Kennedy (125 page)

At the conclusion of the presentations there was a brief, awkward silence. It was the most difficult and dangerous decision any President could make, and only he could make it. No one else bore his burdens or had his perspective. Then Gilpatric, who was normally a man of few words in meetings with the President when the Defense Secretary was present, spoke up. “Essentially, Mr. President,” he said, “this is a choice between limited action and unlimited action; and most of us think that it’s better to start with limited action.”

The President nodded his agreement. Before his decision became-final, he wanted to talk directly with the Air Force Tactical Bombing Command to make certain that the truly limited air strike was not feasible. But he wanted to start with limited action, he said, and a blockade was the place to start. The advocates of air strike and invasion should understand, he went on, that those options were by no means ruled out for the future. The combination of approaches contained in the draft speech anticipated not only a halt of the build-up but a removal of the missiles by the Soviets—or by us. The blockade route had the advantage, however, of preserving his options and leaving some for Khrushchev, too. That was important between nuclear powers, and he wanted our action directed against the other nuclear power, not Castro. “Above all,” he would say later at American University, in drawing the moral of this crisis, “while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war.” Khrushchev had launched this crisis, but a blockade might slow down the escalation instead of rushing him into some irrevocable position. It applied enough military pressure to make our will clear but not so much as to make a peaceful solution impossible. The President then reaffirmed the decision not to include at the start POL or carriers other than surface ships; and, in a major decision, he adopted the term “quarantine” as less belligerent and more applicable to an act of peaceful self-preservation than “blockade.”

Then he asked about the Berlin planning. The Soviets would move there, he expected, but they probably would whatever we did; and perhaps this show of strength would make them think twice about it: “The worst course of all would be for us to do nothing.” I made a mental note to add that sentence to the speech. “There isn’t any good solution,” he went on. “Whichever plan I choose, the ones whose plans we’re not taking are the lucky ones—they’ll be able to say ‘I told you so’ in a week or two. But this one seems the least objectionable.” By the time he finished, those members of our group who had come to the meeting still advocating an air strike or invasion had been essentially won over to the course he outlined.

But bitter disagreement broke out over the diplomatic moves to accompany it.
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The President, although opposed to proposing a summit at that time, wanted to stress the desirability of a peaceful solution, of communications between the two powers, of an approach to the UN, of persuading the world that our action was prudent and necessary. But, as one of those present pointed out, little had been done to work out the political-diplomatic side of the program without which Allied and OAS approval was doubtful. We should go to the UN first, said this adviser, before the Russians do, and have ready an acceptable resolution worded our way. With this the President agreed.

There was disagreement, however, over what our diplomatic stance should be. Earlier in the week—Wednesday morning, the day after he had personally briefed this same individual—the President had been annoyed by a somewhat ambivalent handwritten note he had received from him. On the one hand:

But on the other hand:

That note, which also proposed the high-level courier-to-Khrushchev approach, had been written in the context of the air-strike solution. On Saturday and earlier, the author of the note fully endorsed the blockade route, although casting doubt on any unilateral action we took without OAS approval. He wanted this military action accompanied, however, by suggested diplomatic actions which the President found wholly unacceptable. He wanted the President to propose the demilitarization, neutralization and guaranteed territorial integrity of Cuba, thus giving up Guantánamo, which he said was of little use to us, in exchange for the removal of all Soviet missiles on Cuba. Alternatively or subsequently, he said, we could offer to withdraw our Turkish and Italian Jupiter
missile bases if the Russians would withdraw their Cuban missile bases, and send UN inspection teams to all the foreign bases maintained by both sides to prevent their use in a surprise attack. He also talked of a UN-supervised standstill of military activity on both sides—thus leaving the missiles in with no blockade—and of a summit meeting, and of UN inspection teams investigating not only Cuba but possible U.S. bases for attacking Cuba. The offer of such a political program, he would later write in a follow-up memo, would avoid comparisons with the Suez invasion. The offer would not sound “soft” if properly worded, he declared. It would sound “wise,” particularly when combined with U.S. military action.

There was not a hint of “appeasing the aggressor” in these plans, as some would charge, only an effort to propose a negotiating position preferable to war and acceptable to the world. Even the synopsis prepared by the air-strike “hard-liners” earlier in the week had included not only a call for a summit but a pledge that the United States was prepared to promptly withdraw all nuclear forces based in Turkey, including aircraft as well as missiles. The Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy had also recommended the Jupiters’ withdrawal the previous year.
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Now an adviser who had served in the preceding administration agreed, to the President’s great interest, that the Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Italy were obsolescent and of little military value, practically forced on those countries by the previous administration.

Nevertheless several of those present joined in a sharp attack on these diplomatic proposals. The President admired the courage of their proponent in adhering to his position under fire. He agreed we should beef up the political side of the speech, and said he had long ago asked McNamara to review the overseas Jupiter missiles. But now, he felt, was no time for concessions that could break up the Alliance by confirming European suspicions that we would sacrifice their security to protect our interests in an area of no concern to them. Instead of being on the diplomatic defensive, we should be indicting the Soviet Union for its duplicity and its threat to world peace.

The remainder of the meeting was occupied with a brief discussion of the speech draft and its timing. The President wanted to speak the next evening, Sunday. Secrecy was crumbling. Premature disclosure could alter all our plans. But the State Department stressed that our ambassadors had to brief Allied and Latin-American leaders and
noted the impossibility of reaching them all on a Sunday. The President agreed to Monday, but stated he would still speak Sunday if the story appeared certain to break. He was, moreover, going ahead regardless of Allied reaction, though he wanted them to be informed. The speech was set for 7
P.M
. Monday, October 22 (known in the scenario as P hour); and another meeting was set for Sunday.

We then returned to our offices and the multiple tasks at hand. The speech was circulated and redrafted. The quarantine proclamation was prepared. An approach to the OAS, letters to heads of state, a letter to West Berlin’s Mayor and a simple message of information to Khrushchev were all drafted. Eisenhower was brought by helicopter from Gettysburg for his second briefing of the week by John McCone. The Vice President was brought back from his campaign tour in Hawaii—he had caught the President’s cold. The U.S. Information Agency prepared a special hookup with private medium-wave radio stations to carry twenty-four hours of broadcasts, including the President’s speech in Spanish, to Cuba and to all Latin America. The State Department prepared a thorough, highly efficient scenario outlining the timing of each step by each agency. The Joint Chiefs advised all service commanders to be prepared for possible military action. They ordered Guantánamo reinforced and its dependents evacuated on Monday. Acheson, who had earlier in the week wisely suggested a special high-level emissary to brief De Gaulle and NATO, was given that assignment. Military preparations continued for all levels of action against Cuba.

On Sunday morning I incorporated all suggested changes and corrections for the speech into a fourth draft. Simultaneously, the President met with Tactical Air Command Chief Walter Sweeney, Jr. and a few others (the Attorney General driving in directly from Virginia still in his riding togs). Told there was no way of making certain all the missiles would be removed by an air attack, Kennedy confirmed that the air strike was out and the blockade was on. He met with the British Ambassador, his close friend as well as ally. O’Brien and Salinger were informed. O’Brien was to round up the bipartisan Congressional leaders all over the country with White House military aides arranging transportation. Salinger was to coordinate our information policy with his State, USIA and Pentagon counterparts.

News leaks and inquiries for the first time were a growing problem, as crisis was in the air. The movement of troops, planes and ships to Florida and the Caribbean, the unavailability of high officials, the summoning of Congressional leaders, the Saturday night and Sunday activity, the cancellation of the Presidential and Vice Presidential campaign trips and the necessity of informing a much larger circle of officials meant that our cherished hours of secrecy were numbered. Washington
and New York newspapers were already speculating. Publishers were asked not to disclose anything without checking. One newspaper obtained the story Sunday evening and patriotically agreed at the personal request of the President not to print it. The direct questions of other reporters were avoided, evaded or answered incorrectly by officials who did not know the correct answers; and a few outright falsehoods were told to keep our knowledge from the Communists.

It was “the best kept secret in government history,” said the President, amazed as well as pleased. For most of the week, very few people outside the fifteen regulars, most of their wives and some of their secretaries knew the facts. (Of the three girls in my office, I worked two in alternate night shifts, believing it in the interest of the third that she be kept in the dark, inasmuch as her roommate worked for Senator Keating.) Some officials typed out their own papers or wrote them out in longhand. We stopped signing the entry book at the State Department door, used various entrances to that department and the White House and kept routine appointments where possible.

At 2:30 that Sunday afternoon, October 21, the President met with the NSC once again. He reviewed the State Department’s drafts of instructions to embassies and Presidential letters to allies, all to be sent out in code that night and held for delivery. He reviewed the approaches to the OAS and UN, and agreed that UN supervision and inspection of the missiles’ removal would be requested. He asked Navy Chief of Staff Anderson, Jr. to describe plans and procedures for the blockade. First, said the Admiral, each approaching ship would be signaled to stop for boarding and inspection. Then, if no satisfactory response was forthcoming, a shot would be fired across her bow. Finally, if there was still no satisfactory response, a shot would be fired into her rudder to cripple but not to sink. “You’re certain that can be done?” asked the President with a wry smile. “Yes, sir!” responded the Admiral. Nitze reported on Berlin planning. More aerial surveillance of Cuba was ordered.

Most of that meeting was spent in a page-by-page review of the latest speech draft. Among the issues raised at that meeting, and in my earlier and later meetings with the President, were the following:

1. Should the latest enlarged photographs be shown by the President on TV? No, he decided—both because the average viewer could discern too little for it to be intelligible and because the mere presence of pictures might contribute to panic. The desire to avoid panic also caused the President to delete all references to the missiles’ megatonnage as compared with Hiroshima, and to speak of their capability of “striking,” instead of “wiping out,” certain cities. But to increase hemispheric unity, he did include a reference to the Canadian and Latin-American areas within their target range.

2. Should the speech admit our secret surveillance by U-2 planes, internationally sensitive since 1960 and an illegal violation of Cuban air space? Yes—deciding to make a virtue out of necessity, the President listed increased surveillance as an announced part of his response, justifying it on the basis of an earlier OAS communiqué against secret military preparations in the hemisphere, adding that “further action will be justified” if the missiles remain, and hinting at the nature of that action by urging a consideration of the hazards “in the interest of both the Cuban people and the Soviet technicians
at the sites.”

3. Would he institute the blockade without OAS approval? Yes, if we could not get it, because our national security was directly involved. But hoping to obtain OAS endorsement, he deliberately obscured this question in the speech by a call for unspecified OAS action and an announcement of the blockade and other steps “in the defense of our own security and of the entire Western Hemisphere.”