Cold War (1998) s01e10 Episode Script
Cuba
A war appeared imminent, a first strike might take place at any time.
I said to myself: if Cuba is in such an unfortunate war we will disappear from the map.
Robert Kennedy came to me and said, 'Mr.
Ambassador, the situation is very tense.
Your missiles have just shot down our plane.
Our generals demand that we retaliate.
I If we start bombing, you will fight back.
What can we do?' It was a perfectly beautiful night, as fall nights are in Washington.
I walked out of the president's Oval Office, and as I walked out, I thought I might never live to see another Saturday night.
Throughout the 1940s and '50s, the Caribbean island of Cuba had been America's playground; beaches, booze and casinos.
Havana had it all.
Cuba's land and industry were owned almost entirely by American corporations.
We considered it part of the United States practically, just a wonderful little country over there that was of no danger to anybody, as a matter of fact was a rather important economic asset to the United States.
Cuba's leader, Fulgencio Batista, was a brutal dictator.
His people were turning against him.
After years of guerrilla fighting in the mountains, a charismatic 33-year-old lawyer, Fidel Castro, entered Havana on the 8th of January, 1959.
The triumph of the revolution was an example of order.
There was no looting, no one was dragged along the streets, there were no murders, no crimes.
There was perfect order.
In this perfect order, over 500 members of the former regime were accused of crimes against the people, tried and executed.
Fearing the rise of a new dictator, thousands fled to exile in the United States.
But to most people Castro was a hero.
The revolution promised to provide jobs for the people.
It promised honesty in the administration which had never existed in Cuba.
There were health programs which had never existed before, education programs which had never existed before.
Most important of all, Castro nationalized millions of acres of land held by American companies gave it to the people.
Eager to tell the world of his revolution, Castro flew to New York to speak at the United Nations.
President Eisenhower was too busy to see him.
But Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, was delighted to embrace a new revolutionary and offered him economic assistance.
Cuba decided to buy oil from the Soviet Union, which would be cheaper.
The country could get also credit from the Soviet Union, who were willing to help us.
But the American companies refused to refine the oil.
With nowhere to refine the Soviet oil, Castro was faced with economic disaster.
He sent in his militia and took over the foreign refineries in Cuba.
America's retaliation was swift.
"At his White House press conference, President Eisenhower announces that Cuba's assigned share of the United States sugar market has been cut by 95 percent in reply to what Ike called Fidel Castro's deliberate policy of hostility.
" As tension mounted, Castro nationalized a further billion dollars worth of American investments.
An irate President Eisenhower declared a complete trade embargo and ordered the CIA to recruit Cuban exiles.
They would be trained to destroy Castro's regime.
Government agencies of the United States began training people to bomb Cuba and to burn the sugar cane fields.
They used small planes with incendiary devices to set fire to the fields.
It was very serious, this was the only wealth we had.
They carried out a dirty war against our country.
Guerrilla units were active in every province, even in Havana.
Over a hundred people died when "La Coubre," a freighter unloading arms and ammunition from Belgium, exploded in Havana harbor.
CIA sabotage was suspected, but never proved.
Castro turned to the Soviet Union for help.
Perhaps he might have taken a different line had the Americans been more mild towards him than they actually were.
The Cold War was in its full bloom.
So whatever was unpleasant to the Americans was welcomed in this country, and vice versa I would say.
At a secret base in the Guatemalan jungle, American CIA agents had been training Cuban exiles to invade Cuba.
This, they thought, would be the impetus for the Cuban people to rise up and overthrow Castro.
The plan was presented to the new president, John F.
Kennedy.
Kennedy felt that a plan that he had inherited, in which a band of Cuban exiles were to liberate their own country, was one he could hardly turn his back on.
Surely the United States should help get rid of a communist dictatorship in our hemisphere.
The CIA badly misled the new president, promising him an easy victory and an end to the Cuban problem.
Kennedy agreed to the invasion, but demanded crucial changes to hide America's involvement.
Just three days before the planned invasion, Kennedy denied any possibility of American intervention.
"There will not be, under any conditions, an intervention in Cuba by the United States armed forces, and this government will do everything it possibly can, and I think it can meet its responsibilities, to make sure that there are no Americans involved in any actions inside Cuba.
" As Kennedy spoke, the invasion force was gathering.
An advance wave of American bombers planned to destroy Castro's air force on the ground.
The president, worried that this might reveal Washington's role, ordered the operation scaled down.
On April the 15th, 1961, just six American bombers, disguised in the colors of the Cuban air force, took off from Nicaragua for a crucial attack on Cuban airfields.
But with so few bombers, only three Cuban planes were destroyed.
Seven civilians were killed.
As they buried those who had died, Castro, seeking Soviet support, finally declared that the revolution was socialist.
We prepared ourselves to resist an invasion against all the forces we knew the Americans had at their disposal.
" The following day, just 1,500 exiles, equipped with American arms and ammunition, arrived at the Bay of Pigs, 125 miles to the south of Havana.
"We were the happiest men in the world, because we had the opportunity to return to Cuba, our homeland, to fight to rescue freedom and democracy so that our country could be for all Cubans.
" American planes were to protect the invasion force as they hit the beach.
But Kennedy, now faced with international condemnation for the initial bombing, canceled the air support.
Castro's remaining air force quickly destroyed the ships carrying vital ammunition supplies.
Mistakenly believing that this was a full-scale American invasion, Cuba mobilized all its forces.
The worst moments were at the beginning.
We didn't have much information about the enemy; we didn't know if they were 1,000, 3,000 or 10,000; we didn't know what types of weapons they might have; we didn't know if this was a total invasion.
" Without American air support or resupply, the invasion force was outnumbered and outgunned.
Within 72 hours, the invaders were either captured or dead.
"I did not realize that the mission was impossible until the last day, almost at the end: We trusted in our allies; we never thought they would forsake us or abandon us.
We didn't think that they could betray the commitment they had with us.
" Jack Kennedy was devastated by the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs, and he said it was a fiasco.
He was not accustomed to failure in politics or in life.
He was more distraught than I'd ever seen him.
'How could I have been so stupid?' he said.
Castro had survived and humiliated Kennedy.
The CIA was told to think again.
Our job was to start to come up with new plans, not a Bay of Pigs type plan, but new plans to quote, get rid of Castro and the Castro regime, unquote.
Everything was suggested; from assassination, to spraying LSD into a television studio to make it seem as if Fidel had gone mad.
Whatever they tried Castro took in his stride.
More secure within his own country, he sought to export revolution to the rest of Latin America.
Alarmed by this prospect, America kept up the pressure on Castro.
In the spring of 1962, a "practice invasion" of a Caribbean island was mounted by 40,000 American marines.
We did that purposely to make Castro pay more attention to that than causing trouble in Latin and Central America.
But the Cubans and the Russians, they told us later, believed that the United States really did intend to attack Cuba and therefore Castro kept saying, 'I need some help.
' Castro's pleas inspired the Soviet leader Khrushchev to make a daring offer.
He had boasted to the world of Russia's nuclear strength, but in reality he knew just how limited his long-range missile force really was.
But he did have medium-range nuclear missiles.
From the territory of the Soviet Union, they couldn't possibly reach the territory of the U.
S.
A.
, but deployed on Cuba they would become strategic nuclear weapons.
That meant in practical terms we had a chance to narrow the differences between our forces.
I immediately appreciated the strategic importance the presence of those missiles in Cuba.
By that time, the Americans had already transported similar missiles to Turkey.
I thought: if we expected the Soviets to fight on our behalf, to run risks for us, and even involve themselves in a war for our sake, it would be immoral and cowardly on our part to refuse to accept the presence of those missiles here.
In July 1962, under the nose of the Americans, the first of 150 Soviet ships, loaded with heavily disguised nuclear missiles and over 40,000 troops, sailed for Cuba.
The Americans just didn't notice that we managed to deliver not one but 43,000 people there, plus the equipment, weapons, and everything necessary for the installation work.
We put all the cars, trucks and tractors on the top, all the military equipment was hidden under the decks.
CIA agents in Cuba reported that Russian troops and missile trailers had been seen in the streets of Havana.
Washington dismissed the reports as rumor.
I saw those weird weapons, and then I said to my friend Pablo 'Pablo, how powerful are these weird weapons?' and he answered, 'These are nuclear missiles.
' So I thought, oh, really powerful.
They just put them here, out in the open.
But the CIA had noticed the increase in Soviet ships heading for Cuba.
On October 14th, a U-2 spy plane was ordered to fly across the island to try to discover what was going on.
The next morning, the Photographic Interpretation Center in Washington started analyzing the pictures that the U-2 had taken.
We're looking at the photography and we spot objects that are foreign to the environment.
And we kept looking, and we said, oh-oh, this is an SS-4 ballistic missile site.
So working with the photo interpreters we became convinced that this was it.
The Soviets had never put any nuclear weapons outside the Soviet borders, and we didn't think they'd do it, you know.
The truth of the matter is that it never dawned on us that they would take that kind of risk.
At 8:45 a.
m.
on October the 16th, the CIA informed Kennedy that without any doubt there were Soviet missiles in Cuba.
The president called his advisers to the White House.
We didn't spend a great deal of time wondering why the Soviets were doing this, because why they had done it, for whatever reason they had done it, they had done it in a surreptitious way, lying to the United States through a variety of messages and messengers, that they were only putting defensive weapons into Cuba, and those weapons constituted a clear and present danger to our security.
The missiles in Cuba made the Americans more vulnerable than ever before.
The Russians were so close they could strike without warning.
A first strike would have knocked out all the American air bases, bomber bases, all the American missile bases and all American cities except Seattle, which was out of their range.
But Washington, D.
C.
, New York City, Dallas, would all have gone under the hammer.
We talked about the possibility of an air strike, which was at one time or another almost everybody's first choice, upon first thought, to knock out the missiles.
We talked about an invasion of Cuba, which was always the preferred choice of the right wing, go in and take Cuba away from Castro and rid the island of communism, while at the same time getting rid of these missiles; a diplomatic approach, either bilaterally or through the United Nations.
A blockade, or a quarantine, as it later came to be called.
No decision was made at that first meeting.
But if a vote had been taken there air strike was probably number one on everybody's list.
Robert Kennedy, the president's brother and closest adviser, became concerned that if America's might was used without warning against a small island, world opinion would turn against them.
Robert Kennedy - rightfully, in my opinion - drew the analogy that it would be regarded by the world as a bombing of Cuba, of bases in Cuba, comparable to the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in 1941.
And he said, 'I don't think I want my brother to become another Tojo.
' As the arguments continued, the Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, and the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, kept a long-standing engagement at the White House.
The president raised the question of the increasing tension between our two countries in connection with the Soviet deliveries of weapons.
The president said, 'We are worried about it because it's connected with our own safety and security.
' Gromyko told him - just as I was told to say - That all our deliveries, Mr.
President, are of a defensive nature.
If you don't intend to invade Cuba, you shouldn't worry, because all the weapons are defensive.
' It was a clear intent to deceive.
If the U.
S.
were not to respond to Soviet deception, how would this influence the attitude of our NATO allies, how would they view the U.
S.
guarantee of their security, and how would it influence the future behavior of the Soviet Union? If they got by with deception once, couldn't they do it again? For the next two days, Kennedy stayed away, keeping up with a congressional election campaign.
In Washington, his advisers tried to come up with a solution.
There were no good solutions every solution was full of holes and risks.
It was the only time during my three years in the White House that I would wake up in the middle of the night agonizing over what was the right approach, what would work, what would not blow up the world.
A conclusion was reached.
Not to bomb, but to blockade.
The Navy would stop and search all ships heading for Cuba.
They called it "a quarantine.
" It was believed that the quarantine would convey to Khrushchev the determination of the president to see that those missiles were removed, without stimulating a military response.
But in case the quarantine didn't work, preparations were made for air strikes, and a massive American invasion force was made ready.
President Kennedy was in Chicago.
Now he was needed in Washington.
The press were growing suspicious.
I was called by President Kennedy at 8 o'clock in the morning and he said, come to my room, and he still had his bathrobe on and and he said, here's something I'm writing for you, you're going to hold a press conference to announce it.
The assistant White House physician, Dr.
George Berkeley, noticed that the president's voice was very husky.
This morning when he examined the president, he found that the president had developed a slight temperature, and he was suffering from a minor upper respiratory ailment.
The president will therefore cancel his schedule for the rest of today and tomorrow and return to Washington and the White House.
About halfway to Washington, I suddenly found myself alone with Kennedy in the front part of the airplane.
I said, Mr.
President, you're not sick, what the hell's going on?' He said to me, 'You're going to find out as soon as you land in Washington and then grab your balls.
' "Good morning everyone.
An unusual flurry of top secret military and diplomatic activity over the weekend has Washington guessing today that a major move in American foreign policy may be imminent.
The speculation centers on the Caribbean and possible action against Cuba.
" That afternoon, the Soviet ambassador was called to an urgent meeting with Secretary of State Dean Rusk.
Rusk said, 'You are delivering missiles to Cuba.
We have aerial reconnaissance photographs.
This is a threat to our security, and we cannot possibly allow it.
In one hour's time, at 7 p.
m.
, the president will make a radio and television appeal to the American people, where he will describe the situation.
At the same time he wants you to pass the message on to Khrushchev.
' At 7 o'clock, Kennedy announced to the world for the first time the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba, and that a blockade was now in force.
"The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.
To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated.
All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back.
I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace, and to stable relations between our two nations.
He has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction.
" The first response from Moscow came the next morning: Khrushchev was not going to back down.
Kennedy spoke about quarantine, that sounded as something not very precise, perhaps not a blockade, as it actually was.
So the first reactions were pretty tough from the Soviet side.
"Denouncing the United States arms quarantine against Cuba as a step towards world thermonuclear war, the Soviet Union today ordered its armed forces into a state of combat readiness, and forces of the Warsaw Pact, the communist counterpart of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, immediately followed suit.
" As the superpowers prepared for conflict, Cuba announced a 'combat alarm'.
Over a quarter of a million people stood by to repel an American invasion.
We felt the danger.
This was a war; the country could be invaded at any time by the Americans.
If they invaded our country, I was convinced it would create the grave risk of the U.
S.
taking the second step of carrying out a nuclear air strike against the Soviet Union.
The American fleet now encircled Cuba.
The Soviet ships stayed on course.
With confrontation imminent, Kennedy wanted direct contact with Moscow.
He sent his brother Robert to meet in secret with the Soviet ambassador.
He said, 'Did your government instruct the captains to turn the ships back home because Kennedy introduced the quarantine?' I said, 'No, our captains had no such orders, as far as I am aware they are instructed to go on to Cuba.
According to international law you have no right to stop our ships in the open sea.
You cannot draw an imaginary line which cannot be crossed, it is against the law.
' He replied, 'Well, then I don't know where we are heading.
' "The Pentagon says the United States is ready to sink every communist bloc ship headed for Cuba which refuses to stop and be searched under the blockade.
Further, force will be used if necessary to stop and search any ship, of any nation, bound for Cuba.
" I think that was the moment that really was the heart-stopper.
The I recall I recall being in the newsroom just waiting for that next bulletin, and almost literally trying to type with my fingers crossed.
"Let's check over at the Pentagon, with Charles Burne Friend on that.
Chuck, is there any late information about the position of those Soviet ships, or what might be happening to them?" "Walter, we haven't heard a word for several hours now, as to when the confrontation between U.
S.
vessels and the Soviet ships will come about.
" Nerves were being stretched to breaking point.
People tried to prepare for a possible nuclear holocaust.
A wave of panic buying swept across America.
We have a utility room where the furnaces are, and we wondered whether we could make that into a bomb shelter of some form.
We were learning for the first time the time that we would have after the explosion, before the the the fumes, the killing fumes, killing heat and so forth, would reach us.
The Soviet leaders had tried to keep the crisis from their people, but the news was getting out.
The people felt the breath of war and were tense.
I remember my parents felt doomed.
They understood that war would not be like it was before, that it would be a war with atomic bombs.
"This is a special report from CBS News.
" "Well, at its beginning, this day looked as if it might be one of armed conflict between Soviet vessels and American warships on the sea lanes leading to Cuba.
But there has been no confrontation as far as we know, and some hope has been generated by suggestions of negotiation.
" Almost at the last moment, the missile ships appeared to have slowed down, or altered course.
That evening, as Kennedy dined with friends at the White House, a toast was proposed to celebrate.
Kennedy declined.
"The game," he said, "was hardly over.
" At 9:24 p.
m.
the State Department received a letter from Khrushchev for the president.
Khrushchev rejected all of Kennedy's demands.
The missiles already in Cuba were being prepared for action.
For the first time in its history, America's Strategic Air Command moved to Defense Condition 2.
The next step - DEFCON 1- would be war.
Just after dawn on the morning of the 25th, Kennedy ordered the interception of the Bucharest, a ship carrying Soviet oil.
He knew there was no possibility of an oil tanker carrying missiles, but it was a signal to Khrushchev that he was deadly serious.
That afternoon, at the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson confronted his Soviet counterpart, Ambassador Zorin.
"All right sir, let me ask you one simple question: Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the U.
S.
S.
R.
has placed and is placing medium and intermediate-range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no? Don't wait for the translation: Yes or no?" "I´m not I am not in an American courtroom, sir, and therefore I do not wish to answer a question that is put to me in the fashion in which a prosecutor does.
In due course, sir, you will have your reply.
" "of world opinion right now and you can answer yes or no.
You have denied that they exist and I want to know if I have understood you correctly.
" As the Soviet ambassador prevaricated, the U-2 photographs were brought into the meeting for the world to see.
With work continuing on the missile sites in Cuba, the buildup of U.
S.
invasion forces in Florida increased.
The Americans prepared for conventional combat.
They were unaware that the Soviet forces were equipped with short-range tactical missiles, tipped with atomic warheads, ready to annihilate any invader.
If they had started an invasion using the Marines or the Airborne forces, the losses would have been enormous: We would have fought to the last soldier, to the last bullet.
There was nowhere to retreat to.
On the 26th of October at a meeting with the Soviet military commander, I was informed about the state of the missiles.
He told me, 'The air regiment is ready, the surface-to-air missiles are ready, the tactical nuclear missile unit is ready, missiles ready.
' On October the 26th, with tension increasing, Kennedy received a telegram from Khrushchev.
The most important paragraph in it is, Mr.
President, Mr.
Kennedy, you and I are like two men pulling on a rope with a knot in the middle, the harder we pull, the tighter the knot until it will have to be cut with a sword.
why we don't both let up the pressure and maybe we can untie the knot?' Khrushchev went on to offer that if the United States declared that they wouldn't invade Cuba: "The necessity of the presence of our military specialists in Cuba will disappear".
At last, it looked as if cooler heads were prevailing.
The next morning, everything changed.
Khrushchev tried to push for a better deal.
He demanded a trade.
His missiles in Cuba for U.
S.
missiles in Turkey.
Khrushchev thought that if he if the withdrawal from Turkey could be incorporated in a general agreement between the two sides, that would look very good for the Soviet Union.
Much even better than a simple decision by the United States not to attack Cuba.
President Kennedy was prepared to take the American missiles out of Turkey.
But they were part of America's contribution to NATO and he could offer Khrushchev no promises.
As Kennedy considered the options, he received news that the crisis had escalated again.
In continued American reconnaissance, a U-2 spy plane overflew a Soviet anti-aircraft site in the east of Cuba.
This time, the Soviet commander gave the order to launch a surface-to-air missile against it.
The division commander Lt.
Colonel Grechkove was given the order to liquidate the target.
If we hadn't shot down a plane which had photographed all of our bases, it would have enabled the enemy to destroy us.
That would have meant we had not fulfilled our mission; we would have betrayed our Motherland.
The standby plan was that if a U-2 was shot down, we would immediately bomb that SAM site out of existence.
President Kennedy canceled that order, he said don't bomb that anti-aircraft site, I want time to exchange with Khrushchev.
A war appeared imminent, a first strike might take place at any time.
I said to myself: If Cuba is in such an unfortunate war, we will disappear from the map.
Castro sent a message to Khrushchev He said a U.
S.
attack was just hours away, and once launched, the Soviet Union should retaliate immediately with "an annihilating strike.
" In Washington, Kennedy was still trying to avoid a world war.
Bobby Kennedy had this brilliant idea.
He said: Let's pick out of the Khrushchev cable the things we like and pretend that the rest isn't there.
Jack Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy, they crafted this answer to Khrushchev that did just that.
It ignored the shoot-down of the U-2, it ignored the broadcast from Moscow that was very hawkish, you know, etc.
, etc.
, etc.
, and just we said, 'We understand what you're proposing and we listen to things we like.
' There was little confidence that this ploy would work.
Plans for the invasion continued.
The tension on Saturday night was extraordinary, because there was going to be the meeting where we were going to decide what time the next day we were going to invade Cuba or was it going to be later, were we going to be bombing those areas, and Kennedy started the meeting by saying, 'Listen, all of you have not been home for at least six, seven days I want all of you to go home tonight, come back tomorrow morning, Sunday morning and we'll make the decision Sunday morning.
' They left the White House fearful that America could soon be engulfed in nuclear war a war that once started, might be impossible to stop.
It was a perfectly beautiful night, as fall nights are in Washington.
I walked out of the president's Oval Office, and as I walked out, I thought I might never live to see another Saturday night.
Kennedy sent his brother to another meeting with the Soviet ambassador.
He came to me and said: 'The situation is very tense.
Your missiles have just shot down our plane.
Our generals demand that we fight back.
If we start bombing, you will start to fight back.
What can we do?' I said: 'What about Turkey? He thought for a while and said, 'You know, if that's the only condition which prevents us from striking a deal, then I'm authorized by the president to say that we agree to it.
' We could not take them out under threat, we could not take them out unilaterally, because they were NATO bases, but he had our assurance that they would be gone provided it was not done on a quid pro quo basis.
Therefore the Russians could not talk about it.
And that was, I would say, the last the last thing that led to the decision to accept Kennedy's terms that he would be willing to guarantee that there would be no attack on Cuba, but that the Soviet Union should withdraw all offensive weapons from Cuba.
Khrushchev, fearing that this might be the last chance to escape war, rushed a message, accepting Kennedy's terms, to Radio Moscow.
It was broadcast to the world.
"The Soviet government has ordered the dismantling of weapons in Cuba, as well as their crating and return to the Soviet Union.
" "Radio Moscow at 9 o'clock this morning.
Mr.
Khrushchev crating up his missiles and sending them home.
" The first news I heard on Sunday morning when I woke up was this broadcast from Khrushchev over the open air, that Soviet missiles were to be withdrawn under inspection, and the crisis was over.
I could hardly believe my ears.
"This is the day, we have every reason to believe, when the world came out from under the most terrible threat of a nuclear holocaust since the end of World War II.
We were irate.
How did we learn about this? Through the radio, on the morning of the 28th.
They broadcast that an agreement had been reached between the Soviet Union and the United States, that Kennedy was offering Khruschev a guarantee.
It really was a disgraceful agreement.
It never crossed my mind they would do anything like this.
The whole world was under the impression that Khrushchev had lost because he'd given in to the pressure of a strong president.
That he'd taken everything out of Cuba, but got nothing in return.
No one knew about the agreement regarding the missiles in Turkey.
If you ask who won or who lost, I'd say neither Kennedy nor Khrushchev.
Under close American surveillance, Soviet ships took the missiles back home.
There is no question that if it hadn't been solved, and we had invaded Cuba, we would have been in a nuclear war and the number of people who would have been killed around the world in that nuclear war would have been absolutely disastrous.
That was the biggest crisis of the 20th century, and the fact that Kennedy solved it with Khrushchev is absolutely important, because then we were moving into a totally different world.
Juan Claudio Epsteyn E- mail:
I said to myself: if Cuba is in such an unfortunate war we will disappear from the map.
Robert Kennedy came to me and said, 'Mr.
Ambassador, the situation is very tense.
Your missiles have just shot down our plane.
Our generals demand that we retaliate.
I If we start bombing, you will fight back.
What can we do?' It was a perfectly beautiful night, as fall nights are in Washington.
I walked out of the president's Oval Office, and as I walked out, I thought I might never live to see another Saturday night.
Throughout the 1940s and '50s, the Caribbean island of Cuba had been America's playground; beaches, booze and casinos.
Havana had it all.
Cuba's land and industry were owned almost entirely by American corporations.
We considered it part of the United States practically, just a wonderful little country over there that was of no danger to anybody, as a matter of fact was a rather important economic asset to the United States.
Cuba's leader, Fulgencio Batista, was a brutal dictator.
His people were turning against him.
After years of guerrilla fighting in the mountains, a charismatic 33-year-old lawyer, Fidel Castro, entered Havana on the 8th of January, 1959.
The triumph of the revolution was an example of order.
There was no looting, no one was dragged along the streets, there were no murders, no crimes.
There was perfect order.
In this perfect order, over 500 members of the former regime were accused of crimes against the people, tried and executed.
Fearing the rise of a new dictator, thousands fled to exile in the United States.
But to most people Castro was a hero.
The revolution promised to provide jobs for the people.
It promised honesty in the administration which had never existed in Cuba.
There were health programs which had never existed before, education programs which had never existed before.
Most important of all, Castro nationalized millions of acres of land held by American companies gave it to the people.
Eager to tell the world of his revolution, Castro flew to New York to speak at the United Nations.
President Eisenhower was too busy to see him.
But Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, was delighted to embrace a new revolutionary and offered him economic assistance.
Cuba decided to buy oil from the Soviet Union, which would be cheaper.
The country could get also credit from the Soviet Union, who were willing to help us.
But the American companies refused to refine the oil.
With nowhere to refine the Soviet oil, Castro was faced with economic disaster.
He sent in his militia and took over the foreign refineries in Cuba.
America's retaliation was swift.
"At his White House press conference, President Eisenhower announces that Cuba's assigned share of the United States sugar market has been cut by 95 percent in reply to what Ike called Fidel Castro's deliberate policy of hostility.
" As tension mounted, Castro nationalized a further billion dollars worth of American investments.
An irate President Eisenhower declared a complete trade embargo and ordered the CIA to recruit Cuban exiles.
They would be trained to destroy Castro's regime.
Government agencies of the United States began training people to bomb Cuba and to burn the sugar cane fields.
They used small planes with incendiary devices to set fire to the fields.
It was very serious, this was the only wealth we had.
They carried out a dirty war against our country.
Guerrilla units were active in every province, even in Havana.
Over a hundred people died when "La Coubre," a freighter unloading arms and ammunition from Belgium, exploded in Havana harbor.
CIA sabotage was suspected, but never proved.
Castro turned to the Soviet Union for help.
Perhaps he might have taken a different line had the Americans been more mild towards him than they actually were.
The Cold War was in its full bloom.
So whatever was unpleasant to the Americans was welcomed in this country, and vice versa I would say.
At a secret base in the Guatemalan jungle, American CIA agents had been training Cuban exiles to invade Cuba.
This, they thought, would be the impetus for the Cuban people to rise up and overthrow Castro.
The plan was presented to the new president, John F.
Kennedy.
Kennedy felt that a plan that he had inherited, in which a band of Cuban exiles were to liberate their own country, was one he could hardly turn his back on.
Surely the United States should help get rid of a communist dictatorship in our hemisphere.
The CIA badly misled the new president, promising him an easy victory and an end to the Cuban problem.
Kennedy agreed to the invasion, but demanded crucial changes to hide America's involvement.
Just three days before the planned invasion, Kennedy denied any possibility of American intervention.
"There will not be, under any conditions, an intervention in Cuba by the United States armed forces, and this government will do everything it possibly can, and I think it can meet its responsibilities, to make sure that there are no Americans involved in any actions inside Cuba.
" As Kennedy spoke, the invasion force was gathering.
An advance wave of American bombers planned to destroy Castro's air force on the ground.
The president, worried that this might reveal Washington's role, ordered the operation scaled down.
On April the 15th, 1961, just six American bombers, disguised in the colors of the Cuban air force, took off from Nicaragua for a crucial attack on Cuban airfields.
But with so few bombers, only three Cuban planes were destroyed.
Seven civilians were killed.
As they buried those who had died, Castro, seeking Soviet support, finally declared that the revolution was socialist.
We prepared ourselves to resist an invasion against all the forces we knew the Americans had at their disposal.
" The following day, just 1,500 exiles, equipped with American arms and ammunition, arrived at the Bay of Pigs, 125 miles to the south of Havana.
"We were the happiest men in the world, because we had the opportunity to return to Cuba, our homeland, to fight to rescue freedom and democracy so that our country could be for all Cubans.
" American planes were to protect the invasion force as they hit the beach.
But Kennedy, now faced with international condemnation for the initial bombing, canceled the air support.
Castro's remaining air force quickly destroyed the ships carrying vital ammunition supplies.
Mistakenly believing that this was a full-scale American invasion, Cuba mobilized all its forces.
The worst moments were at the beginning.
We didn't have much information about the enemy; we didn't know if they were 1,000, 3,000 or 10,000; we didn't know what types of weapons they might have; we didn't know if this was a total invasion.
" Without American air support or resupply, the invasion force was outnumbered and outgunned.
Within 72 hours, the invaders were either captured or dead.
"I did not realize that the mission was impossible until the last day, almost at the end: We trusted in our allies; we never thought they would forsake us or abandon us.
We didn't think that they could betray the commitment they had with us.
" Jack Kennedy was devastated by the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs, and he said it was a fiasco.
He was not accustomed to failure in politics or in life.
He was more distraught than I'd ever seen him.
'How could I have been so stupid?' he said.
Castro had survived and humiliated Kennedy.
The CIA was told to think again.
Our job was to start to come up with new plans, not a Bay of Pigs type plan, but new plans to quote, get rid of Castro and the Castro regime, unquote.
Everything was suggested; from assassination, to spraying LSD into a television studio to make it seem as if Fidel had gone mad.
Whatever they tried Castro took in his stride.
More secure within his own country, he sought to export revolution to the rest of Latin America.
Alarmed by this prospect, America kept up the pressure on Castro.
In the spring of 1962, a "practice invasion" of a Caribbean island was mounted by 40,000 American marines.
We did that purposely to make Castro pay more attention to that than causing trouble in Latin and Central America.
But the Cubans and the Russians, they told us later, believed that the United States really did intend to attack Cuba and therefore Castro kept saying, 'I need some help.
' Castro's pleas inspired the Soviet leader Khrushchev to make a daring offer.
He had boasted to the world of Russia's nuclear strength, but in reality he knew just how limited his long-range missile force really was.
But he did have medium-range nuclear missiles.
From the territory of the Soviet Union, they couldn't possibly reach the territory of the U.
S.
A.
, but deployed on Cuba they would become strategic nuclear weapons.
That meant in practical terms we had a chance to narrow the differences between our forces.
I immediately appreciated the strategic importance the presence of those missiles in Cuba.
By that time, the Americans had already transported similar missiles to Turkey.
I thought: if we expected the Soviets to fight on our behalf, to run risks for us, and even involve themselves in a war for our sake, it would be immoral and cowardly on our part to refuse to accept the presence of those missiles here.
In July 1962, under the nose of the Americans, the first of 150 Soviet ships, loaded with heavily disguised nuclear missiles and over 40,000 troops, sailed for Cuba.
The Americans just didn't notice that we managed to deliver not one but 43,000 people there, plus the equipment, weapons, and everything necessary for the installation work.
We put all the cars, trucks and tractors on the top, all the military equipment was hidden under the decks.
CIA agents in Cuba reported that Russian troops and missile trailers had been seen in the streets of Havana.
Washington dismissed the reports as rumor.
I saw those weird weapons, and then I said to my friend Pablo 'Pablo, how powerful are these weird weapons?' and he answered, 'These are nuclear missiles.
' So I thought, oh, really powerful.
They just put them here, out in the open.
But the CIA had noticed the increase in Soviet ships heading for Cuba.
On October 14th, a U-2 spy plane was ordered to fly across the island to try to discover what was going on.
The next morning, the Photographic Interpretation Center in Washington started analyzing the pictures that the U-2 had taken.
We're looking at the photography and we spot objects that are foreign to the environment.
And we kept looking, and we said, oh-oh, this is an SS-4 ballistic missile site.
So working with the photo interpreters we became convinced that this was it.
The Soviets had never put any nuclear weapons outside the Soviet borders, and we didn't think they'd do it, you know.
The truth of the matter is that it never dawned on us that they would take that kind of risk.
At 8:45 a.
m.
on October the 16th, the CIA informed Kennedy that without any doubt there were Soviet missiles in Cuba.
The president called his advisers to the White House.
We didn't spend a great deal of time wondering why the Soviets were doing this, because why they had done it, for whatever reason they had done it, they had done it in a surreptitious way, lying to the United States through a variety of messages and messengers, that they were only putting defensive weapons into Cuba, and those weapons constituted a clear and present danger to our security.
The missiles in Cuba made the Americans more vulnerable than ever before.
The Russians were so close they could strike without warning.
A first strike would have knocked out all the American air bases, bomber bases, all the American missile bases and all American cities except Seattle, which was out of their range.
But Washington, D.
C.
, New York City, Dallas, would all have gone under the hammer.
We talked about the possibility of an air strike, which was at one time or another almost everybody's first choice, upon first thought, to knock out the missiles.
We talked about an invasion of Cuba, which was always the preferred choice of the right wing, go in and take Cuba away from Castro and rid the island of communism, while at the same time getting rid of these missiles; a diplomatic approach, either bilaterally or through the United Nations.
A blockade, or a quarantine, as it later came to be called.
No decision was made at that first meeting.
But if a vote had been taken there air strike was probably number one on everybody's list.
Robert Kennedy, the president's brother and closest adviser, became concerned that if America's might was used without warning against a small island, world opinion would turn against them.
Robert Kennedy - rightfully, in my opinion - drew the analogy that it would be regarded by the world as a bombing of Cuba, of bases in Cuba, comparable to the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in 1941.
And he said, 'I don't think I want my brother to become another Tojo.
' As the arguments continued, the Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, and the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, kept a long-standing engagement at the White House.
The president raised the question of the increasing tension between our two countries in connection with the Soviet deliveries of weapons.
The president said, 'We are worried about it because it's connected with our own safety and security.
' Gromyko told him - just as I was told to say - That all our deliveries, Mr.
President, are of a defensive nature.
If you don't intend to invade Cuba, you shouldn't worry, because all the weapons are defensive.
' It was a clear intent to deceive.
If the U.
S.
were not to respond to Soviet deception, how would this influence the attitude of our NATO allies, how would they view the U.
S.
guarantee of their security, and how would it influence the future behavior of the Soviet Union? If they got by with deception once, couldn't they do it again? For the next two days, Kennedy stayed away, keeping up with a congressional election campaign.
In Washington, his advisers tried to come up with a solution.
There were no good solutions every solution was full of holes and risks.
It was the only time during my three years in the White House that I would wake up in the middle of the night agonizing over what was the right approach, what would work, what would not blow up the world.
A conclusion was reached.
Not to bomb, but to blockade.
The Navy would stop and search all ships heading for Cuba.
They called it "a quarantine.
" It was believed that the quarantine would convey to Khrushchev the determination of the president to see that those missiles were removed, without stimulating a military response.
But in case the quarantine didn't work, preparations were made for air strikes, and a massive American invasion force was made ready.
President Kennedy was in Chicago.
Now he was needed in Washington.
The press were growing suspicious.
I was called by President Kennedy at 8 o'clock in the morning and he said, come to my room, and he still had his bathrobe on and and he said, here's something I'm writing for you, you're going to hold a press conference to announce it.
The assistant White House physician, Dr.
George Berkeley, noticed that the president's voice was very husky.
This morning when he examined the president, he found that the president had developed a slight temperature, and he was suffering from a minor upper respiratory ailment.
The president will therefore cancel his schedule for the rest of today and tomorrow and return to Washington and the White House.
About halfway to Washington, I suddenly found myself alone with Kennedy in the front part of the airplane.
I said, Mr.
President, you're not sick, what the hell's going on?' He said to me, 'You're going to find out as soon as you land in Washington and then grab your balls.
' "Good morning everyone.
An unusual flurry of top secret military and diplomatic activity over the weekend has Washington guessing today that a major move in American foreign policy may be imminent.
The speculation centers on the Caribbean and possible action against Cuba.
" That afternoon, the Soviet ambassador was called to an urgent meeting with Secretary of State Dean Rusk.
Rusk said, 'You are delivering missiles to Cuba.
We have aerial reconnaissance photographs.
This is a threat to our security, and we cannot possibly allow it.
In one hour's time, at 7 p.
m.
, the president will make a radio and television appeal to the American people, where he will describe the situation.
At the same time he wants you to pass the message on to Khrushchev.
' At 7 o'clock, Kennedy announced to the world for the first time the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba, and that a blockade was now in force.
"The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.
To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated.
All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back.
I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace, and to stable relations between our two nations.
He has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction.
" The first response from Moscow came the next morning: Khrushchev was not going to back down.
Kennedy spoke about quarantine, that sounded as something not very precise, perhaps not a blockade, as it actually was.
So the first reactions were pretty tough from the Soviet side.
"Denouncing the United States arms quarantine against Cuba as a step towards world thermonuclear war, the Soviet Union today ordered its armed forces into a state of combat readiness, and forces of the Warsaw Pact, the communist counterpart of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, immediately followed suit.
" As the superpowers prepared for conflict, Cuba announced a 'combat alarm'.
Over a quarter of a million people stood by to repel an American invasion.
We felt the danger.
This was a war; the country could be invaded at any time by the Americans.
If they invaded our country, I was convinced it would create the grave risk of the U.
S.
taking the second step of carrying out a nuclear air strike against the Soviet Union.
The American fleet now encircled Cuba.
The Soviet ships stayed on course.
With confrontation imminent, Kennedy wanted direct contact with Moscow.
He sent his brother Robert to meet in secret with the Soviet ambassador.
He said, 'Did your government instruct the captains to turn the ships back home because Kennedy introduced the quarantine?' I said, 'No, our captains had no such orders, as far as I am aware they are instructed to go on to Cuba.
According to international law you have no right to stop our ships in the open sea.
You cannot draw an imaginary line which cannot be crossed, it is against the law.
' He replied, 'Well, then I don't know where we are heading.
' "The Pentagon says the United States is ready to sink every communist bloc ship headed for Cuba which refuses to stop and be searched under the blockade.
Further, force will be used if necessary to stop and search any ship, of any nation, bound for Cuba.
" I think that was the moment that really was the heart-stopper.
The I recall I recall being in the newsroom just waiting for that next bulletin, and almost literally trying to type with my fingers crossed.
"Let's check over at the Pentagon, with Charles Burne Friend on that.
Chuck, is there any late information about the position of those Soviet ships, or what might be happening to them?" "Walter, we haven't heard a word for several hours now, as to when the confrontation between U.
S.
vessels and the Soviet ships will come about.
" Nerves were being stretched to breaking point.
People tried to prepare for a possible nuclear holocaust.
A wave of panic buying swept across America.
We have a utility room where the furnaces are, and we wondered whether we could make that into a bomb shelter of some form.
We were learning for the first time the time that we would have after the explosion, before the the the fumes, the killing fumes, killing heat and so forth, would reach us.
The Soviet leaders had tried to keep the crisis from their people, but the news was getting out.
The people felt the breath of war and were tense.
I remember my parents felt doomed.
They understood that war would not be like it was before, that it would be a war with atomic bombs.
"This is a special report from CBS News.
" "Well, at its beginning, this day looked as if it might be one of armed conflict between Soviet vessels and American warships on the sea lanes leading to Cuba.
But there has been no confrontation as far as we know, and some hope has been generated by suggestions of negotiation.
" Almost at the last moment, the missile ships appeared to have slowed down, or altered course.
That evening, as Kennedy dined with friends at the White House, a toast was proposed to celebrate.
Kennedy declined.
"The game," he said, "was hardly over.
" At 9:24 p.
m.
the State Department received a letter from Khrushchev for the president.
Khrushchev rejected all of Kennedy's demands.
The missiles already in Cuba were being prepared for action.
For the first time in its history, America's Strategic Air Command moved to Defense Condition 2.
The next step - DEFCON 1- would be war.
Just after dawn on the morning of the 25th, Kennedy ordered the interception of the Bucharest, a ship carrying Soviet oil.
He knew there was no possibility of an oil tanker carrying missiles, but it was a signal to Khrushchev that he was deadly serious.
That afternoon, at the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson confronted his Soviet counterpart, Ambassador Zorin.
"All right sir, let me ask you one simple question: Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the U.
S.
S.
R.
has placed and is placing medium and intermediate-range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no? Don't wait for the translation: Yes or no?" "I´m not I am not in an American courtroom, sir, and therefore I do not wish to answer a question that is put to me in the fashion in which a prosecutor does.
In due course, sir, you will have your reply.
" "of world opinion right now and you can answer yes or no.
You have denied that they exist and I want to know if I have understood you correctly.
" As the Soviet ambassador prevaricated, the U-2 photographs were brought into the meeting for the world to see.
With work continuing on the missile sites in Cuba, the buildup of U.
S.
invasion forces in Florida increased.
The Americans prepared for conventional combat.
They were unaware that the Soviet forces were equipped with short-range tactical missiles, tipped with atomic warheads, ready to annihilate any invader.
If they had started an invasion using the Marines or the Airborne forces, the losses would have been enormous: We would have fought to the last soldier, to the last bullet.
There was nowhere to retreat to.
On the 26th of October at a meeting with the Soviet military commander, I was informed about the state of the missiles.
He told me, 'The air regiment is ready, the surface-to-air missiles are ready, the tactical nuclear missile unit is ready, missiles ready.
' On October the 26th, with tension increasing, Kennedy received a telegram from Khrushchev.
The most important paragraph in it is, Mr.
President, Mr.
Kennedy, you and I are like two men pulling on a rope with a knot in the middle, the harder we pull, the tighter the knot until it will have to be cut with a sword.
why we don't both let up the pressure and maybe we can untie the knot?' Khrushchev went on to offer that if the United States declared that they wouldn't invade Cuba: "The necessity of the presence of our military specialists in Cuba will disappear".
At last, it looked as if cooler heads were prevailing.
The next morning, everything changed.
Khrushchev tried to push for a better deal.
He demanded a trade.
His missiles in Cuba for U.
S.
missiles in Turkey.
Khrushchev thought that if he if the withdrawal from Turkey could be incorporated in a general agreement between the two sides, that would look very good for the Soviet Union.
Much even better than a simple decision by the United States not to attack Cuba.
President Kennedy was prepared to take the American missiles out of Turkey.
But they were part of America's contribution to NATO and he could offer Khrushchev no promises.
As Kennedy considered the options, he received news that the crisis had escalated again.
In continued American reconnaissance, a U-2 spy plane overflew a Soviet anti-aircraft site in the east of Cuba.
This time, the Soviet commander gave the order to launch a surface-to-air missile against it.
The division commander Lt.
Colonel Grechkove was given the order to liquidate the target.
If we hadn't shot down a plane which had photographed all of our bases, it would have enabled the enemy to destroy us.
That would have meant we had not fulfilled our mission; we would have betrayed our Motherland.
The standby plan was that if a U-2 was shot down, we would immediately bomb that SAM site out of existence.
President Kennedy canceled that order, he said don't bomb that anti-aircraft site, I want time to exchange with Khrushchev.
A war appeared imminent, a first strike might take place at any time.
I said to myself: If Cuba is in such an unfortunate war, we will disappear from the map.
Castro sent a message to Khrushchev He said a U.
S.
attack was just hours away, and once launched, the Soviet Union should retaliate immediately with "an annihilating strike.
" In Washington, Kennedy was still trying to avoid a world war.
Bobby Kennedy had this brilliant idea.
He said: Let's pick out of the Khrushchev cable the things we like and pretend that the rest isn't there.
Jack Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy, they crafted this answer to Khrushchev that did just that.
It ignored the shoot-down of the U-2, it ignored the broadcast from Moscow that was very hawkish, you know, etc.
, etc.
, etc.
, and just we said, 'We understand what you're proposing and we listen to things we like.
' There was little confidence that this ploy would work.
Plans for the invasion continued.
The tension on Saturday night was extraordinary, because there was going to be the meeting where we were going to decide what time the next day we were going to invade Cuba or was it going to be later, were we going to be bombing those areas, and Kennedy started the meeting by saying, 'Listen, all of you have not been home for at least six, seven days I want all of you to go home tonight, come back tomorrow morning, Sunday morning and we'll make the decision Sunday morning.
' They left the White House fearful that America could soon be engulfed in nuclear war a war that once started, might be impossible to stop.
It was a perfectly beautiful night, as fall nights are in Washington.
I walked out of the president's Oval Office, and as I walked out, I thought I might never live to see another Saturday night.
Kennedy sent his brother to another meeting with the Soviet ambassador.
He came to me and said: 'The situation is very tense.
Your missiles have just shot down our plane.
Our generals demand that we fight back.
If we start bombing, you will start to fight back.
What can we do?' I said: 'What about Turkey? He thought for a while and said, 'You know, if that's the only condition which prevents us from striking a deal, then I'm authorized by the president to say that we agree to it.
' We could not take them out under threat, we could not take them out unilaterally, because they were NATO bases, but he had our assurance that they would be gone provided it was not done on a quid pro quo basis.
Therefore the Russians could not talk about it.
And that was, I would say, the last the last thing that led to the decision to accept Kennedy's terms that he would be willing to guarantee that there would be no attack on Cuba, but that the Soviet Union should withdraw all offensive weapons from Cuba.
Khrushchev, fearing that this might be the last chance to escape war, rushed a message, accepting Kennedy's terms, to Radio Moscow.
It was broadcast to the world.
"The Soviet government has ordered the dismantling of weapons in Cuba, as well as their crating and return to the Soviet Union.
" "Radio Moscow at 9 o'clock this morning.
Mr.
Khrushchev crating up his missiles and sending them home.
" The first news I heard on Sunday morning when I woke up was this broadcast from Khrushchev over the open air, that Soviet missiles were to be withdrawn under inspection, and the crisis was over.
I could hardly believe my ears.
"This is the day, we have every reason to believe, when the world came out from under the most terrible threat of a nuclear holocaust since the end of World War II.
We were irate.
How did we learn about this? Through the radio, on the morning of the 28th.
They broadcast that an agreement had been reached between the Soviet Union and the United States, that Kennedy was offering Khruschev a guarantee.
It really was a disgraceful agreement.
It never crossed my mind they would do anything like this.
The whole world was under the impression that Khrushchev had lost because he'd given in to the pressure of a strong president.
That he'd taken everything out of Cuba, but got nothing in return.
No one knew about the agreement regarding the missiles in Turkey.
If you ask who won or who lost, I'd say neither Kennedy nor Khrushchev.
Under close American surveillance, Soviet ships took the missiles back home.
There is no question that if it hadn't been solved, and we had invaded Cuba, we would have been in a nuclear war and the number of people who would have been killed around the world in that nuclear war would have been absolutely disastrous.
That was the biggest crisis of the 20th century, and the fact that Kennedy solved it with Khrushchev is absolutely important, because then we were moving into a totally different world.
Juan Claudio Epsteyn E- mail: