of government and to Mayor Willy Brandt, mayor of West Berlin, are drafted for the President’s signature. In addition, the President is writing a letter to Khrushchev; it will be delivered with a copy of his speech. American embassies and consulates abroad are warned to prepare for demonstrations and riots. U.S. ambassadors will receive explanatory telegrams at 6 P.M. tomorrow, an hour before Kennedy speaks. The U.S. Passport Office opens on a Sunday for one traveler—Dean Acheson’s passport must be validated.
The secret won’t keep much longer. An air of crisis hangs over Washington. The entire press corps now knows that something is afoot. The New York Herald Tribune spikes the story at McNamara’s request, but other papers may be expected to divulge it at any time; the British embassy has found out what is coming, and the rest of the diplomatic corps have begun checking rumors. Sunday evening Dean Rusk advises his staff to get some sleep. “Gentlemen,” he says, “by this time tomorrow we will be in a flaming crisis.”
***
Monday, October 22
At noon Salinger announces that the President will speak on television at 7 P.M. The topic will be “of the greatest urgency.”
Lawrence F. O’Brien phones twenty congressional leaders of both parties; the President wants to see them at 5 P.M. Those who can’t make it by commercial airlines are picked up by Air Force planes—in some cases, jet fighters. The meeting turns out to be the most difficult of the crisis for Kennedy. The leaders condemn the quarantine-blockade as too weak. He leaves the room in a rage. Later, with his brother, he is more philosophical, recalling that though the congressional reaction is now more militant than his, it is close to what his was when he first learned of the missiles six days ago.
The diplomatic orchestration is flawless. Following the master scenario, separate briefings are given to forty-six allied diplomats, to Latin American ambassadors, and to envoys from the emerging nations. De Gaulle tells Acheson, “It is exactly what I would have done.” At 6 P.M. Rusk sees Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador; twenty-five minutes later Dobrynin emerges grim and shaken. (U.S. officials will come to believe afterward that Dobrynin had not known of the missiles in Cuba.) In France Acheson lays the matter before the NATO leadership. Adlai Stevenson delivers to Zorin of the USSR a request to convene a special meeting of the Security Council to deal with “the dangerous threat to the peace and security of the world by the secret establishment in Cuba” of missiles “capable of carrying thermonuclear warheads to most of North and South America.”
The initial response to these moves is heartening, even among the governments of neutral nations. The Russians appear stunned. Only one allied leader is suspicious of the Americans: John Diefenbaker of Canada.
Kennedy’s speech begins at 7 P.M. on all TV channels and on the Spanish language network:
“Good evening, my fellow citizens. The Government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.”
He recites the Russian assurances, now revealed as “deliberate deception,” and pledges that it will be his “unswerving objective” to remove the nuclear menace. The quarantine, he says, is only an initial step; it will be followed by stronger measures if that is necessary. The Organization of American States is meeting in emergency session to consider the threat, and U-2 flights over Cuba are being intensified. He warns Khrushchev: any missile launched from Cuba will be regarded as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring full retaliatory response against the USSR. Any vessels attempting to run the blockade will be sunk by the U.S. Navy.
After his speech he is handed a confidential report from McNamara listing the resources being marshaled for further military action: warplanes capable of flying 2,000 sorties against targets in Cuba, 90,000 marines and paratroopers forming an invasion force, and 250,000 troops backing them up. An estimate of American casualties in the event of invasion puts the expected figure at over 25,000.
Unexpectedly, there is a light note in this. The Pentagon reports to the President that the Russians and Cubans have inexplicably lined up their planes wing tip to wing tip, ready to be destroyed, like the American planes at Pearl Harbor twenty-one years earlier. Kennedy asks General Taylor to put a U-2 photographic mission over the U.S. air bases in Florida. “It will be interesting if we have done the same thing,” he says. We have. The Air Force hastily disperses them.
***
Tuesday, October 23
George Ball, who has spent the night in troubled sleep on his office couch, awakens to see Dean Rusk looking down on him, smiling for the first time in a week. “We have won a considerable victory,” Rusk says. “You and I are still alive.” The worst fears have not, in fact, materialized. The Russians have not bombed U.S. bases in the Middle East, blockaded Berlin, or moved to close the Dardanelles. Soviet strategy, whatever its intended thrust, has been checked by the President’s challenge.
In Moscow there is no reaction for thirteen hours. Then the American ambassador there is handed a note accusing the United States of “piracy” and denying that the missiles in Cuba are intended for military purposes. The note is interpreted as betraying uncertainty; Khrushchev, caught off guard, appears to be playing for time to think things through. Even so, there is little time for maneuver. President Kennedy has signed the blockade proclamation; it will go into effect tomorrow morning. In it, contraband is defined as covering offensive missiles, their warheads and electronic equipment, and bomber aircraft. Already the Navy is tracking Russian submarines in the Caribbean. The twenty-five Soviet merchant ships on the way to Cuba have not changed course. They are receiving an extraordinary number of coded messages from Russia.
The Organization of American States meeting opens at 9 A.M., with Dean Rusk in the United States chair. The resolution supporting the quarantine must win fourteen Latin American votes, a two-thirds majority. Edward Martin believes that it will get exactly fourteen. The secretary hopes that his participation will widen the margin. It does—a few minutes after five o’clock the measure carries unanimously, 18–0, with only Uruguay abstaining. The Russians are reported to be astounded. At the same time, American ambassadors in Jamaica and Trinidad, Guinea, and Senegal report success in excluding the possibility that Soviet warheads might be flown
to Cuba; their host governments have agreed to deny landing rights for Soviet bloc planes on their way there. Still another encouraging word comes from the U.N.: Stevenson has the support of seven of the eleven nations on the Security Council.
At the President’s request, Robert Kennedy calls on Ambassador Dobrynin at the Russian embassy. Dobrynin spreads his hands; as far as he knows, there are no missiles in Cuba. Back at the White House, Bobby learns that the President has shortened the line of interception for the quarantine from eight hundred miles to five hundred miles, giving the Russians more time. McNamara phones from the Pentagon—the latest U-2 photographs show work continuing on the sites in Cuba.
President Kennedy has begun to show the tension. He talks rapidly, in staccato bursts, and his eyes are screwed up tight, as though he is squinting at the sun. A telegram arrives from Bertrand Russell: YOUR ACTION DESPERATE…. NO CONCEIVABLE JUSTIFICATION. WE WILL NOT HAVE MASS MURDER…. END THIS MADNESS. Kennedy replies, “I think your attention might well be directed to the burglars rather than to those who have caught the burglars.”
***
Wednesday, October 24
Ten A.M.: the blockade line is drawn. Since Monday afternoon an American fleet, designated Task Force 136, has been racing at flank speed—27 knots—to close off all five navigable channels through which ships from the mid-Atlantic can approach Cuba. Now they have reached their stations in a great arc five hundred miles out to sea from the eastern tip of Cuba. On the forward picket line there are thirteen destroyers; then two cruisers, each flanked by two more cruisers—nineteen ships altogether. Bearing down on them are the twenty-five Russian merchantmen, each of which has been spotted by Navy reconnaissance planes. Two of the vessels, the Gagarin and the Komiles, are within a few miles of the picket line. A Russian submarine has moved into position between them. In Washington the Ex Coram awaits the first interception, probably before noon.
Aerial photographs from special low-level reconnaissance missions of Cuba, supplementing the U-2s, show that feverish work continues on the ground there. Eight to ten bases are situated near the cities of San Cristóbal, Remedios, Guanajay, and Sagua la Grande. Each base has about four launchers. At least thirty missiles with nuclear warheads are in Cuba, and there are over twenty crated IL-28 (Ilyushin) jet light bombers capable of delivering nuclear bombs on American or Latin American cities. In the new photos the launching pads, the missiles, and the nuclear storage bunkers are clearly defined. Within a few days several of the launching pads will be ready for war.
At the U.N., Secretary General U Thant sends identical letters to Kennedy and Khrushchev urging suspension of the blockade and arms shipments for two to three weeks. Kennedy refuses to negotiate until the Russians agree to dismantle and remove the missile bases. In Moscow William Knox, an American industrialist, is invited to the Kremlin, where he finds Khrushchev in a state of near-exhaustion. The Soviet premier says he has a message for Washington. He looks like a man who has not slept all night; at times he is almost incoherent; the message is unimportant.
On his way to an Ex Comm session President Kennedy says to his brother, “It looks really mean, doesn’t it? But then, really there was no other choice. If they get this mean on this one in our part of the world, what will they do on the next?” Bob tells him, “I just don’t think there was any choice, and not only that, if you hadn’t acted, you would have been impeached.” The President says, “That’s what I think—I would have been impeached.”5
The first sign of hope comes at 10:32 A.M. Twenty Russian ships have stopped dead in the water. Six, then twelve, turn around. Rusk nudges Bundy and says softly, “We’re eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked.”
***
Thursday, October 25
At 8 A.M., twenty-two hours after the quarantine proclamation, the first interception of a Russian ship occurs at sea. She is the tanker Bucharest. Identifying herself by radio and declaring that her only cargo is petroleum, she is allowed to proceed through the line of American warships. At 8:35 A.M. the East German passenger ship Völkerfreund, carrying twenty students, also passes. The President has ordered that the captain of each vessel must be permitted sufficient time to consult Moscow.
The situation is still grave. In Cuba work on the missile sites continues at an extraordinarily rapid pace. The IL-28 bombers are also being uncrated and assembled. Kennedy keeps the pressure. To all offers of compromise he replies that the missiles and bombers must be removed; nothing else will do.
In the U.N. Security Council, Valerian Zorin makes the mistake of challenging Adlai Stevenson to produce evidence of the missiles. As millions of Americans watch—it is during the dinner hour—Stevenson turns on him with superb scorn. He says he has proof, but first he asks Zorin to deny that the missiles are there. “Yes or no?” he snaps. “Don’t wait for the translation, yes or no?” Zorin says he is not in an American courtroom. Stevenson says, “You are in the courtroom of world opinion right now and you can answer yes or no.” Zorin, retreating, says, “You will have your answer in due course.” Stevenson closes in: “I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over, if that’s your decision. And I am also prepared to present the evidence in this room.” With that, he unveils easels which have been shrouded, revealing blown-up photos of the sites.
***
Friday, October 26
At 7 A.M. the American destroyer Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. hails the freighter Marucla in the open sea about 180 miles northeast of Nassau. The Kennedy hoists the international signal “Oscar November,” meaning “Heave to,” and the Marucla does so. In less than an hour an armed boarding party of American sailors is searching her. There is no contraband; the ship is allowed to continue. The inference, which is encouraging, is that Moscow has instructed Soviet captains to submit to searches.
Nevertheless the Ex Comm is glum. In Cuba the Russians continue to work feverishly. The first missiles will be ready for firing in a matter of hours. At a White House press conference Salinger takes note of this and observes that the Soviet technicians are clearly trying to achieve “full operational capability as soon as possible.” A State Department spokesman says ominously that if this continues, “further action” by the President “will be justified.” Robert Kennedy tells Ambassador Dobrynin that the President cannot hold off more than forty-eight hours.
The first real break in the crisis comes at 1:30 P.M. It is highly unconventional. John Scali, a TV commentator who covers the State Department for the American Broadcasting Company, receives a telephone call from an acquaintance at the Soviet embassy. The caller is Alexander S. Fomin, a counselor at the embassy who is believed to be a colonel in the KGB, the Soviet secret police. Scali says he is busy. Fomin, highly agitated, says, “It’s very important. Meet me at the Occidental in ten minutes.” At the Occidental Restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue, Fomin says he wants to know whether the State Department would discuss an agreement with three provisions: the removal of the missiles in Cuba under U.N. supervision, a promise from Castro to accept no offensive weapons in the future, and an American pledge not to invade Cuba. Scali says he will find out. At 7:35 the two men meet again in the coffee shop of the Statler Hilton. Scali, having talked to Rusk, informs the Russian that the United States government is definitely interested. Fomin rushes off.
At 6 P.M. (1 A.M. in Moscow) a long, emotional letter from Khrushchev starts coming through over the teletype linking the State Department with the American embassy in Moscow. The Soviet premier acknowledges for the first time that there are Russian missiles in Cuba. His proposal, he says, is this: no more weapons will go to Cuba, and those within Cuba will be either withdrawn or destroyed if Kennedy agrees not to attack Cuba. Essentially, these are Fomin’s terms. At 10 P.M. the Ex Comm meets to consider the offer. The decision is to accept it as though it were a formal note and reply in the morning, pending a careful examination during the night by Kremlinologists at the State Department. The Fomin conditions will be studied at th
e same time. For the first time in ten days the President goes to bed believing that a peaceful solution may be found.
***
Saturday, October 27
The height of the crisis. Even as the reply to Khrushchev is being drafted, Radio Moscow broadcasts a second Khrushchev letter to Kennedy. This one is unacceptable. As a condition for withdrawal of the missiles he demands that NATO missile bases in Turkey be dismantled. The Ex Comm has already weighed the possibility of such a swap and rejected it. Though the bases in Turkey now have little military value (and will, in fact, be phased out soon), the Turks regard them as symbols of the American commitment. To bargain away the weapons of an ally in exchange for the security of the United States would, it is believed, shake, and perhaps shatter, the western alliance. This second letter is different in more than content; it lacks Khrushchev’s style, and reads as though drafted by a committee. The FBI reports, that Soviet diplomats in New York are preparing to destroy their documents. The bridges to sanity seem to be crumbling. On top of this there is another blow. An American U-2 pilot is shot down over Cuba, meaning that the SAM bases on the missile sites are operational; the missiles themselves will be next. The Joint Chiefs join the Ex Comm meeting. They recommend an air strike Monday, to be followed by an invasion of Cuba. With one exception the Ex Comm believes that there is no other course. The exception is the President. He says: “It isn’t the first step that concerns me… but both sides escalating to the fourth and fifth step—and we don’t go to the sixth because there is no one around to do so. We must remind ourselves we are embarking on a very hazardous course.”
Robert Kennedy sees a way out. He proposes that they ignore the second letter and answer the first. Various drafts along these lines are submitted by Dean Rusk, George Ball, McGeorge Bundy, and Llewellyn Thompson. Bob doesn’t like any of them. His brother tells him, “If you disagree so violently, go draft one yourself.” Bob and Ted Sorensen leave the meeting to do just that. By choosing the terms they like best in each of the two letters and in the Fomin proposal, they agree to a proposal Khrushchev never made. The President approves it, sends it to Khrushchev at 8:05 P.M.—and tells the world he has accepted the Russian conditions. Bob then phones Dobrynin and asks him to come to the Justice Department. He tells the Soviet ambassador that they are running out of time. Only a few hours are left. The President must have a reply the next day. Dobrynin is pessimistic; the Kremlin, he says, is deeply committed to Castro.
The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972 Page 145
