Kennedy's Last Days: The Assassination That Defined a Generation (13 page)

But Lee Harvey Oswald and the FBI will soon meet again.

CHAPTER TWELVE

OCTOBER 16, 1962

The White House 8:45
A.M.

T
HE PRESIDENT OF THE
U
NITED
S
TATES
is rolling around on the bedroom floor with his children. The fitness expert Jack LaLanne is on the television telling JFK, Caroline, and John to touch their toes.

John Jr. visits his father on the porch outside the Oval Office.
[JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

The president will soon get dressed. The kids will stick around and watch cartoons. Jackie might sit with him as he wraps his back brace into place before putting on his shirt. Sometimes during the day, John and Caroline walk into the Oval Office and play on the floor or even beneath the presidential desk. Jackie fiercely protects the children from the public eye. But the president takes a larger view, realizing that America is enthralled by such a young first family and wants to hear about their daily life. Caroline and John have become celebrities in their own right, although they don’t know it. Photographers, writers, news magazines, and daily newspapers chronicling their young lives are just a fact of life.

The president’s children often visited the Oval Office. In this photograph, Caroline is four years old and John Jr. is 23 months old.
[JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

John, almost two years old, likes to stop at his father’s secretary’s typewriter on his way in to the Oval Office and pretend to type a letter. Caroline, who is nearly five years old, often brings one or more of the family’s dogs when she pays a visit to her father. In fact, the Kennedy children have turned the White House into a menagerie, with dogs, hamsters, a cat, parakeets, and even a pony named Macaroni. JFK is allergic to dog hair, but he never lets on.

Caroline on her pony, Macaroni, a gift to her from Vice President Johnson. Macaroni received fan mail from people around the country.
[JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

Kennedy, like every president since John Adams became the White House’s first resident in 1800, has learned that life inside the White House is complicated. Mornings are the only time the president can be carefree, unrehearsed, and, best of all, unwatched by a curious public.

Caroline inspects a snowman built for her outside the White House.
[JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

But on this Tuesday morning in October, a knock on the president’s bedroom door intrudes on his private time with the children.

National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy steps through the door.

Bundy has very bad news to deliver. He learned of it last night but intentionally waited until now to tell the president. John Kennedy was in New York to deliver a speech and didn’t return to the White House until very late. The national security adviser wanted to make sure Kennedy had a full night of sleep before he received the news. Bundy knows that from now until the moment this problem is solved, the president will be lucky to get any rest. For what McGeorge Bundy is about to tell JFK could change the course of history.

“Mr. President,” the 43-year-old Bundy calmly informs Kennedy, “there is now hard photographic evidence, which you will see later, that the Russians have offensive missiles in Cuba.”

United States U-2 spy planes flying over Cuba have confirmed that six Soviet medium-range ballistic missile sites and 21 medium-range bomber planes are on that island, just 90 miles from the United States. Each of the airplanes is capable of launching nuclear weapons from thousands of feet in the air. The medium-range ballistic missiles could travel as far as Arkansas.

JFK with McGeorge Bundy, special assistant to the president for national security.
[JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

The nuclear bombs the planes and missiles carry could kill 80 million Americans in a matter of minutes. Millions more would die later from the radioactive fallout.

The president has dealt with crisis after crisis since taking office 21 months ago. But nothing—not the Bay of Pigs, not civil rights, not the Berlin Wall—can even remotely compare with this.

JFK orders McGeorge Bundy to immediately schedule a top-secret meeting of the national security staff. He then phones Bobby, telling him that “we have some big trouble. I want you over here.” The president decides not to deviate from his normal schedule; he doesn’t want the news about this “second Cuba” to get out quite yet. He has several good reasons for this. One is that he doesn’t want to panic the American public. He needs to learn about the situation and make a plan for moving forward before talking to the press.

Another reason has to do with JFK’s political best interests. The president long ago assured the American public that he would not allow the Soviets to install offensive weapons in Cuba. Now Nikita Khrushchev, the premier of the Soviet Union, is calling Kennedy’s bluff.

One of many conversations during the Cuban missile crisis. Here, Kennedy talks with Maxwell D. Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Robert S. McNamara, secretary of defense.
[JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

The final, and by far the most important, reason the president doesn’t want word leaking out about the missiles in Cuba is that he does not want the Russian leadership to know that he is on to their secret.

Labeled U.S. spy plane photo of launch sites being prepared in Cuba.
[© Bettmann/Corbis]

So on the morning of October 16, Kennedy leaves the residence and walks down to the Oval Office to start his day.

Two hours later, the top-secret meeting to talk about the Soviet missiles begins. Kennedy takes a seat at the center of the table, not the head. Bobby sits across from him, as does LBJ. Eleven other men are in attendance, all handpicked for their expertise and loyalty to the president.

Photos taken by U-2 spy planes show that the Soviet missiles are being prepared for launch. Experts think that the nuclear warheads, the bombs that the missiles and planes will carry, are on Soviet ships heading for Cuba. So the main objective is to prevent these ships from reaching Cuba and unloading the bombs. The group presents various military opinions. The first is a limited air strike. The second is a broader air strike, on a broader number of targets. The third is a naval blockade of Cuban waters to keep the Soviet ships away.