The Ends of a Rope
 Day 11: Thursday, October 25
"National security must come first...we can't negotiate with a gun at our head... if they won't remove the missiles and restore status quo ante, we will have to do it ourselves."
-John Kennedy |
Tensions continued to build on Thursday with no resolution appearing any closer at hand. On the 23rd, U Thant, Secretary General of the United Nations, had proposed a pause in the crisis to Kennedy and Khrushchev. He suggested the Soviets stop shipping offensive weapons to Cuba for two or three weeks and in exchange the Americans would suspend the quarantine for the same length of time. On the 25th Kennedy politely turned down the offer because it allowed the Soviets to continue preparing the missiles that were already in Cuba.
Early in the morning, Khrushchev received another correspondence from Kennedy which restated the United State's position. Kennedy was not going to back down.
Still attempting to avoid war, Kennedy had U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson confront the Soviets at the United Nations. When asked directly about the missiles, Soviet Ambassador Zorin refused to comment. Consequently, Stevenson showed the reconnaissance photos of missile sites. Their effect was stunning, the photographs were unmistakable evidence of the Soviet presence in Cuba.
A syndicated column written by influential journalist Walter Lippman was also printed on Thursday. Lippman suggested a "face-saving" missile exchange. The Soviets would remove their missiles from Cuba and the Americans would remove their missiles from Turkey. Days before, EX-COMM had already begun to consider this option and was currently exploring the political consequences. Some government officials both in the United States and Soviet Union mistakenly interpreted Lippman's article as a trial balloon floated by the Kennedy administration. It was not.
In the Atlantic tensions were also running high. The Soviet tanker Bucharest approached the quarantine line and was let through because there was no reason to believe it carried contra-band cargo. To close the day, the aircraft carrier USS Kennedy neared the Lebanese freighter Marcula, which President Kennedy had chosen to be the first ship boarded by quarantine forces. The USS Kennedy radioed the Marcula that night to state it would be boarded the following morning.
At the close of the 5:00 p.m. EX-COMM meeting, CIA Director McCone indicated that some of the missiles deployed in Cuba were now fully operational.
Day 12: Friday, October 26
In the early morning, U.S. quarantine forces boarded the Marcula. After finding only paper products, they cleared the ship to Cuba.
During the 10:00 a.m. EX-COMM meeting, Kennedy said that he believed the quarantine alone could not force the Soviet government to remove its offensive weapons from Cuba. A CIA report from that morning stated that there was no halt in progress in the development of the missile sites and another reconnaissance flight revealed the Soviets were also attempting to camouflage the missiles. Kennedy believed that only an invasion or a trade (for missiles in Turkey) would now succeed. He also agreed to enhance pressure by increasing the frequency of low-level flights over Cuba from twice per day to once every two hours.
At lunch time on the 26th, Aleksandr Fomin, who was known to be the KGB station chief in Washington, requested a meeting with ABC News correspondent John Scali. At the Occidental Restaurant in Washington Fomin hinted that there might be a resolution. Fomin proposed the dismantling of Soviet bases under U.N. supervision in exchange for a public pledge from the U.S. not to invade Cuba. After lunch Scali went directly to the State Department to inform Roger Hilsman of the meeting. Since Fomin was a high ranking officer, the U.S. assumed the proposal was an official one from Khrushchev. Recent accounts from the Soviet side, however, suggest that Fomin's proposal was not in fact authorized by Moscow. Later in the day, Scali was sent back to Fomin with a message from Secretary of State Dean Rusk: "I have reason to believe that the U.S. government sees real possibilities and supposes that the representatives of the two governments in New York could work this matter out with U Thant and with each other. My impression is, however, that time is very urgent." Fomin assured Scali that he would convey the message to the "highest Soviet sources."
The most important occurrence on the 26th was not Fomin's message to Scali, but a letter from Khrushchev to Kennedy. The letter began to arrive at the White House at 6:00 p.m. but because it had to be translated, it came in four separate parts, the last of which arrived at 9:00 p.m. The letter was clearly an impassioned appeal, written by Khrushchev himself, to resolve the crisis. Khrushchev proposed removing his missiles if Kennedy would publicly announce never to invade Cuba.
You and I should not now pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied a knot of war, because the harder you and I pull, the tighter the knot will become. And a time may come when this knot is tied so tight that the person who tied it is no longer capable of untying it, and then the knot will have to be cut. What that would mean I need not explain to you, because you yourself understand perfectly what dreaded forces our two countries possess.
I propose we, for our part, will declare that our ships bound for Cuba are not carrying any armaments. You will declare that the United States will not invade Cuba with its troops and will not support any other forces which might intend to invade Cuba. Then the necessity of the presence of our military specialists in Cuba will disappear.
Later that night, unknown to EX-COMM, Robert Kennedy again went to the Soviet Embassy to meet with Ambassador Dobrynin. When Dobrynin claimed Soviet missiles in Cuba were justified because of American missiles in Turkey, Kennedy offered to introduce the Turkish missiles into a potential settlement. Then, the Attorney General reportedly left the room to call his brother. When he returned he reported this to Dobrynin: "the president said that we are ready... to examine favorably the question of Turkey." After the meeting, Dobrynin again cabled the Kremlin.
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