President Kennedy said, “Most people will think this is a rather even trade and we ought to take advantage of it.”65 “This is a pretty good play of his,” he said admiringly of Khrushchev’s move. “Until we can get an agreement on the cessation of work, how can we possibly negotiate with proposals coming as fast as the wires will carry them?”66
“And the ships are still moving,” Bundy added, “in spite of his assurances to U Thant.”67
The president worried that Khrushchev would “hang us up in negotiations on different proposals while the work goes on.”68 Kennedy had previously intended to pull the Jupiter missiles out of Turkey and Italy as the fifteen vulnerable, obsolete, liquid-fueled missiles in Turkey were provocative but carried little military value. Their primitive design was based on the German V-2 rocket, and their above-ground firing position and long fueling times (before firing trucks had to pump in six thousand gallons of kerosene-based rocket fuel and twelve thousand gallons of liquid oxygen) made them vulnerable and limited their usefulness. “We are now in a position,” Kennedy told his advisers, “of risking war in Cuba and in Berlin over missiles in Turkey which are of little military value. From the political point of view it would be hard to get support on an air strike against Cuba because many would think that we would make a good trade if we offered to take the missiles from Turkey. We are in a bad position if we appear to be attacking Cuba for the purpose of keeping useless missiles in Turkey.”69
Further news added to the gloom. A Soviet antiaircraft battery shot down a U-2 over Cuba, killing the pilot. Two other reconnaissance planes were shot at over Cuba the same day, convincing Kennedy’s advisers that the Soviets had decided to escalate the situation. “There was the realization,” Robert Kennedy wrote, “that the Soviet Union and Cuba apparently were preparing to do battle. And there was the feeling that the noose was tightening on all of us, on Americans, on mankind, and that the bridges to escape were crumbling.”70 CIA Director John McCone also reported that work on the missile sites was proceeding day and night. “We were forced to confront the possibility,” Bundy wrote, “that the Kremlin, or some part of it, was prepared to charge a price we could not pay, or to force a military test, or even conceivably both.”71
In fact, Khrushchev was furious. A ground commander had acted in defiance of explicit orders from the Kremlin not to fire on American planes. In an effort to reassert control, he issued an order for his military forces to exercise restraint: “No independent initiatives. Everything is hanging by a thread as it is.”72
Pressure mounted for military action as the Joint Chiefs of Staff and congressional leaders pressed for an air strike or invasion. After the U-2 pilot was shot down, the Joint Chiefs reiterated to President Kennedy “that they had always felt the blockade to be far too weak a course and that military steps were the only ones the Soviet Union would understand.”73 Preparations were almost complete, and the invasion force waited in Florida. At a minimum, ExComm had resolved firmly earlier that week that if a U-2 were shot down, the United States would retaliate by bombing a SAM site in Cuba, and if a second U-2 were attacked, the Air Force would eliminate all the SAM sites in Cuba.
Scali and Feklisov met again at just after four p.m. “I think it likely,” Bundy wrote, “that a Saturday afternoon meeting between Scali and Fomin may have been particularly persuasive to Khrushchev. Scali was shocked by the Saturday proposal for a Turkish swap. He thought he had been made the go-between for a false lead. Rusk sent for him, asked him quietly what had happened, and sent him back to Fomin to see what he could find out.”74 Scali, furious, called the new Soviet demand for a Jupiter missile trade a “stinking double cross” and told Feklisov that a missile swap was and would remain totally unacceptable. “If you think the United States is bluffing,” Scali continued, “you are part of the most colossal misjudgment of American intentions in history. We are absolutely determined to get those missiles out of there. An invasion of Cuba is only a matter of hours away.” Feklisov insisted repeatedly that his suggestions from Friday “were still valid,” and attributed the cause of any mix-up to cable delays. But Scali was unsatisfied, and the two left “on a frosty note.”
During the 4 p.m. ExComm meeting, the news arrived in Washington that a U-2 had accidentally strayed into Soviet airspace across the Bering Strait while conducting a high-altitude air-sampling mission. U.S. F-102 fighters armed with nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles scrambled to provide cover. Soviet MiGs sent to intercept were minutes away when the U-2 made it safely to international airspace. President Kennedy quipped calmly, “There is always some son of a bitch who doesn’t get the word.”75
Both sides worried that the situation was moving beyond their ability to contain it, and the events of the previous forty-eight hours led each side to fear the other had lost control of its government. “Our little group seated around the Cabinet table in continuous session that Saturday,” Sorensen later wrote, “felt nuclear war to be closer on that day than at any time in the nuclear age.”76
Sorensen and Robert Kennedy suggested to the president a creative response to Khrushchev’s second, disappointing letter. Why not, they wondered, ignore the second letter and respond only to the positive elements in the first? The small chance it would work, the president thought, was worth delaying his response to Khrushchev’s second letter for twenty-four hours. “The final draft of his reply,” Sorensen wrote, “read into the Chairman’s letter everything we wanted.”77
As the letter was typed up, the Kennedy brothers sat in the oval office. “He talked about the miscalculations that lead to war,” Robert Kennedy remembered. “War is rarely intentional. The Russians don’t wish to fight any more than we do. They do not want to war with us nor we with them. And yet if events continue as they have in the last several days, that struggle— which no one wishes, which will accomplish nothing—will engulf and destroy all mankind. He wanted to make sure that he had done everything in his power, everything conceivable, to prevent such a catastrophe. Every opportunity was to be given to the Russians to find a peaceful settlement which would not diminish their national security or be a public humiliation.”78
“If anybody is around to write after this,” the president told his brother, “they are going to understand that we made every effort to find peace and every effort to give our adversary room to move. I am not going to push the Russians an inch beyond what is necessary.”79
Kennedy issued his response to Moscow and released it to the press at eight o’clock that evening. “I have read your letter of October 26 with great care,” he wrote, “and welcomed the statement of your desire to seek a prompt solution to the problem. The first thing that needs to be done, however, is for work to cease on offensive missile bases in Cuba and for all weapons systems in Cuba capable of offensive use to be rendered inoperable, under effective United Nations arrangements. Assuming this is done promptly, I have given my representatives in New York instructions that will permit them to work out this week and—in cooperation with the Acting Secretary General and your representative—an arrangement for a permanent solution to the Cuban problem along the lines suggested in your letter of October 26.” Kennedy concluded by warning, “The continuation of this threat, or a prolongation of this discussion concerning Cuba by linking these problems to the broader questions of European and world security, would surely lead to an intensification of the Cuban crisis and a grave risk to the peace of the world.”80
The president didn’t expect the ploy to work. “We had not abandoned hope,” Robert Kennedy wrote, “but what hope there was now rested with Khrushchev’s revising his course within the next few hours. It was a hope, not an expectation. The expectation was a military confrontation by Tuesday and possibly tomorrow.”81 Secretary of Defense McNamara recalled, “I remember leaving the White House at the end of that Saturday. It was a beautiful fall day; and I remember thinking that I might never live to see another Saturday night.”82
Shortly after the afternoon ExComm meeting, th
e president gathered Rusk, Bundy, Robert Kennedy, and two or three others to decide what to do next. Time was running out, and preparations were moving ahead for an air strike on Cuba on Monday to be followed by an invasion. Kennedy had signed and released the letter to Khrushchev drafted by his brother and Sorensen. But in light of the new demand, the president questioned whether a pledge not to invade Cuba would be sufficient for the Kremlin. President Kennedy asked his brother to approach Dobrynin in secrecy with an additional offer to help Khrushchev save face within the Kremlin. It was agreed that while a public quid pro quo was out of the question, he could tell Dobrynin that the president was willing to remove the missiles in Turkey once the situation in Cuba had been resolved. The attorney general was instructed not to lead with the offer of a trade, but if it was broached by Dobrynin he was to say that the missiles could be dismantled after four or five months. Bundy wrote:
The proposal was quickly supported by the rest of us and approved by the President. It was also agreed that knowledge of this assurance would be held among those present and no one else. Concerned as we all were by the [political] cost of a public bargain struck under pressure at the apparent expense of the Turks, and aware as we were from the day’s discussion that for some, even in our closest councils, even this unilateral private assurance might appear to betray an ally, we agreed without hesitation that no one not in the room was to be informed of this additional message.83
Robert Kennedy phoned Dobrynin at quarter past seven on Saturday night and asked him to come to his office at the Justice Department. Dobrynin arrived at a quarter to eight. “Robert Kennedy looked exhausted,” Dobrynin reported to the Kremlin. “One could see from his eyes that he had not slept for days. He himself said that he had not been home for six days and nights.”84 The president’s brother began by telling Dobrynin that the Cuban crisis continued to quickly worsen. The White House knew that work continued on the missile bases. It had also learned in the last two hours that an unarmed American plane was shot down while carrying out a reconnaissance flight over Cuba and that the pilot was killed. The U.S. military was demanding that the president retaliate and respond to fire with fire. “This was an extremely serious turn in events,” Robert Kennedy reported telling the Soviet ambassador. “We would have to make certain decisions within the next 12 or possibly 24 hours. There was very little time left. If the Cubans were shooting at our planes, then we were going to shoot back. This could not help but bring on further incidents and he had better understand the full implications of this matter.”85 “I want,” he stressed, “to lay out the current alarming situation the way the President sees it. He wants Khrushchev to know this. This is the thrust of the situation now. . . . A real war will begin, in which millions of Americans and Russians will die. We want to avoid that any way we can, and I’m sure that the government of the USSR has the same wish. However, taking time to find a way out is very risky.”86 Within the White House and in the Pentagon were influential parties “itching for a fight.”87 “The president is in a grave situation,” Robert Kennedy said, “and does not know how to get out of it. We are under very severe stress. In fact we are under pressure from our military to use force against Cuba. . . . Even though the President himself is very much against starting a war over Cuba, an irreversible chain of events could occur against his will. That is why the President is appealing directly to Chairman Khrushchev for his help in liquidating this conflict.”88
“The situation,” Kennedy said, “might get out of control, with irreversible consequences.”89 “Those missiles,” he said, “had to go and they had to go right away. We had to have a commitment by at least tomorrow that those bases would be removed. This was not an ultimatum, but just a statement of fact. He should understand that if they did not remove those bases then we would remove them.”90
Dobrynin asked what offer they were making. “In this regard,” the attorney general replied, “the President considers that a suitable basis for regulating the entire Cuban conflict might be the letter Khrushchev sent on October 26 and the letter in response from the President, which was sent off today to Khrushchev through the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. The most important thing for us,” he stressed, “is to get as soon as possible the agreement of the Soviet government to halt further work on the construction of the missile bases in Cuba and take measures under international control that would make it impossible to use these weapons. In exchange the government of the USA is ready, in addition to repealing all measures on the quarantine, to give assurances that there will be no invasion of Cuba.”91 Dobrynin then asked about the missiles in Turkey. “The President doesn’t see any insurmountable obstacles in resolving this issue,”92 Kennedy replied, but any arrangement must never be made public. There could be no quid pro quo, but, he added, if four or five months elapsed, “I am sure these matters could be resolved satisfactorily.”93 He repeated there could be no explicit deal of any kind on Turkey, but he also made it clear to Dobrynin that an understanding was possible, and that provided Khrushchev removed the missiles in Cuba, and the arrangement was kept secret, the Turkish missiles would disappear after an interlude of several months. If Khrushchev spoke a word of the arrangement to anybody, the arrangement would be null and void. Besides him and his brother, the attorney general said, only two or three people in Washington knew anything about it. The offer came with a veiled threat. There was little time to resolve the situation. Events were developing too quickly, and the president needed a clear answer the next day. The pleas by the president’s brother that time was running out was interpreted by the Soviet leadership as meaning that the president was worried he might lose control of the American military, and if Khrushchev did not defuse the crisis quickly, the generals would seize power and act against Cuba on their own. Robert Kennedy’s last words, Dobrynin reported, were, “Time will not wait, we must not let it slip away.”94
After Dobrynin left, the attorney general returned to the White House. The president ordered twenty-four troop transport squadrons of the Air Force Reserve to active duty to prepare to lift invasion forces to Cuba. Bundy compared the evening of the 27th to a tight chess match. The United States had made its move, and it was now up to Khrushchev to make his. Until then, the United States could only hope and wait. “We all agreed in the end,” Robert Kennedy later wrote, “that if the Russians were ready to go to nuclear war over Cuba, they were ready to go to nuclear war, and that was that. So we might as well have the showdown then as six months later.”95
In case his brother’s overture to Dobrynin failed, President Kennedy quietly prepared another way out. He asked Rusk to call Andrew Cordier, dean of Columbia University’s School of International Affairs and a former deputy secretary general of the United Nations. If it became necessary, Kennedy wanted Cordier to suggest to U Thant that the United Nations publicly call on the Soviet Union to withdraw its missiles from Cuba in exchange for an American withdrawal of the missiles in Turkey. It would be difficult, Kennedy believed, for the Soviets to refuse such an offer if it were publicly accepted by the United States. Kennedy was ultimately willing to pay the price of a public withdrawal of the Jupiters, but only if it was necessary, and he would need to use U Thant as cover. Kennedy swore those involved in the Cordier backup plan to secrecy to avoid revealing that it originated with the United States.
On Saturday morning, Khrushchev received information from multiple sources that the invasion would be carried out in the next two or three days. “Our intelligence,” he wrote, “reported that preparations had been made for an amphibious landing and that invasion was inevitable if we didn’t come to an agreement with President Kennedy.”96 He gathered his senior advisers at the Kremlin early Sunday morning Moscow time. They had before them President Kennedy’s letter of October 27, containing Kennedy’s gambit ignoring the Turkish missile demand. As the nervous Soviet leaders looked at each other, Khrushchev spoke. “There was a time,” he told them, “when we advanced, like in October 1917; but in March 1918 we had to retreat
, having signed the Brest-Litovsk agreement with the Germans. Our interests dictated this decision—we had to save Soviet power. Now we find ourselves face to face with the danger of war and of nuclear catastrophe, with the possible result of destroying the human race. In order to save the world, we must retreat. I called you together to consult and debate whether you are in agreement with this kind of decision.”97 The meeting was interrupted as Dobrynin’s report of his meeting with Robert Kennedy arrived and was read out. They asked the Soviet official who had brought the notes in to read them out loud again. “It goes without saying,” Khrushchev recalled, “that the contents of the dispatch increased the nervousness in the hall by some degrees.”98
“We knew,” Khrushchev wrote, “that Kennedy was a young President and that the security of the United States was indeed threatened. For some time we had felt there was a danger that the President would lose control of his military, and now he was admitting this to us himself. Kennedy’s message urgently repeated the Americans’ demand that we remove the missiles and bombers from Cuba. We could sense from the tone of the message that tension in the United States was indeed rapidly reaching a critical point.”99
“Comrades,” the Soviet premier said, “we have to look for a dignified way out of this conflict. At the same time, of course, we must make sure that we do not compromise Cuba.”100 Khrushchev explained to Andrei Gromyko, his foreign minister, “Comrade Gromyko, we don’t have the right to take risks. Once the President announces there will be an invasion, he won’t be able to reverse himself.”101 Khrushchev immediately issued orders to the commander of Soviet forces in Cuba: “Allow no one near the missiles. Obey no orders to launch and under no circumstances install the warheads.”102
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