9
The operation seemed to be unravelling. The surveillance at the Pekin couldn’t be ignored, and inevitably led to questions about the reliability of Penkovsky’s most recent material – was it of the same calibre as his earlier intelligence, or could they now be dealing with the same situation they had faced with Pyotr Popov, who had come under KGB control in 1959? On 20 July, John McCone, who had recently replaced Allen Dulles as head of the CIA, met with President Kennedy in the White House and informed him that they thought the CHICKADEE source was in trouble. ‘We conclude he is under suspicion, possible surveillance, and even might have been compromised to the point where he could be acting as a counter-agent,’ McCone noted. As a result, he told Kennedy, none of the source’s most recent reports were being distributed, pending a more thorough analysis of them.
This review took place over the next six days, and examined Penkovsky’s entire security history. It concluded that he had not been compromised, but recommended that the following six measures, which had been agreed with MI6, be taken:
1. Communications with HERO must be maintained in any event.
2. No pressure will be brought on HERO to produce intelligence, particularly in the event he should be retired.
3. If HERO goes abroad, we recognize that he may wish to defect and we will not induce him to return to the USSR.
4. If HERO should remain in the Committee [i.e. the State Scientific Technical Committee], we will make every effort to restrict personal communications with him to a social-professional context.
5. We will examine the possibilities of clandestine exfiltrations from the USSR for the eventuality of his retirement.
6. WYNNE’s role will in future be one of support for HERO’s position in the Committee and his clandestine communication role will cease.
On 30 July, Howard Osborn, now chief of the Soviet Russia division, requested an authorisation for £15,000 to be used in support of their ‘covert agent’. This was the CIA’s share of the cost for ‘one special phase of operations’ regarding Penkovsky – the other £15,000 was to be provided by MI6. This was Wynne’s pay-off for his work in Moscow, although he would later receive considerably more compensation. The assumption was that only Wynne had been blown, and removing him from the sphere of the operation would lance the boil and allow it to continue.
With a lesser source, the operation would have been wrapped up the moment it was clear the KGB had spotted contact between the liaison and the agent-in-place. But Penkovsky had become too important for that to happen, and was gaining importance by the day: by now the CIA had realised that something was going on in Cuba. Reliable reports suggested that the Soviets were dramatically increasing the number of their ships heading to and from the island’s ports. John McCone was concerned, and stepped up the number of overhead flights by U-2 spy planes to try to get a sense of what was happening. On 10 August, McCone examined intelligence that included U-2 photographs and reports of cargo ship movements from the Baltic and Black Seas to Cuba: he was also well aware of the material Penkovsky had given about the Soviets’ nuclear capabilities, strategies and plans.
Later that day, in a meeting of a National Security Council subcommittee overseeing covert actions in Cuba, McCone suggested that the Soviets might be bringing electronic and military equipment to the island, ‘including medium range ballistic missiles’. The same day, he dictated a memorandum to President Kennedy in which he stated: ‘The only construction I can put on the missiles going into Cuba is that the Russians are preparing to introduce offensive missiles.’
This theory was greeted with scepticism by Kennedy’s advisers. McCone had been brought in to clear up the CIA after Dulles’s resignation following the Bay of Pigs disaster, but he was a lifelong Republican, and a conservative tycoon to boot. He had a reputation for being a militant anti-Communist, and from the start was deeply mistrusted by liberals in the administration. In addition, there was no solid evidence for his assertions of Soviet intentions. Indeed, his subordinates advised him to leave out his suggestion about offensive missiles in his memo to Kennedy until there was proof of it.
McCone insisted it stay in, because he was convinced he was right – and he soon had some circumstantial evidence to support the idea. On 29 August, a U-2 plane photographed surface-to-air missiles and seven KOMAR guided-missile patrol boats on Cuba. However, even this didn’t rouse Kennedy to action. After the Republican senator Kenneth Keating started publicly asking questions about ‘rocket installations in Cuba’, Kennedy issued a statement on 4 September saying that despite a clear build-up of weapons on the island, there was no evidence that any had an offensive purpose. ‘Were it to be otherwise,’ Kennedy said, ‘the gravest issues would arise.’
*
A new crisis was rapidly emerging, but for a handful of people within MI6 and the CIA there was an additional worry: Oleg Penkovsky had now missed his last three scheduled appointments. Just when they most needed to know what was happening in the corridors of the Kremlin, their man in place had dropped out of touch.
In late August, Penkovsky finally reappeared, at a reception in the apartment of the US agricultural attaché Bill Horbaly. The reception was for an American tobacco delegation, and Rodney Carlson was again present. As with the meeting at Spaso House on Independence Day, it had been decided to use a toilet cistern as a dead drop.
Penkovsky turned up around half an hour into the party, and this time he was alone. He mingled and made his way towards Carlson, who was talking to one of the State Committee’s interpreters and an American embassy officer. Carlson felt he was ‘obviously somewhat nervous’, but that nothing otherwise seemed amiss.
After some chit-chat, Carlson moved away and headed to the bathroom. Once inside, he locked the door and removed a small oilskin-wrapped package from his pocket. He taped it to the underside of the lavatory’s water tank cover, then flushed the toilet and rejoined the reception. He found Penkovsky, and the Russian informed him he had a package for him and asked if he had anything in return. Carlson told him he did, and that it was in the bathroom.
As he had done at the Seniors’ party, Penkovsky expressed interest in the apartment, and Carlson and two other Americans showed him around it. Penkovsky asked if he could use the bathroom and walked in – the others moved away and Carlson quickly followed and locked the door. Penkovsky immediately handed him a package from his pocket, and Carlson removed his from the tank and handed him it. They left separately and rejoined the party.
Penkovsky’s package included a letter in which he discussed his anxiety that he would be discovered, and which asked several questions about what would happen if he were to defect to Britain or the United States. He had calculated that, within the terms they had already agreed, he would have around forty thousand dollars in his bank account, but he felt this would not be enough to start again from scratch with his family. He asked for his contributions to be assessed by the heads of MI6 and the CIA and an offer for a lump sum to be made. Worried about the implications of this, the CIA quickly prepared a forged Soviet internal passport in the name of Vladimir Butov for Penkovsky to use if he needed to escape suddenly.
*
The Chisholms had left Moscow in June, and Gervase – ‘Gerry’ – Cowell had now taken over as the head of MI6’s Moscow Station. Cowell was a slight 36-year-old with a somewhat shy demeanour but a sprightly sense of humour. In 1948, he had studied Russian at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge with Ruari Chisholm; they had even performed in the same production of Pushkin’s Boris Godunov. While at Cambridge, Cowell had been spotted by MI6 and recruited by his tutor. He had been warned that espionage primarily consisted of dreary paper-pushing but, as he drily observed many years later, ‘happily my career henceforth was quite hairy and turbulent’.
The plan was now for Penkovsky to meet with Pamela Cowell, codenamed PANSY, at parties in British diplomats’ flats. All these flats had tins of Harpic detergent in the bathroom, and MI6 had built a replica of one with a false bottom in which they could insert instructions and microfilm. PANSY would visit the bathroom and replace the Harpic tin with her own. Some time later, HERO would retrieve its contents, and PANSY would then switch back the tins.
On 6 September, Penkovsky attended a screening of A Taste of Honey at the British Embassy. Gervase Cowell was there, and Penkovsky made eye contact with him, but he could see no sign of Pamela, who had in fact not yet arrived in the Soviet Union, and so he shook hands, watched the film and left. The scheme with the Harpic tins was never used.
Four days later, the CIA and MI6 drafted a letter to Penkovsky asking him if he had any ‘concrete information as to military measures being undertaken by the USSR to convert Cuba into an offensive military base’. More specifically, they asked if he knew whether there were any plans to place surface-to-air missiles on the island. And in an indication of how urgent this had become, the letter responded to his previous request for clarity on financial remuneration by stating ‘our leadership has authorized an award of $250,000, which is being set aside for you until you come to the West’.
This letter was given to Pamela Cowell to pass to Penkovsky at another reception hosted by David Senior. But Penkovsky didn’t appear at the reception, and on 16 September a cable was sent to Washington that read simply: ‘HERO NO SHOW’.
*
On 18 September 1962, General Matvei Zakharov, Chief of the Soviet General Staff, and Admiral Vitaly Fokin, deputy head of the Soviet Navy, sent a top-secret message directly to Nikita Khrushchev informing him of the Navy’s plans to send ships to Cuba. These included a brigade of torpedo submarines and a division of missile submarines, which would travel submerged by day and only surface at night. A week later they sent another message to Moscow, stating that 114 ships had now been sent to Cuba, with 35 still scheduled to be sent. They also reported that they now planned to equip the four torpedo submarines with nuclear warheads, and that on 7 October a transport ship, the Aleksandrovsk, would also embark for the island, accompanied by a Project 627 nuclear submarine.
In Britain, civil servants began drafting the documents that would be given to those selected to retreat to the massive bunker in Wiltshire if a nuclear attack seemed imminent. The documents often read like a caricature of the British stiff upper lip, with suggestions for preparing for a journey that involved abandoning one’s family with no likely return phrased as though discussing a school outing: ‘Food cannot be provided on the journey, and you are advised to take something to eat, such as chocolate or biscuits, with you.’ Those reading the document would have been informed that they would need ‘only pocket money’ while they were away, but could withdraw twenty-five pounds in advance of their salary.
In September 1962, the government took part in FALLEX 62, a major NATO war exercise, and tested how Britain would survive a 200-megaton attack on missile sites, airfields and centres of population. The exercise suggested that there would be major breakdowns in communications and law and order and, perhaps most disturbingly, that dealing with the latter would be seriously hampered as many of the police and Army would have their radiological lives ‘used up in the first few hours and days after attack’, thanks in part to a lack of protected accommodation. While the politicians headed for the bunkers, others would be above ground trying to save lives, and becoming contaminated in the process. For now it was all being conducted on paper and by telephone, but beneath the surface lay the nightmarish possibility of a world plunged into darkness.
The Soviets were also preparing for war, but with rather more purpose. The United States’ National Security Agency – an organisation so secretive it is sometimes referred to as ‘No Such Agency’ – was keeping a very close eye on the Soviet forces’ readiness. On 11 September 1962, the Kremlin suddenly put its strategic forces on the ‘highest readiness stage since the beginning of the Cold War’. They were kept at that level for the next ten days. The reason for this remains unclear, but it may be that Khrushchev was worried that the Americans had discovered the missiles on Cuba.
*
The tension was ratcheting up, but the public still had no idea what was happening. On 5 October 1962, the first James Bond film, Dr. No, had its première in London, featuring Sean Connery as Ian Fleming’s suave British agent unravelling the eponymous villain’s plot to divert the course of American missiles from his base on an island sixty miles south of Cuba, thus upsetting the balance of power and potentially triggering a nuclear war. He outlines his plan to Bond, who remarks sardonically, ‘World domination – the same old dream.’
In the real world, world domination was no dream but an ongoing struggle between the superpowers. And as in Dr. No, the focus point was the Caribbean. John McCone was still convinced that the Russians were intending to use Cuba as an offensive military base, and was making himself increasingly unpopular among Kennedy’s circle of advisers and even among his own staff. On 8 October, GRU officer Georgi Bolshakov – the same back-channel who had been used for the Vienna summit – met with Robert Kennedy, and relayed a personal message from Khrushchev: the Soviet Union, he said, was only supplying Cuba with defensive weapons. However, Bolshakov was taking part in what a former State Department analyst would later characterise as ‘unwitting deception’ – he hadn’t been told that the weapons were in fact offensive.
Bolshakov’s assurances soon crumpled to ashes. In the early morning of 14 October, Major Richard Heyser flew his U-2 over western Cuba, and took two large rolls of film with the plane’s high-resolution camera. The next afternoon, analysts at the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center in Washington pored over Heyser’s photographs and noticed images of missiles that looked longer than surface-to-air missiles. Nothing like them had been seen on Cuba before. The crucial question was if they might be medium-range ballistic missiles, or MRBMs – offensive, rather than defensive missiles.
The Center had loose-leaf volumes called ‘black books’ that compiled all the available information. They contained hundreds of photographs taken at the Soviets’ May Day parades, as well as the field manuals that had been photographed by Penkovsky in Moscow. In looking through the black books, the team came across a photograph of the Soviets’ R-12 MRBM, designated the SS-4 by NATO forces. Penkovsky had provided a manual for the SS-4, and checking it they realised that it was the same missile as in Heyser’s photos.
John McCone had been right all along: the Soviets did have offensive missiles on Cuba, and they could strike the United States. The SS-4 had a range of around 1,100 nautical miles, meaning it could reach anywhere between Dallas and Washington. It carried a one-megaton nuclear warhead, which would create a blast equivalent to around 1 million tons of TNT. Hiroshima had been around 14,000 tons of TNT.
*
On the morning of Tuesday 16 October, McGeorge Bundy, the President’s national security adviser, entered Kennedy’s bedroom in the White House, where he was in his pyjamas reading the New York Times, and informed him of the news.
Kennedy immediately set up a group to deal with the situation, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, or EXCOMM, which held its first meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House later that day. After a brief interruption by his five-year-old daughter Caroline, the meeting began just before noon. Art Lundahl, the director of the National Photographic Interpretation Center; Sidney Graybeal, the chief of the CIA’s Guided Missile division; and General Marshall Carter, the deputy director of the CIA, took the President and his advisers through the evidence they had found so far, using photographs displayed on easels.
‘This is the result of the photography taken Sunday, sir,’ Carter began, referring to Heyser’s U-2 flight. ‘There’s a medium-range ballistic missile launch site and two more military encampments on the southern edge of Sierra del Rosario in west central Cuba.’
Once Kennedy was satisfied that the CIA were certain that the missiles were MRBMs, he asked if they were ready to be fired and, if not, how long it would take before they would be ready. Graybeal fielded the question, answering that they didn’t believe the missiles were ready to be fired, as there was no evidence of nuclear warheads in the immediate vicinity, which would need to be ‘mated’ to the missiles, and which in itself would take a couple of hours.
Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense, asked Graybeal if he could comment on ‘the position of nuclear warheads’. Graybeal replied that they had found ‘nothing that would spell nuclear warhead in terms of any isolated area or unique security in this particular area’. This was a crucial point – the time it took for the Soviets to develop ‘the readiness to fire capability’ was essentially the amount of breathing space they had. To estimate that time, Graybeal added, they needed to know where the warheads were, and as they had not yet found any probable areas for the storage of warheads on the island, ‘It seems extremely unlikely that they are now ready to fire, or may be ready to fire within a matter of hours, or even a day or two.’
With the established information having been presented, Graybeal and Lundahl left the room and the members of EXCOMM set about trying to come up with a solution to what was clearly a major problem. They had various proposals, from a surprise airstrike on the missile sites and surrounding airfields to a full-scale invasion of Cuba. After listening to the arguments, Kennedy felt that the missiles had to be removed from the island, but was not yet prepared to order an airstrike or an invasion. This was perhaps in part because he had received assurances from the Soviets that the missile sites were defensive, and so was still unsure about precisely what was happening on the island. McNamara had also pointed out that, with no evidence of nuclear warheads anywhere on Cuba, it could be a day or even two before the Soviets would be able to fire the missiles.
As the crisis developed, several of Kennedy’s advisers expressed the view that the Soviets were unlikely to retaliate to an invasion of Cuba with military action, buoyed by the CIA’s estimate that there were only 10,000 Soviet troops on the island. In fact, the situation was even more perilous: at a conference on the crisis in Moscow in 1989, it was revealed that there had in fact been 43,000 Soviet troops on the island at the time, along with 270,000 Cuban troops. The Russians and Cubans at the conference also made it clear that they would have reacted to an invasion with military action – this would, in all likelihood, have escalated to a full-scale conflict.
*
On the evening of 16 October, a further meeting took place in the White House in which Marshall Carter showed the President and several others the latest photographs from Cuba. ‘This is a field-type missile,’ Carter told them, ‘and from collateral evidence, not direct, that we have with the Soviet Union, it’s designed to be fielded, placed and fired in six hours.’ Carter explained that the U-2s had taken the photographs at what seemed to be a very early stage of deployment. ‘It would also appear that there does not seem to be the degree of urgency in getting them immediately into position. This could be because they have not been surveyed. Or it could be because it is the shorter-range missile and the radars and the oxygen has not yet arrived.’
Kennedy’s ears pricked up. ‘There isn’t any question in your mind, however, that it is an intermediate-range missile?’ he asked, although he had confused the terms: the missile under discussion was in fact medium-range. Carter assured the President that there was no doubt about it, but now that the issue had been raised others around the table also started asking questions: was it possible that the CIA was discussing a threat to the United States that was not based on proof? Carter assured the assembled company that there was no doubt about the evidence, and that in addition there was no possibility that the Soviets had tried to use camouflage or some other means to deceive them over the evidence.
McGeorge Bundy was unconvinced. It would be ‘really catastrophic’, he said, if they were to make a judgement on ‘a bad guess’. He pressed Carter to explain precisely how the CIA knew which missiles these were, and what their range was. Carter explained that the CIA’s analysts and a committee of guided missile and astronautics experts had ‘fully verified’ the information. Bundy wanted more detail on what had decided the verification: ‘How do we know what a given Soviet missile will do?’ Carter replied that the information on range had been vetted for over two years, and that the CIA had accepted the specifications regarding this family of Soviet missiles. Bundy leaped on his choice of words. ‘I know that we have accepted them,’ he said, talking over Carter as he tried to explain once again, ‘and I know that we’ve had these things in charts for years, but I don’t know how we know.’
‘Well,’ Carter replied, ‘we know from a number of sources, including our IRONBARK sources, as well as from range firings, which we have been vetting for several years, as to the capabilities. But I would have to get the analysts in here to give you the play-by-play account.’
The conversation moved on to other matters. In the tense atmosphere of the time, it was vital that the CIA could support its analysis under close questioning. But the agency had a problem. Even with the looming risk of global nuclear war, Carter could not simply say to the country’s national security adviser: ‘We know because we have a spy: a Soviet military intelligence officer in Moscow has taken photographs of their missile manuals and given them to us.’ Even while Penkovsky’s intelligence was being relayed inside the White House during the greatest crisis of the Cold War, his own identity had to be protected – even to the extent of claiming that he represented more than one source – because if this crisis abated, he might be crucial in stopping the next one.
*
On the morning of 18 October, the CIA concluded from examining the latest U-2 photos that as well as the MRBM sites on Cuba there also appeared to be two intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) sites ‘with fixed launchers zeroed in on the Eastern United States’. That afternoon, Kennedy met with Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko in his office in the White House for two hours, during which Gromyko repeated Georgi Bolshakov’s assertion that the USSR’s assistance to Cuba ‘pursued solely the purpose of contributing to the defense capabilities of Cuba and to the development of its peaceful economy’. Kennedy smiled tersely.
That same day, Leonard McCoy was hard at work at the CIA task force centre at 2430 E Street, when he was called in by the director of the agency’s science and technology division to look at a document. It was a report that John McCone was about to hand the President, and it was stamped IRONBARK. It drew heavily on the material Penkovsky had provided on the Soviet MRBM characteristics. McCoy was asked to review its accuracy, check that all the essential details were included, and ensure that the document didn’t compromise Penkovsky in any way. He did so.
McCone handed Kennedy the report that evening. It made grim reading. ‘The magnitude of the total Soviet missile force being deployed,’ it stated, ‘indicates that the USSR intends to develop Cuba into a prime strategic base, rather than as a token show of strength.’ It spelled this out in specific terms: ‘A mixed force of 1020- and 2200-nm missiles would give the USSR a significant strategic strike capability against almost all targets in the U.S.’ – a map showing these targets was also included. The document concluded that the Soviets were making a ‘major military investment in Cuba with some of their most effective guided missile systems’, and that the planning for the operation to place the missiles on the island ‘must have started at least one year ago and put into motion last spring’. Kennedy now knew that Gromyko had just lied to his face.
At a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the President admitted that the Soviets had outfoxed him. ‘I think we ought to think of why the Russians did this,’ he said, and then gave his own answer.
Well, actually, it was a rather dangerous but rather useful play of theirs. If we do nothing, they have a missile base there with all the pressure that brings to bear on the United States and damage to our prestige. If we attack Cuba, the missiles, or Cuba, in any way then it gives them a clear line to take Berlin, as they were able to do in Hungary under the Anglo war in Egypt. We will have been regarded as – they think we’ve got this fixation about Cuba anyway – we would be regarded as the trigger-happy Americans who lost Berlin. We would have no support among our allies. We would affect the West Germans’ attitude towards us. And [people would believe] that we let Berlin go because we didn’t have the guts to endure a situation in Cuba. After all, Cuba is five or six thousand miles from them. They don’t give a damn about Cuba. And they do care about Berlin and about their own security. So they would say that we endangered their interests and security and reunification and all the rest, because of the preemptive action that we took in Cuba. So I think they’ve got . . . I must say I think it’s a very satisfactory position from their point of view.
Kennedy didn’t much like the options open to him. A quick air strike might eliminate the danger that the missiles could be used from Cuba, but it increased the chance of reprisal from the Soviets – most likely their trying to take Berlin by force. ‘Which leaves me only one alternative,’ Kennedy said, ‘which is to fire nuclear weapons – which is a hell of an alternative – and begin a nuclear exchange, with all this happening.’
Another option was a blockade, but that might provoke the Soviets to create a blockade of their own in Berlin, and be seen to be justified in doing so. However, Kennedy recognised that something had to be done. ‘Because if we do nothing, we’re going to have the problem of Berlin anyway.’ It was estimated that the IRBMs on Cuba would be operational within two months, so any inaction would simply delay the inevitable until then.
The next day, 19 October, Kennedy visited Chicago for a campaign trip – the public still didn’t know about the crisis and he was going about his business as usual. However, he returned to Washington the next day, a Saturday, with the press being told that he had a cold, and that afternoon called his wife Jacqueline, who was in Glen Ora in Virginia with their children and expecting him to join them for the rest of the weekend. Kennedy suggested that they instead return to Washington, and Jackie noticed ‘something funny in his voice’ as he made the request.
That evening, with his family safely back in the White House, the President told his wife about the situation regarding Cuba. Jacqueline asked him to promise that he would not send her or their children to Camp David or anywhere else if there was no room in the bunker in the White House. ‘If anything happens,’ she later remembered telling him, ‘we’re all going to stay right here with you.’ If a nuclear strike were too imminent to find shelter, she wanted to be on the lawn of the White House with him: ‘I just want to be with you, and I want to die with you, and the children do too – than live without you.’ Kennedy swore he would not send them away.
*
With the CIA identifying yet more missile sites, it was time for others to be informed, too. On 21 October, Kennedy wrote to Harold Macmillan about Cuba, informing him of the identification of ‘21 medium-range ballistic missile sites and eight intermediate-range ballistic missile sites capable between them of covering the whole of the United States’. In the early hours of the morning of 22 October, Kennedy called Macmillan personally to discuss the crisis and stated his belief – which echoed Penkovsky’s – that ‘firmness offered the best chance of avoiding the outbreak of a third world war’, and recalled the consequences of not standing tough early against Hitler. However, he still hadn’t decided what precise course of action to take, other than the idea of a naval blockade of the island.
A lot has been made of the close coordination between the Americans and British during the missile crisis. Kennedy was an anglophile and had a particularly close friendship with the British ambassador to Washington, David Ormsby-Gore, who was related by marriage to both him and Macmillan and had even been promised a place in Camp David if it came to war. But despite this, and the fact that CIA analysts had figured out that MRBMs were on Cuba partly as the result of intelligence from an MI6–CIA operation, Kennedy didn’t consult Macmillan before deciding on his initial response to the crisis. In his letter to Macmillan, Kennedy regretted the lack of consultation, saying he had judged ‘speed of decision to be essential’, but the reality was that he had known about the missiles since the morning of 16 October, and had not consulted with any other government: as a result of Cuba’s location, the administration regarded this as a threat primarily to the United States. Charles de Gaulle in Paris and Konrad Adenauer in Bonn were informed of the situation at the same time as Macmillan – less than a day before the rest of the world found out.
Kennedy had also been right about the reaction in Europe to events thousands of miles away. On 24 October, the Daily Express published a cartoon by Osbert Lancaster pointing out many Europeans’ perception of the threat: a severe Englishwoman in a cocktail dress examines a globe and says to her drinking partner, ‘Of course, one does see why President Kennedy’s just a little nervous – after all, Washington’s not all that much further from Cuba than London is from Russia.’ The threat that was spiralling into a global crisis was one that had been in place for other Western nations for years. In addition, as Khrushchev would point out, in April the United States had placed Jupiter IRBMs on Turkey, and those threatened the Soviet Union.
*
On 22 October, the evidence of the missiles was shown to congressional leaders, and shortly afterwards the United States placed its military forces at DEFCON-3, signifying: ‘Forces on standby to await further orders.’ At 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Kennedy finally made the crisis public in a television address in which he accused the Soviet Union of transforming Cuba into a major strategic base that threatened the United States with ‘large, long-range, and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction’.
The only purpose to this, Kennedy said, could be to provide the Soviets with ‘a nuclear strike capability’ against the Western hemisphere. He excoriated Gromyko for his bare-faced lie to him in his own office a few days earlier, and announced that the US Navy would stop all Soviet ships travelling to Cuba and inspect them for weapons.
At the close of the seventeen-minute speech – perhaps the most tense ever delivered by an American president – Kennedy’s speechwriter Ted Sorensen struck a note that was simultaneously accusatory and conciliatory and which, in its soaring rhetoric, also sought to signal to the Soviet leader and the world that he was not a greenhorn president, but a mature and visionary statesman: ‘I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations. I call upon him further to abandon this course of world domination, and to join in an historic effort to end the perilous arms race and to transform the history of man.’
An alternate version of this speech was also prepared in the event Kennedy decided to take more serious action. Revealed in 2002, it offers an insight into an alternate history that very nearly happened, and if it had been delivered it might now be more famous than the speech that was delivered, or perhaps not known at all, as it could have been one of the last public speeches given before the onset of an all-out nuclear war, which could have led to the destruction of civilisation: ‘My fellow Americans, with a heavy heart, and in necessary fulfillment of my oath of office, I have ordered – and the United States Air Force has now carried out – military operations, with conventional weapons only, to remove a major nuclear weapons build-up from the soil of Cuba . . .’ It is not known if there were versions of the speech that informed the American public and the world that Kennedy had ordered either a full-scale invasion of Cuba, or a nuclear strike.
*
The world listened to Kennedy’s speech in offices, homes and bars. In Langley, CIA HQ, it was now clear that the international situation was once again perilous. There was, however, still no sign of Oleg Penkovsky. Joe Bulik cabled the CIA station in Moscow: ‘SUGGEST HERO EARLY WARNING PROCEDURE BE IN ALERT SITUATION WITH PERSONNEL IN PLACE.’