 |
| President John F. Kennedy |
Note:
Throughout the late summer and early fall of 1962 reports and rumors were
swirling in Washington DC that the Soviet Union and Cuba were collaborating on
building nuclear missile launch sites in Cuba. On August 10th CIA Director
John McCone sent JFK a memo stating that he thought the Soviet Union
would deploy medium range nuclear ballistic missiles in Cuba and this was
followed at the end of the month by an announcement by Senator Kenneth Keating (Republican NY) in the
U.S. Senate stating there was evidence the Soviets were actually building the
sites and urging the President to do something about it. In early September
Kennedy had his brother and chief advisor, Attorney General Robert Kennedy meet with the Soviet
Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to
express JFK’s concerns about the reports and rumors he is getting. He is
assured by Dobrynin that any military aid being given to Cuba is for defensive
purposes only and does not involve offensive missiles. A week later, on
September 11th the Soviet News Agency Tass announces the same thing, but the same day Soviet Foreign
Minister Andrei Gromyko in a speech to the UN states that should the U.S. invade
Cuba it would mean war with the Soviet Union. In response to all of this JFK orders a U-2
over flight of Cuba to take place on October 9th but the flight is
delayed until the 14th by bad weather. On October 10th
Senator Keating makes another announcement that the Soviets are building six
nuclear missile launch sites in Cuba. A few days later, on October 14th,
the U-2 takes photographs that on analysis reveal the first hard evidence that
the Russians and Cubans are, indeed, building the missile launch sites. The
President’s National Security Advisor McGeorge
Bundy is informed of the photos on October 15th and on Tuesday
morning October 16th he informs the President. For the next thirteen
days the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a high wire act of
nuclear brinksmanship that threatened the whole world with annihilation…the Cuban
Missile Crisis. Here is the whole story…MA
 |
| JFK and RFK during the Crisis |
|
A
|
ccording to Robert Kennedy in his memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis Thirteen Days, just after 9AM on
Tuesday, October 16th 1962 he received an urgent phone call from the
President asking that he come immediately to the White House. The message was
that “we are in great trouble” but
beyond that no further data was given. Upon arriving RFK was told by his
brother that according to U-2 photos just taken and analyzed the Soviets were
constructing nuclear missile launch sites in Cuba. Within two hours a meeting
was convened in the Cabinet room at the White House comprised of most of the
top officials of the US Government and national security establishment. In
attendance besides the President and his brother were Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Director of the CIA John McCone, Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon, National Security
Advisor McGeorge Bundy, Special
Counsel to the President Ted Sorensen,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Maxwell Taylor, Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson, Vice President Lyndon
Johnson and Special Assistant to the President Ken O’Donnell. In addition there were a number of
assistants to the Secretaries of State and Defense as well as an advisor on
Russian affairs. This is the group, more or less, that would become known as “Ex Comm”, short for “Executive Committee of the National Security Council”, which
met daily and often long into the night across the next two weeks and was
charged by President Kennedy with looking at all options and solutions to
resolve the crisis.
Realizing
that his presence might prevent some members of the group from honestly
speaking their minds JFK only attended the meetings he was asked to attend in
order to be briefed or to render decisions. Robert Kennedy briefed him daily on
what transpired at the meetings. At this first meeting the Ex Comm group was
briefed on and shown the photographs by the CIA. With their charts and pointers
the CIA’s photo experts pointed out where the sites were being built and what
the various images meant. According to RFK in his memoir, even with the photos,
he had to take the fact there were missile launch sites being built on faith
because, try as he might, what he was looking at just looked like vacant lots
to him. The President, he states, felt the same way. Neither doubted the
veracity of what they were being told however.
 |
| Nikita Khrushchev |
In
the meantime it was also imperative that the situation be handled with the
utmost secrecy. JFK did not want the Soviets to be aware that he knew what they
were doing in Cuba just yet; at least not until he had a chance to formulate
his strategy for handling the crisis. Likewise, he did not want the media or
the public in the loop until he was ready, fearing it would cause unnecessary
panic. To accomplish this it was worked out that he would keep up the semblance
of his normal Presidential routine. The mid-term elections were coming up in
November and he had a number of campaign speeches and appearances scheduled. He
would need to make good on these commitments, lest his absence indicate that
something was up.
For
the next two days the Ex Comm group met, arguing over the options and
alternatives possible. It was in these early meetings that Robert McNamara
proposed the idea of a blockade of Cuba as the strategic response to the
missile launch sites. He argued that the blockade option had several
advantages; it would put pressure on the Soviets but it would be limited
pressure and would give them time to reconsider what they were doing and pull
out. It also gave the U.S. the option of taking steps to increase that pressure
if needed. In addition, McNamara noted that, based on estimates from the JCS, surgical
airstrikes, as the group had initially entertained as an option, were not
practical unless they also included hitting other Cuban military installations
as well and also unless a follow up invasion took place. McNamara argued that,
while it might come to that in the end, we should not start at that point and that
taking a less extreme approach would afford more options at avoiding war and
still getting the missiles out. Opposing McNamara was the view, held by several
in Ex Comm as well as the JCS, that a blockade would do nothing about the
missiles already in Cuba or about the on going construction of the launch sites
and therefore would not resolve the threat. They also argued that a blockade
around Cuba would result in the Russians doing the same with Berlin thus
expanding the crisis. Because of these things military intervention was the
only viable option they asserted.
 |
| JFK and the Joint Chiefs of Staff |
On
Wednesday, 17 October more U-2 photography was taken which showed more missile
installations and revealed that as many as 32 medium range ballistic missiles
were in Cuba capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to any location within a
thousand mile radius. Within a few minutes of an attack these missiles could
potentially kill 80 million Americans. It was against this mounting pressure
that on the morning of Friday, 19 October JFK met with the Joint Chiefs of
Staff to discuss the military options for taking out the missiles, should that
be option chosen. Present for the meeting were the President, Defense Secretary
McNamara Joint Chiefs Chairman Maxwell
Taylor, Air Force Chief Curtis LeMay,
Naval Chief George Anderson, Army
Chief of Staff Earle Wheeler and
Commandant of the Marine Corp David Shoup.
During the meeting the depth of the disparity between JFK’s views and those of
his military leaders was on full display as well the antipathy held for the
President by some of the Chiefs, particularly Curtis LeMay.
LeMay
had fashioned a remarkable, if somewhat controversial career in the Air Force.
He had commanded the B-29 firebombing raids over Tokyo during WW II that are
estimated to have killed between 250,000 and 500,000 civilians. He once
commented that if the Japanese won the war he would be tried for war crimes. He
also helped run the Berlin airlift in 1948 and later in 1948 he took over the Strategic Air Command (SAC). Over the
next nine years LeMay presided over its emergence as the most massive jet
powered, nuclear bomber force in the world with over 2000 jet bombers, many of
them B-52s. In 1951 he became the youngest four star general in the U.S.
Military since Ulysses Grant in the
Civil War. He had become Chief of Staff of the Air Force in 1961. Noted for his
right wing, anti-communist views, the cigar smoking LeMay could be both
intimidating and belligerent in expressing them. With regard to the Joint
Chiefs, JFK felt that he would probably have the most trouble with LeMay; an
apprehension that proved to be correct. In a meeting on October 18th
with the Chiefs, Kennedy had asked Lemay what the Soviet response would be
should the U.S. bomb Cuba, as LeMay had been advocating. “They’ll do nothing” LeMay responded.
 |
| General Curtis LeMay |
Incredulous
at what he was hearing, Kennedy retorted: “Are
you trying to tell me they’ll let us bomb their missiles and kill a lot of
Russians and then do nothing? If they don’t do anything in Cuba they’ll
certainly do something in Berlin.”
After the October 18th
meeting with LeMay JFK commented to his assistant Ken O’Donnell: “These brass hats have one great advantage
in their favor. If we listen to them and do what they want us to do, none of us
will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.”
During
JFK’s Friday meeting with the Chiefs, LeMay again displayed his bellicose
attitude stating, “We don’t have any
choice except direct military action” and once again asserted that in
response the Soviets would do nothing. He was critical of the “blockade” option
stating that it would be a weak response and telling Kennedy it would be “…almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich”;
a reference to English Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain’s capitulation to Adolph Hitler’s
territorial demands at a conference held in that city in 1938. (LeMay’s comment
was also a veiled allusion to the role JFK’s father Joseph Kennedy played at the time, the elder Kennedy having been
the U.S Ambassador to England in 1938 and a supporter of Chamberlain’s
appeasement policy.) The other Generals
at the meeting, including Kennedy’s own Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman
appointee Maxwell Taylor, chimed in as well. They all agreed…there was no
choice but direct military intervention in Cuba. LeMay summed up his statements
at the meeting by saying that if the President responded weakly to the Soviet
threat in Cuba then his administration would be viewed as spineless overseas
and that many U.S. citizens would feel that way. He concluded his baiting of
Kennedy by stating to the President: “In
other words, you’re in a pretty bad fix at the present time.”
Not
one to let a challenge pass, Kennedy responded: “What did you say?”
“You’re in a pretty bad fix.” LeMay repeated.
“You’re in there with me. Personally.”
Kennedy retorted.
After
an hour Kennedy and McNamara left the meeting without JFK giving a decision to
the Chiefs as to how he would proceed in Cuba. He was clearly shaken by the
attitude of LeMay and his top military men. Right after the meeting Kennedy
encountered Ted Sorensen outside the Cabinet room. In reference to the blockade
strategy JFK told him, “You and Bobby
have to get a consensus on this thing.”
Pointing at the door of the room he just exited and where the Chiefs still
were, the President added, “They all want
war.”
A little later he expressed his
fear that his military would start a war without his approval, stating to an
aide, “I don’t want these nuclear weapons
firing without our knowing it. I don’t
think we ought to accept the Chief’s word on that one.”
The Ex Comm group met all day and
night of Friday the 19th and by Saturday morning had reached a
consensus for a blockade. Robert Kennedy called the President, who had gone to
Chicago to meet Mayor Richard Daley
for a campaign visit, and told him that he needed to return to Washington to
meet with the group and make the final decision. Telling the press that his
campaign stop was being cut short due to a cold, JFK flew back to the White
House. While he was in the air U.S. armed forces around the world were put on
alert and Defense Secretary McNamara ordered four tactical air squadrons be
readied in the event Kennedy opted for the air strikes. By 2:30 PM on
Saturday,
October 20th Ex Comm was back
in session with the President at the White House. In the discussion that
followed all of the options and the reasons for them were reviewed and in the
end JFK chose the blockade as the best strategy to move forward with. According
to Robert Kennedy in his memoir, the main point that swung the decision toward
blockade was the moral aspect of a big and powerful nation like the U.S.
launching a surprise attack on its smaller and weaker neighbor. Much time had
been spent on this point. McNamara, RFK and others argued that such an act ran
counter to what the United States stood for and would damage the country’s
reputation in the world’s eyes. In the end this view prevailed with the
President but his decision was aided by a more honest Air Force officer he had
consulted with, General Walter Sweeney
Jr., who told him there was no way anyone could guarantee that an air
strike would get all the launch sites or missiles leaving the possibility that
any surviving missiles could still be launched against the United States. Any
doubt Kennedy had about how to proceed was now gone….blockade it would be.
 |
| Ex Comm meeting |
While
plans to implement the blockade moved forward Kennedy scheduled airtime on all
three major broadcast networks, NBC, ABC and CBS, to announce the situation to
the American people. He had his strategy for handling and had managed the first
week of the crisis without the Soviets or the public realizing what was going
on. The time for secrecy was over.
To be continued...
Copyright ©
2013
By Mark Arnold
All Rights
Reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment