A Thousand Days

by Arthur M. Schlesinger

  The President, however, rightly regarded any political program as premature. He wanted to concentrate on a single issue—the enormity of the introduction of the missiles and the absolute necessity for their removal. Stevenson’s negotiating program was accordingly rejected. Stevenson, when I saw him that week-end, took this realistically; he felt he had done his job as the custodian of our UN interests in making the recommendation, and the decision was the President’s. However, some of his colleagues on the Executive Committee felt strongly that the thought of negotiations at this point would be taken as an admission of the moral weakness of our case and the military weakness of our posture. They worried considerably over the weekend (and some of them vocally thereafter) whether, denied his political program, Stevenson would make the American argument with sufficient force in the UN debate.

  I spent all day Sunday till well after midnight working at the State Department with Harlan Cleveland, Joseph Sisco and Thomas Wilson on the UN speech. At ten o’clock on Monday morning the President called me in to instruct me to go to New York and assist Stevenson on the UN presentation. He was in a calm and reflective mood. It was strange, he said, how no one in the intelligence community had anticipated the Soviet attempt to transform Cuba into a nuclear base; everyone had assumed that the Russians would not be so stupid as to offer us this pretext for intervention. I asked why he thought Khrushchev had done such an amazing thing. He said that, first, it might draw Russia and China closer together, or at least strengthen the Soviet position in the communist world, by showing that Moscow was capable of bold action in support of a communist revolution; second, that it would radically redefine the setting in which the Berlin problem could be reopened after the election; third, that it would deal the United States a tremendous political blow. When I remarked that the Russians must have supposed we would not respond, Kennedy said, “They thought they had us either way. If we did nothing, we would be dead. If we’reacted, they hoped to put us in an exposed position, whether with regard to Berlin or Turkey or the UN.”

  I met with him again at eleven to go over the draft of the UN speech with Rusk, Robert Kennedy and others. The President suggested a few omissions, including a passage threatening an American strike if the Soviet build-up in Cuba continued; he preferred to leave that to Moscow’s imagination. The Attorney General drew me aside to say, “We’re counting on you to watch things in New York. . . . We will have to make a deal at the end, but we must stand absolutely firm now. Concessions must come at the end of negotiation, not at the beginning.” Then, clutching the speech, I caught the first plane to New York.

  In Washington everything awaited the President’s television broadcast that night to the nation. Sorensen had been laboring over the draft since Friday. Kennedy himself was never more composed. At four o’clock he had an appointment with Prime Minister Milton Obote of Uganda. Wholly at ease, he talked for forty-five minutes about the problems of Africa and Uganda as if he had nothing on his mind and all the time in the world. Angier Biddle Duke of the State Department remarked to Obote on their way back to Blair House that a crisis of some sort was imminent; the Ugandan was incredulous and, when he heard Kennedy’s speech that evening, forever impressed.

  At five o’clock Kennedy saw the congressional leaders, many of whom had flown in from their home states in Air Force planes. He showed them the U-2 photographs and told them what he proposed to do. Senator Russell of Georgia disagreed; the quarantine, he said, would be too slow and too risky—the only solution was invasion. To the President’s surprise, Fulbright, who had opposed invasion so eloquently eighteen months before, now supported Russell. The President listened courteously but was in no way shaken in his decision. (Kennedy told me later, “The trouble is that, when you get a group of senators together, they are always dominated by the man who takes the boldest and strongest line. That is what happened the other day. After Russell spoke, no one wanted to take issue with him. When you can talk to them individually, they are reasonable.”)

  Then at seven o’clock the speech: his expression grave, his voice firm and calm, the evidence set forth without emotion, the conclusion unequivocal—“The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.” He recited the Soviet assurances, now revealed as “deliberate deception,” and called the Soviet action “a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country, if our courage and our commitments are ever to be trusted again by either friend or foe.” Our “unswerving objective,” he continued, was to end this nudear threat to the Americans. He then laid out what he called with emphasis his initial steps: a quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba; an intensified surveillance of Cuba itself; a declaration that any missile launched from Cuba would be regarded as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union; an immediate convening of the Organization of American States to consider the threat to hemisphere security; an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to consider the threat to world peace; and an appeal to Chairman Khrushchev “to abandon this course of world domination, and to join in an historic effort to end the perilous arms race and to transform the history of man.”

  He concluded with quiet solemnity. “My fellow citizens: let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort. . . . No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred. . . . But the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing. . . . Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right—not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.”

  After the broadcast the President returned to the Mansion, sought out Caroline and told her stories until it was time for dinner. He dined alone with Jacqueline.

  6. THE REACTION

  We listened to the speech clustered around a television set in Stevenson’s office in New York. I had found Adlai unperturbed in the midst of pandemonium. The Mission was a frenzy of activity in preparation for the Security Council. The UN had never seemed so much like a permanent political convention: so many people to be considered and cajoled, so many issues going at once, such an inherent unpredictability about the parliamentary sequence. From the moment of the President’s statement, Stevenson had to talk so much to UN delegates from other nations that he had little time left for his own speeches and strategy. Through Monday evening and Tuesday morning he snatched moments to revise and edit his remarks for the Security Council. It was reminiscent of his presidential campaigns: the last part of his address was still in the typewriter at the Mission on Tuesday afternoon when he had already begun to speak across the street at the UN.

  The speech began at four o’clock. The OAS had been meeting since nine that morning. Edwin Martin had done a splendid job briefing the OAS ambassadors the night before, and Secretary Rusk, invoking the security resolution of Punta del Este, was now offering a resolution authorizing the use of force, individually or collectively, to carry out the quarantine. No one could doubt the OAS sentiment, but a number of ambassadors had not yet received instructions from their governments. As a result, the resolution establishing the legal basis for United States action was not passed until Stevenson was well into his speech.*

  Martin, by prior arrangement, notified Harlan Cleveland the moment the OAS acted, and Cleveland instantly called Sisco in New York. Watching Stevenson on television, Cleveland could see Sisco leave the chamber to take the call, then in a moment return and place the text of the resolution on the desk in front of Stevenson. Stevenson, absorbed in his speech, talked on, apparently unaware of the sheet of paper before him. At this moment Kennedy, with characteristic attention to detail, called Cleveland and asked whether Stevenson knew about the OAS action. Cleveland replied that he had sent a message but feared that Adlai had not seen it. Just then
on the screen Stevenson reached for the paper. Kennedy, who was also watching television, said, “I guess he has it now.”

  In New York Stevenson, who had been speaking with extraordinary eloquence to a hushed chamber, now read the OAS resolution. In another moment he concluded: “Since the end of the Second World War, there has been no threat to the vision of peace so profound, no challenge to the world of the Charter so fateful. The hopes of mankind are concentrated in this room. . . . Let [this day] be remembered, not as the day when the world came to the edge of nuclear war, but as the day when men resolved to let nothing thereafter stop them in their quest for peace.” The President immediately dictated a telegram:

  DEAR ADLAI: I WATCHED YOUR SPEECH THIS AFTERNOON WITH GREAT SATISFACTION. IT HAS GIVEN OUR CAUSE A GREAT START. . . . THE UNITED STATES IS FORTUNATE TO HAVE YOUR ADVOCACY. YOU HAVE MY WARM AND PERSONAL THANKS.

  And now the tension was rising. In Cuba workmen were laboring day and night to complete the bases. Forty-two medium-range nuclear missiles were being unpacked and prepared for launching pads with desperate speed. IL-28 aircraft were being assembled. On the Atlantic at least twenty-five Soviet merchant ships, some no doubt loaded with intermediate-range missiles, were steaming toward Cuba, their courses thus far unaltered after the President’s speech. Ninety ships of the American fleet, backed up by sixty-eight aircraft squadrons and eight aircraft carriers, were moving into position to intercept and search the onrushing ships. In Florida and neighboring states the largest United States invasion force since the Second World War was gathering. In Moscow, the Soviet government in a long and angry statement insisted that the weapons in Cuba were defensive, ignored the charges of nuclear missiles and savagely denounced the American quarantine.

  The United Nations was only the first step in gaining world understanding of the American position. Africa now assumed vital strategic importance because Soviet flights to Cuba would have to refuel at African airports. Both Sdkou Touré in Guinea and Ben Bella in Algeria sent Kennedy their assurances that they would deny Russian aircraft transit rights. (Touré later added that the problem must be kept in a Soviet-American context; if it became a Cuban-American problem, we would lose support in the uncommitted world.) Most African states, moved no doubt by their faith in the American President, indicated private sympathy.

  In Western Europe support was general, though there were waverings in Britain and Italy. In Paris General de Gaulle received Dean Acheson, the President’s special emissary, and, without waiting to see the aerial photographs Acheson had brought along, said, “If there is a war, I will be with you. But there will be no war.” De Gaulle went on to wonder whether the quarantine would be enough, and so did Adenauer, but both strongly backed the American position.

  The British had received their first notification on Saturday, October 20. At Sunday noon Kennedy called David Ormsby Gore to the White House and outlined the alternatives. Ormsby Gore expressed strong support for the quarantine and, with his knowledge of Macmillan, assured the President of a sympathetic British reaction. Later the same day Kennedy explained directly to Macmillan that he had found it essential in the interests of security and speed to make his first decision on his own responsibility, but that from now on he expected to keep in the closest touch. He added that, if Khrushchev tried anything in Berlin, the United States would be ready to take a full role there as well as in the Caribbean.

  Macmillan responded on Monday that Britain would give all the support it could in the Security Council, though he did not then or later offer to take part in specific action on the Atlantic. He added that two aspects of the problem particularly troubled him. European opinion, he said, would need attention, because Europeans had grown so accustomed to living under the nuclear gun that they might wonder what all the fuss was about. The other and more worrying point was that, if it came to a negotiation, Khrushchev might try to trade Cuba for Berlin. The President, no doubt detecting an element of reserve in Macmillan’s tone, tried to reassure him that the Cuban decision was not simply a response to aroused public opinion or to private passion against Cuba; he had no interest in a squabble with Castro. This was something very different: a major showdown with Khrushchev, whose action had so contradicted all the Kremlinologists had prophesied that it was necessary to revise our whole estimate of his desperation or ambition or both. Thereafter Macmillan did not falter, and his counsel and support proved constant through the week.

  Macmillan’s initial caution reflected a peculiar reaction throughout his country. The British had greeted Kennedy’s Monday night speech with surprising skepticism. Some questioned whether nuclear missiles really were in Cuba; maybe CIA was up to its old tricks again, or maybe this was a pretext to justify an American invasion. Even Hugh Gaitskell doubted the legality of the quarantine and wondered why Kennedy had not gone first to the United Nations; and the Economist as late as Friday warned against “forcing a showdown over the shipment of Russian arms to Cuba.” The Manchester Guardian said on Tuesday that, if Khrushchev had really brought in nuclear missiles, “he has done so primarily to demonstrate to the U.S. and the world the meaning of American bases close to the Soviet frontier.” The Guardian added two days later, “In the end the United States may find that it has done its cause, its friends, and its own true interests little good.” By Saturday it was suggesting that Britain vote against the United States in the UN. A group of intellectuals—A. J. Ayer, A. J. P. Taylor, Richard Titmuss and others—attacked the quarantine and advocated British neutrality. The Tribune wrote, “It may well be that Kennedy is risking blowing the world to hell in order to sweep a few Democrats into office.” Among the pacifists, Bertrand Russell, who was already on record calling Kennedy “much more wicked than Hitler,” sent messages to Khrushchev:

  MAY I HUMBLY APPEAL FOR YOUR FURTHER HELP IN LOWERING THE TEMPERATURE. . . . YOUR CONTINUED [sic] FORBEARANCE IS OUR GREAT HOPE.

  and to Kennedy:

  YOUR ACTION DESPERATE. . . . NO CONCEIVABLE JUSTIFICATION. WE WILL NOT HAVE MASS MURDER. . . . END THIS MADNESS.

  There was some of the same in the United States. The followers of Stuart Hughes’s peace party denounced the quarantine, sought excuses for Khrushchev and prayed for American acceptance of the missiles.

  On Tuesday night Kennedy dined quietly at the White House with English friends. Cuba was hardly mentioned at the table; but after dinner he beckoned David Ormsby Gore out into the long central hall, where they quietly talked while the gaiety continued in the dining room. The British Ambassador, mentioning the dubious reaction in his own country, suggested the need for evidence: could not the aerial photographs be released? The President sent for a file, and together they went through them picking out the ones that might have the greatest impact on skeptics. In a while Robert Kennedy walked in, bleak, tired and disheveled. He had just been to see Ambassador Dobrynin in an effort to find out whether the Soviet ships had instructions to turn back if challenged on the high seas. The Soviet Ambassador, the Attorney General said, seemed very shaken, out of the picture and unaware of any instructions. This meant that the imposition of the quarantine the next day might well bring a clash.

  The three old friends talked on. Ormsby Gore recalled a conversation with Defense Department officials who had declared it important to stop the Soviet ships as far out of the reach of the jets in Cuba as possible. The British Ambassador now suggested that Khrushchev had hard decisions to make and that every additional hour might make it easier for him to climb down gracefully; why not, therefore, make the interceptions much closer to Cuba and thereby give the Russians a little more time? If Cuban aircraft tried to interfere, they could be shot down. Kennedy, agreeing immediately, called McNamara and, over emotional Navy protests, issued the appropriate instruction. This decision was of vital importance in postponing the moment of irreversible action. They soon parted, looking forward with concern to the crisis of the morrow.

  And so around the world emotions rose—fear, doubt, incertitude, apprehension. In th
e White House the President went coolly about his affairs, watching the charts with the Soviet ships steadily advancing toward Cuba, scrutinizing every item of intelligence for indications of Soviet purpose, reviewing the deployment of American forces. At one point the Air Force produced a photograph of planes lined wingtip to wingtip on a Cuban airfield, arguing that only a few bombs could wipe out the enemy air power. The President asked the Air Force to run similar reconnaissance over our own airfields; to the Pentagon’s chagrin, the photographs showed American planes also lined up row by row. In this manner he preserved a taut personal control over every aspect of the situation; the Bay of Pigs had not been in vain. He said to someone, “I guess this is the week I earn my salary.”

  He never had a more sober sense of his responsibility. It was a strange week; the flow of decision was continuous; there was no day and no night. In the intervals between meetings he sought out his wife and children as if the imminence of catastrophe had turned his mind more than ever to his family and, through them, to children everywhere in the world. This was the cruel question—the young people who, if things went wrong, would never have the chance to learn, to love, to fulfill themselves and serve their countries. One noon, swimming in the pool, he said to David Powers, “If it weren’t for these people that haven’t lived yet, it would be easy to make decisions of this sort.”