THE Herald continues its look back at how the newspaper chronicled the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
AT 10am on October 24, the executive committee of the National Security Council feared a confrontation with the Soviets was imminent. In the words of John F Kennedy biographer Robert Dallek: “The Soviets were making ‘rapid progress’ in the completion of the missile sites [on Cuba] and bringing their military forces ‘into a complete state of readiness’.” All of the Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles and their warheads were close to operational. Two Soviet ships, possibly carrying offensive weapons, were nearing the US quarantine line off Cuba. And US forces had moved up to Defcon 2, just one level below readiness for a general war.
Bobby Kennedy himself later wrote: “[The president’s] eyes were tense, almost grey, and we just stared at each other across the table. Was the world on the brink of a holocaust and had we done something wrong? I felt we were on the edge of a precipice and it was as if there was no way off.”
Word came through that six Soviet ships had either stopped or changed course. George Rusk, then secretary of state, said: “We’re eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked.” But Kennedy knew the crisis was not yet over. He feared that a US destroyer might sink a Soviet ship that had turned around.
“SOME RUSSIAN SHIPS CHANGE COURSE” ran the main headline in the Glasgow Herald. In 2008, however, author Michael Dobbs discovered that two Soviet ships, the Kimovsk and the Yuri Gagarin, were in fact hundreds of miles from the USS Essex, having been ordered to turn around the previous day. The real danger was the presence of four Soviet submarines still in the western Atlantic.
Nikita Khrushchev had telegrammed the philosopher Bertrand Russell to say a summit with the US would be useful. And the UN acting Secretary General, U Thant, had urged suspensions of the blockade and Soviet arms shipments to Cuba.
Sources: John F Kennedy (Dallek); One Minute to Midnight (Dobbs).
TOMORROW
The Soviets are challenged at the United Nations.
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