{"id":44371,"date":"2023-10-20T06:54:22","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=44371"},"modified":"2023-10-20T06:54:22","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:54:22","slug":"jfk-vs-curtis-lemay-nuclear-terror-during-cuban-missile-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/20\/jfk-vs-curtis-lemay-nuclear-terror-during-cuban-missile-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"JFK vs. Curtis LeMay: Nuclear Terror During Cuban Missile Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell\u2019s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood<\/a>.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

Part II of <\/strong>Our Look Back at Nuclear Terror During Cuban Missile Crisis<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Continuing a series begun earlier this week<\/a>, as we look back 61 years this week to the beginnings of the gravest nuclear crisis of our era, involving JFK, Castro, and Soviet missiles in Cuba. The below is an excerpt from my 2016 bestseller, The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall<\/a><\/em>, which among other things revealed the Kennedy White House trying to kill, that same autumn, one of the most important TV specials ever, from NBC, documenting an astounding underground passage to freedom.<\/p>\n

Note: As I have long said<\/a>, U.S. nuclear “first-use” policy remains in effect today, as dangers in the Middle East proliferate this month\u2026.<\/p>\n

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By nightfall on October 18, 1962, President Kennedy thought his executive committee, or ExComm, had reached a consensus on blockading Cuba without firing a shot in anger, but the next day this began to unravel. An early morning meeting with the Joint Chiefs, who still strongly advocated a preemptive U.S. strike, tested JFK\u2019s resolve. McGeorge Bundy had shifted to that shoot-first position overnight. and it seemed that everyone\u2019s emotions were dangerously fluid.<\/p>\n

The President continued to play the Berlin card. Any attack on Cuba, he maintained, would give the Soviets \u201ca clear line to take Berlin….We would be regarded as the trigger-happy Americans who lost Berlin.\u201d European allies would be livid \u2013 they cared passionately about Berlin and their own security but didn\u2019t \u201cgive a damn\u201d about Cuba. And if the Soviets moved on Berlin this would leave him \u201conly one alternative, which is to fire nuclear weapons \u2013 which is a hell of an alternative \u2013 and begin a nuclear exchange…. When we recognize the importance of Berlin to Europe, and recognize the importance of our allies to us, that\u2019s what has made this thing be a dilemma for three days….\u201d Remember, he added, the \u201cargument for the [Cuba] blockade was that what we want to do is to avoid, if we can, nuclear war….\u201d<\/p>\n

Rarely have three words \u2013 if we can<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 signified so much.<\/p>\n

General Curtis LeMay, the most hot-blooded hawk of all \u2013 one of his nicknames was \u201cThe Mad Bomber\u201d \u2013 opposed a blockade on grounds that it would \u201clead right into war.\u201d He also called it \u201cweak\u201d and compared it to \u201cthe appeasement at Munich.\u201d He wanted a full bombing assault as soon as possible. LeMay addressed Kennedy, \u201cYou\u2019re in a pretty bad fix at the present time.\u201d Kennedy, angry, asked LeMay to repeat that. Then JFK replied with a laugh, \u201cYou\u2019re in there with me!\u201d<\/p>\n

After the meeting Kennedy, always skeptical of advice from the military, said to an aide, referring to LeMay and his ilk, \u201cThese brass hats have one great advantage in their favor. If we listen to them, and do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, the press and the public were kept in the dark. A Pentagon spokesman stated in response to a media query, \u201cThe Pentagon has no information indicating the presence of offensive weapons in Cuba.\u201d The mechanics of a possible \u2013 some believed, likely \u2013 retaliatory Soviet blockade of West Berlin gained wide private study in Washington, however. David Klein, a National Security Council assistant, submitted a Top Secret memo to his boss, Mac Bundy, under the heading, The Defense of Berlin if Cuba is Blockaded<\/em>. Klein wrote bluntly: A Soviet blockade \u201cwould inevitably stir feeling among all Europeans that this crisis was in some measure the fault of the Americans.\u201d Most likely \u201cKhrushchev would trade Berlin for Cuba any day,\u201d which would be a \u201cheavy net loss\u201d for the U.S. Under a prolonged blockade, \u201cwith us sharing the blame,\u201d the morale of Berlin would likely crack, and no one would fight a nuclear war for a \u201cdying city.\u201d Therefore, Klein advocated that we \u201cshorten our reaction times\u201d in the four-phase Poodle Blanket plan, \u201cand be prepared to confront Khrushchev at a very early stage with a bluntly nuclear choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Dean Rusk, the tension of indecision was stifling. Taking the elevator from the State Department parking garage to his seventh floor office with George Ball and Dean Acheson, Rusk pointed to his security guards and said, \u201cYou know, the only decent advice I have had this past week has come from these two fellows.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of them, a former pro football lineman, responded, quite serious, \u201cThe reason for that, Mr. Secretary, is that you have surrounded yourself with nothing but dumb fucks.\u201d Rusk laughed, as Ball and Acheson blushed.<\/p>\n

Rusk (an architect and defender of our Vietnam tragedy) with Kennedy, below. In 1970 he was speaker at my college graduation. Like many others, I pointedly refused to shake his after grabbing my diploma. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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