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 ♪
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 ♪