“Now We Have Untied Our Hands”
On Monday, October 29, Dobrynin brought Robert Kennedy a new private letter from Khrushchev to the President spelling out their secret agreement on Turkish missiles. Perhaps the Chairman was trying to defend himself against charges by his generals that he had been hornswoggled.*
By Dobrynin’s account, Robert told him that it would be “very hard” for the United States to accept the letter, since withdrawal of the Turkish missiles had to be sanctioned by NATO. This would take time. He renewed his guarantee, on behalf of the President, that the missiles would be gone within four to five months.
The next day, Robert told Dobrynin that he and the President had studied his letter overnight. There could be “no quid pro quo.” In talking points for this conversation, he had written, “Take back your letter—Reconsider it & if you feel it is necessary to write letters then we will also write one which you cannot enjoy. Also if you should publish any document indicating a deal then it is off & also if done afterward will further affect the relationship.”
He assured Dobrynin that the Turkish missiles would soon be gone but that it was “important not to publicize it” because he and the President would seem to be “purveying a falsehood to the American public.” By Dobrynin’s account, Khrushchev’s message also raised the issue of Guantanamo, which Kennedy briskly dismissed.*
The Ambassador took back the letter, but Khrushchev’s thirteenth-hour grab at a more favorable settlement had inflicted still another blow on trust between him and the Kennedys. When Dobrynin assured Robert that his government would not publish Khrushchev’s secret Missile Crisis correspondence with the President, the Attorney General replied, “Speaking quite frankly, you also told me your government never intended to put missiles in Cuba.”
The President’s prohibition against public claims of victory over Khrushchev was based at least partly on his fear that, if provoked, the Chairman might reveal that it had not been such an American victory after all.
He remembered how in 1940 his own father and others had hurt Franklin Roosevelt by charging that FDR had made a “secret deal” with Churchill to bring the United States into Europe’s war. As a Congressman, Kennedy himself had attacked Roosevelt’s secret diplomacy at Yalta. Were Americans to discover that he had offered Khrushchev a secret concession to end the crisis, the President could have been badly damaged.
He knew that Khrushchev had much to gain from revelation of his secret concession. Not only would the Chairman seem more of a victor in the crisis, but were NATO to learn that the President had unilaterally pledged to scrap the Turkish missiles, it would have depreciated the value of other American commitments. It would have shown that in this confrontation, the Soviet Union was not the only superpower that had strong-armed a little ally for the sake of world peace.
Thus Kennedy kept a sharp eye on reportage on the crisis. On the President’s instructions, when Salinger was asked how many letters Kennedy had exchanged with Khrushchev during the thirteen days, the press secretary replied with a nonresponse: “Well, you are aware of the letters we have said anything about.” Pressed further, he said, “I am going to stand on my answer.”
The columnist Rowland Evans heard and wrote about Khrushchev’s emotional Friday letter. The President ordered Salinger to officially deny that the letter had been “written by an agitated or an overwrought man.” He was so furious about Evans’s story that he did his own detective work to track down the leak. Told that Evans’s source might have been a French diplomat with whom Evans had dined at Stewart Alsop’s house, he ordered William Tyler to inform Ambassador Alphand of the President’s view that “responsibility for the leak rests with a member of the French Embassy staff.”
Alphand told Tyler that he had shown his copy of Khrushchev’s letter to only one other person, his Counselor, Jean-Claude Winckler. The next day, Winckler confessed to Tyler that he had been the Frenchman at the Alsop dinner: he had mentioned a “peculiar” Khrushchev letter showing “great excitement and nervousness,” but when Evans pressed for details he had “refused to discuss it.”
Kennedy demanded that all outstanding copies of his correspondence with Khrushchev be retrieved. He told Ex Comm, which continued its meetings, “There’s going to be press around all of you. They all want their own angles.” The “only sources of information on the Cuban situation” should be Bundy and Sorensen: “We must make information available to the press in our own way, rather than have it leak out.”
As with Vienna and his meetings with Gromyko, the President implemented this dictum in his own fashion. A few days later, he showed Walter Lippmann flattering excerpts from his crisis correspondence with Khrushchev. Just as he publicly took responsibility for the Bay of Pigs while privately blaming Eisenhower, the Joint Chiefs, and the CIA, Kennedy refrained from vulgar public gloating about the crisis while privately seeing to it that it was recognized as a triumph of his statesmanship.
When Bartlett asked him for a formal interview on the crisis, he refused: “After all, I would just be putting credit on myself. There’s no point in sitting around patting myself on the back.”
But presidential conversations on background with Bartlett, Lippmann, Sulzberger, and Bradlee and the usual skillful leaks by the White House staff ensured that Americans would know who had won the Missile Crisis. Discussing his confrontation with Khrushchev among intimate friends, the President modestly said, “I cut his balls off.”*
The foreign editor of Pravda, Yuri Zhukov, rushed to Washington from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where he had been attending a Ford Foundation conference on American-Soviet relations. Known to be close to Khrushchev, Zhukov was primed to serve as his pathfinder before Soviet-American bargaining to tie up the loose ends of the agreement with Kennedy on Cuba.
He made appointments with Thompson, James Reston, and other Americans. Rusk told the President, “I guess Zhukov doesn’t regard me as part of the ruling circle. He hasn’t asked to see me.” Over lunch, Salinger reminded Zhukov that high-ranking Russians had “deliberately lied” to Kennedy: if the Chairman’s commitments on Cuba were not swiftly carried out, a renewed crisis was “inevitable.”
Zhukov nodded: “If your President were to back down on his position, it would place Chairman Khrushchev in a most difficult position with Castro.” What about a summit that would seal the agreements on Cuba and settle other problems? Salinger gave his “private” opinion that such a meeting would be “awkward” unless important results were assured. Zhukov assured him that Khrushchev would not soon reopen Berlin: “We do not want to solve this problem without your participation.”
The Soviet Union had started dismantling the missile sites on Sunday, even before the President had replied to Khrushchev’s public letter. Jackhammers were used to break up launching pads. Missiles were loaded onto ships bound for the Black and Baltic seas. When American spy planes flew over the ships sailing for the Soviet Union, Soviet crewmen waved cheerfully, pulling back tarpaulins to reveal the departing missiles.
Frustrated, Castro tried to thwart what was happening all around him. On Sunday, two hours after Khrushchev’s letter was broadcast, he had thrown down his own demands: the United States must lift the military and economic blockade of Cuba, stop its subversive activities and violations of Cuban air space and territorial waters, and get out of Guantanamo. He threatened to down American planes soaring across his island to photograph the Soviet retreat: “Whoever comes to inspect Cuba must come in battle array!”
U Thant flew to Havana. Wearing battle fatigues and a large pistol, Castro ranted at him for two hours against the United States. Thant pledged that if a UN team were allowed to inspect the Soviet offensive sites, Washington’s no-invasion guarantee would go into effect. Castro denounced the proposal as “one more attempt to humiliate our country.”
Havana street groups sang in Conga rhythm, “Nikita, Nikita / That which you give / Is not to be taken away!”
Castro declared, “Cuba does not want to be a pawn on the world’s chessboard.… I cannot agree with Khrushchev promising Kennedy to pull out his rockets without the slightest regard to the indispensable approval of the Cuban government.” Khrushchev’s act was “immoral”: “Friends simply just do not behave in this way!”
Khrushchev privately wrote Castro that he knew some Cubans “would have preferred that the missiles had not been withdrawn.… However as political figures and statesmen, we are the leaders of the masses and the masses do not know everything.… That is why we have to lead the way.”
Without some kind of agreement with the United States, “a war would have surely ensued, causing millions of casualties, and the survivors would have blamed the leaders for failing to take the necessary steps to avoid it.” The Chairman noted that Castro’s cable of Saturday, October 27, had said “it was only a matter of time—twenty-four or seventy-two hours. Having received that alarming cable from you, knowing your courage, we gave your warning great credence. Didn’t that constitute our consultation of you?”
Castro’s cable had demanded that the Soviet Union be “the first to inflict a nuclear strike on the enemy’s territory. You know very well where such an action would have led us. It would not have been a simple blow, but the beginning of a global thermonuclear war.” Had the missiles been fired from Cuba, “the U.S. would have suffered enormous losses, but the Soviet Union and all the socialist bloc would have been greatly affected too.… The Cuban people would have heroically perished.”
“If we do struggle against imperialism, it is … to lose the least in the struggle and regain the most afterwards in order to bring communism to triumphant heights.… The measures we have adopted have allowed us to reach the aim we sought when we decided to send you the missiles to Cuba. We have managed to obtain an agreement from the U. S. not to invade Cuba and not to allow its Latin American allies to do so. We have achieved all of that without a nuclear war.”
Castro wrote Khrushchev, “We knew, without a doubt, that we would have been exterminated in case of a thermonuclear war. Still that did not lead us to ask you to remove the missiles. Nor did we ask you to give in.… Comrade Khrushchev, I did not suggest that the U. S. S. R. become the aggressor by striking first.… That would have been immoral and unworthy of me. I proposed that if the imperialists attacked Cuba and the Soviet military forces in Cuba assigned to defend us against foreign attack, we would retaliate and destroy them.
“Everyone has his own opinions. I believe that because of the Pentagon’s dangerous character, it could have the motive and will to launch a preventive strike.… Comrade Khrushchev, I maintain my point of view.… I can only wish that I might be wrong and hope that you are doing the right thing. It is not just a few Cubans, as some might have told you, but many of them who in these moments are experiencing an indescribable amount of bitterness and sadness. There is already talk of a new invasion by the imperialists, proof that their promises are shortlived and unreliable.”
Khrushchev felt deeply wounded by the rift with the protégé whom he considered “almost like a son.” Almost tearfully he told a Cuban diplomat, “Because of Fidel I cannot sleep.”
He knew that if Castro blocked the inspections of Cuba specified in his exchange of letters with Kennedy, the entire agreement might unravel: the United States could declare itself unbound by its no-invasion pledge. The Chairman was also concerned that Castro’s loud complaints of betrayal would unsettle other Soviet clients and give ammunition to Khrushchev’s own enemies in the Kremlin and Peking. He sent Mikoyan to Havana.
No Soviet leader was closer to Castro than Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan, who in 1960 was the first high-ranking Russian to call on Castro. The normally impassive Armenian could not restrain his zeal for the young revolutionary. He once told Rusk, “You Americans must realize what Cuba means to us old Bolsheviks. We’ve been waiting all of our lives for a country to go Communist without the Red Army. It has happened in Cuba, and it makes us feel like boys again.”
Born in 1895, Mikoyan had been a full member of the Presidium since 1935, far longer than Khrushchev or anyone else. It was said that if Russia returned to czarist rule, the new monarch would be heard to mutter, “Now, Anastas, what do I do?” Stalin called him “a genius in trade”; he was the man who brought Eskimo Pies to the Soviet Union. Khrushchev later recalled that during the Soviet crackdown in Hungary, Mikoyan “threatened to do something to himself as a sign of protest.”
He once told Mikoyan it was his bad luck to have been born one generation too late: otherwise he would have made a fortune. In 1957, the Armenian was the only member of Stalin’s old circle to oppose the Anti-Party Group, a gamble for which Khrushchev was forever grateful.* Harriman was impressed by how frequently the Chairman referred to “Anastas and myself,” almost suggesting that Mikoyan was part of a duumvirate.
On his way to Havana, Mikoyan stopped in New York to dine with Kuznetsov and Stevenson. He warned them that Castro might not accept ground inspections of Soviet military sites in Cuba. Arriving in the Cuban capital, he declared, “The Soviet people are with Cuba body and soul.” During Mikoyan’s second day of talks with Castro, his wife of forty years died in Moscow. So important was this mission that he did not return for her funeral.
Mikoyan found the Cuban leader morose and brittle. Castro told him it was not enough to apologize to him for Khrushchev’s insolence; he must apologize to the Cuban people. When Mikoyan explained in a Cuban meeting hall, he was reputedly pelted with rotten fruit.†
American intelligence picked up signs that Castro might even try to expel the Russians from Cuba. The Secretary of State privately told Senators that if Soviet troops started shooting at Cubans, the United States would not accept “Hungarian-type action in this hemisphere” and “would have to do something immediately.”
Rusk told Ex Comm that they did not have a “good contract with Khrushchev.” An exchange of letters was not the same thing as a formal treaty: the United States must “get everything out of their language that we possibly can.”
Kennedy told Sorensen that it would be “easy to get national support for getting the missiles out” but “much more difficult” to keep it for the final settlement. Robert Kennedy reminded his brother that during the crisis, Stevenson had seemed “so upset, so disturbed.” To negotiate against Zorin and Deputy Foreign Minister Kuznetsov at the UN, the President augmented Stevenson with the Republican John McCloy. To give Stevenson the bad news Kennedy sent Gilpatric and George Ball, who was not surprised that “Stevenson’s nose was out of joint about it.”*
In New York on Tuesday, October 30, Stevenson lunched with Kuznetsov, whom he had met in Moscow in 1958. The Russian buttered him up, saying that he had read all of Stevenson’s books. In harmony with the message that Zhukov was spreading to all who would listen, he said he hoped not only to “wind up the Cuban affair” but also conduct a “general exploration of outstanding issues,” including military bases around the world, and feel out the prospects for a Kennedy-Khrushchev summit.
This would have been in the Chairman’s interest; he knew that Stevenson would be a more sympathetic negotiating partner than the hard young men of the New Frontier. The possibility of broader talks with Stevenson at the center was music to the Governor’s ears. He quickly reported to Washington that Kuznetsov had been “extremely cordial” and was “very eager” to discuss the whole range of problems between their countries.
Kennedy was horrified not only by the idea of Stevenson renegotiating the American-Soviet relationship but by Kuznetsov’s reference to military bases around the world, which almost certainly made him worry that the Soviets were once again going to try to establish a public link between the missiles in Cuba and Turkey.
Stevenson was ignorant of Robert Kennedy’s secret assurances to Dobrynin. The President had no desire to give him information that he might one day use to vindicate his arguments within Ex Comm for a Turkey-for-Cuba trade: if Stevenson should ever be ridiculed for softness during the Missile Crisis, the temptation to hint that the President’s ultimate deal with Khrushchev was exactly what he had originally proposed might be too great to resist. Kennedy cabled Stevenson to confine himself to winding down the Cuban crisis.
Kuznetsov was worried about Castro’s threat to attack American reconnaissance planes over Cuba. Knowing that a downing could reignite the crisis, he urged the Americans to limit themselves to the Cuban periphery. The President refused but took the precaution of approving the missions one by one.*
McCone warned Ex Comm that although the missiles in Cuba were leaving, “apparently everything else is being built up, including communication complexes and possibly even a submarine base.” Assembly of Il-28 bombers was continuing.†
On Sunday, October 28, in the afterglow of Khrushchev’s crowning letter, Kennedy had told Ex Comm not to “get hung up on the Il-28 bombers.” But the Il-28s were capable of offensive use. He now asked Stevenson to tell Kuznetsov that the Il-28s should go. The Russian replied that this was a “new issue,” not covered in the Kennedy-Khrushchev exchange of letters.
Thompson advised the President to give Khrushchev “something to show to his colleagues in the Kremlin.” On Saturday evening, November 3, Robert Kennedy was sent to the Soviet Embassy.
Entertaining the Bolshoi Ballet, Dobrynin introduced the Attorney General to the beautiful prima ballerina, Maya Plisetskaya, who said, “You and I were born on the same day and same year”—November 20, 1925. Kennedy kissed her and promised to send her a present. In private, he told Dobrynin that if the Soviet Union started removing Il-28s and took them out within thirty days, “we would be prepared immediately to announce the removal of the quarantine.”
The next day, over lunch at his country house in Stamford, Connecticut, McCloy told Kuznetsov, “You know what we want … namely, the elimination of Cuba as a Soviet military base in this hemisphere.… We think you should put heavy pressure on Castro to permit suitable inspection to take place.”‡
On Tuesday, November 6, Dobrynin gave Kennedy a letter from Khrushchev that rejected the President’s Il-28 demand. Robert had what he later called “the most unpleasant conversation I have ever had with Dobrynin.” Afterward he told his brother that perhaps he had seen the Ambassador too frequently: such familiarity made “statements by me at critical times less effective.”
The President sent Stevenson and McCloy an angry cable that the Soviets seemed to be following their familiar course “in which bargains are fudged, secrecy prevents verification, agreements are reinterpreted, and by one means or another the Soviet government seeks to sustain and advance the very policy which it has apparently undertaken to give up.”
Kennedy wrote Khrushchev that he was “surprised” at his charge that he was using the Il-28s to “complicate” the situation. His October 27 letter had referred to all weapons capable of offensive use. He had “no desire to cause you difficulties.” But the Chairman must understand that the installation of missiles in Cuba had been a “deep and dangerous shock.”
Not only did it “threaten the whole safety of this hemisphere, but it was, in a broader sense, a dangerous attempt to change the worldwide status quo.… Your Government repeatedly gave us assurances of what it was not doing … and they proved inaccurate.”
Now it was “vital” to “reestablish some degree of confidence in communication between the two of us.” The issue of verification in Cuba could “become very serious indeed.” Kuznetsov and McCloy had “spoken as if this were entirely a problem for the Castro regime to settle.” But this was an “explicit condition” of their exchange of letters. “The need for this verification is, I regret to say, convincingly demonstrated by what happened in Cuba in the months of September and October.”
The President told Ex Comm that the situation was “capable of becoming dangerous very quickly.” An earlier version of his letter had closed by threatening Khrushchev with “renewed action on our side.”
That day Americans were voting in the midterm elections. Kennedy cast his ballot on Beacon Hill in Boston, flew by helicopter to Hyannis Port to see his father, and then returned to the White House, where he watched the returns with Jacqueline in the upstairs Oval Room.
The Gallup poll found that the Missile Crisis had improved the President’s public approval rating from 66 to 74 percent. Harriman had complained in late October that the Republicans were already at work to “undermine” the President’s acclaim. Congressman Thomas Curtis of Missouri charged that the crisis had been “contrived for election purposes.” Barry Goldwater declared that the President’s no-invasion pledge had “locked Castro and communism into Latin America and thrown away the key to their removal.”
Kennedy did not resume campaigning. He knew the best way to help his party was to defend his management of the crisis. Cuban exiles were charging that the Soviets had not removed their nuclear missiles but had hidden them in Cuban caves. He asked Ex Comm to issue denials to “appropriate news editors.* The White House tried to keep the exiles from buying radio time.
After the President saw one exile unburdening himself on NBC’s Today program, he gave an order that “within twenty-four hours our officials interrogate every Cuban refugee who was making statements about arms going to Cuba. The refugees are naturally trying to build up their story in an effort to get us to invade.”
Kennedy knew that an unexpected visit from an FBI agent might not only yield information but instill a proper fear of the dangers of antagonizing the administration. The previous April, after steel magnates broke their pledge not to raise steel prices, as Robert Kennedy recalled, “I told the FBI to interview them all—march into their offices the next day.” Some of the interviews took place at home, at night.†
The knock on the door chastened the steel men. One might imagine its impact on Cuban refugees of uncertain immigration status whose crime was indignation that the President might be consigning their country to Fidel Castro forever.
Kennedy told Ex Comm that he was not certain how much concern he should show the public about Khrushchev’s foot-dragging on the Il-28s. Four days before the election, when he informed the nation that the missiles were being removed, he did not mention the bombers. In case the Soviets refused to withdraw them, he did not want to risk the appearance that his efforts to close the crisis had ended in failure.
More Americans turned out on Election Day 1962 than for any off-year election in forty years. The Democrats gained four seats in the Senate and suffered a net loss of only two in the House, the best midterm showing of any party holding the White House since 1934. Political legend has had it that the Missile Crisis made the difference. After losing in California, Richard Nixon complained that “the Cuban thing” had kept him “from getting our message through.”*
Actually, it is difficult to find a single race in which the crisis changed the outcome. Polls found that farm policy, civil rights, and other domestic issues had more impact than Cuba. The crisis doubtless gave a boost to many campaigners who were already in office. Congressman Curtis recalled that Cuba “gave all the incumbents running for reelection a great help: we were important.”
Kennedy was delighted by the luster added to his political image by his party’s defiance of electoral tradition but felt that on Capitol Hill he was “about in the position we were in the last two years.” Looking forward to what he hoped would be a landslide reelection, he told friends, “Wait until 1964.”
Alexander Zinchuk gave Charles Bartlett a new confidential message, which Bartlett reported to the President: “It would be a mistake to push Russia too hard now.… He feels their policy is to get the thing cleaned up as quickly as possible.”† Khrushchev wrote the President four private letters refusing to withdraw the bombers before the quarantine was lifted.‡
On Wednesday, November 14, Kennedy told Macmillan by telephone, “We might get the [Il-28] bombers out, but they want us to withdraw the quarantine and the overflights and have inspection of Florida as well as Cuba.… We might say the whole deal is off and withdraw our no-invasion pledge and harass them generally.” The Prime Minister said, “You must not give in to him.”
The Joint Chiefs advised Kennedy that if Khrushchev did not remove the Il-28s, the quarantine should be tightened to include petroleum, oil, and lubricants. If this failed, “we should be prepared to take them out by air attack.”
In his concentration on the Il-28s, Kennedy had allowed himself to be distracted from two other elements of the Soviet offensive buildup. His November 7 letter had told Khrushchev that he attached the “greatest importance” to the Chairman’s assurances to Kohler on October 16 that there would be no Soviet submarine base on Cuba, but he evidently did not pursue the matter further.
At the President’s behest, McCloy complained to Kuznetsov about the Soviet regiments on the island, but Kennedy apparently contented himself with Soviet assurances that those military personnel associated with offensive systems on Cuba would be withdrawn.* His failure to clarify how many Soviets would be taken out of Cuba would come back to haunt him.
On Sunday, November 18, McCloy played Russian billiards and lunched with Kuznetsov at the Soviet retreat in Locust Valley, Long Island. Over coffee, McCloy told his host that removal of the Il-28s “cannot be indefinitely postponed.”
He said that the President’s offer to lift the quarantine had been “very difficult” for him to make since he had told the nation that he would not do so until UN observation of Cuba was assured: “We are neither trying to starve out the Cubans nor to be unresponsive to any constructive action taken by the Soviet Union.”
McCloy gave him an ultimatum. Kennedy’s next press conference would be on Tuesday at six o’clock: if the Soviets did not promise by then to withdraw the Il-28s, it would “put in question whether in fact we have an agreement with the Soviet Union” about Cuba. If the Il-28 problem was settled, the United States would “give our solemn declaration in the UN” not to invade Cuba and “use our good offices in connection with other Western Hemisphere countries to take the same position, assuming Cuba does not institute aggression against them.”
Kuznetsov replied, “Please do not complicate the situation by insisting upon interminable inspection on the ground. It would be impossible to go all over Cuba turning over every stone, looking into every cave and bathroom to determine whether nuclear weapons still existed there.”
McCloy said, “We are quite as anxious as the Soviet Union to wind up this transaction, for there are a number of things we ought to be discussing in order to keep this situation from arising again. Today it is Cuba and the combination of this bearded figure who is dictator of Cuba and certain miscalculation by the Soviet Union that almost brought us to war. Tomorrow it may be something else.”
On Monday afternoon, November 19, Robert Kennedy informed Bolshakov that the United States had ceased low-level reconnaissance flights over Cuba, but that if the Il-28s did not go they would resume. And if Castro downed a U.S. plane, who could tell how the confrontation might escalate? He said he needed an answer before the President’s press conference.
The Kennedys backed up their ultimatum with an even greater threat. That same day, the President sent a suggestion to NATO leaders that if the Il-28s were not promptly withdrawn, the United States might have to destroy them by air attack. This message was sent by means allowing it to be easily intercepted by the Soviet Union.
Another signal to Khrushchev and Castro may have been the destruction of a Cuban factory in mid-November by a Cuban exile sabotage team sent from the United States. The President had ordered covert action against Cuba canceled; a furious Robert Kennedy learned that nonetheless three commando teams had been sent. The factory explosion may have reminded the Soviets and Cubans that the Americans had the ability and intention to harass the Castro regime unless the Cuban problem was settled to its satisfaction.
In Havana, Castro had warned Mikoyan, “If you concede even a little to the Americans, they will immediately ask you for more and more, and they will not know when to stop.… To hell with the imperialists!” By Aragones’s recollection, Mikoyan replied with a “long, confusing exposition on Soviet-Cuban friendship, on the overthrow of the czars and all kinds of things.… It was very confusing and surreal.”
After days of bargaining, when Mikoyan asked Castro to break the deadlock with the United States by consenting to the removal of the Il-28s, the Cuban leader exploded. According to Aragones, he then leaned back, waved his hand, and cried, “Oh, to hell with the airplanes!”
Assuming that the three Il-28s destined for the Cuban Air Force had not yet been formally transferred, he knew it would be hard to keep the Russians from retrieving them. But he did have the power to veto on-site inspections of his island by outsiders, which he did.
On Tuesday, November 20, Dobrynin appeared at Justice: “I have a birthday present for you.” This was a new letter from Khrushchev. In it, the Chairman complained that in their October correspondence, the President had not included “a single mention of bomber aircraft.” Il-28s were obsolete and “cannot be classified as offensive types of weapons.” But they would go within thirty days in exchange for the lifting of the quarantine.
Robert noted that Khrushchev’s letter was “rather disorganized.” Dobrynin told him that Khrushchev dictated such letters while walking around the room, never looking at the female stenographer.
The President concluded that Castro had given in because of the noisy, low-level U.S. spy flights over Cuba: he “could not permit us to indefinitely continue widespread flights over his island at two hundred feet every day, and yet he knew that if he shot down one of our planes, it would bring back a much more serious reprisal on him.”
In the late afternoon, Bolshakov came to the Attorney General’s office, where they had cocktails and watched the President’s press conference on television. The President announced the removal of the Il-28s and the quarantine: “If we’re successful in Cuba, we would be hopeful that some of the other areas of tension could be relaxed.… I think this is a very climactic period.”
Bolshakov told Robert Kennedy that the President’s statement had been “very good.” Kennedy called Maya Plisetskaya in Boston and prodded his Russian friend to sing “Happy Birthday” to her.
The President immediately lifted the quarantine, terminated the SAC air alert, and ordered the release of all air reserves called up for the missile crisis. He cabled Macmillan, de Gaulle, and Adenauer, “It appears that at this second turning point in the Cuban crisis, Khrushchev has once again chosen the safer course.”
The next day, Kennedy wrote the Chairman, “I have been glad to get your letter of November 20, which arrived in good time yesterday. As you will have seen, I was able to announce the lifting of our quarantine promptly at my press conference, on the basis of your welcome assurance that the Il-28 bombers will be removed within a month.”
He regretted “that you have been unable to persuade Mr. Castro to accept a suitable form of inspection or verification in Cuba, and that in consequence we must continue to rely upon our own means of information. But as I said yesterday, there need be no fear of any invasion of Cuba while matters take their present favorable course.”
Khrushchev could not have missed the meaning of the President’s final seven words. Since Castro had refused the inspection of Cuba specified in their October exchange of letters, Kennedy had withheld a formal pledge not to invade Cuba. At his press conference, he had merely said, “For our part, if all offensive weapons are removed from Cuba and kept out of the hemisphere in the future, under adequate verification and safeguards, and if Cuba is not used for the export of aggressive Communist purposes, there will be peace in the Caribbean.”
On Friday morning, November 23, the day after Thanksgiving, the President convened an Ex Comm meeting at Hyannis Port, including Rusk, McNamara, the Attorney General, Taylor, McCloy, Ball, Gilpatric, Sorensen, and Bundy. The Russians were pressing him for a formal document setting down the Kennedy-Khrushchev agreement on Cuba that could be registered with the UN.
Ex Comm produced a draft saying that as long as offensive weapons were gone from Cuba, the United States could “give assurances against invasion.” Without the agreed-upon verification and other safeguards, such a promise would remain in force only if Cuba did not interfere with other means of gaining “satisfactory information”—namely, reconnaissance flights. The United States would continue to observe the Rio treaty and the UN Charter.
Kennedy instructed McCloy to tell Kuznetsov that since the Cubans had refused UN verification, this was “the most we can do.” He did not want a “long and fruitless haggle” with the Russians over the document: “Some of these differences may wither away over time if things go well.”
Aerial photography showed that within two weeks of Khrushchev’s promise, the Il-28s were gone from Cuba. In New York, Kuznetsov pleaded with McCloy to delete the clause about gaining “satisfactory information,” warning that it would inflame Castro. McCloy refused.
Through December, the Americans and Russians in New York and Kennedy and Khrushchev in their correspondence tried to agree on a joint declaration settling the Missile Crisis. They failed. The following month, Stevenson and Kuznetsov jointly asked U Thant to remove the matter from the Security Council agenda.
The President allowed his November 20 statement to stand as his final public word on the settlement. As Sorensen recalled, Kennedy “would have preferred a cleaner solution, but the way this worked out was really all right. We were able to continue our overflights, and Khrushchev got no no-invasion pledge.”*
Khrushchev later claimed that his great missile gambit brought him what he wanted all along—an American promise not to invade Cuba. In the late 1960s, in his memoirs, he said that “for the first time in history,” the “American imperialist beast was forced to swallow a hedgehog, quills and all. And that hedgehog is still in its stomach, undigested.… I’m proud of what we did.”
This was an effort to put the best face on failure. The billion dollars earmarked for moving eighty MRBMs and IRBMs, related equipment and troops in and out of Cuba was a high price to pay for a flimsy no-invasion pledge that could be revoked at any time. With Castro’s angry epithets ringing in their ears, potential Soviet clients no doubt reduced their expectation of how ardently Moscow might defend them against American threat.
The exercise did nothing to advance Khrushchev’s ambition of improving the Soviet position in the nuclear balance of power. Much of the world took his haste to withdraw the missiles as hard evidence of Soviet nuclear weakness. As with the Berlin ultimata of 1958 and 1961, he had challenged the United States and failed. The dismantled missiles and Il-28s sailing away from Cuba appeared to be the definitive rebuff to his claim in the Wars of Liberation speech that capitalism was in retreat.
Gromyko said in 1989 that “the world would have been better off” had Khrushchev not sent the missiles to Cuba. Georgi Arbatov of the U.S.A.-Canada Institute remembered the episode as a “humiliation”: “The very fact that the missiles had to be withdrawn, and not on the most splendid terms, proves that it was a mistake.”
Khrushchev had taken pains to build support among the Presidium for missiles in Cuba, but he found that while victory might have had a thousand fathers, defeat had only one. Many in Soviet politics came to see the gambit as an example of the “harebrained scheming” for which he was later thrown out of office.
The Chairman had once argued that a lean, powerful, minimum deterrent missile force that could destroy Western Europe and the American continent would be enough to restrain the West; Kennedy had acknowledged at Vienna that their two countries had nuclear parity.
For this approach the Missile Crisis* was the death knell. It suggested that Khrushchev’s policy of nuclear blackmail was too dangerous. It gave his military opponents a second great victory, after that of July 1961, when the Chairman had to repeal his massive troop cut and increase defense spending in order to counter the Kennedy defense buildup and buy military support for his Berlin showdown.
In both the summer of 1961 and the fall of 1962, the Soviet military argued that if American nuclear strength had allowed Kennedy to thwart Khrushchev’s assertions of Soviet power, the Soviet Union must now invest the resources to fully compete with the United States. At their Stamford luncheon, Kuznetsov notoriously warned McCloy, “You Americans will never be able to do this to us again.”
Khrushchev was unwilling to allow the crisis to defeat his previous intention to resolve the most nagging problems of the Cold War. His brush with nuclear danger in the Missile Crisis increased his interest in a test ban and a period of Soviet-American détente.
More belligerent Soviet civil and military officials welcomed such a period of calm as a stopgap measure until that triumphant moment when the Soviet Union competed with the United States from a position of nuclear equality or, better yet, superiority.
During his lifetime, Kennedy virtually escaped criticism for the policies that moved Khrushchev to send missiles to Cuba and for the fact that he did not warn against the missiles until they were already reaching the island. No reporter ever questioned the President about either of these failures. Had Congress in 1963 investigated the origins of the crisis, as it had Pearl Harbor, Kennedy might have been badly embarrassed on the eve of his campaign for reelection.*
Most of the American press and public, relieved by the peaceful end to the crisis, were eager to accept the official version of events presented in Kennedy’s October 22 speech—that Khrushchev had committed a “clandestine, reckless, and provocative” act in full knowledge that he was taking the world to the “abyss of destruction.”
As with the Berlin Wall, the public’s eagerness to believe in their President and the public relations talents of the Kennedy White House succeeded in diverting Americans at the time—and many historians later—from serious attention to his culpability in the Missile Crisis. Some later President, serving in an age of cynicism about the actions and motives of American leaders, would not have been so lucky.
With hindsight, it is more clear that had Kennedy not provoked Khrushchev by repeatedly heralding American nuclear superiority, indulging himself and his officials in talk that caused the Russians to fear an American first strike, and suggesting through Operation Mongoose and military preparations that the United States might invade the island in 1962, it is doubtful that Khrushchev would have felt compelled to take his giant risk on Cuba.
Had the President enough understanding of Soviet motives to issue the warning in March 1962 that he issued in September, Khrushchev would almost certainly have been deterred. The stakes would have been raised to a vital interest for which the United States had announced itself willing to go to nuclear war.
By the late 1970s, there was a substantial minority opinion that in the Missile Crisis the victor was not the American President. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had served Kennedy as Assistant Secretary of Labor, complained in 1977 that by sending missiles to Cuba, Khrushchev should have expected “to have a lot of trouble with the United States—and real trouble. All that happened was … ‘OK, you can have your man down there permanently.’”
In 1982, the columnist George Will asked, “Why must Finland take care not to offend its Soviet neighbor, while Cuba exports subversion and expeditionary forces in this hemisphere and Africa? Because in 1962 the United States, which had might and right on its side, failed to achieve the only success worthy of the name—a severing of the Soviet military connection with Cuba.”
Many critics have complained about what they consider to be the Kennedys’ pledge not to invade Cuba. Close study of the settlement suggests that the President may have deliberately avoided such an unambiguous commitment. When an early draft of his October 27 letter to Khrushchev offered “binding assurances to respect the territorial integrity and political independence of Cuba,” Kennedy struck this out and offered only “assurances against an invasion.” The new language would not foreclose Mongoose-style attacks against the island.
He also watered down his no-invasion “assurances” by conditioning his October 27 offer on “effective United Nations arrangements.” He may have anticipated that Castro would never accept on-site inspections. Even if Castro did, the ground teams could have gathered information that would be useful in American covert action against Cuba.
In his October 28 letter, Khrushchev tried to unilaterally improve the President’s offer by referring to “your statement … that there would be no attack or invasion against Cuba.” Kennedy caught the Chairman’s trick. His reply to Khrushchev merely said that he would stand by what he had written on Saturday.
In his November 20 press conference statement, the President toughened his conditions: there would be “peace in the Caribbean” only if there were no more offensive weapons in Cuba, if there were “adequate verification and safeguards,” and if there were “no export of revolution” from Cuba and if Cuba did not violate the Rio treaty and the UN Charter.*
These additional conditions, which were little noticed, had the effect of neutralizing Kennedy’s no-invasion assurances. He knew that the UN Charter and the Rio Pact were so ambiguous that it would not be difficult, if necessary at some point, for the United States to declare that Cuba had violated them and then invade.* And by late November, he knew that the chances of achieving the “adequate verification and safeguards” (defined with similar, probably intentional ambiguity) were almost zero.
One must therefore conclude that the President deliberately booby-trapped his no-invasion pledge in order not to rule out further American efforts to topple the Castro regime, including invasion. Here he employed his extraordinary powers of public presentation to distract the world from the fact that on this issue he had gotten the better of Khrushchev.
By November 1962, newly reeducated about the bloody cost of full-scale military force against Cuba, Kennedy was even less disposed to invade the island than before the Missile Crisis. But he was still unsettled by the idea of suffering the domestic and foreign political consequences of living with Castro until he left the White House in 1969. Especially if criticism of his settlement grew so brutal that it endangered his reelection, he probably wanted to be able to assure the American people that the agreement did not bind him to tolerate Castro forever.
In the wake of the Missile Crisis, Kennedy never spelled out in public the fact that Khrushchev had achieved no guarantee for Cuba against American invasion or attack. A major reason was no doubt the President’s fear that if Khrushchev’s retreat from Cuba looked too embarrassing, the Chairman might reveal Kennedy’s secret deal on Turkey.
Nor did the President apparently gain any public Soviet pledge that Cuba would not be used to spread revolution throughout Latin America. He deleted from the draft of his October 27 letter to Khrushchev a demand for “binding assurances” from Cuba “that it would not seek, through military aggression or subversion, to interfere in the affairs of other American states.” Robert Kennedy evidently made such a demand orally when he met with Dobrynin that Saturday evening.
No evidence now available suggests that Khrushchev met the demand or that the President seriously raised the matter with the Russians again. At his November 20 press conference, he included Cuba’s refraining from export of revolution among his conditions for peace.* Including this condition in what he intended as a definitive statement of the crisis settlement implied that Kennedy had done more than he really had to ensure that the Soviets would not use Cuba as a base from which to communize the hemisphere.
In the short run, this reinforced his efforts to ensure that Americans saw the Missile Crisis as a victory. Over the long run, it meant that each time something that could be taken as new evidence of revolutionary subversion of Latin America was revealed—arms caches, forged documents, sabotaged steel mills—the President would be forced to explain to an ever-more-angry domestic opposition why he did not intend to enforce the agreement with Khrushchev by invading Cuba.
Kennedy’s successors paid the price for his effort to paper over the issue. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the Soviet Union used its Cuban base to nurture communism in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and other Latin countries, those Presidents had to deflect complaints from the American public that the Soviets had violated the Kennedy-Khrushchev agreement.
Later critics said that Kennedy should have threatened in November to tighten the quarantine or invade Cuba in order to win a settlement more favorable to the United States. In reply Bundy has sensibly noted that the President had imposed the quarantine simply to get offensive weapons out of Cuba: had he tried to barter it also for a Soviet pledge of good behavior in the Caribbean or removal of the entire Soviet military presence on Cuba, “we would have soon faced a rapid erosion of support at home and abroad.”†
Thus Kennedy’s management of the Missile Crisis achieved neither victory nor defeat. He simply accomplished his central purpose, the restoration of the status quo ante in Cuba, no more and no less. Khrushchev had pledged that the Soviet Union would not send offensive weapons to the island, but the importance of this pledge was soon diminished as the Russians improved their submarine strength in the western Atlantic and Caribbean and installed in Cuba such potentially offensive weapons as the MiG-23 fighter-bomber, which could be quickly adapted to carry nuclear weapons.*
The chief effect of Kennedy’s heavily qualified no-invasion assurance was not to bar Kennedy or his successors from invading Cuba but to compel that President to explain to world opinion why an invasion would not violate the Kennedy-Khrushchev understanding.
The victory Kennedy did score was with American opinion. In a drama far more compact and comprehensible to the general public than the abstractions of Berlin, he had seemed to throw down the gauntlet against Khrushchev and win. One American official called the Missile Crisis “the Gettysburg of the Cold War.” Unaware of their President’s responsibility for provoking the crisis, most Americans in 1962 saw it as a demonstration of firmness and mastery of Cold War statecraft that displaced previous anxieties that Kennedy had been too soft and inexperienced during the confrontations at the Bay of Pigs, Laos, Vienna, and Berlin.
Richard Rovere wrote in the New Yorker that Kennedy had achieved “perhaps the greatest personal diplomatic victory of any President in our history.” Newsweek reported that Kennedy’s behavior in the crisis “has given Americans a sense of deep confidence in the temper of their President and the team he had working with him.” The hard-line columnist George Sokolsky said that Kennedy had “established that the ‘soft’ period in our history is over.”
No longer was the President so rattled by the danger of being charged with appeasement. In December 1962, his poll ratings and congressional majority were little more favorable than those for the first twenty-one months of his Presidency. But in the wake of the near-unanimous acclamation, Kennedy felt far more politically self-confident to pursue the kind of Soviet détente that he might have preferred to have started in January 1961.
An improvement in relations would also reduce the danger that another confrontation like the Missile Crisis would spiral into nuclear war. Over dinner at the White House, the President reminded Ben Bradlee that one false step on Cuba could have wiped out “all of us at this table and our children.”
On December 1, the Saturday Evening Post published a Missile Crisis postmortem by Charles Bartlett and Stewart Alsop. What grabbed headlines was a blind comment by a “nonadmiring” official that at the decisive October 20 Ex Comm meeting, “Adlai wanted a Munich. He wanted to trade the Turkish, Italian, and British missile bases for the Cuban bases.”*
The New York Daily News brayed, ADLAI ON SKIDS OVER PACIFIST STAND IN CUBA. Deeply hurt, Stevenson was convinced that Kennedy had inspired the article, perhaps to force his resignation. The President wrote him that he “did not discuss the Cuban crisis or any of the events surrounding it with any newspapermen.”†
This was not true. While researching the article, Bartlett had mentioned Stevenson’s apostasy to Kennedy over dinner. As Bartlett recalled, the President seemed “not too displeased that this had turned up,” both to place Stevenson’s suggestion on the historical record and because it had “rather shocked” him. Kennedy asked that a reference to Sorensen as an Ex Comm “dove” be deleted so that critics who knew he had been a postwar noncombatant would not leap on him. He asked no such favor for Stevenson.
The President knew that if a Turkey-for-Cuba trade was treated by the press as some kind of wild pacifist idea, the public might be less likely to suspect that this was exactly how he had secretly ended his confrontation with Khrushchev. Only in 1987, when Kennedy’s willingness to consider an explicit Turkey-for-Cuba trade via Andrew Cordier finally became public, did Stevenson enjoy a measure of final vindication. Richard Harwood wrote in the Washington Post, “It now appears that Stevenson was not the only ‘dove’ at the White House during the crisis.”
A week after the Alsop-Bartlett article appeared, Stevenson introduced Kennedy at a large Washington black-tie dinner. He looked and sounded drugged: “Ladies and gentlemen, / the auth-ore, / the produc-ore, / the dye-rect-ore, / and the star / of Mr. Khrushchev’s new play hit in Moscow, / ‘A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to Cuba,’ / the President of the United States.”
The audience roared. In keeping with his vow not to gloat in public about the Missile Crisis, Kennedy barely suppressed a smile. When he reached the lectern, he ignored his UN Ambassador. George Ball noticed that after the Alsop-Bartlett flap, Stevenson went “through the motions, making speeches, yet with a feeling in his heart that it didn’t make any difference to the world if he fell over and had a heart attack.”
During the second week of the crisis, the President had told Ormsby-Gore, “A world in which there are large quantities of nuclear weapons is an impossible world to handle. We really must try to get on with disarmament if we get through this crisis … because this is just too much.”
The rendezvous with disaster also sharpened Khrushchev’s interest in controlling nuclear weapons. After the acute phase of the crisis was over, Zhukov told Harriman that Cuba had shown that nuclear war was “unthinkable.” They should “try to reach an agreement on nuclear testing.” A test ban treaty would allow both sides to reduce defense spending and “concentrate on economic competition.”
Harriman asked about China. Zhukov replied that there was not much time, but if Washington and Moscow achieved a test ban, “world opinion would force other nations, including China, to agree.”
Rostow warned Bundy that having failed to redress the nuclear balance with missiles in Cuba, the Soviets would now try other means, such as nuclear weapons in space and a radically accelerated ICBM program. The United States should try to “maximize the influence in Moscow of those who may argue that the only realistic road to Russian security is by inspected arms control.”
On October 30, Arthur Dean spoke to Kuznetsov in New York about a test ban treaty. In late November, when Mikoyan stopped in Washington, he told Kennedy that they “should proceed to a point-by-point negotiation of all outstanding questions.” The Russians were waiting for “constructive proposals from the U.S.” on Berlin. Bundy later told the President, “I suspect he may have to wait quite a while.”
On Tuesday, December 11, Khrushchev wrote Kennedy a nine-page letter on Cuba and Berlin.* He promised to break the deadlock on a nuclear test ban.
After the Missile Crisis, Peking had denounced the Chairman for both “adventurism” and “capitulationism.” Before the Supreme Soviet, Khrushchev retorted that the Chinese were more capitulationist than he: didn’t they tolerate those “foul-smelling” colonial enclaves, Hong Kong and Macao, right on their doorstep?
Had the “loudmouths” been heeded, “we would have entered a new world war.… Our vast country could have withstood it, of course, but tens and tens of millions of people would have perished! And Cuba would have simply ceased to exist.” For the first time, Americans had felt the “scorching breath of thermonuclear war on their own threshold.
“They began to realize that if a world war broke out, it would take place not somewhere across the ocean—in Europe or Asia—but everywhere, including the U.S.A., and would bring millions of Americans misery and death.” The American elections had demonstrated this new humility. “The American people blackballed some of the more aggressive politicians, and first among them such a warmonger as Nixon.”*
Reading the text, Kennedy called Arthur Schlesinger and read him two particularly well-drawn sentences,† saying, “Khrushchev certainly has some good writers.” Schlesinger replied that they could do as well for him if only he would give two-hour speeches.
Responding to Khrushchev’s latest letter, the President wrote, “We have come to the final stage of the Cuban affair between us, the settlement of which will have significance for our future relations and for our ability to overcome other difficulties. I wish to thank you for your expression of appreciation of the understanding and flexibility we have tried to display.”
Referring to their “confidential channels,” he wrote, “I have not concealed from you that it was a serious disappointment to me that dangerously misleading information should have come through these channels before the recent crisis.” A Soviet diplomat had also used “a representative of a private television network as a channel to us. This is always unwise in our country, where the members of the press often insist on printing at some later time what they may learn privately.”*
Kennedy explained that “the competition for news in this country is fierce. A number of the competitors are not great admirers of my Administration, and perhaps an even larger number are not wholly friendly to yours.… It would be a great mistake to think that what appears in newspapers and magazines necessarily has anything to do with the policy and purpose of this government.”
He looked forward to “your confidential letter and proposals on the test ban question, and I think there is every reason to keep working on this problem. I hope that in your message on this subject you will tell me what you think about the position of the people in Peking on this question.”
On Wednesday, December 19, Khrushchev replied, “Now we have untied our hands to engage closely on other urgent international matters.” The time had come to “put an end once and for all” to nuclear testing.
“Mr. President, you and your representatives point out that without at least a minimum number of on-site inspections, you will not manage to persuade the U.S. Senate to ratify an agreement.… Well, if this is the only difficulty … we are ready to meet you halfway.”
He noted that Arthur Dean had told Kuznetsov that two to four annual on-site inspections on Soviet territory would be sufficient. To “overcome the deadlock,” he offered “two to three inspections a year on the territory of each of the nuclear powers in the seismic areas where some suspicious earth tremors might occur.”
Kennedy was exhilarated by Khrushchev’s letter but puzzled by the reference to two to four inspections as being adequate. Dean denied having said so to Kuznetsov. White House staff members complained that Dean had a reputation for vagueness.†
Khrushchev may have confused the conversation with Jerome Wiesner’s October suggestion to a Soviet scientist named Yevgeni Federov that one way to break the test ban deadlock would be for the Russians to offer three or four annual inspections: Kennedy might propose seven or eight, and they could split the difference.
The President wrote Khrushchev that on on-site inspections, “there appears to be some misunderstanding.… Ambassador Dean advises me that the only number which he mentioned in his discussions with Deputy Minister Kuznetsov was a number between eight and ten.” This was a “considerable decrease,” since the United States “had previously been insisting upon a number between twelve and twenty.” He had hoped that the Soviet Union would “match” his concession.
Khrushchev was infuriated by Kennedy’s rejection of his offer of a test ban treaty on what he thought to be roughly American terms. As Thompson said, the Chairman “probably thought it was deliberate.”
Identified by the American press as having been used to deceive the President about the missiles in Cuba, Georgi Bolshakov was abruptly called back to Moscow. The Attorney General wanted to do something for him but did not want to be seen feting the Russian now publicly known to have been sent to trick his brother. He persuaded Bartlett to give Bolshakov a farewell luncheon at home.
Rising from the table, a Soviet diplomat gave a long speech brushing aside his country’s lies about the missiles as a “misunderstanding.” Driving Bolshakov away from the party, Robert asked him why he hadn’t spoken up to support a citizen of the Soviet Union. Bolshakov said, “He doesn’t know what I know.”
He returned to Moscow as broadcasting chief of the Novosti Press Agency. The Attorney General sent him a handwritten note: “There is still peace even though you have been gone from the United States for more than two months. I would not have thought that possible.… I hope you are telling all your Communist friends what nice people we are over here—and that they believe you.…
“Give my best wishes to my friend Maya. Why don’t you two jump into one of those brand new luxurious jet liners and fly over and see us. She could dance, I could sing, and you could make a speech. Best wishes from your friend, Bob.”
The President closed the year by flying to Palm Beach. On Saturday, December 29, he and Jacqueline were driven in an open white car onto the Orange Bowl field in Miami, where forty thousand Americans and Cuban exiles welcomed the surviving veterans of the Bay of Pigs from Cuban jails.
When the rally was announced, Rusk and Bundy had opposed a presidential appearance. O’Donnell warned Kennedy, “It will look as though you’re planning to back them in another invasion of Cuba.” But the Attorney General said his brother’s presence would help to soften his sense of guilt over the Bay of Pigs.
Even during the Missile Crisis, Robert had not forgotten the men. Preparing for a possible invasion of Cuba, he asked Brigade leaders whether they were ready to land in Havana, establish a new government, and release the 1,113 prisoners. In late November, he was told that if the men were not rescued soon, he would be “liberating corpses.” Both Kennedys were grieved by the veterans’ fate and knew that if they started dying in large numbers, it would renew calls for military action against Castro, tearing open the Cuban issue just after the delicate settlement had been reached with Khrushchev.
To fulfill Castro’s demands, the Attorney General persuaded manufacturers to pledge $44 million in drugs, baby food, pharmaceuticals, and surgical, dental, and veterinary instruments.* The Department of Agriculture donated $9 million in powdered milk. Castro delayed the prisoners’ release until the outstanding $2.9 million cash ransom from April was also paid. Robert turned to Cardinal Cushing, who quickly raised $1 million from “Latin American friends,” to whom he promised repayment in three months. Lucius Clay helped to raise the remainder.
A list of cash contributors was never released. It was plausibly suggested that the Kennedy family may have donated some of the money. The President’s 1960 campaign aide Hy Raskin understood that another “very substantial” sum came from “Jake the Barber” Factor, a wealthy California Democrat who had been imprisoned for a fraudulent stock deal. Factor’s case for a presidential pardon had been argued by Governor Pat Brown before the Kennedy brothers, who had rejected it. Raskin recalled that Kennedy later changed his mind and granted the pardon.
By Christmas Eve, the last of the prisoners were airborne for Miami. The Attorney General said, “All right … what about Hoffa?”
At the Orange Bowl, Jacqueline told the men in Spanish that she hoped her son would grow up to be so brave. Cubans wept and shouted, “Guerra! Guerra! Guerra!” Pepe San Roman, the Brigade commander, gave the President the banner that had flown over the invasion site for three days: “We temporarily deposit it with you for your safekeeping.”
Unfurling the banner, Kennedy cried, “I can assure you that this flag will be returned to this brigade in a free Havana!”*
The text of the speech was given to Khrushchev. Deprived of a formal pledge not to invade Cuba, still burning over what he saw as the President’s test ban double cross, straining to detect signs that Kennedy intended to exploit his advantage after the Missile Crisis, the Chairman may have wondered whether this challenge foretold some new effort to overthrow the Castro regime.
He wrote the President on New Year’s Eve, “The year 1962 now passing into history witnessed events whose fatal development was possible to avert, thanks to the fact that both sides showed a sensible approach and reached a compromise.”
In Washington, Dobrynin declared that chances for better relations with the United States were brighter than at any time since the long-ago springtime of 1960.
*Soviet radio that day called on the Kennedy administration to pay attention to “the people’s wise demand” and “remove its rocket nuclear weapons from Turkey.”
*Walt Rostow warned Bundy on October 31 that the Russians were “re-raising” the issues of Turkey and Guantanamo “at levels short of formal diplomacy.”
*He even told Hugh Sidey that “the country rather enjoyed the Cuban quarantine. It was exciting, it was a diversion, there was the feeling we were doing something.” He did hasten to add that “it might have been a different story if there had been thousands killed in a long battle.”
*Khrushchev did confide to the Yugoslav envoy in Moscow that Mikoyan had drafted his speech to the Central Committee during the Anti-Party Coup so that if the tide seemed to be going against Khrushchev, he could change it to suit the turn of events.
†Despite all this, Mikoyan and his son Sergo, who accompanied him on both the 1960 and 1962 trips, persisted in their enthusiasm for Castro. In a 1989 conversation with the author, Sergo Mikoyan, who emphatically criticized other shortcomings in Soviet foreign policy, refused to concede that Castro’s thirty years in power had not been good for the island.
*The old Stevensonian Arthur Schlesinger recalled that in 1961, when McCloy and Arthur Dean went to the UN to work with Stevenson on nuclear testing and disarmament, the Governor had tried to ignore them: “They were up on the top story of the building, sore. Stevenson wouldn’t even invite them to meetings.… I would take drafts up to them and get their stupid reactions.… McCloy and Dean had nothing of value to contribute and they took hours to do it.”
*Ex Comm agreed that if a U-2 was attacked by a SAM site on Cuba, “we should probably assume that this is a deliberate Soviet decision.” The United States would attack the SAM site by air strike, concurrent with a message from Kennedy to Khrushchev explaining “the vital necessity of continuing aerial surveillance.” If a U-2 was downed, the United States would destroy the SAM site responsible, “communicate a second time with Moscow, and finally, in the absence of satisfactory assurances, eliminate the remainder of the SAM system” on Cuba.
†The CIA presumed that the Soviets had sent forty-two Il-28 bombers to Cuba, of which seven had been assembled. We now know that only twelve were actually delivered; three of these were earmarked for the Cuban Air Force and had yet to be uncrated.
‡Unaware of Kennedy’s secret concession, McCloy also warned Kuznetsov not to bring the Turkish missiles into the negotiations: “It bears no relation to the Caribbean or the Western Hemisphere.”
*When the Washington Evening Star ran the caves allegation on its front page, Kennedy asked McCloy to speak with the Star’s editors to persuade them to “check such stories with the government before they print them.”
†Robert Kennedy said later that the interviewing at night “was a decision the FBI made … nor did they discuss it with me, nor did I even know who they were interviewing.” William Sullivan of the FBI agreed that “we were the ones who made the decision to interview at night, not Kennedy.” Douglas Dillon recalled Robert’s suspicions “that things like this might have been done on purpose by Edgar Hoover to embarrass him.”
Even while Vice President, Lyndon Johnson used the same technique to throw his foes off balance. Two months after the President’s steel showdown, when a Pecos, Texas, editor and the editor of Farm and Ranch were investigating his relations with the wheeler-dealer Billy Sol Estes, he asked Hoover, his old friend and Washington neighbor, to send agents to interview them. Hoover promised to “get started on it right away,” but drew the line when johnson asked him to do the same with a Florida Congressman who was calling for his impeachment.
*Nixon went on to perceptively speculate that Kennedy and Khrushchev might have made a secret “deal on NATO and the Warsaw Pact” to settle the crisis.
†Zinchuk’s message must have come from an excellent source. As Bartlett reported the rest of the conversation to Kennedy, “The apparent justification … not the reason—for the sneak of the missiles into Cuba is to be the Turkish episode, which was done against their stern protests and maps were published in Turkey showing the targets in the SU. Khrushchev apparently was encouraged in acceding to the move by a desire to let you know how it felt to have those things moved in on you.”
‡As of this writing, the contents of Kennedy’s November 15 letter and Khrushchev’s November 6, 12, 14, and 15 letters are still kept secret by the American and Soviet governments.
*As Raymond Garthoff has noted, had Kennedy known that there were actually forty-two thousand, many of whom were not associated with the offensive weapons, he would have had to make a much larger issue about them. His September warning to Khrushchev had specifically included “any organized combat force in Cuba.”
*Although the Kennedy-Khrushchev agreement on Cuba was never formalized in a treaty, later Presidents and Soviet leaders treated it with almost the same reverence. In 1970, after the United States discovered construction of a Soviet submarine base in Cuba at Cienfuegos Bay, Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, examined the record of 1962 and told the President that the agreement was “never formally buttoned down.”
Despite the ambiguity of the Kennedy-Khrushchev understanding about submarine bases, Kissinger proceeded as if submarines were as clearly prohibited from Cuba as long-range missiles or bombers. He told the Soviet chargé Yuli Vorontsov, that the United States regarded the understanding as in effect. Happy to reaffirm the agreement for Castro, who was worried about a Nixon-inspired invasion, Vorontsov replied that the Soviets also saw it as “still in full force.” TASS denied that the Soviet Union was building a submarine base in Cuba and confirmed its commitment to observe the 1962 understanding.
*Or the “Caribbean crisis,” as Russians have called it to this day, emphasizing not the Soviet offensive weapons but the American threat of aggression in the Caribbean.
*As it did after the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy administration headed off such hearings.
*An earlier draft added that the United States had “refrained from taking further military action against the Communist buildup in Cuba, but we are ready for whatever action might be required.”
*Kennedy may have imposed the new conditions under pressure from the Joint Chiefs, who on November 16 recommended to the President that “any assurances to Castro be hedged by conditions protecting our obligations under the Rio Pact and linking the duration of the assurance to good behavior by Castro and the acceptance of air surveillance.” A November 12 Ex Comm document noted that “if the Cubans started … to foment trouble in the hemisphere, it would be clear that the OAS under the Rio Treaty would have to take such action as might be necessary, up to and including invasion.”
*On December 11, Rusk underscored the message by cabling McCloy to remind the Russians that “if Cuba undertook new acts of aggression, the U.S. and other American republics could not be expected to be bound by no-invasion assurances.”
†Bundy, who on the eve of the crisis had defended the Il-28s in Cuba as acceptable, thought the President’s November demand to remove the bombers “went right to the edge of what was prudent.”
*After the discovery of MiG-23 deliveries to Cuba in 1978 and 1982, the State Department ruled that as then configured they did not violate the Kennedy-Khrushchev agreement.
*Actually Stevenson had not mentioned Britain.
†Bartlett said that while researching the article, someone gave him a tip about Stevenson’s performance. He confirmed it with members of Ex Comm: “Most of them did not like Adlai Stevenson and most of them were very happy to verify it.” Robert Pierpoint of CBS reported that Bundy was the “nonadmiring” official: “It is well known in Washington that Bundy, a Republican, is not a friend of Stevenson’s.” Bundy denied it. George Ball thought it was Nitze. Others suspected Acheson. Ball was amazed that so many officials were leaking to Alsop and Bartlett after the President’s order “that nobody was supposed to discuss this with anybody.”
*Still kept secret as of this writing.
*One Western intelligence report had it that thirty-five to forty high-ranking military officers who were members of the Supreme Soviet boycotted the session in protest of the Chairman’s handling of the Missile Crisis.
†These were “At the climax of events around Cuba, there began to be a smell of burning in the air,” and “Those militarists who boast that they have submarines with Polaris rockets on board, and other surprises, as they put it, against the Soviet Union, would do well to remember that we are not living in mud huts either.” One of the speech writers was Fyodor Burlatsky.
*This reference to John Scali may have been especially motivated by the leak to Scali, evidently by the Russians, of Khrushchev’s November 20 letter to Kennedy. It suggested that the President wished his communications with Khrushchev through middlemen like Bolshakov to be classified into eternity. His worry that the Soviets would reveal his Turkish missile concession may have been newly aroused.
†Warren Heckrotte, one of the American test ban negotiators at Geneva, later said that he and most of his colleagues thought Kuznetsov’s report to Khrushchev had been “a correct appraisal of what he thought he had been told.”
*This was not all altruism. Windfall profits were promised by instant tax rulings allowing companies to take deductions at retail prices.
*After hearing about this challenge, Castro complained to a crowd that Kennedy had had too much to drink: “Never has a President so degraded the dignity of his position! This man acted like a vulgar pirate chief and freebooter to meet with these cowards and then say that their flag would return to a free Havana.… Kennedy the intriguer should stop dreaming. We are free, Mr. Kennedy!” In 1975, bitter members of the Brigade who felt betrayed by Kennedy and his successors demanded and obtained the flag’s return from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.