 |
| Cuban Missile Crisis |
On 22 October 1962, President Kennedy made a television address announcing a blockade of the Communist island of Cuba. The broadcast followed seven days of meetings held by the National Security Council Executive Committee (ExComm), a group of advisors specially convened by the president in response to the discovery of Soviet missile bases under construction in Cuba.
The “quarantine” was to prevent further equipment from reaching the island and its announcement caused the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, to stop his ships. There then followed an exchange of letters and secret back-channel negotiations that resulted in a deal. The missiles would be removed in exchange for a public U.S. pledge of noninvasion; a secret second part, involving the removal of U.S. Jupiter missiles in Italy and Turkey, was only revealed later.
Few conspiracy theories regarding the crisis itself have been given much credence by Western historians. During the cold war, Russian writers (e.g., Nechayev, 1987) argued that there had never been any missiles in Cuba and that the CIA had doctored photographs.
    |
However, glasnost and the opening up of the Soviet archives provided plenty of evidence that there were actually more missiles on the island than the United States thought. It has also been suggested that the peaceful resolution of the crisis and the withdrawal of missiles from Italy and Turkey were part of the reason for the assassination of President Kennedy.
Elements within the military and the CIA are said to have seen Kennedy’s refusal to fight as a sign of weakness and defeat. Coupled with the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the noninvasion pledge, Kennedy greatly angered anti-Castro Cubans as well as businessmen whose assets in Cuba were nationalized.
Few conspiracy theories regarding the crisis itself have been given much credence by Western historians. During the cold war, Russian writers (e.g., Nechayev, 1987) argued that there had never been any missiles in Cuba and that the CIA had doctored photographs.
However, glasnost and the opening up of the Soviet archives provided plenty of evidence that there were actually more missiles on the island than the United States thought. It has also been suggested that the peaceful resolution of the crisis and the withdrawal of missiles from Italy and Turkey were part of the reason for the assassination of President Kennedy.
Elements within the military and the CIA are said to have seen Kennedy’s refusal to fight as a sign of weakness and defeat. Coupled with the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the noninvasion pledge, Kennedy greatly angered anti-Castro Cubans as well as businessmen whose assets in Cuba were nationalized.
Members of ExComm and Kennedy’s inner circle also took part in a conspiracy of silence and misinformation to protect the president and his brother, Bobby, over the resolution of the crisis. Aside from not revealing the deal to remove the Jupiter missiles from Turkey and Italy, insiders also distorted key events in the crisis to portray the Kennedys more favorably.
In particular, Kennedy aide Theodore Sorenson secretly edited Bobby Kennedy’s posthumously published diary of the crisis, Thirteen Days, making it seem that Bobby had led the anti–air strike faction in ExComm, and that he and Sorenson had devised the solution that solved the crisis.
Key meetings with the Soviet ambassador were also misrepresented. Similarly, another aide waited thirty years before revealing that the president had been prepared to ask the secretary general of the UN to impose a peaceful resolution.
