McGeorge Bundy, too, is quite sure that the ExComm men are all about to crack. They’ve been awake night and day for almost two weeks. These staid men have become emotional because of their extreme exhaustion and have cultivated opinions and petty jealousies that will define their relationships for years to come. One of the most powerful voices among them is that of air force general Curtis E. LeMay, who sees nothing wrong with blowing Cuba off the map.
* * *
Then Khrushchev’s message arrives. The letter’s wording is personal, an appeal from one leader to another to do the right thing. The Soviet leader insists that he is not trying to incite nuclear war: “Only lunatics or suicides, who themselves want to perish and to destroy the whole world before they die, could do this,” he writes. The Soviet ruler rambles on, questioning Kennedy’s motivations.
Khrushchev concludes his letter by negotiating with Kennedy in a somewhat confusing fashion. The paragraph that draws the most attention states: If you have not lost your self-control, and sensibly conceive what this might lead to, then, Mr. President, we and you ought not to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot.”
The ExComm crew does not believe that Khrushchev’s message is the sign of an outright capitulation. But they all agree it’s a start.
For the first time in more than a week, John F. Kennedy feels hopeful. Yet he does not lift the blockade. There are still nearly a dozen Soviet vessels steering directly toward the quarantine line—and these ships show no signs of turning around.
The tension increases the next afternoon, when word reaches JFK that Cuban surface-to-air missiles have shot down an American U-2 spy plane. The pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson Jr., has been killed.
In retaliation, the Joint Chiefs of Staff demand that the president launch U.S. bombers in a massive air strike on Cuba within forty-eight hours, to be followed by an outright invasion.
Worst of all, spy plane photographs now confirm that some of the Soviet missile installations are complete. There are twenty-four medium-range ballistic missile launchpads, and forty-two MRBMs. Once the warheads are attached, the MRBMs can be launched. Each has a range of 1,020 miles—far enough to reach Washington. Soviet diplomats in their Washington, D.C., embassy are so convinced war is imminent that they have begun burning sensitive documents.
The crisis isn’t over. The prospect of nuclear war has never been greater. The United States is so close to invading Cuba that one bad joke in the nonstop series of ExComm meetings is that Bobby Kennedy will soon be mayor of Havana.
White House appointments secretary Kenny O’Donnell sums up the mood best, describing the ExComm meeting on Saturday evening, October 27, as “the most depressing hour that any of us spent in the White House during the president’s time there.”
President Kennedy secretly sends Bobby to meet with Soviet officials in Washington, promising not to invade Cuba if the missiles are removed, and also to meet a Khrushchev demand that he withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey that are currently in range of the Soviet Union. The Turks won’t like it, and the missiles are technically under control of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but the president is willing to make this one concession if it will stave off war.
It is a war that could be just hours away.
* * *
Then Khrushchev blinks.
The Communist leader is so sure that Kennedy is bluffing that he has not mobilized the Soviet army to full alert. Yet Khrushchev’s intelligence reports now show that the United States is very serious about invading Cuba. And if that happens, the Russians will be forced to fire nuclear missiles. Failure to do so would make Khrushchev and the Soviet Union an international laughingstock. Far worse, the world will think that John Kennedy is more powerful than Nikita Khrushchev.
There is no way the Soviet leadership or the Soviet people will stand for that humiliation. Khrushchev will be toppled from power.
Despite this possibility, the Soviet leader becomes less bellicose. The “funny little man” is introspective when it comes to the subject of war. He lost his first wife to typhus during World War I. Khrushchev may be remembering his beloved Yefrosinia when he says of war “it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction.” The Russian dictator sees that the American president is willing to conduct a nuclear war if pushed to the limit. Yes, the United States will be gone forever. But so will the Soviet Union.
On Sunday morning, at 9:00 A.M., Radio Moscow tells the people of the Soviet Union that Chairman Khrushchev has saved the world from annihilation. The words are also aimed directly at JFK when the commentator states that the Soviets choose to “dismantle the arms which you described as offensive, and to crate and return them to Soviet Russia.”
After thirteen long days, the Cuban missile crisis is over.
* * *
In Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald has been following the action closely. His reaction is to show solidarity with the Russians and Cubans by joining the Socialist Workers Party.
Oswald is alone in the new two-story brick apartment he has rented on Elsbeth Street and is eager for Marina to join him. She and baby June are living with friends in Fort Worth, and he is lonesome for her company despite their violent history. Yet when Marina finally arrives in Dallas, on November 3, their domestic battles resume. She calls their squalid new dwelling a “pigsty.” They scream at each other for two solid days. Oswald swears that he’s going to “beat the hell out of her,” and then goes one step further by threatening to hit her so hard and so long that he’ll kill her.
Marina has had enough. She leaves him again, moving in with some of her Russian friends. So complete is their split that she doesn’t even give Oswald her new address. The members of the Russian community in Dallas, who never liked Oswald, refuse to assist him in his search for his wife.
Outcast, misunderstood, and alone, Lee Harvey Oswald, who considers himself a great man, destined to