Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy

by Ted Widmer

  As president, Kennedy was of course the ultimate arbiter of American foreign and military policy. But if the buck stopped with him, there were still a small number of former presidents he could consult with, who knew the great burdens of the office and had faced decisions nearly as difficult.

  JFK: General, what about if the Soviet Union—Khrushchev—announces tomorrow, which I think he will, that if we attack Cuba that it’s going to be nuclear war? And what’s your judgment as to the chances they’ll fire these things off if we invade Cuba?

  EISENHOWER: Oh, I don’t believe that they will.

  JFK: You don’t think they will?

  EISENHOWER: No.

  JFK: In other words, you would take that risk if the situation seemed desirable?

  EISENHOWER: Well, as a matter of fact, what can you do?

  JFK: Yeah.

  EISENHOWER: If this thing is such a serious thing, here on our flank, that we’re going to be uneasy and we know what thing is happening now, all right, you’ve got to use something.

  JFK: Yeah.

  EISENHOWER: Something may make these people shoot them off. I just don’t believe this will.

  JFK: Yeah, right.

  EISENHOWER: In any event, of course, I’ll say this. I’d want to keep my own people very alert.

  JFK: Yeah. Well, hang on tight!

  EISENHOWER: Yes, sir.

  JFK: Thanks, General.

  EISENHOWER: All right. Thank you.

  MEETING WITH SENATORS, OCTOBER 22, 1962

  The Constitution ordains that the Senate shall give advice and consent to the President on certain matters of foreign policy, including the making of treaties. Pursuant to that mandate, and as a gesture of respect to his old colleagues, JFK invited several Senate leaders to the White House for a private briefing on October 22, 1962. These senators were intimately involved in all of the legislation that JFK was trying to enact. Richard Russell (D-GA) would be a principal opponent of the Civil Rights Act, which would emerge in 1963 and be enacted in 1964. But on this day, they were all Americans, trying to protect their country.

  JFK: As I say, this information became available Tuesday morning. Mobile bases can be moved very quickly, so we don’t know, [but] we assume we have all the ones that are there now. But the CIA thinks there may be a number of others that are there on the island and have not been set up, which can be set up quite quickly because of the mobility. Intermediate-range ballistic missiles, of course, because of its nature, can take a longer time. We’ll be able to spot those. The others might be set up in the space of a very few days.

  Beginning Tuesday morning after we saw these first ones, we ordered intensive surveillance of the island, a number of U-2 flights until Wednesday and Thursday. I talked with, I asked Mr. McCone13 to go up and brief General Eisenhower on Wednesday.

  We decided, the vice president and I, to continue our travels around the country in order not to alert this, until we had gotten all the available information we could. The last information came in on Sunday morning, giving us this last site,14 which we mentioned.

  We are presented with a very, very difficult problem because of Berlin as well as other reasons, but mostly because of Berlin, which is rather … The advantage is, from Khrushchev’s point of view, he takes a great chance, but there are quite some great rewards to it. If we move into Cuba, he sees the difficulty I think we face. If we invade Cuba, we have a chance that these missiles will be fired on us. In addition, Khrushchev will seize Berlin and that Europe will regard Berlin’s loss, which attaches such symbolic importance to Berlin, as having been the fault of the United States, by acting in a precipitous way. After all, they are five or six thousand miles from Cuba, and much closer to the Soviet Union. So these missiles don’t bother them, and maybe they should think they should not bother us.

  So that whatever we do in regard to Cuba, it gives him the chance to do the same with regard to Berlin. On the other hand, to not do anything but argue that these missile bases really extend only what we had to live under for a number of years, from submarines which are getting more and more intense, from the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile system, which is in a rapid buildup [and] has a good deal of destruction which it could bring on us, as well as their bombers, that this adds to our hazards but does not create a new military hazard. And that we should keep our eye on the main site, which would be Berlin.

  Our feeling, however, is that this would be a mistake. So that, beginning tonight, we’re going to blockade Cuba, carrying out the [action] under the Rio Treaty. We called for a meeting of the Rio Pact countries and hope to get a two-thirds vote from them to give the blockade legality. If we don’t get it, then we’ll have to carry it out illegally or under declaration of war, which is not as advantageous to us.

  SENATOR EVERETT DIRKSEN: Now, we don’t know if Khrushchev would respond to a complete blockade?

  JFK: A blockade as it will be announced will be for the movement of weapons into Cuba. But we don’t know what the bloc15 ships will do. In order not to give Khrushchev the justification for imposing a complete blockade on Berlin, we are going to start with a blockade on the shipment of offensive weapons into Cuba that will stop all ships.

  Now, we don’t know what the bloc ships will do. We assume that they will probably … We don’t know what they will do, whether they’ll try to send one through, make us fire on it, and use that as a justification on Berlin, or whether he’ll have them all turn back. In any case, we’re going to start on offensive weapons. We will then consider extending it as the days go on to other, petroleum, oil, lubricants, and other matters, except food and medicine. These are matters we will reach a judgment on as the days go on.

  Now, in the meanwhile, we are making the military preparations with regard to Cuba so that if the situation deteriorates further, we will have the flexibility. Though the invasion is, the only way to get rid of these weapons is, the only other way to get rid of them is if they’re fired, so that we’re going to have to, it seems to me, watch with great care.

  I say if we invade Cuba, there’s a chance that these weapons will be fired at the United States. If we attempt to strike them from the air, then we will try to get them all, because they’re mobile. And we know where the sites are, inasmuch as we can destroy the sites. But they can move them and set them up in another three days someplace else, so that we have not got a very easy situation.

  There’s a choice between doing nothing if we felt that would compel Berlin rather than help [unclear] Latin America. So after a good deal of searching, we decided this was the place to start. I don’t know what their response would be. We’ve got two, three, four problems. One will be if we continue to surveil them and they shoot down one of our planes. We then have the problem of taking action against part of Cuba. So I think that—I’m going to ask Secretary McNamara to detail what we’re doing militarily—if there’s any strong disagreement in what at least we set out to do, I want to hear it. Otherwise, I think that what we ought to do is try to keep in very close contact before anything gets done of a major kind differently, and it may have to be done in the next twenty-four hours, because I assume the Soviet response will be very strong and we’ll all meet again. Needless to say, the vice president and I have concluded our campaigning.

  SENATOR J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT: Mr. President, do I understand that you have decided, and will announce today, the blockade?

  JFK: That’s right. The quarantine.

  DEAN RUSK: Mr. President, may I add one point to what you just said on these matters? We do think this first step provides a brief pause for the people on the other side to have another thought before we get into an utterly crashing crisis, because the prospects ahead of us at this very moment are so very serious. Now if the Soviets have underestimated what the United States is likely to do here, then they’ve got to consider whether they revise their judgment quick and fast. The same thing with respect to the Cubans. Quite apart from the OAS and the UN aspects of it, a brief pause h
ere is very important in order to give the Soviets a chance to pull back from the frontier. I do want to say, Mr. President, I think the prospects here for a rapid development of the situation can be a very grave matter indeed.

  SENATOR RICHARD RUSSELL: Mr. President, I could not space out under these circumstances and live with myself. I think that our responsibilities are quite immense, and stronger steps than that in view of this buildup there, and I must say that in all honesty to myself.

  I don’t see how we are going to get any stronger or get in any stronger position to meet this threat. It seems to me that we are at a crossroads. We’re either a first-class power or we’re not. You have warned these people time and again, in the most eloquent speeches I have read since Woodrow Wilson, that’s what would happen if there was an offensive capability created in Cuba. They can’t say they’re not on notice.

  The secretary of state says, “Give them time to pause and think.” They’ll use that time to pause and think, to get better prepared. And if we temporize with this situation, I don’t see how we can ever hope to find a place where …

  Why, we have a complete justification by law for carrying out the announced foreign policy of the United States that you have announced time … That if there was an offensive capability there, that we would take any steps necessary to see that certain things should stop transit. They can stop transit, for example, though, in the Windward Passage and the Leeward Passage, easily with the nuclear missiles and with these ships. They could blow Guantánamo off the map. And you have told them not to do this thing. They’ve done it. And I think that we should assemble as speedily as possible an adequate force and clean out that situation.

  The time is going to come, Mr. President, when we’re going to have to take this step in Berlin and Korea and Washington, DC, and Winder, Georgia, for the nuclear war. I don’t know whether Khrushchev will launch a nuclear war over Cuba or not. I don’t believe he will. But I think that the more that we temporize, the more surely he is to convince himself that we are afraid to make any real movement and to really fight.

  JFK: Perhaps, Mr. Senator, if you could just hear Secretary McNamara’s words, then we could …

  RUSSELL: Pardon me. You just said, if anybody disagrees, and I couldn’t sit here, feeling as I do.

  PRESIDENT KENNEDY ADDRESSES THE NATION ON THE SOVIET ARMS BUILD-UP IN CUBA, OCTOBER 22, 1962. MORE THAN 100 MILLION AMERICANS WATCHED THE SPEECH. AS HE SPOKE, THE NATION ELEVATED ITS READINESS FOR WAR AND NEARLY 200 AIRCRAFT CARRYING NUCLEAR WEAPONS WERE AIRBORNE TO AVOID AN ENEMY STRIKE

  READING COPY OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S TELEVISED ADDRESS, OCTOBER 22, 1962

  CALL TO ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE ROSWELL GILPATRIC, OCTOBER 23, 1962

  This telephone call gives as close a view as we are likely to get of how World War III could have started in October 1962. In his call to Assistant Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric, Kennedy envisions the way a U.S. naval vessel will stop a Russian ship attempting to penetrate the American quarantine of Cuba. The confrontation imagined here—and prepared for in detail—never happened, as both sides took care to minimize the risk of confrontation on the high seas.

  JFK: But as I understood, there was some report that the Russian ships were not going to stop. That we were going to have to sink them, in order to stop them. I thought that, or we were going to have to fire on them. I was wondering whether the instructions on how that’s to be done, or where they’re to be shot at, and so on, to cause the minimum of damage. And in addition, if they’re boarded, it’s very possible the Russians will fire at them as they board, and we’d have to fire back and have quite a slaughter. I would think we’d want two or three things. First, I think we’d want to have some control over cameras aboard these boats, so that we don’t have a lot of people shooting a lot of pictures, which in the press might be …

  GILPATRIC: Yeah, we’re gonna control all the picture taking.

  JFK: On the boats?

  GILPATRIC: Yeah.

  JFK: They all turn in their cameras. Secondly, I don’t know enough about the ships, but where they ought to fire and whether they ought to go through three or four steps, such as ask them to stop. If they don’t stop, asking them to have their crew come above deck so that they won’t be damaged, and three, so that we have this record made. Maybe you could talk to somebody about this?

  GILPATRIC: Yes. We’ve got instructions at CINCLANT16 which start with those steps. Shot across the bow, shot through the rudder.

  JFK: Shot through the rudder.

  GILPATRIC: Then a boarding party and then order the crews to come on deck. And the minimum amount of force at each stage. Now, maybe we haven’t thought of everything, but we’ll take another look at it.

  JFK: OK, fine. How’d those photographic expeditions go this morning? Do you know?

  GILPATRIC: No incidents. They were back a couple of hours ago. We’ll see the pictures later.

  JFK: I see. You’re getting that one from me, aren’t you? Of those Florida bases?

  GILPATRIC: That’s right.

  JFK: OK. Have you taken a look at West Palm Beach?

  GILPATRIC: Yeah. The air force is doing that. We can look at all of the dispersal possibilities down there.

  JFK: OK, good.

  GILPATRIC: Did you decide anything about Nelson Rockefeller, or are you going to leave that?

  JFK: Wait a minute now. What about, do we know anything more about Nelson Rockefeller?

  RFK: [in background] We sent him a telegram.

  JFK: We sent him a telegram saying that I’d be in touch with him later. I thought we’d meet at six, but what my thought was that we’d bring down the Civil Defense Committee. If we bring down every governor, then it seems to me we’re kind of in the obligation to bring every congressman down to brief.

  GILPATRIC: No, he just wanted to have the Civil Defense Committee.

  JFK: Well then that’s what we’ll be in touch with him about, because I’m hoping Pittmann and Ed McDermott17 will come today anyway.

  GILPATRIC: They will.

  JFK: Then we’ll send a wire from them to him and arrange that meeting.

  GILPATRIC: Do it right.

  JFK: OK, Ros.

  PRESIDENT KENNEDY SIGNS PROCLAMATION 3504 AUTHORIZING A NAVAL QUARANTINE OF CUBA, OCTOBER 23, 1962

  SIGNED PROCLAMATION 3504

  PROCLAMATION 3504: INTERDICTION OF THE DELIVERY OF OFFENSIVE WEAPONS TO CUBA

  CONVERSATION WITH ATTORNEY GENERAL ROBERT F. KENNEDY, OCTOBER 23, 1962

  This brief taped excerpt reveals some of the other stresses on President Kennedy during the crisis, from the ordinary pressures of public attendance at events, faced by all presidents, to the particular anxiety noted by Robert Kennedy—that a failure to respond to the Soviet threat would likely have resulted in impeachment proceedings in Congress.

  RFK: What was that?

  JFK: Oh Christ, about the dinner tonight.

  RFK: What?

  JFK: About a dinner tonight. She’s invited somebody and I invited somebody.

  RFK: How does it look?

  JFK: Looks like hell. Looks real mean, doesn’t it? But on the other hand, there is no other choice. If they get this mean on this one, it’s just a question of where they go about it next. No choice. I don’t think there was a choice.

  RFK: Well, there isn’t any choice. I mean, you would have been, you would have been impeached.

  JFK: That’s what I think. I would have been impeached. I think they would have moved to impeach. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t move to impeach right after this election, on the grounds that I said, and didn’t do it and let … I mean, I’d be …

  RFK: I don’t think that’s … you know, that’s a, if we’d gone in and done something else, or taken some other step that wasn’t necessary, and then you’d be …

  JFK: Yeah.

  RFK: Yeah. But now, the fact is that you couldn’t have done any less. The fact that you got all those South American countries and
Central American countries to vote unanimously.18 When they’ve been kicking us in the ass for two years, and they vote unanimously for this. And then to get the reaction from the rest of the allies, you, like David Ormsby-Gore19 and everybody else. Saying that you had to do it. You calculate … I mean, if it’s going to come at you, it was going to come as something you couldn’t have avoided.

  CALL TO BRITISH PRIME MINISTER HAROLD MACMILLAN, OCTOBER 26, 1962

  Despite a twenty-three-year difference in age, President Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan shared an easy camaraderie. Throughout the crisis, they talked often, usually at night; Kennedy reported from the epicenter of events, and Macmillan offered calm, resolve, and unstinting support. As this call indicates, he was also willing to offer strategic considerations of high value, including Britain’s willingness to give up its Thor missiles. When the crisis was finally resolved, Macmillan took an active part in planning ways to avert any repetition, including his strong recommendation that Kennedy pursue a nuclear test ban treaty with Nikita Khrushchev.

  JFK: Hello, Prime Minister.

  MACMILLAN: Hello, what’s the news now?

  JFK: Well, Governor Stevenson20 saw U Thant21 this afternoon and made our proposals about the importation of arms ceasing and that work on these bases stopping and leading to eventual dismemberment. There are some reports around, some Russian conversations, but it’s rather unofficial and unreliable, about some thought that it’s possible they might do something about withdrawing the weapons if they could get a territorial guarantee of Cuba. But that is so unofficial that I’m not in a position now to know whether there’s anything to it or not. Khrushchev told U Thant that he would keep his ships out of there for the time being, but he couldn’t—he wouldn’t do it very long. He isn’t giving us very much because actually he’s got no ships in the area anyway. But at least he’s made that an announcement; he’s keeping his ships out of there for the time being. We are continuing the quarantine. The buildup of the sites continues, however. And I put a statement out this afternoon describing how the buildup is going on, so that unless in the next forty-eight hours we get some political suggestions as to dismantling the base we’re then going to be faced with a problem of what to do about this buildup.