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

'he would want to know': Time magazine profile, July 28, 1961.

danger of getting 'bogged down': JCS message 051956Z, CNO Cuba, USNHC.

Electronic eavesdroppers on board: Intercepted message reported in ExComm meeting, interview with Keith Taylor, USS Oxford, November 2005; tracking intercept described in Harold L. Parish OH, October 12, 1982, NSA.

FIRE HOSE: CINCAFLANT messages 27022Z and 280808Z, CNO Cuba, USNHC. Some writers have claimed that the White House had to talk LeMay out of ordering the immediate destruction of a SAM site ? see Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 463-4. Notes taken by JCS historian Walter Poole suggest this was not the case. The JCS favored continuing reconnaissance flights until another loss occurred and then attacking all SAM sites 'as a minimum' ? see Chronology of JCS Decisions, October 23, 1962, NSAW. For JCS opposition to piecemeal measures, see October 27 memorandum on 'Proposed Military Actions in Operation Raincoat,' OSD.

The men were falling 'like dominoes': Mozgovoi, 92, Havana 2002, vol. 2.

According to regulations: Yesin et al., Strategicheskaya Operatsiya Anadyr', 84; Mozgovoi, 71. The flotilla commander was Capt. 1st class Vitaly Agafonov. He was traveling on submarine B-4.

Arkhipov and Savitsky were equal in rank: Both men had the rank of captain 2nd class, the Soviet equivalent of a commander. The officer in charge of the torpedo was a captain 3rd class, equivalent to a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy.

'The Americans hit us': Mozgovoi, 93; Orlov interview with the author, July 2004. Other submarine commanders have questioned Orlov's version of events. Arkhipov and Savitsky are both dead. While it is impossible to know the precise words used by Savitsky, Orlov's account is consistent with other descriptions of the conditions on board the Soviet Foxtrots and the known movements of B-59.

'There were sharp disagreements': RFK, 102.

his 'terrific executive energy': Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, 625.

'almost telepathic': Schlesinger, 'On JFK: An Interview with Isaiah Berlin,' New York Review of Books, October 22, 1998.

The final version bore the marks: See State Department and Stevenson drafts, and ExComm discussion.

The inner ExComm agreed that: Accounts differ as to who attended this meeting. According to Rusk, it was attended by JFK, RFK, McNamara, Bundy, and 'perhaps one other,' in addition to himself ? Letter to James Blight, February 25, 1987, NSAW. According to Bundy, the meeting was also attended by Ball, Gilpatric, Thompson, and Sorensen ? see McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival (New York: Random House, 1988), 432-3.

Drawing on a cable: The formula proposed by Rusk was first suggested by the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Raymond Hare, in Ankara cable 587, which arrived at the State Department on Saturday morning ? NSAW.

'No one not in the room': Bundy, 433. For another account, see Rusk, 240-1.

a 'complex and difficult person': Dobrynin, 61. In an October 30, 1962, memo to Rusk, RFK said he asked Dobrynin to meet him at the Justice Department at 7:45 p.m. (FRUS, Vol. XI, 270). But RFK was running late. The ExComm session did not end until around 7:35. RFK then attended the meeting in the Oval Office, which lasted around twenty minutes. He likely met Dobrynin around 8:05 p.m., at the same time the State Department transmitted the president's message to Moscow ? ibid., 268.

'tapping telephone conversations': KGB profile of RFK, February 1962, SVR.

as 'very upset': Dobrynin cable to Soviet Foreign Ministry, October 27, 1962. I have reconstructed this account from the Dobrynin cable, the RFK memo to Rusk, and RFK, Thirteen Days, 107-8. The RFK and Dobrynin accounts match each other closely, although Dobrynin is more explicit, particularly on the withdrawal of the Jupiters. On the Jupiter discussion, the contemporaneous Dobrynin cable seems more credible than the various RFK accounts. The official U.S. story on the Jupiters has changed over the years. Former Kennedy aides, such as Ted Sorensen, have acknowledged playing down or even omitting potentially embarrassing details. See articles and documents published by Jim Hershberg, CWIHP, 5 (Spring 1995), 75–80, and 8–9 (Winter 1996-97), 274, 344-7, including English translations of the Dobrynin cables.

'the children everywhere in the world': O'Donnell and Powers, 325; WH gate logs and president's phone log, October 27, 1962.

'an extra chicken leg': O'Donnell and Powers, 340-1.

The evacuation instructions were part: Ted Gup, 'The Doomsday Blueprints,' Time, August 10, 1992; George, 46–53.

'What happens to our wives': O'Donnell and Powers, 324.

'succumbed to the general mood of apocalypse': Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 482; 'An Interview with Richard Lehman,' Studies in Intelligence (Summer 2000).

'never live to see another': Blight et al., Cuba on the Brink, 378. McNamara says that he was 'leaving the president's office at dusk' to return to the Pentagon, but Sheldon Stern points out that it was already dark by the time the ExComm broke up: sunset came at 6:15 p.m. on October 27.

With Kennedy's consent, Rusk telephoned: FRUS, Vol. XI, 275; Rusk, 240-1. Some scholars have questioned the reliability of Rusk's 1987 account of the approach to Cordier, but it seems fully consistent with the thrust of the previous ExComm debate and JFK's views on the Jupiters.

'Junta for an Independent': State Department Coordinator for Cuban Affairs memo, October 27, 1962, JFKARC.

'I cannot run my office': Miro profile, Time, April 28, 1961.

'I know something': Reeves, 97.

kept at 'maximum readiness': Nestor T. Carbonell, And the Russians Stayed: The Sovietization of Cuba (New York: William Morrow, 1989), 222-3.

a 'volatile, emotional': CIA memo for Lansdale on Operation Mongoose ? Infiltration Teams, October 29, 1962, JFKARC; see also Lansdale memo on covert operations, October 31, 1962, JFKARC.

'Friends simply do not behave': Allyn et al., Back to the Brink, 149.

'He began to assess the situation': Alekseev cable to Moscow, October 27, 1962, trans. in CWIHP, 8–9 (Winter 1996-97), 291.

His subsequent report to Moscow: Blight et al., Cuba on the Brink, 117. Alekseev said that he did not find out the truth about who shot down the plane until 1978.

'almost fell into the water': Orlov interview.

'This ship belongs': Ibid.

Lookouts reported that the Americans: Mozgovoi, 93; Carrier Division Sixteen, Cuban missile crisis documentation, NSAW.

'to throw off your pursuers': Orlov interview.

Kennedy dismissed most: Salinger, John F. Kennedy, 125.

a 'piece of ass': Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (Boston: Little, Brown, 1997), 389. The need for sex was a recurring theme for JFK. He told Clare Boothe Luce that he could not 'go to sleep without a lay.'

Mary telephoned Jack: White House phone records, October 27, 1962; WH social files, October 24, 1962, JFKL. Meyer's many visits to the White House were usually noted by the Secret Service. There is no evidence that she met JFK on October 27. It is unclear whether he returned her phone call, as he was able to make local calls without going through the White House switchboard. For a discussion of their relationship, see Nina Burleigh, A Very Private Woman (New York: Bantam Books, 1998), 181–227.

'We'll be going': O'Donnell and Powers, 341.

George Anderson retired to bed: CNO Office log, October 27, 1962; OPNAV resume of events, CNO Cuba, USNHC.

to be 'hostile': Gilpatric handwritten notes from 9:00 p.m. ExComm meeting, October 27, 1962, OSD.

'Now anything can happen': October 28 Prensa Latina report, FBIS, October 30, 1962.