by Ted Sorensen
The Chairman’s message, I replied (as the President had suggested), seemed both hollow and tardy. The late summer shipments of Soviet personnel, arms and equipment into Cuba had already aggravated world tensions and caused turmoil in our internal political affairs. As reported in my memorandum on the conversation dictated that same afternoon:
Dobrynin said that he would report this conversation in full to the Chairman and that he was aware himself of the political and press excitement regarding this matter. He neither contradicted nor confirmed my reference to large numbers of Soviet military personnel, electronic equipment and missile preparations. He repeated several times, however, that they had done nothing new or extraordinary in Cuba—that the events causing all the excitement had been taking place somewhat gradually and quietly over a long period of time—and that he stood by his assurances that all these steps were defensive in nature and did not represent any threat to the security of the United States.
At the time the Ambassador was speaking, forty-two Soviet medium-and intermediate-range ballistic missiles—each one capable of striking the United States with a nuclear warhead twenty or thirty times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb—were en route to Cuba. Judging from the rapidity with which they were assembled, the planning and preparations for this move had been under way within the Soviet Union since spring and within Cuba all summer. The sites had been selected and surveyed, the protective antiaircraft missiles moved in, the roads improved and the local inhabitants evicted. Yet the reassurances given me by Dobrynin on September 6 were identical to those he gave to the Attorney General and others in the same period (presumably but not necessarily with knowledge of the actual facts). A Soviet Government statement on September 11 said flatly that its nuclear rockets were so powerful that there was no need to locate them in any other country, specifically mentioning Cuba, and that “the armaments and military equipment sent to Cuba are designed exclusively for defensive purposes” and could not threaten the United States. Khrushchev and Mikoyan told Georgi Bolshakov—the Soviet official in Washington through whom the Khrushchev letters had first arrived and who enjoyed friendly relations with several New Frontiersmen—to relay word that no missile capable of reaching the United States would be placed in Cuba. The message could not have been more precise—or more false.
The President was not lulled by these statements. (The Bolshakov message, in fact, reached him after he knew of the missiles’ existence.) Over one hundred voyages to Cuban ports by Communist bloc and bloc-chartered vessels in July and August had caused him to pay close attention to the aerial photography, agent reports and other intelligence data on Cuba. But the principal concern inside the government, as reflected in my August 23 luncheon conversation with Dobrynin, had been the possibility of a new Soviet move on West Berlin. With Khrushchev’s post-Sputnik offensive failing, with neither his pressures nor negotiations on Berlin getting anywhere, a new and dangerous confrontation seemed likely; and these suspicions were heightened by the report that Khrushchev had told Robert Frost, when the aged poet visited the Soviet Union in September, that democracies were “too liberal” to fight. All thought he meant Berlin; and with Berlin chiefly in mind the President had obtained a Congressional renewal of his authority to call up Reservists. “If we solve the Berlin problem without war,” he said to me one evening, outlining the tack I should take with a columnist, “Cuba will look pretty small. And if there is a war, Cuba won’t matter much either.”
The movement of Soviet personnel and equipment into Cuba, however, had been the subject of a series of meetings and reports in the White House beginning in August. Naval ships and planes photographed every Soviet vessel bound for Cuba. Aerial reconnaissance flights covered the entire island twice monthly. A special daily intelligence report on Cuba began on August 27.
The intelligence picture was clouded by the constant rumors reported to the CIA, to the press and to some members of Congress by Cuban refugees that Soviet surface-to-surface missiles had been seen on the island. All these rumors and reports, numbering in the hundreds, were checked out. All proved to be unfounded, resulting from the inability of civilians to distinguish between offensive and defensive missiles or the wishful thinking of patriots hoping to goad the United States into an invasion of Cuba. (Those missiles later discovered were not those discussed in all these reports and were fully observable only through aerial photography.) Refugee reports of Soviet missiles on the island had, in fact, begun well before Cuba in 1960 started receiving any Soviet arms of any kind.
But these and other reports were used by Senators Keating, Cape-hart, Thurmond, Goldwater and others to inflame the domestic political scene and to call for an invasion, a blockade or unspecified “action.” Ever since the Bay of Pigs, Cuba had been the Kennedy administration’s heaviest political cross; and the approach of the 1962 Congressional elections had encouraged further exacerbation of the issue. The administration—though readying a plan of military action in the knowledge that an internal revolt, a Berlin grab or some other action might someday require it—had been stressing since early 1961 the more positive and indirect approach of isolating Castro from a developing, democratic Latin America. An Organization of American States (OAS) Conference in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in January, 1962, had declared that the present government of Cuba was incompatible with the inter-American system, excluded it from participation in the OAS, prohibited OAS members from selling it arms, and adopted resolutions for collective defense against Communist penetration of the hemisphere. The United States had placed an embargo on all exports to Cuba other than food and medicines, prohibited importers and tourists from bringing in goods of Cuban origin, and restricted the use of American ports and ships by those engaged in Cuba bloc trade. These actions, and others under way, had hurt Castro’s economy, his prestige and his attempts to subvert his neighbors. But they had not removed him—and this was the political Achilles’ heel at which the President’s opponents aimed.
The Republican Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees announced that Cuba would be “the dominant issue of the 1962 campaign.” The public opinion polls showed growing frustration over Communist influence on that island. Senator Keating talked of Soviet troops and then of offensive missile bases at a time when no credible, verifiable proof existed of either. His information later proved inaccurate in important respects, but his refusal to reveal his sources of information made it impossible for the CIA to check their accuracy. As the President would later comment at a news conference, “We cannot base the issue of war and peace on a rumor or report which is not substantiated, or which some member of Congress refuses to tell us where he heard it…. To persuade our allies to come with us, to hazard…the security…as well as the peace of the free world, we have to move with hard intelligence.” Still concerned about West Berlin, he opposed an invasion of Cuba at his August 29 news conference, stressing “the totality of our obligations,” but he promised “to watch what happens in Cuba with the closest attention.”
Photographs taken that same day, and reported to the President on August 31, provided the first significant “hard intelligence”: antiaircraft surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), missile-equipped torpedo boats for coastal defense and substantially more military personnel. But neither these pictures nor those taken on September 5 (which also revealed MIG-21 fighter aircraft) produced evidence of offensive ballistic missiles, for which in fact no recognizable equipment had yet arrived. In a public statement on September 4 revealing the August 31 findings, the President repeated that there was as yet no proof of offensive ground-to-ground missiles or other significant offensive capability. He added, however: “Were it to be otherwise, the gravest issues would arise.”
With the exception of CIA Chief John McCone, who speculated that the SAM sites might be intended to protect offensive missile installations, but whose absence on a honeymoon prevented his views from reaching the President, Kennedy’s intelligence and Kremlinology experts stressed that no offensive Sovie
t missiles had ever been stationed outside of Soviet territory, not even in Eastern Europe, where they could be constantly guarded and supplied; that the Soviets would in all likelihood continue to limit their military assistance to Cuba to defensive weapons; and that they evidently recognized that the development of an offensive military base in Cuba might provoke U.S. military intervention. This distinction between offensive and defensive capabilities, while not always clear-cut, was regarded as crucial by all concerned. The presence in Cuba of Soviet weapons incapable of attacking the United States was obnoxious but not sufficiently different from the situation which had long existed in Cuba and elsewhere to justify a military response on our part.
Continued Soviet shipments and the belligerent Moscow statement of September 11, however, impelled the President to deliver an even more explicit statement at his September 13 news conference. He was still concerned about the possibility that Khrushchev hoped to provoke him into another entanglement in Cuba which would make a martyr out of Castro and wreck our Latin-American relations while the Soviets moved in on West Berlin. He refused to give in to the war hawks in the Congress and press (and a few in the Pentagon) who wanted to drag this country into a needless, irresponsible war without allies against a tiny nation which had not yet proven to be a serious threat to this country. He paid no more attention to Soviet assurances about defensive missiles than he did to refugee claims about offensive missiles—both were subject to proof and the proof as yet was not present. But he thought it important that both the American public and the Kremlin leaders understand distinctly what was and was not tolerable in the way of Soviet aid to Cuba. After a series of meetings at the White House, he had decided upon a precise warning to the Soviets not to permit their Cuban build-up to achieve serious proportions. Striking out at “loose talk” about an American invasion which could only “give a thin color of legitimacy to the Communist pretense that such a threat exists,” he underlined once again the difference between offensive and defensive capabilities:
If at any time the Communist build-up in Cuba were to endanger or interfere with our security in any way…or if Cuba should ever…become an offensive military base of significant capacity for the Soviet Union, then this country will do whatever must be done to protect its own security and that of its allies.
Answering a questioner’s reference to the Moscow warning that any U.S. military action against the build-up would mean “the unleashing of war,” the President replied that, regardless of any threats, he would take whatever action the situation might require, no more and no less. (The added Soviet strength then known to be on the island, he had been told, could not save Castro, should the U.S. ever have to attack, for more than an extra twenty-four hours.) He politely indicated that a Congressional resolution on the matter, while not unwelcome, was not necessary for the exercise of his authority.
When the Congress made clear that it wished to pass one anyway, he saw to it that the wording was as broad and nonbelligerent as possible, applying only to arms or actions endangering this nation’s security. Khrushchev nevertheless angrily warned that the actions contemplated by the resolution would mean the beginning of war—thermonuclear war. His various statements to reporters and diplomats also spoke of continuing the dialogue on Berlin after the November elections, hinting at a summit meeting at that time.
America’s allies also warned of American hysteria over Cuba. Neither Latin America nor Western Europe showed any signs of supporting—or even respecting—a blockade or other sanctions. The OAS was induced nevertheless to lend its authority to our aerial surveillance; and that surveillance soon altered the situation drastically.
DISCOVERY
On October 9 the President—whose personal authorization was required for every U-2 flight and who throughout this period had authorized all flights requested of him1—approved a mission over the western end of Cuba. The primary purpose of the mission was to obtain information on the actual operation of Soviet SAMs. The western end was selected because the SAMs in that area—first spotted on August 29—were believed most likely to be operational. A secondary objective, inasmuch as the September flights had surveyed previously uncovered parts of the island, was to resurvey the military build-up in that sector—specifically to check two convoy observations from inside Cuba (both delayed because of the difficulty in getting reports out) which had indicated more precisely than usual the possibility of a medium-range ballistic missile site in that location. (It was not until one day after this authorization, on October 10, that Senator Keating first asserted the presence of offensive missile bases in Cuba.)
Delayed by bad weather until October 14, the U-2 flew in the early morning hours of that cloudless Sunday high over western Cuba, moving from south to north. Processed that night, the long rolls of film were scrutinized, analyzed, compared with earlier photos, and reanalyzed throughout Monday by the extraordinarily talented photo interpreters of the U.S. Government’s intelligence network; and late that afternoon they spotted in the San Crist?bal area the first rude beginnings of a Soviet medium-range missile base.
By Monday evening, October 15, the analysts were fairly certain of their findings. Between 8 and 10 P.M., the top CIA officials were notified and they notified in turn the Defense and State intelligence chiefs and, at his home, McGeorge Bundy. Bundy immediately recognized that this was no unconfirmed refugee report or minor incident. He decided, however—and quite rightly, I believe—not to call the President but to brief him in person and in detail the next morning. (Over four months later, almost as an afterthought, the President asked why he didn’t telephone him that night; and Bundy responded with a memorandum “for your memoirs”:
… Its validity would need to be demonstrated clearly to you and others before action could be taken. The [photographic] blowups and other elements of such a presentation would not be ready before morning…. [To] remain a secret…everything should go on as nearly normal as possible, in particular there should be no hastily summoned meeting Monday night. [Bundy, Rusk, McNamara and others were all at different dinner parties where reporters, foreign diplomats and other guests might become suspicious.]…This was not something that could be dealt with on the phone…. What help would it be to you to give you this piece of news and then tell you nothing could be done about it till morning?…You were tired [from] a strenuous campaign weekend, returning…at 1:40 Monday morning. So I decided that a quiet evening and a night of sleep were the best preparation you could have….)
Around 9 A.M. Tuesday morning, October 16, having first received a detailed briefing from top CIA officials, Bundy broke the news to the President as he scanned the morning papers in his bedroom. Kennedy, though angry at Khrushchev’s efforts to deceive him and immediately aware of their significance, took the news calmly but with an expression of surprise. He had not expected the Soviets to attempt so reckless and risky an action in a place like Cuba, and had accepted—perhaps too readily, in retrospect—the judgment of the experts that such a deployment of nuclear weapons would be wholly inconsistent with Soviet policy. Even John McCone had assumed that no missiles would be moved in until an operational network of SAMs would make their detection from the air difficult. (Why the Soviets failed to coordinate this timing is still inexplicable.) For weeks the President had been publicly discounting the wild refugee reports checked out by his intelligence experts and found to be inaccurate. He had criticized in a campaign speech the previous weekend (in Capehart’s Indiana) “those self-appointed generals and admirals who want to send someone else’s son to war.” While he had at least conditioned all his public statements on the basis of information then available, some subordinate officials had flatly asserted that no offensive weapons were in Cuba.
Nevertheless the possibility was not new; he had ordered flights for this very purpose; and his pledge to act was unavoidable. He asked Bundy to arrange for two presentations of the evidence that morning—first to the President alone and then to a list of officials he requested Bundy t
o summon.
Shortly thereafter, upon arriving at his office, he sent for me and told me the news. He asked me to attend the 11.45 A.M. meeting in the Cabinet Room and in the meantime to review his public statements on what our reaction would be to offensive missiles in Cuba. At the time those statements were made he may well have doubted that he would ever be compelled to act on them. But at 11 A.M., as CIA Deputy Director Marshall Carter spread the enlarged U-2 photographs before him with comments by a photo interpreter, all doubts were gone. The Soviet missiles were there; their range and purpose were offensive; and they would soon be operative.
At 11:45 A.M. the meeting began in the Cabinet Room. Those summoned to that session at the personal direction of the President, or taking part in the daily meetings that then followed, were the principal members of what would later be called the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, some fourteen or fifteen men who had little in common except the President’s desire for their judgment:
State: Secretary Dean Rusk, Under Secretary George Ball, Latin-American Assistant Secretary Edwin Martin, Deputy Under Secretary Alexis Johnson and Soviet expert Llewellyn Thompson. (Participating until departing for his new post as Ambassador to France the following night was Charles “Chip” Bohlen.)
Defense: Secretary Robert McNamara, Deputy Secretary Roswell Gilpatric, Assistant Secretary Paul Nitze and General Maxwell Taylor (newly appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff).
CIA: On the first day, Deputy Director Carter; thereafter (upon his return to Washington), Director John McCone.