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

James Gannon of Stony Point, NY asks: Mr. McNamara said that 30 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis we learned that 162 warheads were mounted at missile sites, 60 pointed at the U.S., with the potential to kill 80 million people. Where did he learn that information? What other facts about the crisis did the U.S. government learn only after it was over? Robert McNamara responds: We learned, I think, most of the facts about the crisis after it was over. In 1987, Professor Nye, Joseph Nye, who is now the dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard – initiated a meeting at which he brought together living U.S. officials from the Kennedy period -- those I named earlier -- Ted Sorenson, McGeorge Bundy, Max Taylor, and so on, myself, and we met in Florida to discuss and review the actions during the crisis. It was a very successful meeting and Joe and I then a year later – by the way it was the first of a series of five meetings extending over a period of seven years – from 1985 or ‘86 into 1992 – and the second meeting was held at Harvard. It included not only the U.S. personnel who had been present at the first, but three or four Russians, including the son of Khrushchev and the son of Mekalhan, and it was very successful; it added much knowledge to our understanding what was going on because the Russians had the permission of the Russian leaders to tell us their side of the story. And that was so successful that the Russians invited, the prime minister invited Americans and Russians and Cubans to meet in Moscow and in I guess it might have been 1989, and when the Cubans entered the room, with the Russians and the Americans in the room, if they would have had guns, I don’t know who they would have shot first, the Russians or the Americans, because they were still angry that Khrushchev had unilaterally decided to take those missiles out without even consulting the Cubans. But, in any event, at the end of three or four days, the Cubans themselves were very, very impressed by how much they had learned, and they informed Castro of that. And while we were in Moscow, Castro invited us all to come to Havana to continue the discussions. And I refused to go until he would answer a question that I put to the Cubans in Moscow, which they said they had no authority to answer. And the question was -- why did Castro think that a group of responsible, intelligent, experienced, senior U.S. officials – military and civilian – had behaved so irresponsibly as to carry out assassination attempts – covert operations such as Mongoose and so on – and I said until he would answer that or agree to answer that – I wouldn’t go to Havana. The answer, of course, that I wanted him to make was that we were responding to his actions to his attempt to establish Soviet bases in the hemisphere and overthrow established governments covertly in the hemisphere. As I say, he had invited us to Havana, I refused to go; we had a meeting a year later in Nassau, as an alternative, the Cubans, the Russians, and the Americans. Again they refused to answer the question. They said only Castro could answer it. But he repeated his invitation for a succeeding year, and we went in January 1992 to Havana with the understanding that he would answer my question in Havana, which he eventually did, and he answered by saying what I knew that I wanted to get him on the record as saying, that, yes, indeed, they had attempted to covertly overthrow democratically established governments in our hemisphere and, in addition, had agreed to serve as a Soviet base in the hemisphere. Now, at that meeting, which was in January 1992, a senior Russian present, was a general – military officer named General Gribkov, who at the time of his retirement from the Soviet military force had been commander of the Warsaw Pact forces. He was the most senior military officer in the Soviet forces, and he just rather casually during one of the discussions said, "Well, of course, our nuclear warheads were numerous and included both tactical warheads and warheads for the medium-range missiles." Well, we didn’t know there were any warheads for the medium range missiles there, and we sure as heck didn’t know there were tactical warheads there. It was an absolutely shocking and startling disclosure. And once he learned that we didn’t know what he’d said, he clammed up and we couldn’t get any more out of him. However, later that year, 1992, in November, there were two very important articles published authoritatively in Moscow. As I recall, one of them was by the commander of the Soviet nuclear storage sites in Cuba in October 1962, and it was then that we learned that not only was Gribkov correct, there were nuclear warheads on the island of Cuba in October 1962, and not only were there both warheads for the medium range missiles targeted on East Coast cities in the U.S., which if launched would have killed on the order of 80 or 90 million Americans – but there were also to our great shock and surprise tactical warheads to be used against a U.S. invasion force; 162, as I recall, which on the order of 90 were tactical and the other were strategic. It was a tremendous shock to everybody present. And then, if I may take a moment and add to this, when we heard that news in Havana, Castro was chairman of the meeting. And I said to him, "Mr. President, this is shocking information, surprising information. May I ask you three questions? Number one, did you know the warheads were there? Number two, if you did, would you have recommended to Khrushchev that he use them in the event of a U.S. attack? And Number three, if he had, what would have happened to Cuba?" Castro said, "Number one, I did know they were there; Number two, I would not have recommended – I did recommend to Khrushchev that they be used" in a cable I think he said he sent on Thursday, which would have been about October 25, 1962, "and Number three, I knew that if that happened, we, Cuba, would be totally destroyed." Now, that was his attitude: pull the temple down on my head.