This is how the world ends.
That was the prevailing thought, or at least a consideration, on the minds of the thirteen men who gathered in the Cabinet Room inside the White House in Washington, DC. For 13 days and nights in October 1962, their fate, and the fate of much of humanity, lay on a little island 90 miles off the coast of Florida.
Since the early days of the Republic, Cuba had fascinated American officials. After his presidency, Thomas Jefferson advocated pursuing Cuba as a state, telling then-Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun that the United States "ought, at the first possible opportunity, to take Cuba.” For Jefferson, a slave owner who had expanded the U.S. through the Louisiana Purchase, the lure was clear. Like the South, Cuba was rich in soil, producing sugarcane, rice, and tobacco. In the late 1840s, President James K. Polk offered $100 million to Spain to purchase the territory but failed. Polk had overseen victory in the Mexican-American War, and the ensuing Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago, in which Mexico ceded present-day Texas to the United States, along with California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and portions of Colorado.
But still, there sat Cuba, still 90 miles away—and still, out of reach.
In 1897, President McKinley offered $300 million for the island. A year later, the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor and gave the U.S. the opportunity to enter Cuba’s war of independence against Spain. In under three months of fighting, American troops aided Cuban rebels to end Spanish rule, while also taking other Spanish territories in the process: Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
However, Cuba’s independence came at a cost, and the island had to accept U.S. terms and the Platt Amendment, which held that the U.S. would maintain military bases on the island and intervene domestically when necessary for the sake of “good governance.” With the stroke of a pen, Cuba essentially became a U.S. territory.
And so it remained for decades, as Cuba catered to American companies, tourists and the mafia alike with friendly business deals, gambling, and prostitution. But then the American-friendly Cuban President, General Fulgencio Batista, canceled the elections in 1953, setting off rebel attacks led by a 26-year-old lawyer, Fidel Castro. Batista jailed Castro, only to later release him due to international pressure. Soon after, Castro and the rebels took the city of Santa Clara. Batista fled Cuba, and the U.S. imposed a trade embargo. On January 8, 1959 Castro and the rebels rode into Havana, unchallenged.
Soon, the Communist Castro regime began land seizures, including U.S. businesses. In response, President Eisenhower and the CIA prepared Operation Mongoose: the removal of Castro from power and the installation of a U.S. friendly leader, just as had been done in Guatemala in 1954. But before the plan came about, Eisenhower’s term was up. There was a new president now: John F. Kennedy. On January 28, 1961, CIA Director Allen Dulles—an Eisenhower administration holdover—presented the plans to President Kennedy. By April, a plan was agreed upon: an initial airstrike of Cuban air bases followed by a land invasion on the beaches of Bahia de Cochinos—the Bay of Pigs.
The invasion was a disaster from the start. The initial airstrike on April 15, in B-26 bombers painted to look like Cuban planes, missed their targets as photos of the planes—clearly painted over—became public. The next day, land forces struggled as they encountered coral reef instead of the seaweed the CIA had said surrounded the beaches. Planes and troops struggled, as more than 100 Americans were killed. Kennedy, the youngest president in American history, had trusted his advisers and now he looked like a fool.
A few months later, on June 3, 1961, Kennedy had a chance to redeem himself on the international stage in his first meeting with Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna.
In the wake of the second World War, the United States and Soviet Union stood alone as military superpowers. At the heart of their divisions—literally—was Berlin, Germany. The German capital had been split in two at the end of WWII, East and West, and Kennedy had hoped to engage in peace talks about Berlin in Vienna. But the summit soon turned in a dressing down, as the 67-year-old Krushchev berated Kennedy. The two days ended badly, as the Soviet leader told him, “Force will be met with force.”
And in Moscow, Chairman Khrushchev himself was seeking validation. He wanted to solidify himself as the leader of global Communism. However, the Soviet Union’s
neighbor, China, had just had a Communist revolution of its own and was seeking greater influence on the global stage too. Both saw an opportunity in Cuba, which sought military help from any Communist nation willing to help. However, Khrushchev had little advantage over Cuba and couldn’t give them the full support they desired through arms sales alone.
At the same time, Khrushchev knew that the “missile gap” Kennedy had spoken of when running in 1960—that the U.S. lacked the firepower of the U.S.S.R.—was actually a lie. Instead, it was the Soviets that trailed the United States. And to make it worse, a few weeks after the Vienna meeting, the United States had placed 15 nuclear-armed Jupiter missiles in Turkey. The United States could now turn the Kremlin into dust in minutes if it so chose.
Then, while walking along the beach in Varna along the Black Sea, it came to Khrushchev, a solution that could solve both his problems in one fell swoop. He would place missiles in Cuba, giving Castro and the rebels the military support they wanted and holding his position as the global defender of Communism, and at the same time, placing missiles close enough to hit Washington—with the goal of having Kennedy remove his missiles from Turkey and for Cuba, preventing a future invasion. On the flight back to Moscow, Khrushchev told his plan to the Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko. Gromyko balked, but Khrushchev told him, “We don’t need a nuclear war and we are not about to fight.”
For the next few months, Soviets began secretly sending missiles and supplies to Cuba. On August 29, a U-2 flight over Cuba discovered Soviet SAMs, or surface to air missiles. The next day on August 30 another U-2 over the Soviet Union was spotted. A week later, another U-2 was shot down over China. Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, began to question all the flights, wondering aloud if the CIA wanted to provoke war. Suspicions both internal and external began to grow. Soon, the reconnaissance flights were halted—until October 14.
At the time, CIA analysts believed Cuba was home to about 4,000 Soviet troops. In reality, the number was closer to 40,000, most of them transported in the five crucial weeks between early September and mid-October when the surveillance paused over the island. Also in that time, on October 4, the cargo ship Indigirka brought the first nuclear warheads to the island, 60 in total. A few days later, on October 8, the first R-12 launcher—capable of firing a nuclear warhead into U.S. airspace—was successfully installed.
On October 9 in Washington—where Kennedy officials had no idea of these developments—CIA director John McCone, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and Attorney General Bobby Kennedy all proposed that flights be resumed, this time with Air Force pilots instead of CIA pilots, so in case the pilot was shot down, the government would have plausible deniability as to his actions. For three days, they waited for the weather to clear over the Caribbean. Then at 11:30PM on the night of October 13, 1962, thirty-five year old Korean War veteran Major Richard S. Heyser took off from Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, destined for McCoy Air Force Base in Florida. At 7:30AM the morning of the 14th, he entered Cuban airspace, his U-2C aircraft capturing images up to 100 nautical miles below. After seven minutes over Cuba, he tacked to Florida. Immediately, the film was flown to Andrews Air Force Base for processing. After developing the film, it was clear: the Soviets had deployed medium-range ballistic missiles on the island.
The world was officially on the brink of Nuclear War.
The next morning, October 15, McGeorge Bundy delivered the news to the President while he was still in bed, reading the morning papers. Kennedy was incensed, calling Khrushchev “a fucking liar.” The night before, in Boston of all places, Dwight Eisenhower had broken precedent and decided to criticize Kennedy’s foreign policy. As Bundy told him of the missiles, Kennedy was reading a New York Times headline, “Eisenhower Calls President Weak on Foreign Policy.”
For the next 13 days and nights, Kennedy and his twelve closest advisers—called the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, or ExCom—debated as the world teetered on the edge. Immediately, Secretary of State Rusk made the options clear: direct diplomacy or military action. The group debated the forms of military action: surgical airstrikes on missile sites, or on troop sites, or a general strike followed by a blockade. Ideas went back and forth. The president’s brother, Bobby, proposed another option: the invasion of Cuba.
The President wasn’t convinced of anything but was growing sure that military action was necessary. He didn’t want to look weak, as he had in the Bay of Pigs, as he had in Vienna, as he had on the front page of The New York Times that very morning. But the president’s advisors were torn. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara didn’t support the airstrike option and instead argued for a naval blockade. McGeorge Bundy pressed for an unannounced strike. Robert Kennedy pressed further: stage an attack on Guantanamo Bay to justify an invasion, “just to get into it and get it over with and take our losses,” while others like Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Maxwell Taylor also pressed a full-scale invasion.
For days and nights, this went back and forth inside the White House. Thirteen men debating how to untangle a nuclear trap. And on the other side of the planet, in Moscow, were Nikita Khrushchev and his advisors, doing the very same thing. Khrushchev sent his foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, to request a meeting with Kennedy and Rusk at the White House. They agreed, neither side aware of what the other knew. Gromyko did not know that the Americans knew about the missile sites—while the Americans did not know they were already nuclear capable. The fog of war had even clouded a face-to-face meeting.
Kennedy feared that if he fired on Cuba, Khrushchev might fire on Berlin, unaware that Khrushchev would have likely fired on Washington or New York. That of course would trigger the Jupiters in Turkey to fire at Moscow. On October 19, he laid out the options. “If we do nothing, they have a missile base there…If we attack Cuba…it gives them a clear line to take Berlin. Which leaves me the only one alternative, which is to fire nuclear weapons—which is a hell of an alternative.” President Kennedy, who was the most hawkish on October 15, was beginning to see the real stakes of the situation.
On the morning of October 22, Kennedy called his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower to talk through his options. Eisenhower, who had criticized Kennedy days before had also led the Allied invasion at Normandy. And this was no time for grudges. That night, at 7PM, the President addressed the American people: he informed the public of the Cuban missiles and announced a naval blockade of Cuba. In his conclusion he addressed Khrushchev, whom he called upon to “halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations.” The ask was clear: take the missiles out of Cuba or prepare for war.
Before the speech, Khrushchev was convinced an invasion was imminent, and told forces on the ground to prepare weapons if that indeed occurred. As he gave the order he asked aloud, “How can that be possible?” Like Kennedy, Khrushchev was now fully grasping what might lay before them. If in that moment, Kennedy had announced an invasion, Soviet rockets would have been in the air perhaps in moments.
Still, the fog of war had not lifted, as Soviet ships still headed for Cuba. For two days, on October 24 and 25, Soviet ships were stopped by the U.S. Navy and inspected for weapons and allowed to proceed, while others turned around prior to inspection. Still, U.S. Strategic Air Command raised the alert level to DEFCON-2 for the first time in history, just below DEFCON-1, which is reserved for open warfare. Khrushchev now feared that Kennedy planned to hit Havana and Moscow with twin punches.
Speaking to his advisors at the Presidium, Khrushchev now maintained that the Soviets had made Cuba the focus of the world, and that by potentially agreeing to Kennedy’s demands, they would achieve victory simply by saving Cuba from invasion. “This is not cowardice,” he explained. He was deciding to deescalate.
The next day, October 26, was different. Rumors were swirling in Moscow, based on something the Soviet foreign minister heard from a journalist in a Washington bar, that Kennedy might invade any moment. In a long letter, Khrushchev proposed what the Presidium had approved: removing the missiles in exchange for no invasion. “If there is no intention,” he said, “to doom the world to the catastrophe of thermonuclear war, then let us not only relax the forces pulling on the ends of the rope, let us take measures to untie that knot. We are ready for this.”
But then, a second message came, one that was much harsher and demanded the removal of the Jupiter missiles in Turkey as well. The idea of the Cuban-Turkish missile swap was now gaining steam. Kennedy’s advisors were staunchly against the idea, and in Moscow, so were many of Khrushchev’s men. Thousands of miles apart, the two leaders were beginning to think alike. But that same day, October 27—as the Chiefs of Staff prepared to present their invasion plan to the president, the real shock came: another U-2 plane had been shot down over Cuba.
Soviets and Cubans were prepared for an invasion, as American generals advocated for one. In the case of invasion, Khrushchev was prepared to send nuclear missiles into American cities. The world hung in the balance. President Kennedy sent his family out of Washington, in case of a nuclear exchange. But the one man capable of setting things in motion was President Kennedy, and against his advisors’ counsel, he determined that given the contents of the first letter, Khrushchev hadn’t given the orders to shoot down the U-2 plane. He was right. And again against the advice from ExCom members, he said to reply to the first letter and agree to not invade in exchange for no Cuban invasion.
At the same time, the President sent his brother Robert to meet with the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, and agree to a missile swap in private. The Soviets would publicly announce the removal of the Cuban missiles, while the Americans would remove the Turkish missiles in the coming months, with no public announcement.
That night, with his family whisked away from Washington, and Americans, Cubans, and Russians alike preparing for Armageddon, President Kennedy watched Roman Holiday in the White House screening room. The next day, Sunday October 28, Dobrynin shared the secret offer with Khrushchev. He accepted.
After returning from Mass that Sunday, President Kennedy entered the Cabinet Room to a scene of jubilation. One aide told him, “Mr. President, today you’re more than ten feet tall.”
“That will last about a couple of weeks,” he chuckled.
Sources:
Serhii Plokhy. Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. 2021.