WE continue our look back at how The Glasgow Herald covered the Cuban Missile Crisis, which took place 55 years ago this month.
IN a move designed to show that he means business with the quarantine, President John F Kennedy approves the boarding of the Marucla, a Soviet-chartered Lebanese freighter. It is searched for contraband military supplies but none are found and it is allowed to sail on.
Photographic evidence disclosed to Kennedy shows accelerated construction of the missile sites and the uncrating of Soviet IL-28 bombers at Cuban airfields.
In a telephone call with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, Kennedy said: “We’re not going to have any problem at sea because [Khrushchev] is keeping his ships out of there, and as I say we let one ship pass today... On the other hand, if in the end of 48 hours we are getting no place and the missile sites continue to be constructed, then we are going to be faced with some hard decisions.”
At the ExComm meeting Kennedy acknowledged the success of the quarantine but said there were only two ways to get rid of the missile bases – negotiation, or physically going in and taking them out.
He anticipated an air strike followed by an invasion.
Fidel Castro writes to Khrushchev: If the US invaded Cuba, “that would be the moment to eliminate this danger forever, in an act of the most legitimate self-defence.”
Khrushchev himself writes to Kennedy, offering to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for an end to the quarantine and a pledge that the US will not invade Cuba.
The day’s events were summarised by the Glasgow Herald: Khrushchev told U Thant, the UN’s acting Secretary-General, that he had ordered Soviet ships to temporarily stay away from the U.S. Navy’s quarantine zone.
In Bonn, the Chancellor, Dr Konrad Adenauer, said the crisis was the worst threat to world peace since 1945 and said no easing of tensions was visible.
Hugh Gaitskell, the British Labour Party leader, said the Cuban crisis had to be settled by negotiation, not force.
If the US tried to settle the issue by attacking Cuba this would give the Russians a complete justification for their making a similar attack on US missiles in Turkey, which would, he said, be disastrous.
Sources: JFK Presidential Library; John F Kennedy, by Robert Dallek.
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