One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

twenty-four in all.

'Let's see,' said Kennedy, reading aloud passages from the intelligence report. 'Two of these missiles are operational now…missiles could be launched within eighteen hours after the decision to fire…yields in the low megaton range.'

He had been dreading this meeting, but knew he must at least go through the motions of consulting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He felt that the generals had misled him over the Bay of Pigs, pushing him to support an ill- prepared invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro exiles. He was particularly mistrustful of the Air Force chief of staff, General Curtis LeMay, a cigar-chomping World War II hero with three thousand nuclear bombs under his command. 'I don't want that man near me again,' Kennedy had said, after listening to one of LeMay's blood-curdling briefings about bombing America's enemies back to the 'Stone Age.' Profane, tough, and brutally efficient, LeMay was the kind of man you wanted by your side when the fighting started, but not the type who should be making decisions about war and peace.

LeMay could barely contain himself as the president voiced his fears of a nuclear conflagration. Attempting to put himself in Khrushchev's shoes, Kennedy predicted that a U.S. attack on Cuba would inevitably be followed by a Soviet attack on Berlin. 'Which leaves me with only one alternative, which is to fire nuclear weapons ? which is a hell of an alternative.'

Nonsense, retorted LeMay, speaking slowly as if addressing a somewhat dim pupil. It was the other way round. Not taking firm action in Cuba would only encourage the Soviets to try their luck in Berlin. A naval blockade of Cuba, as proposed by some of Kennedy's advisers, could send a fatal message of weakness.

'It will lead right into war. This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.'

There was a shocked silence around the table. LeMay's remark was an audaciously insulting reference to the president's father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., who had advocated a policy of negotiating with Hitler while serving as U.S. ambassador to London. LeMay was implying that JFK, who had launched his political career as the author of an anti-appeasement book called While England Slept, was about to follow in his father's footsteps.

LeMay's strategy for dealing with the rival superpower was based on a simple logic. The United States enjoyed overwhelming nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union. However much Khrushchev might threaten and bluster, he had absolutely no interest in provoking a nuclear war that he was bound to lose. Thanks to the Strategic Air Command (SAC), the most powerful military force in the history of the world, America had 'the Russian bear' by the balls. 'Now that we have gotten him in a trap, let's take his leg off right up to his testicles,' he told his associates. 'On second thoughts, let's take off his testicles, too.'

Kennedy's logic was very different. The United States might have many more nuclear bombs than its adversary, but 'winning a nuclear war' was a pretty meaningless concept. As many as 70 million Americans could die in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. 'You're talking about the destruction of a country,' he told the Joint Chiefs. He wanted to avoid provoking Khrushchev into what McNamara called 'a spasm response,' an involuntary knee-jerk reaction that would end up in a nuclear exchange.

The commander in chief was shocked by the impertinence of the Air Force general. When LeMay told him that 'you're in a pretty bad fix at the present time,' Kennedy thought he hadn't heard right.

'What did you say?'

'You're in a pretty bad fix,' LeMay repeated calmly, in his flat midwestern voice.

'Well, you're in there with me. Personally.'

The reply provoked some strained laughter around the table. A few minutes later, LeMay assured the president that the Air Force could be 'ready for attack at dawn' on Sunday, although the 'optimum date' would be the following Tuesday. Kennedy left the room shortly afterward.

With the president gone, the generals felt free to dissect the debate. The hidden tape recorders were still running.

'You, you pulled the rug right out from under him,' the commandant of the Marine Corps, General David M. Shoup, told LeMay.

'Jesus Christ, what the hell do you mean?' replied the Air Force chief, eager for praise.

The problem with politicians, said Shoup, was that they always tried to do everything 'piecemeal.' As a military man, he preferred settling matters with 'that little pipsqueak of a place' once and for all.

'You go in there and friggin' around with the missiles. You're screwed. You go in and friggin' around with little else. You're screwed.'

'That's right.'

'You're screwed, screwed, screwed.'

Later, in the privacy of his office, the president conducted his own postmortem on the performance of his generals. He was amazed by LeMay's blithe assurance that Khrushchev would fail to react to the bombing of the missile sites and the deaths of hundreds of Russians.

'These brass hats have one great advantage in their favor,' he told his personal assistant and friend Dave Powers. 'If we listen to them and do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.'

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19, NIGHT

Jack Kennedy had a keen appreciation for the vagaries of history. His experiences commanding a patrol boat in the Pacific during World War II, reinforced by the lessons from the Bay of Pigs, had taught him to mistrust the assurances of military leaders. He knew that there can be a huge gulf between the orders and wishes of the man in the Oval Office and how that policy is actually implemented on the ground. One of his lasting impressions from the war was that 'the military always screws up everything.'

The events of the next few days would confirm JFK's view of history as a chaotic process that can occasionally be given a shove in a desired direction, but can never be completely controlled. A president can propose, but ordinary human beings often dispose. In the end, history is shaped by the actions of thousands of individuals: some famous, others obscure; some in positions of great authority, others who want to tear down the established order; some who strive mightily to put themselves in a position to alter events, others who stumble onto the political stage almost by chance. The story of what would later become known as the Cuban missile crisis is replete with accidental figures whose role in history is often overlooked: pilots and submariners, spies and missileers, bureaucrats and propagandists, radar operators and saboteurs.

As the president agonized over what to do about the missile sites, two such humble Cold War warriors were steering a rubber dinghy through the mangrove swamps of western Cuba. Miguel Orozco and Pedro Vera had blackened their faces and were wearing military-style ponchos. Their backpacks contained explosives, fuses, a two-way radio set, an M-3 rifle, a couple of pistols, and enough food and water to survive for a week. The electric engine on the RB-12 dinghy was equipped with silencers. The little boat made practically no noise as it drifted through the winding canal.

They had known each other for years, having waged war together against the barbudos in the Sierra Maestra. Taller and wirier than his companion, Orozco had served as lieutenant in Batista's army. Vera was a former sergeant. Following the success of the Fidelista uprising, both men had fled Cuba and joined the CIA-trained, anti-Castro guerrilla force known as Brigade 2506. Orozco had helped transport Brigade members to the Bay of Pigs for the doomed invasion. Vera had taken part in a parachute attack on a road leading to the isolated Zapata peninsula before retreating in disarray when Castro's troops counterattacked. He had been lucky to escape alive, and spent more than a week at sea on a small raft before being rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard.

They were headed south, up the Malas Aguas River, into the foothills of the low mountains that rise up along the northern Pinar del Rio coastline. Their target ? an aerial tramway connecting the Matahambre copper mine with the port of Santa Lucia ? was less than a dozen miles away as the crow flies. But the countryside ahead was terribly inhospitable: a mixture of swamp, poisonous undergrowth, and thick forest. It could take them another three or four days to reach their destination.

Every aspect of the operation had been painstakingly planned. The CIA had obtained detailed blueprints of the copper mine from the company's former American owners, whose property had been confiscated as a result of the revolution. It had used these plans to build a full-scale mock-up of the facility at 'the Farm,' a heavily forested