by Ted Widmer
11. Albert Boutwell (1904–1978), mayor of Birmingham (1963–1967).
12. C. Douglas Dillon (1909–2003), ambassador to France (1953–1957); undersecretary of state (1959–1961); and secretary of the treasury (1961–1965).
13. John Macy (1917–1986), chairman of the Civil Service Commission.
14. Roy Wilkins (1901–1981) was the executive secretary of the NAACP.
15. Walter Reuther (1907–1970) was a prominent labor leader who headed the United Automobile Workers and pledged support to the Civil Rights Movement.
16. A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979) was an early Civil Rights leader and the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which he organized in 1925. He had conceived the idea of a march on Washington as far back as 1940, to protest segregation within the armed forces, and his voice is heard on some of the earliest tape recordings made inside the Oval Office, when he spoke with FDR.
17. Medgar Evers (1925–1963) was the NAACP’s first field secretary for Mississippi. He was murdered on June 12, 1963, hours after President Kennedy’s speech to the nation on Civil Rights.
1. Arthur Lundahl (1915–1992) was an expert on aerial photography of military installations and a longtime employee of the Central Intelligence Agency.
2. Marshall Carter (1909–1993), deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
3. Sidney Graybeal, CIA expert on Russian missiles.
4. GSC is an acronym for a guidance system.
5. General Maxwell Taylor (1901–1987), President Kennedy’s favorite military advisor, who became chairman of the Joint Chiefs on October 1, 1962, just before the crisis started (he served until 1964).
6. Robert McNamara was secretary of defense; Roswell Gilpatric, assistant secretary of defense; General Maxwell Taylor, a top military advisor to President Kennedy; George Ball, undersecretary of state; U. Alexis Johnson, deputy undersecretary of state for political affairs; Edwin Martin, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs; McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor; Theodore C. Sorensen, President Kennedy’s special counsel and chief speechwriter.
7. Dean Acheson was the former secretary of state, under Harry Truman.
8. Robert Lovett (1895–1986), secretary of defense (1951–1953) under President Truman.
9. Admiral George W. Anderson (1906–1992), chief of naval operations (1961–1963) and in charge of the naval quarantine of Cuba during the crisis.
10. In 1958, the Eisenhower administration landed a large contingent of marines in Lebanon, to prevent a suspected coup.
11. General David Shoup (1904–1983), commandant of the Marine Corps (1961–1963). General Shoup received the Medal of Honor for his valor in World War II. After his retirement he became a prominent critic of the Vietnam War.
12. Willy Brandt (1913–1992) was the mayor of West Berlin (1957–1966) and chancellor of West Germany (1969–1974).
13. John McCone (1902–1991), director of the Central Intelligence Agency (1961–1965).
14. Remedios, a missile site on Cuba.
15. Sioviet bloc.
16. An acronym for commander in chief, Atlantic Command.
17. Steuart Pittmann was assistant secretary of defense for civil defense, Edward McDermott was director of the Office of Emergency Planning.
18. The Organization of American States voted unanimously to endorse the U.S. position in its meeting of October 23, 1962.
19. David Ormsby-Gore (1918–1985) was minister of state for Foreign Affairs under Prime Minister Harold Macmillan from 1957 to 1961 and British ambassador to the United States from 1961 to 1965.
20. Adlai Stevenson was President Kennedy’s ambassador to the United Nations.
21. U Thant (1909–1974), secretary general of the United Nations from 1961 to 1971.
22. Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961), secretary general of the United Nations from 1953 until his death in a plane crash on September 18, 1961.
23. Lauris Norstad (1907–1988) was an Air Force general and supreme allied commander, Europe; Lyman Lemnizter (1899–1988) was chairman of the Joint Chiefs from 1960 to 1962.
24. Philip de Zulueta, private secretary to Prime Minister Macmillan for foreign affairs.
25. Thomas Finletter (1893–1980) was the U.S. permanent representative to NATO’s North Atlantic Council.
26. The use of the U.S. naval base on the southeast coast of Cuba was negotiated in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War and has continued through many different political regimes in Cuba.
1. The United States hoped for a high number of annual inspections of Soviet nuclear facilities; the Soviets regarded this as spying and pushed for a lower figure.
2. At the July 31, 1963, meeting, President Kennedy met with Dr. John Foster, director of Livermore Laboratories; Dr. Norris Bradbury, director of Los Alamos Laboratory; Dr. Glenn Seaborg, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission; and John Palfrey, commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission.
3. Johnston Island is part of an atoll in the Pacific where the United States conducted atmospheric and underground nuclear tests. “Safeguard C” of the Limited Test Ban Treaty gave the United States the right to continue to test nuclear weapons at Johnston Island should the need arise.
4. Edward Teller (1908–2003), nuclear physicist known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb” and a prominent advocate of defense spending, nuclear development, and non-military use of nuclear power. In the 1980s he was a leading supporter of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.
1. James Webb (1906–1992) was the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, serving from 1961 to 1968.
2. Robert Seamans (1918–2008) was deputy administrator of NASA.
3. Jerome Wiesner (1915–1994) was the science advisor to Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1971–1980).
1. James “Scotty” Reston (1909–1995) was a columnist and reporter for the New York Times, reporting for many years from Washington.
2. John Foster Dulles (1888–1959), secretary of state under President Eisenhower.
3. Alger Hiss (1904–1996) was a prominent lawyer and State Department official who became embroiled in national controversy after he was denounced as a Communist in 1948, a cause that was taken up by Senator Joseph McCarthy. He was convicted of perjury in 1950.
4. Dien Bien Phu was the site of the climactic battle between the French and the Vietnamese fighters for independence led by Ho Chi Minh, fought between March and May 1954.
5. The former British colony of Malaya became independent in 1946, and was integrated into the new nation of Malaysia in 1963.
6. Ngo Dinh Diem (1901–1963) was the first president of South Vietnam, which he led from 1955 to his assassination on November 2, 1963.
7. Juan Bosch (1909–2001), a longtime opposition figure in the Dominican Republic, became its president in February 1963, after the assassination of President Rafael Trujillo on May 30, 1961. After a mere seven months, he was overthrown in a coup on September 25, 1963.
8. John McCone (1902–1991) was director of Central Intelligence from September 1961 to April 1965.
9. Roger Hilsman (b. 1919) was assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs; Michael Forrestal (1927–1989) was a National Security Council aide and the son of former defense secretary James Forrestal, who brought JFK to Europe in 1945.
10. General Paul D. Harkins (1904–1984) was a commander in Vietnam from 1962 to 1964.
11. Ngo Dinh Nhu (1910–1963) was the younger brother of President Diem and served without portfolio as the chief defender of his brother’s repressive policies.
12. Because West Berlin was separated from West Germany, it was important for U.S. troops to be able to move freely along the Autobahn highway system. The Russians and their East German allies often tested American resolve by hindering access.
13. In 1962, Congress proposed an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1
961 that restricted aid to Communist countries and to countries that nationalized the property of American corporations. Targeted primarily at Cuba, it was named after Senator Bourke B. Hickenlooper of Iowa. The Kennedy administration opposed the amendment, which undermined its hope to find a creative path forward in the developing world, and in Latin America in particular.
1. President Obama repeated the phrase in his Nobel lecture of December 2009.
2. G. Mennen Williams (1911–1988), governor of Michigan (1948–1960), assistant secretary of state for African Affairs (1961–1966).
3. Chinese Communist.
4. Identified participants at the December 5, 1962, meeting were: President John F. Kennedy; Robert McNamara, secretary of defense; General Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs; McGeorge Bundy, national security advisor; George Ball, undersecretary of state; and Jerome Wiesner, special assistant to the President.
5. Richard Helms (1913–2002) was deputy director of plans at the Central Intelligence Agency in 1963; he would ultimately serve as director of Central Intelligence (1966–1973).
6. United States Information Agency.
7. U.S. Agency for International Development.
8. In a response to a request by Jacqueline Kennedy during the height of the Cold War, Pushinka (Russian for “Fluffy”) was a gift from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to Caroline Kennedy. Pushinka was a puppy from Strelka, one of the first Soviet space dogs who returned to Earth. Pushinka and the Kennedys’ Welsh Terrier Charlie had four puppies together.
9. Tito had led Yugoslavia’s fierce partisan resistance to the Nazis in World War II, and conceived a unique path during the Cold War, as the head of a Communist nation capable of standing up to the Soviets and embracing certain values of the West.
10. In October 1961, Tito visited the United States. During a visit to the United Nations, he encountered protests from Croats and Serbs and was criticized by Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut.
1. David Hackett (1927–2011) was executive director of the President’s Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime from 1961 to 1964. He was a close friend of Robert Kennedy since they had attended Milton Academy together, and a hockey standout who played for the U.S. Olympic team.
2. Arthur Sylvester was assistant secretary of defense for public affairs.
3. Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy’s press secretary.
4. Jordan Marsh was a department store in downtown Boston.
5. Godfrey McHugh (1911–1997) was a brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force and the air force aide to President Kennedy.
6. “Al” is unidentified.
7. Peter Lawford (1923–1984) was an English-American film actor married to President Kennedy’s sister Patricia Kennedy (1924–2006). They divorced in 1966.
8. Jack L. Warner (1892–1978) was a Canadian-American film executive who was the president and driving force behind the Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.
9. This meeting included three advisors. Wilbur Mills (1909–1992) was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from the state of Arkansas and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Lawrence O’Brien (1917–1990) was special assistant to the President for congressional relations and personnel. O’Brien was also one of the Democratic Party’s leading electoral strategists and served as the director of Kennedy’s successful U.S. Senate election and reelection campaigns and nationally as the director of his presidential campaign. Ted Sorensen (1928–2010) was President John F. Kennedy’s special counsel.
10. This meeting included Robert Kennedy, Lawrence O’Brien, DNC Chairman John Bailey, Kenneth O’Donnell, and Ted Sorensen.
11. Stephen E. Smith (1927–1990) was married to President Kennedy’s sister Jean. He was expected to serve as the campaign manager for the 1964 election.
12. The Alliance for Progress was a Kennedy administration initiative to improve relations with Latin America, emphasizing trade and development, and announced in 1961.
13. João Goulart (1919–1976) was president of Brazil from 1961 to 1964; his progressive policies often put him at odds with the United States at the time.