From the eye of storm: the key moments of the Cuban Missile crisis - as seen by a man who was in the thick of it - includes excerpts from 'The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis'

Washington Monthly, Nov, 1997 by Theodore C. Sorenson

Ever since John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev peacefully resolved the world's first nuclear confrontation, a veritable cottage industry has focused on the Soviet Union's surreptitious installation of strategic missiles in Cuba and their rapid withdrawal. With thousands of books, articles, documentaries, seminars, and conferences devoted to those 13 harrowing days in October 1962, it seemed to me highly unlikely that new light could be shed on this subject.

I was wrong.

Harvard's Ernest May and Philip Zelikow have masterfully assembled, edited, and placed in context readable transcriptions of Kennedy's secret taping (unbeknownst to us all) of "ExComm's" marathon deliberations. Some key documents, external developments, and exchanges conducted outside the Cabinet Room or in Kennedy's absence are necessarily incorporated, if at all, only by reference. Some minor errors accompanied the transcription of these rudimeritary tapes. But no previous work has conveyed more clearly the sometimes chilling, sometimes heated, sometimes foggy atmosphere in that room during the Cold War's most dangerous fortnight.

From recent Russian publications, we know now with certainty what some in our group doubted then: that the massive air strike and invasion of Cuba that they preferred to President Kennedy's decision to respond initially with a naval blockade (which Kennedy coupled with surveillance, warnings, and diplomatic pressure), would have engendered a vigorous Soviet nuclear as well as conventional force attack that would have escalated quickly into global war. In retrospect, Kennedy's choice seems obvious. Yet the transcripts reveal as never before that his choice was neither obvious nor easy.

In our first meeting on Tuesday, October 16, the discussion following the opening presentation of U2 photographs of these incipient missile bases centered on their removal by surprise attack:

Secretary of State Dean Rusk: ... We have to set in motion a chain of events that will eliminate this base. I don't think we can sit still. The question becomes whether we do it by sudden, unannounced strike of some sort or ... build up the crisis to the point where the other side has to consider very seriously about giving in.... We ourselves are not moved to general war. We're simply doing what we said we would do if they took certain action. Or we're going to decide that this is the time to eliminate the Cuban problem by actually eliminating the island.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara: ... If we are to conduct an air strike against these installations, or against any part of Cuba, we must ... schedule that prior to the time these missile sites become operational.... Any air strike must be directed not solely against the missile sites, but against the missile sites plus the airfields, plus the aircraft which may not be on the airfields but hidden by that time, plus all potential nuclear storage sites.... We would be prepared, following the air strike, for an invasion both by air and by sea....

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Maxwell Taylor: We're impressed, Mr. President, with the great importance of getting a strike with all the benefit of surprise, which would mean ideally that we would have all the missiles that are in Cuba above ground.

Rusk: ... I don't believe, myself, that the critical question is whether you get a particular missile before it goes off, because if they shoot those missiles we are in general nuclear war....

Secretary of Treasury Douglas Dillon: ... I think that the chance of getting through this thing without a Russian reaction is greater under a quick strike than building the whole thing up to a climax....

National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy: I share the Secretary of the Treasury's feeling....

President Kennedy: How effective can the take-out be, do they think?

Taylor. It'll never be 100 percent, Mr. President, we know. We hope to take out a vast majority in the first strike, but this is not just ... one strike, one day-but continuous air attack for whenever necessary, whenever we discover a target.... I think we should be in a position to invade at any time, if we so desired.

Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson: ... I think the question with the base is whether we take it out or whether we talk about it, and either alternative is a very distressing one. But, of the two, I would take it out. Assuming that the commanders felt that way....

President Kennedy: What you're really talking about are two or three different potential operations. One is the strike just on these ... bases. The second is the broader one ... on the airfields and on the SAM sites and on anything else connected with missiles. Third is doing both of those things and also, at the same time, launching a blockade ... which is a larger step. And then, as I take it, the fourth question is the degree of consultation. I don't know how much use consulting with the British has been. They'll just object. [We] just have to decide to do it. Probably ought to tell them, though, the night before.