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ExComm, the Quarantine, and the Secret Jupiter Deal
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Kennedy convened a secret committee, ordered a naval quarantine, and made a hidden deal over Jupiter missiles in Turkey — all while the public had no idea how close the world was to nuclear war. This is the inside story of the decisions that defined the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Most people know the Cuban Missile Crisis as thirteen days of tension that ended without a shot fired. That's the version that got handed down.
On October fourteenth, nineteen sixty-two, a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft piloted by Major Richard Heyser flew a routine intelligence pass over western Cuba. What the cameras captured over the Pinar del Río region wasn't routine at all.
Kennedy's first decision was to tell almost no one. He convened a small group of senior officials and advisors in secret.
Kennedy chose the naval blockade, though his administration carefully called it a quarantine. The distinction mattered under international law.
On October twenty-sixth, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev sent a private letter to Kennedy. It was long, emotional in places, and it offered a path toward resolution.
October twenty-seventh, nineteen sixty-two, is now referred to by historians as Black Saturday. It was the day the crisis came closest to going catastrophically wrong.
The United States Navy had been tracking a Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine designated B-59 in international waters off the coast of Cuba. The submarine had been submerged for days.
The resolution came within days. Khrushchev announced on October twenty-eighth that the Soviet missiles in Cuba would be dismantled and removed.
Going back to where this began: the photographs that Major Heyser brought back on October fourteenth. They started something, but not quite what history's shorthand suggests.
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