Thirteen Days (9 page)

Such “lessons” offer comfort, but they share a flaw. It lies in the assumption that the Soviet rulers were at once cool calculators, reasoning from all the evidence at
our
disposal, and assured controllers, orchestrating every act of their bureaucracies. As Robert Kennedy informs us, this is an assumption that the President resisted. His resistance accounts for the “flap” at the White House.

What Kennedy appears to have believed is that Khrushchev might be a ruler somewhat like himself, beset by uncertainties in seeking evidence and weighing it, likely to misjudge its meaning in another country's context, susceptible to human imperfections of emotion and fatigue, plagued also by the bureaucratic imperfections of communication and control. Khrushchev's long message on Friday night, October 26, seems powerfully to have reinforced this presidential point of view, adding to White House concern about a third week of crisis. If the Russians held their course for a mere seventy-two hours, we would have to escalate a step, probably by bombing Cuban sites. In logic, they should then bomb
Turkish sites. Then we…; then they…. The third step is what evidently haunted Kennedy. If Khrushchev's capability to calculate and to control was something like his own, then neither's might suffice to guide them both through that third step without holocaust.

N
EW
C
HECKS AND
B
ALANCES

In warmaking, the Constitution contemplated enforced collaboration between the President and his fellow politicians on Capitol Hill. In practice, as the missile crisis illustrates, a strong role for Congress is by no means assured. This does not mean, however, that Presidents act in isolation. Any modern President stands at the center of a watchful circle with whose members he cannot help but consult. Today, indeed, he is more dependent on Executive officials for advice as well as execution than our Constitution makers could have anticipated two centuries ago.

New checks and balances replace the old. There is, however, one extraordinary difference: the old circle was supposedly comprised of men who owed their places to elections, who themselves had experienced the risks of nomination and electioneering. Political accountability conferred on each, firsthand, legitimacy as an agent of the people. Indeed, our Constitution's democratic element consisted mainly in reserving to these men the great decisions on the use of force. By contrast, the new circle is appointive or co-optive: congressmen may enter it and so may private citizens when their service as surrogates is wanted by a President. But mostly, and continuously, those assured an entry are the President's own appointees: department heads, Chiefs of Staff, White House aides, and others whose institutional positions or per
sonal relations make their presence virtual necessities for him. As this implies, they are by no means “mere” subordinates. He is no freer than he would have been with Congress to ignore them. But neither are they colleagues in the sense of sharing either his legitimacy or accountability. Nowadays those rest with him alone.

Consider again the group that made fundamental choices for the United States during the missile crisis. Who were the members?

First, there was the President as constitutional Commander in Chief, nationally elected. No other elective officer was so involved (save the Vice-President, an appropriately attentive listener). No member of the Senate or House stands astride the action channel for decisions on nuclear war. None is consulted unless the President so chooses as a matter of discretion. In October 1962, Congress remained ignorant of the Soviet missiles in Cuba during the first week of Ex Comm deliberations. Only on October 22, two hours before his broadcast to the world, did the President assemble the leaders of both houses, advise them of the missiles, and inform them that he had decided to respond with a naval quarantine. The Congressional leaders disagreed strongly with the course the President had chosen. Senator Fulbright in particular urged that the United States respond more forcefully. Senator Russell stated that “he could not live with himself if he did not say in the strongest possible terms how important it was that we act with greater strength.” The Senators insisted that the record show they had been informed, not consulted. But Congressional objections had no effect at that point. Nor was any member of Congress deeply involved in subsequent decisions during the week that followed.

Second, there were several men whose institutional posi
tions made them unavoidable parties to any major choice about nuclear war: the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the White House Assistant for National Security Affairs. Why were these men involved of
necessity?
Because each had a portion of the wherewithal for action. As the President considered possible military moves, who could specify the spectrum of feasible options except the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their subordinates? When the President chose blockade, no one but the Secretary of Defense had both the authority and the information to oversee its implementation. Who told the President about the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba? His Assistant for National Security Affairs, McGeorge Bundy. (Indeed, Bundy chose not to tell him on the evening of Monday, October 15, when the CIA informed Bundy of this fact, but rather to let the President get a good night's sleep on the fifteenth before telling him on the morning of the sixteenth.) Bundy learned about the missiles from the CIA; the Director of the CIA, John McCone, and the machine under him served as the “eyes and ears” of the U.S. government in keeping abreast of developments in Cuba. The need for information, analysis, and assistance in implementation meant that Deputy Secretaries and even the relevant Assistant Secretaries also were included, as, for example, Paul Nitze of Defense.

Third, there were the President's men: his brother and campaign manager, the Attorney General, and his Special Counsel, Theodore Sorensen. Sorensen had joined JFK when he went to the Senate in 1953 and ever since had been among his closest personal and programmatic advisers as well as his principal speechwriter. The President depended
on Sorensen for more than words in speeches. Sorensen, and even more Robert Kennedy, helped John Kennedy assess the full spectrum of his responsibilities as President. Having depended on the national security apparatus alone in making the fateful choice about the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy insisted thereafter that no major national security decision be made without including RFK and Sorensen in the process.

Fourth, there were the surrogates, some of them officials, some from private life. Dean Acheson was a former Secretary of State; Robert Lovett, a former Secretary of Defense. Both had served the Truman Administration, Lovett as a Republican. They were involved because the President happened to value their judgment and also because he knew that others valued their judgment—especially in the “bipartisan foreign policy establishment”—on Capitol Hill and off. Adlai Stevenson, Ambassador to the United Nations, can be counted of their number since his position as a former Democratic presidential candidate and liberal outweighed the importance of his official role. The presence of the Secretary of the Treasury, Douglas Dillon, attests not only to the weight accorded his department in matters of foreign affairs—a vital if half-hidden feature of our government—but also to his representative character as Eisenhower's former Undersecretary of State.

The importance of the individuals in the circle becomes clear as one reflects on the extraordinary role they played. Decisions passed through the President's hand but were not simply the product of his mind alone. Both the definition of the issue and the choice of the U.S. response
emerged
from deliberations of the group. Robert Kennedy's account is suggestive, both about individual perceptions and preferences,
and about the process by which the group came to the blockade.
^*

On the morning of Tuesday, October 16, McGeorge Bundy went to the President's living quarters with the message: “Mr. President, there is now hard photographic evidence that the Russians have offensive missiles in Cuba.” Much has been made of Kennedy's “expression of surprise.” But “surprise” fails to capture the character of his initial reaction. Rather it was one of startled anger, most adequately conveyed by the exclamation: “He can't do that to
me!
” That exclamation in this context was triple-barreled. First, in terms of the President's attention and priorities at the moment, Khrushchev had chosen the most unhelpful act of all. In a highly sensitive domestic political context—less than two years after the Bay of Pigs, less than two months before midterm elections—where his opponents demanded action against Soviet interests in Cuba, Kennedy was following a policy of reason and responsibility. In support of that policy, he had drawn a distinction between “defensive” and “offensive” weapons, staked his full presidential authority on the flat statement that the Soviets were not placing offensive weapons in Cuba, and warned unambiguously that offensive missiles would not be tolerated. Second, the main thrust of his Administration's policy toward the Soviet Union had been aimed at relaxing tension and building trust through trust. At considerable political cost, he was attempting to leash the anti-Communist cold warriors and to educate officials, as well as the public, out of prevailing devil theories of Soviet
Communism. He and his closest advisers had made considerable effort to guarantee that all communication between the President and the Chairman would be straightforward and accurate. Contact had been made; Khrushchev was reciprocating; mutual confidence was growing. As part of this exchange, Khrushchev had assured the President through the most direct and personal channels that he was aware of Kennedy's domestic problem and would do nothing to complicate it. Specifically, Khrushchev had given the President solemn assurances that the Soviet Union would not put offensive missiles in Cuba. But then this—the Chairman had
lied
to the President.
^*
Third, Khrushchev's action challenged the President personally. Did he, John F. Kennedy, have the courage in the crunch to start down a path with significant probability of nuclear war? If not, Khrushchev would win this round. More important, he would gain confidence that he could win the next as well—simply by forcing Kennedy to choose between a nuclear path and acquiescense. Kennedy had worried, both after the Bay of Pigs and after his Vienna meeting with Khrushchev, that the Chairman might have misjudged his mettle. This time Kennedy was determined to stand fast. The nonforcible paths—avoiding military measures, resorting instead to diplomacy—could not have been less relevant to
his
problem.

These two paths—“doing nothing” or “taking a diplomatic approach” as the alternatives were labeled in the Ex Comm—were the solutions advocated by two of his principal advisers.
For Secretary of Defense McNamara, the missiles raised a specter of nuclear war. He first framed the issue as a straightforward strategic problem. To understand the issue, one had to grasp two obvious but difficult points. First, the missiles in Cuba represented an inevitable occurrence: narrowing of the missile gap between the United States and U.S.S.R. It simply happened sooner rather than later. Second, the United States could accept this occurrence since its consequences were minor: seven to one missile “superiority,” one to one missile “equality,” one to seven missile “inferiority”—the three positions are identical. What was identical was the unacceptability of the American casualties that could be inflicted from any of the three. McNamara's statement of this argument at the first meeting of the Ex Comm was summed up in a phrase, “a missile is a missile.” “It makes no great difference,” he maintained, “whether you were killed by a missile from the Soviet Union or Cuba.” The implication was clear. The United States should not initiate a crisis with the Soviet Union, risking a significant probability of nuclear war, over an occurrence that had such small strategic implications.

The perceptions of McGeorge Bundy are difficult to reconstruct. He too seems to have been impressed primarily by the potential in the proposed military actions for escalation to nuclear war, since initially he was the advocate of a diplomatic approach. Several forms of diplomatic approach were outlined, but Bundy argued most persuasively for either confronting Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko with the evidence and demanding withdrawal, or directly approaching Khrushchev in a similar manner. As he pointed out, this approach would give Khrushchev an opportunity to withdraw the missiles quietly, without humiliation. It might avoid any confrontation whatever. It reduced the length of time this
secret would have to stay bottled up inside our government. Moreover, Bundy argued, consider the alternatives—each called for springing the discovery on Khrushchev when announcing to the American people and the world the chosen course of action. This amounted to a suspension of the rules of diplomacy. To make this a public issue engaging Khrushchev's and the Soviets' prestige in the eyes of the world, before trying traditional diplomatic channels, would be at best shortsighted. Finally, in terms of the argument that became the touchstone of these deliberations, a diplomatic approach closed no other options. If Khrushchev refused or delayed, an alternative could then be publicly announced, and the Administration would be shielded from criticisms that it had provoked the public confrontation without first attempting diplomatic negotiations.

Bundy's argument was powerful. But the tone of the argument and the fact that later in the week he became an advocate of the air strike leaves some doubt about his “real” reaction. Was he laboring under his acknowledged burden of responsibility in the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs? Was he playing the role of devil's advocate in order to make the President probe his own initial reaction? As Bundy summarized his own reaction, “I almost deliberately stayed in the minority. I felt that it was very important to keep the President's choices open.”