Kennedy: The Classic Biography (128 page)

At 2:30 that Sunday afternoon, October 21, the President met with the NSC once again. He reviewed the State Department’s drafts of instructions to embassies and Presidential letters to allies, all to be sent out in code that night and held for delivery. He reviewed the approaches to the OAS and UN, and agreed that UN supervision and inspection of the missiles’ removal would be requested. He asked Navy Chief of Staff Anderson, Jr. to describe plans and procedures for the blockade. First, said the Admiral, each approaching ship would be signaled to stop for boarding and inspection. Then, if no satisfactory response was forthcoming, a shot would be fired across her bow. Finally, if there was still no satisfactory response, a shot would be fired into her rudder to cripple but not to sink. “You’re certain that can be done?” asked the President with a wry smile. “Yes, sir!” responded the Admiral. Nitze reported on Berlin planning. More aerial surveillance of Cuba was ordered.

Most of that meeting was spent in a page-by-page review of the latest speech draft. Among the issues raised at that meeting, and in my earlier and later meetings with the President, were the following:

1. Should the latest enlarged photographs be shown by the President on TV? No, he decided—both because the average viewer could discern too little for it to be intelligible and because the mere presence of pictures might contribute to panic. The desire to avoid panic also caused the President to delete all references to the missiles’ megatonnage as compared with Hiroshima, and to speak of their capability of “striking,” instead of “wiping out,” certain cities. But to increase hemispheric unity, he did include a reference to the Canadian and Latin-American areas within their target range.

2. Should the speech admit our secret surveillance by U-2 planes, internationally sensitive since 1960 and an illegal violation of Cuban air space? Yes—deciding to make a virtue out of necessity, the President listed increased surveillance as an announced part of his response, justifying it on the basis of an earlier OAS communiqué against secret military preparations in the hemisphere, adding that “further action will be justified” if the missiles remain, and hinting at the nature of that action by urging a consideration of the hazards “in the interest of both the Cuban people and the Soviet technicians
at the sites.”

3. Would he institute the blockade without OAS approval? Yes, if we could not get it, because our national security was directly involved. But hoping to obtain OAS endorsement, he deliberately obscured this question in the speech by a call for unspecified OAS action and an announcement of the blockade and other steps “in the defense of our own security and of the entire Western Hemisphere.”

4. Should his speech anticipate, and try to forestall, a retaliatory blockade around Berlin? Yes—both by emphasizing that we were not “denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948” and by warning that we would resist “any hostile move anywhere in the world against the safety and freedom of peoples to whom we are committed—including in particular the brave people of West Berlin.”

5. What should he say about diplomatic action? Nothing that would tie our hands, anything that would strengthen our stand. Saturday’s discussion, which obtained some additional State Department support and refinement over the weekend, was of major help here. The President deleted from my original draft a call for a summit meeting, preferring to state simply that we were prepared to present our case

and our own proposals for a peaceful world at any time…in the United Nations or in any other meeting that could be useful, without limiting our freedom of action…. I call upon Chairman Khrushchev…to join in an historic effort to end the perilous arms race and to transform the history of man…. We have in the past…proposed the elimination of all arms and military bases…. We are prepared to discuss…the possibilities of a genuinely independent Cuba.

These remarks were a far cry from the Saturday afternoon proposals, but they were more than we had for the first draft.

6. How would we explain our action to other nations long living in the shadow of missiles? The President deleted a specific reference to self-defense against armed attack under Article 51 of the UN Charter, but carefully chose his words for anyone citing that article:

We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation’s security to constitute maximum peril. Nuclear weapons are so destructive, and ballistic missiles are so swift, that any substantially increased possibility of their use or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace.

He made dozens of other changes, large and small. After each recitation of the September Soviet Government and October Gromyko assurances, he inserted the sentence: “That statement was false.” References to Latin America and the hemisphere were inserted along with or in place of references to this country alone. And a direct appeal to the Cuban people was expanded considerably by one of Kennedy’s top appointees in State from Puerto Rico, Arturo Morales Carrion, who understood the nuances in Spanish of references to “fatherland,” “nationalist revolution betrayed” and the day when Cubans “will be truly free—free from foreign domination, free to choose their own leaders, free to select their own system, free to own their own land, free to speak and write and worship without fear or degradation.”

But Kennedy struck from the speech any hint that the removal of Castro was his true aim. He did not talk of total victory or unconditional surrender, simply of the precisely defined objective of removing a specific provocation. In the same vein, he deleted references to his notification of the Soviets, to the treatment awaiting any ships attempting to run the blockade and to predictions of the blockade’s effect on Castro, believing that making these matters public was inconsistent with his desire not to force Khrushchev’s hand. Lesser action items proposed by the State Department—specifically, a Caribbean Security Conference and further shipping restrictions—he deleted as too weak-sounding and insignificant for a speech about nuclear war. There was no mistaking that central subject, underlined most specifically in the words:
“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

Throughout Sunday evening and most of Monday, minor changes in the text were made, each one being rushed to USIA translators and to the State Department for transmission to our embassies. The whole nation knew on Monday that a crisis was at hand—particularly after Salinger’s announcement at noon that the President had obtained 7
P.M
. network time for a speech of the “highest national urgency.” Crowds and pickets gathered outside the White House, reporters inside. I refused all calls from newsmen, answering the telephoned questions of only one powerful Congressman (“Is it serious?” “Yes”) and Ted Kennedy (“Should I give my campaign dinner speech on Cuba?” “No”). I informed Mike Feldman and Lee White in my office by giving them copies of the speech. “It’s a shame,” cracked White with heavy irony, gazing out the window. “They’ve just finished sanding that Executive Office Building.” Upon hearing that Gromyko was to make an announcement on his departure for Moscow, a special monitor was arranged—but his remarks contained only the usual farewell.

For the President that Monday, October 22, was a day of conferences. By telephone he talked to former Presidents Hoover, Truman and Eisenhower. He met with our group in the morning and with the full National Security Council at 3
P.M
., all Joint Chiefs of Staff present. These were taut, organizational meetings, nothing more. The group he had originally summoned six days earlier was formally established as the “Executive Committee” of the National Security Council, with a standing order to meet with the President each morning at ten. At 4
P.M
. he met with the Cabinet, briefly explained what he was doing and promptly adjourned the meeting. His presentation was tense and unsmiling. There were no questions and no discussion.

Just before the Cabinet meeting he kept a long-scheduled appointment with Prime Minister Milton Obote of Uganda. He had hoped to cut it short; and Secretary Rusk, who sat in on the conference, was visibly distracted. The Prime Minister blithely talked on, debating with the President the wisdom of U.S. aid to Rhodesian schools. The President found himself drawn into the debate, enjoying the change of subject and the clash of intellects. Rusk rustled his papers, the Cabinet paced outside the windows. Finally the meeting ended and the President personally escorted Obote to the door of the White House, looking more relaxed than he had all day. (The following day the Prime Minister, informed by Kennedy’s speech of the grave matter with which he had competed for time, wrote the President that his patient attention at that hour was proof of his genuine regard for the new African nations.)

Elsewhere the State Department scenario was being effectively carried out. The President’s speech, now completed, served as the basic briefing document in all capitals of the world and in a series of ambassadorial meetings in the State Department. Photographs were provided as well. Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin was invited to Rusk’s office at 6
P.M
. Ambassador Kohler delivered the same message in Moscow a little later. U.S. custodians of nuclear weapons in Turkey and Italy were instructed to take extraordinary precautions to make certain that such weapons were fired only upon Presidential authorization. Latin-American governments were told of possible disorders and the availability of riot control equipment. Our own missions were instructed to tape their windows. Many State, Defense and White House officers went on a twenty-four-hour watch, with cots in offices and personnel working in shifts.

The only sour note of the day was the President’s meeting with some twenty Congressional leaders at 5
P.M
. They had been plucked from campaign tours and vacation spots all over the country, some by jet fighters and trainers. (Hale Boggs, for example, fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, was first buzzed by an Air Force plane dropping a note to him in a plastic bottle, and was finally taken by helicopter to New Orleans, traveling by jet from there to Washington.) Members of both parties campaigning for re-election gladly announced the cancellation of their speeches on the grounds that the President needed their advice.

But in some cases their advice was captious and inconsistent. Reacting to a McNamara-Rusk-McCone picture briefing the same way most of us originally did, many called the blockade irrelevant and indecisively slow, certain to irritate our friends but doing nothing about the missiles. An invasion of the island was urged instead by such powerful and diverse Democratic Senators as Russell and Fulbright (who had strongly opposed the 1961 Cuban invasion). Charles Halleck said he would support the President but wanted the record to show that he had been informed at the last minute, not consulted.

The President, seeking bipartisan unity, announced that he, the Vice President and Cabinet had canceled the rest of their campaign trips, whatever happened. An invasion could not begin immediately in any event, he said, and it was better to go slow with Khrushchev. But Russell, one of the authors of the original, more belligerent forms of the Congressional resolution, complained that more than halfway measures were required.

The President, however, was adamant. He was acting by Executive Order, Presidential proclamation and inherent powers, not under any resolution or act of the Congress. He had earlier rejected all suggestions of reconvening Congress or requesting a formal declaration of war, and he had summoned the leaders only when hard evidence and a fixed policy were ready. “My feeling is,” he said later, “that if they had gone through the five-day period we had gone through—in looking at the various alternatives, advantages and disadvantages…—they would have come out the same way that we did.”

The meeting dragged on past 6
P.M
. I waited outside the door with his reading copy, angry that they should be harassing him right up to the last minute. Finally he emerged, a bit angry himself, and hustled over to his quarters to change clothes for his 7
P.M
. speech. As I walked with him, he told me of the meeting, muttering, “If they want this job, they can have it—it’s no great joy to me.” But in a few minutes he was calm and relaxed once again. Alone back in the Cabinet Room, we reviewed the text once more; and in a few more minutes the most serious speech in his life was on the air:

Good evening, my fellow citizens:

This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military build-up on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere….

This urgent transformation of Cuba into an important strategic base, by the presence of these large, long-range and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction, constitutes an explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas….

For many years, both the Soviet Union and the United States…have deployed strategic nuclear weapons with great care, never upsetting the precarious status quo which insured that these weapons would not be used in the absence of some vital challenge. Our own strategic missiles have never been transferred to the territory of any other nation, under a cloak of secrecy and deception…. American citizens have become adjusted to living daily in the bull’s-eye of Soviet missiles located inside the U.S.S.R. or in submarines….