Preamble:United States President John F. Kennedy secretly tape-recorded high-level meetings that took place in the White House during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. These recently released recordings provide valuable insights into how American leaders handled a high-stakes game of brinkmanship, the closest the world has ever come to a nuclear holocaust.
The Cuban missile crisis began on October 16, 1962, when President Kennedy first saw photographs taken by an American U-2 spy plane, revealing that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was secretly establishing nuclear missile bases in Cuba. Just a few months before the crisis, Kennedy had arranged to conceal microphones in the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room, probably to have material for a post-presidential memoir. Switches near the chairs he usually sat in enabled him to turn on or off a reel-to-reel tape recorder in the White House basement.
Only Kennedy's private secretary, the Secret Service agents who installed and maintained the system, and possibly his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, knew about it.
Kennedy recorded almost every minute of the many meetings that took place during the crisis. These recently released recordings offer historians a reliable and utterly unique insight into the deliberations of top-level government officials during a national emergency, and they provide a tantalizing opportunity to listen in as history unfolded.
The Crisis Emerges
As congressional elections approached in the fall of 1962, Republican members of Congress called for the United States to take military action on reports that the USSR was channeling weapons to Cuba. Kennedy argued that the weapons did not justify military action. Nevertheless, he took steps to warn the Soviets about supplying arms to the Communist government in Cuba, which had recently allied itself with the USSR. In a September 1962 press conference, Kennedy declared that if the Soviets ever placed offensive weapons (a phrase widely understood to mean nuclear weapons) in Cuba, “the gravest issues would arise.”
UPI/Corbis
On October 16 U.S. intelligence officials presented Kennedy with the U-2 photographs showing the building of nuclear missile bases in Cuba. Preparations for two types of missiles appeared in the photos: medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM) able to travel about 1100 nautical miles (about 2000 km/1300 mi) and intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM) able to reach targets at a distance of about 2200 nautical miles (about 4100 km/2500 mi). Kennedy also saw evidence of nuclear-capable bombers. These missiles placed most major U.S. cities—including Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City—within range of nuclear attack.
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had promised the United States that he would never place nuclear weapons in Cuba. Experts from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), thinking Khrushchev would not risk provoking the United States, had told Kennedy that they believed Khrushchev would keep his promise. Now the U-2 photographs presented Kennedy with those “gravest issues” of war and peace.
For Kennedy, however, there was no clear choice between war and peace. He knew that an attack on Soviet installations in Cuba risked touching off a global thermonuclear war that would result in the loss of millions of lives. At the same time, he thought, and repeatedly said, that he also risked war by doing nothing. If he ignored Soviet defiance of such a clear public pledge, all U.S. pledges might become suspect.
A U.S. promise to defend the beleaguered city of West Berlin in Germany was already under severe pressure. Berlin had been divided into East Berlin, controlled by Communist East Germany, and West Berlin, governed by capitalist West Germany, at the end of World War II (1939-1945). Earlier in the year Khrushchev had threatened to take over West Berlin and told Kennedy he was willing to bring the matter to the point of war. Khrushchev set a deadline of November 1962 for the resolution of the issue.
Before the Cuban missile crisis began, Kennedy and his advisers believed U.S. nuclear superiority would deter any aggressive Soviet moves. But when the U-2 photos arrived, Kennedy and his experts agreed that the missiles in Cuba might have been placed there to keep the United States from going to war over West Berlin. For Kennedy, doing nothing about the missiles in Cuba would only present him with another war-threatening crisis later in the year, this time over Berlin, and with, as Kennedy put it, this “knife stuck right in our guts.” The dilemma, as Kennedy understood it, was acute.
Kennedy quickly assembled a small circle of advisers.
Eventually referred to as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (or ExComm), the group included both national security officials and others whose judgment Kennedy prized, including Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillon, White House Counsel Theodore Sorensen, former Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and his brother Robert.
On October 16, the first day of the crisis, Kennedy and almost all of his advisers agreed that a surprise air attack—followed, perhaps, by a blockade and an invasion—was the only reasonable response. On October 18, however, former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Llewellyn (Tommy) Thompson suggested that Kennedy announce a blockade of Cuba as a prelude to an air strike.
This idea was taken up by two groups. One, which included Thompson, Dillon, CIA director John McCone, and later Robert Kennedy, saw the blockade as a form of ultimatum. Unless Khrushchev announced he would pull the missiles out of Cuba, the blockade would be followed very shortly by some kind of military action.
The other group, which included Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, United Nations (UN) Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, and Sorensen, saw the blockade as an opening to negotiation. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, for whom the blockade seemed a means of testing the Soviets, took an intermediate position. He characterized an air strike or negotiation as “chapter two,” to be written only after the Soviets and U.S. allies had an opportunity to react to the blockade.
As they debated these options, the group struggled to come to grips with the long-term consequences of their actions. Undersecretary of State George Ball voiced discomfort with the idea of a surprise air attack. “We strike without warning, that's like Pearl Harbor,” he said. “It's the kind of conduct that one might expect of the Soviet Union. It's not conduct that one expects of the United States.” Not long afterward, Robert Kennedy intervened. “I think George Ball has a hell of a good point…,” he said. “I think it's the whole question of, you know, assuming that we do survive all this … what kind of a country we are.”
Around midnight on October 18, President Kennedy went alone to the Oval Office, turned on the recorder, and summarized aloud the various positions. “During the course of the day,” he commented, “opinions had obviously switched from the advantages of a first strike on the missile sites and on Cuban aviation to a blockade.” A few individuals adhered to other stances, but “everyone else felt that for us to fail to respond would throw into question our willingness to respond over Berlin [and] would divide our allies and our country. … The consensus was that we should go ahead with the blockade.” Even so, the U.S. military began moving soldiers and equipment into position for a possible invasion of Cuba.
Before Kennedy publicly announced the blockade, he wanted to prepare both military and congressional leaders. On October 19 he met in the Cabinet Room with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Curtis LeMay, chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, acted as spokesman for the others. The Joint Chiefs favored an air strike and an invasion. LeMay came close to calling Kennedy's policy cowardly. “This blockade and political action, I see leading right into war,” LeMay said. “I don't see any other solution. It will lead right into war. This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.” LeMay was referring to the 1938 Munich Pact in which France and the United Kingdom, hoping to avoid war, allowed Nazi Germany to take over parts of Czechoslovakia.
After hearing all the Joint Chiefs speak similarly, Kennedy said coolly, “I appreciate your views. These are unsatisfactory alternatives. The obvious argument for the blockade was [that] what we want to do is to avoid, if we can, nuclear war by escalation or imbalance.”
Kennedy's meeting with congressional leaders took place on October 22, the same day he was scheduled to announce the blockade. The legislators' opinions mirrored those held by Kennedy and the majority of his advisers when the crisis first broke. Richard Russell of Georgia, the most powerful and influential Democrat in the U.S. Senate, argued for attacking Cuba, even at the risk of nuclear war. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and customarily a moderate, agreed. “I think a blockade is the worst of the alternatives.… I'm in favor… of an invasion, and an all-out one, and as quickly as possible,” Fulbright said. President Kennedy closed the meeting by observing: “The people who are the best off are the people whose advice is not taken because whatever we do is filled with hazards.”
On October 22 Kennedy went on worldwide radio and television and announced the discovery of the missiles. He demanded that Khrushchev withdraw them and said that as a first step he was initiating a naval quarantine to intercept any additional offensive weaponry en route to Cuba. For legal purposes, Kennedy and his advisers had decided to refer to the blockade as a quarantine because international law defines a blockade as an act of war. Finally, Kennedy warned that if Khrushchev fired missiles from Cuba, the result would be “a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”
Waiting for War
The first days after the speech were consumed with tension as Kennedy and his advisers waited to see whether the Soviet ships would respect the blockade or trigger a military confrontation at sea. Within a few days Khrushchev gave indications that he wanted to escape the crisis. On October 24 a morning meeting in the Cabinet Room was interrupted by a report that Soviet ships en route to Cuba had stopped dead in the water. Among other things, this at least postponed any confrontation with the Soviet freighters or the Soviet submarines escorting them. Once it appeared the blockade would hold, ExComm discussions turned to the task of removing the missiles already in Cuba.
On October 26 Khrushchev sent a coded cable to Kennedy that seemingly offered to withdraw missiles from Cuba in return for a U.S. pledge not to invade the island, a pledge Kennedy had already volunteered more than a week earlier during a meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko. But before Kennedy and his advisers could react, Khrushchev delivered a public message in which he linked the withdrawal to the removal of “analogous” U.S. weapons in Turkey. None of Kennedy's top advisers had much use for the U.S. missiles in Turkey, which were considered obsolete, but nearly all counseled against doing so in response to a Soviet demand, a demand they thought was made in bad faith to derail any solution.
Meanwhile the United States faced the difficult problems of maintaining the blockade and keeping track of the Soviet missiles, which were camouflaged and moved soon after Kennedy's speech. Low-flying U.S. surveillance aircraft encountered hostile fire, and on October 27 a U-2 was shot down and its pilot killed. The question of whether or not to retaliate, destroy some air defense sites in Cuba, kill Russians, and thereby escalate the crisis produced tormented exchanges among Kennedy's advisers.
Kennedy sensed that the Soviet proposal to trade for the missiles in Turkey would appeal to the public, and he pressed his advisers to find some way of addressing it without capitulating to Khrushchev's demand. Finally, following a suggestion made by Rusk, Kennedy decided his public reply would only address Khrushchev's first message, which offered to withdraw the missiles in exchange for a noninvasion pledge. At the same time, however, Kennedy planned to privately assure Khrushchev that he intended to remove the missiles in Turkey. Robert Kennedy paid a secret visit to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., to convey the president's pledge and its terms.
If the Soviets disclosed the assurance or intimated that the missiles in Turkey were part of the bargain, the missiles would not be withdrawn, Robert Kennedy told Dobrynin. He also warned the Soviets that time was running out and that the president would soon feel compelled to attack Cuba.
Although many scholars have placed great emphasis on this “secret trade,” Kennedy's intention was to push the issue off the table, not bring it on. And it is now known that what Robert Kennedy said to Dobrynin had no material effect on the outcome. Khrushchev had already concluded that he had created too much danger of escalation to nuclear war.
The fact that the United States allowed some Soviet-bloc ships to pass through the blockade may have emboldened Khrushchev to add the proposal regarding the missiles in Turkey. But the tough U.S. response—combined with Cuban leader Fidel Castro's message to Khrushchev saying he believed a U.S. invasion was imminent and that Khrushchev should be ready to launch the missiles—led Khrushchev to decide that Kennedy was serious and that an air attack on Cuba and an invasion were near at hand. Khrushchev told his ministers that the missiles must be withdrawn from Cuba in return only for a noninvasion pledge even before he received Dobrynin's report.
On October 28, the tension began to subside. In a worldwide radio broadcast Khrushchev said he would remove “offensive” weapons from Cuba in return for a U.S. pledge not to invade. He also called for UN inspectors to verify the process. Kennedy believed Khrushchev was sincere, but many of his advisers remained wary of the Soviets' intentions. Additional problems were that Castro refused to allow UN oversight of the dismantling process and the Soviets disagreed that the nuclear-capable bombers in Cuba were “offensive” weapons.
Eventually an agreement was reached: The bombers would be removed within 30 days, and the missiles and other “offensive” weapons would be evacuated in the open so that U.S. surveillance aircraft could observe their removal. Because the removal was not verified by inspection, however, the United States did not provide an ironclad guarantee not to invade Cuba.
The Cuban missile crisis marked the point at which the Cold War began to thaw. Both sides had peered over the precipice of nuclear war and wisely decided to retreat. Khrushchev eventually accepted the status quo in West Berlin and the predicted conflict there never materialized. The thaw also led to the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963.
The Tale of the Tapes
The tapes represented an invaluable historical record of the crisis, but their existence remained secret for many years. The Secret Service removed the tapes from the White House within hours of Kennedy's assassination in November 1963. They were stored for a time in Washington, D.C., and then moved to Massachusetts along with other White House records.
In the meantime, books by Sorensen, Robert Kennedy, and other participants disclosed many new details about the crisis. Most of these accounts divided Kennedy's advisers into two major groups: “Hawks,” who advocated a surprise bombing attack on Cuba, most likely to be followed by an invasion; and “Doves,” who argued for negotiations and possibly concessions to the Soviets. According to these accounts, Kennedy and a few others had found, and taken, a middle course represented by the quarantine.
More details about the crisis emerged from declassified U.S. and Soviet files and historical conferences involving those who participated in the crisis, including some Soviet officials. Kennedy's secret assurance to Khrushchev concerning the missiles in Turkey came to light, as did two other facts. The first was that Soviet forces in Cuba had been equipped with “tactical” nuclear weapons intended for battlefield use. The second was that the United States had incorrectly estimated the number of Soviet troops stationed in Cuba. Instead of a few thousand troops, there was an entire Group of Soviet Forces in Cuba, about 40,000 soldiers. Any U.S. invasion would have faced stiff resistance.
The existence of the tapes first came to light in 1973 at the same time that former President Richard Nixon's taping system (a completely different system than the one Kennedy had used) was disclosed during the Watergate hearings. In 1975 the Kennedy family deeded the tapes to the United States, and they have since been stored in the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, under the control of the National Archives and Record Administration. The National Archives released portions of the tapes, but those few excerpts and summaries were heavily edited to excise classified information.
Then in the mid-1990s the library released virtually all of the missile crisis tapes. They provided a more nuanced picture of the crisis than the simple image of clashing “hawks” and “doves.” They showed a remarkable process of collective reasoning, usually guided by Kennedy himself, which led not to the victory of one group over another, but rather to an evolving consensus. Kennedy's military advisers consistently championed an air strike and an invasion, and Stevenson consistently championed negotiation. But almost everyone else shifted from position to position, partly in response to changing intelligence, but even more as a result of listening to others, absorbing their arguments, and adapting to them.
Conclusion
It is clear that the Cuban missile crisis was a very dangerous episode, perhaps the most dangerous in all of human history. Kennedy can be criticized for policies, such as the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, that helped build up the Soviet-Cuban relationship and led Khrushchev to think Kennedy might be bullied. Yet at the same time it was Kennedy's good judgment, and the belated prudence Khrushchev displayed once the crisis intensified, that helped avoid catastrophe.
Given what is now known it seems clear that all the alternatives to the course Kennedy actually pursued would have been more dangerous. An air strike or an invasion of Cuba would have resulted in a larger conflict than the United States had imagined. On the other hand, any indication of willingness to negotiate could have encouraged Khrushchev to demand more concessions rather than to come to terms. Kennedy guided U.S. policy along what in retrospect seems to have been the wisest and most prudent path, one that is now retraceable thanks to the release of the Kennedy tapes.
*Ernest May is the Charles Warren Professor of History at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Philip Zelikow is an associate professor of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School. They are coeditors of The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, published by Belknap in 1997.
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