The Untold History of the United States

by Oliver Stone

  But in October 1961, Kennedy decided to come clean on the striking disparity between U.S. and Soviet military strength. He authorized Gilpatric to publicly flaunt the United States’ superiority in a speech to the Business Council in Hot Springs, Virginia. The speech was carefully crafted by young RAND consultant Daniel Ellsberg. Gilpatric announced that the United States “has a nuclear retaliatory force of such lethal power that an enemy move which brought it into play would be an act of self-destruction. . . . The total number of our nuclear delivery vehicles, tactical as well as strategic, is in the tens of thousands.” McNamara publicly confirmed that the United States possessed “nuclear power several times that of the Soviet Union.”108 Several times was an understatement. The United States had approximately forty-five ICBMs.109 The Soviets had only four, and those were very vulnerable to a U.S. attack. The United States had more than 3,400 deliverable nuclear warheads on submarines and bombers. The United States had more then 1,500 heavy bombers to the Soviets’ 192. The United States also had some 120 IRBMs stationed in Turkey, Britain, and Italy, 1,000 tactical fighter bombers within range of the USSR, and nuclear missiles on Polaris subs. Overall, the United States had approximately 25,000 nuclear weapons; the Soviets had one-tenth that number.110

  SAC Commander General Thomas Power was not pleased by this revelation, having based his enormous funding requests on the contention that the United States faced a dire crisis. Refusing to go quietly, he began spotting Soviet missile sites everywhere, disguised as grain silos, monastery towers, and even a Crimean War Memorial. Power, a LeMay protégé who led the firebombing attack on Tokyo in World War II, opposed all efforts to constrain SAC. In December 1960, when briefed by RAND’s William Kaufmann on the need to avoid targeting civilians, Power exploded, “Why do you want us to restrain ourselves? Restraint! Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards!” He added, “Look. At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!” Exasperated, Kaufmann responded, “Well, you better make sure that they’re a man and a woman.”111

  Despite the fact that the United States’ nuclear superiority was vast and growing, the air force wanted to increase the number of missiles to 3,000. SAC wanted 10,000. McNamara’s studies showed that the United States did not need more than 400 but settled on 1,000 as the lowest number he could get away with under the circumstances.112

  Soviet Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky interpreted Gilpatric’s October statement to mean that “the imperialists are planning . . . a surprise nuclear attack on the USSR and the socialist countries.”113 The Soviets, who had chosen not to exploit their advantage in the one area in which they were ahead of the United States—missile technology—responded by detonating a 30-megaton bomb, the biggest yet exploded, two days later. The next week they tested a 50-plus-megaton bomb, which they could have made 100 megatons, but they decided to leave off the third stage. McNamara later acknowledged that a surprise first strike was indeed one of the options under the SIOP—an option General LeMay was openly discussing.114 LeMay had reportedly advocated building a single bomb big enough to destroy the entire Soviet Union.115

  War seemed terrifyingly close in the fall of 1961. Robert Lowell wrote, “All autumn, the chafe and jar/of nuclear war; we have talked our extinction to death.”116

  Kennedy’s unwavering commitment to overthrowing the revolutionary Cuban government further inflamed tensions with the Soviet Union. Robert Kennedy told CIA head John McCone in January 1962 that overthrowing Castro was “the top priority of the United States Government.” Two months earlier, the Kennedys had unleashed Operation Mongoose, a terror campaign against Cuba under CIA auspices. Robert Kennedy outlined the policy: “My idea is to stir things up . . . with espionage, sabotage, general disorder, run and operated by Cubans themselves.”117 The objective was to wreck the Cuban economy and assassinate Castro. Kennedy put master counterinsurgent and dirty-tricks expert Edward Lansdale in charge. The CIA assembled an enormous intelligence operation that included 600 CIA officers in South Florida, nearly five thousand CIA contractors, and the third largest navy in the Caribbean.118 In March, Lansdale asked the Joint Chiefs for a “description of pretexts” to justify “US military intervention in Cuba.” Brigadier General William Craig, the Operation Mongoose Program Officer, quickly produced an astounding list, which was approved by the Joint Chiefs and actively promoted by Chairman Lemnitzer.

  Craig had recently suggested that if John Glenn’s upcoming Mercury orbital flight failed, the United States should manufacture evidence blaming Cuban electronic interference. He appropriately named this Operation Dirty Trick. His new suggestions for Lansdale were code-named Operation Northwood. They included a “Remember the Maine” incident modeled on the ship sinking that had triggered the Spanish-American war; a “terror campaign” against Cuban refugees, including sinking a boatload of Cubans escaping to Florida; hijacking attempts against U.S. aircraft that would be pinned on the Cuban government; staging a Cuban government shootdown of a civilian airliner (“the passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday”); “an incident which will make it appear that Communist Cuban MIGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack”; and “a series of well coordinated incidents . . . in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.” These would include blowing up ammunition inside the base, starting fires, burning aircraft on the base, lobbing mortar shells, inciting riots, and sabotaging ships.119

  U.S. actions throughout 1962 convinced the Soviets that an invasion was imminent. In January, the United States coerced Latin American countries to suspend Cuba’s membership in the OAS. In April, 40,000 U.S. troops engaged in a two-week exercise culminating in an invasion of a Caribbean island. Two smaller exercises followed in May. During the summer and fall, the United States intensified its contingency planning for an invasion. In October 1962, the U.S. announced Operation Ortsac, a large exercise including a mock invasion by 7,500 marines of a Caribbean island replete with the overthrow of its government. The message was clear; Ortsac was Castro spelled backward. Scheduled to begin on October 15, the unfolding crisis would force Ortsac’s cancellation.

  Kennedy was also intent upon standing up to the Communists in Vietnam, despite understanding the difficulties the United States faced there. After visiting Vietnam in 1951, he had advised against aiding the French colonialists and later spoke more broadly of needing to win the support of Arabs, Africans, and Asians who “hated . . . the white man who bled them, beat them, exploited them, and ruled them.”120 He pointed out the contradiction in opposing the Soviets in Hungary and Poland while supporting the French in Vietnam, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. But he was soon defending Diem’s cancellation of elections and urging U.S. support for the South Vietnamese government. The United States’ “prestige in Asia” was at stake. “Vietnam,” he now insisted, “represents the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia, the keystone in the arch, the finger in the dike. Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and obviously Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the red tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam.”121

  In the late 1950s, Diem’s repressive rule had sparked armed resistance in the South. In December 1960, with Hanoi’s blessing, the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) came into being as a broad coalition united around opposition to Diem. Its ten-point program called for the ouster of U.S. advisors, steps toward peaceful reunification of the country, and radical social reforms. Diem ignored U.S. pressure to democratize, choosing instead to ban public assembly, public dancing, and political parties. Instead of using this as an excuse to reduce U.S. involvement, Kennedy increased the number of U.S. military personnel in the country in a conscious contravention of the Geneva Accords and vastly expanded U.S. support for counterinsurgency programs.

  In May 1961, Kennedy sent Vice President Johnson to Vietnam to demons
trate the United States’ resolve. Johnson anointed Diem the “Winston Churchill of Southeast Asia”122 and urged Americans to dig in their heels. In October, Kennedy sent Maxwell Taylor, who was then his personal military advisor, and Walt Rostow, the deputy assistant for National Security Affairs. They painted a bleak picture and pressed for a much larger U.S. involvement. Taylor was part of a growing chorus of Kennedy advisors who pushed for deployment of U.S. combat troops. McNamara and the Joint Chiefs agreed with Taylor’s assessment that only U.S. combat troops could possibly forestall a Communist victory. Like Taylor, they acknowledged that an initial troop deployment would increase the pressure to send more troops, possibly vast numbers of them. Kennedy understood this dynamic all too well and resisted. He explained to Schlesinger, “The troops will march in; the bands will play; the crowds will cheer; and in four days everyone will have forgotten. Then we will be told we have to send in more troops. It’s like taking a drink. The effect wears off, and you have to take another.”123

  Kennedy did approve Taylor’s other recommendations and expanded U.S. involvement. The number of U.S. military personnel in Vietnam jumped from 800 when Kennedy took office to over 16,000 in 1963. The United States began resettling villagers at gunpoint behind barbed-wire-enclosed compounds guarded by government troops and using herbicides to defoliate areas where guerrillas operated. The long-term environmental and health effects would prove disastrous for Vietnamese and Americans alike.

  But it was the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 that really impressed upon Kennedy the potentially disastrous repercussions of his hard-line Cold War policies. On Sunday, October 14, a U-2 surveillance plane brought back startling photos from Cuba. The next day, photoanalysts determined that the Soviets had placed SS-4 medium range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) on the island that were capable of delivering 1-megaton warheads to the continental United States.

  A U.S. aircraft sprays herbicide over a South Vietnamese forest to defoliate a guerrilla-infested area. The long-term environmental and health effects would prove disastrous for Vietnamese and Americans alike.

  Kennedy was in a bind. Leading Republicans and his own CIA director had warned that the Soviets would one day put offensive weapons on Cuba. Kennedy had repeatedly assured critics that if the Soviets did so, he would act decisively.

  The last thing the Soviets wanted in 1962 was a direct military confrontation with the United States. With little more than ten ICBMs that could reliably reach U.S. soil and fewer than 300 nuclear warheads, they stood no chance against the United States’ 5,000 nuclear bombs and nearly 2,000 ICBMs and bombers.124 Fearing a U.S. first strike, the Soviets gambled that placing missiles in Cuba could both deter an attack on themselves and protect Cuba against an anticipated U.S. invasion. Khrushchev also saw this as an inexpensive way to placate Kremlin hawks. Having deliberately misled Kennedy with promises that no offensive weapons would be placed in Cuba, he said he wanted to give the Americans “a little bit of their own medicine” and show them that “it’s been a long time since you could spank us like a little boy—now we can swat your ass.”125 Khrushchev equated Soviet missiles in Cuba with U.S. missiles on the Soviet Union’s border in Turkey and in Western Europe. He had intended to announce their presence on November 7 at the forty-fifth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.126

  Photo taken over Cuba by a U.S. U-2 surveillance plane on October 14, 1962. The photo revealed that the Soviets had placed medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) on the island that were capable of delivering 1-megaton warheads to the continental U.S. This revelation sparked the Cuban Missile Crisis.

  On October 16, Kennedy pondered Soviet motives. “What is the advantage of” putting ballistic missiles in Cuba, he asked his advisors. “It’s just as if we suddenly began to put a major number of MRBMs in Turkey. Now that’d be goddamn dangerous, I would think.” The room fell silent until Bundy replied, “Well, we did it, Mr. President.”127

  Kennedy hoped to stop the Soviets before the missiles had been fully installed. He conferred with his advisors to determine his options. On October 19, he met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The majority, led by LeMay, favored an air strike to destroy the missiles. LeMay advised, “The Russian bear has always been eager to stick his paw in Latin American waters. Now we’ve got him in a trap, let’s take his leg off right up to his testicles. On second thought, let’s take off his testicles, too.”128 LeMay assured Kennedy that the Soviets would not respond to an attack on the missiles in Cuba. Kennedy replied that they would have to respond—if not in Cuba, then in Berlin. LeMay welcomed that scenario, believing that the time was ripe not only to overthrow Castro but to wipe out the Soviet Union. Kennedy was shaken by LeMay’s cavalier attitude toward the possibility of nuclear war. After the meeting he remarked to his aide Kenneth O’Donnell, “Can you imagine LeMay saying a thing like that? These brass hats have one great advantage in their favor. If we listen to them, and do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.”129

  Most of the chiefs and several of the other advisors wanted the strike to be followed by an invasion. Those less ready to risk war preferred a blockade. McNamara contended that the presence of Soviet missiles did not change the strategic balance. Kennedy agreed but believed that allowing the missiles to stay would have devastating political consequences abroad, especially in Latin America. Kennedy also confided to his brother Robert that if he didn’t take strong action, he would be impeached. But in the coming days, he rejected the advice of his military leaders, of the civilian hard-liners Acheson and Nitze, and of former President Eisenhower, and opted for the blockade, which he referred to as a “quarantine” to downplay the fact that this too was an act of war. LeMay was furious. “This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich,” he charged at the October 19 meeting.130 On October 22, the president solemnly informed the American people of what had transpired. “The purpose of these bases,” he noted, “can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.” In words that could hardly have been comforting, he declared, “We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the course of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth, but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced.”131

  Tensions heightened daily as the crisis dragged on. On October 25, Soviet leaders decided they would have to remove the missiles, but they wanted to secure the best terms they could before doing so. They hoped to trade Soviet missiles in Cuba for U.S. Jupiters in Turkey. But before they could act on that decision, Khrushchev received word that the U.S. invasion was about to begin. He sent Kennedy what McNamara described as “the most extraordinary diplomatic message I have ever seen.” Khrushchev warned that the United States and USSR were heading inexorably toward war: “if war should indeed break out, then it would not be in our power to stop it . . . war ends when it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction.”132

  In that letter, Khrushchev asked simply for a promise not to invade Cuba. Even ignoring the faulty information about the invasion beginning, Khrushchev had abundant reason to worry. A series of “incidents” occurred, any one of which could have triggered the nuclear holocaust that he and Kennedy desperately sought to avoid. A SAC test missile was launched from Vandenburg Air Force Base toward the Marshall Islands, and U.S. officials mistakenly reported that Tampa and Minnesota were under attack.

  On October 22, SAC went to DEFCON 3. At 10:30 A.M. on October 24, for the first time in history, SAC was placed on DEFCON 2 and prepared to strike targets in the Soviet Union. The decision to go to the precipice of nuclear war was made by General Power on his own authority without consulting the president. To make matters worse, instead of putting out this order in code, as would be expected, he sent it out in the clear to make sure that the Soviets would pick it up. Thereafter, the SAC fleet remained airborne, refueled by aerial tankers and getting ready to attack with close to
three thousand nuclear weapons, expected to kill hundreds of millions of people.

  Tensions continued to ratchet up. On October 27, an incident occurred that Schlesinger accurately described as “not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. It was the most dangerous moment in human history.”133 A navy group led by the carrier USS Randolph began dropping depth charges near a Soviet B-59 submarine sent to protect the other Soviet ships approaching Cuba. Those inside the U.S. destroyers were unaware that the Soviet sub was carrying nuclear weapons. Soviet signals officer Vadim Orlov described the scene: “The [depth charges] exploded right next to the hull. It felt like you were sitting in a metal barrel, which somebody is constantly blasting with a sledgehammer. The situation was quite unusual, if not to say shocking—for the crew.”

  The temperature rose sharply, especially inside the submarine’s engine room. The ship went dark, with only emergency lights continuing to function. Carbon dioxide in the air reached near-lethal levels. People could barely breathe. “One of the duty officers fainted and fell down. Then another one followed, then the third one. . . . They were falling like dominoes. But we were still holding on, trying to escape. We were suffering like this for about four hours.” Then “the Americans hit us with something stronger. . . . We thought—that’s it—the end.”

  Panic ensued. Commander Valentin Savitsky tried unsuccessfully to reach the general staff. He then ordered the officer in charge of the nuclear torpedo to prepare it for battle and shouted, “Maybe the war has already started up there, while we are doing somersaults here. We’re going to blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all—we will not disgrace our Navy.” Savitsky turned to the other two officers aboard for their approval. One agreed, but political officer Vasili Arkhipov refused to launch, single-handedly preventing nuclear war.134