THIRTEEN DAYS

March 2001
		Nearly 10 years after the end of the Cold War, are nuclear weapons still a threat? What can be learned from the dramatic events of the Cuban Missile Crisis? Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara responds to your questions.

Forum introduction What was the makeup of President Kennedy's inner circle? How much did news reporters know and relay about the events of the crisis? Was Kenneth O'Donnell as big a part of the real events as he is in the movie? Didn't the U.S. remove missiles in Turkey in exchange for moving Soviet missiles out of Cuba? Didn't the Bay of Pigs invasion help stir Cuban resentment? How much did the government learn about the crisis after it was over? How would today's military react to a similar crisis?     Online Special Media Watch Feb. 22, 2001 Three experts discuss the new movie "Thirteen Days." Online Special: Coverage of the Missile Defense Debate Extended Interviews: Undersecretary of Defense Jacques Gansler Pentagon Official Philip Coyle August 9, 2000: Whether or not to build a defense system. July 10, 2000: The Pentagon's second failed test of the National Missile Defense System May 31, 2000: President Clinton offers to share missile defense technology. May 4, 2000: The US and Russia meet to discuss arms control Dec. 30, 1999: Nuclear missiles and Y2K. Browse the NewsHour's full coverage of the Military and the media     Thirteen Days -- the movie The National Security Archive

Jim Chevigny of Seattle, Washington asks: Who was JFK’s inner circle during this event? Was there a "hawk" vs. "dove" situation during closed-door meetings? What were the odds of us going to war, in your mind, during this crisis? Robert McNamara responds: The inner circle formally included the members of what was known as the executive committee – I’ve forgotten how many but let’s just say roughly 16 or 17 individuals. And the information about the placement of the Soviet missiles in Cuba was largely restricted to that group. I don’t know of any other instance in my years in government where senior officials in State, Defense, the National Security Council and intelligence were really outside the loop. Within [the executive committee]… there were perhaps six or seven who were the true inner circle, and they included, of course, the president, Bobby Kennedy; McGeorge Bundy, the National Security Adviser; Ted Sorensen, the assistant to the president; Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State; Max Taylor, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs; Tommy Thompson, a very, very important former ambassador to the Soviet Union, who was a major adviser to the president and all of us on the possible reactions of Khrushchev to U.S. actions; and myself. Those were the – I’ll call it the true members of the inner circle. Now, were there hawks and doves amongst the members of the Executive Committee? Yes, indeed. On the critical Saturday, which was Saturday, October 27, 1962, the day before Khrushchev on Sunday announced publicly the withdrawal of the missiles, the majority of Kennedy’s military and civilian advisers were in favor of an attack on Cuba if Khrushchev had not on that succeeding day, Sunday, announced withdrawal. The members of what I’ll call the hawks group… shifted during the 13-day period. But certainly during the last five or six days the hawks were slightly in the majority. Now, what was the risk of war? Well, number one, it’s important to recognize and to remember that the CIA at the time, of course, having produced the photographs through the U-2 reconnaissance mission on Sunday, the 14th of October, the photographs of the missiles in Cuba – the CIA believed there were no nuclear warheads there. They believed 20 intermediate-range missiles were coming on a ship named the "Poltava." So in a sense, the belief among the hawks of a possible nuclear response to a U.S. attack on Cuba was very, very unlikely, but the hawks proved totally wrong on that because some years later we learned there were, indeed, nuclear warheads there. But the hawks also believed that it was unlikely the Soviets would respond militarily to a conventional force U.S. attack on Cuba. The first stage air attack was scheduled at about 1,080 sorties. To get an idea of the size of that, that would have been a larger attack than any single day attack on Kosovo during the recent conflict there. And the invasion force, U.S. invasion force, had been assembled – 180,000 troops assembled in Southeast U.S. ports with the necessary shipping to take them to Cuba. So it would have been a huge military operation, and at the time the CIA believed there were 10,000 Soviet troops there; it turned out later there had been 40,000 or 45,000. And they were on the order of 150,000 or 200,000 very well armed Cubans, who, in the words of their commanders, were determined to fight to the death. Now, in the face of that, the majority of Kennedy’s military and civilian advisers who favored attack believed the Soviets would not respond militarily, because they thought they were weak in the hemisphere; they were weak in the Atlantic off of Cuba; they were weak on Cuba in a sense -- and the U.S. military force was so much greater, the Soviets would not respond. However, in the conversations that took place between U.S. and Soviet officials after the missile crisis was over -- the sons of both Khrushchev and Mikoian, Khrushchev’s senior associate -- both stated without any qualification that Khrushchev definitely would have responded militarily someplace in the world to an attack by the U.S. on Cuba. Where would he have responded? Probably by an attack against the U.S. Jupiter missiles in Turkey, and/or an attack against West Berlin. So the probabilities of war had the U.S. attacked Cuba were very great indeed -- and much, much greater risk of nuclear war than was understood at the time.