One minute to midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the brink of nuclear war (15 page)

Castro's problems were political as well as economic. His troops were still fighting a guerrilla war with rebels in the Escambray Mountains of central Cuba. Earlier in the year, he had beaten off a challenge from orthodox Communists, forcing their leader, Anibal Escalante, to flee the country and take refuge in Prague. Castro's denunciation of "sectarianism" was followed by a thorough purge of the Communist Party, with two thousand out of six thousand party members being weeded out.

Photo Insert One

Meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExComm). White House, Cabinet Room, October 29, 1962. Clockwise starting from the flag: Robert McNamara, Roswell Gilpatric, General Maxwell Taylor, Paul Nitze, Donald Wilson, Theodore Sorensen, McGeorge Bundy (hidden), Douglas Dillon, Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson (hidden), Robert F. Kennedy, Llewellyn Thompson, William C. Foster, John McCone (hidden), George Ball, Dean Rusk, President Kennedy.
[Cecil Stoughton, Kennedy Presidential Library]

President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy outside the West Wing of the White House in October 1962.
[Cecil Stoughton, Kennedy Presidential Library]

Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy during their only meeting, in Vienna in June 1961.
[USIA-NARA]

Nikita Khrushchev embraces Fidel Castro in Harlem, New York City, in September 1960.
[USIA-NARA]

Fidel Castro at El Chico during the missile crisis, with Soviet commander General Issa Pliyev (right).
[MAVI]

Castro and Anastas Mikoyan, the Soviet leader who knew him best, in November 1962. Soviet ambassador Aleksandr Alekseev is in the background.
[USIA-NARA]

Prior to a Cuba mission, ground crews service a U.S. Navy RF-8 Crusader at Key West, Florida. The main forward-shooting photo bay is visible at the bottom of the plane.
[USNHC]

Navy Commander William Ecker (left), who led the first low-level overflight of Cuba on October 23, shakes hands with Marine Captain John Hudson. Drawings on the plane fuselage show Fidel Castro with chickens to commemorate each successful Cuba mission.
[USNHC]

Photograph of a nuclear warhead bunker under construction at San Cristobal Medium-Range Ballistic Missile Site No. 1, shot by Ecker with a nose camera at the same time as the oblique photograph below.
[NARA]

Photograph of San Cristobal MRBM Site No. 1 taken by Ecker on Tuesday, October 23, on Blue Moon Mission 8003, showing missile equipment, fueling vehicles, and nuclear warhead vans. The photograph was shot with a left-side oblique camera at the same time as the photograph above.
[NARA]

Previously unpublished photograph of a USAF RF-101 "Voodoo" jet entering Cuban air space on November 1 to inspect the dismantling of missile sites.
[NARA]