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

Peter Baker, Susan Glasser, Peter Finn, Sergei Ivanov, and Masha Lipman went out of their way to be helpful when I was in Moscow. I enjoyed the hospitality of Alex Beam and Kiki Lundberg while I was in Boston. In London, Peter and Michelle Dobbs were unfailingly generous with offers of meals and accommodation, as was my brother Geoffrey.

In addition to the editors at Knopf, a number of people took the trouble to read the manuscript and make useful suggestions, including Tom Blanton, Svetlana Savranskaya, Raymond Garthoff, David Hoffman, Masha Lipman, and especially Martin Sherwin, who wielded a judicious scalpel. My mother, Marie Dobbs, an author in her own right, critiqued an early draft so extensively that I spent the next two months revising it.

My greatest debt of gratitude, as always, is to my wife, Lisa, and our three children, Alex, Olivia, and Jojo. I am dedicating this book to Olivia, whose music-making abilities, language talents, and curiosity about the world have blossomed during the two years I have been immersed in this book.

NOTES

ABBREVIATIONS OF SOURCES

AFHRA

Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base

AFSC

Air Force Safety Center, Kirtland Air Force Base

CINCLANT

Commander in Chief Atlantic

CNN CW

CNN Cold War TV series, 1998. Transcripts of interviews at King's College London

CNO

Chief of Naval Operations

CNO Cuba

CNO Cuba history files, Boxes 58–72, Operational Archives, USNHC

CREST

CIA Records Search Tool, NARA

CWIHP

Cold War International History Project bulletin

DOE

Department of Energy OpenNet

FBIS

Foreign Broadcast Information Service.

FOIA

Response to Freedom of Information Act request

FRUS

Foreign Relations of the United States Series, 1961–1963, Vols. X, XI, XV. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997, 1996, 1994.

Havana 2002

Havana Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962. Conference briefing books prepared by the National Security Archive

JFKARC

John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection at NARA

JFKL

John F. Kennedy Library, Boston

JFK2, JFK3

Philip Zelikow and Ernest May, eds., The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy, The Great Crises, Vols. 2–3, Miller Center for Public Affairs, University of Virginia

LAT

Los Angeles Times

LCV

Library of Congress Dmitrii Volkogonov Collection

MAVI

Archives of Mezhregional'naya Assotsiatsia Voinov-Internatsionalistov, Moscow

NARA

National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD

NDU

National Defense University, Washington, D.C.

NIE

National Intelligence Estimate

NK1

Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970

NK2

Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974

NPRC

National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, MO

NSA

National Security Agency

NSAW

National Security Archive, Washington, DC

NSAW Cuba

National Security Archive, Cuba Collection

NYT

New York Times

OH

Oral History

OSD

Office of Secretary of Defense, Cuba Files, NARA

RFK

Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days. New York: W. W. Norton, 1969

SCA

Records of State Department Coordinator for Cuban Affairs, NARA

SDX

Records of State Department Executive Secretariat, NARA

SVR

Archives of Soviet Foreign Intelligence, Moscow

USCONARC

U.S. Continental Army Command

USIA

U.S. Intelligence Agency