I want to thank my sister Valerie
and her husband Larry for helping me write this. Not in the sense
that any of the words are theirs, but for providing me with our
weekly Sunday motorcycle rides. I always feel very creative on
motorcycle rides and over these past few weeks, the part of my mind
that is not preoccupied with shifting, counter steering and watching
traffic and scenery, is able to go back through my mind and
remember from books read decades ago.
Both parts of the title of today's blog
are quotes from Nikita Khrushchev, the first part from his memoirs
and the second from a line he used in one of his letters to President
Kennedy, about if either of them pulled too tight on the rope of war,
the knot would be almost impossible to untie. If either of them had
been men of less reason and gravitas, I think that it would have
proved to have been the nuclear Armageddon we all were fearing during
the cold war. Tom Lehrer's “Will all burn together when we burn,
there's no need to stand and wait your turn,” would have proved
true. Also, supposedly during this time period, Bob Dylan wrote his
song, “ A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall.”
The first election that I had any
interest in was the 1960 Presidential race. I was ten years old. I
remember watching the debates and discussing the merits of both
candidates with my friend then and now Tom Gorey, who has always been
very politically astute and knowledgeable, He taught me about the
electoral college and the Know Nothing Party and the Whigs and the
Federalist. I remember a kid down the street who told me that if
Kennedy won the Presidency the Pope would run the Country. Would
anyone today make the same comment if Mitt Romney should win the
White house this November., that the country would be run by Thomas
Monson. I had also read both “Seven Days in May,” and “Fail
Safe.
I remember the discussion of Matsu and
Quemoy and the Missile Gap, that later we would learn, yes there was
a missile gap, but it was so much in our favor, that it was almost
pathetic. This among other things, had a direct bearing on the
relations between Russia and the United States from Kennedy's
Inauguration to this Death. Eisenhower had always been very
circumspect in discussing this topic, was peeved with Kennedy, for
using it, for from briefings JFK knew that we had many times the
number of missiles,etc than the Russians had. Never tell the emperor
he is naked, there is no way he will take it well. The Bay of Pigs
made Kennedy look weak and Khrushchev was convinced that we would
mount another invasion of Cuba and that this second attempt would
probably be successful. We did plan “Operation Mongoose,” that Bobby
Kennedy was very involved in the various plans that were
considered . Kennedy had not done well at his Summit in Vienna
with Khrushchev, his personal charm was lost on Khrushchev and
Khrushchev grumbled that he couldn't relate to Kennedy who was
younger that his own son.
I remember as if it was yesterday the
excitement surrounding the inauguration ;The torch is passed to a new
generation of American, in college I would write a paper, that I may
do a blog about next year on the 50th anniversary of
Kennedy's Death, in which I quoted someone, I forget with out looking
now, that wonderfully worded and delivered speech was “jingoistic,
a Monroe Doctrine for the World. “ My uncle Ranch Kimball was
involved with the democratic party in Utah and had been invited to
the inauguration. Then I didn't know that thousands of people are
always invited, and I borrowed from my Aunt ,and took to school to
exhibit with pride, the invitation.
In September of 1962, as the mid terms
elections were on the horizon, I remember the charges made by the
Senator from New York, Kenneth Ketting, who Robert Kennedy would
defeat in the 1964 election, surrounding the military building up on
Cuba and also another republican senator Homer Capehart who made
similar charges. He would be defeated in the midterm elections. In
response to this Kennedy made a speech in September of 1962, that
during the crisis he regretted making, about what would be the
consequences of the Russians putting any offensive weapons on Cuban
Soil. Never before, unlike the United States, had Russian put nuclear
weapons outside its own boarders.
In the earlier part of October, my
family had taken what would turn out to be our final road trip to
Taos and our friends who lived in Taos came back part way with us and
we took them to Monument Valley and the Goose necks of the San Juan
and I remember saying goodbye to them at the bottom of the Mokie
dugway. I try to visit this same area every few years, and I always
have a genuine Proustian moment at this same junction. I remember
thinking about this weekend during the crisis itself, the last
collected normalcy, while worrying about what may happen and
realizing probably for the first time, that there were things in the
world, that my parent's couldn't protect me from.
Athough the Public announcement and
JFK speech regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis did not take place
until the 22nd of October, JFK first saw the grainy
pictures on the morning of October 16th 1962 by McGeorge
Bundy, and his first response was that he guessed we would have to
bomb them. And that Kenneth Ketting would be elected President in
1964. To deal with this crisis a sub committee, called Excom was
established, from both member's of the National Security Council and
others and after the crisis had ended. Kennedy or a representative
for him contacted the jeweler Cartier about doing a simple little
block with the month of October and those thirteen days in bold
highlights. Cartier, suggested it be done in silver and supposedly did
it for nothing. There were 33 of these made and besides the Excom
people both Kennedy's secretary Evelyn Lincoln and Jackie received
one.
Very early in the proceeding two things
became very evident to the President, it was fast devolving in to
Hawks and Doves, Bobby Kennedy at one point turned to someone and
said, “Now I know how Tojo felt,” and that his presence in all
the meetings, inhibited the exchange of views. Also, from everything
I have read about JFK, many books and articles, I don't think he had
a long attention span. He always had to have things going on, as many
highly compartmentalized people do, and I think his mind would have
maybe started to wander if he had had to sit through all those
meetings. Kennedy after and because of the fiasco of the Bay of
Pigs, had a healthy skepticism of military intelligence and I also
think that because of his many health problems and brushes with
death, he had enough empathy to put himself not only in Khrushchev
place, but to imagine how this appeared to the rest of the world. It
was ludicrous to think that two people could decide the fate of
mankind. Kennedy was told that even if we eliminated 80 to 90 percent
of the missiles in Cuba, upwards of 700 thousand Americans would
loose their life if the remaining missiles on Cuba were unleashed
during an attack on the United States. That is more people than died
in the American Civil War. Western Europe had lived for years with
the close proximity of missiles aimed at them, and in the event of
war, it really would not matter whether the missile was fired from
Russia, or from 90 miles away. It really didn't change the strategic
balance at all. It would take the best of both of these leader's and
their adviser's, to prevent the knot on the rope of war from becoming
too tight to undo. Kennedy was a student of history, had read his
Herodotus and Thucydides and had read and had all his aides, as well
as several generals and the joint chiefs of staff read Barbara
Tuchman's “The Guns of August,” dealing with the mistakes in
decision making, etc. that lead up to the First World War.
Now for a break, what I actually
remember, I remember his speech on the 22nd, which came
out of the blue, even though by then I tried to watch the Huntley
Brinkley report, which then was 15 minutes long, with my father every
late afternoon. I remember the tenseness during the rest of the week,
and I was actually at a friend's house, Kim Fuller, who had a very
nice and elegant mother, for Adali Stevenson’s UN presentation
and his hell freezing over and the world court of public opinion
pronouncements and I remember feeling that she was deeply scared and
worried, although she tried to pretend that nothing was going on. And
yet, I still needed to be home by 5:30pm, we still ate as a family
and my father still cut out that evening's television schedule from
the Salt Lake Tribune with his pocketknife.
The President and his adviser's looked
at either destroying the missiles or a quarantine and Ted Sorenson,
the words-man of the New Frontier, actually worked on two draft's the
one which was presented for the quarantine, which supposedly sounded
less harsh than blockade, and one announcing that the president had
approved taking out the missiles and the invasion by 150,000 plus of
US servicemen of the island nation of Cuba. There was discussion
about needing a government to run Cuba after our invasion and someone
suggested Bobby as Mayor of Havana. That second draft is now on
public display and it is chilling to read.
One of the best books I have read on
the Cuban Missile Crisis is called, “One Minute to Midnight”, by
Michael Dobbs, who by doing his own research of photos taken at the
time, but not ever really looked at, but available for research at
the National Archives, he actually found where the nuclear warheads,
were stored and that the number of soviet Military personnel on the
island of Cuba was much greater than we knew, 42,000+ and that in
addition to the LRBM and MRBM, there were tactical nuclear weapons
called Frogs and even some nuclear tipped shells for tanks and that
Guantanamo,was a prime military target for the Cuban's and the
Soviet soldiers. Even thought this was not known at the time, all the
wives and most of the American support people at Guantanamo had been
air lifted out earlier in the week. After the crisis had passed,
Castro lobbied to retain ownership of the nuclear tipped shells that
we didn't know about, but the Russians wisely took all the weapons
out, although it probably took another month after the public
resolution of this crisis.
The penultimate days of the crisis
were late Friday October 26th and all of October 27th
, referred to by those involved on the American side as 'Black
Saturday,' it was then, late Friday, that the President received the
first of two letters from Khrushchev. The first was a reasonable one
and after they had started to think about responding to that one.
(This letter was fairly close to the final agreement, that we would
agree to not invade Cuba, which had been one of the Russian reasons
for putting the missiles there in the first place, and that privately
we would agree at some point to remove the obsolete Jupiter Missiles
from Turkey.) A much harsher and more belligerent second letter was read over
Radio Moscow. They assumed that the first letter was written by Khrushchev alone, and the second letter was done by the politburo as a group. In those days, there was no direct line between our
governments, that grew out of the Cuban Crisis, and to send a
telegraph to Moscow, the Washington Soviet embassy had to call
Western Union who would send over an elderly African American on a bicycle,
who would pick up the message and peddle back to Western union. How
to deal with these two letter's took up much of the debate during
those two days. Also, on Saturday a U2 was shot down, the pilot had
been the same one that took the first photos. A Rudolph Anderson Jr.
and he ended up being the only American who directly lost his life as
a result of the crisis. A Russian sub was forced to surface as a
result of some depth charges being sent their way and the Captain of
the Sub wanted to fire his nuclear torpedo, but a Russian Admiral,
(Vasili Arkhipov) on board prevented him from doing this. He is
certainly an unsung hero of this epic. Another man of reason. During
this time the United States went to level Defcon 2, just one removed
from actual all out nuclear war. If this torpedo had been fired, it would have
been very hard to contain the escalation of events. Several people
finally suggested that the President respond to the first private
letter and to ignore the second public letter. Also on the 27th
Bobby Kennedy met secretly with Andrei Gromyko to go over all of
this. Another person of reason in this ordeal. There had also been
prior meetings between a KGB agent and a newspaper man John Scali.
The Military felt, that the shooting down of the U2 was sufficient
grounds to attack the Russians, that the blockade had done nothing,
except for public relations purposes. Kennedy was smart enough to
view this as an accident, the U2 downing, and not a premeditated act
on the part of the Russians to escalate the situation.
President Kennedy was uncomfortable
with those that were gloating that we had beat the Russians and when
this was over, he said to Bobby, that it would be a great night to go
to the theater. Bobby said he would go with him. Kennedy felt that
this, the Cuban Missile Crisis, would be what he would be remembered
for, but I like to think that the Peace Corp, the Test Ban Treaty and
putting men on the Moon are the most lasting tribute, that and the
groundwork, that LBJ would complete of the Civil Rights act of 1964.
I have thought about how would all of
this play out today, when it is impossible to keep a secret and with
the pressure of Twitter and Facebook. Does the President still have
the bag man in close proximity for the launch codes for a nuclear
attack, or is there a smart phone app for that. Does the red phone
still exist, or does the President have leaders on speed dial on his
blackberry and are they Facebook friends.
My biggest surprise in looking back at
all of this, is that 50 years later, Fidel, although not the day to
day head of Cuba is still around. He weathered all of our misplaced
efforts to displace him, to assinate him, or to make his beard fall
out and the embargo of Cuba, while being detrimental to the people of
Cuba, has not changed their form of government. On that same “Black
Saturday” Fidel wrote a letter to Khrushchev suggesting that the
Russian do a preemptive attack on the United States, even though it
would have for sure caused the destruction of Cuba and its people.
Thank goodness men or reason prevailed.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy certainly
learned from this experience as his speech in June of 1963 his so
called Peace Speech, his commencement address at American University.
“In the final analysis, our most common link is that we all inhabit
this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our
children's future. And we are all mortal.”
When I was in high school I wrote in a
play that won a Scholastic Magazine National Award, the following is
a couple of lines from it and it sum's up my feelings as well today
as it did then.
“The Men make bombs, but they buy
paintings, they throw sulfur into the atmosphere, but they plant
beautiful and even rows of wheat.”
