One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

by M. Dobbs

  In an apparent attempt to create a bureaucratic alibi for himself, Harvey would draw attention to a formal halt to "all action, maritime and black infiltration operations" from October 28 onward. A temporary stand-down had been imposed two days earlier, on October 26, following the Mongoose meeting at the Pentagon. Already in trouble with Bobby Kennedy for the unauthorized dispatch of agent teams to Cuba, Harvey did not have the stomach to challenge the stand-down order. Orozco and Vera were expendable.

  On the morning of Tuesday, October 30, Vera finally concluded that they could wait no longer. "The boat had not come back, Miguel was dying, and nobody was answering our calls." He was a tough, wiry little man nicknamed el cojo ― "the lame one." (Four years earlier, a truck had run over his foot, leaving him with a permanent limp.) He helped his friend onto the catamaran, originally intended to take them to the mother ship, and set out to sea. Using the stars to navigate, he headed northward, in the direction of the Florida Keys.

  Waves were soon battering the little boat from all sides. The constant motion caused Orozco to cry out in pain. As land was disappearing below the horizon, a huge wave capsized the catamaran, washing their ruck-sacks into the sea. They managed to get it back upright, but the motor was useless. Their only usable equipment was a paddle that they had somehow salvaged. There was no way they could reach Florida. They began paddling back in the direction of Cuba.

  Orozco and Vera were arrested by Cuban militiamen on the night of November 2 after approaching a peasant for help. A U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane overflew the Matahambre area earlier that same day. It was clear from the photographs of the mine and aerial tramway ― which were both intact and functioning ― that the latest CIA sabotage mission against Cuba had ended in failure.

  9:00 A.M. SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28 (5:00 P.M. MOSCOW, 8:00 A.M. HAVANA)

  Soviet officials worked on the text of Khrushchev's message to Kennedy until the very last moment, cleaning up the rough draft and translating the finished version into English. At 3:00 p.m. Moscow time, the Foreign Ministry called the U.S. Embassy and told them to expect an important message "within 11/2 to 2 hours." Everybody was very conscious of the five o'clock deadline, when the president was expected to address the American people.

  With time running out, several copies of the letter were entrusted to the Communist Party secretary in charge of ideology, Leonid Ilyichev, who had responsibility for mass media. He ordered his chauffeur to drive as fast as he could to the headquarters of Radio Moscow, a forty-minute drive with little traffic. The black Chaika sped along the winding forest road connecting Novo-Ogaryevo to the center of Moscow, up the vast expanse of Kutuzov Avenue, past the Triumphal Arch commemorating Napoleon's defeat in 1812, and across the Moscow River. When the militiamen saw the curtained Kremlin limousine approach, they waved other vehicles to the side of the road with their long white nightsticks. By disregarding all traffic regulations, Ilyichev reached the radio station in record time.

  At the station, the announcers wanted more time to go over the script. They were used to getting scripts hours, sometimes days in advance, so they could perfect their delivery, striking the appropriate balance of pathos and ideological conviction. Known as diktors in Russian, the newsreaders were the voices of the Soviet state. Most of them were accomplished actors, trained by the famous Stanislavsky School in what was known as the Method. In order to seem sincere, an actor must completely live the part. If he can convince himself that he is hopelessly in love, he can convince his audience. Their voices dripped with pride as they recited five-year plans and steely indignation as they recounted the misdeeds of the imperialists.

  The most famous diktor of all was Yuri Levitan. To hear his dulcet, authoritative voice was like listening to Big Brother himself. He had brought the Soviet people news of triumph and tragedy, victory and defeat, persuading them to put their faith in the Communist Party, whatever the circumstances. Levitan had announced the start of the war with Nazi Germany in June 1941 and the defeat of Nazism four years later. He had broken the news of the death of Stalin in 1953 and Yuri Gagarin's space flight in 1961. It now fell to him to proclaim the end of Khrushchev's great Cuban gamble.

  Since the deadline was fast approaching, Ilyichev insisted that the diktors go on the air live, with no time to rehearse. Khrushchev's message would be broadcast simultaneously in Russian and English.

  "Govorit Moskva," Levitan began ― "This is Moscow speaking." It was 5:00 p.m. in Moscow, 9:00 a.m. in Washington. He told his listeners he would read from a letter written by Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, first secretary of the Presidium of the Communist Party and chairman of the Council of Ministers, to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, president of the United States of America.

  The Soviet government, in addition to earlier instructions on the discontinuation of further work on weapons construction sites, has given a new order to dismantle the weapons you described as offensive, and to crate and return them to the Soviet Union.

  Levitan managed to make this sound like yet another triumph for Moscow's peace-loving foreign policy over warmongering imperialists. The supremely wise, always reasonable Soviet leadership had saved the world from the threat of nuclear destruction.

  Khrushchev's son Sergei had been waiting for his father at the family dacha when he heard the announcement over the radio. He was half-relieved, half-stunned by the turnaround. He would come to view his father's decision in a much more positive light, but at this moment it sounded to him like a "shameful retreat."

  "That's it," he thought to himself. "We've surrendered."

  Other Soviet citizens were grateful that the nightmare was over. When Oleg Troyanovsky finally returned to his apartment after a week on duty at the Kremlin crisis center, he was shocked to discover that he had lost five pounds. When he told his wife what he had been doing, she gently reprimanded him. "If possible, the next time you want to lose some weight, find a safer way to do it."

  The five o'clock deadline turned out to be a false alarm. No new presidential address had been planned for that time. One of the American television networks had simply decided to rerun Kennedy's October 22 speech. Khrushchev had been misinformed by his intelligence people.

  The bells began going off on the news agency teletypes in Washington soon after 9:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. McGeorge Bundy was having breakfast in the White House Mess, down the corridor from the Situation Room, when an aide rushed in with a bulletin torn off the printer. He called Kennedy on an internal phone. The president was in his bedroom, getting dressed to go to church, as his national security adviser read the item from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service:

  Moscow Domestic Service in Russian at 1404GMT on 28 October broadcast a message from Khrushchev to President Kennedy stating that the USSR had decided to dismantle Soviet missiles in Cuba and return them to the Soviet Union.

  28 Oct 0908A

  "I feel like a new man now," JFK told Dave Powers after digesting the news. "Do you realize that we had an air strike all arranged for Tuesday? Thank God it's all over."

  Other members of the ExComm were equally ecstatic. John McCone was on his way back from nine o'clock mass when he heard the news over the car radio. "I could hardly believe my ears," he later recalled. The Soviet about-face was as unexpected as it was sudden. Donald Wilson "felt like laughing or yelling or dancing." After several nights with little sleep, wondering if he would see his family again, he was suddenly lighthearted, almost giddy.

  It was a gorgeous fall morning in Washington. The leaves on the trees had turned a brilliant red and the city was bathed in golden sunshine. Arriving at the White House, George Ball was reminded of a Georgia O'Keeffe painting of "a rose growing out of an ox skull." Life had magically emerged from the shadow of death.

  Bystanders noticed an extra spring in the president's step as he leapt out of his black limousine at the Church of St. Stephen eight blocks from the White House. Just hours earlier, he had been calculating the odds of nuclear war, putting them at somewhere bet
ween "one in three and even."

  Photo Insert Three

  A Soviet motorized rifle regiment stationed near Remedios parades in civilian clothes. Operation Anadyr was nicknamed Operation Checkered Shirt by Russian soldiers because they were issued very similar civilian clothes in hope of disguising their true identities. [MAVI]

  Previously unpublished U.S. Marine reconnaissance photograph of Tarara beach, east of Havana, renamed Red beach in the invasion plan. The Marines were expecting around five hundred casualties during the first day alone, an estimate that assumed the enemy would not use tactical nuclear weapons. [USNHC]

  Contemporary photograph of Tarara beach. Note the concrete bunker constructed in 1962 against a possible U.S. invasion of Cuba, now used as a lifeguard post for foreign tourists. [Photo by author]

  Previously unpublished photograph of the Bejucal nuclear storage site, taken from raw intelligence film shot by U.S. Navy Crusaders on Blue Moon Mission 5008 on October 25. Note the circular road, nuclear warhead vans, single security fence, and lax security at the main gate. See inset of vertical photograph of nuclear warhead vans, shot on the same mission. [NARA]

  Colonel Nikolai Beloborodov, commander of the Soviet nuclear arsenal on Cuba, at the helm of Indigirka, the first Soviet ship to arrive in Cuba with nuclear warheads. [MAVI]

  Previously unpublished photograph of the nuclear storage site at Managua, south of Havana, which was used to store the warheads for the tactical FROG/Luna missiles. Labels show the single security fence, the entrances to the bunker, and an antiaircraft site on top of the hill. Photograph shot on October 26 by U.S. Air Force RF-101 on Blue Moon Mission 2623. [NARA]

  Previously unpublished photographs of raw intelligence film from Blue Moon Mission 5025 on Saturday, October 27, showing frames before and after the pilot detected enemy antiaircraft fire. Frame 47 shows the San Cristobal MRBM Site No. 2. A fraction of a second later, in frame 48, the pilot turns sharply to the left to escape over the mountains. A photograph of a clock embedded in the film (see inset) shows the precise time of the incident, 20:22:34 GMT, which was 16:22:34 Washington time, or 15:22:34 Cuban time. [NARA]

  The Soviet cruise missile known as FKR, or frontovaya krylataya raketa, was aimed at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base during the Cuban missile crisis. The FKR was an unpiloted version of the MiG-15 jet fighter and could deliver a 14-kiloton nuclear warhead. [Cuban government photo produced for the 2002 Havana Conference]

  U.S. Marines guarding Guantanamo Bay Naval Base had no idea that nuclear cruise missiles were stationed in hills fifteen miles away. [Distributed by the Pentagon]

  Photograph of the Banes SAM site, taken by the RF-101 pictured above on October 26. [NARA]

  Previously unpublished intelligence film of a U.S. Air Force RF-101 overflying the Soviet SAM site at Banes on October 26. The following day, October 27, a U.S. Air Force U-2 piloted by Major Rudolf Anderson was shot down by two missiles fired from this SAM site. Discovered by the author at the National Archives, the consecutive frames were cut and pieced together with Scotch tape by CIA analysts. [NARA]

  Flying right wing on Blue Moon Mission 2626, this U.S. Air Force RF-101, numbered 41511, took the photograph shown on front page from its left camera bay. [NARA]

  Colonel Georgi Voronkov (left), commander of the SAM regiment in eastern Cuba, congratulates officers responsible for shooting down Anderson's U-2. The officer on the right, with a pistol, is Major Ivan Gerchenov, commander of the Banes SAM site. [MAVI]

  Previously unpublished map of U-2 pilot Captain Charles Maultsby's overflight of the Soviet Union, found by the author in State Department Archives. [NARA]

  Air Force photo of Captain Maultsby. [Photo provided by Maultsby family]

  Another U-2 pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson, was shot down over Cuba while Maultsby was in the air over the Soviet Union. [Photo provided by Anderson family]

  The mood was very different across the Potomac at the Pentagon, where the Joint Chiefs were busy refining their plans for a massive air strike against Cuba followed by an invasion. Curtis LeMay was already furious with Kennedy for postponing the planned attack until Tuesday. The Air Force chief wanted his fellow generals to go with him to the White House to demand an attack by Monday at the latest, before the missile sites became "fully operational."

  Tickertape of the Radio Moscow broadcast was distributed around 9:30 a.m. on Sunday. The chiefs reacted with dismay. LeMay denounced Khrushchev's statement as "a charade," and a cover for keeping some weapons in Cuba. Admiral Anderson predicted that the no-invasion pledge being offered to Cuba by Kennedy would "leave Castro free to make trouble in Latin America." The generals were unimpressed by McNamara's argument that Khrushchev's concessions left the United States in "a much stronger position." They drafted an urgent message to the White House dismissing the Soviet move as "an insincere proposal to gain time" and warning that "there should be no relaxation of alert procedures."

  "We have been had," Anderson told Kennedy when they finally got together.

  "It's the greatest defeat in our history," insisted LeMay. "We should invade today."

  Fidel Castro was at home in Vedado. He heard about the dismantling of the Soviet missile sites in a telephone call from the editor of Revolucion, Carlos Franqui. The Associated Press teletype was reporting the text of the letter from Khrushchev to Kennedy that had just been broadcast over Radio Moscow. The newspaper editor wanted to know "what should we do about this news?"

  "What news?"

  Franqui read the news bulletin over the phone and braced himself for an explosion.

  "Son of a bitch! Bastard! Asshole!" Fidel went on in this vein for some time, "beating even his own record for curses." To vent his anger, he kicked a wall and smashed a mirror. The idea that the Russians had made a deal with the Americans "without even bothering to inform us" cut him to the core. He felt deeply "humiliated." He instructed President Dorticos to call the Soviet ambassador to find out what had happened.

  Alekseev had been up late the night before. He was still in bed when the telephone rang.

  "The radio says that the Soviet government has decided to withdraw the missiles."

  The ambassador had no idea what Dorticos was talking about. There was obviously some mistake.

  "You shouldn't believe American radio."

  "It wasn't American radio. It was Radio Moscow."

  11:10 A.M. SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28

  The report reaching the North American Air Defense Command in Colorado Springs was startling. An air defense radar had picked up evidence of an unexplained missile launch from the Gulf of Mexico. The trajectory suggested that the target was somewhere in the Tampa Bay area of Florida.

  By the time the duty officers at NORAD had figured out where the missile was headed, it was already too late to take any action. They received the first report of the incident at 11:08 a.m., six minutes after the missile was meant to land. A check with the Bomb Alarm System, a nationwide network of nuclear detonation devices placed on telephone polls in cities and military bases, revealed that Tampa was still intact. The Strategic Air Command knew nothing about the reported launch.

  It took a few nerve-wracking minutes to establish what had really happened. The discovery of Soviet missiles on Cuba had resulted in a crash program to reorient the American air defense system from north to south. A radar station at Moorestown just off the New Jersey Turnpike had been reconfigured to pick up missile launches from Cuba. But the giant golfballlike installation was still experiencing teething problems. Technicians had fed a test tape into the system at the very moment that an artificial satellite appeared on the horizon, causing radar operators to confuse the satellite with an incoming missile.

  A false alarm.

  The ExComm began meeting at 11:10 a.m., after JFK returned from church, just as NORAD was clearing up the confusion about the phantom missile attack on Tampa. Aides who had expressed doubts about Kennedy's handling of the crisis a few hours earlier now vied with each other to praise him. Bundy co
ined a new expression to describe the divisions among the president's advisers that had erupted in dramatic fashion on Saturday afternoon.

  "Everyone knows who were the hawks and who were the doves," said the self-appointed spokesman for the hawks. "Today was the day of the doves."

  To many of the men who had spent the last thirteen days in the Cabinet Room, agonizing over the threat posed by Soviet missiles, it suddenly seemed as if the president was a miracleworker. One aide suggested he intervene in a border war between China and India that had been overshadowed by the superpower confrontation. Kennedy brushed the suggestion aside.

  "I don't think either of them, or anybody else, wants me to solve that crisis."

  "But, Mr. President, today you're ten feet tall."

  JFK laughed. "That will last about a week."