One minute to midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the brink of nuclear war

by Michael Dobbs

  "And what's left of NATO?" demanded an alarmed Bundy.

  "I don't think NATO is going to be wrecked," Ball replied. "And if NATO isn't any better than that, it isn't much good to us." Just a few hours earlier, the under secretary of state had insisted that merely talking about the Jupiters to the Turks would be an "extremely unsettling business."

  An aide whispered into Bundy's ear. The national security adviser interrupted the debate on war and peace to address a more immediate issue.

  "Do people want dinner downstairs, do they want trays, or do they want to wait?"

  "Eating is the least of my worries," snapped McNamara.

  People drifted in and out of the Cabinet Room. In Kennedy's absence, the debate went round in circles, sometimes descending into barely concealed animosity. Vice President Lyndon Johnson had kept his views to himself as long as the president was around. But he became much more animated when JFK was out of the room, hinting at policy differences. He was worried that the administration was "backing down" from the firm position outlined in the president's speech. The American public could sense that the White House was wavering and felt "insecure."

  "People feel it. They don't know why they feel it and how. They just..."

  Bobby had wandered back into the room. He was angered by the suggestion that his brother was "backing down," but LBJ pressed ahead, claiming that Soviet ships were "comin' through" the blockade.

  "No, the ships aren't coming through. They all turned back.... Ninety percent of them."

  LBJ stuck to his guns. He repeated quietly that it was difficult to argue that "we are as strong as we were the day of the president's announcement." A few minutes later, after his nemesis had again wandered off, he startled other ExComm members by interjecting whimsically, "I think governments are old and tired and sick, don't you think?" He wanted action--such as an immediate attack on a Soviet SAM site. The shoot-down of the U-2 had grabbed everybody's attention much more than "all these signals that each one of us write." Words were becoming meaningless. Khrushchev was "an expert at palaver."

  After his lengthy absence, the president returned to the Cabinet Room around seven thirty to wrap up the marathon ExComm meeting. He did not reveal what he had been doing while he was away, or who he had been consulting, but it was clear that he had begun to bypass the ExComm as a decision-making body. There were too many opinions to reconcile. Despite the objections of Bundy and others, Kennedy made clear he was still thinking about some kind of deal over Turkey. The United States could not invade Cuba to destroy the missiles it could trade away without incurring any carnage.

  "If that's part of the record, I don't see how we'll have a very good war," the president said.

  After initially supporting a trade, Johnson now feared that Khrushchev would merely use negotiations over Turkey to wrestle an endless series of concessions from the United States:

  "It doesn't just mean missiles. He takes his missiles out of Cuba, takes his men out of Cuba, and takes his planes out of Cuba. Why then your whole foreign policy is gone. You take everything out of Turkey. Twenty thousand men, all your technicians, and all your planes, and all your missiles. And...and crumble."

  "How else are we gonna get those missiles out of there?" JFK wanted to know.

  In moments of crisis, the person in whom Kennedy had most confidence was Bobby. He saw him as "a puritan, absolutely incorruptible." But his brother's most important characteristics, from JFK's point of view, were his "terrific executive energy" and his intuitive, "almost telepathic" understanding of the president's wishes. The White House was full of exceptionally intelligent people brimming with brilliant ideas. The problem was getting things done. Bobby was a superb organizer. Jack trusted his brother to implement his will.

  In their different ways, both men had been profoundly changed by their shared experiences of the last twelve days. When they first heard about the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba, their immediate reaction had been anger, even pique, at being thwarted by Khrushchev. They had come very close to bombing the missile sites. Now they were desperately looking for ways to step back from the edge of a nuclear abyss.

  Working in the president's private office, Bobby and Ted Sorensen had managed to merge the rival letters to Khrushchev into a single document. The final version bore the marks of many authors:

  I have read your letter of October 26th with great care and welcome the statement of your desire to seek a prompt solution to the problem. [Original State Department draft, written mainly by Ball and his deputy, Alexis Johnson]

  The first thing that needs to be done, however, is for work to cease on offensive missile bases in Cuba and for all weapons systems in Cuba capable of offensive use to be rendered inoperable.... [Stevenson/JFK] Assuming this is done promptly, I have given my representatives in New York instructions that will permit them to work out this weekend--in cooperation with the Acting Secretary General and your representative--an arrangement for a permanent solution to the Cuban problem [Stevenson] along the lines suggested in your letter of October 26th. As I read your letter, the key elements of your proposals--which seem generally acceptable as I understand them--are as follows: [RFK]

  1. You would agree to remove these weapons systems from Cuba under appropriate United Nations observation and supervision; and undertake, with suitable safeguards, to halt the further introduction of such weapons systems into Cuba. [State]

  2. We on our part, would agree--upon the establishment of adequate arrangements through the United Nations to ensure the carrying out and continuation of these commitments--(a) to remove promptly the quarantine measures now in effect [State] and (b) to give assurances against an invasion of Cuba....[ExComm discussion]

  The effect of such a settlement on easing world tensions would enable us to work toward a more general arrangement regarding "other armaments," as proposed in your second letter which you made public. [Stevenson]

  I would like to say again that the United States is very much interested in reducing tensions and halting the arms race [JFK] and if your letter signifies that you are prepared to discuss a detente affecting NATO and the Warsaw Pact, we are quite prepared to consider with our allies any useful proposals. [Stevenson]

  But the first ingredient, let me emphasize, is the cessation of work on missile sites in Cuba and measures to render such weapons inoperable, under effective international guarantees.... [JFK]

  The president wanted Bobby to deliver the letter personally to the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, along with an oral message emphasizing the gravity of the situation. Unbeknownst to the rest of the ExComm, Bobby had already telephoned Dobrynin and asked to meet with him at the Justice Department, six blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.

  As the ExComm meeting broke up, Kennedy invited a select group of his advisers--including RFK, McNamara, Rusk, and Bundy--into the Oval Office to discuss the oral message Bobby would deliver to Dobrynin. He excluded LBJ and McCone from this session. The inner ExComm agreed that Bobby should warn the ambassador that time was running out and "further American action was unavoidable" if Khrushchev rejected the terms outlined by the president. That left the issue of how to respond to Khrushchev's call for a Cuba-Turkey trade beyond the promise in the letter to discuss "other armaments," diplomatic code for the Jupiters.

  Drawing on a cable from the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Rusk had thought of a way to reconcile the differences in the ExComm. He suggested that Bobby simply inform Dobrynin that the Jupiters would be withdrawn soon anyway. That way, the obsolete American missiles would not be an obstacle to an agreement. But they would also not become a pretext for further haggling. To avoid giving the impression of a Soviet-American bargain at the expense of the Turks, it was important that the unilateral assurance on the Jupiters remain confidential. The secretary of state's ingenious attempt to square the circle quickly won unanimous support.

  Knowledge of the arrangement would be tightly held, everybody agreed. In Bundy's words, "No one no
t in the room was to be informed of this additional message." Furthermore, the Soviets would have to observe the same secrecy, or the commitment would become "null and void."

  8:05 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

  Anatoly Dobrynin had mixed feelings about Bobby Kennedy. For the genial Russian diplomat, RFK was a "complex and difficult person who often lost his temper." He "behaved rudely," working himself into a state about Soviet misdeeds, real and imagined. Their conversations tended to be "uneven and broken." Bobby seemed to regard himself as an expert on foreign policy, but he knew little about the rest of the world. During his one visit to the Soviet Union, in 1955, he had gone out of his way to offend his hosts, inquiring about Soviet techniques for "tapping telephone conversations" and criticizing the lack of freedom. Nevertheless, he was the president's brother, and the best channel for direct, informal communications between the Kremlin and the White House.

  They had seen a lot of each other in the seven months since Dobrynin arrived in Washington. To break the ice, Bobby had invited the new ambassador out to his home in McLean, introducing him to his "rather tumultuous family." On the subject of Cuba, Dobrynin thought that Bobby was "impulsive and excitable." He viewed RFK as one of the hawks on the ExComm, pushing his brother to take "a firm approach," up to and including an invasion of the island. At their previous meetings, Bobby had angrily denounced Soviet trickery and "deception." Summoned to the Justice Department on Saturday evening, Dobrynin braced for yet another explosion.

  Instead, he encountered a subdued, almost distraught individual in a vast, dimly lit office decorated with children's paintings. In a cable to the Foreign Ministry written immediately after the meeting, Dobrynin described the attorney general as "very upset," with little of his normal combativeness. He had never seen him like this before. "He didn't even try to get into fights on various subjects, as he usually does. He persistently returned to one theme: time is of the essence and we shouldn't miss the chance."

  Instead of the standard diplomatic demarche, Bobby addressed the Soviet ambassador as a fellow human being trying to save the world from nuclear destruction. He began by describing the shootdown of the U-2 and the firing on low-level U.S. Navy jets as "an extremely serious turn in events." He was not delivering an ultimatum; he was simply laying out the facts.

  "We're going to have to make certain decisions within the next twelve, or possibly twenty-four, hours. There's very little time left. If the Cubans shoot at our planes, then we are going to shoot back."

  Dobrynin objected that American planes had no right to fly over Cuba at all. Rather than argue the point, Bobby wanted the ambassador to understand American political realities. The military was demanding that the president "respond to fire with fire." Khrushchev should know that there were many hotheads among the generals--"and not only among the generals"--who were "itching for a fight."

  "We can't stop these overflights," RFK explained. "It's the only way we have to quickly get information about the state of construction of your missile bases on Cuba, which pose a very serious threat to our national security. But if we open fire in response, a chain reaction will start that will be very difficult to stop."

  A similar logic applied to the Soviet missile bases, said Bobby. The United States was determined to "get rid" of the bases, if necessary by bombing them. If this happened, Soviet citizens would almost certainly be killed, causing Moscow to take action against the United States somewhere in Europe. "A real war will begin, in which millions of Americans and Russians will die. We want to avoid that any way we can."

  Bobby described the contents of Kennedy's latest letter to Khrushchev. The president was ready to end the quarantine and issue guarantees against an invasion of Cuba if the Soviet government dismantled the missile bases.

  "What about Turkey?" the ambassador wanted to know.

  This was the trickiest, most sensitive issue, the one that had preoccupied the president and the ExComm for much of the day. Once again, Bobby took the Russian into his confidence and explained the dilemma facing his brother. The president was willing to withdraw the Jupiters "within four to five months." But he could not make any kind of public commitment. The decision to deploy the Jupiters had been taken collectively by NATO. If it appeared that the United States was dismantling the missile bases unilaterally, under pressure from the Soviet Union, the alliance might crack apart.

  Bobby asked for a quick answer from Khrushchev, by Sunday if possible. "There's very little time left," he warned. "Events are moving too quickly."

  8:25 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

  RFK checked back into the White House at 8:25 p.m. His meeting with Dobrynin had lasted no longer than fifteen minutes. He immediately went up to the executive mansion, where he found the president chatting with his four-year-old daughter on the phone. Over the past few days, Kennedy had been more than usually attentive to Caroline and John Junior, taking the time to put them to bed and read them goodnight stories. He told Dave Powers that he worried not just about his own children but "the children everywhere in the world" whose "lives would be wiped out" in the event of nuclear war.

  Skipping his regular evening swim because of the pressure of meetings, the president invited Powers for an informal supper in the upstairs living room. The kitchen staff had left some broiled chicken on a hot-plate. Jack opened a bottle of white wine. A hungry Bobby asked if they could spare "an extra chicken leg" as he reported on his meeting with the Soviet ambassador. All three men were busy eating and drinking when Kennedy looked at Powers with mock disapproval.

  "God, Dave. The way you're eating up all that chicken and drinking up all my wine, anybody would think it was your last meal."

  "The way Bobby's been talking, I thought it was my last meal," Powers replied.

  The lighthearted joking disguised increasing concern. The White House was the prime target for a Soviet missile attack. Over the last few days, the staff had been receiving packages of instructions telling them what to do and where to go in an emergency. Top aides like Powers, Sorensen, and Kenny O'Donnell received pink identification cards, which meant they would accompany the president to an underground bunker in the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia. An elite helicopter unit, the 2857th Test Squadron, had the sole mission of landing on the White House lawn if a nuclear strike seemed imminent, and whisking the president and his closest aides to safety. The helicopter crews were even ready to make a poststrike rescue attempt. Dressed from head to toe in protective clothing, they would smash their way into the White House bomb shelter with crowbars and acetylene torches, bundle the president into a radiation suit, and fly him out of the rubble.

  The evacuation instructions were part of a secret doomsday plan to ensure the survival of the U.S. government in the event of nuclear war. The president would be evacuated to Mount Weather, fifty miles from Washington, along with cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, and several thousand senior federal officials. Facilities at Mount Weather included an emergency broadcasting network, decontamination chambers, hospital, emergency power plant, crematorium, and presidential suite complete with a special therapeutic mattress for JFK's bad back. Congress had just completed construction of its own "secure, undisclosed location" beneath the luxury Greenbrier Hotel, in the Allegheny Mountains. Contingency plans called for the rescue of Federal Reserve assets and cultural treasures such as the Declaration of Independence and masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art.

  "What happens to our wives and kids?" asked Powers, after receiving his pink card.

  The families had somehow fallen through the cracks in the doomsday planning. The president's naval aide, Captain Tazewell Shepard, was ordered to make the necessary arrangements. He told dependents to assemble inside a fenced-off reservoir in northwest Washington without bringing any personal belongings. "Minimal supplies of food and water" would be provided for a journey by motorcade to "a relocation site outside of the Washington area." Kenny O'Donnell felt that the chances of survival for his wife and fiv
e children were "slim" at best.

  Lacking confidence in the government's plan, families of top officials devised their own evacuation plans. Dino Brugioni, a key member of the CIA team monitoring the Soviet missile buildup, "succumbed to the general mood of apocalypse" on Saturday evening. Seeing no way out of the crisis "except war and complete destruction," he told his wife to get ready to drive their two children to his parents' home in Missouri, halfway across the country. The man in charge of the president's daily intelligence bulletin, Dick Lehman, had a similar agreement with his wife.

  Often the higher the official, the gloomier they were about the chances for a peaceful outcome of the crisis. Earlier that evening, Bob McNamara had wandered out onto the veranda outside the Oval Office during a break in the ExComm discussions and watched the sunlight fade away. It was a gorgeous fall evening, but the defense secretary was too preoccupied to enjoy it. He thought to himself that he might "never live to see another Saturday night."

  9:00 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27 (8:00 P.M. HAVANA)

  The secretary of defense wanted the low-level Navy reconnaissance planes to be accompanied by fighter escorts in their missions over Cuba. "If our planes are fired on tomorrow, we ought to fire back," McNamara insisted, after ExComm members reassembled in the Cabinet Room for a final evening meeting.

  The president did not see the point of taking out individual antiaircraft guns. "We just hazard our planes, and the people on the ground have the advantage." He agreed with the military chiefs. If there were any further attacks on American planes, he would announce that the United States considered the island of Cuba "open territory," and take out all the SAM sites. In the meantime, he would activate twenty-four air reserve squadrons, with roughly three hundred troop carrier transports. Known as "flying boxcars," the C-119 planes would ferry airborne troops and supplies to Cuba in an invasion. Calling up the reservists was a way of signaling American determination.