title: Kennedy and Khrushchev: 6. Kennedy’s move
author: The Bomb
contenttype: podcast
publication: The Bomb
published: 2026-01-05T01:30:00
sourceurl: http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/6/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download-rss/proto/http/vpid/p0mpbj5k.mp3
word_count: 5563
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. The best B2B marketing gets wasted on the wrong people, so when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over one billion professionals, including 130 million decision makers, and that's where it stands apart from other ad buys. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company, role, seniority, skills, company revenue, so you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. It's why LinkedIn ads generate the highest B2B return on ad spend of major ad networks. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash broadcast. That's LinkedIn.com slash broadcast. Terms and conditions apply. There I was scrolling my phone, and someone cracked open a Mountain Dew Baja Cowboy citrus. Next thing I know, I heard a rift. My friend tried the splits and jeans, but not a drop of spill. Have a blast with Mountain Dew Baja Cowboy citrus, a punch of tropical citrus flavor. Saguagrande, the north coast of Cuba. We will defend Cuba is our motherland, reads a banner, fixed her pole. Soldiers from the 79th Missile Regiment are celebrating. The regiment is the first in Cuba to be combat ready. Despite intense heat and humidity, they have built bridges, gravel roads, warehouses, and eight Missile launchers are in place next to concrete launching pads. The R12s or medium-range ballistic missiles are lying on trucks closed by, covered by canvas. It's Saturday, October 20th, 1962. 10 hours, that's the time it takes to deliver the nuclear warheads from a bunker in central Cuba to the launch site at Saguagrande. Then, armed with their warheads, the missiles can reach Washington DC within 20 minutes. From the BBC World Service, this is the bomb, Kennedy and Krushcheva, with me, Nina Krushcheva, and me, Max Kennedy. Episode six, Kennedy's move. Overlooking the waterfront in Boston in the United States, stands the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, built in his memory. It's an archive, research center, and museum, and there's a small exhibition of objects telling the story of the grueling days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. I'm standing in front of our little desk paper weight. It's about five inches by five inches square, piece of red mahogany, and there's a small silver calendar, an ordinary day calendar of October 1962 with 13 days that are in bold, and those are the days that the executive committee met and tried to prevent and thermonuclear war. President Kennedy had the American company Tiffany make these, especially, and he gave them to each member of the executive committee. I remember the one that my father had was in our house growing up, and I'm not sure what happened to it. Just before noon on the first of those 13 days, Tuesday the 16th, President Kennedy sits in the cabinet room of the White House. He's at the center of the long oval table with his back to the Rose Garden, waiting for his advisors. His three-year-old daughter, my cousin Caroline, keeps him company until they arrive. This is the first meeting of the group that will become known as X-Con. He has been briefed that morning on the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba. While the president is waiting, he flicks a secret switch under the table, turning on a taping system. Well, it's an incredibly arresting moment. It is captured on tape, and it begins with President Kennedy talking in the most innocent way with his young daughter, Caroline. This is Ted Widmer, the editor of Listening In, the secret White House recordings of John F. Kennedy. But then right away, you go into this briefing of the president that the CIA has discovered through its overhead aerial surveillance. Buildings are being built that look like they are going to house missiles that will be capable when launched of wiping out most of the cities of the eastern seaboard of the United States. Easels have been set up around the room to display the evidence captured by major Richard Heiser's U2 spy plane two days earlier. The blown-up photographs show a forest, country lanes. Something which President Kennedy says looks like a football field. The quality of the photographs is grainy. Arthur Lundahl, the CIA's chief photo interpreter, points to some tube-like objects and oval-shaped white dots lined up next to each other. To help the others understand the pictures, he's labeled them. A Rector Launcher Equipment. Missile trailers. Tent areas. This is a political and military catastrophe for a president who's only a couple weeks away from the midterm elections and has been promised by Nikita Khrushchev that Russia will not do anything to destabilize their relationship during a tense political season for President Kennedy. And here's the opposite. It's unexpected disaster. That will make President Kennedy look very weak but could also with two or three missteps lead to the end of humanity. All of these thoughts are racing through his head on the first day of the crisis October 16th. President Kennedy seems calm to the other men in the room but his voice betrays his anger. He asks them when will the missiles be ready to fire? The experts aren't sure. It all depends on where the nuclear warheads are. The group quickly comes to agreement that the missiles must be removed but the question is how to force Khrushchev. The military camp they're looking at is in Western Cuba. The people gathered in the room have no idea that at least eight other nuclear missile sites are nearly complete. The site at Sagwa Lagrande will be combat ready within just four days. The president wants more U2 flights to get a better picture of what's happening across the whole island. Cloud cover is still proving an issue. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara tells him that because there is no fencing around the missile sites protecting them he thinks the nuclear warheads are not yet in place but they're almost certainly on the island somewhere. The president is convinced that he wants military action an air strike that would wipe out all of the missile sites but Cuba is 850 miles long. They have no idea how many sites there are or where they're located. General Maxwell Taylor warns the president that they may have very little time. The missiles could be ready to fire any day. General Taylor wants an invasion. President Kennedy is determined to keep the discovery of the missile site secret as long as possible so he carries on with his schedule, business as usual, acting as if nothing is wrong. They'll reconvene in the evening. In Cuba, the missile launchers are being completed one by one. The Soviet troops are under the command of General Issa Plief. He's a hero of past wars, calm, experienced, diplomatic but Plief now is old and unwell and in the Cuban heat only becomes sicker. He needs frequent neps and he's surrounded by younger ambitious deputies who he will struggle to keep in line. Plief is a very interesting figure. He is a cavalryman. So in that sense it's a World War I guy who is there really on the verge of starting World War III. This is Sergei Plogi, author of Nuclear Folly in New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He ended up there because he was politically reliable. He oversaw the crashing by the military of the workers' revolt in the South Russian city of Novacarcusk. So he would follow the orders. The only thing that Plief lacks is health and energy to really supervise the mission that is very new for the Soviets. This is the first time they in Western Hemisphere they have to deal also with the climate, with the extreme heat by the Soviet standards and that means that Plief just can't go through all this stress that comes with the Cuban Missile Crisis. He can't go sleepless day in and day out and that means that Plief at the end of the day is a bad choice. President Kennedy's mind races over how to deal with the unfolding crisis. He's playing the gracious host at a formal lunch for the Crown Prince of Libya. I want your highness to know that in these very difficult days we are very appreciative to those who are our friends. The hospitality which you've shown now. The President has tried in the Vienna meeting the previous year in letters and through back channels to understand Khrushchev to coax and contend with him. He thought they had an understanding but with the discovery of the missile sites he knows Khrushchev has betrayed him. Over beef Wellington and on deep salad the President maintains his composure in front of his lunch and guests. These include Adley Stevenson, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. After the formalities are over the President invites Stevenson to the family quarters in the White House and he shows him the YouTube photographs. Kennedy tells Stevenson he thinks the alternatives are to go in by air and wipe them out or take other steps to disable the weapons but Stevenson warns against an air strike. He urges the President to explore a peaceful solution first. That evening President Kennedy and his advisors file back into the cabinet room. I'm heading on the additional films we have. Microphones are hidden in the wall behind the President's seat and carry the sound to a tape machine in the basement operated by the Secret Service. Only the President and his brother, my father Robert Kennedy, are aware they're being recorded. President Kennedy would tape the meetings he wanted to so we don't have every single meeting in a long day. We just have the ones he deemed important. But obviously during the Cuban Missile Crisis these were conversations of the highest importance to the fate of the world so he taped almost all of them. The ones in the cabinet room are sometimes hard to hear. There's a high ceiling and the meetings were often quite crowded so you have people interrupting each other but we can hear most of it. Around the table people disagree on whether Kushoff's weapons and Cuba make a difference strategically. As the President says geography doesn't mean that much. What's the difference if you get blown up by a missile flying from the Soviet Union or one from 90 miles away? So if they don't make a strategic difference the President asked why? Why is it? Can any Russian expert tell us why they? He trails off and says it's a goddamn mystery to him. It's just as if we began to put missiles in Turkey. At one point Kennedy says that's like us putting nuclear weapons in Turkey. Now that'd be goddamn dangerous and his national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy, has to say well we did, Mr. President. James Hirschberg is professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University. And it sort of is an acknowledgement that there is some parallel, some analogy between what the Soviets are doing and what the United States has done around the Soviet Union. Max, could you please follow up on this? For Khrushchev it is a matter of great urgency is not letting the Soviet Union become a punching bag. And so the Cuban missile project for him was to say we are as important as you are. Don't talk to us in a condescending way. Don't threaten us. Respect us. We can then have a conversation. And if you don't, we demand parity. And the parity is if you have missiles in Turkey, we are going to have missiles right next to you in Cuba. And the idea of being denied parity for him was was a very important issue. And he was ready to take a big gamble on that, which of course the Cuban missile project was. I think that putting the Jupiter missiles into Turkey was such a huge error. And it was kind of one of these calamitous small decisions that snowballed. They were completely useless missiles. And it took a long time to fuel them. When they didn't do us any good and harmed and offended the Russians and led Khrushchev for in some ways personal reasons feeling threatened and insulted by them, understandably so, to try to sneak some missiles into Cuba and let the United States know how it felt to be living under the shadow of nuclear weapons. But wouldn't it be amazing if that was the case to send a message to the Russians that Kennedy wanted to dismantle them? There is no threat. It's going to be gone. And there was no need for Khrushchev to do his own game. That would have been a great message to send for sure. That we missed an opportunity there for sure. But I wonder, I mean that seems like a such a simple solution. Yeah, it's such a misunderstanding between the two. Why are you doing what are you doing? We're already dismantling them so come down. We're not disrespecting you all good. President Kennedy knows he's going to have to do something in response to Khrushchev. But he starts to waver on the tough line he took in September. Last month he says, I should have said we don't care. Kennedy has drawn this red line. He's made it very clear publicly that he's not going to accept Soviet missiles in Cuba. But he's now beginning to have second thoughts and he's full of doubts. Michael Dobbs, author of One Minute to Midnight. It's not a military question. It's really a psychological question. Having drawn the red line, he cannot allow a Khrushchev to simply break through it because that will undermine US prestige all around the world. What John of Kennedy understood from early on was that in terms of the strategic balance, this was less important than it actually appeared. At Harvard University, I spoke to Professor Frederick Logoval. He's the biographer of President Kennedy. The strategic balance overwhelmingly favored the United States, even with this deployment. There's also a moment at the beginning where President Kennedy talks about his regret because he'd given a speech saying we can't allow Cuba to be a foothold for Russia. And he says, if I just hadn't said that, we wouldn't be in a crisis that threatens every life on the planet. Yeah, and I think that gives real insight into Kennedy's thinking about this. And his conviction that this cannot be allowed to lead to a nuclear conflagration. It could make both worlds wars seem like minor skirmishes in comparison. I think he felt that very strongly. Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, is urging everyone to slow down. He asks them to set down on paper alternative courses of action and to think clearly about their consequences. He proposes a blockade at sea to stop any more weapons entering Cuba on Soviet ships with open surveillance and no strike. McNamara says, I don't know quite what kind of a world we live in after we have struck Cuba. President Kennedy still favors a surprise surgical strike against the missiles. At the end of the meeting, the president's brother, my father, Robert Kennedy, lists 11 people in favor of a blockade and seven in favor of a strike. There is no decision. Northwest of the pretty town of Bihukau in the mountains of central Cuba, a surveillance flight has picked up something. A construction site is circular road. But what the Americans can see is the bunker that lies beneath. It's the central storage depot for the Soviet nuclear warheads. Attached to missiles, they can potentially destroy the cities of the eastern seaboard of the United States. The reinforced bunker in the mountains has only one security fence around it. So the Americans don't suspect the Soviets of storing any nuclear warheads there. Soviet officers who looked after the warheads complained of constant stress. They were only able to sleep three or four hours a night. They had a great experience of handling these warheads back in Russia and the conditions were completely different in Cuba. Michael Dobbs, author of one minute to midnight. The humidity has to be kept within a band of 45 to 70 percent inside these bunkers. And the temperature also cannot rise above 68 degrees. I mean in Cuba during this period, we're talking about 100 degree temperatures outside. So the Soviets had to scrounge air conditioners and even blocks of ice from all over the country to keep their warheads safe and in the proper condition. And all this sort of added enormously to the strain that the Soviet warhead officers were under. So a lot of them are probably suffering from undiagnosed radiation sickness. They had enough power in that bunker to blow up the entire world. Taxes was waiting on the refund you needed yesterday. All right, your car repair is going to run about three grand. Now taxes is getting back on the road with turbo tax in credit karma, where you can get your refund up to five days faster and get personalized guidance to take every dollar further. Now this is taxes into it credit karma with turbo tax deposit of federal refund into credit karma money account and early submission of refund data by IRS required. Terms apply banking services provided by MVB bank anchor member FDIC credit karma is not a bank. True Crime meets history with a twist in a new series of lady killers. Join me as we travel back in time to investigate the most astonishing lady killers of the 19th and 20th centuries. We visit the scene of the crime and we delve deep into their lives to ask how did they do it? Why did they do it? What drove them to it? Watch lady killers with Lucy Wesley on BBC dot com. It all starts with a subscription to BBC dot com. Find out more at BBC dot com slash unlimited. After the first meeting of XCOM president Kennedy tells my father attorney general Robert Kennedy, he won't attend all the committee meetings partly to avoid arousing attention and partly so people can speak freely without him there. He asked my father to lead the meetings in his absence. My dad spends the first day burning with outrage at the duplicity of the Soviets who directly lied to him. Initially Bobby Kennedy is a hawk. Evan Thomas has written a biography of him. He likes to get even when his brother or the United States is threatened he wants to strike back and his initial instinct is to take out those missiles with a preemptive strike with a military strike. Not only that but he wants to stage a provocation to do it and at the second meeting he talks about saying can't we do something like sink the main. That's a reference to the Spanish-American War of 1898 when United States warship was blown up in Havana Harbor the main the thing just blew up accidentally but the United States pretended theater Roosevelt pretended that it had been sunk by a Spanish mine and that was the provocation for the United States to go to war with Spain in 1898. Well now Bobby Kennedy is saying can't we sink the main or something to stage a provocation to attack Cuba it's a bad idea he gets over it this is an important thing about Robert Kennedy. He had the capacity to change his mind not every government official has that and he knew himself well enough that after sometimes his initial belligerent instincts calm down he looks for a smarter shooter approach he changes his mind perhaps partly because he's young he's only 36 years old by far the youngest man in the room he manages the meetings in a way that encourages everyone to rethink their own positions and to feel comfortable changing their mind by the second day Robert Kennedy is no longer advocating an invasion the context for this is that a secretary of state Dean Atchison has been brought to the end of the ex-com and Atchison's a hard-line hawk and he wants to attack he wants to stage a preemptive strike to get rid of those missiles and Bobby has a reaction against Atchison Atchison as a bristling guardsman moustache society accent a kind of haughty guy and Bobby's Irish Catholic streak kicks in and he resents this and finds it overbearing and he pushes back and he's joined in this by a couple of others most famously who well in Thompson who had been the US ambassador to the Soviet Union and had spoken many times with cruise ship and they believe that it would be the phrase is used a blot on the escutche of the United States to launch a surprise attack on the missile bases that would kill thousands of Soviets potentially that it would be unethical and so the idea is raised that no there has to be some kind of warning first Robert Kennedy keeps coming back to the surprise attack on the US Navy at Pearl Harbor more than 2,400 Americans were killed and as a result the United States was drawn into World War Two my father makes an impassioned argument that a surprise attack by a large nation against a very small one would not be moral it would be against American ideals but he continues to meet with the CIA's Operation Mongoose team throughout the week he is monitoring their campaign of sabotage in Cuba aimed at toppling Fidel Castro unaware of what is going on in the White House premier cruise ship is thinking about the big announcement he's planning to make in a couple of weeks time his big reveal the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrii Gramicco has a pre-arranged meeting with President Kennedy and cruise ship once Gramicco to get a sense of what the American reaction might be to the Soviet missiles it's Thursday October 18th the meeting is at 5 pm earlier that day the ex-com has been briefed with a new development you two cameras have photographed more missile sites for longer range rockets intermediate range ballistic missiles if they're on the island they'd be able to reach Chicago and cities across the Midwest the head of the CIA John McCone wants President Kennedy to show Gromico the photographs and give them 24 hours to dismantle and remove any missiles on the island President Kennedy heads to the Oval Office with Secretary of State Dean Rusk taking the CIA photographs with him Soviet Foreign Minister Andrii Gramicco will be joined at the meeting by the ambassador to the United States and Atoli Dabrinyan Dabrinyan knows nothing about the missiles in Cuba Gramicco knows all about them but he doesn't know that the Americans now have photographs of several missile sites they arrive in the Oval Office President Kennedy has decided he'll wait to see what Gromico will admit to John F. Kennedy is prepared to confront Gromico and he actually has secret YouTube photographs of the Soviet missile bases under construction in his desk drawer in the Oval Office but the decision is made that if Gromico doesn't raise the missiles Kennedy won't either because the Americans haven't decided what to do yet the two sites continue their diplomatic dance over Berlin Gromico describes the American presence there as a rotten tooth that must be pulled out he gives his prepared line on Cuba the Soviets are there simply to train Castro's forces in the use of defensive weapons he notices that Secretary of State Dean Rusk looks red like a lobster Gromico complains about American threats against Cuba Kennedy appears to formulate his thoughts very slowly and takes great care over his words Kennedy actually assures Kramiko that the U.S. is not planning to attack or invade Cuba but he doesn't tell Kramiko that the U.S. has already detected the Soviet missile bases being installed in Cuba the president says that the Soviet shipments of arms to Cuba are creating the most dangerous situations since the end of the Second World War but Gromico doesn't flinch or pick up any signs that his host knows about the missiles and Gromico admits to nothing my father wrote in his memoir 13 days president Kennedy listened astonished but also with some admiration for the boldness of Gromico's position the Americans don't reveal what they now the photographs stay in the drawer by this stage the lights are staying on late at night in the White House the press realizes something is going on but they don't know what to avoid raising too much suspicion ex-com members sometimes use secret tunnels to approach the cabinet office for meetings several of them would share one car to enter the White House coming from a large family and with seven children of his own already my father was used to that on one occasion he has general tailor the driver himself and the head of the CIA crowd into the front seat and six other high officials squash in the back on the morning of Friday the 19th of October president Kennedy is getting ready to fly to Illinois for a campaign event he continues his appointments as though nothing unusual is happening before he leaves he meets with the joint chiefs of staff the heads of the US military the chiefs are very much you know trying to push the president into taking tougher stronger action against the Soviets and Kennedy is the one person in the room who really understands all along that you know any full step can lead to a nuclear war Michael Dobbs and at one point he says to his aide Dave Powers well you know those brass hats meaning the joint chiefs of staff they have one great advantage if we listen to them and do what they want us to do none of us are going to be alive later to tell them that they are wrong general Curtis Lemay is the Air Force chief of staff he's largely responsible for the fire bombing of Tokyo and dozens of other Japanese cities during the Second World War killing at least 300,000 civilians he's an effective military leader but absolutely brutal Buck turgidson the war craze general and dr. Strangelove is based on Lemay Lemay spoke in very crude terms he thought that this is the time when we get even with the Russian bear and we've got the bear in a trap let's take his leg off right up to his testicles and then he says well on second thoughts let's take his testicles off too I spoke with Ted Whitmer about the meeting with Curtis Lemay Ted is the editor of listening in the secret White House recordings of John F. Kennedy air power US air power was the envy of the world he was the master of it but I think he was drunk on his own power and can you just talk about the way he speaks to the president of the United States is just astonishing it's astonishing both with president Kennedy right there in the room and then even worse when the president leaves the room but that we still can hear what he's saying because of the tapes running but he accuses him of appeasement which was a very loaded word it appeasement refers more to British history than American history it's the word associated with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's giving in to the demands of Adolf Hitler in 1938 relating to taking Czechoslovakia as it was then called and I'm sure president Kennedy was thinking his father was US ambassador to Great Britain and was quite close to Chamberlain so to call president Kennedy an appeaser was a very personal insult and he handled it well he didn't react and then Lemay says you're in a pretty bad fix mr president and I mean among many other qualities John F. Kennedy was extremely funny and he said well you're right in it with me and the room does laugh and it kind of breaks the tension but it's you know in subordination it's rank in subordination and anyone at that high level in the military should know the president is the commander in chief those who talk to the president straight after the meeting describe him as furious and driving pressure hard on the others to come up with a better solution than invading Cuba he tells Robert Kennedy to push everyone towards a consensus soon time is running out after Grammiko's meeting with Kennedy he delivers an optimistic report back to Krushchev the plan seems to be working the Americans don't know about the Soviet missiles in Cuba Grammiko even proclaims that American ruling circles are amazed by the Soviet Union's courage in assisting Cuba but the Soviet chief intelligence office in Moscow is beginning to suggest otherwise it has picked up unusual activity by the US Navy there is an increased presence in the Caribbean while they carry out an exercise code named Ortsak Castro spelled backwards the US Air Force 2 has sent military planes to Puerto Rico force separate reports suggest that Kennedy is still considering military action against Cuba and the Soviet military is aware of strange behavior at the Pentagon it seems that the defense secretary Robert McNamara has ordered senior military chiefs to remain near the building for exhaustive meetings in Moscow it's starting to look as if Grammiko may have been misled by Kennedy's performance in the other office standing on the Truman balcony of the White House overlooking the South Lawn on Saturday the 20th of October president Kennedy reviews a draft of a potential TV address revealing to the world that the Soviets have placed nuclear weapons in Cuba and announcing to exactly what the United States is going to do about it the problem is they still have not decided he has returned to Washington under the premise of being ill it's a lie and sounds a little preposterous president Kennedy never wore hats in public he thought they made him look weak but that day he puts on a hat to convince onlookers he's been summoned back to Washington that morning by his brother because the majority of the ex-com has reached agreement they want to navel blockade they don't want to trigger nuclear war and it's of course all recognized that this would be thermonuclear war that the Soviets have gigantic hydrogen bombs and so the blockade which the State Department lawyer says is it legally an act of war a causes belly so they come up with the name quarantine is a compromise it will make clear to the Soviets that the world that the U.S. is willing to use force but it doesn't actually kill anyone so the U.S. can pressure the Soviets meaning Khrushchev to back off some want the blockade to serve as an ultimatum for Khrushchev to remove his missiles others think it simply buys time it's now up to the president with the CIA saying there's evidence that some of the missiles are in place and ready to be fired he decides to go ahead with the blockade president Kennedy promises those pressing for stronger action if the blockade isn't effective he'll follow through with an air strike and invasion he orders the military to prepare and he asks for air time on Monday night next time on the bomb Kennedy and Khrushchev I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to hall and eliminate this clandestine reckless and provocative threat to world peace he has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction this has been episode six of 10 of the bomb season three Kennedy and Khrushchev from the BBC World Service presented by me Nina Khrushcheva and me max Kennedy the two previous seasons of the bomb are also available to listen to right now the producer is Megan Jones the editor is Chris Ledjard the production coordinator is Stuart Laws research by Mini Harap and Isabelle Eaton the story editor is Kate Lee's music composed by Elizabeth Pernell the theme is by Trevor Garekis sound designed by Tim Nielsen at Skywalker Sound the sound supervisor is Catherine Robinson the commissioning editor is Simon Pitts the bomb Kennedy and Khrushchev is a BBC audio whales production for the BBC World Service music true crime meets history with a twist in a new series of lady killers join me as we travel back in time to investigate the most astonishing lady killers of the 19th and 20th centuries we visit the scene of the crime and we delve deep into their lives to ask how did they do it why did they do it what drove them to it watch lady killers with Lucy Wesley on BBC dot com it all starts with a subscription to BBC dot com find out more at BBC dot com slash unlimited