Eyeball to Eyeball (Final Failure)

by Douglas Niles

  “Really?” Tukov replied, intrigued in spite of himself. Indeed, the lack of a reserve position was something that had bothered him, though it had been too far down on his list of concerns while he was still trying to bring his unit to operational status. But it was something he would like to address. “Can you show me this place?”

  “It would be my honor,” Che Guevera replied with obvious sincerity. “I know you are busy here,” he added—acknowledging the fact for the first time, Tukov thought. “Tell me when you have a couple of free hours, and we will go there.”

  “All right,” the colonel agreed. “How about we make it first thing tomorrow morning?”

  20 October 1962

  0900 hours (Saturday morning)

  Cabinet Room, the White House

  Washington D.C.

  The Saturday morning ExComm meeting began while the President was campaigning with Mayor Daley and the Democratic party in Chicago. When most of the other members were present, however, DCIA McCone got right to the point.

  “Our latest evidence, from yesterday, indicates that the SS4 sites in central Cuba, Sagua la Grande to be precise, are operational. Those in the west, around San Cristobal, are only a couple days away from completion. Our time is running out.”

  The news, having been anticipated by progress reports over the last few days, came as no great shock. By now, the consensus had moved away from the surprise air attack option. Pearl Harbor had been invoked too many times for these men, all of whom had vivid memories of that stark betrayal—and the vengeful spirit it had roused in the American people—to order a similar action from this government.

  “Can I conclude we’re leaning toward the option of some kind of blockade, then?” Bundy asked as they moved to a decision point. A murmur of agreement rumbled around the table, though Max Taylor shook his head grimly. The Chairman of the JCS, it was known, still favored some kind of military action.

  “We need to get the President back here,” Bobby said. “I don’t think we can proceed to the next step without him.”

  They called in Pierre Salinger, the Press Secretary. Salinger had intentionally been kept out of the ExComm in order to avoid putting him into an awkward situation with the reporters he needed to interact with on a daily basis. Even now, he was told only the minimum: “We need to get my brother back here today. There’s an urgent matter that needs his attention, but we don’t want to set off any alarms, or cause any undue publicity.”

  “Daley’s not going to be happy about it,” Salinger noted.

  “He’ll have to get over it,” Bobby replied. “The point is, how can we get it done?”

  “The tried-and-true method is probably the best,” replied the veteran at press relations. “We’ll announce that President Kennedy has a cold and needs to cut short his campaign trip to protect his health.”

  1955 hours (Saturday evening)

  Apartment 5-B

  4571 Dupont Circle

  Washington D.C.

  Stella had been working the phone and pounding the D.C. pavement for several days, and had gathered enough confirmation that, together with her hunches, allowed her to put together a blockbuster story. She was convinced that the Soviets were actively installing nuclear rockets in Cuba, and that the United States knew about it and, apparently, was doing nothing to prevent it from happening.

  Her pieces assembled, she had come home from work tonight with the intention of writing the whole story by the end of the day on Sunday. She sat at her kitchen table and pounded away at her Royal typewriter, feeling the story come together with a natural flow. It was powerful, compelling, and accurate. She had a few more loose ends to tie together, but she expected to have it to be a prominent feature of the Monday evening news program.

  When the phone rang, she hoped it would be one of her contacts—perhaps the petty officer who worked for the Navy department at the Pentagon—calling back with some necessary confirmation. She snatched up the receiver with a breathless “Hello,” almost as if she’d been running a footrace.

  “Stella! This is Bob—I’m glad I caught you.”

  “Hi, Bob. Are they giving you some time off work tonight?” she replied lightly.

  “Well, yes. Um, that’s why I’m calling. It’s late notice, but I just found out. We were supposed to be campaigning in the Midwest through Sunday, but we came back early.”

  “Yes, I heard about that. The President has a cold, they said. I hope he’s not terribly ill?” She made the last statement into a question.

  Morris couldn’t resist the baited trap. “Oh, no. That was just a—that is, he didn’t seem like he was suffering too much on Air Force One. I think he’ll be okay, with some time in his own bed.”

  “What a relief,” she replied.

  “Listen, again, I know it’s not much warning. But is there any chance you’d be free for dinner tonight? Or have you already eaten?”

  “No, I haven’t yet. And I’d like to see you, but I’m sorry, I can’t, not tonight. You see, I have a story to write. I’m working.”

  “Oh, of course. Listen, I’m sorry—“

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m glad you called. And like you said when you called me Thursday, when all this is over, let’s take some time to get caught up. Please, call me again.”

  After she hung up the phone, she went back to her typewriter. This story was practically writing itself. Now that the President had returned to the White House, she sensed that the ending was coming, not too far down the line.

  21 October 1962

  1130 hours (Sunday morning)

  Oval Office, the White House

  Washington D.C.

  Defense Secretary McNamara introduced the man who accompanied him into the office. “Mister President, this is General Sweeney, the head of Tactical Air Command at Langley.”

  “Yes, General—thank you for coming,” said Kennedy with an affable handshake. He led the two new arrivals to the couches and chairs arranged for comfortable conversation, and indicated the other three men already waiting there.

  “Perhaps you know my brother, the Attorney General, and Director McCone of the CIA. I know you’re familiar with General Taylor.”

  Introductions out of the way, the President sat in an armchair with the other men seated to face him, and got right to the point. “General Sweeney, I know you’ve been preparing plans for a series of airstrikes on military targets in Cuba. I’d like to ask you a few questions about those plans.”

  “Certainly, Mr. President.”

  “First, how close to readiness are you, if the order comes to make this series of air attacks?”

  “I can safely say, Sir, that by the time I issue the order, we will have planes in the air within an hour. We’re ready to go.”

  “Very good. Now, how would these strikes be conducted? With what kind of weaponry—I presume that would vary by target?”

  “Yes, sir.” Sweeney went on to outline the types of attacks the Air Force was prepared to make. Napalm, the incendiary jelly that had been developed late in the Second World War, would play a primary role, as it would devastate a large swath of the target area. Gravity bombs would also play in important part, as would aircraft-mounted rockets and even machinegun fire. Sweeney had enough assets to hit every identified strategic target in the first strike, with followup attacks used to “clean up” tactical sites, troop concentrations, and supply and ammunition stockpiles.

  “We anticipate some vigorous air defense by the enemy,” the general said. “But our aircraft superiority, both in numbers and in the capabilities of individual types, gives me a high degree of confidence in predicting that Cuban and Soviet fighter assets will quickly be degraded.”

  “An important question, then,” the President followed up. “Can you be certain of destroying each strategic missile site on the island of Cuba.”

  Sweeney hesitated, then shook his head in a frank gesture. “I can’t be certain, Sir. First, air strikes—while devastating—cannot deliver guaranteed
results. Secondly, can we rule out the fact that there might be other sites, strategic missiles bases, that have not yet been discovered?”

  “No,” JFK said. “We can’t rule that out.”

  “And we have to consider the overall morality, and the historic record,” Bobby Kennedy added. “There are too many parallels to Pearl Harbor for me to be comfortable with this. I realize, if we warn them that we will attack if they don’t remove the missiles, that we give them time for countermeasures. But if we attack without warning—well, how are we different from Tojo?”

  “I agree with the attorney general,” DCIA McCone said bluntly. “We’re taking too big of a risk if we bring the bombers out of the blue. Although I need to stress, Sir, that we have to keep this airstrike option on the table, make sure General Sweeney and his people are ready at a moment’s notice.”

  “I agree,” said the President. “General Sweeney?”

  “We’ll be ready, Mr President. It’s your call, but rest assured that if you send my men in, they will do their very best to get the job done.”

  The Air Force general departed, and the other men, the heart of ExComm, settled on their plan: They would use the United States Navy to block the approach routes to Cuba, stopping any ships that were suspected of carrying offensive weapons.

  “A ‘blockade’ is generally regarded as an act of war,” Secretary McNamara said. “What if we call it something else. Say, a ‘quarantine’?”

  “Good,” JFK agreed. “Now, what else do we need to get ready?”

  “The press is starting to get on this story,” Bobby said. “I think you need to make some kind of statement to the public, very soon. Until then, we should try to keep a lid on the story.”

  “Right. I’ll have Pierre get me time on the networks, say at 7:00 p.m. Monday.”

  “What about our allies?” McNamara asked. “And I hate to say it, but perhaps some of the Congressional leadership should be brought on board.”

  “You’re right, Bob,” the President said with a wry chuckle. “Let’s get our ducks in a row. Tomorrow night, before this story breaks outside of our control.”

  22 October 1962

  1700 hours (Monday evening)

  Presidium Chamber

  Kremlin, Moscow

  “What do you mean, ‘He’s going to make a speech?’” The Chairman demanded of the messenger who’d just interrupted the meeting of the Presidium.

  “Just that, Comrade Chairman. It is a news story that has just been broadcast in America, and Ambassador Dobrynin wasted no time in passing the information to us. President Kennedy has demanded time on all of the American television networks. He intends to address the people of his country tonight—” The messenger checked the piece of paper in his hand so that he could quote accurately: “On a matter of the utmost urgency.”

  “Why?” Khrushchev asked, looking around at the implacable faces of the Soviet leadership. He fixed his eyes on Defense Minister Malinovsky. “Why would he do this?”

  “I can think of only one reason, Comrade Chairman. And that is that our missile deployment in Cuba, Operation Anadyr, has been discovered by the Americans.”

  1100 hours (Monday morning)

  NBC News Washington Bureau

  Tenleytown, Washington D.C.

  “You’re killing my story?” Stella asked in disbelief. She had just handed the copy to Bill Tuchman, her bureau chief, a few minutes before. When he called her into his office, she had expected—hoped for, anyway—some enthusiastic praise. She had prepared herself for a request to rewrite, to do some more digging.…

  But this?

  Tuchman shook his balding head in a mixture of regret and resolve. “I’m sorry, Stella. Pressure from the White House. The President is going to speak tonight, and they’ve practically ordered all news outlets to keep a lid on the story until he’s off the air. It’s pretty clear he’s going to talk about the same thing you wrote about.”

  “They can’t do that!” she said. “He can’t do that!”

  “Technically, you’re right—they can’t do it legally. But they can put a lot of pressure on us. And they implied pretty strongly that the President’s authority, and his message, will be weakened if these details start to leak out ahead of time.”

  Stella slumped in her desk chair. Tuchman was right: her story would reveal the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba and charge the President with failing to act—except that now, it seemed, he was acting. She could quickly imagine the national outcry if her story was broadcast before the speech.

  “The Republicans would eat him alive,” she acknowledged morosely. “When he does go on the air, he’d appear to be reacting to a political crisis, not a military one.”

  She felt a sudden urge to cry, quickly tamping it down with a wry smile. “Dammit, Bill—that piece was going to win me a Pulitzer!”

  “I read it,” he said, “And it may well have done that. For now, I know you’ve got a jump on everyone else in town on this story. I’m going to need your best stuff while this thing is played out.”

  “That,” she agreed, “you can count on. Just as soon as I hear that damned speech.”

  Four: Countdown to Quarantine

  “Now, in the thermonuclear age, any misjudgment on either side about the intentions of the other could rain more devastation in several hours than has been wrought in all the wars of human history.”

  President Kennedy

  Address during the Berlin crisis

  25 July, 1961

  22 October 1962

  2100 hours (Monday night)

  Publisher’s Office, Revolucion Newspaper

  Havana, Cuba

  Carlos Franqui had been a member of Movimiento 26 de Julio since the very beginning. When Fidel Castro and his revolution, which had come to be known as the “26th of July Movement,” prevailed and forced dictator Juan Batista to flee the island, Franqui had been placed in charge of the most influential newspaper in revolutionary Cuba. His publication was granted a fair degree of autonomy by the authoritarian regime, because he could be counted on to support the goals of both the revolution, and of El Máximo Lider.

  As recently as this morning, the paper’s front page had trumpeted a warning under the broad headline: “Preparations for Yankee Aggression.” The story had proceeded to describe, in slightly exaggerated detail, the gathering in Florida of American military forces. Even before JFK’s Monday night speech, Fidel had approved the alarmist approach. After all, though many Cubans were not enthusiastic supporters of the now openly communist revolutionaries, they were even more fearful of yanqui aggression.

  So it was that, after listening to the American President on the radio, Fidel ordered his driver to take him directly to the newspaper’s office. Franqui had immediately assigned a technician to record an audio tape of their leader, and several stenographers busily took notes as Castro, smoking cigar in hand, strode back and forth between the journalists’ desks and dictated the story that would appear on Tuesday morning’s front page. If the Americans had expected any contrition or hesitation in their Cuban antagonist’s attitude, they were to be sorely disappointed:

  “The nation has awakened on a war footing, ready to repulse any attack!” Castro proclaimed. He spoke without notes, and at such a speed that the stenographers frantically scribbled to keep up. “Every weapon is in its place, and beside each weapon are the heroic defenders of the Revolution, and the Motherland.

  “And the Revolutionary leaders, the entire government, stand ready to die next to the people. From the length and breadth of the island resounds like thunder, from millions of voices, with more fervor and reason than ever before, the historic and glorious cry: Patria o Muerte! Homeland or death!”

  Castro kept up the barrage of words for an hour, reinforcing his determination to defeat the Americans, underlining the courage and patriotism of his people, highlighting the arrogance and imperialist ambitions of the neighbor to the north. He denounced the incursions of American spyp
lanes, accused the enemy of sabotage and espionage against the sovereign state of Cuba, and promised to “blast them to oblivion” if they so much as dared to approach the shores of his island.

  He went on to warn of extensive beach defenses, fortified landing zones, and thousands upon thousands of armed, trained revolutionaries who were committed and skilled, and who would turn the battle into a bloodbath for the imperialist invaders. One fact he didn’t waste any time developing, because to him it seemed too obvious even to mention. He believed it to the very core of his soul:

  The American invasion was coming, and it was coming soon.

  23 October 1962

  0800 hours (Tuesday morning)