President John F. Kennedy signs a proclamation allowing U.S. warships to interdict the delivery of military equipment to Cuba the during the Cuban missile crisis. Fidel Castro, opposite page, accuses the United cuban States of firing on Cuban missile territory in September 1962. crisis at Five DecaDes later, n October of 2002, as Presi- only the actual firing of weapons dent George W. Bush openly represents a sufficient challenge to 50lessons are still prepared for the invasion of a nation’s security to constitute I Being learneD From Iraq, an elite group of former Ken- maximum peril”—to justify the nedy White House aides gathered forthcoming attack on Iraq. the most Dangerous in Havana to commemorate the From Cuba, Kennedy’s aides Days in history 40th anniversary of the Cuban mis- quickly challenged the President’s sile crisis. “There are lessons to be misappropriation of the past. Theo- By Peter KornBluh learned,’’ observed Arthur M. dore Sorensen, JFK’s speechwriter Schlesinger Jr., a top Kennedy advi- who had drafted the very words Bush mages sor and renowned historian, at the cited, clarified that they were “not i international conference hosted by intended to justify a preemptive etty g Fidel Castro. “This was not only the strike, because JFK had specifically most dangerous moment of the ruled out a preemptive strike.” Ken- Cold War. It was the most danger- nedy’s strategy in 1962 “was not hotoQuest/ p ous moment in human history.’’ preemption. It was the reverse of owe/ For Bush, the key lesson of the preemption,” stated former Defense r bbie missile crisis was that a preemp- Secretary Robert McNamara. If a tive strike was warranted to take President Bush was his student, out Saddam Hussein’s purported Schlesinger told the Washington weapons of mass destruction. “We Post, “I would flunk him in history.” mages; opposite: cannot wait for the final proof— i • • • etty the smoking gun—that could g come in the form of a mushroom Fifty years after the Cuban missile xley/ cloud,” he declared in an October crisis brought the world to the o lan 7 speech, citing John F. Kennedy’s brink of nuclear war its dramatic a words during the missile crisis— history continues to hold lessons “we no longer live in a world where for the present. A decade ago the this page: photo credit tk 92 93 President John F. Kennedy signs a proclamation allowing U.S. warships to interdict the delivery of military equipment to Cuba the during the Cuban missile crisis. Fidel Castro, opposite page, accuses the United cuban States of firing on Cuban missile territory in September 1962. crisis at Five DecaDes later, n October of 2002, as Presi- only the actual firing of weapons dent George W. Bush openly represents a sufficient challenge to 50lessons are still prepared for the invasion of a nation’s security to constitute I Being learneD From Iraq, an elite group of former Ken- maximum peril”—to justify the nedy White House aides gathered forthcoming attack on Iraq. the most Dangerous in Havana to commemorate the From Cuba, Kennedy’s aides Days in history 40th anniversary of the Cuban mis- quickly challenged the President’s sile crisis. “There are lessons to be misappropriation of the past. Theo- By Peter KornBluh learned,’’ observed Arthur M. dore Sorensen, JFK’s speechwriter Schlesinger Jr., a top Kennedy advi- who had drafted the very words Bush mages sor and renowned historian, at the cited, clarified that they were “not i international conference hosted by intended to justify a preemptive etty g Fidel Castro. “This was not only the strike, because JFK had specifically most dangerous moment of the ruled out a preemptive strike.” Ken- Cold War. It was the most danger- nedy’s strategy in 1962 “was not hotoQuest/ p ous moment in human history.’’ preemption. It was the reverse of owe/ For Bush, the key lesson of the preemption,” stated former Defense r bbie missile crisis was that a preemp- Secretary Robert McNamara. If a tive strike was warranted to take President Bush was his student, out Saddam Hussein’s purported Schlesinger told the Washington weapons of mass destruction. “We Post, “I would flunk him in history.” mages; opposite: cannot wait for the final proof— i • • • etty the smoking gun—that could g come in the form of a mushroom Fifty years after the Cuban missile xley/ cloud,” he declared in an October crisis brought the world to the o lan 7 speech, citing John F. Kennedy’s brink of nuclear war its dramatic a words during the missile crisis— history continues to hold lessons “we no longer live in a world where for the present. A decade ago the this page: photo credit tk 92 93 Top left, two of President Kennedy’s closest advisers during the Cuban missile crisis were Secretary of State Dean Rusk, left, and Defense mages Secretary Robert McNamara. Top right, Kennedy with Air Force Chief i of Staff Curtis LeMay. Bottom, a U-2 spy plane photo of a Soviet ballistic etty g missile site in Cuba that set off the U.S.–Soviet confrontation. )/ dod nuclear weapon systems that the CIA never detected in Cuba. These new revelations remind us of how terrifyingly close the world efense ( d f came to atomic Armageddon. But the declassified record has also revealed o major new details on how committed both Kennedy and Khrushchev were to using creative diplomacy to stop the forces of a final Cold War epartment confrontation that they themselves had inadvertently unleashed. d ictures/ the oFFICIAl STORY p ife The genesis of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s offer of a nuclear l ime deterrent to Cuba, and Castro’s decision to deploy the missiles on Cuban t sabers of war were rattling over Iraq; today the United States and Israel soil, dates back to the April 1961 CIA-led paramilitary assault at the Bay of mages; are openly debating a preemptive strike against Iran. Sadly, Schlesinger, Pigs, and the subsequent covert program known as “Operation Mongoose” i etty Sorensen and McNamara are no longer here to point out the implications which was intended to lead to another U.S. invasion of Cuba. But the g of the crisis for current day conflicts. The search for a full appreciation of official starting point of the missile crisis came on October 14, 1962, when rchive/ the lessons of the crisis, nevertheless, continues. a U-2 spy plane snapped hundreds of reconnaissance photos of a series of a Incredibly, despite the current global importance for a complete newly constructed installations and camps in the Cuban countryside. The ulton ulton accounting of the missile crisis, significant parts of the historical record next day, analysts at the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation h remain secret and sealed. Even so, in the decade since the conference in Center spotted hard evidence—images of launchers, missiles, trailers and mages; Havana, which brought together surviving officials from Cuba, the for- special transport trucks—that proved the existence of medium -range i etty mer USSR and the U.S. along with newly declassified documentation ballistic missile [MRBM] sites on the island. Additional photo intelligence g from all three nations, the narrative of the conflict has evolved, allowing soon revealed bases for intermediate-range missiles capable of striking ictures/ analysts and historians to revisit and revise the events of October 1962. targets over 2,800 miles away in the United States. The CIA estimated the p ife A recent book by the intrepid investigative reporter Michael Dobbs, One missiles would become “fully operational within two weeks.” l ime Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear On October 16, Kennedy gathered a select group of advisors—an t War, for example, has revealed that besides the ballistic missiles, the executive committee officially known as the “ExComm”—to discuss a Soviets secretly brought dozens of nuclear-tipped cruise missiles to Cuba, strategic response. His Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, presented chutzer/ s and, at the height of the crisis, positioned those weapons near the U.S. him with three basic options: l) a political option of “approaching aul p naval base at Guantanamo Bay in anticipation of a U.S. invasion. Castro,” and “approaching Khrushchev”; 2) a naval blockade to stop Another book published this fall, The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis: Castro, Soviet ships carrying weapons to Cuba; and 3) “military action directed Mikoyan, Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Missiles of November, by Sergo against Cuba, starting with an air attack against the missiles.” The Mikoyan and edited by Svetlana Savranskaya, draws on never-before- ExComm’s initial discussions focused on a massive U.S. military assault seen Soviet documents that record the struggle between Moscow and on the nuclear installations and other bases in Cuba, and whether the Havana over withdrawing those cruise missiles, and other battlefield Soviets would counterattack in Berlin or elsewhere. clockwise from top left: 94 In one of the most dramatic public moments during the Cuban missile crisis, shoppers in a department store watch President Kennedy’s nationally televised speech to the American people in which he announced the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. Would a U.S. attack on Cuba killing thousands of Soviet personnel At 7pm on October 22, Kennedy went on television to give one of —the CIA estimated 8,000 Soviet troops and technicians on the island the most dramatic 18-minute speeches in modern times. The U.S. now when the actual number was 42,000—and many more thousands of had “unmistakable evidence” of offensive missile bases on the island of Cubans, set off a spiral of superpower aggression leading to the ultimate Cuba, he told the nation and the world.