One minute to midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the brink of nuclear war

by Michael Dobbs

  George Anderson retired to bed with a cold shortly before 11:00 p.m. after receiving a briefing from Curtis LeMay on everything that had happened in Washington while he was at the Navy-Pitt football game. More than fourteen thousand air reservists had been called up for a possible invasion of Cuba. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had promulgated a revised schedule of reaction times for attacking Cuba:

  Air Strikes against SAM sites: two hours.

  Full Air Strike: twelve hours.

  Invasion: Decision Day plus seven days.

  All Forces ashore: Decision Day plus eighteen days.

  Even more ominously, the ExComm was planning to announce that any Soviet submarine located within the 500-mile intercept zone would be presumed to be "hostile." American antisubmarine forces had located two Soviet submarines inside the zone; another two were just outside. The proposed declaration was vaguely worded. Under certain circumstances, it could be interpreted as granting U.S. warships the authority to open fire on the submarines inside the zone, if they presented "a threat."

  In Havana, Sergio Pineda was preparing for another long night. The reporter for the Prensa Latina news agency had been filing dispatches to Latin American newspapers from the Cuban capital. On Saturday evening, he described the call-up of hundreds of young women into health battalions and the appearance of soldiers in steel helmets outside large office buildings "unloading enormous crates of medicine and surgical material."

  "Now anything can happen," Pineda reported. "There is calm at this time in the city. Everything appears to be sunken into stillness." As he typed his report, the only sound he could hear was the fluttering of a flute from a radio receiver in a nearby guard post. The music was occasionally interrupted by a radio announcer repeating the words of Antonio Maceo Grajales, one of the heroes of the Cuban war of independence against Spain:

  "Whoever attempts to invade Cuba will gather only the dust of its blood-drenched soil, if they do not die in the fight."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  "Crate and Return"

  2:00 A.M. SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28 (10:00 A.M. MOSCOW)

  Events had unfolded very differently from the way Nikita Khrushchev imagined when he sent his armies across the ocean, further than Soviet, or indeed Russian, soldiers had ever ventured before. At the time he made the decision, back in May, it had seemed inspired. He would defend the newest member of the socialist community from American aggression while strengthening the overall military position of the Soviet Union. He had assumed, naively, that it would be possible to hide the nuclear weaponry until he could present the world with a fait accompli. Now, he was faced with a choice he had never anticipated: an American invasion of Cuba and possible nuclear war or a personal humiliation.

  The situation was changing hour by hour, sometimes minute by minute, in dangerous, unpredictable ways. Meeting with his Presidium colleagues on Saturday morning, he had announced that an American invasion Cuba was "unlikely" in the near future. Even though he had already concluded that he would have to withdraw the missiles, it was still possible to negotiate, extracting maximum advantage for the Soviet Union from Kennedy's reluctance to go to war. But a series of unforeseen incidents--including the shooting down of one U-2, the penetration of Soviet airspace by another, and the alarming message from Castro predicting an imminent yanqui attack--had persuaded Khrushchev that time was running out.

  He had asked the Soviet leadership to meet with him at a government dacha in the bucolic Moscow countryside. A fairy-tale landscape of billowing birch trees, picture-book villages, and the meandering Moscow River, the area around Novo-Ogaryevo had been the playground of the Russian ruling class for centuries. Tsarist governors of Moscow had carved ornamental gardens out of the thick forest; Stalin came here to escape the Kremlin demons; Khrushchev had his own weekend place nearby, where he liked to relax with his family.

  A two-story mansion with a mock neoclassical facade, the Novo-Ogaryevo dacha bore a passing resemblance to the White House in Washington. It had originally been built for Stalin's putative successor as Soviet prime minister, Georgi Malenkov, who was quickly pushed aside by the more forceful Khrushchev. After Malenkov's disgrace, the estate was taken away from him and turned into a government guest house. Novo-Ogaryevo would achieve greater fame decades later as the presidential retreat of Mikhail Gorbachev and the site of negotiations that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

  The Presidium members were seated in front of the first secretary along the long, polished oak table. The eighteen attendees included Andrei Gromyko, the foreign minister, and Rodion Malinovsky, the defense minister. Aides hovered in the background, to be summoned and dismissed as needed. As usual, it was Khrushchev's show. The others were happy to let him talk and talk. "You dragged us into this mess; it is now up to you to find a way out of it" was the unspoken sentiment in the room. Apart from Khrushchev, the only people who contributed very much to the discussion were Gromyko and Anastas Mikoyan.

  Lying on the table in front of each Presidium member was a folder with the latest missives from Kennedy and Castro. The White House had released the JFK letter to the press to avoid the long communications delays between Moscow and Washington. Dobrynin's report on his meeting with Bobby Kennedy had still not reached Moscow when the Presidium session began. But Khrushchev was encouraged by the passage in the Kennedy letter that expressed a willingness to discuss "other armaments" once the Cuban crisis had been resolved. He understood this as "a hint" on the withdrawal of the Jupiters from Turkey.

  Khrushchev had prepared the Presidium for the inevitability of a tactical retreat by depicting the American promise not to invade Cuba as a victory for Soviet diplomacy. His defense was that he was acting in the tradition of the great Lenin, who had surrendered a huge swathe of territory to the Germans under the punitive 1917 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to "save Soviet power." The stakes were even higher now. Khrushchev told his colleagues that they had to defuse "the danger of war and nuclear catastrophe, with the possibility of destroying the human race. To save the world, we must retreat."

  An aide jotted down the two main points made by the first secretary:

  1. If an attack [on Cuba] is provoked, we have given the order for a retaliatory response;

  2. We agree to dismantle the missile sites.

  The real question facing Khrushchev was not whether to retreat but the logistics for implementing the pullout decision and the concessions he could extract from Washington in return. That issue was largely resolved for him by a series of alarming reports that arrived while the meeting was in progress.

  A telegram from the KGB residency in Havana reported that "our Cuban friends consider that invasion and bombarding of military objects is inevitable." The cable gave added emphasis to Castro's earlier warning. This was followed at 10:45 a.m. Moscow time by the formal Soviet report on the downing of the American U-2 the previous day. The message, signed by Malinovsky, made clear that the plane had been brought down by a Soviet, rather than Cuban, antiaircraft unit. But it did not say who ordered the shootdown. The possibility that Soviet commanders on Cuba were following Castro's orders on such a sensitive matter alarmed Khrushchev.

  As the Presidium members were digesting this information, Khrushchev's foreign policy aide, Oleg Troyanovsky, was summoned to the telephone. The Foreign Ministry had just received a coded cable from Dobrynin on his meeting with Bobby Kennedy. Troyanovsky scribbled down the essential points and returned to the Presidium session.

  As the Presidium members listened to Dobrynin's report, the "highly electric" mood of the meeting became even more charged. RFK's reference to hotheaded American generals resonated with Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders who had long suspected that the Pentagon was the real center of power in Washington. The ambassador's report made it clear that the "hour of decision" had finally arrived.

  The Presidium members asked Troyanovsky to read the cable again, so they could fully understand its implications. The Turkey offer clearly sweetened the propos
ed deal even if, as Dobrynin reported, Bobby Kennedy insisted it be kept "extremely confidential." Any remaining desire to haggle about terms and conditions drained away. After listening to the latest message from Washington, the men around the table "agreed fairly quickly that they had to accept President Kennedy's conditions," Troyanovsky would later recall. "In the final analysis, both we and Cuba would get what we wanted, a guarantee that the island would not be attacked."

  At this point, a phone call arrived for the secretary of the Defense Council. Colonel General Semyon Ivanov returned a few minutes later to report that the U.S. president would go on television at 9:00 a.m. Washington time. It looked as if Kennedy was about to make some kind of dramatic announcement, perhaps a U.S. attack on Cuba or the bombardment of the missile bases.

  The good news was that Khrushchev had an extra hour to reply to Kennedy's letter. The time difference between Moscow and Washington had stretched from seven hours to eight hours overnight with the end of American Daylight Saving Time. The deadline for a Soviet reply was 5:00 p.m. Moscow time. To save time, the reply would be transmitted publicly by radio, rather than as a coded diplomatic cable.

  There was not a moment to lose. Khrushchev called for a stenographer, and began dictating a personal letter to John F. Kennedy.

  Despite all their differences, both personal and ideological, the two men had reached similar conclusions about the nature of nuclear war. Nikita Khrushchev and John Kennedy both understood that such a war would be far more terrible than anything mankind had known before. Having witnessed war themselves, they also understood that a commander in chief could not always control his own armies. They were awed, frightened, and sobered by their power to blow up the world. They believed that the risks of war had become unacceptably high, and it was necessary to act decisively to cut what Khrushchev had called "the knot of war." In short, they were both human beings--flawed, idealistic, blundering, sometimes brilliant, often mistaken, but ultimately very aware of their own humanity.

  Kennedy had already decided, against the advice of many of his closest aides, that he was not going to risk a nuclear war over a few obsolete missiles in Turkey. He had concluded that "we are not going to have a very good war" unless he could provide the American people with a convincing explanation of the "whys and wherefores."

  The master of the Kremlin did not have to pay as much attention to public opinion, at least in the short term, as the occupant of the Oval Office. But he too understood that his people would never forgive him if he led them into a "war of annihilation" without taking "all necessary measures" to prevent it. Castro's suggestion that he consider a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States filled him with foreboding. Even though Khrushchev was a gambler by nature--his Presidium colleagues would later accuse him of "hare-brained scheming"--he would not tempt fate. He had a crafty peasant's instinct for when to push and when to pull back. As he told his generals before sending them on their Cuban adventure, "Let none of you think that he can lead God around by the beard."

  When they met in Vienna in June 1961, Khrushchev had privately felt "a bit sorry" for Kennedy even as he bullied him over Berlin. He vividly recalled the expression of deep disappointment on the president's face when the meeting broke up. But he reminded himself that "politics is a merciless business" and resisted the temptation to help his rival out. He felt free to bluster and threaten as long as there was no grand consequences. The situation now was very different. The world was teetering on the edge of nuclear destruction. The Russian had come to "deeply respect" the American. Kennedy had shown himself to be "sober-minded." He had not allowed himself "to become frightened," but neither did he "become reckless." He had not "overestimated America's might." He had "left himself a way out of the crisis."

  Khrushchev's latest missive to Kennedy contained the usual outpouring of impulsive thoughts and pungent imagery. The diplomats would go over the text later, bringing it "up to standard," in bureaucratic jargon. Knowing that time was short, the chairman got to the point very quickly. The Soviet Union would withdraw its missiles from Cuba. A jumble of self-justification followed. Cuba had been "under continuous threat by aggressive forces, which did not conceal their intention to invade its territory." "Piratic ships" roamed freely around. The Soviet weaponry was for defensive purposes only. The Soviet people wanted "nothing but peace."

  Having done his part to avert war, Khrushchev detailed his complaints about American behavior. At the top of the list was the provocative probing of Soviet territory by U.S. reconnaissance planes. He reminded Kennedy that the slightest spark could result in a general conflagration. Soviet air defenses had reported an overflight of the Chukot Peninsula by an American U-2.

  The question is, Mr. President: how should we regard this? What is this: a provocation? One of your planes violates our frontier during this anxious time we are both experiencing, when everything has been put into combat readiness. Is it not a fact that an intruding American plane could be easily taken for a nuclear bomber, which might push us to a fateful step? And all the more so since the U.S. government and Pentagon long ago declared that you are maintaining a continuous nuclear bomber patrol.

  After finishing the letter to Kennedy, Khrushchev dictated a message to Fidel Castro. Dealing with the prickly Cuban leader was difficult enough at the best of times. The rush to announce an agreement with Washington complicated matters even more. By the time the coded cable reached Havana, the whole world would already know about the "crate and return" order from Radio Moscow. Anticipating an explosion, Khrushchev pleaded with Castro "not to be carried away by sentiment." He acknowledged that the Americans had acted rashly in sending their reconnaissance planes over Cuban territory. "Yesterday you shot down one of them," he complained, as if Castro was personally responsible for the decision. "Earlier you didn't shoot them down when they overflew your territory."

  Khrushchev advised Castro to "show patience, self-control, and still more self-control." If the Americans invaded, Cubans had every right to defend themselves "by all means." But Castro should not allow himself to be "carried away by the provocations" of "Pentagon militarists" who were looking for any excuse to invade Cuba.

  There was one more message to send, to General Pliyev, the commander of the Soviet Group of Forces on Cuba. It was succinct and to the point:

  We consider that you acted too hastily in shooting down the American U-2 spy plane, at a time when an agreement was already emerging to avert an attack on Cuba by peaceful means.

  We have taken a decision to dismantle the R-12 missiles and evacuate them. Begin to implement this measure.

  Confirm receipt.

  At Khrushchev's behest, Pliyev's men had labored day and night to prepare the missiles for firing, and target them on American cities. Now, at the very moment they had completed their assignment, they were being told to disassemble everything. No explanation for this stunning turnaround was provided.

  4:30 A.M. SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28

  The American destroyers had been trailing the Grozny all night. Standing on the bridges of the Lawrence and the MacDonough, U.S. naval officers could see the lights of the Soviet merchant vessel as she headed toward the quarantine line. They discussed how they would board the tanker and inspect her cargo, if ordered to make an interception.

  The Navy was rethinking how to halt Soviet ships that refused to stop for inspection. "Firing a shot across the bow should be avoided if possible," read the latest message from the headquarters of the Atlantic Fleet in Norfolk. "If this situation arises, a scheme has been devised to bring such ships to a stop." The new procedure consisted of entangling the target ship in "a long wire" or rope. Exactly how this would work was unclear. Further details were promised later.

  As they waited for dawn, the Americans noticed that the Soviet ship had come to a standstill just outside the quarantine zone. A flash telegram was dispatched to Norfolk: "Contact dead in water since 0430."

  The Grozny had received instructions not to challenge the
blockade.

  6:30 A.M. SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28

  Three hundred miles further north, American destroyers were still surrounding submarine B-59. The Soviet crew had painted out the number on the conning tower, but the ship was flying the red flag. Attempts by American warships to communicate with the sub by flashing light had been hampered by the language barrier and peculiarities in the Russian Morse code alphabet. American signalmen had interpreted the name of the Soviet submarine variously as "Korabl X" or "Ship X," and "Prinavlyet" and "Prosnablavst," two items of meaningless gibberish.

  As dawn broke, American commanders decided to make another attempt to contact the sub. A pair of Russian-language speakers were dispatched by helicopter from the Randolph to the Lowry. The destroyer came alongside the submarine, within hailing distance by megaphone.

  "Vnimaniye, vnimaniye," Captain Oscar MacMillan shouted into the microphone from the bridge of the Lowry. "Attention, attention."

  "Kak vas zovut? What is your name?"

  A couple of Soviet sailors were on the bridge of B-59. They ignored the shouted greetings from the Americans. Their faces betrayed no emotion, or any sign of recognition.

  The second American interpreter, Lieutenant Commander George Bird, tried to speak louder. "Attention, attention please," he yelled several times. "What is the name of your ship? Where are you going?"

  Still no reply.