Back Yard- Guatemala and Cuba 1954-1962

 

A Case for the Monroe Doctrine

 

On the evening of 16 December 1953, the newly appointed US ambassador to Guatemala sat down to dinner with President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. For six hours the ambassador grilled his host, questioning him about left-wing influ­ences on his two-and-a-half-year-old government, its pro-Soviet slant, and the role of the Guatemalan Communist Party in agrarian reform. President Arbenz came up with what the ambassador regarded as lame responses. Although Arbenz was not himself a Communist, his government had been elected through the support of several left-wing parties. In a popular programme of land reform, it had nationalized 400,000 acres of uncultivated private land, much of it belonging to the largest American enterprise in Central America, the United Fruit Company, whose banana plantations were at the core of the Guatemalan economy. This unused land had been redistributed to rural peas­ants. After the dinner the ambassador wrote a report for Secretary of State John Foster Dulles: "If the President is not a Communist, he will do until one comes along." Arbenz had to go. The United States could not tolerate a foothold for communism in the western hemisphere.

 

Five months later, on 15 May 1954, a Polish ship docked in Guatemala with two thousand tons of small arms and ammunition made in Czechoslovakia. It was the first time a Latin American state had bought arms from the Eastern bloc, and the Eisenhower administration saw this transaction as the last straw. Since the days of President James Monroe, America had regarded the Caribbean as its own back yard, a source of trade and wealth, its own security zone. Of late, the Arbenz government had interfered in labour disputes between the United Fruit Company and its workers, and the company had great influence in Washington. John Foster Dulles had been a senior partner in a law firm associated with the company for many years. His brother, Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, had been on its board of trustees. President Eisen­hower's personal secretary was married to United Fruit Company's head of public relations. With little prodding, Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers approved a secret plan to depose Arbenz, now nick­named Red Jacobo. But under the charter of the Organization of American States, no member could interfere in the internal poli­tics of another. While publicly espousing this doctrine, Washing­ton authorized the CIA to train and supply a band of Guatemalan political exiles on United Fruit property in neighbouring Hon­duras. The rebels were to be led by an ardent anti-Communist exile, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas.

 

In June 1954 a few hundred of these rebels crossed into Guatemala. Initially they made little headway. But Arbenz had relied naively on his army's loyalty. Subjected to a campaign of radio propaganda inspired by the CIA, the officer corps defected to the rebels. Arbenz went into exile. Before long Castillo Armas led a new junta in Guatemala and was installed as president. He reversed the reforms of previous years, evicting 500,000 "squatters" from the land Arbenz's government had given them, and he executed hundreds of left­wing sympathizers, labour leaders, and co-operative farmers, unleashing an orgy of killing that would plague the small nation for decades. Castillo Armas ruled Guatemala through control of a purged army, but in 1957 he was him­self murdered in a mystery that has never been solved. At the time of the Arbenz coup, the CIA was euphoric over its success. The Eisenhower adminis­tration complacently assumed that in the Caribbean and in Latin America, Pax Americana would prevail without further challenge.

 

Trouble Closer to Home

 

In 1898 the United States had been victorious in a ten-week war against Spain to liberate Cuba from Old World colonial oppression - and to protect consid­erable American investment there. In the following decades US businessmen bought up most of the land and industry in an independent Cuba, which, unlike Puerto Rico, could not be annexed because of an amendment attached to the declaration of war against Spain. In 1933 Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar came to power and ruled through puppets or directly for twenty-five years. By the 1950s, however, his corrupt and dictatorial regime was losing support among many Cubans. On 26 July 1953 Fidel Castro, a young lawyer, first raised the standard of revolution against Batista, but he was arrested and impris­oned. Castro was later released and went into exile in Mexico, from where he returned to Cuba to lead a two-year guerrilla struggle. Slowly Castro and his band of rebels, which included the charismatic Argentinian Ernesto "Che" Guevara, gained popular support, as Batista's reign of terror further alienated his power base.

 

On 8 January 1959, a week after Batista fled the country, Castro led his armed revolutionaries into Havana, where he formed a new coalition govern­ment, which was more Cuban nationalist than revolutionary socialist. Although land reforms excited popular support, there was initially no programme to nationalize American interests or take control of the all-important sugar industry. At this point Castro had not declared his allegiance to Marxism-Leninism. Consequently the Soviet Union was cautious in approaching Cuba. It was not until February 1960 that Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan visited Havana and signed a trade agree­ment. Castro then nationalized a billion dollars' worth of American investments in Cuba. Eisenhower in reprisal announced an economic blockade and stopped buying Cuban sugar, the coun­try's principal export. However, the Soviet Union quickly agreed to buy the sugar. When the United States announced that it would not sell petroleum products to Cuba, again the Soviet Union agreed to meet the island's needs, despite the severe strain on Soviet ship­ping. Cuba moved closer to the socialist camp. When Nikita Khrushchev met Castro at the United Nations in September 1960, he embraced him as a fellow revolutionary.

 

To the United States a revolutionary, left-leaning government so near its coast was an unbearable affront. On 17 March 1960 Eisenhower approved another CIA programme of covert action; a Cuban paramilitary force would be trained in the jungles of Guatemala by the United States to lead a resis­tance movement. In December, Eisenhower also endorsed a plan for an amphibious landing by US-trained Cuban guerrillas, which, the CIA was con­fident, would provoke an island-wide uprising against Castro. Allen Dulles, the CIA director, saw a chance to repeat the kind of successful coup his agency had carried out against Arbenz.

 

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Fidel and Che: New World Revolutionaries

 

Fidel Castri Ruz was born in Mayari, Cuba, in 1926. The son of middle-class parents, he was schooled by Jesuits and received a law degree from the University of Havana in 1950. In 1953 he was jailed following the failure of, a coup, the July 26th upris­ing, against dictator Fulgencio Batista. Amnestied and then exiled, he lived in Mexico and the United States before returning in 1956 to launch a guerrilla campaign against Batista from the Sierra Maestra region of Oriente Province. In 1959 he succeeded In oust­ing Batista, became premier, and immediately set out to reform Cuba.

 

Nationalizing oil companies and sugar producers, as well as cracking down on mobsters, made him a hero in Cuba, but the seizure of American companies aroused the unremitting enmity of the United States.

 

Because his policies drove many middle-class Cubans into exile the American government assumed that Castro was deeply unpopular; it encouraged and financially supported a growing band of Cuban exiles determined to overthrow him. Their attempt failed, and the disaster at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 only made Castro more powerful. He turned increasingly to the USSR for assistance and announced that Cuba was a socialist state and that he was a Marxist­ Leninist His hostility to what he saw as Yankee imperialism was implacable, and he welcomed the Soviet missiles that led. to the crisis with the United States in the autumn of 1962.

 

ERNESTO GUEVARA-DE LA SERNA,

known as Che, was born near Buenos Aires in 4928. He was trained as a physician and even practised medicine briefly in Mexico City But his first love was revolution, particularly against the United Statese was an early friend of Castro's and fought beside him in the Sierra Maestra. His nickname came from his way of addressing his buddies as "Che"-­"friend in Argentina. For a time he was president- of the. Cuban national bank, and his still popular portrait as a revolutionary dates from then. In 1965 he Left his adopted island to begin the travels that were to take him to Bolivia, where he was killed in 1967.

 

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On 19 January 1961, the day before his inauguration, the new president, John F. Kennedy, was briefed by Eisenhower on a number of topics, including the US plan to help the anti-Castro guerrillas. Kennedy was surprised by its scale but was not averse. The young president refused to let the US military intervene directly, but he continued to allow the CIA to organize Cuban exiles for an invasion. Kennedy insisted, however, that any American involvement must be concealed. In April, three days before the scheduled invasion,

 

Kennedy stated at a press conference that there would not be, "under any con­ditions, an intervention in Cuba by United States armed forces." Privately Kennedy told his aides, "The minute I land one marine, we're in this thing up to our necks.... I'm not going to risk an American Hungary."

 

Despite the CIA's continued confidence, there were problems with the invasion plan. The morale of the Cuban exiles training in Guatemala was low; their numbers were small. And the CIA assumption that, if things did go wrong, the United States would support a failing mission by direct military involvement ran counter to Kennedy's public position. The Joint Chiefs of Staff rated the operation's chance of success as "fair" - less than fifty-fifty.

 

A Fiasco

 

From the beginning everything did go wrong. Only six American bombers, painted in Cuban colours, as if flown by rebel Cubans, took off from Nicaragua in support of the amphibious invasion, which counted on air cover for success. They damaged only three of Castro's planes on the ground. Fearful of having his role detected, Kennedy at the last minute had withdrawn US air support. Despite this, a force of about 1,500 Cuban exiles went ahead with the invasion at the Bay of Pigs. Castro sent his Soviet-made tanks against these invaders, who never won more than a beachhead half a mile wide and a quar­ter of a mile deep. Contrary to CIA expectations, the attack provoked no popular uprising against Castro. Kennedy called a crisis meeting and considered sending unmarked US jets to destroy the Cuban air force. The meeting broke up at 3:00 AM, after everyone recognized that the situation was hopeless. At the end of three days' fighting, the survivors surrendered. More than one hun­dred men were dead. Only fourteen were rescued by the US Navy.

 

Kennedy was distraught over the Bay of Pigs fiasco. He fully recognized that his determination to minimize political risk had fundamentally weak­ened prospects for a military success. And the CIA had vastly overestimated the support of the Cuban people for a military invasion to "liberate" them.

 

Kennedy took as his lesson from the Bay of Pigs that he must be considerably more critical of counsel from eager advisers. The fiasco, however, did not cause a change of mind about Cuba. He was even more determined that Castro represented a threat to the United States and must be removed.

 

Kennedy was now also convinced that in the battle for the hearts and minds of the developing world the Soviets were winning. When he met Khrushchev at the Vienna summit in June and admitted that the Bay of Pigs had been a mistake, the Soviet leader turned the knife in the wound by insist­ing that wars of national liberation would now be won by Communists, that the United States was on the wrong side of history. All this added to Kennedy's gloom; maybe the West was losing the Cold War.

 

In Cuba, the Bay of Pigs invasion helped unify the people behind the regime. Castro chose this moment to proclaim that his cause was that of socialist revolution. Communism was the only possible response to Yankee imperialism. The developing relationship with Moscow was the way forward.

 

Following the Vienna summit the Berlin crisis preoccupied Washington, Moscow, and their separate allies for several months. But in the United States, the open wound of Cuba did not heal. A presidential directive in November 1961 created a top secret covert-action programme against Cuba called Operation Mongoose, which had as part of its objective the overthrow of Castro. A variety of schemes were considered, including several plots to assas­sinate him. In March 1962 the joint Chiefs began contingency planning for an invasion of Cuba, and for an economic blockade. Later that spring 40,000 US Marines practised an amphibious landing on another Caribbean island.

 

Khrushchev, paradoxically, like Kennedy, was concerned about the weak­ness of his own position. He worried about the humiliation for the USSR if Cuba were lost, certain that Washington would sooner or later invade again. In his memoirs Khrushchev tells how he became obsessed with the "terrible blow" that would "gravely diminish our stature throughout the world, and especially within Latin America," if Cuba fell. Khrushchev also felt the Soviet Union's military weakness. By 1962 a million US soldiers were stationed in more than two hundred foreign bases, all threatening the Soviet Union, from Greenland to Turkey, from Portugal to the Philippines. There were listening posts and USAF facilities in Iran and Pakistan, and an electronic monitoring station in Ethiopia. Three and a half million troops belonging to America's allies were garrisoned around the Soviet Union's borders. There were Amer­ican nuclear warheads in Italy, the United Kingdom, and Turkey. Khrushchev felt surrounded. Despite his rhetoric about building missiles "like sausages," he knew that the missile balance was stacked against him, and that his long­range missiles were limited in their capability.

 

Khrushchev's Bold Idea

 

In May 1962 Khrushchev visited Bulgaria. Walking on the beach at Varna, the Soviet leader was acutely aware that on the opposite shore of the Black Sea, in Turkey, there were American military bases with nuclear warheads capable of wiping out Kiev, Minsk, and Moscow in a matter of minutes. It was about then that an idea formed in Khrushchev's mind of placing missiles in a base close to the United States. "Why not throw. a hedgehog at Uncle Sam's pants?" Khrushchev asked.

 

Cuba provided the perfect 'site. Installing Soviet missiles in Cuba would have the double benefit of protecting the island from attack and of equaliz­ing the balance of power in nuclear weapons. It was a bold plan. The Soviet Union had never before sited ballistic missiles outside its borders. Khrushchev talked with colleagues and then the Presidium in Moscow about implement­ing the idea, reasoning that it would be best to import the missiles in secret. By the time the Americans spotted them it would be too late. Even if they were able to take out some of the installations, at least a few missiles could still be fired. Washington would realize this and would not try to destroy the missiles once they were operational. Khrushchev's plan to place short- and medium­range missiles in America's back yard would, overnight, create a parity with America's long-range weapons - one of fear. The American rockets in Turkey "are aimed at us and scare us," said Khrushchev. "Our missiles will also be aimed at the United States, even if we don't have as many of them. But ... they will be even more afraid."

 

Would Castro agree to the siting of Soviet missiles in Cuba? At first he was unhappy that his nation should be turned into a Soviet missile base. But, believing that the missiles would alter the worldwide strategic balance in favour of the socialist camp, Castro agreed to accept them. His brother, Raul, led a military delegation to Moscow to negotiate the terms. In July 1962 sixty­five Soviet ships sailed for Cuba, ten of them carrying military equipment. By September the installation of missile sites, from which nuclear warheads tar­geted on the United States could be launched, was under way. Castro wanted the missiles to be sited openly, but the Soviet obsession with secrecy prevailed. Even the Soviet ambassadors in Washington and at the UN were not told.

 

On the morning of Sunday, 14 October, a U-2 spy plane photographed the missile sites under construction near San Cristobal in western Cuba. The next day the photographs were analysed, and by late evening reports hit the desk of McGeorge Bundy, the president's national security adviser. He decided to let the president get a good night's sleep before telling him the news. When Kennedy was told, he was horrified. It was, he said, "just as if we suddenly began to put a major number of [missiles] in Turkey." "Well, we did, Mr. President," an adviser had to remind him.

 

ExComm

 

On Tuesday, 16 October, Kennedy convened a small group of senior officials to debate the crisis. Known as ExComm, this Executive Committee of the National Security Council met'almost continuously for the next two weeks. It was unanimous from the start that the missiles must be removed from Cuba. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara calculated that they would become operational in less than two weeks, which imposed a fourteen-day maximum timetable to get the missiles out. More than just a problem with Cuba, this was a major Cold War crisis.

 

The first issue ExComm debated was whether to bomb the missile sites or to pursue some other option to force the Soviets to dismantle them. Could the missiles be taken out effectively by an air strike? And would the Soviets retal­iate? At first the president eagerly supported a limited air strike. As he dis­cussed a pre-emptive air attack, his brother Robert, the attorney general, passed him a note. "I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor." On the afternoon of 16 October, the Joint Chiefs met and agreed that an air strike would have to be total to be effective, taking out not only all the missile sites but the SAM anti-aircraft missile defences and the backup facili­ties. ExComm met again later that afternoon but failed to agree.

 

Over the next few days the discussion within ExComm went back and forth as options were kicked around and analysed. The Pentagon tried to per­suade Kennedy that a neat, surgical strike against the missile launchers was impractical. Air force general Curtis LeMay agreed that a major air offensive was called for, with hundreds of bombing sorties. Those opposed to this line argued that it risked American and Soviet casualties, and could jeopardize worldwide public opinion. A great deal of time was spent debating whether a surprise air attack would be a morally acceptable course of action. ExComm members fell broadly into two groups, since called hawks and doves. The hawks wanted to take Cuba and rid it of communism. Many of the military backed this line. The doves preferred to explore diplomatic options, which included approaching Castro or even Khrushchev, and wanted to avoid any­thing that might prompt Soviet retaliation.

 

On the afternoon of Thursday, 18 October, the president met with Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko at the White House. Gromyko was in the United States to attend the UN General Assembly. Both men were nervous, but both tried to conceal it. Kennedy had not yet decided whether to confront Gromyko with irrefutable proof of the presence of Soviet missile sites in Cuba. But he had copies of the aerial photographs in a desk drawer ready to pull out. They discussed the possibility of another summit. Then Gromyko, in raising the issue of Cuba, charged the United States with "pestering" a small country. The president pointed out that the situation was aggravated by Soviet mili­tary aid to Cuba. Gromyko insisted that the Soviet Union's military assistance was purely defensive in nature; no offensive weapons would be introduced. Kennedy decided not to reveal US awareness of the missiles until he had his policy clearly worked out. Gromyko left the White House happy and cabled the Kremlin that "the situation is quite satisfactory.... There is reason to believe that the United States has no current plans for an invasion of Cuba."

 

That evening ExComm was told that installation of the SS-4 medium­range missiles was nearly complete and that they probably could be launched within eighteen hours. The longer-range SS-5 missile sites might not be oper­ational until December. Talking beyond midnight, ExComm now pursued an alternative option to an air strike: a naval blockade. This would prevent the Soviets from landing any further shipments. Although stopping ships on the high seas was tantamount to an act of war, a blockade would permit better

control over events and offer more options as the crisis unfolded.

 

For two more days the meetings continued. But with midterm congres­sional elections approaching, the president was needed elsewhere to cam­paign on behalf of the Democrats. In the meanwhile, Rusk and McNamara persuaded ExComm to come down against a military air strike, and to recommend the more cautious policy of a naval blockade of Cuba as first option

 

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A Two-Week Meeting - On Tape!

 

Membership of ExComm varied throughout the crisis, but at the core were Secretary of State Dean Rusk, his deputy George Ball, assistant for Latin American Affairs Edwin Martin, and, briefly, Soviet expert Charles Bohlen; Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, his deputy Roswell Gilpatric, and Assistant Secretary Paul Nitze; General Maxwell Taylor, chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff;, McGeorge Bundy, national security adviser; Llewellyn Thompson, ex­ambassador to Moscow and Soviet specialist; John McCone, director of the CIA; and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the president's younger brother and one of his key confidants.

 

Several other senior officials joined the deliberations from time to time, including Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon; Theodore Sorensen, special counsel to the White House; Dean Acheson, former secretary of state; and Adlai Stevenson, ambas­sador to the United Nations.

 

General Taylor provided a link with the Joint Chiefs, who also met with the president throughout the crisis. Unknown to the members of ExComm, the meetings were recorded. Tapes and transcripts of the almost hourly meetings are now available.

ExComm discussions were long, freewheeling, and unstructured, with no formality leading to decision making. Dean Acheson was appalled at the informal way in which ideas were shared. Under President Truman personal leadership had prevailed against incessant discussion to arrive at a consensus.

Dean Rusk was suspicious that the meetings were an attempt to shift policy planning away from the State Department.

 

Many of the key decisions were made outside ExComm, especially by the president and his brother, who opened backdoor negotiations with Moscow through the new Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin. Many members of ExComm were kept in ignorance of these negotiations.

 

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Kennedy Backs a Blockade

 

On Sunday morning, 21 October, under pretext of suffering a cold, Kennedy cancelled the rest of his electioneering trip. He now decided to back the block­ade. It seemed to be the step "least likely to precipitate general war while still causing the Soviets ... to back down and abandon Castro." Acheson suggested calling this a "quarantine" around Cuba, since it sounded less aggressive. Plans were finalized at top speed, and Acheson was dispatched abroad to drum up support for America's position.

 

On Monday, Pierre Salinger, Kennedy's press secretary, approached the TV networks to request prime-time coverage of a speech by the president on "a matter of highest national urgency" All three networks agreed to clear their schedules. Earlier in the day the State Department officially informed America's allies of its intentions. This was the first news of the crisis in London, Paris, Bonn, Ottawa, and other capitals. Both President de Gaulle and Prime Minister Macmillan assured the United States of full support.

 

Meanwhile, precautionary measures were taken elsewhere. From the start Kennedy had been worried that action over Cuba would produce a reac­tion by the Soviets over Berlin. At noon Strategic Air Command put its B-52 nuclear bomber force on alert, ensuring that at any given time one-eighth of the force, equivalent to four squadrons, would be airborne. Each bomber was armed with four nuclear warheads. For the first time in its history, the Air Defense Command armed all its aircraft with nuclear weapons.

 

At 5:00 PM the president, Secretary Rusk, and Secretary McNamara met with seventeen congressional leaders from both parties to brief them on the crisis. Some expressed their support for the blockade plan. Others, including Senator J. William Fulbright, argued that the naval blockade was not enough, that an air strike or an invasion would be needed to get the missiles out of Cuba. Kennedy and McNamara assured the congressmen that they had not ruled out an invasion but would try the blockade option first. Kennedy said they would take a chance that the missiles now ready would not be fired, but he admitted that it was "one hell of a gamble."

 

That afternoon Soviet ambassador Dobrynin was in New York, seeing Gromyko off at the end of his American trip. A State Department official caught up with him at the airport and asked that he meet the secretary of state that evening in Washington. When Dobrynin asked that the meeting be postponed, he was told it was a matter of urgency. Accordingly at 6:00 PM Dobrynin met Dean Rusk in his office. Rusk gave the ambassador a copy of the speech that Kennedy would deliver on television that evening, along with a copy of a personal message to Khrushchev. In this letter the president told the Soviet leader that his action was a "necessary minimum" and that he hoped the Soviet government would refrain from any action that would deepen an already grave crisis. Rusk thought Dobrynin "aged ten years" before his eyes. The ambassador, who still knew nothing of the deployment of "offensive" Soviet weapons in Cuba, returned to his embassy. He sat in his office alone for fifteen minutes to calm himself before relaying Kennedy's message to a hastily assembled Presidium in Moscow, where the mood was grim. The Soviet lead­ership, convinced that a US invasion of Cuba would now follow, feared that the Soviet force there would be outnumbered and sent instructions to the Soviet commander authorizing him to use tactical nuclear weapons in the event Americans landed. But he was told not to fire the SS-4 ballistic missiles without a direct order from Moscow. "They can attack us, and we shall respond," said Khrushchev to the Presidium. "This may end in a big war," he added.

 

Kennedy Addresses the Nation

 

An hour after Rusk met with the Soviet ambassador, President Kennedy addressed the nation live from the White House. He set out "unmistakable evidence" of the siting of Soviet missiles, and outlined the US policy of naval quarantine.

 

While Kennedy was speaking, the joint Chiefs of Staff ordered all US mil­itary forces worldwide to go to DEFCON 3, a heightened state of nuclear alert. Several hundred ICBM missiles were prepared for firing, and Polaris nuclear submarines were dispatched to their pre-assigned stations at sea. In the Caribbean, the US Navy deployed 180 ships to blockade Cuba. That evening Rusk told a meeting of ambassadors in Washington, "I would not be candid and I would not be fair with you if I did not say that we are in as grave a crisis as mankind has been in."

 

 

Khrushchev's bold idea had backfired. With no contingency plan in the event the missiles were found out, all he could do now was improvise. He put Warsaw Pact armed forces on alert. On the morning of Tuesday, 23 October, TASS transmitted a statement from the Kremlin charging Kennedy with piracy, with an "unheard of violation of international law," and with measures that constituted "a serious threat to peace and to the security of nations." Moscow insisted that the weapons in Cuba were "intended solely for defensive purposes in order to secure the Republic of Cuba against the attack of an aggressor," and that the White House policy "may lead to catastrophic conse­quences for world peace."

 

That evening Robert Kennedy paid the first of several private visits to Ambassador Dobrynin. No one else was present when they met in the ambas­sador's living room above the Soviet Embassy. Kennedy, tense and agitated, told Dobrynin that more than anything he regretted the breakdown in the relationship between President Kennedy and Chairman Khrushchev; the pres­ident had taken grave offence at the way in which Khrushchev and Gromyko had tried to deceive him. Dobrynin, who also had not known of the missile sit ings, found the talk embarrassing. As he was leaving, the president's brother asked the ambassador in a matter-of-fact way if he knew what orders had been given the Soviet ships heading for Cuba. Dobrynin told him, "Our captains have orders to continue their course to Cuba, for the actions of President Kennedy are unlawful." In fact, the Kremlin had already ordered five ships carrying missiles to return to the Soviet Union.

 

On Wednesday, 24 October, U Thant, secretary-general of the United Nations, under pressure from forty non-aligned states, sent identical letters to Kennedy and Khrushchev urging suspension of the blockade and the stopping of shipments to Cuba for two or three weeks. The letter pleaded with both gov­ernments to refrain from any action that would "bring with it the risk of war."

 

In the Caribbean, the Soviet ship Aleksandrovsk arrived at the Cuban port of La Isabela. This ship was the one Soviet vessel ordered to race on to Cuba when the others were recalled. It contained twenty-four nuclear warheads, and beat the blockade by just a few hours.

 

Khrushchev cautioned Kennedy that should the US Navy try to stop Soviet ships at sea, his submarines would sink the American vessels. He would not be the first to fire a nuclear weapon, he said, but he warned, terrifyingly, that "if the US insists on war, we'll all meet together in hell."

 

ExComm went into a long, tense session. At 10:25 AM an intelligence mes­sage reported that some of the Russian ships appeared to have stopped dead in the water. Dean Rusk leaned across to McGeorge Bundy, sighed with relief, and said, "We're eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked." McNamara advised Admiral George Anderson, chief of naval operations, that the blockade must carefully avoid humiliating the Russians, lest Khrushchev react in a nuclear spasm.

 

Later that night Kennedy received a personal message from Khrushchev, warning that the Soviet Union saw the blockade as "an act of aggression," and that "you will understand that the Soviet Union cannot fail to reject the-arbi­trary demands of the United States." It looked as though Moscow was, after all, going to the wire. Equally firmly, the joint Chiefs of Staff increased the alert status of the US military to DEFCON 2, the highest alert status short of war. It was the only time in the entire Cold War that the US military would go to this level of alert.

 

At 7:15 AM on Thursday, 25 October, in the blue waters of the Caribbean, the first interception took place. As the Soviet tanker Bucharest entered the quarantine zone, it was stopped by the USS Gearing. Guaranteeing that it was only carrying oil, the Bucharest was allowed to continue to Havana. In the White House, Kennedy explained, "I don't want to push him [Khrushchev] in a corner from which he cannot escape."

To U Thant's appeal, Kennedy avoided responding directly. Khrushchev wrote that he agreed with the proposal. Meanwhile, at the UN Security Council, Adlai Stevenson confronted Soviet representative Valerian Zorin with evidence of the missile installations. At ExComm the CIA reported that the medium-range SS-4 missiles were now ready for firing.

 

Soon after dawn on Friday, 26 October, another ship was stopped by destroyers of the US Navy and boarded. It was the Lebanese tramp steamer Marucla. Intended to show US determination, this event was stage-managed for public opinion. Lebanon could barely afford to mount an international protest, and in any case, intelligence already knew that the cargo consisted of spare parts for trucks, asbestos, and other industrial goods. Three US naval officers, along with a Russian translator, boarded the Marucla and peered into her hold. Having assured themselves of what they already knew, they allowed the steamer to continue to Havana.

 

By 10:00 AM ExComm was assembled. Kennedy, under increasing political pressure to "crack down hard" on Castro before the November elections, con­ceded that the blockade was not going to get out missiles already in Cuba, and plans for invasion were discussed. Twenty-five thousand marines were assem­bling around the Caribbean, and 100,000 soldiers had been mobilized in Florida. Two giant aircraft carriers, Enterprise and Independence, headed for Cuba at full speed. The air force again put forward the bombing option, and presented plans for an initial strike of more than 2,000 sorties. But it was esti­mated that in the ten days of fighting tied to an invasion, the United States would suffer nearly 18,500 casualties. The president was aghast; to avoid catastrophe Kennedy would have to do a deal.

 

An Extraordinary Proposal

 

Later that morning ABC-TV diplomatic correspondent John Scali received a surprise phone call from Aleksandr Fomin, a press counsellor at the Soviet Embassy, suggesting they meet. Over lunch Fomin asked if the US government would accept a compromise whereby in return for a guarantee that the United States would not invade Cuba, the Soviet Union would dismantle and withdraw the missiles. Scali, amazed at the approach, immediately passed the request on to Dean Rusk, who went straight to the president with it. Scali was told to get back to Fomin and tell him that the US government saw real pos­sibilities in the deal. Extraordinarily, it later appeared that Fomin, actually a KGB official, was acting entirely on his own initiative.

 

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Harsh Words

 

At the UN Security Council in New room of world opinion right now and York, on 25 October, tensions rose. The you can answer yes or no. You have Soviet ambassador to the UN, Valerian denied that they exist, and I want to Zorin, challenged the US ambassador, knowwhether I have understood you Adlai Stevenson, to provide proof that correctly."

the missiles were in Cuba. The exchange has gone down in the history books

 

Stevenson: "Well, let me say some thing to you, Mr. Ambassador.  We do have the evidence ... it is clear and uncontrovertible....Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the USSR has placed and is placing missile sites in Cuba? Yes or no? [Pause] Don't wait for, the- translation, yes or no?"

 

Zorin (translated from the Russian): "I am not in an American courtroom, sir, and therefore I do not wish to answer a question that is put to me in a fashion in which a prosecutor puts questions."

 

Stevenson: "You are in the court­room of world opinion right now and you can answer yes or no.  You have denied that they exist, and I want to know whether I have understood you correctly.”

 

Zorin:"Continue with your state­ment. You will have your answer in due course."

Stevenson: "I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over

 

Stevenson then turned to show close-up photographs of the missile

sites on a board set up beside the council table. Zorin failed to answer and ridiculed the photographic evidence.

 

Stevenson: "We know the facts and so do you, sir, and we are ready to talk about them. our job here is not to score debating points. Our job is to save the peace. And if you are ready to try, we are."

 

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That evening the State Department received a letter from the Kremlin. In four parts, it was, in Robert Kennedy's words, "very long and emotional." It seemed to offer hope by suggesting a settlement along the lines Fomin had proposed earlier in the day; the Soviets might withdraw the missiles if the US agreed not to invade nor "support any other forces which might intend to invade Cuba." This would remove the cause for siting the missiles in the first place. The letter appeared to be directly from Khrushchev; it had his style about it: "We and you ought not to pull on the end of the rope in which we have tied the knot of war, because the more we pull the tighter the knot will be tied." At 10:00 PM, ExComm reconvened and decided to treat Khrushchev's letter as a bona fide proposal. Taken along with Fomin's approach that day, it seemed to everyone that a new Soviet position was emerging.

 

Later that night Castro visited the Soviet Embassy in Havana. He dictated a cable to Khrushchev predicting an imminent US invasion and assuring the Kremlin that any landings would be fiercely resisted. He suggested that the Soviets prepare a nuclear strike in retaliation. Despite protest from the Soviet ambassador, he ordered his own units to

fire on any US aircraft flying over Cuba.

 

In the early hours of the morning, Robert Kennedy had anoth­er secret meeting with Dobrynin. The ambassador sternly pointed out that the United States had sited operational missiles in Turkey aimed at the Soviet Union. Kennedy responded that the Turkish missiles might be brought into a possible solution to the crisis and

left the room briefly to make a telephone call. When he returned Kennedy told the ambassador the president was willing to "examine favorably the question of Turkey." Dobrynin passed this on to Moscow immediately.

 

When the sun came up in Washington that morning, Saturday, 27 October, the day was clear and bright; but it has gone down in history as Black Saturday. ExComm began a marathon session at 10:00 AM with the news that low-level reconnaissance flights indicated that six missile launchers now appeared to be operational. The next forty-eight hours would be critical. The meeting was interrupted by a report that a U-2 flight over Alaska had drifted off course into Siberian air space. The Soviet military regarded this as a "feeler" sent to test their response systems. When ExComm heard that Soviet MiGs had been launched to intercept the U-2, McNamara went white. "This means war with Russia," he yelled out. The president was calmer. "There's always some son of a bitch," he said, "who doesn't get the word."

 

In fact the U-2 pilot did get away safely. At this tense moment, just after 11:00 AM, reports came in of a Radio Moscow broadcast of another letter from Khrushchev. This second letter was in a much more formal tone, and it made a new proposal. For the Soviets to remove the missiles from Cuba, the United States must remove its missiles from Turkey. The hawks in ExComm were out­raged. There had been nothing about Turkey in the earlier letter. Maybe Khrushchev had been overruled by hard-liners in the Kremlin, or perhaps deposed. The Kennedy brothers squirmed, for the Kremlin was only responding to the idea they had put forward the night before. The president commented, "He's got us in a pretty good spot here, because most people will regard this as not an unreasonable proposal." Bundy, Rusk, and General Taylor immedi­ately challenged their commander-in-chief; to remove the missiles from Turkey would fragment NATO. The discussion carried on through the day, with Kennedy arguing that to start a nuclear war instead of accepting a trade over Turkey was "an insupportable position." The president was stuck. He could not move forward without risking a nuclear nightmare. He could not retreat without surrender. He had to move sideways.

 

Khrushchev Sees It His Way

 

Fears in Washington that Khrushchev had been overpowered were wide of the mark. The Soviet premier was in complete control of the Soviet leadership throughout the crisis. At the Saturday Presidium he had argued that for five days Kennedy had done nothing; by standing firm, the Kremlin had forced the White House to reconsider its invasion plans. Despite all the intelligence pre­dictions, Khrushchev did not believe invasion would now take place. Khrushchev introduced to the Presidium the new factor, the Turkish missiles. "If we could achieve the liquidation of the bases in Turkey," Khrushchev argued, "we would win." In front of the Presidium, Khrushchev dictated the message that created the panic response in ExComm.

 

In Cuba, Saturday, 27 October, began badly. A powerful tropical storm lashed the island. As the Soviet technicians frantically raced to prepare their missiles, they worried that torrential rain would short-circuit their electron­ics. Reports that an American U-2 had been spotted over the island prompted the Soviet anti-aircraft batteries into action. Nerves were on edge. Unable to reach the Soviet commander, his deputy authorized the firing of a SAM mis­sile. Exploding alongside the U-2 it sent the plane plunging to earth. The pilot was killed.

 

When this was reported in Washington, the military prepared to take reprisal against the SAM missile emplacements, as contingency plans directed. To the Pentagon's consternation, the president ordered that no action be taken. At ExComm the idea slowly emerged of ignoring Khrushchev's second letter and responding only to his first. Theodore Sorensen and Robert Kennedy prepared a reply. At just after 8:00 PM, the president signed the letter, which guaranteed an end to the blockade and no invasion of Cuba if Russia withdrew its missiles.

 

That Saturday evening, as he left the White House, McNamara recalled, "it was a beautiful fall evening, the height of the crisis, and I went up into the open air to look and to smell it, because I thought it was the last Saturday I would ever see." Strikingly, Martin Walker, in his book The Cold War, relates that on the other side of the world, at that same moment, in Moscow, Fyodor Burlatsky, a Soviet journalist with connections to the Kremlin, had similar thoughts: "That was when I went and telephoned my wife and told her to drop everything and get out of Moscow. I thought then that the American bombers were on their way." Throughout the world, as the crisis escalated, people held their breath. Parents feared for their children's future, kept them back from school, and went to bed not certain they would see another day.

 

A few ExComm veterans lingered at the White House, including the president, his brother, Rusk, and Sorensen. They agreed that Robert Kennedy should arrange another meeting with the Soviet ambassador and inform him directly of the president's letter. Rusk had come round to the deal over the Turkish missiles but suggested it not be made explicit since it would look like a climbdown. In case the whole business got out, Rusk telephoned an American official in the United Nations and dictated a statement that he wanted U Thant to issue the following day if so instructed by Washington. In the statement, U Thant was to call for the removal of both the US missiles in Turkey and the Soviet missiles in Cuba. If the Russians revealed the secret deal, Kennedy could pretend the suggestion had come from the UN.

 

Later that night Dobrynin met with Robert Kennedy at the justice Department. Nervous and agitated, Kennedy told Dobrynin that he had not been home or seen his children for six days. He made it clear that the situa­tion was worsening, that the military and many senior Washington officials were "spoiling for a fight." The United States would have to bomb the missile sites if the missiles were not withdrawn. However, he said, if the Soviets dis­mantled the missiles, the US would withdraw the blockade and would guar­antee no invasion. Dobrynin asked about the missiles in Turkey. Kennedy replied that the president was willing, but the deal would have to be kept secret, since as the leading member of NATO, the United States could not appear unilaterally to withdraw them for its own purposes. However, he could guarantee that the Turkish missiles would go within "four to five months." Time was running out; there were only a few hours left. He urged that Khrushchev give a clear, substantive reply by the next day, but asked him not to mention the Turkish missile deal, which only a few people knew of.

 

In Moscow the Presidium had gone into session at Khrushchev's dacha, just outside the city. When Dobrynin's report of his conversation arrived, Khrushchev told his colleagues that they must take the dignified way out of the crisis. Khrushchev worried that the young president was under such intense pressure from the military to escalate that he might not be able to hold out. Fearful that air attacks on the missile sites were imminent, Khrushchev agreed to accept Kennedy's proposals.

 

At 9:00 AM on the following morning, Sunday, 28 October, Radio Moscow broadcast a message from Khrushchev announcing that "the Soviet govern­ment has given a new order to dismantle the arms which you describe as `offensive' and to crate and return them to the Soviet Union." At the White House there was an immense sigh of relief. Within hours Kennedy broadcast a quick acceptance statement to Moscow over the Voice of America, and ordered that no more ships were to be boarded. In a more formal reply to Khrushchev, the president wrote of "firm undertakings on the part of both our governments which should be promptly carried out." He concluded, "I agree with you that we must devote urgent attention to the problem of disar­mament.... Perhaps now as we step back from the danger, we can together make real progress in this vital field."

 

A Win-Win Outcome

 

In the United States the settlement was treated as a major Soviet defeat. Almost within hours everything at the White House was back to normal. President Kennedy had gone head-to-head with the Soviets, and won. Only the right-wing hawks and the military were disappointed; they had been denied a fight. Admiral Anderson, who had commanded the naval blockade, said, "We have been had." General LeMay suggested they should go ahead and bomb the Cuban missile sites anyway. The Joint Chiefs instructed the military not to relax their alert in case the Soviet line was an "insincere" ploy, designed to gain time.

 

In Moscow, Khrushchev too claimed a victory. "The two most powerful nations in the world had been squared off against each other, each with its finger on the button," Khrushchev later wrote. But the resolution to the crisis brought a "triumph for common sense." In portraying the settlement, the Soviets repeatedly stressed that they had achieved what had never before been possible - an agreement from the United States not to invade Cuba. Khrushchev had safeguarded the socialist revolution in Cuba for posterity. Cuba would not suffer the fate of Guatemala. Khrushchev regarded the set­tlement as a great victory for his diplomacy, "without a single shot having been fired."

In Havana, Fidel Castro, who had not been consulted over the missiles' withdrawal, went into a rage. He cursed Khrushchev as a "son of a bitch, bas­tard, asshole." He refused to see the Soviet ambassador and regarded the dis­mantling of the missiles as a moral defeat. In Ankara, the Turkish govern­ment, which had repeatedly made clear that it wanted US missiles sited on its territory for defensive purposes, expressed delight at the settlement and stated that it would never be party to any negotiation that involved their withdrawal. No one told the Turks that a deal already had been done.

 

In the legend of the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy was the victor. Bright, young, heroic, he kept his cool and taught the Soviets a lesson. In the con­gressional elections ten days after the crisis, the Democrats won their biggest majority in the Senate in twenty years. In Massachusetts the president's youngest brother, Edward, was elected to that body in a landslide. Most grati­fying of all to the Democrats, Richard Nixon was defeated in his bid for the governorship of California. In 1963 US missiles were quietly removed from Turkey, with cover stories that this had no connection to the Cuban crisis: the missiles were obsolete, and the president had wanted them removed long before the crisis blew up. Despite the terms of the agreement with the Soviets, Kennedy continued to discuss plans for sabotage and insurgency in Cuba. After his early humiliations over the Bay of Pigs and his uncertainty over Berlin, Kennedy had now become a statesman, a world peacemaker; his polit­ical future looked secure.

 

The crisis ended with a collective sigh of relief. Both Washington and Moscow had had to choose between compromise and nuclear war. Neither side chose war. Although both claimed a victory, the same important lesson was learned in the Kremlin as in the White House: never again must the superpowers risk direct nuclear confrontation.