[MUSIC FADES IN]
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Saturday, October 27 had been the most dangerous day of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
MAX HASTINGS: So it was a terrifying day. And by the time they all went to bed that night, that in the minds of JFK and many of those of these top table, there was a real fear that the country was going to war.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: But Sunday, October 28th would dawn a new day - and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev would surprise President Kennedy and his advisors by agreeing to remove the missiles in Cuba.
MAX HASTINGS: The suddenness of that capitulation from Moscow amazed the Americans and amazed the world.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Khrushchev would also signal a desire to work with Kennedy on other matters.
NINA KHRUSHCHEVA: And of course, even if we sit down from morning, we are not going to finish with all these issues till the evening. But at least we need to start. We need to start this conversation.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Eleven days after going public with the missiles in Cuba, Kennedy would again go on the air to speak to the American people, this time with good news.
[CLIP FROM PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S ADDRESS TO THE NATION ON NOVEMBER 2, 1962]
JOHN F. KENNEDY: Soviet missile bases in Cuba are being dismantled, their missiles and related equipment are being crated, and the fixed installations at these sites are being destroyed.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: But as quickly as the resolution to the Cuban Missile Crisis appeared to come, there would still be obstacles.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: Kennedy feels strongly that in addition to the missiles being withdrawn, the IL-28 bombers also have to go. Castro says, uh-uh. Not going to happen.
SERHII PLOKHY: Castro was supposed to do, as a junior member of the Communist Club, whatever Khrushchev was telling him to do, and Castro refused to do that.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: This is Atomic Gambit - the Cuban Missile Crisis 60 Years Later. Episode 5: Uneasy Peace.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[MUSIC FADES IN]
JAMIE RICHARDSON: The night of October 27, Kennedy had written to Khrushchev that the US would not invade Cuba and it would lift the naval quarantine if the Soviets stopped work on missile sites, and removed them from the island. In a back-channel meeting between Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, Kennedy said that the US would also eventually remove its missiles in Turkey. But Khrushchev was to keep this a secret.
On Sunday, October 28, Khrushchev received Kennedy’s message. But he also received intelligence that the US was preparing to invade Cuba, and perhaps attack the Soviet Union as well.
Serhii Plokhy, author of Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, describes the fear Khrushchev felt as that Sunday began.
SERHII PLOKHY: He believes that the United States can go to war not just by attacking Cuban and Soviet forces in Cuba, but by attacking the Soviet Union itself. And that's the most nightmarish scenario that he can imagine.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Khrushchev wanted to reply to Kennedy’s message, but it seemed time was running out. The traditional method that they both communicated through was long and laborious. The morning before, he had sent his message about the US removing its missiles from Turkey in a broadcast over the radio. From there, it was translated and reported in the American press, where Kennedy and his advisors learned about it. This was the fastest method available at the time.
Khrushchev again turned to the radio to get his urgent message to Kennedy before war could break out.
Marvin Kalb was the CBS Bureau Chief in Moscow when he heard there was going to be a big announcement on the afternoon of October 28.
40 years later at a forum at the JFK Library, he recalled this experience.
[CLIP FROM JFK LIBRARY FORUM, “THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND THE MEDIA,” 10/28/2002]
MARVIN KALB: On that Sunday, I was in doing a broadcast, the normal World News Roundup broadcast when a Russian came in — a Russian reporter — and said that a Russian named Levitan, I believe, was going to do an important broadcast at 4 o’clock on Sunday afternoon, which was 8 am in Washington.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: CIA Director John McCone later recalled that Sunday morning on the other side of the Atlantic:
[CLIP FROM A 1986 INTERVIEW WITH JOHN MCCONE]
JOHN MCCONE: I remember going to mass on uh...8 o'clock on Sunday morning. And we were to meet 9:30 or 10:30 or something like that. And there came the...it came over the news at 8 o'clock that Khrushchev would have a...statement to make within an hour. That's the longest mass I've ever sat through.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Sir Max Hastings, author of The Abyss: Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962 explains what Khrushchev said.
MAX HASTINGS: And Khrushchev wrote a letter to JFK, which was broadcast by Moscow Radio at 5:00 p.m. in Moscow time, and of course, mid-morning in Washington, and he just said, in deference to your views and feelings, we withdraw our missiles from Cuba... The suddenness of that capitulation from Moscow amazed the Americans and amazed the world.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: A key part of the Soviet premier’s message said, “the Soviet Government… has given a new order to dismantle the arms which you described as offensive, and to crate and return them to the Soviet Union.”
After 12 long days of uncertainty, this message came as a relief - and as an apparent win for the US.
[CLIP FROM JFK LIBRARY FORUM, “THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND THE MEDIA,” 10/28/2002]
MARVIN KALB: And I allowed the broadcast to run straight on through so that in New York they were picking it up. And I was interpreting it and I said that “they have just blinked. The other guys just blinked.” And David Schonberg [a fellow journalist] …shortly thereafter turned to me and said to me, “What does this mean?” and I said it seemed to me that the Russians just blinked and the crisis is over.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: But Kennedy didn’t want any boasting about the apparent capitulation from Khrushchev. His press secretary Pierre Salinger called the CBS bureau in Moscow.
[CLIP FROM JFK LIBRARY FORUM, “THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND THE MEDIA,” 10/28/2002]
MARVIN KALB: During the next commercial break, Schonberg got a call from Salinger who was called by the president to say, “Tell that guy in Moscow to shut up about people blinking because we don’t want the Russians to have the feeling that somehow their ego was involved, that they had caved to the United States. We want it all to be just fine - to path them all on the back.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara also later reiterated that President Kennedy did not want any gloating in the aftermath of Khrushchev’s message.
[CLIP FROM A 1986 INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT MCNAMARA]
ROBERT MCNAMARA: The president made very clear, after he received the notice from Khrushchev that he was removing the missiles that we were not to boast about it. We were not to convey to the public that we had "won" because almost surely that would carry with it some Soviet response.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Kennedy didn’t want to embarrass Khrushchev, and he didn’t want to make him rescind his offer in retaliation.
Weeks later, President Kennedy told reporters that though the US and Soviet Union had their differences, there was something they had in common:
[CLIP FROM PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S PRESS CONFERENCE ON 11/20/1962]
JOHN F. KENNEDY: Human nature is the same on both sides, fortunately, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, which is why I am optimistic about the ultimate outcome of this struggle.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Nina Khrushcheva, granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev and professor of International Affairs at the New School, notes that although Kennedy and Khrushchev came from different worlds and led different countries, there was a level of respect and acknowledgement of what they did have in common.
NINA KHRUSHCHEVA: But I also think that they really respected each other. I mean, I know, certainly, Khrushchev did respect JFK, the way he handled it. We see it from his letters that he wrote to him… In one letter, he says, there's all these issues. And you and I care about those. And we had all these talks… And of course, even if we sit down from morning, we are not going to finish with all these issues till the evening. But at least we need to start. We need to start this conversation.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: But Khrushcheva also says that as time has gone by, her grandfather’s role in ending the crisis has been diminished to a narrative that he blinked or let Kennedy win.
NINA KHRUSHCHEVA: So he unwound this crisis, together with JFK. Only, JFK took all the credit, and Khrushchev wasn't even-- he agreed not to do PR about it. And nobody even knew until rather recently that, in fact, he wanted to-- those American weapons out of Turkey, and he got it but decided to give JFK kind of a PR moment.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Tom Nichols, professor at the Naval War College and columnist, explains what made Khrushchev want to give Kennedy this PR moment.
TOM NICHOLS: And I think he realized the time had come to fold, that this gamble had failed, and that the Americans were going to act one way or another, whether it was going to be the Joint Chiefs invading or some kind of an attack or some kind of aerial bombardment. I think he was taken by surprise and realized that he miscalculated… it's not just the Joint Chiefs, but it's the entire resolution of the American leadership, civilian military, and the public. I think Khrushchev realizes this was kind of a big bet, he pushed everything in the middle of the table, he came up short, and that he was just going to have to get out of it somehow.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
JAMIE RICHARDSON: When Kennedy learned that Khrushchev had been building missiles in Cuba, he felt he had been deceived by the Soviet leader. In his address to the American people on October 22, the American president emphasized that the Soviet leader had lied to him.
Historian Serhii Plokhy says that Kennedy changed course and decided to trust Khrushchev with the secret deal on the US missiles in Turkey.
SERHII PLOKHY: And the most amazing part of the story is that he would trust with that secret Khrushchev, the person whom he knew better that he couldn't trust him. And one more surprise is that Khrushchev keeps his word. He doesn't talk about the swap of the Turkish missiles, the US missiles for the Soviet missiles in Cuba, to anyone to against some key figures of the leadership now. But he doesn't tell that to his allies or to his clients, the leaders of the Communist governments in Eastern Europe, or anywhere else.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: And as Khrushchev kept this a secret, so did Kennedy.
SERHII PLOKHY: He would keep this deal secret from the closest, from members of his administration, the majority of the members of administration. He would lie about it to Eisenhower and the previous presidents.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Before news of the crisis broke, Kennedy had called his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, that he was going to initiate a quarantine of Cuba as a first step to get the missiles out of Cuba. Now, with a resolution in sight, Kennedy called Eisenhower again with an update.
[CLIP FROM PHONE CALL BETWEEN KENNEDY AND EISENHOWER, 10/28/1962 AT 12:08 P.M.]
JOHN F. KENNEDY: We then got a message, that public one the next morning, in which he said he would do that if we withdrew our missiles from Turkey. We then, as you know, issued a statement that we couldn’t get into that deal.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: But when the former president asked if there were any conditions, JFK left out the part about the American missiles in Turkey.
[CLIP FROM PHONE CALL BETWEEN KENNEDY AND EISENHOWER, 10/28/1962 AT 12:08 P.M.]
EISENHOWER: Of course. But, Mr. President, did he put any conditions in whatsoever, in there?
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: No, except that we’re not going to invade Cuba.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: After a short break, Kennedy faces backlash close to the White House, and the United States goes to the polls in the midterm elections.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[SHORT PODCAST BREAK]
[MUSIC FADES IN]
JAMIE RICHARDSON: While the confrontation between the two superpowers had appeared to be over, there was a new battle JFK had to fight: with the American press.
Leading up to and during the crisis, the press had been frustrated by the lack of information coming from the White House. On the one hand, the president had a need for secrecy around matters of national security, and on the other, journalists needed information to tell the public in order to keep the nation informed.
On October 24, the White House had issued a memo to editors and news directors with an update about information that would not be released by the government, and that should not be published by the media.
Press Secretary Pierre Salinger held briefings at least twice a day, but he wasn’t giving journalists much information. Briefings would often become tense as reporters would ask questions that Salinger couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.
White House Correspondent for Westinghouse Broadcast Corporation Sid Davis later recalled.
[CLIP FROM JFK LIBRARY FORUM, “THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND THE MEDIA,” 10/28/2002]
SID DAVIS: There were damn fine reporters covering the White House in Washington. And we were probing and tough. At that point, the whole government was in unison in not giving us information.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Sander Vanocur, a journalist working for NBC News, agreed.
[CLIP FROM JFK LIBRARY FORUM, “THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND THE MEDIA,” 10/28/2002]
SANDER VANOCUR: I can’t remember doing much that week because I had nothing to say.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: As ExComm continued to meet after getting Khrushchev’s agreement, they also discussed how to deal with the press, who would have even more questions now that the height of the crisis had passed.
[CLIP FROM EXCOMM MEETING SECRETLY RECORDED ON 10/30/1962 AT 10:02 A.M.]
JOHN F. KENNEDY: So now what we want to do is to have it as a solid policy that none of us will talk to these people at all personally. I think we just say that “the President has said that.” I’m not going to see any of them. I think none of us [should] see any newspapermen for a while.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: At the start of his presidency, Kennedy pioneered the new medium of television by holding the first live televised press conference. By the end his presidency, he had averaged one press conference every 16 days.
He also had a personal involvement in news media, says Alice George, author of Awaiting Armageddon: How Americans Faced the Cuban Missile Crisis.
ALICE L. GEORGE: Kennedy really prided himself on having good relations with the press. He had briefly been a reporter himself after he got out of the military. And he had a lot of friends who were journalists.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: But now, with the intricacies and sensitivities involved in the Cuban crisis, this relationship would be tested as he and his advisers believed they needed to be strategic with what information they shared.
ALICE L. GEORGE: And so it became known as news management, that he was trying to manage what the public and the press were allowed to know. And after the crisis, the Pentagon spokesman, Art Sylvester, made a foolish comment that the press was one of the weapons that the United States could use to win the Cold War. And the press, of course, did not like that. They did not like being shown as non-objective, but instead, as sort of a wing of the government.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: On November 20 - his first press conference in nearly two months - President Kennedy was asked about the suppression of information coming from the White House.
[CLIP OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S PRESS CONFERENCE ON 11/20/1962]
JOHN F. KENNEDY: I don't think that there is any doubt it would have been a great mistake and possibly a disaster if this news had been dribbled out when we were unsure of the extent of the Soviet buildup in Cuba, and when we were unsure of our response, and when we had not consulted with any of our allies, who might themselves have been involved in great difficulties as a result of our action.
ALICE L. GEORGE: But it still ended with his relationship with the press being tainted and with some suspicion there. And while people generally talk about the press becoming more cynical after Vietnam and Watergate, I think the Cuban Missile Crisis may have been also one part of the growing skepticism in the press about what they were told by the government.
[SHORT CLIP OF WALTER CRONKITE REPORTING FOR CBS NEWS]
JAMIE RICHARDSON: The press may have been skeptical of the White House as the crisis ended, but the public largely supported Kennedy and the peaceful resolution.
This support cut across different segments of the American population, says Mary Dudziak, Civil Rights historian and foreign policy expert at Emory Law School.
MARY DUDZIAK: Well, there was quite a lot of, essentially, rallying behind the president on the part of Americans across categories during the Cuban Missile Crisis. So many, especially as the crisis played out, not resulting in nuclear war but essentially talking that down and resolving it in a way that was peaceful, that led to widespread public support, including support from many African-American leaders, including Jackie Robinson was Republican. He supported President Kennedy.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Jackie Robinson, the first Black baseball player to break the color line in Major League Baseball, had campaigned for Richard Nixon, Kennedy’s opponent in the 1960 presidential campaign. At the end of the crisis, Robinson wrote an editorial in the Chicago Defender, praising Kennedy’s statesmanship, and adding that the US still needed to work on civil rights at home to get respect internationally.
Though some members of the public, elected officials, and even some of JFK’s own advisors had argued for aggressive action in Cuba, the sudden, peaceful resolution showed a positive step in a dangerous world.
MARY DUDZIAK: One of the things that's interesting, although many people were across the country, including African-Americans, were in favor of a sort of American strength and not caving to Soviet efforts to put missiles in Cuba, another response is Martin Luther King, Jr. is a good example of the way that the crisis was seen as an indication of the way that one could approach international conflict not through militarism but by seeking peace.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: An approach to international conflict through peaceful methods would be something Kennedy considered more seriously in the last year of his presidency.
When Kennedy had first learned of the missiles in Cuba on 16th of October, the country was weeks away from the 1962 midterm elections. Before it became clear he couldn’t both campaign and focus on the crisis, he had stumped for fellow Democrats in Connecticut, Illinois, and Ohio.
Even with the severity of the crisis taking up most of Kennedy’s days, the midterms weren’t entirely forgotten, according to Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and JFK biographer.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: But I think it's really important to note that he's got, at this point, midterm elections coming up. The fortunes of his party for the final two days of his first administration will hinge, at least in part, on what happens in those midterm elections.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Today, we’d expect the president’s party to stand behind them in a time of crisis, and the opposition party to use it to score political points. But that wasn’t the case in 1962.
Barry Goldwater, senator from Arizona, was the leading figure in the growing conservative movement in the Republican Party and getting ready to run for president in 1964.
In an oral history interview for the JFK Library, he described how he felt when he heard about the missiles in Cuba.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
[CLIP FROM BARRY GOLDWATER’S ORAL HISTORY AT THE JFK LIBRARY]
BARRY GOLDWATER: I’ll never forget for four or five days I was just like a fish out of water— what the hell could you say? You had to back your president—it was the right act.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: On Tuesday November 6, the midterm elections took place. Nearly 54 million Americans went to the polls to cast their ballots.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: I think what's remarkable about the outcome of the midterm election is how much it did not conform to what we typically see. Typically, we see that the party in power takes a beating in the midterms. Didn't really happen… The Democrats lost four or five seats in the House. The Democrats gained seats in the Senate, if you can imagine.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Of note, Kennedy’s youngest brother Edward M. Kennedy won his first election for Senate - winning the seat left vacant when JFK was elected president.
Richard Nixon lost his bid for governor of California, losing to incumbent Edmund Brown.
But as Kennedy cautiously celebrated the Democratic wins, there was still more work to be done to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis.
After a short break, a look at how difficult weeks of negotiations in Cuba almost led to another crisis.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[SHORT PODCAST BREAK]
JAMIE RICHARDSON: The standard narrative of the Cuban Missile Crisis ends on the 28th of October, the 13th day, when Kennedy and Khrushchev reached an agreement on the missiles.
Khrushchev said he would remove “the arms which you described as offensive,” and ExComm needed to determine what exactly he meant by that, and how they would know that the Soviets held up their end of the bargain. And there was another party to consider.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: The main drama is over by the 28th of October. But it continues, and it's partly Castro.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Cuban leader Fidel Castro had been angered by the US surveillance planes flying over Cuba, and feared that an invasion was imminent. He asked Khrushchev to strike the US with nuclear weapons if that happened.
When he learned that Khrushchev had made a decision about the missiles without informing him, he was angered again, according to historian Serhii Plokhy.
SERHII PLOKHY: In terms of Castro, Castro felt really upset in a major way that the deal on Cuba on the removal of the missiles was reached without his consent. For him, he didn't trust, of course, Kennedy. He didn't trust the word that the American administration was giving that they would not invade. For him, removal of the missiles was really tantamount to leaving Cuba exposed, leaving Cuba vulnerable for the future for the new American invasion, either on Kennedy's watch or on the watch of any of his successors.
Michael Dobbs, author of One Minute To Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of War, notes that the Cuban Missile Crisis also marked a positive turning point for Castro.
MICHAEL DOBBS: But then if you think about it-- and Castro certainly thought that was a huge defeat for him. He was furious with Khrushchev for agreeing to pull out those missiles. But if you think about it, the Cuban Missile Crisis really marked the end of American attempts to overthrow Castro. The US gave an assurance that it would not invade the island. And all those sabotage schemes designed to overthrow the Castros really ended after 1962.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: But Castro didn’t know that at the time. As he tried to gain control of the situation, and as a way to complicate things for the Soviets, Castro issued a set of conditions, which came to be known as Five Points. These were five demands he made of the United States in exchange for removing the missiles in his country.
SERHII PLOKHY: And eventually he tries to negotiate. He puts forward five points, including the liquidation of the American military base, Guantanamo base, in Cuba. Of course he doesn't get anywhere.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Kennedy and Khrushchev had clashed in their only in person meeting in Vienna and traded hard words at the outset of the crisis. But now, having come close to war, they were able to work together.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: On the other hand, Khrushchev and Castro, who were ideological allies, were now at odds with each other.
Tom Nichols explains how this disunity could make negotiations difficult.
TOM NICHOLS: To bring a crisis to an end, you do have to get everybody on the same page. And I think Castro proved to be a difficult ally for the Soviets in doing that. And I think that Soviet-Cuban relations after that were always a little shakier, at least until Khrushchev was gone.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Khrushchev also didn’t necessarily see Castro as an equal.
SERHII PLOKHY: Castro was supposed to do, as a junior member of the Communist Club, whatever Khrushchev was telling him to do, and Castro refused to do that.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Khrushchev had approved Kennedy’s requirement that the US inspect missile sites as they were being dismantled. But feeling betrayed by Khrushchev, Castro refused to let that happen - threatening to kick off another crisis.
SERHII PLOKHY: So at the end of the day when the crisis allegedly was resolved on the level of the superpowers the major crisis started in relations between the Soviet Union and Cuba because one of the conditions of the agreement reached by Khrushchev and Kennedy was that the United States would have an opportunity to go to Cuba and to check the removal of the missiles from the Cuban territory. And Castro said, no. He would not allow either American or United Nations inspections on the territory of Cuba.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: For ExComm, not being able to verify what had been removed from Cuba was not acceptable. They continued the overflights that had bothered Castro so much.
[CLIP FROM EXCOMM MEETING SECRETLY RECORDED ON 10/29/1962 AT 6:30 P.M.]
JOHN F. KENNEDY: If you’re not going to have the on-site inspection, then we’ve got to continue the photography, unless you can give us an alternative to the photographic method.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: To get Castro to cooperate, Khrushchev sent top Soviet diplomat Anastas Mikoyan to Cuba. Mikoyan had been against putting the missiles in Cuba in the first place, and now he had to find a way to get them out.
SERHII PLOKHY: And the entire deal suddenly was in jeopardy, and Khrushchev turns to Anastas Mikoyan, the person who was from the very start, from the very beginning against this adventure, telling him, OK. You are the only person to whom Castro would listen. Go to Cuba and convince Castro to accept the conditions that we agreed with Kennedy.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Mikoyan agreed to go, but at personal cost.
SERHII PLOKHY: And Mikoyan does that despite the fact that his wife is dying at that time. He knows that he she has really very few days, maximum weeks, to live, but he takes this order from Khrushchev. He goes to Cuba. Before he starts negotiations, news arrived from Moscow that his wife actually died. He sends his son back to Moscow but stays himself and continues negotiations in Cuba.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Mikoyan stayed in Cuba for a month to ensure a positive outcome to negotiations.
He was unable to persuade Castro to agree to on the ground inspections of the missile sites, but he was able to get a win in another area of the negotiations.
SERHII PLOKHY: Castro refuses to allow inspections. But Mikoyan convinces Castro to accept another deal regarding the removal of the Soviet bombers from Cuba and eventually stops US Cuban relations from a complete rupture.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Through surveillance photographs, ExComm watched nuclear bombers being constructed throughout the crisis, even after the missile sites had been removed. The bombers, IL-28s also known as “Beagles” had not originally been defined as “offensive weapons.”
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara explained why he thought the IL-28s should be taken out - with part of his reasoning being that Americans wouldn’t want them there.
[CLIP FROM EXCOMM MEETING SECRETLY RECORDED ON 11/1/1962 AT 10 A.M.]
ROBERT MCNAMARA: I think it’s absolutely essential that the IL-28s are part of the deal. I don’t think we could live with the American public if they weren’t. These are bombers with substantial capabilities: 750-mile range, 4,000-pound bomb load. We’ve just got to get those out of there. And we need to know whether there’s any evidence that the Soviets are planning to get them out.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: Kennedy feels strongly that in addition to the missiles being withdrawn, the IL-28 bombers also have to go. Castro says, uh-uh. Not going to happen.… And so what then ensues is delicate, drawn out, difficult negotiations in Washington, in Cuba. And it is a period of weeks before this thing is resolved.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: The offensive weapons the US wanted the Soviets to remove hadn’t initially covered the IL-28s, and it didn’t include tactical nuclear weapons. That was because the US didn’t know they were in Cuba.
But Khrushchev wanted to get them out before the Americans could discover them, or Castro could use them, according to historian Serhii Plokhy.
SERHII PLOKHY: They were not covered by any agreement, but Khrushchev was so concerned about provoking Kennedy, provoking the United States, that he removes them from Cuba anyway, and was so concerned about the appetite of Castro to gain control over the nuclear weapons.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: But before the tactical nuclear weapons could be removed, Castro needed to agree to this. Mikoyan came to the rescue again.
SERHII PLOKHY: He lies to Castro. He says that there is a law in the Soviet Union that doesn't allow either placing missiles on the foreign territory and transferring it to somebody else's control. The law of that kind didn't exist in the Soviet Union. He made the whole thing up, so eventually they don't allow Castro to gain control over those weapons.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: On October 28, Soviet technicians in Cuba had got to work right away on dismantling the missiles.
The public phase of the Cuban Missile Crisis had begun on October 22, when President Kennedy addressed the nation. Eleven days later, on November 2, he went on television again to tell the American people that surveillance photos showed that the Soviets were removing missiles from Cuba.
[CLIP FROM PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S ADDRESS TO THE NATION ON 11/2/1962]
JOHN F. KENNEDY: I want to take this opportunity to report on the conclusions which this Government has reached on the basis of yesterday's aerial photographs which will be made available tomorrow, as well as other indications, namely, that the Soviet missile bases in Cuba are being dismantled, their missiles and related equipment are being crated, and the fixed installations at these sites are being destroyed.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: He also said that the quarantine would remain in effect and the US would continue to do aerial surveillance over Cuba.
[CLIP FROM PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S ADDRESS TO THE NATION ON 11/2/1962]
JOHN F. KENNEDY: The continuation of these measures in air and sea, until the threat to peace posed by these offensive weapons is gone, is in keeping with our pledge to secure their withdrawal or elimination from this hemisphere.
[CLIP FROM NEWSREEL DATED 11/20/1962]
ANNOUNCER ED HERLIHY: A final chapter in the Cuban crisis is brought to a close, as President Kennedy holds a news conference to announce that Soviet bombers on Cuban soil would be withdrawn by Russia.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: After weeks of negotiating, the last remaining details - the IL-28 bombers - were finalized between the US, the Soviet Union, and Cuba.
In the same press conference where he was asked about news suppression, Kennedy announced that the US would lift the naval quarantine around Cuba.
[CLIP OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S PRESS CONFERENCE ON 11/20/1962]
JOHN F. KENNEDY: I have today been informed by Chairman Khrushchev that all of the IL-28 bombers now in Cuba will be withdrawn in 30 days. He also agrees that these planes can be observed and counted as they leave. Inasmuch as this goes a long way towards reducing the danger which faced this hemisphere four weeks ago, I have this afternoon instructed the Secretary of Defense to lift our naval quarantine.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: He also addressed the other condition the United States had agreed to - a non-invasion pledge of Cuba.
[CLIP OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S PRESS CONFERENCE ON 11/20/1962]
JOHN F. KENNEDY: As for our part, if all offensive weapons systems are removed from Cuba and kept out of the Hemisphere in the future, under adequate verification and safeguards, and if Cuba is not used for the export of aggressive Communist purposes, there will be peace in the Caribbean.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: This press conference was two days before Thanksgiving, and Kennedy reflected on the sobering experience he - and the whole world - had gone through. He hoped that the peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis would lead to more opportunities for progress.
[CLIP OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S PRESS CONFERENCE ON 11/20/1962]
JOHN F. KENNEDY: In short, the record of recent weeks shows real progress and we are hopeful that further progress can be made. The completion of the commitment on both sides and the achievement of a peaceful solution to the Cuban crisis might well open the door to the solution of other outstanding problems.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: In the next episode, Kennedy and Khrushchev work toward a strategy of peace, and find solutions to outstanding problems, including a long sought after test ban treaty.
We’ll look at the legacy of the Cuban Missile Crisis -- 1963 and beyond -- next time on our next episode of Atomic Gambit.