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

'Otherwise, he's going to announce that we've rejected his proposal,' Kennedy reasoned. 'And then, where are we?'

Dean Rusk predicted that the Soviets would make 'a big blast' about the U-2 overflight of the Soviet Union. The secretary of state read out a draft statement saying that the U-2 had been engaged in 'routine air sampling operations,' but 'went off course' as a result of 'an instrument failure.'

Kennedy preferred not to say anything 'if we can get away without having some leak.' He remembered the embarrassment suffered by President Eisenhower in May 1960 following the downing of a U-2 over Siberia. He did not want to be caught in a series of conflicting explanations about what the U-2 was doing over the Soviet Union that would undermine his 'credibility' with Khrushchev.

'It gives him a story tomorrow and makes us look like we're the offenders.'

More details were coming in from the Pentagon on the afternoon reconnaissance flights. McNamara erroneously reported that one of the Crusaders had been 'hit' by a 37mm shell. The pilot was okay and was returning to base, but there had obviously been 'quite a change in the character of the orders given to the Cuban defenders.' The defense secretary did not think it wise to 'confuse the issue' by publicly acknowledging the American overflight of the Soviet Union.

'I agree,' Kennedy said firmly. 'Let's let it go.'

5:40 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

Dean Rusk found the conflicting signals from Moscow difficult to understand. On Friday, he had received what appeared to be a backchannel message from Khrushchev via the ABC reporter John Scali, offering to pull Soviet missiles out of Cuba in return for a U.S. promise not to invade the island. Today, the Soviet leader had upped the ante by demanding the withdrawal of American missiles from Turkey. The secretary of state asked Scali to find out what happened.

Late on Saturday afternoon, Scali asked Aleksandr Feklisov to come to the Statler-Hilton Hotel, where they had met the previous evening. This time, the reporter and the KGB rezident went up to the deserted ballroom on the mezzanine level. Scali was furious with his source, and did not want to be overheard.

'This is a stinking double-cross,' he protested when they were alone. 'The formula mentioned by Radio Moscow has nothing to do with what we discussed last night.'

Feklisov tried to calm Scali down. There had been no 'double-cross,' he insisted. He conceded that his message to Moscow might have been delayed by the 'heavy cable traffic' back and forth. He also pointed out that the idea of a Turkey-Cuba swap was hardly new. Even Walter Lippmann had mentioned it in his column.

'I don't give a damn if Walter Lippmann or Cleopatra mentioned it,' the newsman exploded. 'It is completely, totally, and utterly unacceptable. It is unacceptable today, it will be unacceptable tomorrow. It will be unacceptable until infinity. The American government just won't consider it.'

Feklisov explained that he and Ambassador Dobrynin were just 'small fry.' Khrushchev was receiving advice from many different people. They were waiting for a message back from Moscow in response to their cable of the previous evening.

Saying good-bye to Feklisov, Scali walked the three blocks up Sixteenth Street to the White House. The deputy chief of intelligence at the State Department was waiting for him. It was 5:40 p.m. Thomas Hughes had been attending a matinee performance of The Mikado when one of the actors appeared on stage, in Japanese imperial regalia, and told him to call his office. His boss, Roger Hilsman, had retired to bed exhausted. Hughes was assigned the job of escorting Scali to the president's private office for a meeting with Rusk.

Rusk was mystified by the latest developments. One reason why the U.S. government had put so much stock in the private Friday letter from Khrushchev was the concrete proposal received via Feklisov. The original Khrushchev message had been very vague, saying merely that the 'necessity for Soviet specialists' in Cuba would disappear in the event of a noninvasion pledge from Washington. Without the extra information provided by Feklisov, the original Khrushchev letter was 'twelve pages of fluff,' in McNamara's phrase. 'There's not a single word in it that proposes to take the missiles out…. That's no contract. You couldn't sign that, and say we know what we signed.'

What nobody on the ExComm realized was that the reporter and the rezident had greatly exaggerated their own importance. The Scali-Feklisov 'backchannel' was itself largely fluff.

Back in the Cabinet Room, JFK was facing mounting opposition to his willingness to consider some kind of Cuba-Turkey deal. The revolt was being led by Mac Bundy, who feared the mere hint of a trade would cause 'real trouble' for the United States. The experts were all agreed, the national security adviser insisted. 'If we appear to be trading the defense of Turkey for a threat to Cuba, we'll have to face a radical decline' in the effectiveness of NATO.

Kennedy was irritated by Bundy's arguments. The allies might complain about a missile trade, but they would complain even louder if the Soviets responded to a U.S. invasion of Cuba by attacking Berlin or Turkey. 'We all know how quickly everybody's courage goes when the blood starts to flow,' he told the ExComm. 'That's what is going to happen to NATO. When [the Soviets] grab Berlin, everybody's gonna say, 'Well, that was a pretty good proposition.' Let's not kid ourselves.'

The president thought Khrushchev had to be offered some inducement to take his missiles out of Cuba. Having made a public offer of a Turkey-Cuba trade, he was not going to simply back down without getting anything in return. There were only two ways to get the Soviet missiles out of Cuba, Kennedy believed: by force or by negotiation. He preferred negotiation.

'I don't agree, Mr. President,' objected Llewellyn Thompson. 'I think there is still a chance we can get this line going.'

'That he'll back down?'

The former ambassador pointed out that Khrushchev had been ready to settle for a noninvasion of Cuba guarantee less than twenty-four hours before. It was possible he was just trying to put 'pressure on us,' to see how much he could get. The president should try to steer him back to the ideas outlined in his private letter on Friday. Thompson was also worried by the terms of the proposed Cuba-Turkey deal. The wording of the Soviet letter suggested that Khrushchev wanted to exchange missiles for missiles, airplanes for airplanes, and bases for bases. Getting the Russians out of Cuba might require the dismantling not just of the Jupiters but of the entire U.S. military presence in Turkey, NATO's eastern flank.

By now, several rival drafts of a possible reply to Khrushchev were on the table. In a phone call from New York, Adlai Stevenson had objected that the State Department draft sounded 'too much like an ultimatum.' He proposed new, more conciliatory language. Kennedy attempted to merge the two drafts, and began dictating changes to Dean Rusk. Soon, everybody was offering suggestions.

'Change it a little,' instructed Kennedy. 'Start again, Mr. Secretary.'

'You can cut the next sentence,' chimed in Bundy.

''Welcome the statement of your desire,'' said Rusk, reading back his notes. 'Couldn't we just say, 'My desire is the same?''

'My desire isn't the same as his,' Kennedy objected. How about 'I can assure you of the great interest of the people of the United States to find a satisfactory solution to this…'

'Interested in reducing tensions,' murmured the secretary of state.

'We have to fudge it somewhat,' conceded the president.

Rusk pressed on. 'We are of course quite prepared to consider with our allies the suggestions that you and your partners in the Warsaw Pact might have in mind.'

The notion that the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact was an alliance of free nations was too much for the hawkish Bundy. 'Do we have to talk about their 'partners in the Warsaw Pact'? he interrupted peevishly. 'What you [Khrushchev] have in mind.'

'Yeah, I think you oughta…' the president agreed.

Seated across the table from Jack, Bobby could no longer conceal his frustration. The cobbled-together draft was full of noble sentiments but didn't actually say anything. Like Thompson, Bobby wanted to steer the exchange with Moscow back to the original Friday night proposal. He suggested his brother tell Khrushchev, 'You made an offer to us, and we accept it. And you've also made a second offer, which has to do with NATO, and we'll be glad to discuss that at a later time.'