Three Men Go to War (2012) - full transcript

Man: Kennedy's head

is in a vise.

Khrushchev...

Woman: Khrushchev was now

feeling very vulnerable.

And Castro...

Man: Castro is getting

angrier and angrier.

Pushed the world

to the brink of nuclear war

in a battle to see

who would blink first.

Man: All three believed

that once the war started

there would be no stopping it.

"Cuban missile crisis:

Three men go to war"

starts right now on pbs.

By contributions

to your pbs station

from viewers like you.

John Kennedy: We happen to live

in the most dangerous time

in the history

of the human race.

Man: I can so vividly remember

my first flyover of Cuba

when I coasted out

over corpus christi, Texas.

And I could see the Yucatan

peninsula over to the right,

just as the sun was breaking

over the horizon.

I could really remember

this picture in my mind

of the island of Cuba

and how beautiful it looked.

And I remember the thought

in me,

"This beautiful place on earth

is dangerous to me."

[ Explosion ]

Reporter: The amount of energy

generated by a nuclear explosion

is enormous.

Man: The world almost came

to an end in October of 1962.

It's not fiction.

It's not speculation.

It almost happened, and in fact,

in terms of probability,

it should have happened.

[ Man speaking Russian ]

Interpreter: This would have

been the beginning

of a nuclear world war,

of which

no one would have come out

as winner.

The majority of the population

of the Soviet Union

and the United States,

and maybe the whole planet,

would have died.

Man: We always said that we

would go to the brink.

And here we were, to the brink,

and then we didn't know

what the hell too

when we got there.

It was a terrible time.

Believe me.

Reporter: There is almost total

destruction from blast and heat.

[ Man speaking Spanish ]

Interpreter: It's true that it

was a dangerous moment,

and maybe later, with time,

one realizes that it would have

been a world disaster,

catastrophic.

Reporter: These are

the most dangerous...

Man: We have to know everything

about the Cuban missile crisis

to be sure that we

don't go down that path again.

Woman: It is humans,

who are not perfectly rational,

who respond to stimulus

in unpredictable ways --

those people were deciding

the fates of humankind.

Narrator: Personalities

of the three leaders

are at the heart and soul

of the Cuban missile crisis.

All three believed

that once the war started,

there would be no stopping it.

There were roughly

enough nuclear weapons,

or enough nuclear power,

at the time,

to erase human civilization

a thousand times over.

Man: I received a fateful

phone call from the president

the morning of Tuesday,

October 16,

in which he asked me

to come and talk with him

in his office immediately.

And that was the first day

of what historians now call

"the most dangerous 13 days

in the history of mankind."

Man: The first inkling

that the Soviets have missiles

in Cuba

comes from U-2s,

high-altitude spy planes,

70,000 feet above the earth.

Man: When they found the site,

they didn't know

what missile it was.

And so they call me.

The photo interpreter said,

"it's longer than

the surface-to-air missile."

I showed the photo interpreter

a photograph

taken in the streets

of Moscow

of the SS-4 in parades,

and he said, "that's it."

And he said, "You're sure?"

And he said,

"that -- that's it."

Sorensen: It was a surprise.

It was a shock.

It had been secretly

and swiftly done.

You have to understand,

John Kennedy,

who was a man of few words

and not a display of emotional

anger out of control --

"they lied," he said.

He said it grimly.

Brugioni: All during the crisis,

I prepared the briefing boards

and the notes

that were used to brief

the president.

I was one step, in a sense,

from the president.

And-and-and-and I had

to be right.

Man: The U-2 photographs

of the Soviet missile bases

are a huge surprise,

and also an embarrassment.

Kennedy had made it clear,

publicly and privately,

that there was a line

that he had drawn.

Khrushchev should have

understood that.

And he didn't.

And why did he do this?

Did he not understand

that he was risking war?

This is a story of men

and not of governments.

Man: Khrushchev was in his 70s.

Kennedy was the youngest

president in American history.

Khrushchev was the son

of a Ukrainian peasant,

and Kennedy was the son

of a millionaire.

They were on completely

different planets.

Kennedy believed he had

the ability to charm people,

and Khrushchev was really

the first leader

that Kennedy had met

that he was unable to charm.

Man: On the one hand, you know,

there was nothing illegal

about the Soviets' putting

missiles into Cuba.

The United States had put

missiles into Turkey.

Those missiles were essentially

on the border

with the Soviet Union.

Khrushchev has

his own motivations.

He wants to erase

the psychological advantage

that the United States has

in having these missiles

in Turkey, so close to Moscow,

by having missiles in Cuba

that are just

a few miles

off the coast of Florida.

Khrushchev sees Kennedy

as a pushover,

thinking that this

young U.S. president

won't have the cojones,

as the Cubans would say,

to stand up and resist

this initiative,

scary as it is,

by the Soviets.

Khrushchev is proven wrong.

Clearly, he did not know

John Kennedy

like he thought he did.

We forget about iron curtain.

On each side, it was

a different vision of the world.

Absolutely different.

It was "Soviet Union,

evil empire,"

from American perspective.

But it was,

"United States was evil empire,"

from the Soviet perspective.

Dobbs: When Kennedy first

learned that the Soviets

had deployed their missiles

to Cuba, he was outraged.

The question was not,

would they accept it?

It was how they were going to

get those missiles removed.

Naftali: If Kennedy is

considering an air strike,

it's not clear how precise

the bombing will be.

And you're dealing

with nuclear weapons.

What if one missile

gets launched?

One nuclear missile could kill

hundreds of thousands of people.

One.

Woman: The general imbalance is

the ratio of 17 to 1

between the United States

and the Soviet Union

in deliverable nuclear

firepower.

But it all depends on,

how much damage

are you willing to sustain?

What's unacceptable

for you?

And for the American

administration,

even one nuclear warhead

on a major city --

New York, Washington, Chicago,

any major city --

would be unacceptable damage.

Man: The Soviet Union,

you know, would be destroyed,

and we would only lose

a third of our population.

[Laughs]

You know, when you think

of someone thinking, "only lose

a third of your population,

and you've won a war,"

you know,

you've sort of left

the world of reality.

Savranskaya: The story is

amazing, the story of deception.

Under the nose

of the U.S. intelligence,

the Soviets were able

to transport

close to 42,000

military personnel,

innumerable amounts

of ammunition,

nuclear missiles,

to Cuba.

The deployment is an incredible

military feat.

Sergei Khrushchev:

There's no success

military operation

without secrecy.

My father thought,

what he have to do.

"We have to send very powerful

signal to Americans,

'don't invade Cuba.

We are serious.'"

Man: Cuba seems to have

the same effect

on American political leaders

that the full moon once had

on werewolves.

We may not froth at the mouth,

but we simply can't deal

rationally with Cuba.

Dobbs: There was a revolution

in Cuba led by fidel Castro

in 1959,

and in 1960,

Castro declared Cuba to be

a socialist state

allied to the Soviet Union.

Cuba had been a playground

for Americans.

They would fly down there,

they would go gambling.

The night life was wonderful.

The beaches were wonderful.

So it was kind of seen

by many Americans

as an extension

of the United States

as a legitimate extension

of the United States.

We had been expecting

the invasion

since the end of 1960.

The logic of the relationship

between Cuba

and the United States

obviously led anyone to believe

that there was going to be

some sort of invasion.

Cuba was ready to fight.

Castro saw Kennedy

as a significant threat

to the vy existence

and future,

not only of the Cuban

revolution, but of Cuba itself.

He is convinced

that the Kennedy brothers,

being the competitive men

that he understands them to be,

people who hate to lose,

will eventually

try and overcome their loss

at the bay of pigs

by invading Cuba again,

this time openly,

with the U.S. military.

That is why he accepts the idea

of having these missiles

on his territory

and the danger

that came with it.

Savranskaya: Khrushchev

likes Castro a lot.

It was a lot

of early love dynamic --

infatuation, flirting,

but not completely trusting

each other yet,

trying to kind of feel

each other out,

trying to establish

the boundaries

of the relationship.

Wayne Smith: Castro may have

liked the idea

of having the missiles

on Cuban soil --

it certainly turned Cuba

into a major player

in the strategic game --

but Castro recommended that

they not try to do it secretly.

He pointed out the difculty

of that.

The U.S. has U-2 spy planes

overhead almost every day.

Wouldn't it be far better

to do it openly?

Let's sign a new

mutual defense agreement.

[ Camera shutters clicking ]

[ Man speaking Spanish ]

Interpreter:

Fidel was never in favor

of putting the rockets in

secretly -- never.

We had the right

to defend ourselves

and to have the arms that we

needed to defend ourselves.

Even if those arms were nuclear

and 90 miles

from the United States,

we had the right to do it.

But Khrushchev

wasn't in favor of that.

He said, once we had

all the rockets here,

the United States

would know about it

and would be able to do

absolutely nothing.

That was a big mistake.

Man: From October 15th

until October 22nd,

John Kennedy kept the existence

of these missiles in Cuba

a secret.

Sorensen: We knew

what the Russians were up to.

So long as they didn't know

that we knew,

we might have time to plan

our response.

J.F.K., that first morning,

asked of us

every possible option he had.

Military options, every possible

diplomatic option,

even the possibility

of doing nothing at all,

though he himself felt

that the country

would not stand for that.

Man: The Cuban missile crisis

presented Kennedy

with a very acute

personal challenge,

where none of his glamour,

his good looks,

his religion,

his rhetoric,

none of the previous virtues,

if that's what they were,

that went into the Kennedy

success story

applied any longer

in the Cuban missile crisis.

He couldn't count

on any of those.

And he's left all alone,

with a system

that's producing all kinds

of hot-headed advice.

Kornbluh: The Nemesis

of John F. Kennedy

during the Cuban missile crisis

is thought to be

general Curtis Lemay,

the gruff and grumpy general,

who really wanted to just blow

Cuba to smithereens.

Brugioni: When Lemay was asked,

what would he do with Cuba,

he said, "I'll fry it,"

and he meant it.

Man: Lemay and all the chiefs --

all four services --

want to go to war.

This is what they do.

Tense.

You know,

it had never happened before.

The people in the White House

weren't the most experienced

in the world.

The joint chiefs

weren't the most flexible.

So there were weaknesses

everywhere one turned.

Sorensen: The joint chiefs

opposed the blockade --

in particular,

a negotiated solution.

They thought we should go in

and hit the Russians

with everythg we had,

as one of them said.

Sounded pretty good,

sounded pretty tough.

Naftali: Kennedy asked

his top air chiefs,

"Can you assure me that a U.S.

air strike would be surgical,

go and knock out

all Soviet missiles?"

And they tell him,

"no, sir.

"There's a high probability

we get most of them.

"There is a possibility

of some people

"in the southeastern

part of the United States

dying in a nuclear attack."

Kennedy: So it finally

comes down to,

how many advisors

you have,

frequently, they are divided,

and the president

must finally choose.

On October 22nd, at 7:00 P.M.

eastern daylight time,

president Kennedy gave

the scariest speech ever given.

I defy anybody to find one

that scared more people

more profoundly

than that ch.

Alzugaray: We knew it was

going to be about Cuba.

It was going to be about Cuba,

and it was not going to be good.

Sergei Khrushchev:

They announced, "the president

will speak with the nation."

I asked my father

what it will be about.

He told, "I think

that they discovered

the missiles in Cuba."

Kornbluh: Up until that moment,

they thought

they had gotten away

with the secret deployment

and implementation

of these missiles in Cuba.

But at that moment,

this plan is exposed.

Sergei Khrushchev: He asked the

members of the Soviet leadership

to come to Kremlin, and there,

they waited

what president would say.

If they declare invasion,

it will be very dangerous.

Savranskaya:

They all expected

Kennedy would announce

an attack.

And what Khrushchev says

during that session

is really interesting.

He is not his normal flamboyant,

"we will Bury them" kind of guy.

He says, "well, we will respond

if they attack.

But that might mean

a big war."

And you can see that he

is really grappling

with the possibility

of a real nuclear war.

Kennedy: Within the past week,

unmistakable evidence

has established the fact

that a series of offensive

missile sites

is now in preparation

on that imprisoned island.

To halt this offensive buildup,

a strict quarantine

on all offensive military

equipment under shipment to Cuba

is being initiated.

Sorensen: I tried to put

some language in the speech

that indicated that we were

prepared to do what we had to do

if we had to do it,

but we preferred the blockade,

which, in effect, put the ball

in Khrushchev's court.

It shall be the policy

of this nation

to regard any nuclear missile,

launched from Cuba

against any nation

in the western hemisphere,

as an attack by the Soviet Union

on the United States,

requiring a full retaliatory

response upon the Soviet Union.

Pretty chilling line.

And these actions may only be

the beginning.

Thank you, and good night.

Sorensen: Both sides were

on that ladder of escalation.

Kornbluh: Kennedy's speech has

a number of purposes.

One is to define t issue

as the United States sees it.

The Soviets have committed

an act of aggression.

They have done it deceitfully

and deceptively,

so their motivations

are suspect.

But his second purpose is

to send a message

directly to the Soviets

very quickly,

faster than it would take

to send a diplomatic note

that would

have to be translated.

Naftali:

This is a diffent era.

For the 21st-century viewer,

it's very important

to understand

the limits of technology

in this period.

Dobbs: Communications

were very iffy,

both between Cuba and Russia

and between Washington

and Moscow.

On the one hand, this was

the age of the Sputnik,

Telstar

Satellite Communication Systems

beginning to be introduced,

but they were

still dependent

on very rudimentary

forms of communication.

The Soviet ambassador

to Washington remembered

that when he wanted to send

a message back to Moscow,

he would have to summon

a messenger from western union,

who would appear on his bicycle.

They would hand him

the telegram,

the man would cycle away

on his bicycle

and they would hope that

something wouldn't happen to him

between him leaving

the Soviet embassy

and reaching

the telegraph office,

where the message was sort of

laboriously typed in,

sent across the Atlantic,

and then decoded

on the other side.

The whole process took 12 hours,

which, you know, by the time

the message arrived,

the whole situation

could have changed.

Blight: The CIA

told the president that they

were reasonably convinced

that not one nuclear warhead

had arrived in Cuba.

I think the number

that had arrived is 162.

[ Speaking Russian ]

Interpreter: Modern history

knows only two cases

of the use of nuclear weapons --

the American bombing

of the cities

of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The capacity of the nuclear

device that was used then

was between 13 and 20 kilotons.

If we compare this

with the capacity

of the devices that were

deployed in Cuba,

they were 70 times to 140 times

more powerful than that.

Reporter: The quarantine went

into effect

at 10:00 A.M.

eastern daylight time.

Would Russian trips try to run

e blockade?

And would our Navy sink them?

♪ It all starts somewhere ♪

♪ It all starts

with one ♪

♪ Everything comes

from something ♪

♪ It all starts

with one ♪

♪ It all starts somewhere ♪

♪ It all starts

with one ♪

♪ Nothing comes from nothing ♪

♪ It all starts with one ♪

♪ Starts with one ♪

On October 24th, the Americans

implemented the blockade.

The Soviet ships were still

heading towards the island.

Kornbluh: Dozens and dozens

of U.S. naval ships

are going to be positioned

in international waters

in a perimeter around Cuba.

Tensions build as these ships

come closer and closer,

and the concern becomes

a confrontation

between the U.S. Navy

and the Soviet Navy at sea.

Unbeknownst to Kennedy

and his advisors,

there are nuclear-tipped

torpedoes

on the Soviet submarines

that are accompanying

the Soviet ships.

Man speaking Russian ]

Interpreter: Sure,

there are no secrets here.

We had all the standard weapons,

the full standard set,

and at the last moment,

they loaded a special weapon

onto our submarine --

one nuclear torpedo --

although nobody seemed to know

what sort of thing it was,

what was it like,

and what should we do with it?

That was for the first time

during the whole existence

of the Navy

that a weapon could be used

just on the order

of a submarine commander,

a nuclear weapon.

Naftali: The success

of Moscow's operation

depends on the deception

never being uncovered.

Khrushchev thought

that the Americans

would not detect the missiles

until they were

up and operational.

So you'll have these submarines

sent out,

without proper preparation

for a quarantine

or for a confrontation

on the high seas.

Man: The forces under

my command -- that is to say,

under the command

of the president --

are ordered to interdict

delivery of offensive weapons

and associated material to Cuba.

Those are the instructions

we've been given.

Those are the instructions

we will carry out.

[ Ketov speaking Russian ]

Interpreter: There were

quite a few moments

when we could have used

the weapons, quite a few.

I didn't have any doubt

about using it.

I would have done it easily.

News arrived at the excomm

that at the last moment,

the Soviet ships

had turned around,

and Dean Rusk,

Secretay of State,

famously said that we were

eyeball-to-eyeball

and the other side

just blinked.

That moment never actually

took place.

[ Man speaking Russian ]

Interpreter: When they announced

the introduction

of a sea quarantine,

when Kennedy ordered

the U.S. military vessels

to start the blockade of Cuba,

Khrushchev simply got

profoundly scared.

And he ordered our ships to stop

and not to cross

the quarantine line.

Blight:

Useful to keep in mind here

that all during

the Cuban missile crisis,

huge numbers of all the b-52s

in the United States airforce

are circling the perimeter

of the Soviet Union,

carrying humongous bombs.

Imagine if you're khrushchev

and knew

that the United States air force

is now circling

like a wolf ready for the kill.

I mean, it would have

been terrifying.

Naftali: He had the missiles,

and he had the warheads there.

He didn't have all the missiles

he wanted, but he had enough.

The White House is getting

conflicting signals,

and obviously they don't have

a direct channel to khrushchev.

On the one hand, they do see

that some ships are starting

to turn around.

That, they can pick up.

On the other hand,

work is continuing

on the missile sites.

So where are the Soviets?

Is there one Soviet government?

Is there a struggle

in the Soviet government

between hawks and doves --

as indeed there was

in the U.S. government

at the time?

They don't know,

and they can't know.

Well, what's happening is

that Khrushchev

is calibrating his risks.

He decides

he's not going to risk

the big missiles

on the high seas.

Those aren't going to make it

to Cuba.

But he hasn't given up

his major gambit.

Man: The mood was somber --

they've certainly realized

the danger --

but it was also defiant.

[ Man speaking Spanish ]

Interpreter: The people

were calm,

in the sense that we weren't

going to allow the Americans

toome back over here.

If they disembarked here,

they were going to find

the people on the warpath.

Naftali: Castro is getting

angrier and angrier and angrier.

He's angry because Kennedy

starts launching

low-level reconnaissance.

He wants even better coverage

of Cuba.

[ Jet roaring ]

And these planes come in

really low, just above treetops.

First of all, it's a reminder

of American power.

And it's a signal that,

if the Yankees want to attack,

that's not hard.

Man: We came across

the missile sites

so fast and so low that I'm sure

that we took them by surprise.

I remember seeing personnel

down there,

I remember seeing

the actual launch pads

that they had prepared,

lots of vehicles

and buildings and warehouses

and storage areas

and a lot of camouflage netting.

[ Jet plane roaring ]

[ Fernandez speaking Spanish ]

Interpreter: They were flying

very close to the ground,

and you could even see

the pilot faces.

But there was no order to fire.

Neither the Cubans nor

the Soviets had orders to fire.

Obviously, nobody can tolerate

a situation like that.

Coffee:

We could have used fighters

and strafed those missile sites.

We could have attacked them

with low-level bombs as well.

But they never knew that.

We just -- we just

took pictures...

And watched them all run.

[ Jet plane roaring ]

The commander of the squadron

took the developed film,

and the very next day,

our ambassador

to the United Nations,

Adlai Stevenson,

used that film, those pictures,

those prints,

to prove to the world, starting

right there in the U.N,

that those Soviet missiles

existed in Cuba.

Do you, ambassador Zorin,

deny that the U.S.S.R.

Has placed and is placing

medium- and intermediate-range

missiles and sites in Cuba?

You will receive the answer

in the due course.

I'm prepared to wait

for my answer

until hell freezes over,

if that's your decision.

We will set up an easel here

in the back of the room,

where I hope it will be

visible to everyone.

Wow -- I mean, they were really

down there.

I mean, they were really close,

I mean, they could have

identified people.

Stevenson: San Cristobal

on the island of Cuba,

southwest of Havana.

The purpose being,

whatever we would have to do,

I'm mean, if we would attack Cuba

to get them to remove

the missiles,

or go in and destroy

the missiles,

we wanted the rest of the world

to understand

that we had good cause,

and that there was no way

that we were going to live

with intercontinental

ballistic missiles

90 miles off of our coast,

which could reach

any of our major cities

in the United States.

[ Speaking Russian ]

Interpreter: If the Americans

had crossed the fatal line

that divides peace from war,

a terrible tragedy

could have happened.

Dobbs: The United States

were not aware

about the presence

of tactical nuclear missiles

on Cuba.

They were short-range weapons.

Their purpose was to deter

an American invasion.

Had the Americans invaded,

there would have been

a very big risk of

nuclear weapons' being used.

Once you'd had Soviets'

using a nuclear weapon

against American troops,

what would the United States

have done in retaliation?

Naftali: As the second week

progresses,

the level of anxiety increases.

Push is about to come to shove.

Dobbs:

October 27th became known

as "Black Saturday,"

because, of all the 13 days

of the missile crisis,

it was the most dangerous.

Things began happening

that neither khrushchev

nor Kennedy had predicted

and that they didn't

fully control.

Sorensen: One piece of bad news

after another.

When we began our meeting

that Saturday morning,

passed around the table

was a letter

that had come in

from Khrushchev

the night before,

and this one was personal,

emotional.

It meandered around a bit --

nevertheless,

buried among those threats

and denials were some hints

that he wanted a way out.

[ Explosion ]

Savranskaya: Khrushchev was now

feeling very vulnerable.

He also feels

personally responsible

for the whole gamble.

You can see that he is really

grappling with the possibility

of a real nuclear war --

looking into what is happening

and envisioning

those mushroom clouds.

Sergei Khrushchev:

It was not edited,

it was just what he felt,

how he felt to the world,

to the future of our countries,

and how he was worried

that we can make the first step

and destroy everything.

He realized full impact

of the nuclear war.

He was very scared about this,

especially because he learned

from the second world war,

and he told me many times,

he watched documentaries,

read stories, watched films.

It is nothing close

to the reality.

The reality is much more bloody,

much more dangerous,

much more dirty.

We have to avoid

with any way we can.

Sorensen: We sat at the table,

trying to figure out

how to answer that letter,

and then a second letter

came in.

This one wasn't personal.

This one sounded as though

it had been drafted

by the military presidium

in Moscow.

It demanded that, before they

take any action at all,

we take NATO missiles

out of Turkey.

Natali: Americans

couldn't figure out

why there seemed to be

two different Khrushchevs.

There was the Khrushchev

of the first letter,

and there was the Khrushchev

of the second.

The second, which is read

over radio Moscow,

sort of upped the ante.

It's not enough to promise

not to invade Cuba.

Now the United States

has to dismantle

some missiles of its own.

Man: Why does Khrushchev

write two letters?

He thinks he can push

for a better deal.

Nafti: The White House reacts

by thinking

that maybe Khrushchev has lost

control of the situation,

thus making it

much more dangerous.

Kornbluh: John F. Kennedy was

under intense pressure.

His military generals

were saying to him,

"the longer you wait,

"the more operational

these missile silos will be.

We need to launch this attack

now, Mr. President."

Dobbs: Jack Kennedy was

in a minority of one.

Everybody else in the room

was saying

that you cannot take this deal

that Khrushchev is offering you,

this implicit exchange.

Kennedy was the only person

in the room who really

was determined

to explore that exchange.

So how to answer

that second letter?

Or should we answer

the second letter?

While we're...

Sitting there, debating that,

another report comes in.

[ Russian music playing

on radio ]

A U.S. air force plane had been

sent up from Alaska

to test the atmosphere,

to see if the Soviets

had been testing

their nuclear weapons.

Dobbs: Chuck Maultsby is

a reconnaissance pilot.

His job was to collect samples.

As luck would have it,

on Black Saturday,

Maultsby makes a huge

navigational error.

He's blinded

by the Aurora borealis,

and, instead of making a 180°

turn and coming back to Alaska,

he rolls out in the direction

of the Soviet Union.

At the most tense time

of the missile crisis,

he blunders

into Soviet territory.

Man: If you're flying over

the north pole,

every direction you turn

is south.

And so he's flying south

on the Moscow south.

And the sun doesn't come up

when it's supposed to.

And he says the famous words,

"o.S."

And he says, "well,

what do I do now?"

Well, he's over the landmass,

the Soviet landmass,

on the 27th of October.

The Soviets are looking at him.

You know what they think,

don't you?

Dobbs: Maultsby hears Russian

music over his radio,

figures out that he's

over the Soviet union

and not anywhere near Alaska.

He's finally turned around,

pursued by Soviet migs.

He doesn't have any fuel.

He just makes it back

across the Bering strait.

Sorensen: There was a moment --

a grim moment of silence

around that table.

"There's always one

son of a bitch,"

he said,

"who never gets the word."

I later learned that was

an Old Navy saying.

Maybe he heard that.

We didn't think

it was too funny.

Naftali: This is a moment

of extreme tension.

Sergei Khrushchev: My father

repeated all the time,

"we have to prevent

the first shot.

"After first shot,

the control of situation

will shift from our hands" --

his and president Kennedy's,

politicians' --

"to the military,

and they will decide our fate."

[ Speaking Russian ]

Interpreter: The situation

was escalating.

And when, on 27th October,

we received an order

to dig individual trenches

for ourselves,

to take cover

when the bombing started,

we understood that it smelled

of trouble.

Blight: Fidel Castro has gone

to the Russians

and said, "you've got

the surface-to-air missiles,

"the Sam-2s,

all over the island.

You can shoot those u-2s down."

The Russians on the island

are like,

"yes! Because we're going to be

just as dead as these Cubans

"if they're scoping us out

and they're going to drop

these precision bombs

and so forth."

Savranskaya: The Soviet military

on the island,

when they expected

to fight and die

in a nuclear war,

they were more attuned,

they were more allied,

with Castro

than with their Russian

leadership.

[ Man speaking Russian ]

Interpreter: Fidel Castro was

very good to us

and came a few times

to see us in the Garrison.

Fidel was young, handsome,

and full of fervor.

He would give

three-hour speeches,

and we would be so inspired

by his example

that we weren't

afraid of anything.

Sorensen: The military

had extracted an agreement

at the beginning of the crisis.

Any attempt or success

by the Soviets

in shooting down

American spy planes

would be met

by U.S. retaliation

bombing the Soviet

surface-to-air missile site

at had done the shooting.

Oh, my, the --

on October the 27th,

the most horrible day

in my life...

Get word that one of our

flights, U-2 flights, was late,

indicating that maybe problems

had developed.

McIlmoyle:

We all knew the danger.

I mean, we all knew

that it could happen.

Our rule was,

we flew sequentially.

We all got the same number

of missions,

weren't exposed to danger

anymore than any other person.

And a guy named Rudy Anderson,

who was my boss,

got scheduled

to fly the mission.

[ Man speaking Russian ]

Interpreter: Naturally,

after everything had happened,

I thought and re-thought it

thousands of times.

But a task is a task,

and you have to do it well,

as well as you can.

I just happened to be at the end

of this chain.

It was given number 33.

Target number 33.

Events started to develop

from the moment

the target was detected.

The division commander

started worrying.

Something had to be done.

Another couple of minutes,

and the target would leave

the hitting zone.

Eventually, the order came.

Target 33 is to be destroyed.

After I had pressed the button

and the missile was launched...

There was a tropical downpour.

The sky was completely overcast.

All the trenches were

half-filled with water.

So, you know, it's the breaks

of the game, I guess.

[ Ryapenko speaking Russian ]

Interpreter: We understood

very well

what a complex thing it was

to shoot at a flying plane,

especially with a man on board.

But every soldier is destined

to carry out his task

at a certain moment,

and this is what happened.

But a war is a war.

Sergei Khrushchev: When the U-2

plane was shot over Cuba,

my father was very nervous,

because it was just sign

that, yes, military can make

the decision,

not with authorization Moscow.

Blight: Alex Johnson,

the Deputy Secretary of State,

said, "Russians have drawn

first blood.

Now's the time to go,

Mr. President."

He was a dove.

Kennedy's head is in a vise.

And I think for a period of time

on October 27th,

when he first discovered

that shoot-down,

he didn't know how to get

his head out of it.

Brugioni: I called my wife,

and I said,

"if I call you again,

put the kids in the car,

and start out for Missouri,

where my parents live,"

because I was convinced that we

were going to be bombing Cuba

on Monday.

There was an operation plan

that the site that shot down

our u-2 should be destroyed.

And there were planes

ready to do it.

And they pressed that point

on that grim Saturday afternoon,

October 27,

saying, "let's do it now!"

But Kennedy knew, once again,

that will start the war.

And he said, "time enough

for that later.

Let's wait and see how

the correspondence turns out."

Kornbluh: Tensions were

very, very high.

Cubans were digging holes

and preparing for the worst.

They thought their country

was going to be

invaded, attacked,

obliterated.

Invasion plans were massive

and uncompromising.

The invasion was code-named

"operation raincoat.

And it essentially involved

raining bombs down

upon Cuba.

Alzugaray:

We were prepared to die.

I don't think in Cuba,

people thought that there would

have been any other outcome.

As a matter of fact,

there was a joke --

with time, there would be --

where Cuba was,

there would be no Cuba,

no land, and only a marker

in theea,

saying, "here was Cuba,

the thumb of imperialism

in the western hemisphere."

[ Siren wailing ]

Naftali: It becomes clear

to Castro

that Moscow and Washington

are communicating

with each other,

and Moscow is

not letting Castro know.

There's no consultation

with the Cubans.

So Fidel is thinking,

"wait a second.

"I let the Soviets

put missiles here.

"Now I'm the center

of world politics.

"Our future is at risk,

and Moscow isn't telling me

anything."

That anger leads to one of those

dramatic moments in history

that even the best novelist

couldn't devise.

It's a long night spent

with the Soviet ambassador,

and over sausages

and a lot of beer,

he wants Khrushchev to knowt

with that if Moscow decides

to launch a strike

against the United States,

even if the consequences

of that strike

would be the decimation

of Cuba,

Fidel supports Khrushchev.

"We are willing

to sacrifice ourselves

for the socialist cause."

Alzugaray: Fidel had

two purposes in his letter.

One was to tell

Nikita Khrushchev,

"listen, if you're worried

about us,

don't be worried --

we are ready to pay the price."

The second purpose was,

"we have to guarantee victory."

The logic is,

you strike first.

Blight: Khrushchev received it

and was heard to say,

"this is insane!

He has lostt his mind."

Quote, "Fidel is trying to drag

us into the grave with him."

Dobbs: Khrushchev takes it

as evidence that Castro

is beginning to get

a little unhinged.

Castro's gambit

actually backfired.

Sergei Khrushchev:

It is the responsibility

of the leaders at the time

of crisis that you

have to take

all the responsibility

and you have to make

the decision.

You, Kennedy, not excomm.

You, Khrushchev,

not the central committee.

Naftali: The two statesmen,

however much they were

committed to peace,

might have found themselves

at war.

You hear him on tape

saying to his advisors,

"you know, how am I

going to tell the world

"why I'm going to war,

"when Khrushchev

has offered me something

"that really doesn't cost

very much?

"We don't really like

the missiles in Turkey.

"They're old missiles,

really quite useless.

"And they're provocative.

How can I go to war --" because

he knew the next step was war --

"how can I go to war

to defend this missile system?

"The world will never accept it.

"They'll say, 'why didn't you

just trade away those missiles?

You didn't believe in them,

anyway.'"

but most of his advisors

didn't agree with him,

and ultimately he decided

that he was going to

just ignore them.

Kornbluh: He sent his brother,

Robert Kennedy,

to talk to Anatoly Dobrynin,

the Soviet ambassador

to Washington,

to say, "we will secretly swap

the obsolete U.S. missiles

"aimed at the Soviet union

from Turkey

"if you withdraw

the missiles from Cuba.

"We will not admit

that we agreed to a swap.

"And we will not do it

at the same time.

But we will do it -- you'll have

to trust us that we will do it."

Naftali: It's the night

of October 27th, Black Saturday.

Kennedy felt

that if this didn't work,

he'd have to order

the invasion of Cuba.

[ Thunderclap ]

Sorensen: Bob McNamara has often

said he went home that night

thinking it might be the last

sunset he would ever see.

[ Jet plane roaring ]

Blight: Really scary, because

there's nothing you can do

except wait.

[ Clock ticking ]

Alzugaray: That night,

somebody asked me,

"what about a nuclear war?

What happens if we

are attacked tonight?"

And I said,

"Believe me, we don't have to

worry very much.

We'll see a flash, a big flash,

and then we will be dead."

♪ Said the night wind

to the little lamb ♪

♪ Do you see what I see? ♪

♪ Do you see what I see? ♪

♪ Way up in the sky,

little lamb ♪

♪Do you see what I see? ♪

♪ Do you see what I see? ♪

♪ A star, a star,

dancing in the night ♪

♪ With a tail as big

as a kite ♪

♪ With a tail

as big as a kite ♪

Reporter: This is radio Moscow.

Premier Khrushchev has sent

a message

to president Kennedy today

that his government has ordered

the dismantling of weapons

in Cuba

as well as their cratings,

and return to the Soviet Union.

Reporter: The world seems

to have veered off,

at least for the moment,

the collision course

toward global annihilation.

Sorensen: When I woke up

Sunday morning,

I turned on the radio

at my bedside.

And there, on the radio,

was the news

that the Soviet

nuclear missiles

were being withdrawn

under public inspection.

I couldn't believe it!

Thunderstruck with happiness,

relief.

[ Kurrinoy speaking Russian ]

Interpreter: When we discovered

that an agreement

had been reached between

Khrushchev and Kennedy

and that our troops

were being withdrawn,

we were over the moon.

We had completed our mission

and come out alive.

We were glad to be going home.

Kornbluh: Nikita Khrushchev

agrees to withdraw the missiles,

first and foremost,

because he has

a secret deal

that the United States

will eventually withdraw

its missiles from Turkey.

And this will change

the psychological equation

of the balance of power, and so

he got something he wanted,

secretly, something

he could tell his generals

was a good reason to withdraw

the missiles from Cuba,

and deal with the embarrassment

in the eyes of the world

of retreating.

And so the missile crisis

came to an end.

[ Children laughing ]

Savranskaya: Fear saved the day

on October 27th.

Khrushchev's fear

and Kennedy's fear.

Both of them experienced

this existential, basic,

primeval fear of nuclear war

and actual destruction

ofhe civilization

as they knew it.

Naftali: How interesting

that Khrushchev

did not make a big deal

about the Jupiter cosion.

How easy it would have been

for him to say,

"well, I forced the Americans,

"I scared them so much,

I forced John Kennedy

to go to the Turks and take away

missiles from the Turks."

He didn't do that.

Khrushchev kept his word.

The Soviet government

kept its word.

It promised not to go public

with this, and it didn't.

Never -- and it didn't.

It's an amazing part

of the story.

Sergei Khrushchev: Who won?

Everybody won,

because we're still alive.

We're very lucky that both

in white house and kremlin,

we have politicians not like,

"first shoot, then think,"

they're politicians who first

think, then think second time,

and they decided

not to shoot at all.

Personality counts

for an enormous amount.

At key moments in history,

personality

can make the difference,

and I think

the Cuban missile crisis

is one of those times.

It's quite possible

that it could have ended

in a nuclear war,

with less controlled,

less responsible people

in the White House

and the Kremlin.

Where did you find this?

My mother

had a cousin.

Grandpa.

Cousin's parents.

Great uncle.

Mom's third cousin.

Governor of Vermont.

That I found laying

on a trash pile.

Flea market.

Dealer. In the dirt.

She paid 45.

$25.

Never seen one

quite like this.

Rare

fabulous. Fantastic!

$25,000.

$250,000.

Over $300,000.

Oh, my god!

Every treasure tells a story.

"Antiques roadshow,"

only on pbs.

For more information on

"Cuban missile crisis:

Three men go to war,"

This program is available

on DVD.

or call us at 1-800-play-pbs.

♪ It all starts with one ♪

♪ It all starts somewhere ♪

♪ It all starts

with one ♪

♪ Nothing comes from nothing ♪

♪ It all starts with one ♪

♪ Starts with one ♪