TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/60elect/60elect.14b

Text File | 1992-09-10 | 24.5 KB | 465 lines

                                                                                November 2, 1962

COLD WAR

The Showdown



     For days and weeks, refugees and intelligence sources within
Cuba had insisted that the Soviet Union was equipping its
Caribbean satellite with missiles, manned by Russians, that could
carry nuclear destruction to the U.S. But the reports were
fragmentary and sometimes contradictory. And U.S. reconnaissance
planes, photographing Cuba from the Yucatan Channel to the
Windward Passage, could detect no such buildup. President Kennedy
was not yet persuaded to take decisive action.

     On Oct. 10 came aerial films with truly worrisome signs.
They showed roads being slashed through tall timber. Russian-made
tents mushrooming in remote places. The order went out to
photograph Cuba mountain by mountain, field by field and, if
possible, yard by yard.

     Magic Pictures. For four long days, Hurricane Ella kept the
planes on the ground. Finally, on Sunday, Oct. 14, Navy fighter
pilots collected the clinching evidence. Flying as low as 200
ft., they made a series of passes over Cuba with their cameras
whirring furiously. They returned with thousands of pictures --
and the photographs showed that Cuba, almost overnight, had been
transformed into a bristling missile base.

     As if by magic, thick woods had been torn down, empty fields
were clustered with concrete mixing plants, fuel tanks and mess
halls. Chillingly clear to the expert eye were some 40 slim, 52-
ft., medium-range missiles, many of them already angled up on
their mobile launchers and pointed at the U.S. mainland. With an
estimated range of 1,200 miles, these missiles, armed with one-
megaton warheads, could reach Houston, St. Louis -- or
Washington. The bases were located at about ten spots, including
Sagua la Grande and Remedios on the northern coast, and San
Cristobal and Guanajay on the western end of the island. Under
construction were a half-dozen bases for 2,500-mile missiles,
which could smash U.S. cities from coast to coast. In addition,
the films showed that the Russians had moved in at least 25 twin-
jet Ilyushin-28 bombers that could carry nuclear bombs.

     At Once. Throughout Monday, Oct. 15, the experts poured over
the pictures. There could be no doubt. Early on Oct. 16 a
telephone call went to CIA Director John McCone, who was in
Seattle mourning the death there of his stepson. It was 4 a.m. on
the Coast, but McCone came awake in shocked realization of the
grave impact of the news. When he had heard the last detail, he
ordered the pictures taken to the President at once.

     While the pictures were being prepared for the President,
CIA officials outlined the information by phone to McGeorge
Bundy, Kennedy's adviser on national security. Bundy hurried out
of his office in the west wing of the White House, rode the tiny
elevator up to the President's living quarters on the second
floor, and walked into Kennedy's bedroom. The President, who was
dressed and had just finished breakfast, put down the morning
papers and listened. His expression did not change as Bundy spun
out the startling story.

     At 10:30 a.m., Kennedy first saw the pictures of the
missiles. At 11:45 he sat down in his rocking chair for a
conference with the top members of his Administration that began
the most crucial week of his term in office. It was a week of
intensive analysis and planning, a week of round-robin meetings
at State and the Pentagon -- and above all, a week of decisions
of surpassing importance to the U.S. and the world today.

     Why? Throughout that week, U.S. planes kept Cuba under their
photographic magnifying glass. Air Force RB-47s and U-2s prowled
high over the island. Navy jets swooped low along the coastlines.
With the passing of each day, each hour, the missile buildup
burgeoned. In speed and scope it went far beyond anything the
U.S. had believed possible. By conservative estimate, the Soviet
Union must have been planning it in detail for at least a year,
poured at least $1 billion into its determined effort.

     But why? That was the question that kept pounding at
President Kennedy. He knew all too well that the Soviet Union had
long had the U.S. under the Damoclean sword of intercontinental
ballistic missiles in the Russian homeland. There thus seemed
little real need for such a massive effort in Cuba. Yet, as
Kennedy pondered and as he talked long and earnestly with his top
Kremlinologists -- among them former U.S. Ambassadors to Moscow
Llewellyn Thompson and Charles Bohlen -- some of the answers
began to emerge. More and more in Kennedy's mind, the Cuban
crisis became linked with impending crisis in Berlin -- and with
an all-out Khrushchev effort to upset the entire power balance of
the cold war.

     "Chip" Bohlen, about to leave for Paris as U.S. ambassador
there, supplied a significant clue. Talking to Kennedy, he
recalled a Lenin adage that Khrushchev is fond of quoting: If a
man sticks out a bayonet and strikes mush, he keeps on pushing.
But when he hits cold steel, he pulls back.

     The Theory. Khrushchev's Cuban adventure seemed just such a
probe. He hoped to present the U.S. with a fait accompli, carried
out while the U.S. was totally preoccupied -- or so, at least,
Khrushchev supposed -- with its upcoming elections. If he got
away with it, he could presume that the Kennedy Administration
was so weak and fearful that he could take over Berlin with
impunity.

     The theory gained credence when, on the very day that
Kennedy learned about the missiles in Cuba, Khrushchev did his
best to cover up the operation by assuring U.S. Ambassador Foy D.
Kohler during a relaxed, three-hour talk that the arms going to
Cuba were purely defensive. Two days later, Foreign Minister
Andrei Gromyko showed up in the White House with the same
soothing message. But all was not bland during Gromyko's 2 1/2-
hour visit. Noting that he knew Kennedy appreciated frank talk,
Gromyko declared that U.S. stubbornness had "compelled" Russia to
plan to settle the Berlin crisis unilaterally after the Nov. 6
elections.

     Khrushchev already had requested a November meeting with
Kennedy. As Kennedy came to see it, Khrushchev planned to say
something like this: We are going to go right ahead and take
Berlin, and just in case you are rash enough to resist, I can now
inform you that we have several scores of megatons zeroed in on
you from Cuba.

     If such a scene would hardly be dared by novelists, it was
well within Khrushchev's flair for macabre melodrama. In this
baleful light, it became completely clear to Kennedy that the
U.S. had no course but to squash the Soviet missile buildup. But
how? In his long, soul-trying talks with Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara, State Secretary Dean Rusk, the CIA's McCone and other
top civilian and military officials, the plan was arduously
worked out. Direct invasion of Cuba was discarded -- for the time
being. So was a surprise bombing attack on the missile sites.
Both methods might cause Khrushchev to strike back instinctively
and plunge the world into thermonuclear war. More than anything
else, Kennedy wanted to give Khrushchev time to understand that
he was at last being faced up to -- and time to think about it.

     The Answer. The best answer seemed to be "quarantine" -- a
Navy blockade against ships carrying offensive weapons to Cuba.
That would give the Premier time and food for thought. It would
offer the U.S. flexibility for future, harsher action. It seemed
the solution most likely to win support from the U.S.'s NATO
allies and the Organization of American States. And it confronted
the Soviet Union with a showdown where it is weakest and the U.S.
is mighty: on the high seas. For the U.S. Navy, under Chief of
Naval Operations George Anderson, 55, has no rival.

     To Anderson went the job of setting up the blockade with
ships and planes and making it work. While the Bay of Pigs fiasco
had involved heltery-skeltery White House amateurs, now the pros
were taking over. Anderson worked closely with Joint Chiefs of
Staff Chairman Maxwell Taylor and with McNamara, who had been
eating and sleeping in the Pentagon.

     Speed was vital. Already plowing through the Atlantic were
at least 25 Soviet or satellite cargo ships, many of them
bringing more missiles and bombers for Cuba. They were shadowed
by Navy planes from bases along the East Coast. Now, under
Anderson's direction, U.S. warships prepared to intercept them.

     All this took place in an eerie atmosphere of total secrecy
in a notably voluble Administration. As part of the security
cover, Kennedy took off on a scheduled campaign tour. But by
Saturday, Oct. 20, he knew he could stay away from Washington no
longer. Press Secretary Pierre Salinger announced that the
President had a cold. Kennedy, a dutiful deceiver muffled in hat
and coat, climbed aboard his jet and sped back to Washington.

     Roundup. On the morning of Monday, Oct. 22, Kennedy worked
over the TV speech that would break the news to the nation that
night. The order went out to round up congressional leaders --
wherever they were -- and fly them back to Washington. The Air
Force brought House Speaker John McCormack from his home in
Boston, House Republican Leader Charles Halleck from a pheasant-
hunting trip in South Dakota, Senate Minority Whip Thomas Kuchel
from a handshaking visit to a San Diego factory.

     House Democratic Whip Hale Boggs was fishing in the Gulf of
Mexico when an Air Force plane few over his boat and dropped into
the water a plastic bottle attached to a red flag. The message in
the bottle told Boggs to phone the White House. His boat pulled
over to a nearby offshore oil rig. The Congressman donned a life
jacket, swung by rope to a spindly ladder, and climbed 150 feet
to the rig's platform, where a helicopter was awaiting him. At an
airbase on the mainland, they crammed Boggs into a flight suit,
strapped him into a two-seat jet trainer, clapped an oxygen mask
on his face, took away the sandwich he had been clutching, and
rocketed him back to Washington.

     Dissent. While the Senators and Congressmen were converging
on Washington, Kennedy called in his Cabinet members. Some of the
members still did not know what was going on. Silently they filed
in. Silently they listened to the briefing, and silently they
departed. Next came the congressional leaders. They studied the
enlargements of the missile pictures and in the words of one,
their blood ran cold. The President then said simply: "We have
decided to take action."

     When he was done outlining the quarantine plan, Kennedy
asked for comments -- and found himself opposed by two of his
fellow Democrats. Sitting directly across from the President,
Georgia's Richard Russell, chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, told the President that blockade was not enough and
came too late. Russell was for immediate invasion. He argued that
the U.S. was still paying for the Bay of Pigs debacle, so why
fiddle around any longer? Russell was supported, surprisingly, by
Arkansas' William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate's Foreign
Relations Committee, who had led the fight in April 1961 against
the Bay of Pigs invasion.

     Kennedy turned away the criticism without anger, stuck by
his decisions, and even managed to send the legislators away
laughing. Said the President to Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey as
the meeting broke up: "If I'd known the job was this tough, I
wouldn't have trounced you in West Virginia." Said the Senator to
the President: "If I hadn't known it was this tough, I never
would have let you beat me."

     "Judge for Yourself." Throughout that afternoon, Cadillacs
swept through the magnificent October sunshine bearing foreign
diplomats on urgent summons to the State Department. Russia's
Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin smiled affably at newsmen as he
strolled into the building. After the usual pleasantries, Rusk
handed Dobrynin a copy of Kennedy's speech and a letter to
Khrushchev. Dobrynin emerged 25 minutes later, his shoulders
sagging and his face the color of fresh putty. When reporters
asked him what had happened, he snapped: "You can judge for
yourself soon enough."

     The afternoon papers had carried the announcement that the
President would address the nation that night on a matter of the
"highest national urgency" -- and all America seemed to be
watching as Kennedy went on television. It was a grim speech,
delivered by a grim President. The U.S., he said, had two goals:
"To prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other
country, and to secure their withdrawal or elimination from the
Western Hemisphere."

     Kennedy explained that the quarantine would cut off
offensive weapons from Cuba without stopping "the necessities of
life." He warned that "any nuclear missile launched from Cuba
against any nation in the Western Hemisphere" would be regarded
by the U.S. as an attack by the Soviet Union and would bring
full-scale nuclear reprisal against Russia.

     Shotguns & Beans. There were some Nervous Nelly reactions in
the U.S. The stock market, hardly a symbol of U.S. backbone,
dropped sharply next day. In Tampa, sporting-goods stores
reported a run on shotguns and rifles. In Dallas, a store
reported brisk sales of an emergency ration pack of biscuits,
malted-milk tablets, chocolate, pemmican and canned water. In Los
Angeles, a Civil Defense warning that retail stores would be
closed for five days in the event of war or a national emergency
went housewives stampeding into the supermarkets. In one, hand-
to-hand combat broke out over the last can of pork and beans.
Said North Hollywood Grocer Sam Golstad: "They're nuts. One
lady's working four shopping carts at once. Another lady bought
twelve packages of detergents. What's she going to do, wash up
after the bomb?" Yet for all such transient evidences of panic,
the U.S. was solidly behind Kennedy. As he himself had discovered
on his election-year forays around the nation, it was the
overriding wish of almost all Americans to "do something" about
Cuba.

     Around the world, U.S. forces braced for combat. Under
Admiral Anderson's orders, the Navy's Polaris submarines prowled
the seas on courses known only by a handful of ranking officials.
The Air Force went on a full-scale alert, put a fleet of B-52
bombers into the air, dispersed hundreds of B-47 bombers from
their normal bases to dozens of scattered airfields. In West
Berlin, the Army's contingent of 5,000 went on maneuvers.

     Salty Pride. As for the blockade itself, it was precisely
directed by Anderson, working in his blue-carpeted Pentagon
office bedecked with pictures of historic Navy battles. Several
times a day he briefed McNamara, red-eyed from lack of sleep, in
front of huge wall maps. He signed countless cables -- pink paper
for secret, green for top secret.

     As a professional -- and articulate -- Navyman, Anderson
took particular pride in the fact that the confrontation with
Russia was taking place on salt water. Said he: "The sea still
does provide a measure of space, if two thermonuclear powers
would stand off against each other. In general, we're seeing the
great importance of sea power." Another way of putting it was
that the Navy's show provided a maximum amount of power with a
minimum amount of friction. At all times, Anderson delegated
heavy responsibility to his subordinates -- most of all to an old
friend he called Denny. This was Admiral Robert Lee Dennison, 61,
who is both Commander in Chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet and
NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic.

     Ships, Planes & Subs. As the Russian ships headed toward
Cuba on their collision course with the blockading force,
Dennison walked to a wall map in his Norfolk headquarters and
outlined the Navy's problem. "The approaches to Cuba are pretty
well funneled down. Most ships headed for Cuba come out of the
North Atlantic and have to come through the Bahamas or the Lesser
Antilles, and both the Bahamas and the Lesser Antilles have
relatively few channels. We don't really have any headaches. We
have plenty of force. There are a lot of ships out there."

     So there were. They belonged to Task Force 136, commanded by
Vice Admiral Alfred G. Ward, 53, a gunnery specialist who has
developed into one of the Navy's most respected strategists.
Under Ward were approximately 80 ships. In reserve was the
nuclear-powered carrier Enterprise. Navy P2V, P5M and P3V patrol
planes, flying out of bases all along the East Coast and Florida,
and from carriers encircling Cuba, put the Soviet ships under
constant surveillance within 800 miles of Cuba.

     Anderson's orders were clear. All Cuba-bound ships entering
the blockade area would be commanded to heave to. If one failed
to halt, a shot would be fired across its bow. If it kept on, the
Navy would shoot to sink. If it stopped, a boarding party would
search it for offensive war materials. If it had none, it would
be allowed to go on to Cuba. But if it carried proscribed cargo,
the ship would be required to turn away to a non-Cuban port of
its captain's own choosing. Similarly, Cuba-bound cargo aircraft
would be intercepted and forced to land at a U.S. airport for
inspection, or be shot down. As for Soviet submarines, they would
be sought out by radar and sonar. U.S. forces would signal an
unidentified sub by dropping some "harmless" depth charges while
radioing the code letters IDKCA, the international signal meaning
"rise to the surface." Any submarine that ignored the order would
be depth-charged for keeps.

     Although there was a strong national sense of relief when
Kennedy finally announced that he was "doing something" about
Cuba, tension mounted almost unbearably in the hours that
followed. What would happen? Would Khrushchev press the
thermonuclear button? On Tuesday night, Kennedy signed a
proclamation outlining the quarantine. The first indication of
Russia's reaction came when a few Soviet freighters changed
course away from Cuba. But others steamed on, and the moment of
showdown came closer.

     A day and a half after proclamation of the blockade, the
Navy intercepted the Soviet tanker Bucharest. Oil had been left
off the proscribed list because the Administration did not want
to draw the line on an item that might be a necessity of life for
Cuba. The tanker was allowed to pass without inspection.

     "No Incidents." Sixteen hours later, about 180 miles
northeast of the Bahamas, the destroyers John R. Pierce and
Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. took up stations behind a Russian-chartered
Lebanese freighter named the Marucla (built in Baltimore during
World War II). (Asked how the destroyer named for the President's
older brother, who was killed in World War II, happened to be at
the right place at the right time, a Defense official said: "Pure
coincidence." The Pierce is named for a lieutenant commander who
won the Navy Cross and lost his life in 1944 while commanding the
U.S.S. Argonaut against the Japanese. In the battle, the Argonaut
went down with all guns firing.) At daybreak on Friday, in a
scene reminiscent of the 19th century, the Kennedy lowered away
its whaleboat and sent a boarding party aboard the Marucla, which
cooperatively provided a ladder. Wearing dress whites, Lieut.
Commander Dwight G. Osborne, executive officer of the Pierce, and
Lieut. Commander Kenneth C. Reynolds, the exec of the Kennedy,
led the party aboard the ship. After politely serving his
visitors coffee, the Greek captain allowed them the run of his
ship. The cargo turned out to be sulphur, paper rolls, twelve
trucks, and truck parts.

     "No incidents," radioed the boarding party. "No prohibited
material in evidence. All papers in order. Marucla cleared to
proceed course 260, speed 9 knots to Havana via Providence
Channel, Maintaining surveillance."

     While the Marucla was being searched, a far more important
event of the blockade was happening elsewhere in the Atlantic.
After days of steaming toward Cuba and closer and closer to the
Navy's line of ships, the remaining Soviet arms-carrying
merchantmen were heading for home. Khrushchev had decided not to
collide with the U.S. Navy on the high seas. The blockade was a
success.

     Still, there could be no sense of relaxation. A way had to
be found to get those already installed missiles out of Cuba. The
U.S. effort was two-pronged: one was diplomatic, the other
military.

     Talk. On the diplomatic front, Adlai Stevenson urged Acting
U.N. Secretary-General U Thant to impress upon the Russians the
fact that the missiles must go. Making prompt action even more
necessary was the fact that the Navy's twice-daily, low-level
reconnaissance flights showed that the Russians were speeding up
the erection of missile sites.

     While the talks with U Thant were going on, Khrushchev
suddenly proposed his cynical swap; he would pull his missiles
out of Cuba if Kennedy pulled his out of Turkey. His long,
rambling memorandum was remarkable for its wheedling tone -- that
of a cornered bully. Wrote Khrushchev: "The development of
culture, art, and the raising of living standards, this is the
most noble and necessary field of competition . . . Our aim was
and is to help Cuba, and nobody can argue about the humanity of
our impulse."

     Force. Kennedy bluntly rejected the missile swap and
increased the speed of the U.S. military buildup. The President
considered choking Cuba's economy with a complete blockade. To
knock the missiles out in a hurry, the White House discussed
sabotage, commando raids, naval bombardment or a pinpoint bombing
attack. And there was the strong possibility that invasion might
finally be required.

     Squadrons of supersonic F-100s and F-106s zoomed into
Florida's Patrick and MacDill Air Force Bases. In the Caribbean
were 10,000 Marines who had been about to go on maneuvers.
McNamara ordered to active duty 24 troop carrier squadrons of the
Air Force Reserve -- more than 14,000 men.

     Demand. Kennedy's course carried with it the obvious risk of
casualties and finally, after a week of talk and maneuver, an Air
Force reconnaissance plane was lost. But the flights went on as
the U.S. prepared to move against Cuba if Khrushchev did not
destroy his missiles.

     To underline the need for urgent action, Kennedy sent
Khrushchev a letter at week's end stating that no settlement
could be reached on Cuba until the missiles came down under U.S.
supervision.

     Surrender. Next day -- just two weeks after the clinching
recon photos were taken -- Khrushchev said he was giving in. In
his message, Khrushchev mildly told Kennedy: "I express my
satisfaction and gratitude for the sense of proportion and
understanding of the responsibility borne by you for the
preservation of peace throughout the world, which you have shown.
I understand very well your anxiety and the anxiety of the people
of the U.S. in connection with the fact that the weapons which
you describe as offensive are in fact grim weapons. Both you and
I understand what kind of weapons they are."

     To try and save some face, Khrushchev took full credit for
preserving the peace of the world by dismantling the missiles. He
also asked for a continued "exchange of opinions on the
prohibition of atomic and thermonuclear weapons and on general
disarmament and other questions connected with the lessening of
international tension." And he said that Russia would continue to
give aid to Cuba, which might mean that he had a lingering hope
of still using the island as a base for Communist penetration of
Latin America.

     Within three hours, President Kennedy made his reply: "I
welcome Chairman Khrushchev's statesmanlike decision to stop
building bases in Cuba, dismantling offensive weapons and
returning them to the Soviet Union under United Nations
verification. This is an important and constructive contribution
to peace . . . It is my earnest hope that the governments of the
world can, with a solution to the Cuban crisis, turn their
earnest attention to the compelling necessities for ending the
arms race and reducing world tensions."

     Thus, President John Kennedy appeared to have won in his
courageous confrontation with Soviet Russia. There would, of
course, be other crises to come. Looking ahead, Kennedy said
several times last week: "I am sure we face even bigger, more
difficult decisions." Such decisions -- if met as boldly and
carried out as shrewdly as those so far -- present him with an
opportunity for a major breakthrough in the cold war.