Unfinished Business: Kennedy and Cuba

Wednesday, October 24: The naval blockade took effect. Both Kennedy and Khrushchev acted cautiously to avoid a clash. Two Soviet ships reached the blockade line and halted their positions. Soon other Soviet ships stopped or turned back. Khrushchev had decided not to challenge—but he had not officially acknowledged the blockade.

Thursday, October 25: The president permitted a Soviet tanker, the Bucharest, to pass through after adequate identification. Back in New York, at the U.N. Security Council meeting, U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson confronted Valerian Zorin, Soviet ambassador to the U.N., with the photographs of the Cuban missiles.

Friday, October 26: The U.S. Navy boarded the Marcula, a Lebanese-registered freighter under Panamanian and Greek ownership and leased to the Soviet Union. Because the USSR did not own the vessel, the search symbolized a moderate stance. They found no weapons aboard.

That afternoon the White House received a 10-page letter from Khrushchev. It opened with an emotional description of the death, destruction and anarchy that would result from nuclear war. This, he wrote, must be avoided. The letter indicated that, if Kennedy would agree not to attack Cuba and would recall the fleet, then Khrushchev would remove the missiles.

Saturday, October 27: A second letter arrived from Khrushchev. In it he appeared to withdraw his concessions from the previous day—perhaps under pressure from other forces in the Soviet leadership. It stated that the U.S. must remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey and pledge not to invade Cuba. At about the same time the second letter arrived, the White House learned that a Soviet surface-to-air missile had shot down a U-2 over Cuba, killing the pilot—the same Major Anderson who had taken the initial photographs.

Suddenly, the crisis teetered on the brink of nuclear war. The ExComm "hawks" wanted to unleash an attack. Yet the president held them back and decided to contact Khrushchev again. Kennedy had received inside information via unconventional means. ABC News correspondent John Scali had met with Soviet official Aleksandr Fomin, who indicated that Khrushchev would withdraw if the U.S. pledged not to invade Cuba.

The president wrote to Khrushchev again, but responded as if to his first letter, ignoring the second. Kennedy would agree not to invade Cuba and promised to end the blockade when the Soviets removed their missiles. He did not mention the request to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.

Kennedy was willing to remove the U.S. missiles from the Turkish base, but neither publicly nor under duress. He sent RFK to meet with Dobrynin to relay the message verbally.

Sunday, October 28: News broke that Khrushchev had accepted Kennedy's deal. Khrushchev's statement implied that the missiles in Cuba had been defensive, and since the U.S. had promised not to invade Cuba, the missiles were no longer necessary and would be removed. Kennedy responded with comments that welcomed Khrushchev's statesmanlike decision. He added that the negotiated solution to the crisis allowed the two superpowers to consider ending the arms race.

The one person disappointed about peaceful settlement was Castro. He had wanted a clear-cut victory over the U.S., but had been left out of negotiations. Castro refused to cooperate with the U.N., so the U.S. verified the removal of the missile sites in the same way it discovered them—using aerial photographs.

On November 20, the U.S. ended its naval blockade. The USSR removed the last of its weapons in early December. The Cuban missile crisis ended with both sides claiming victory.