A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (58 page)

The Bay of Pigs was a failure and
embarrassment for the U.S. and began the disintegration of the CIA,
the principal Cold War tool of the Eisenhower years. Ike much
preferred covert operations to full scale military assaults that
were costly in terms of blood and treasure.

Shortly after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, JFK met
Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev in a "summit" in Vienna, Austria. It
went poorly for the young President. Shaken by the Cuban failure,
JFK was unimpressive. Kruschev, on the other hand, was at the
height of his powers.

A round-faced, squat man from the peasant
class, he had been assigned a "suicide mission" during World War II
by Joseph Stalin: defense of Stalingrad. In one of the bloodiest,
most horrible sieges in the history of warfare, the Nazis encircled
the city and bombed her incessantly. Amid the freezing Russian
winter, the population starved; suffering unspeakable horrors; hope
was virtually lost that Stalingrad and all of Mother Russia would
be lost; but Kruschev ruthlessly opposed every German
onslaught.

Commanders who failed or showed anything less
than 100 percent bravery (read: stupidity) were put in a locked
room with a loaded gun, told by Kruschev to handle the situation
themselves as to avoid "bureaucracy," as in a firing squad, show
trial and lasting persecution of their families.

Using fear and bravado to the extreme,
Kruschev somehow led the Soviet forces to a bitter victory over
their German occupiers. Winston Churchill said of the 1943-44
battle that, "it is not the beginning of the end, but it is the end
of the beginning." Indeed, it was one of Germany's first major
defeats after having marched from victory to victory since 1939,
and helped the Allies to win the war.

Kruschev was a tremendous hero of the
"Patriotic War," as the Soviets called it, but immediately found
himself mired in the labyrinthine world of Soviet politics, where a
popular war hero was immediately seen by Stalin as a threat. Many
who served loyally were summarily shot, a fate Kruschev avoided by
carefully reading the tea leaves.

When Stalin died in 1953, Kruschev survived
a grueling Politburo selection process to emerge as the Premier. He
faced immediate crises: a workers' revolt in East Berlin; the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956; and the Egyptian nationalization of
the Suez Canal. But Communism also saw its greatest glories under
his rule. In 1957, Sputnik was launched. In 1958-59, Castro took
power in Cuba. The Soviets began adventurous forays into Latin
America and Africa.

Kruschev argued the merits of Communism vs.
capitalism with Vice President Nixon; the famed "kitchen debate" in
Moscow, and the argument over availability of fine foods at
Petrini's Stonestown supermarket in San Francisco.

In 1960, Kruschev spoke at the United
Nations. He removed his shoe, pounded it on the podium, and told
the West that "we will bury you." It was an alarming moment in
East-West relations, convincing many - especially on the Right -
that Soviet Communism was an evil threat that needed to be stopped
at all costs.

But Kruschev had problems within his own
circles. Long-simmering feuds going back to the Korean conflict
came to a head, and in 1959 Mao Tse-Tung and Red China split from
their alliance with the Soviet Union. This set off a mad scramble
among the Western intelligentsia to manipulate and benefit from the
fissure.

When Kennedy met Kruschev in 1961, the
Soviet leader not only boasted of Communism's superiority, he
actually believed it to be true. Many Communists toed the "company
line" but knew the truth. Kruschev was a "true believer." Nixon
himself had complained in 1960 that some 800 million people lived
under Communism, while only 500 million lived under freedom. This
was the kind of statistic Kruschev could fall in love with. Now, in
1961, the battle for world supremacy would be fought over the
"Third World"; the vast, largely indigenous peoples of
underdeveloped, non-industrialized nations that stretch from the
Pacific to Latin America to Africa, to the Middle East and
Asia.

Kruschev respected Nixon, a man of intellect
and toughness. He knew the conservative Republican was a military
hard-liner, held back from nuking the Communists in Vietnam by Ike.
But JFK was like a boy sent to do a man's job, in his view.

"Kruschev was so cocky and sure of himself
because he believed that President Kennedy indeed was a 'rookie,' I
mean he has 'no experience,' " said former KGB Major General Oleg
Kalunin.

After shaking Kennedy's hand at Vienna,
Kruschev returned to Moscow determined to exploit the young
President's inexperience. In the summer of 1961 he ordered the
Berlin Wall to be built, dividing the free West from the Communist
East. JFK reacted impotently. Kruschev was convinced he could
continue to poke holes in the American armor.

By 1962, JFK had settled into the job. He
presided over tax cuts that spurred the economy and acquitted
himself well in dealing with a steelworkers strike. Both John and
Bobby Kennedy saw domestic politics as their chief concern. Vietnam
was on the horizon, but not yet a major issue; certainly not with
voters. After the Bay of Pigs and the Berlin Wall, a period of
relative East-West calm presided, with the question of how to
"handle" China being the major area of foreign concern.

Castro was a thorn in America's side. The
Kennedy's used the CIA and the Mafia - eager to regain the casino
empire they lost to Castro - in a series of failed attempts to
liquidate the Cuban leader. One plot involved rigging a cigar to
blow up in his face, but all efforts were unsuccessful.
Nevertheless, there was a feeling that both sides were unwilling to
test the other in a dangerous confrontation. No showdowns appeared
imminent.

****

Los Angeles mourned the loss of the pennant
race to the Giants, but their attentions were quickly turned to the
exploits of John McKay's Southern California Trojans, who were in
the process of going unbeaten en route to their first National
Championship since 1939.

Sports fans in San
Francisco and New York were spellbound by a classic World Series,
one of the greatest ever played. America was innocent still. The
portrait of her painted by George Lucas's
American Graffiti
was an accurate
one. President Kennedy's biggest domestic concern were the upcoming
Congressional mid-terms. He also followed closely the campaign of
his rival, former Vice President Nixon, locked in a
knockdown-drag-out battle with incumbent Governor Pat Brown in
California.

Then on Monday, October 15, photos taken by
American U-2 pilot Richard Heyser revealed SS-4 nuclear missiles in
Cuba. President Kennedy was informed of the
missiles at breakfast the next day. He convened his 12 most
important advisors, known
as EX-COMM.
Most
of them supported an air strike followed by an invasion. However,
they weren't aware that Kruschev, knowing communications between
Moscow and Cuba were unreliable, had authorized Soviet field
commanders in Cuba to use tactical nuclear missiles if the U.S.
invaded.

Kennedy wanted to appear
tough yet avoid military confrontation. Some advisors recommended a
blockade. No matter what action the U.S. took regarding Cuba,
EX-COMM expected Kruschev to retaliate.

Between Wednesday, October
17 and Saturday, October 20, Kennedy and his inner circle
maintained tight secrecy, but they knew the public could be
diverted from the crisis for a finite amount of time. Kennedy
followed his planned schedule, taking campaign trips to Connecticut
and the Midwest, where he appeared on behalf of the man he owed so
much from the 1960 elections, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. In
between trips,
a U-2
flight discovered
SS-5 missiles, which could reach most of the continental U.S.
Kennedy and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrie Gromyko met. Kennedy
told Gromyko the U.S. would not tolerate offensive weapons in Cuba,
but did not play his hand. The tacit warning, however, was meant to
tell Gromyko that he knew about the missiles in Cuba without
actually telling him he knew. Playing "cat and mouse," Gromyko
denied the Soviets had any missiles in Cuba.

On October 20, Attorney
General
Robert Kennedy
called the President in Chicago to tell him he needed to
return for an urgent meeting with
EX-COMM
. Feigning an "upper
respiratory infection," he returned to Washington, but the press
began to get suspicious.

The East-West Fall Classic

"Total triumph is unsettling."

-
San Francisco Chronicle
columnist Charles
McCabe after the Giants barely missed winning the World
Series

On the evening of the day the Giants won the pennant,
the circulation manager of the
San Francisco Chronicle
,
which uniquely printed its sports section on green and pink paper,
asked the editor what the headline was for the next day's
editions.

"It's 'WE WIN!' - white on black," the editor
replied.

"How big?"

"Same size as 'FIDEL DEAD!' "

The papers cared only about the Giants. Richard
Nixon's campaign was noteworthy because he had appeared in the
Giants' clubhouse, a move meant to usurp San Francisco votes
normally ticketed to the Democrat Party.

There were human interest stories about little kids
using their piggy bank savings, running away from home to buy
Series tickets. A constant refrain from the provincial writers
harkened back to the "gay '90s," when owner Jim Mutrie called them
"my giants." Now, in San Francisco, they were "our Giants." The
social set was aghast.

"Good God!" one member of the landed gentry
exclaimed. "People will think we're like
Milwaukee
, or
something!"

Chronicle
columnist Charles McCabe, who was
not a sportswriter, normally wrote of the comings and goings at
Trader Vic's, city hall, the Sausalito
avante garde
scene,
and other uniqueness' of San Francisco life. He now directed his
attention to the Giants, who he saw as a metaphor for his vision of
what America should be. McCabe did not like greatness, as embodied
by American Exceptionalism, because for America to be exceptional,
other countries had to be unexceptional. That was . . . unfair.

Therefore, he determined that despite having won 103
games, with perhaps the greatest superstar of all time in his prime
playing center field, the Giants displayed "lovable incompetence."
McCabe warned San Franciscans (who cringed at the moniker "Frisco"
applied to them by out-of-towners, of whom thousands were flocking
in alarming numbers) that victory would bring on a smugness that
would be less comfortable than defeat. It was
not
what
George Patton told his troops before they embarked on the rescue of
Bastogne.

For the better part of two decades, whenever classic
baseball was played (and often when very mediocre baseball was
played), the great Roger Angell was there to chronicle it for
The New Yorker
. Angell's political and social sensibilities,
which had not cottoned to the Los Angeles scene, were much more
attuned to the San Francisco he found in October of 1962.

The City changed
drastically
as a result of
the Free Speech Movement, the anti-war movement, the gay liberation
movement, the women's liberation movement, and in particular, the
"Summer of Love" (1967). The San Francisco that emerged in the
years after that event, after Vietnam and Watergate, bears little
resemblance to The City that Angell found in 1962. There are still
vestiges of it that will always be there, if one chooses to search
them out and find it, but in '62 it was a way of life.

San Francisco was indeed sophisticated, cultured and
foggy. It was The City of Dashiell Hammett's
Maltese Falcon
,
with Humphrey Bogart leading moviegoers while "Spade turns up
Powell Street." This was a far, far cry from Clint Eastwood's
Dirty Harry
a mere decade in the future. It was a city of
men in suits, elegant women, coifed hair, and evening manners; of
the theatre and the opera; of letters and iconoclasm.

"We've had a lot of trouble in the past few years,"
a woman told Angell, who by virtue of his
New Yorker
pedigree tended to run in effete literary circles. Thinking she was
talking about a scandal in her family or some such thing, Angell
was surprised to discover she was talking about the Giants'
tendency to lose in September since their arrival in 1958. Instead
of pointing out the long history of September pratfalls that
afflicted the New York Giants, Angell said nothing to the matron,
"for I realized that her affair with the Giants was a true love
match and that she had adopted her mate's flaws as her own. The
Giants and San Francisco are a marriage made in Heaven."

How they were, and whey they were, is not easy to
describe. McCabe had a point, truth be told; they were
almost
good enough
, just as San Francisco was. Almost good enough was
good enough in these parts. Somehow, these people could turn their
noses up at the team, the city, the political figure that finished
ahead of them. It was snobbery. Beating Los Angeles was like
winning a competition with Howard Hughes to build rocket boosters
for NASA (did they really want to do
that?
), but now -
almost to their relief - another obstacle, even more daunting, had
been set before them.

"You win the pennant, then you have to go out the
very next day and play the Yankees," said Orlando Cepeda. "That
didn't give us much time to savor our win against the Dodgers."

"The way the season ended, and the way the play-offs
went, it took away a lot of the excitement of the World Series, "
said O'Dell. "We never really got the thrill of the Series that I
believe everybody else gets."