“The next morning October 16 they woke the President to tell him. He called a Cabinet meeting. They quizzed the experts who said that it looked as if the site at San Cristobal would be ready for firing in ten days’ time. You can imagine that everyone was deeply shocked. It meant that we could be attacked almost anywhere in the States with no more than three minutes’ warning.
“I’ve got to emphasise that these missiles are ‘first-strike’ weapons. They have no defensive rôle. They are attack weapons. What is even worse is that both the military and the CIA agree that the weapons being set up in Cuba are half the total missiles available to the Soviet Union.
“Today’s the 19th and the President is going on TV on Monday night to tell the American people what’s going on. That gives us barely three days to decide what steps we are going to take. We have a number of choices. I’d like to explain what they are and the one that we have almost firmed up as our response.” He paused. “Will you help us decide?”
Aarons said quietly, “Have you had any recent contacts with Soviet officials in Washington?”
“Yesterday the President kept a long-standing arrangement to receive Andrei Gromyko. He made the meeting last as long as he could, two hours, to give Gromyko an opportunity of raising the missile business. He didn’t say a word about them.”
“I’ll help you, but when you’ve told me about the alternatives and your preferred action I’d like an hour or so to think about it on my own.”
“Where are you staying? What hotel?”
“I don’t know.” Aarons looked at Malloy who smiled and said to Robert Kennedy, “I’ve booked him in at the Dupont Plaza.”
“Look, the Ex Comm is still in session, how about you go back to the hotel and get some sleep and we’ll meet here again mid-evening. Say nine and I’ll lay on something for us to eat. Talk a couple of hours and then you’ve got all night to think about it.”
“Whatever suits you, sir.”
Kennedy smiled. “I’m still Bobby. The President is having to keep to his usual schedule so that nobody can start getting ideas that there’s some crisis. If people can see me around it’ll help.” He stood up, straightening his loose tie as he looked at Malloy, “Look after him, Bill, see that he gets all he wants.” Then he turned to Aarons. “How’s your lovely Tania?”
“She’s OK,” Aarons said, and was touched by that genuine Kennedy concern, to remember his wife’s name and ask after her in the middle of an international crisis.
Robert Kennedy joined them just after 9 p.m. and put a sheet of paper on the table in front of him.
“Let’s get started. Jack’s kept to his schedule and is campaigning for the Democratic candidates in Connecticut. Nobody outside the group seems to have picked up any idea that there’s a crisis. I’ve been running the Ex Comm discussions so I’m right up to date on the alternatives. The medium-range missiles—that’s with a range of a thousand miles—will be ready to fire in a week. The intermediates—two thousand two hundred miles—would be ready for early December.
“So—the alternatives. The majority opinion favours an air attack to take out the sites and the missiles. Snags—the Air Force say that would mean killing about twenty-five thousand Cubans and a number of Soviet technicians. Dead Russians would almost certainly lead to total war with the Soviet Union.
“Next we’ve got the blockade route. Cut Cuba off by sea and air from the rest of the world.” Bobby Kennedy looked at Aarons. “Next option is we could do nothing. Next we could send a top man to Khrushchev and try to settle it just talking. No revelation, no publicity. Another alternative is to expose the Russians in the UN Security Council, photographs and all. But unfortunately the Soviets chair the Council this month—Zorin. Then we have the big one—we invade Cuba. Take it over lock, stock and barrel. Solve all the problems in one go.”
He looked at his notes. “One last thing. Both bombing and blockading are technically acts of war.” He half smiled. “That’s the menu, Andy.”
“Can we talk about it a bit right now?”
“Sure.”
“Even if technically blockade is an act of war it sheds no blood. It keeps the stakes low.”
“So does doing nothing or trying out sweet reason at the Kremlin.”
“On the invasion—would the military really prefer this, using the missiles as an excuse—a reason for doing it?”
“No. But it has to be borne in mind. Not only is it an alternative but if we choose some other way and it doesn’t work we have to come back to this.”
“Can I ask who supports doing nothing or a quiet talk with the Kremlin?”
“Sure. Nobody supports either. They are possibilities so they have to be considered.”
“Have you decided that you’d be ready to take military action if it came to it to take out the missiles?”
Robert Kennedy was silent for several moments before he said, “I think you could say that we’ll do anything that’s necessary to remove those missiles.”
“Anything?”
“Yeah, anything.”
“What’s your experts’ analysis of why Moscow have put those missiles in Cuba?”
Kennedy shrugged. “They haven’t a clue. Every reason put forward sounds crazy. The bottom line is that they know what they’re doing and that means that either they’re ready to risk a
