Fallout

by Steve Sheinkin

  * * *

  Yuri Gagarin never got back into space. The world-famous cosmonaut was too busy traveling the world, greeting cheering crowds and dining with dignitaries. At a formal breakfast in London’s Buckingham Palace, Gagarin stared down at a table setting more perplexing than any cockpit.

  “Your Highness,” he said, turning to Queen Elizabeth, “you know this is the first time I’ve had breakfast with the Queen of Great Britain, and it’s very difficult to know which cutlery to use.”

  This was not the proper way to address the monarch. She loved it.

  “You know,” said the queen, “I was born in this palace, but I still get mixed up.”

  Returning to the Soviet Union, Gagarin trained five female cosmonaut candidates. In 1963, he proudly watched Valentina Tereshkova become the first woman to fly to space—beating the Americans in this important achievement by twenty years. Gagarin dreamed of getting back in the game himself, but the Soviet government considered him too valuable as a celebrity to risk on space flight. Still, he couldn’t shake the dream. When the great rocket designer Sergei Korolev died in 1966, Gagarin said, “I won’t feel right until I’ve taken Korolev’s ashes to the moon.” Gagarin began training in a MiG fighter jet, relearning the feel of the controls. He was killed in a crash in 1968, less than three weeks after he’d turned thirty-four.

  The following year, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. They left behind, on the dusty gray surface, a medal honoring Yuri Gagarin.

  * * *

  “As you look back upon your first two years in office, sir, has your experience in the office matched your expectations?”

  “Well, I think in the first place the problems are more difficult than I had imagined,” John Kennedy told the reporter. “It is much easier to make the speeches than it is to finally make the judgments.”

  Every president would agree with that.

  Kennedy kept his promise to Khrushchev, removing the American missiles from Turkey in April 1963. Asked by the press if this was part of some secret deal with the Soviets, Kennedy dodged the question, claiming it was a matter of routine upgrades—and pointing out that the same targets could easily be hit by American submarines in the Mediterranean Sea.

  In June 1963, Kennedy enjoyed his greatest moment on the world stage, speaking to a crowd of nearly half a million in the shadow of the Berlin Wall.

  “Freedom has many difficulties,” he declared, “and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in.” He repeated America’s commitment to defend West Berlin and all it stood for. “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin,” Kennedy said to a roaring ovation. “And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’”

  I am a Berliner!

  Or, possibly, I am a jelly doughnut!

  There’s a jelly-filled German pastry called a “Berliner.”

  After some consultation, German grammar experts agreed that Kennedy had spoken correctly.

  To deal with each other more effectively in the future, Kennedy and Khrushchev established a “hotline”—a direct phone line from Moscow to Washington. They agreed to the Limited Test Ban Treaty, the first nuclear arms control agreement, banning nuclear tests everywhere but underground. Kennedy considered the treaty his greatest achievement, a real step away from World War III.

  His confidence high, his back feeling better than it had since the tree-planting fiasco over two years before, he traveled to Texas for political events in a state that would be vital to his hopes for reelection. John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. He was forty-six.

  * * *

  Nearly a year later, at his vacation home on the Black Sea, Nikita Khrushchev picked up the phone and heard the voice of Leonid Brezhnev, the second most powerful man in the Soviet government. Brezhnev told Khrushchev to return immediately to Moscow. The Presidium would be meeting tomorrow.

  “Why?” asked Khrushchev. “On what issue?”

  “On agriculture and some others.”

  “Decide things without me!”

  “Members have already gathered,” Brezhnev said. “We are asking you to come.”

  Khrushchev knew there was no pressing agriculture issue. His prestige had never fully recovered from the Cuban missile crisis. Younger leaders were impatient for their chance to take over. Clearly, they were ready to make their move.

  The next day, his face pink from the sun, Khrushchev walked into the Presidium meeting room and took his chairman’s seat at the long table. The scene was a bit like his showdown with Lavrenty Beria eleven years earlier. Only this time, he was the one without the script.

  Brezhnev led the attack. Khrushchev made rash decisions, he charged. He didn’t listen to advice.

  “Why are you doing this?” Khrushchev asked. “Why?”

  “Wait a minute. You listen to us for a change.”

  The other Presidium members took turns taking shots:

  “Hasty, erratic, and inclined to intrigues.”

  “Coarse and rude.”

  “Infected with conceit.”

  “You love ovations.”

  Unlike Beria, Khrushchev was not arrested and executed. He lost his Moscow home and luxurious dachas but was permitted a quiet, comfortable retirement.

  He hated it. “He’d repeat bitterly that his life was over,” his son Sergei would later recall, “that life made sense as long as people needed him, but now, when nobody needed him, life was meaningless.”

  Nikita Khrushchev died of a heart attack in 1971. He was seventy-seven.

  * * *

  The drama and danger of the Cold War continued without Kennedy and Khrushchev.

  The new Soviet leaders quickly expanded their stockpile of nuclear weapons. They’d been forced to back down in Cuba but did not plan to allow that to happen again. The United States kept pace, and the total number of nuclear weapons in the world rose from around twenty-nine thousand at the time of the Cuban missile crisis to a high of over sixty-nine thousand in the mid-1980s.

  This is when I joined the story, as a cynical teenager obsessed with nuclear apocalypse movies—everything from the darkly funny War Games to the relentless nightmare of The Day After, still the most widely watched TV movie of all time. I was disgusted with supposedly intelligent leaders who talked casually about “mutually assured destruction”—MAD. The idea was that both the United States and the Soviet Union could destroy each other many, many times over—so don’t worry! Neither side would be crazy enough to make the first move!

  I was pretty sure there’d be a nuclear war before I finished high school.

  Then things changed very quickly.

  Freedom movements gained ground in Eastern Europe and many parts of the Soviet Union. The Soviets were struggling economically—partly because they were spending so much money trying to keep up in the arms race and partly because their communist system simply didn’t work. The tipping point came in Berlin, in November 1989, when the East German government gave in to pressure to ease travel across the Berlin Wall. Crowds on both sides climbed atop the despised divider with pickaxes and literally began knocking it down. Communist governments collapsed all over Eastern Europe, and in 1991, the once mighty Soviet Union broke apart, leaving behind Russia and fourteen newly independent states.

  The Cold War was over.

  Though, as you’ve no doubt noticed, the United States and Russia have remained rivals.

  Today, arms control agreements have lowered the global nuclear stockpile to about thirteen thousand, mostly in the hands of Russia and the United States. Seven other countries possess nuclear arsenals: China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. Will any of these weapons ever be used?

  That story is still unfolding. We don’t know how it ends.

  * * *

  Finally, with hindsight, how close did the world really come to World War III in October 1962? Ho
w close did humans come to wiping our species off the planet? How does the Cuban missile crisis compare with twenty-first-century threats such as terrorism, climate change, and pandemic disease?

  This is open to discussion and debate. But it’s interesting to hear from the people who were there.

  After the Cold War, former U.S. and Soviet officials began meeting to share their recollections of the crisis, their fears, even their secrets. It was at these meetings that Americans first learned that the four Soviet subs had been armed with nuclear torpedoes. And that the Soviets had dozens of hydrogen bomb warheads in Cuba during the crisis—plus tactical nukes that Soviet commanders were ready and willing to use if attacked.

  “This was not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War,” concluded Arthur Schlesinger, a Kennedy aide during the crisis. “It was the most dangerous moment in human history.”

  Robert McNamara, secretary of defense during the crisis, came to what I consider to be a far more disturbing conclusion. One I believe we’d better keep in mind as we face the dangers of the present and the future.

  “At the end, we lucked out,” McNamara said of the world’s narrow escape in 1962. “It was luck that prevented nuclear war.”

  My big takeaway is that these guys were smart—and they nearly blew up the planet. We can be smarter. From now on, no matter what type of threat we’re facing, let’s not depend on luck.

  SOURCE NOTES

  Each source note includes a key phrase, description, or quote, along with the page number on which the phrase, details, or quote appears. Subsequent quotes from the same conversation are from the same source, unless otherwise noted.

  The Paperboy

  Jimmy Bozart’s nickel story: Joseph Donnelly, “Boy’s Story of Spy Film in Hollow Nickel,” Daily News (New York), September 21, 1957; Nathan Ward, “The Hollow Nickel Kid: Real-Life Brooklyn Newsboy Played a Huge Part in ‘Bridge of Spies’ Case,” Daily News (New York), November 4, 2015; Associated Press, “RPI Student Helped Nab Soviet Spy,” Troy (NY) Record, September 21, 1957; FBI Rudolf Abel case file 15; Whittell, Bridge of Spies, 21–23.

  “You’re Bozart?” and detective’s other lines: Jim Dwyer, “Sidelight to a Spy Saga: How a Brooklyn Newsboy’s Nickel Would Turn into a Fortune,” New York Times, November 3, 2015; Whittell, Bridge of Spies, 23.

  Cold Warrior

  “It’s not suitable for a magic trick”: FBI Rudolf Abel case file 15, p. 5.

  “I would rather perish than betray the secrets”: Whittell, Bridge of Spies, 15.

  Rudolf Abel background: Whittell, Bridge of Spies, 7–13; J. Donovan, Strangers, 18; Andrew and Mitrokhin, Sword and the Shield, 146–47.

  “An iron curtain has descended”: The full text of Churchill’s famous speech “Sinews of Peace” can be found at the website of the National Churchill Museum at Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri, where the speech was given on March 5, 1946. nationalchurchillmuseum.org/sinews-of-peace-iron-curtain-speech.html.

  Abel’s journey to New York: Bernikow, Abel, 1–3; Whittell, Bridge of Spies, 14–15.

  Hollow Coin #1

  Abel’s meeting with Cohen: Whittell, Bridge of Spies, 17; Albright and Kunstel, Bombshell, 197–98; Carr, Operation Whisper, 193.

  Truman’s announcement of the hydrogen bomb: Anthony Leviero, “Truman Orders Hydrogen Bomb Built for Security Pending an Atomic Pact,” New York Times, February 1, 1950.

  Sokolov’s visit to the Cohens’ apartment: Albright and Kunstel, Bombshell, 3–6.

  Abel’s spy gadgets: Gibney, “Russian Master Spy,” 123; Albright and Kunstel, Bombshell, 245; FBI Rudolf Abel case file 2, p. 20; Mildred Murphy, “F.B.I. Sifts Abel’s Possessions for Possible Clues to Espionage,” New York Times, August 9, 1957.

  The Super

  “Have you got a problem for me to solve?”: Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon, 83.

  21Science behind the idea for the Super: Rhodes, Dark Sun, 246–55; DeGroot, The Bomb: A Life, 162–63; York, The Advisors, 20–21.

  Oppenheimer opposes Super: Rhodes, Dark Sun, 403.

  Teller’s work on Super: Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician, 213–17; Rhodes, Dark Sun, 460–62; Hargittai, Judging Edward Teller, 207–17.

  “I found a way to make it work”: Françoise Ulam recalls this scene in a postscript to Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician, 311.

  Teller-Ulam configuration basics: De-Groot, The Bomb: A Life, 175; Rhodes, Dark Sun, 466–70.

  “the test program included experiments”: Jay Walz, “Experiments for Hydrogen Bomb Held Successfully at Eniwetok,” New York Times, November 17, 1952.

  “You would swear”: United Press, “Flash Is Described,” New York Times, November 17, 1952.

  Daily News on test: “U.S. First with H-Bomb,” editorial, Daily News (New York), November 18, 1952.

  The Long Game

  “Well, go”: Khrushchev recalls this scene in N. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 290.

  “They think something has happened”: N. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 316.

  Stalin’s stroke and Beria’s reaction: Taubman, Khrushchev, 237–39; N. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 317–21.

  Khrushchev background: Taubman, Khrushchev, 21–109; Beschloss, Mayday, 164–71; S. Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, 6–21; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, 175–80.

  “Our hand must not tremble”: Taubman, Khrushchev, 99.

  “Listen, Comrade Malenkov”: N. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 330.

  You scoundrel: Taubman, Khrushchev, 252.

  Beria arrest scene: N. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 336–37; Taubman, Khrushchev, 254–55.

  “Today Beria has been arrested”: Sergei Khrushchev recalls this scene in Nikita Khrushchev, 36.

  The Worst Spy

  Abel’s life in New York and his Brooklyn studio: Bernikow, Abel, 7–10, 17–20; J. Donovan, Strangers, 137–38.

  Hayhanen arrival in New York: Bernikow, Abel, 37; Whittell, Bridge of Spies, 20–21; FBI Rudolf Abel case file 7, pp. 10–11.

  Lamphere’s work on coded message: Lamphere and Shachtman, FBI-KGB War, 270–72.

  One-time pad description: Singh, Code Book, 120–24; Lamphere and Shachtman, FBI-KGB War, 80–81.

  Abel and Hayhanen meet: J. Donovan, Strangers, 23; Bernikow, Abel, 46–47.

  The Turtle and the Dragon

  Televised atomic bomb test: The film and photos of this test, March 17, 1953, can easily be found online; search for “Operation Doorstep.”

  “Prepare now against the threat”: Operation Doorstep, Federal Civil Defense Administration film, 1953.

  government-made instructional film: Duck and Cover, Federal Civil Defense Administration film, 1951.

  Lucky Dragon details: Ropeik, “Unlucky Lucky Dragon”; Lapp, Voyage of the Lucky Dragon, 27–33. The Atomic Heritage Foundation website has information on the Lucky Dragon and a film of the H-bomb test, which was code-named Castle Bravo, atomicheritage.org/history/castle-bravo.

  “The sun rises in the west!”: Lapp, Voyage of the Lucky Dragon, 28.

  42“I don’t know exactly what happened”: Lapp, Voyage of the Lucky Dragon, 57.

  “Please make sure that I am the last victim”: Graff, Raven Rock, 49.

  Godzilla origin story: Ropeik, “Unlucky Lucky Dragon.”

  Early Warning

  “Attention! The plane is over the target”: Sakharov, Memoirs, 190–92; Rhodes, Dark Sun, 569.

  Sakharov’s H-bomb design: Gorelik, “Riddle of the Third Idea.”

  “It worked!”: Sakharov, Memoirs, 191.

  Sakharov describes his mixed emotions: Sakharov, Memoirs, 193.

  “May all our devices explode”: Sakharov, Memoirs, 194.

  “We, the inventors, scientists, engineers, and craftsmen”: Sakharov, Memoirs, 194.

  Nuclear arsenal figures: Rhodes, Dark Sun, 562; Norris and Kristensen, “Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories.” Current year totals can be found at “World Nuclear Weapon Stockpile,” P
loughshares Fund, ploughshares.org/world-nuclear-stockpile-report.

  Colonel Shoup’s Santa call: International News Service, “More May Follow Santa’s Route, Youngster Learns,” Pasadena (CA) Independent, December 1, 1955; Steve Hendrix, “A Child Calling Santa Reached NORAD Instead. Christmas Eve Was Never the Same,” Washington Post, December 24, 2018.

  Lieutenant Powers’s recruitment: F. G. Powers, Operation Overflight, 7–10; also F. G. Powers Jr., Spy Pilot, 41–42.

  “I was told to ask for a Mr. William Collins”: F. G. Powers, Operation Overflight, 8.

  Secret World

  Barbara Moore background: B. Powers, Spy Wife, 15.

  “Golly, I’d sure like to meet”: B. Powers, Spy Wife, 14.

  Frank and Barbara talk over the offer: F. G. Powers, Operation Overflight, 9; B. Powers, Spy Wife, 22.

  “How do you feel about it now?”: F. G. Powers, Operation Overflight, 11.

  “What do you call it?”: F. G. Powers, Operation Overflight, 26.

  Area 51 and U-2 pilots: F. G. Powers, Operation Overflight, 31–32; Whittell, Bridge of Spies, 56–58; Reel, Brotherhood of Spies, 66–67.