One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
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By contrast, Pentagon records on the missile crisis are very sparse. At my request, the National Archives began the process of declassifying the crisis records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, but hundreds of important documents have been withheld for further "screening." As I noted above, the raw intelligence film gathered by the DIA has been largely declassified, but finding aids are virtually nonexistent, making most of the collection inaccessible. Most State Department records on the crisis are available for research. For help in declassifying and accessing Cuban missile crisis records at the National Archives, I would like to thank the following: Allen Weinstein, Michael Kurtz, Larry MacDonald, Tim Nenninger, David Mengel, Herbert Rawlings-Milton, and James Mathis. I am grateful to Tim Brown, of GlobalSecurity.org, for helping me make sense of the DIA imagery.
Together with the Marines, the U.S. Navy has done the best job of the four armed services in making its missile crisis records available to the public, despite the fact that its budget for historical research is only a fraction of the amount available to the Air Force. I spent a couple of weeks combing through the records at the Naval Historical Center, which include minute-by-minute reports from the quarantine line around Cuba, office logs of the Chief of Naval Operations, and daily intelligence summaries. I would like to thank Tim Petit of the Historical Center and Curtis A. Utz of the Naval Aviation History Branch.
In contrast to the Navy, the U.S. Air Force has done a very poor job of documenting its role in the crisis in a way that is accessible to outside scholars. Most of the Air Force records so far declassified are unit histories rather than original source materials in the form of orders, telegrams, and reports. The value of these histories varies. In many cases, they were designed to make the Air Force look good rather than provide an accurate account of what took place during the missile crisis. The Maultsby affair is just one example of an embarrassing incident censored from the official Air Force record. The Air Force responded to repeated requests for missile crisis records by releasing some more unit histories, but very little underlying documentation. I am grateful to Linda Smith and Michael Binder for doing what they could to assist me within the constraints imposed by their agency. Toni Petito was also helpful during a visit I made to the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell AFB. Louie Alley of the Air Force Safety Center at Kirtland AFB responded promptly to my requests for information about specific accidents.
Researching and writing can be lonely pursuits, which makes me even more grateful to the institutions and individuals who have helped me along the way. I owe a special debt to the U.S. Institute of Peace, which awarded me a senior fellowship for the academic year 2006-07. The support from USIP made it possible for me to make extra trips to Russia and Cuba and to devote more time to writing than would otherwise have been the case. Thanks to USIP, I was able to make this a two-year project rather than a sixteen-month project, and it is a better book as a result. There are many people at USIP who made this possible, but I would particularly like to thank Richard Solomon, Virginia Bouvier, and my researcher, Chris Holbrook.
I would like to thank Sergo Mikoyan and Sergei Khrushchev for their firsthand insights into the Soviet political system and for lifting the curtain into the lifestyle of senior Politburo members. Sergo served as an informal adviser to his father, Anastas Mikoyan, and accompanied him on several trips to Cuba. Sergei edited his father's memoirs and worked on the Soviet rocket program.
Researching a book on a subject like the Cuban missile crisis is a wonderful opportunity to study foreign countries and cultures. Thanks to a posting in Moscow as a reporter for The Washington Post from 1988 to 1993, I started this project with a pretty good knowledge of Russia and Russian, but my return visits to Moscow were greatly facilitated by Svetlana Chervonnaya. My guide in Kiev was Lena Bogdanova, a talented Ph.D. sociology student. Cuba and Latin America were largely new to me. For teaching me Spanish, and introducing me to Latin American culture, history, and literature, a very special gracias to Miryam Arosemena. Thanks to Miryam, I was able to get around Cuba by myself without relying on translators and official guides.
As with my previous books, I have benefited enormously from the advice of Ashbel Green, one of America's most distinguished editors, who retired at the end of 2007 after twenty-three years at Knopf. His authors included Andrei Sakharov, Vaclav Havel, and Milovan Djilas, so I could hardly have been in better company. I will miss him greatly, but he handed me on to Andrew Miller, who made many invaluable suggestions about how to improve this book. Others at Knopf I would like to thank include Sara Sherbill, who made the trains run on time; Ann Adelman, the copyeditor; Robert Olsson, the book designer; David Lindroth, the map maker; Meghan Wilson, the production editor; and Jason Booher, for the fabulous jacket. A special thanks, too, to my agent, Rafe Sagalyn, for his friendship and support.
Peter Baker, Susan Glasser, Peter Finn, Sergei Ivanov, and Masha Lipman went out of their way to be helpful when I was in Moscow. I enjoyed the hospitality of Alex Beam and Kiki Lundberg while I was in Boston. In London, Peter and Michelle Dobbs were unfailingly generous with offers of meals and accommodation, as was my brother Geoffrey.
In addition to the editors at Knopf, a number of people took the trouble to read the manuscript and make useful suggestions, including Tom Blanton, Svetlana Savranskaya, Raymond Garthoff, David Hoffman, Masha Lipman, and especially Martin Sherwin, who wielded a judicious scalpel. My mother, Marie Dobbs, an author in her own right, critiqued an early draft so extensively that I spent the next two months revising it.
My greatest debt of gratitude, as always, is to my wife, Lisa, and our three children, Alex, Olivia, and Jojo. I am dedicating this book to Olivia, whose music-making abilities, language talents, and curiosity about the world have blossomed during the two years I have been immersed in this book.
NOTES
ABBREVIATIONS OF SOURCES
AFHRA
Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base
AFSC
Air Force Safety Center, Kirtland Air Force Base
CINCLANT
Commander in Chief Atlantic
CNN CW
CNN Cold War TV series, 1998. Transcripts of interviews at King's College London
CNO
Chief of Naval Operations
CNO Cuba
CNO Cuba history files, Boxes 58–72, Operational Archives, USNHC
CREST
CIA Records Search Tool, NARA
CWIHP
Cold War International History Project bulletin
DOE
Department of Energy OpenNet
FBIS
Foreign Broadcast Information Service.
FOIA
Response to Freedom of Information Act request
FRUS
Foreign Relations of the United States Series, 1961–1963, Vols. X, XI, XV. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997, 1996, 1994.
Havana 2002
Havana Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962. Conference briefing books prepared by the National Security Archive
JFKARC
John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection at NARA
JFKL
John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
JFK2, JFK3
Philip Zelikow and Ernest May, eds., The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy, The Great Crises, Vols. 2–3, Miller Center for Public Affairs, University of Virginia
LAT
Los Angeles Times
LCV
Library of Congress Dmitrii Volkogonov Collection
MAVI
Archives of Mezhregional'naya Assotsiatsia Voinov-Internatsionalistov, Moscow
NARA
National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD
NDU
National Defense University, Washington, D.C.
NIE
National Intelligence Estimate
NK1
Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushche
v Remembers. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970
NK2
Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974
NPRC
National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, MO
NSA
National Security Agency
NSAW
National Security Archive, Washington, DC
NSAW Cuba
National Security Archive, Cuba Collection
NYT
New York Times
OH
Oral History
OSD
Office of Secretary of Defense, Cuba Files, NARA
RFK
Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days. New York: W. W. Norton, 1969
SCA
Records of State Department Coordinator for Cuban Affairs, NARA
SDX
Records of State Department Executive Secretariat, NARA
SVR
Archives of Soviet Foreign Intelligence, Moscow
USCONARC
U.S. Continental Army Command
USIA
U.S. Intelligence Agency
USNHC
U.S. Navy Historical Center, U.S. Continental Army Command, Washington, DC.
WP
Washington Post
Z
Zulu time or GMT, four hours ahead of Quebec time (Eastern Daylight Time), five hours ahead of Romeo time (Eastern Standard Time). Time group 241504Z is equivalent to October 24, 1504GMT, which is the same as 241104Q, or 1104EDT
CHAPTER ONE: AMERICANS
"the clearing of a field": Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969, hereafter RFK), 24. Photographs of missile sites are available through the John F. Kennedy Library, the National Security Archive, the Naval Historical Research Center, and NARA.
"Daddy, daddy": CNN interview with Sidney Graybeal, January 1998, CNN CW. 3 "Caroline, have you": Dino Brugioni, "The Cuban Missile Crisis ― Phase 1," CIA Studies in Intelligence (Fall 1972), 49–50, CREST; Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 371; author's interview with Robert McNamara, October 2005.
Once armed and ready to fire: CIA, Joint Evaluation of Soviet Missile Threat in Cuba, October 19, 1962, CREST. The CIA estimated the range of the R-12 (SS-4) missile as 1,020 nautical miles; the true range was 2,080 kilometers, or 1,292 miles. For simplicity, I have converted all nautical mile measurements to the more commonly used statute miles.
"The length, sir": For dialogue from ExComm meetings, I have relied on the transcripts produced by the Miller Center for Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Philip Zelikow and Ernest May, eds., The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy, The Great Crises, Vols. 2 and 3 (hereafter JFK2 and JFK3). The transcripts are available at the Miller Center Web site. I have also consulted Sheldon M. Stern, Averting "the Final Failure": John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). For atmosphere, and to check discrepancies, I have listened to the original tapes, available through the Miller Center and the JFK Library.
"a hostile and militant Communist": Michael Beschloss, The Crisis Years (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 101.
"to hurl rockets": Keating press release, October 10, 1962.
"Ken Keating will probably": Kai Bird, The Color of Truth (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 226-7. Kenneth P. O'Donnell and David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), 310.
"let it begin now": William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 499.
"It reminded me": Beschloss, 224-7. Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life (Boston: Little, Brown, 2003), 413-15. Reeves, 174.
"I'm inexperienced": Reeves, 172.
"fucking liar": Dallek, 429.
"an immoral gangster": Beschloss, 11.
the president's "dissatisfaction": FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. XI: Cuban Missile Crisis and Aftermath, Document 19. Sabotage proposals and earlier meeting of Special Group (Augmented) available through JFK Assassination Records Collection, NARA. See also Richard Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder (New York: Random House, 2003), 208-9.
"Demolition of a railroad bridge": Mongoose memorandum, October 16, 1962, JFKARC.
"the Cuban problem carries": CIA memorandum, January 19, 1962, JFKARC. See also Church Committee Report, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), 141.
"Everybody in my family forgives": Richard D. Mahoney, Sons and Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy (New York: Arcade, 1999), 87.
"Oh shit, shit, shit": Dino Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Random House, 1991), 223; RFK, 23.
"the dominant feeling was one": RFK, 27.
"My idea is": Reeves, 264; Dallek, 439.
He even had his own full-time: Samuel Halpern interview with CIA history staff, January 15, 1988, JFKARC record no. 104-10324-1003.
"Robert Kennedy's most conspicuous folly": Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 534.
"sit there, chewing gum": Author's interview with Thomas Parrott, October 2005.
"reflected the president's own": Richard Goodwin, Remembering America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), 187.
A top secret Lansdale memorandum: "The Cuba Project," February 20, 1962, JFKARC record no. 176-10011-10046.
"Lansdale's projects simply gave": McManus interview with Church Committee, JFKARC.
"Elimination by Illumination": Lansdale memo, October 15, 1962, JFKARC; Parrott interview with Church Committee. In a January 1, 1976, letter to the Church Committee, Lansdale indignantly denied making the illumination proposal, but the record shows that he did.
"will meet our requirements": Robert A. Hurwitch memorandum, September 16, 1962, SCA, JFKARC record no. 179-10003-10046.
"There is only one thing": Eisenhower presidential papers quoted in Reeves, 103.
"I know there is a God": Ibid., 174.
"odds are even": Joseph Alsop, "The Legacy of John F. Kennedy," Saturday Evening Post, November 21, 1964, 17. For the "one-in-five" quote, see Reeves, 179.
"Bullfight critics": Max Frankel, High Noon in the Cold War (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004), 83.
the approval by "higher authority": Thomas Parrott memorandum, October 17, 1962, SCA, JFKARC record no. 179-10003-10081.
As the winds: State Department history of "The Cuban Crisis 1962," 72, NSA Cuba; CINCLANT Historical Account of Cuban Crisis, 141, NSA Cuba.
"military intervention by the United States": JCS memorandum, April 10, 1962, JFKARC.
"We could blow up": L. L. Lemnitzer memorandum, August 8, 1962, JFKARC. 18 "I am so angry": Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Random House, 2001), 456.
"an importance in the sum": James G. Blight, Bruce J. Allyn, and David A. Welch, Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Collapse (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 323-4.
Bobby Kennedy was already: RFK desk diary, JFKARC. See also Chronology of the Matahambre Mine Sabotage Operation, William Harvey to DCI, November 14, 1962, JFKARC.
"an initial burst": Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 214.
"My brother is not going": Elie Abel, The Missile Crisis (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1966), 51.
According to Harvey's record: Chronology of the Matahambre Mine Sabotage Operation; Harvey memo on sabotage operation, October 19, 1962, JFKARC.
"I don't want that man": Reeves, 182.
America had "the Russian bear": Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 469.
As many as 70 million: Reeves, 175.
"These brass hats": O'Donnell and Powers, 318.
"the military always screws up": Stern, 38; Beschloss, 530.
Every aspect of the operation had: Author's interview with Pedro Vera, January 2006; Harvey memo to Lansdale, August 29, 1962, JFKARC; Cuban army interrogation of Vera and P
edro Ortiz, Documentos de los Archivos Cubanos, November 8, 1962, Havana 2002.
"the Farm": Also known by the code word "ISOLATION" Chronology of the Matahambre Mine Sabotage Operation.
"You do it": Warren Hinckle and William Turner, Deadly Secrets (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1992), 149.
"If the Americans see us": Malakhov reminiscences, Archives of Mezhregional'naya Assotsiatsia Voinov-Internatsionalistov, Moscow (hereafter MAVI).
the 79th missile regiment: V. I. Yesin et al., Strategicheskaya Operatsiya Anadyr': Kak Eto Bylo (Moscow: MOOVVIK, 2004), 381. Except where noted, all references to this book are to the 2004 edition. Some of the names of the missile regiments were changed for Operation Anadyr as part of the Soviet disinformation campaign. The 79th missile regiment was also referred to as the 514th missile regiment in Cuba. The CIA incorrectly reported that a missile site near San Cristobal was the first to achieve combat-ready status.
given a special "government assignment": Sidorov's account of the deployment is contained in A. I. Gribkov et al., U Kraya Yadernoi Bezdni (Moscow: Gregory-Page, 1998), 213-23.
All this was part of a much larger: Col. Gen. Sergei Ivanov memo, June 20, 1962, Soviet defense minister Rodion Malinovsky memos, September 6 and 8, 1962, trans. in CWIHP, 11 (Winter 1998), 257-60.
"The motherland will not forget": Malakhov, MAVI.
The first ship to depart: For shipping tonnages and descriptions, I have relied on Ambrose Greenway, Soviet Merchant Ships (Emsworth, UK: Kenneth Mason, 1985). I use gross tonnage, a measurement of volume, not weight.
In all, 264 men had to share: Author's interview with Lt. Col. Sergei Karlov, official historian, Peter the Great Military Academy of Strategic Rocket Forces (RSVN), May 2006.