The Missiles of October

Fifty nine years ago today President of the United States John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev

Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev bullfax.com

were “eyeball to eyeball” over the missiles earlier placed in Cuba by the Soviet leader. “This was the day recalled by almost everyone in ExComm as “doomsday Saturday,” and seemed to all involved to be the immediate prelude to a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.” That, and much of what follows was taken from the magnificent book:

It begins: October 14th, 1962: A U-2 flight over Cuba photographs many of the 36 MRBMs and their mobile launchers at multiple sites.

October 15th: The CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in Washington, D.C. develops the film and interprets the images; this is the day that the missiles were discovered.

October 16th: President Kennedy is informed, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, as it is defined by historians, begins; this is the first day of thee harrowing “thirteen days,” to use Robert F. Kennedy’s terminology from his book about the event.

October 18th: President Kennedy kept a long-standing date with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Soviet Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin in the White House. At that meeting, Gromyko lied to JFK and denied that any offensive weapons wee being placed in Cuba. The public still did not know about the missiles, and the Soviets still did not know that we knew.

October 19th: President Kennedy met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a body to receive their advice, and was severely pressured to adopt massive air strikes and a full invasion as his response the the Missile Crisis. The Chiefs unanimously pressured JFK to bomb and then invade Cuba, and Air Force Chief of Staff LeMay’s exchange with JFK was unusually blunt, rude, and provocative. [Specifics to come later in this essay.]

October 20th-22nd: It had proven difficult, but by Saturday, October 20th, after four days of back and forth in multiple meetings every day, Bobby Kennedy had built a narrow consensus within ExComm for a blockade as an initial response to the crisis, with an air strike and invasion a future options, or course, if a blockade did not work.

JFK met with the hastily recalled Congressional leadership early on the evening of Monday, October 22nd. It was a stormy session, with most of the leadership declaring they were against the blockade option and in favor of military action. President Kennedy then gave his nationally televised address that evening,

and the Cuban Missile Crisis then moved into its public phase, (lasting from October 23 through 28th). In his speech, JFK announced the blockade option (a “quarantine” of any offensive weapons headed to Cuba, since a blockade was technically an act of war), and threatened that the launch of any nuclear missile from Cuba against any nation in the western Hemisphere would result in a full-scale nuclear attack upon the Soviet Union by the United States. President Kennedy also moved the American armed forces from DEFCON-5 to DEFCON-3 just prior to the speech. (Defense condition 5 was peacetime deployment, and at the other extreme on that scales of readiness, defense condition 1 was “nuclear war.”)

October 23rd: The United States successfully engineered a 19-0 vote in favor of the Cuban blockade option by the Organization of American States (with Cuba abstaining).

October 24th: On this day the naval “quarantine” of Cuba was initiated.

Let us pause for a brief break in the action for personal recollections. This writer was in the seventh grade having turned twelve at the end of August, just before school began after Labor Day.

The earliest memory I have of my father, a deeply religious man, is of being in church and looking up at him holding a Bible in his hand while singing this song:

There was a gentleman in the neighborhood who had a small barber shop located in his back yard, which is where my hair was cut for many years. Like most of the men in the neighborhood he had served in the military during World War II. Some of the men would come there to talk and smoke cigarettes, and to get away from the wife for a time. I recall being there with my father during the Cuban Missile Crisis when he was asked if he thought it a good idea for me to be listening to their conversation. “The boy has got to grow up some day. Might as well be now,” replied my father. All the men were Republicans and Baptists and loathed and detested JFK. Those men were what became known as “Goldwater Republicans.” They did not care for change and especially when it came from a Yankee, Catholic, POTUS. They hated Communists and were ready for war at any cost. My father was a radioman with the Navy during “The Big One” and must have been very good at what he did because he was assigned to the Pacific Task Force and was in many, if not all of the major battles about which movies have been made. After the war he had what has come to be known as PTSD. Sloppy Floyd Bailey, who proudly called himself an old “Jarhead,” made fun of my father, saying he had “spastic colon disease.” My father never talked about the war until we were watching the Braves play in the World Series and the flood gates opened wide; did they ever…My father was opposed to war, especially nuclear war, because he had experienced enough of it to last a lifetime. The men at the Barber Shop were full of bluster, but I could sense they were scared and afraid of what the future might bring. They attempted to act like macho men around the other men but when I overheard some of them at the Boys Club they were filled with a palpable fear of the future. My father told me to say nothing about what I had heard to the other members of our family. Other members of the family, aunts,uncles and cousins, would come over and sit around the kitchen table drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes while talking in hushed tones so my sisters and I could not hear them. It did not work. Everyone was on edge; you could feel the vibes. At school we were told to not discuss anything about what we had seen and heard about the “Crisis.” This was while being made to prepare for War by learning how to “Duck and Cover.”

Everyone old enough to be aware was on edge, and even those too young to understand knew something was happening even if they did not know what it was, Mr. Jones.

It was around this time that something major happened that altered the course of my life, and I have always wondered what, if any, part the Cuban Missile Crisis played in how my life developed…

October 25th: On Thursday, U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson debated the ill-informed and hung-out-to-dry Soviet Ambassador Zorin on television at the televised U.N. Security Council meeting over the missiles in Cuba. Confronted with Soviet denials and stonewalling, Stevenson and his team produced for public consumption undeniable evidence of the Soviet missiles in Cuba on several large photographic briefing boards prepared for this purpose by the CIA’s NPIC in Washington, D.C.

October 26th: As a symbolic act meant purely to demonstrate that the U.S. blockade had teeth, on Friday, October 26th the U.S. Navy stopped and boarded a harmless Soviet-chartered Lebanese freighter manned by a Greek crew, which was known to be carrying innocuous cargo. The blockade had accomplished its goal of preventing the introduction of any more offensive weapons into Cuba, and stopping this ship was intended as proof that America was not afraid to stop ships n the high seas.

Unfortunately, this was also the date that ExComm informed JFK that the MRBMs in Cuba were probably now operational. (This was a remarkably accurate estimate; the Soviet Commander in Cuba confirmed readiness to fire the 36 MRBMs the next day, on October 27th, by cable.)

Low-level reconnaissance flights, which had been taking place twice per day since Tuesday, were accelerated to once every two hours on Friday to increase the psychological pressure on the Soviet Union, and to provide as much up-to-date information as possible to Ex Comm and the U.S. military. On this date Castro ordered his anti-aircraft gunners to begin firing on all low-flying U.S. aircraft.

On this date, we now know, the Soviet missile commander, General Prilyev, moved the nuclear warheads for his 35 MRBMs (in their mobile vans) from the nuclear bunker sites (under construction), to the field sites where the mobile launchers and the missiles were located.

October 27th: This was the day recalled by almost everyone in ExComm as “doomsday Saturday,” and seemed to all involved to be the immediate prelude to a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

End Part One

The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy

“I never let schooling interfere with my education.” – Mark Twain

Today is the anniversary of the brutal murder of POTUS John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The event which transpired in New York city on September 11, 2001 has been equated with what happened in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, which to anyone my age is laughable. The enormousness of the killing of a POTUS dwarfs any other day of infamy.

The death of President Kennedy was announced at a pep rally at my high school on a Friday afternoon. Half of those in attendance cheered. JFK was reviled in the South, not only because he was a yankee, but also a Catholic. Southern Baptists did not like Catholics. Actually, most of them did not like anyone other than those who were like minded.

I had turned thirteen a few months earlier and was in the eight grade at a new high school where I knew only two other students, both from my grammar school. Fights broke out after the announcement. Fortunately I was not involved.

Like most other Americans my family gathered around the television to watch the continuous coverage. One could tell how important an event was this because there were no commercials broadcast for days. I saw Jack Ruby allegedly shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, if it was really Lee Harvey Oswald, in the basement of the Dallas police department. Oswald said he was a patsy. Some do not believe Ruby, an FBI informant, actually shot Oswald. Only a few people know the truth, and they are not telling. One reason may be what has been written about something in the office of organized crime figure Carlos Marcello’s office: “Three can keep a secret if two are dead,” which is a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin.

I read Rush To Judgement, by Mark Lane, in the late 1960’s and was hooked. At one time I could count the number of books on the assassination, but that is no longer the case, and has not been for decades. Former Georgia Chess Champion Michael Decker once told someone that I “Had read EVERYTHING!” It may have been close to the truth then, but there have been so many books written now that it is virtually impossible for anyone to read all of them. Michael, like most other Americans, refused to believe anything other than what the government said had happened. On one of the many visits I made to visit him in Louisville I noticed a copy of Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, by David S. Lifton. When asked if he had read the book he looked like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He refused to discuss the matter, so I let it drop. I could discern his faith in our institutions had been shaken.

I even read discredited books concerning the assassination considered by knowledgeable people to be disinformation. When asked why I would reply, “In order to know what they leave out, or where they want you to go, so I can go the other way.” I drew the line, though, at the doorstop, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, by Vincent Bugliosi. After all, my time on this earth is limited and reading that piece of trash would be a complete waste of time. I will admit, though, that the reviews panning it were even better than the reviews of Gerald Posner’s terrible book, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK.

I went to the Atlanta Historical Society one evening to listen to a lecture by a man some call an “eminent historian,” Robert Dallek, who had written, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917 – 1963. I was in line to ask him a question when the first question to him was, “What books have you read on the assassination of JFK?” When he said, “Case Closed,” the questioner asked, “That’s all?” When Dallek said there was no need to read any other books after reading that one, the audience booed, and hissed, and booed some more. I turned and walked out. Need I tell you this is one of the highlights of my life?

Back in the 1980’s Michael “Mad Dog” Gordon, another Chess player, watched a two-hour program on the JFK assassination, which he thought made him an expert. The Legendary one, had told Mike that I had read many books on the subject, so Mad Dog began asking me questions one evening while taking a break from playing fifteen minute games. We did not play another game. Many hours later he offered his couch because of the late hour. I could not do that now because my memory is not what it used to be. I have forgotten names, dates, and details, unfortunately. The program Mad Dog had watched “proved” that LHO had shot JFK. As the man from the High Planes, Life Master David Vest, former Georgia Chess Champion and Georgia Senior Chess champion, would say, “I refuted the Mad Dog.”

Whatever one thinks of John Fitzgerald Kennedy the fact that you are here today and reading this is testament to the man because if he had not been POTUS during the Cuban Missile Crisis there would have been a nuclear war. There would have been an alternate timeline, one that possibly would not have included humans. You see, the hawks who wanted to bomb the hell out of Cuba did not know that nuclear weapons were positioned there, ready to strike the US, and that the Russian battlefield commanders had authority to fire them in case of an invasion. This was learned decades later at a conference in Cuba.

A few who have learned of my continuing interest in the sordid affair have asked me what book to read, as if there were one, and only one, book to read on the assassination of President Kennedy. My usual response has been to scoff at such a ridiculous question. Now I am old and today may be my tomorrow, so I have decided to share the titles of the books I would recommend one read, if interested in the subject.

When I began researching the subject I focused on not who had killed the POTUS, but why was he killed. This is the best book to answer that question:

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, by James W. Douglass.

Garrison Keillor puts out an edition of The Writer’s Almanac every day, which can be listened to on NPR and found here: https://writersalmanac.org/

Mr. Keillor writes in today’s edition, “As they drove through Dealey Plaza, Lee Harvey Oswald opened fire from a sixth-floor window in the Texas School Book Depository.” Lee Harvey Oswald was later that day tested for nitrates on his face, something he would have had if he had fired a rifle earlier in the day. He tested negative.

Because it is his birthday a piece on Charles de Gaulle, a former President of France, follows, which is ironic because when asked about the Kennedy assassination, de Gaulle, who had survived numerous assassination attempts, said, “His security was compromised.” This is the book to read in order to understand what happened that November day in 1963:

Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect President Kennedy, by Vincent Palamara.

Douglas Horne has written a five volumne set of books that is simply de rigueur if one wants to know what happened in Dallas that terrible day: Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK.

If one wants to know the empirical evidence he should read the masterful: A Deeper, Darker Truth, by Donald T Phillips.

That’s it, unless one is interested in speculation, when I would highly recommend: Target JFK: The Spy Who Killed Kennedy? by Robert K. Wilcox, the author of the highly acclaimed, Target Patton: The Plot to Assassinate General George S. Patton.

Then there is, THE MEN THAT DON’T FIT IN, by Rod MacKenzie. Can it really be true that these last two books are true? With the JFK assassination, anything is possible.

The Men That Don’t Fit In
By Robert W. Service
There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: “Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!”
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;
He’s a man who won’t fit in.