by Kai Bird
In the meantime, however, preparations in Washington were gathering speed for a full-scale invasion of Cuba, and later that day Robert Kennedy warned Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin that an air strike could not be held off longer than two days.40 Pressures were also escalating from outside the government to launch an air strike. Zbigniew Brzezinski, then a Harvard professor, cabled his White House friend Arthur Schlesinger, “Any further delay in bombing missile sites fails to exploit Soviet uncertainty.”41 But within hours the situation began to change. At 6:00 P.M., the president received a long, rambling letter obviously dictated personally by Khrushchev, and probably sent without the knowledge of his Politburo colleagues. McNamara called it the “most extraordinary diplomatic message I have ever seen.” Running six or seven feet in length, the teletyped message seemed to suggest the basis for a settlement.42
First the Soviet leader asserted once again that the missiles in Cuba were there purely to defend Castro’s regime from his powerful North American neighbor. “You can be calm in this regard,” he wrote, “that we are of sound mind and understand perfectly well that if we attack you, you will respond the same way. . . . Only lunatics or suicides, who themselves want to perish and destroy the whole world before they die, could do this.” Khrushchev then said that, if the United States would pledge itself not to invade Cuba and to lift the quarantine, there would be no need for Soviet military forces to be deployed in the defense of Cuba. “If you have not lost your self-control,” he pleaded, “. . . then, Mr. President, we and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more we pull, the tighter the knot will be tied.”43 This was an altogether encouraging personal statement, and the Kennedy brothers retired that night feeling that the crisis had eased.
But then, the following morning, another Khrushchev letter—this time sounding as though it had been written by his Foreign Office—was broadcast on Moscow radio. This letter added to the deal a public demand that the United States reciprocate by removing the Jupiter missiles stationed in Turkey. Stevenson had been right all along: the Soviets viewed the Turkish missiles as no different from the missiles they had placed in Cuba. A few days earlier, Walter Lippmann had suggested such a swap in a column the Soviet newspaper Izvestia had reprinted. It had all along been an obvious solution to the crisis, and now Kennedy told his advisers that he was ready to make the deal. Excomm hard-liners, particularly Paul Nitze and Mac Bundy, again argued that he should not link the two issues. Kennedy replied that he was concerned that, if “we wouldn’t take the missiles out of Turkey, then maybe we’ll have to invade or make a massive strike on Cuba, which may lose Berlin.”44 At another point in the debate, he complained, “We are in a bad position if we appear to be attacking Cuba for the purpose of keeping useless missiles in Turkey.”45
Later in the day, tensions mounted once again when news came that a Soviet SAM anti-aircraft missile had shot down a U-2 reconnaissance plane and killed its pilot. At this McNamara said that they should be prepared to attack Cuba, that an “invasion had become almost inevitable.”46 CIA Director McCone suggested that Kennedy send an ultimatum by “fast wire” to Khrushchev, and “demand that he stop this business and stop it right away or we’re going to take those SAM sites out immediately.”47
McCone, like McCloy, often expressed a blend of toughness and pragmatism. He had changed his mind overnight, and now told Kennedy that, while threatening the Soviets with an air strike, he should also tell Khrushchev that he’d deal on the Turkish bases. “I’d trade these Turkish things out right now. I wouldn’t even talk to anybody about it.”48 That’s exactly what the Kennedy brothers decided to do, and they were going to do it in secrecy. That evening, the attorney general went to tell Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin that, although there could be no public “quid pro quo,” the Russians could be assured that the Turkish missiles would be out within four to five months. “You have my word on this,” the attorney general told Dobrynin, “and that is sufficient. . . . If you should publish any document indicating a deal then it is off. . . .”49
These private assurances were given to Dobrynin by the Kennedy brothers on Saturday night without the knowledge of most Excomm advisers. Yet it was the heart of the deal; together with the public pledge that the United States would not invade Cuba, the secret concession on the Turkish bases allowed Khrushchev to face down his own hard-liners in the Politburo.50 Ironically, it was the one concession that Adlai Stevenson had predicated would be necessary. But for domestic political reasons, it was also the one concession the Kennedy brothers thought was best done in secrecy. Furthermore, if Khrushchev and his colleagues had not been satisfied with a secret pledge, President Kennedy was prepared to endorse a public swap of missiles.51
On that Saturday, October 27, 1962, Kennedy had brought the country to the very brink of an invasion of Cuba. But the next morning, a radio broadcast brought welcome news: the Soviet premier was taking his missiles home. However, even though tensions at last began to recede, this did not mean that the crisis was over. Most accounts of the Cuban missile crisis end their narratives at this point. But behind closed doors, the crisis—including the danger of war—stretched out for another two months. As the man responsible for negotiating the details of the missile withdrawals from Cuba, McCloy was center-stage throughout this period. Among the terms of the agreement was a provision for U.N. inspections of the missile sites and an accounting of the dismantled missiles to be shipped back to the Soviet Union. Only then, the Kennedy administration said, would it issue a noninvasion pledge to Cuba and end the quarantine. There were other details to be worked out concerning the fate of forty-two IL-28 bombers, which the Americans regarded as offensive weapons since they were capable of carrying nuclear bombs.
All these issues were now to be debated at the U.N., where McCloy was appointed chairman of a three-man committee to handle the negotiations. Working with him were George Ball and Roswell Gilpatric. A number of U.N. delegates expressed surprise that McCloy seemed to be superseding Stevenson’s authority. The New York Times observed, however, that the same thing had happened to the Soviet’s chief U.N. delegate, Valerian A. Zorin, whose negotiating responsibilities were now assumed by Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Kuznetsov. McCloy’s new counterpart was a tall, white-haired man who spoke fluent English from his studies as a young man at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pennsylvania. A veteran diplomat, Kuznetsov got along well with McCloy over the next two months of hard bargaining.
The first snag in the McCloy-Kuznetsov talks occurred over Khrushchev’s agreement to an on-site inspection in Cuba of the dismantled missiles. When an angry Castro learned that Khrushchev had backed down, he reportedly kicked the wall and broke a mirror.52 He then warned that “whoever tries to inspect Cuba must come in battle array.”53 After visiting Cuba for two days at the end of October, U Thant told McCloy that the missiles would all be dismantled within days, a fact confirmed by aerial photography. But as regards on-site inspection, Castro was demanding strict reciprocity. The Cuban leader wanted the right to inspect the Cuban exile camps in the United States, from which numerous attacks on Cuba had been launched. (Ironically, a few days later a CIA-dispatched sabotage team funded by Operation Mongoose successfully blew up a Cuban factory.54) Short of such reciprocity, U Thant said Castro would not allow ground inspection by U.N. observers or anyone else. The White House at this point really didn’t expect to win on-site verification. As of October 31, McCloy’s written instructions stated that “Kuznetsov’s insistence on no physical inspection of dismantling and removal of Soviet weapons is essentially non-negotiable.” It was “probable,” he was told, that he would have to settle for aerial inspections.55
U Thant had learned quite a bit about the situation in Cuba. He told McCloy that relations between the Soviets and the Cubans were “unbelievably bad.” Castro had boasted that Cubans, not Russians, had fired the SAM that had brought down the American U-2 earlier in the week.56 The Cuban leader war
ned that “his boys are trigger happy.” The secretary general then conveyed a quite remarkable piece of information: the commander of all Soviet forces in Cuba, a General Stazenko, had told a U.N. official that the Americans ought to vary the pattern of their surveillance flights, since the Cubans “had established what they believed to be the standard routine for reconnaissance flights.” This U.N. official came away from his conversation with the Soviet general convinced that the Cubans would take every opportunity to fire on U.S. planes. Washington had trouble digesting this news. Rusk fired off an “eyes-only” cable to McCloy’s colleague George Ball saying that the United States could not accept that sophisticated weapons like surface-to-air-missiles could be operated by Cubans. McCloy thought all this was a serious complication. But it didn’t stop him from cabling Rusk that, though any further attacks on U.S. reconnaisance planes “would again put us face to face,” aerial surveillance was absolutely essential.57 Despite the risks, the reconnaissance continued.
On November 3, McCloy went back down to Washington for further instructions. He attended the Excomm meeting with Kennedy present, and later that evening he and Stevenson spent a half-hour alone with the president.58 By this time, yet another problem had arisen: aerial photore-connaisance confirmed that the Soviets were continuing to assemble IL28 bombers. Early in the crisis, President Kennedy himself had mentioned to his advisers that the presence of the IL-28 bombers did not bother him.59 Indeed, the eight-year-old, first-generation jet bombers were universally regarded as an outmoded nuclear-delivery vehicle.60
Despite his own doubts on the matter, Kennedy now insisted that they should be regarded as falling within the definition of the offensive weapons that Khrushchev had agreed to withdraw. The Soviets had only been informed of this American interpretation the evening before.61 They understandably thought the Americans were interpreting the phrase “offensive weapon” in an entirely “arbitrary fashion.”62 Far from trying to avoid further humiliation to Khrushchev, as some court historians have argued, President Kennedy at this point in the crisis dug in his heels. McGeorge Bundy later recalled that at this point the president was actually “irritated” with his New York negotiators and worried that his tactical instructions were being ignored.63 He now told McCloy and Stevenson in rather severe language that he could not be satisfied with a “mere gentlemen’s agreement relating only to visible missiles on identified launch pads.”64 They had to insist on both on-site inspection and the removal of the IL-28S. Furthermore, said Kennedy, McCloy was to tell Kuznetsov that no Soviet military base of any kind could remain in Cuba.65
Back in New York, McCloy had lunch with Kuznetsov and told him that the United States had evidence that the Soviets were building a submarine base. He said the president regarded this as a violation of the agreement barring offensive weaponry. McCloy also raised the matter of the presence in Cuba of a Soviet “combat brigade,” which he said Washington also wanted out. In response, Kuznetsov denied that they were building anything like a submarine base. Regarding the combat brigade, the Russian diplomat only went so far as to say that any Soviet military personnel associated with offensive weaponry would be withdrawn. McCloy didn’t pursue the matter, and the Soviets never committed themselves to withdrawing all their troops from Cuba.66
Nor was McCloy any more successful in pinning Kuznetsov down on the issue of on-site inspection. Instead, the Soviet diplomat proposed an alternative to a ground inspection of the missile sites. Why not, he suggested, perform the inspection on the high seas, and count all forty-two missiles on the decks of the freighters as they return to the Soviet Union? Following his new instructions from the president, McCloy insisted that on-site inspection was “of the gravest importance.”67 The United States would not be satisfied with a simple inspection of vacant missile sites; the designated inspectors had to have the “freedom to investigate reports of concealed weapons in caves or elsewhere.”68 Once again, Kuznetsov explained that Castro was not going to allow inspections on this basis. The talks were stalemated, and time was running out. By now, the missiles had all been trucked into various seaports and were waiting to be shipped out aboard Russian freighters. Frustrated by the impasse, McCloy felt that it was time to have his instructions changed. At one Excomm meeting, he got into a vigorous debate with Edwin M. Martin, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs. Citing his experience in Germany, McCloy insisted that aerial photography was the best possible verification system. Martin was unconvinced, but the president nevertheless authorized McCloy to have a second look at Kuznetsov’s proposals.69
Over the next few days of intensive talks with Kuznetsov, he finally worked out detailed procedures for an inspection at sea. U.S. destroyers would be allowed to pull alongside the Russian freighters once they had steamed out of Cuban waters. The tarpaulins covering the missiles, which all had to be laid out on the ships’ upper decks, would then be pulled back so that the missiles could be photographed. Crates containing missile equipment would be pried open, and American helicopters would be allowed to hover overhead to take additional photographs.70
As Kuznetsov and McCloy now actually began to accomplish something concrete in working out these details, the two men acquired a grudging admiration for each other. Years afterward, McCloy had Kuznetsov in mind when he frequently told interviewers, “I never had a session with the Russians in which I didn’t think the fellow on the other side was almost as fair as I was.”71 With his excellent English and aristocratic bearing, Kuznetsov seemed to McCloy a most reasonable negotiator. Soon they had worked out all the procedures for an inspection at sea, and by November 9, McCloy reported that thirty-eight of the forty-two missiles had been observed leaving Cuba.72 The four remaining missiles departed the next day.
This was a major accomplishment, but it was not the end of their encounters. Nor was it the end of the crisis; U.S. forces were still on the exceedingly high Defcon-2 alert level as late as November 12.73 And McCloy’s negotiations with Kuznetsov sometimes became as nerve-racking as at the height of the crisis. One Sunday in mid-November, he drove out to the old George Pratt property in Locust Valley on Long Island, where the Soviet mission to the U.N. maintained a country estate for their diplomats. There he joined Kuznetsov and Zorin for a game of Russian billiards and a luncheon. It was a cordial affair; McCloy had brought Ellen along, together with his son, John, Jr. After lunch, the men adjourned for coffee and a long talk about their problems. On instructions from Kennedy, McCloy again pressed his host for on-site inspection of the original missile sites, if only as a matter of principle. The Kennedy administration, he explained, would not give the Soviets the promised no-invasion pledge until they were allowed the on-site inspection promised by Khrushchev.74 Kuznetsov accused the United States of “stalling” and once again explained that Castro would not submit to such inspections unless Washington could agree to his conditions.75 These now included, in addition to the principle of inspection reciprocity, such demands as the abandonment of Guantanamo, a suspension of the trade embargo, and an end to “subversive” activity inside Cuba.76 Kennedy, of course, was not about to make such concessions to Castro. He was still hoping, in fact, that the Soviet humiliation in Cuba might somehow lead to Castro’s collapse.77 And as far as the no-invasion pledge was concerned, the president had decided that the domestic political cost of such a pledge was too high. He wanted to avoid any clear-cut pledge not to invade. McCloy was fully aware of these domestic political considerations, but he personally felt that the principle of obtaining a ground inspection was irrelevant now that the missiles had been withdrawn and counted at sea. He favored an end to the quarantine and, together with Stevenson, was quite willing to drop the whole idea of a U.N.-supervised ground inspection. McCloy even thought that the United States should now pledge not to invade Cuba, in the hopes that this might help persuade the recalcitrant Cubans to give up the IL-28 bombers.78 Having started out the crisis as an instinctive “hawk,” McCloy had now become a verifiable “dove.” Once the mis
siles were out of Cuba, he simply regarded anything to do with Cuba as a “minor issue.” U.S. leverage on the Soviets should be used, he thought, to obtain agreements on such critical national-security issues as the status of Berlin and substantive arms-control measures.79 He told Kuznetsov that he was anxious to “wind up this transaction,” because there were plenty of other “things we ought to be discussing in order to keep this situation from arising again.” Today it was “this bearded figure who is dictator in Cuba and (a) certain miscalculation on (the) part of (the) Soviet Union that almost brought us to war. Tomorrow it may be something else.” He wanted to discuss not only broader arms-control measures but such specific topics as the current Chinese-Indian war, which he thought was the kind of regional conflict that might get out of hand.80
Kennedy was disinclined to open the discussions up to such far-flung issues, and felt he repeatedly had to instruct McCloy and Stevenson not to talk to the Russians about these larger issues. The president was heard one day complaining that he was spending more time worrying about McCloy and Stevenson than he did about the Russians.81
The longer McCloy listened to his adversary’s position, the more willing he was to make a few concessions. On November 15, he became so frustrated with the deadlocked talks that he proposed to Rusk that, in exchange for a one-shot on-ground inspection in Cuba, the United States and some Latin American countries might allow the Cubans an inspection of their territories so as to ascertain whether there were any “refugee training camps preparing for attack on Cuba.” Even Stevenson realized that such an idea was “politically intolerable,” and the McCloy proposal was quietly ignored.82