A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (62 page)

Secrecy was the key at the
time. National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and Secretary of
State Dean Rusk publicly insist that RFK had simply made informal
assurances, not specific promises regarding the American arsenal.
After
glasnost
in
1989, Theodore Sorensen admitted that he had taken it upon himself
to edit out a "very explicit" reference to the inclusion of the
Jupiter's in the final deal. The following are excerpts of
recollections of the crisis by key participants:

Robert F. Kennedy

"I telephoned Ambassador Dobrynin about 7:15
P.M. and asked him to come to the Department of Justice. We met in
my office at 7:45. I told him first that we knew that work was
continuing on the missile bases in Cuba and that in the last few
days it had been expedited. I said that in the last few hours we
had learned that our reconnaissance planes flying over Cuba had
been fired upon and that one of our U-2s had been shot down and the
pilot killed. That for us was a most serious turn of events.
President Kennedy did not want a military conflict. He had done
everything possible to avoid a military engagement with Cuba and
with the Soviet Union, but now they had forced our hand. Because of
the deception of the Soviet Union, our photographic reconnaissance
planes would have to continue to fly over Cuba, and if the Cubans
or Soviets shot at these planes, then we would have to shoot back.
This would inevitably lead to further incidents and to escalation
of the conflict, the implications of which were very grave
indeed.

He said the Cubans resented the fact that we
were violating Cuban air space. I replied that if we had not
violated Cuban air space, we would still be believing what
Khruschev had said - that there would be no missiles placed in
Cuba. In any case, I said, this matter was far more serious than
the air space of Cuba - it involved the peoples of both of our
countries and, in fact, people all over the globe.

"The Soviet Union had secretly established
missile bases in Cuba while at the same time proclaiming privately
and publicly that this would never be done. We had to have a
commitment by tomorrow that those bases would be removed. I was not
giving them an ultimatum but a statement of fact. He should
understand that if they did not remove those bases, we would remove
them. President Kennedy had great respect for the Ambassador's
country and the courage of its people. Perhaps his country might
feel it necessary to take retaliatory action; but before that was
over, there would be not only dead Americans but dead Russians as
well.

"He asked me what offer the United States
was making, and I told him of the letter that President Kennedy had
just transmitted to Khruschev. He raised the question of our
removing the missiles from Turkey. I said that there could be no
quid pro quo or any arrangement made under this kind of threat or
pressure and that in the last analysis this was a decision that
would have to be made by NATO. However, I said, President Kennedy
had been anxious to remove those missiles from Italy and Turkey for
a long period of time. He had ordered their removal some time ago,
and it was our judgment that, within a short time after this crisis
was over, those missiles would be gone.

I said President Kennedy wished to have
peaceful relations between our two countries. He wished to resolve
the problems that confronted us in Europe and Southeast Asia. He
wished to move forward on the control of nuclear weapons. However,
we could make progress on these matters only when the crisis was
behind us. Time was running out. We had only a few more hours - we
needed an answer immediately from the Soviet Union. I said we must
have it the next day.

"I returned to the White House...."

(Robert F. Kennedy.
Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile
Crisis
. New York: New American Library,
1969, 107-109.)

Nikita Khruschev

"The climax came after five or six days,
when our Ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, reported that
the President's brother, Robert Kennedy, had come to see him on an
unofficial visit. Dobrynin's report went something like this:

"'Robert Kennedy looked exhausted. One could
see from his eyes that he had not slept for days. He himself said
that he had not been home for six days and nights.' 'The President
is in a grave situation,' Robert Kennedy said, 'and does not know
how to get out of it. We are under very severe stress. In fact we
are under pressure from our military to use force against Cuba.
Probably at this very moment the President is sitting down to write
a message to Chairman Khruschev. We want to ask you, Mr. Dobrynin,
to pass President Kennedy's message to Chairman Khruschev through
unofficial channels. President Kennedy implores Chairman Khruschev
to accept his offer and to take into consideration the
peculiarities of the American system. Even though the President
himself is very much against starting a war over Cuba, an
irreversible chain of events could occur against his will. That is
why the President is appealing directly to Chairman Khrushchev for
his help in liquidating this conflict. If the situation continues
much longer, the President is not sure that the military will not
overthrow him and seize power. The American army could get out of
control.'"

(
Khruschev Remembers
, introduction,
commentary, and notes by Edward Crankshaw, translated and edited by
Strobe Talbott. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970; citation from
paperback edition, New York: Bantam, 1971, pages
551-52.)

Theodore Sorensen

"...The President [Kennedy] recognized that,
for Chairman Khruschev to withdraw the missiles from Cuba, it would
be undoubtedly helpful to him if he could say at the same time to
his colleagues on the Presidium, 'And we have been assured that the
missiles will be coming out of Turkey.' And so, after the ExComm
meeting [on the evening of October 27, 1962], as I'm sure almost
all of you know, a small group met in President Kennedy's office,
and he instructed Robert Kennedy - at the suggestion of Secretary
of State [Dean] Rusk - to deliver the letter to Ambassador Dobrynin
for referral to Chairman Khrushchev, but to add orally what was not
in the letter: That the missiles would come out of Turkey.

"Ambassador Dobrynin felt that Robert
Kennedy's book did not adequately express that the 'deal' on the
Turkish missiles was part of the resolution of the crisis. And here
I have a confession to make to my colleagues on the American side,
as well as to others who are present. I was the editor of Robert
Kennedy's book. It was, in fact, a diary of those "Thirteen Days".
And his diary was very explicit that this was part of the deal; but
at that time it was still a secret even on the American side,
except for the six of us who had been present at that meeting. So I
took it upon myself to edit that out of his diaries, and that is
why the Ambassador is somewhat justified in saying that the diaries
are not as explicit as his conversation."

(Sorensen's comments; Bruce
J. Allyn, James G. Blight, and David A. Welch, editors,
Back to the Brink: Proceedings of the Moscow
Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis.
January 27-28, 1989; Lanham, Maryland: University Press of
America, 1992, pages 92-93.)

McGeorge Bundy

"... Later [on Saturday], accepting a
proposal from Dean Rusk, [John F.] Kennedy instructed his brother
to tell Ambassador Dobrynin that while there could be no bargain
over the missiles that had been supplied to Turkey, the President
himself was determined to have them removed and would attend to the
matter once the present crisis was resolved - as long as no one in
Moscow called that action part of a bargain. [page 406]

"...The other part of the oral message [to
Dobrynin] was proposed by Dean Rusk: That we should tell Khrushchev
that while there could be no deal over the Turkish missiles, the
President was determined to get them out and would do so once the
Cuban crisis was resolved. The proposal was quickly supported by
the rest of us [in addition to Bundy and Rusk, those present
included President Kennedy, McNamara, RFK, George Ball, Roswell
Gilpatrick, Llewellyn Thompson, and Theodore Sorensen]. Concerned
as we all were by the cost of a public bargain struck under
pressure at the apparent expense of the Turks, and aware as we were
from the day's discussion that for some, even in our own closest
councils, even this unilateral private assurance might appear to
betray an ally, we agreed without hesitation that no one not in the
room was to be informed of this additional message. Robert Kennedy
was instructed to make it plain to Dobrynin that the same secrecy
must be observed on the other side, and that any Soviet reference
to our assurance would simply make it null and void. [pages
432-441>

"…There was no leak. As far as I know, none
of the nine of us told anyone else what had happened. We denied in
every forum that there was any deal, and in the narrowest sense
what we said was usually true, as far as it went. When the orders
were passed that the Jupiters must come out, we gave the plausible
and accurate - if incomplete - explanation that the missile crisis
had convinced the President once and for all that he did not want
those missiles there.... [page 434]"

(Bundy, McGeorge.
Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in
the First Fifty Years.
New York: Random
House, 1988.)

Dean Rusk

"Even though Soviet ships had turned around,
time was running out. We made this very clear to Khrushchev.
Earlier in the week Bobby Kennedy told Ambassador Dobrynin that if
the missiles were not withdrawn immediately, the crisis would move
into a different and dangerous military phase. In his book
'Khrushchev Remembers', Khrushchev states that Robert Kennedy told
Dobrynin that the military might take over. Khrushchev either
genuinely misunderstood or deliberately misused Bobby's statement.
Obviously there was never any threat of a military takeover in this
country. We wondered about Khrushchev's situation, even whether
some Soviet general or member of the Politburo would put a pistol
to Khrushchev's head and say, 'Mr. Chairman, launch those missiles
or we'll blow your head off!'

"...In framing a response [to Khrushchev's
second letter of Saturday, October 27], the President, Bundy,
McNamara, Bobby Kennedy, and I met in the Oval Office, where after
some discussion I suggested that since the Jupiters in Turkey were
coming out in any event, we should inform the Russians of this so
that this irrelevant question would not complicate the solution of
the missile sites in Cuba. We agreed that Bobby should inform
Ambassador Dobrynin orally. Shortly after we returned to our
offices, I telephoned Bobby to underline that he should pass this
along to Dobrynin only as information, not a public pledge. Bobby
told me that he was then sitting with Dobrynin and had already
talked with him. Bobby later told me that Dobrynin called this
message 'very important information.'"

(Rusk, Dean as told to
Richard Rusk.
As I Saw
It
.
New York:
Norton & Co., 1990, pages 238-240.)

Dobrynin's Cable to the Soviet Foreign
Ministry, October 27, 1962

TOP SECRET Making Copies Prohibited Copy No.
I

CIPHERED TELEGRAM

"Late tonight R. Kennedy invited me to come
see him. We talked alone.

The Cuban crisis, R. Kennedy began,
continues to quickly worsen. We have just received a report that an
unarmed American plane was shot down while carrying out a
reconnaissance flight over Cuba. The military is demanding that the
President arm such planes and respond to fire with fire. The USA
government will have to do this.

I interrupted R. Kennedy and asked him, what
right American planes had to fly over Cuba at all, crudely
violating its sovereignty and accepted international norms? How
would the USA have reacted if foreign planes appeared over its
territory?

"We have a resolution of the Organization of
American states that gives us the right to such overflights," R.
Kennedy quickly replied.

"I told him that the Soviet Union, like all
peace-loving countries, resolutely rejects such a 'right' or, to be
more exact, this kind of true lawlessness, when people who don't
like the social-political situation in a country try to impose
their will on it - a small state where the people themselves
established and maintained [their system].

"'The OAS resolution is a direct violation
of the UN Charter,' I added, 'and you, as the Attorney General of
the USA, the highest American legal entity, should certainly know
that.'

"R. Kennedy said that he realized that we
had different approaches to these problems and it was not likely
that we could convince each other. But now the matter is not in
these differences, since time is of the essence. 'I want,' R.
Kennedy stressed, 'to lay out the current alarming situation the
way the president sees it. He wants N.S. Khrushchev to know this.
This is the thrust of the situation now.'

"'Because of the plane that was shot down,
there is now strong pressure on the president to give an order to
respond with fire if fired upon when American reconnaissance planes
are flying over Cuba. The USA can't stop these flights, because
this is the only way we can quickly get information about the state
of construction of the missile bases in Cuba, which we believe pose
a very serious threat to our national security. But if we start to
fire in response - a chain reaction will quickly start that will be
very hard to stop. The same thing in regard to the essence of the
issue of the missile bases in Cuba. The U.S.A. government is
determined to get rid of those bases - up to. In the extreme case,
of bombing them, since, I repeat, they pose a great threat to the
security of the USA. But in response to the bombing of these bases,
in the course of which Soviet specialists might suffer, the Soviet
government will undoubtedly respond with the same against us,
somewhere in Europe. A real war will begin, in which millions of
Americans and Russians will die. We want to avoid that any way we
can, I'm sure that the government of the USSR has the same wish.
However, taking time to find a way out [of the situation] is very
risky (here R. Kennedy mentioned as if in passing that there are
many unreasonable heads among the generals, and not only among the
generals, who are itching for a "fight"). The situation might get
out of control, with irreversible consequences.