'Tuesday morning, October 16, 1962."

TUESDAY MORNING, OCTOBER l6, 1962,
shortly after 9:00 o'clock. President Kennedy called and
asked me to come to the White House. He said only that
we were facing great trouble. Shortly afterward, in his
office, he told me that a U-2 had just finished a photographic mission and that the Intelligence Community
had become convinced that Russia was placing missiles
and atomic weapons in Cuba.
That was the beginning of the Cuban missile
crisis—a confrontation between the two giant atomic
nations, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., which brought the
world to the abyss of nuclear destruction and the end of
mankind. From that moment in President Kennedy's
office until Sunday morning, October 28, that was my
life—and for Americans and Russians, for the whole
world, it was their life as well.
At 11:45 same morning, in the Cabinet
Room, a formal presentation was made by the Central
Intelligence Agency to a number of high officials of the
government. Photographs were shown to us. Experts ar23
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rived with their charts and their pointers and told us
that ifwe looked carefully, we could see there was a missile base being constructed in a field near San Cristobal,
Cuba. I, for one, had to take their word for it. I examined
the pictures carefully, and what I saw appeared to be no
more than the clearing of a field for a farm or the basement of a house. I was relieved to hear later that this was
the same reaction of virtually everyone at the meeting,
including President Kennedy. Even a few days later,
when more work had taken place on the site, he remarked that it looked like a football field.
The dominant feeling at the meeting was
stunned surprise. No one had expected or anticipated
that the Russians would deploy surface-to-surface baU
listic missiles in Cuba. I thought back to my meeting
with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin in my office
some weeks before. He came to tell me that the Russians
were prepared to sign an atmospheric-test-ban treaty if
we could make certain agreements on underground testing. I told him I would transmit this message and the accompanying documents to President Kennedy.
I told him we were deeply concerned within the
Administration about the amount ofmilitary equipment
being sent to Cuba. That very morning, I had met on
this subject with the President and the Secretaries of
24
"Tuesday morning, October 16,1962 . .
State and Defense. There was some evidence that, in addition to the surface-to-air-missile (SAM) sites that were
being erected, the Russians, under the guise of a fishing
village, were constructing a large naval shipyard and a
base for submarines. This was all being watched carefully—through agents within Cuba who were reporting
the military buildup in a limited but frequently important way, through the questioning ofrefugees who were
screened and processed as they arrived in Florida, and
through U-2 flights.
It was election time. The autumn days of September and October were filled with charges and countercharges. Republicans "viewing with alarm" were
claiming the U.S. was not taking the necessary steps to
protect our security. Some, such as Senator Homer E.
Capehart of Indiana, were suggesting that we take military action against Cuba.
I told Ambassador Dobrynin of President Kennedy's deep concern about what was happening. He
told me I should not be concerned, for he was instructed
by Soviet Chairman Nikita S. Khrushchev to assure
President Kennedy that there would be no ground-toground missiles or offensive weapons placed in Cuba.
Further, he said, I could assure the President that this
military buildup was not of any significance and that
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Khrushchev would do nothing to disrupt the relationship of our two countries during this period prior to the
election. Chairman Khrushchev, he said, liked President
Kennedy and did not wish to embarrass him.
I pointed outthat I felt he had a very strange way
ofshowing his admiration; that what the Russians had
been doing in Cuba was a matter ofthe deepest concern
to the United States; and that his protestations offriendship meant little alongside the military activities in the
Caribbean. I told him we were watching the buildup
carefully and that he should know it would be of the
gravest consequence ifthe Soviet Union placed missiles
in Cuba. That would never happen, he assured me, and
left.
I reported the conversation to President Kennedy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara, and relayed my own skepticism, and suggested that it might be advisable to issue
a statement making it unequivocally clear that the U.S.
would not tolerate the introduction of offensive surfaceto-surface missiles, or offensive weapons of any kind,
into Cuba.
That same afternoon, September 4, from a draft
prepared by Nicholas Katzenbach, the Deputy Attorney
General, and myself, the President issued exactly this
26
"Tuesday morning, October 16,1962 . .
kind of warning and pointed out the serious consequences that would result from such a step.
A week later, on September 11, Moscow disclaimed publicly any intention oftaking such action and
stated that there was no need for nuclear missiles to be
transferred to any country outside the Soviet Union, including Cuba.
During this same period of time, an important
official in the Soviet Embassy, returning from Moscow,
brought me a personal message from Khrushchev to
President Kennedy, stating that he wanted the President to be assured that under no circumstances would
surface-to-surface missiles be sent to Cuba.
Now, as the representatives ofthe CIA explained
the U-2 photographs that morning, Tuesday, October
16, we realized that it had all been lies, one gigantic
fabric of lies. The Russians were putting missiles 'in
Cuba, and they had been shipping them there and beginning the construction of the sites at the same time
those various private and public assurances were being
forwarded by Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy.
Thus the dominant feeling was one of shocked
incredulity. We had been deceived by Khrushchev, but
we had also fooled ourselves. No official within the gov27
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emment had ever suggested to President Kennedy that
the Russian buildup in Cuba would include missiles. On
a number of occasions, the President had asked for a
specific evaluation on what the Intelligence Community
felt to be the implications for the U.S. of that buildup.
The Intelligence Community, in its National Estimate
of the future course of events, had advised him—on
each of the four occasions in 1962 when they furnished
him with official reports on Cuba and the Caribbean—
that the Russians would not make offensive weapons
available to Cuba. The last estimate before our
meeting ofthe 16th ofOctoberwas dated the 19th ofSeptember, and it advised the President that without reservation the United States Intelligence Board, after considerable discussion and examination, had concluded
that the Soviet Union would not make Cuba a strategic
base. It pointed out that the Soviet Union had not taken
this kind ofstep with any ofits satellites in the past and
would feel the risk of retaliation from the United States
to be too great to take the risk in this case.
We heard later, in a postmortem study, that reports had come from agents within Cuba indicating the ;
presence of missiles in September of 1962. Most of j
the reports were false; some were the result of confusion
by untrained observers between surface-to-air mis-':
28
"Tuesday morning, October 16,1962 . .
siles and surface-to-surface missiles. Several reports,
however, turned out to be accurate—one from a former
employee at the Hilton Hotel in Havana, who believed
a missile installation was being constructed near San
Cristobal, and another from someone who overheard
Premier Fidel Castro's pilot talking in a boastful and intoxicatedway one evening aboutthe nuclear missilesthat
were going to be furnished Cuba by Russia.
But before these reports were given substance,
they had to be checked and rechecked. They were not
even considered substantial enough to pass on to the
President or other high officials within the government.
In retrospect, this was perhaps a mistake. But the same
postmortem study also stated that there was no action
the U.S. could have taken before the time we actually
did act, on the grounds that even the films available on
October 16 would not have been substantial enough to
convince the governments and peoples of the world of
die presence of offensive missiles in Cuba. Certainly,
unsubstantiated refugee reports would not have been
sufficient.
The important fact, of course, is that the missiles
were uncovered and the information was made available to the government and the people before the missiles
became operative and in time for the U.S. to act.
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The same group that met that first morning in the
Cabinet Room met almost continuously through the
next twelve days and almost daily for some six weeks
thereafter. Others in the group, which was later to be
called the "Ex Comm" (the Executive Committee of the
National Security Council), included Secretary of State
Dean Rusk; Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara;
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John McCone; Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon; President Kennedy s adviser on national-security affairs, McGeorge Bundy; Presidential Counsel Ted Sorensen; Under Secretary of State George Ball; Deputy Under
Secretary of State U. Alexis Johnson; General Maxwell
Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Edward
Martin, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America;
originally. Chip Bohlen, who, after the first day, left to
become Ambassador to France and was succeeded by
Llewellyn Thompson as the adviser on Russian affairs;
Roswell Gilpatric, Deputy Secretary of Defense; Paul
Nitze, Assistant Secretary of Defense; and, intermittently at various meetings, Vice-President Lyndon B.
Johnson; Adlai Stevenson, Ambassador to the United Nations; Ken ODonnell, Special Assistant to the President;
and Don Wilson, who was Deputy Director of the
United States Information Agency. This was the group
30
"Tuesday morning, October 16,1962 . .
that met, talked, argued, and fought together during
that crucial period of time. From this group came the
recommendations from which President Kennedy was
ultimately to select his course of action.
They were men ofthe highest intelligence, industrious, courageous, and dedicated to their country's wellbeing. It is no reflection on them that none was consistent in his opinion from the very beginning to the very
end. That kind of open, unfettered mind was essential.
For some there were only small changes, perhaps varieties of a single idea. For others there were continuous
changes of opinion each day; some, because of the pressure of events, even appeared to lose theirjudgment and
stability.
The general feeling in the beginning was that
some form of action was required. There were those, although they were a small minority, who felt the missiles
did not alter the balance ofpower and therefore necessitated no action. Most felt, atthat stage, that an air strike
against the missile sites could be the only course. Listening to the proposals, I passed a note to the President: "I
I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl
[Harbor."