One minute to midnight

by Michael Dobbs

  Antiaircraft guns also opened fire on the Crusader reconnaissance planes overflying San Cristobal. The Cuban crews had been on alert ever since being taken by surprise earlier in the day. This time, the pair of U.S. Navy jets approached from the west, from the direction of the village of San Diego de los Banos. The jets had overflown the site known to the Americans as San Cristobal MRBM Site No. One, photographed by Commander Ecker on October 23, and were following the ridgeline of the Sierra del Rosario. A Cuban antiaircraft unit stationed outside the entrance of the missile site fired at the two Crusaders as they headed toward MRBM Site No. Two, three miles to the east.

  From inside their cockpits, the pilots on Blue Moon Mission 5025 could see telltale puffs of smoke in their rearview mirrors. The cameras housed in their bomb bays were still clicking away methodically. When he glimpsed the first puff of smoke, the lead pilot yanked his steering column to the left, but quickly pulled level. His forward camera captured a sweeping panoramic view of MRBM Site No. Two that would later be released by the Pentagon as evidence of Soviet missile activity in Cuba. Launch stands and erectors were clearly visible on the left side of the picture, a few hundred feet from freshly dug personnel trenches, at the base of the heavily wooded mountains. A fraction of a second later, the pilot saw another puff of smoke. A series of previously unpublished photographs taken at the moment when the Crusader was fired upon is included on page four of the third insert. This time, the pilot did not hesitate. He banked sharply to the left, and headed over the Sierra del Rosario mountains for home.

  4:00 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

  News that the U.S. Navy jets had run into trouble began reaching the White House soon after the start of the afternoon ExComm meeting. McNamara reported that two Crusaders had "aborted" their mission and were "returning to base" because of "mechanical" trouble. Twenty minutes later, a message arrived that two other planes had been "fired on...by what appeared to be a 37 mm antiaircraft gun."

  The attacks on the low-level planes appeared to represent a significant escalation by the Soviets, particularly when combined with the apparent loss of Major Anderson's U-2 over Cuba that morning. The latest developments made Kennedy wonder whether it was a good idea to go ahead with the previously scheduled night surveillance flights. The acting director of the United States Information Agency, Donald Wilson, had been planning to broadcast a warning to the Cuban people about "harmless" explosions in the dark.

  "I think we had better wait," Kennedy told Wilson. "I don't know whether tonight is the night to do it."

  "We ought to evaluate certain things before we let them go," agreed Maxwell Taylor. The USIA chief left the room in a hurry "to make sure that nobody does anything wrong on this one."

  The president turned his attention to a draft response by the State Department to Khrushchev's private letter of Friday evening and his public proposal earlier in the day for a Cuba-Turkey missile trade. Kennedy felt the State Department draft failed to adequately address the Soviet leader's offer and its likely appeal to international public opinion. He proposed softer language, saying the United States would be "glad to discuss" other matters once the Soviets halted work on their missile sites in Cuba.

  "Otherwise, he's going to announce that we've rejected his proposal," Kennedy reasoned. "And then, where are we?"

  Dean Rusk predicted that the Soviets would make "a big blast" about the U-2 overflight of the Soviet Union. The secretary of state read out a draft statement saying that the U-2 had been engaged in "routine air sampling operations," but "went off course" as a result of "an instrument failure."

  Kennedy preferred not to say anything "if we can get away without having some leak." He remembered the embarrassment suffered by President Eisenhower in May 1960 following the downing of a U-2 over Siberia. He did not want to be caught in a series of conflicting explanations about what the U-2 was doing over the Soviet Union that would undermine his "credibility" with Khrushchev.

  "It gives him a story tomorrow and makes us look like we're the offenders."

  More details were coming in from the Pentagon on the afternoon reconnaissance flights. McNamara erroneously reported that one of the Crusaders had been "hit" by a 37mm shell. The pilot was okay and was returning to base, but there had obviously been "quite a change in the character of the orders given to the Cuban defenders." The defense secretary did not think it wise to "confuse the issue" by publicly acknowledging the American overflight of the Soviet Union.

  "I agree," Kennedy said firmly. "Let's let it go."

  5:40 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

  Dean Rusk found the conflicting signals from Moscow difficult to understand. On Friday, he had received what appeared to be a backchannel message from Khrushchev via the ABC reporter John Scali, offering to pull Soviet missiles out of Cuba in return for a U.S. promise not to invade the island. Today, the Soviet leader had upped the ante by demanding the withdrawal of American missiles from Turkey. The secretary of state asked Scali to find out what happened.

  Late on Saturday afternoon, Scali asked Aleksandr Feklisov to come to the Statler-Hilton Hotel, where they had met the previous evening. This time, the reporter and the KGB rezident went up to the deserted ballroom on the mezzanine level. Scali was furious with his source, and did not want to be overheard.

  "This is a stinking double-cross," he protested when they were alone. "The formula mentioned by Radio Moscow has nothing to do with what we discussed last night."

  Feklisov tried to calm Scali down. There had been no "double-cross," he insisted. He conceded that his message to Moscow might have been delayed by the "heavy cable traffic" back and forth. He also pointed out that the idea of a Turkey-Cuba swap was hardly new. Even Walter Lippmann had mentioned it in his column.

  "I don't give a damn if Walter Lippmann or Cleopatra mentioned it," the newsman exploded. "It is completely, totally, and utterly unacceptable. It is unacceptable today, it will be unacceptable tomorrow. It will be unacceptable until infinity. The American government just won't consider it."

  Feklisov explained that he and Ambassador Dobrynin were just "small fry." Khrushchev was receiving advice from many different people. They were waiting for a message back from Moscow in response to their cable of the previous evening.

  Saying good-bye to Feklisov, Scali walked the three blocks up Sixteenth Street to the White House. The deputy chief of intelligence at the State Department was waiting for him. It was 5:40 p.m. Thomas Hughes had been attending a matinee performance of The Mikado when one of the actors appeared on stage, in Japanese imperial regalia, and told him to call his office. His boss, Roger Hilsman, had retired to bed exhausted. Hughes was assigned the job of escorting Scali to the president's private office for a meeting with Rusk.

  Rusk was mystified by the latest developments. One reason why the U.S. government had put so much stock in the private Friday letter from Khrushchev was the concrete proposal received via Feklisov. The original Khrushchev message had been very vague, saying merely that the "necessity for Soviet specialists" in Cuba would disappear in the event of a noninvasion pledge from Washington. Without the extra information provided by Feklisov, the original Khrushchev letter was "twelve pages of fluff," in McNamara's phrase. "There's not a single word in it that proposes to take the missiles out.... That's no contract. You couldn't sign that, and say we know what we signed."

  What nobody on the ExComm realized was that the reporter and the rezident had greatly exaggerated their own importance. The Scali-Feklisov "backchannel" was itself largely fluff.

  Back in the Cabinet Room, JFK was facing mounting opposition to his willingness to consider some kind of Cuba-Turkey deal. The revolt was being led by Mac Bundy, who feared the mere hint of a trade would cause "real trouble" for the United States. The experts were all agreed, the national security adviser insisted. "If we appear to be trading the defense of Turkey for a threat to Cuba, we'll have to face a radical decline" in the effectiveness of NATO.

  Kennedy was irritated by Bundy's
arguments. The allies might complain about a missile trade, but they would complain even louder if the Soviets responded to a U.S. invasion of Cuba by attacking Berlin or Turkey. "We all know how quickly everybody's courage goes when the blood starts to flow," he told the ExComm. "That's what is going to happen to NATO. When [the Soviets] grab Berlin, everybody's gonna say, 'Well, that was a pretty good proposition.' Let's not kid ourselves."

  The president thought Khrushchev had to be offered some inducement to take his missiles out of Cuba. Having made a public offer of a Turkey-Cuba trade, he was not going to simply back down without getting anything in return. There were only two ways to get the Soviet missiles out of Cuba, Kennedy believed: by force or by negotiation. He preferred negotiation.

  "I don't agree, Mr. President," objected Llewellyn Thompson. "I think there is still a chance we can get this line going."

  "That he'll back down?"

  The former ambassador pointed out that Khrushchev had been ready to settle for a noninvasion of Cuba guarantee less than twenty-four hours before. It was possible he was just trying to put "pressure on us," to see how much he could get. The president should try to steer him back to the ideas outlined in his private letter on Friday. Thompson was also worried by the terms of the proposed Cuba-Turkey deal. The wording of the Soviet letter suggested that Khrushchev wanted to exchange missiles for missiles, airplanes for airplanes, and bases for bases. Getting the Russians out of Cuba might require the dismantling not just of the Jupiters but of the entire U.S. military presence in Turkey, NATO's eastern flank.

  By now, several rival drafts of a possible reply to Khrushchev were on the table. In a phone call from New York, Adlai Stevenson had objected that the State Department draft sounded "too much like an ultimatum." He proposed new, more conciliatory language. Kennedy attempted to merge the two drafts, and began dictating changes to Dean Rusk. Soon, everybody was offering suggestions.

  "Change it a little," instructed Kennedy. "Start again, Mr. Secretary."

  "You can cut the next sentence," chimed in Bundy.

  "'Welcome the statement of your desire,'" said Rusk, reading back his notes. "Couldn't we just say, 'My desire is the same?'"

  "My desire isn't the same as his," Kennedy objected. How about "I can assure you of the great interest of the people of the United States to find a satisfactory solution to this..."

  "Interested in reducing tensions," murmured the secretary of state.

  "We have to fudge it somewhat," conceded the president.

  Rusk pressed on. "We are of course quite prepared to consider with our allies the suggestions that you and your partners in the Warsaw Pact might have in mind."

  The notion that the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact was an alliance of free nations was too much for the hawkish Bundy. "Do we have to talk about their 'partners in the Warsaw Pact'? he interrupted peevishly. "What you [Khrushchev] have in mind."

  "Yeah, I think you oughta..." the president agreed.

  Seated across the table from Jack, Bobby could no longer conceal his frustration. The cobbled-together draft was full of noble sentiments but didn't actually say anything. Like Thompson, Bobby wanted to steer the exchange with Moscow back to the original Friday night proposal. He suggested his brother tell Khrushchev, "You made an offer to us, and we accept it. And you've also made a second offer, which has to do with NATO, and we'll be glad to discuss that at a later time."

  The youngest and least experienced member of the ExComm, Bobby frequently veered between belligerence and inarticulateness. But he also had a knack for occasionally homing in on the essence of a problem. He sensed that the discussion in the ExComm was going around in circles, and that everybody was getting lost in a morass of commas and subordinate clauses. He urged his brother to permit him and Ted Sorensen to go off into another room and draft the reply to Khrushchev.

  "Why don't we try to work it out for you, without you being there to pick it apart?"

  The suggestion drew laughter from the rest of the ExComm. Nobody else dared speak so frankly to the president. Bobby broke the tension again a couple of minutes later when Taylor announced that the Joint Chiefs were calling for massive air strikes against Cuba by Monday morning at the latest "unless there is irrefutable evidence in the meantime that offensive weapons are being dismantled."

  "Well, I am surprised."

  ExComm members were still debating what to do about the Turks and the Jupiters when they were jerked back to the present. More than four hours had passed without any news on the fate of Major Anderson. He was almost certainly dead, but it was unclear whether his disappearance over Cuba was due to an accident or enemy action. An intercepted Cuban communication settled the issue.

  "The U-2 was shot down," said McNamara, reading a note handed to him by an aide.

  "Was the pilot killed?" Bobby wanted to know.

  General Taylor had some more details. "The pilot's body is in the plane." The U-2 had likely been shot down over the town of Banes by a Soviet SAM missile. An American reconnaissance plane had picked up missile guidance radar signals from a SAM site near Banes at the same time as the U-2 overflight. "It all ties in in a very plausible manner."

  Kennedy was taken aback by the apparent Soviet "escalation." There must have been a significant "change of orders" from Moscow. He began connecting the dots. A tough new message from Khrushchev earlier in the day following more conciliatory signals on Friday. Antiaircraft fire against low-level U.S. Navy reconnaissance planes. And now a U-2 shot down. The outlook suddenly seemed very bleak. Mixing metaphors somewhat, Bobby Kennedy would later describe a sense in the room that "the noose was tightening on all of us, on Americans, on mankind, and that the bridges to escape were crumbling."

  "They've fired the first shot," said Paul Nitze, the hard-line assistant secretary of defense.

  The immediate question was how to respond.

  "We can't very well send a U-2 over there, can we now, and have a guy killed again tomorrow," said the president.

  Taylor agreed. "We certainly shouldn't do it until we retaliate, and say that if they fire again on one of our planes that we will come back with great force."

  "We ought to go in at dawn and take out that SAM site," said McNamara.

  His deputy, Gilpatric, argued that the downing of the U-2 was more ominous than the antiaircraft fire against the low-level planes. The antiaircraft batteries were probably manned by Cubans, but the SAM missiles were almost certainly controlled by Soviets.

  "This is a change of pattern," concluded McNamara, thinking aloud. "Now why it's a change of pattern, I don't know."

  5:50 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27 (12:50 A.M. SUNDAY, MOSCOW)

  The families of the U-2 pilots lived alongside each other at Laughlin Air Force Base outside Del Rio, Texas, a small town on the Mexican border surrounded by cactus and sagebrush. The 4080th Strategic Wing, which consisted of one U-2 squadron with about twenty-five pilots, was a large, rambunctious family. The Air Force had built brand-new bungalows on good-size lots for the pilots. Their social life revolved around bridge parties and church and backyard barbecues. Rudolf Anderson, Sr., and his wife, Jane, were pillars of the bridge-playing set, together with their best friends, Robert and Marlene Powell, who had children around the same age.

  The pilots' wives had little information about what was taking place in the skies over Cuba. Their husbands all disappeared at the start of the crisis, without saying very much about what they were doing. The women were left to fend for themselves, stockpile canned food, and tape up their windows in case of a Soviet attack. As they tried to preserve a semblance of routine, there was one sight that encapsulated all their fears: a chaplain and a colonel walking up the driveway with serious expressions on their faces.

  Jane Anderson had already been through this ghastly routine. A few months earlier, the Air Force had reported that Rudy had been killed in a U-2 crash during a refueling exercise. It turned out to be a false report. There had been a mix-up in the manifest, and another pilo
t had died. Shortly before the Air Force officers showed up on Jane's doorstep to deliver the news, Rudy called to let her know that he was okay. It took some time to sort out the confusion.

  When the Air Force staff car appeared in the officer housing complex on Saturday afternoon, the women looked out of their windows to see where it was headed. As the car carrying the colonel and the chaplain passed their houses, everybody breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, the officers got out of the car and went looking for Marlene Powell. She assumed that something had happened to her husband. Instead, they asked her to accompany them across the street to the Anderson bungalow. Definitive word on what had happened to Rudy had still not reached Del Rio. All that was known was that he had gone missing over Cuba.

  When she heard the knock on her door, Jane ran into the bathroom and refused to come out. Marlene tried to comfort her through the locked door.

  "Don't get worried," she told her friend, who was stifling her sobs. "There's still hope."

  When Jane finally reappeared in the living room, an Air Force doctor wanted to give her a drug to calm her nerves. Marlene took the doctor aside. As Jane's best friend, she knew something nobody else knew.

  "Don't give her anything," she whispered. "She's pregnant."

  Rudy Anderson's widow gave birth to a baby girl seven and a half months later.

  Because of the seven-hour time difference, it was already well after midnight in Moscow. Nikita Khrushchev was resting at his villa on the Lenin Hills, with its panoramic view of the Kremlin and the winding Moscow River. He had returned home late from the office and asked for his usual nighttime drink, tea with lemon. He suggested that his wife and son drive out to their weekend retreat outside Moscow in the morning. He had summoned other Presidium members to meet with him at a government villa nearby. As soon as he was free, he would join the rest of his family at the dacha.