1962’s Real Nightmare.

October 1962 stands out in my life as the scariest of times. I went to bed every evening unsure if the world would exist the next day. They were ten of the worst days of my young life. Now I am saying this as someone whose child almost died and who has survived, to date, terminal and inoperable cancer. The “Cuban Missile Crisis” actually had to do with “Real Weapons of Mass Destruction.” And the outcome was totally different from how our current administration dealt with the faux WMD. Thank God!

Michael Dobbs is a fine journalist who reports for the Washington Post. He has a new book out that is getting great reviews from those who are in the “Know.”

Here is the review by Richard Holbrooke in the Sunday NYT’s Book Review:

June 22, 2008

Real W.M.D.’s

By RICHARD HOLBROOKE

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ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT

Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War.

By Michael Dobbs.

Illustrated. 426 pp. Alfred. A. Knopf. $28.95.

Any new entry in the crowded field of books on the 1962 Cuban missile crisis must pass an immediate test: Is it just another recapitulation, or does it increase our net understanding of this seminal cold war event? By focusing on the activities of the American, Soviet and Cuban militaries during those tense October days, Michael Dobbs’s “One Minute to Midnight” passes this test with flying colors. The result is a book with sobering new information about the world’s only superpower nuclear confrontation — as well as contemporary relevance.

Dobbs, a reporter for The Washington Post, states his central thesis concisely in a description of the state of play on Oct. 25, the 10th day of the crisis: “The initial reactions of both leaders had been bellicose. Kennedy had favored an air strike; Khrushchev thought seriously about giving his commanders in Cuba authority to use nuclear weapons. After much agonizing, both were now determined to find a way out that would not involve armed conflict. The problem was that it was practically impossible for them to communicate frankly with one another. Each knew very little about the intentions and motivations of the other side, and tended to assume the worst. Messages took half a day to deliver. ... The question was no longer whether the leaders of the two superpowers wanted war — but whether they had the power to prevent it.”

Ten days earlier, a U-2 spy plane had produced photographic evidence that the Soviets were sneaking nuclear missiles into Cuba. In “High Noon in the Cold War,” published four years ago, Max Frankel described this reckless action as “worthy of the horse at Troy.” Within hours of the discovery, Kennedy made a decision: the United States would not tolerate the missiles remaining in Cuba. During the next week, a small group of officials who would go down in history as the Executive Committee, or ExComm, deliberated in total secrecy. Most narratives focus on the dramatic debates in the Cabinet Room, during which America’s leaders changed their positions frequently as they searched desperately for the proper mix of diplomatic and military pressure.

Dobbs gives relatively short shrift to that first week, covering it in only 54 pages. His focus — extending over almost half the book — is Oct. 27, “Black Saturday,” the darkest day of the cold war. On that day a Soviet missile team in Cuba shot down a U-2, killing its pilot; the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended immediate military retaliation; Castro sent Khrushchev a wildly emotional letter saying that he was facing an imminent American invasion, and Khrushchev sent a second letter to Kennedy, far tougher than an earlier one. That night men in Washington went to sleep not knowing (as Dean Rusk told me later) if they would awake in the morning, and wives debated whether to stay in Washington with their husbands or go to safer rural hideaways. (Almost all stayed, including Jackie Kennedy.)

By Black Saturday, the two leaders seem to have been transformed by the magnitude of this crisis. But as they searched for a peaceful, face-saving way out, their military machines kept preparing for war. Dobbs is at his best in reconstructing the near misses, misunderstandings and unauthorized activities that could have led to an accidental war. He follows secret C.I.A. infiltration teams deep into the swamps of Cuba as they try to carry out a previously authorized plan to sabotage a copper mine. He traces the flight of a U-2 pilot, Chuck Maultsby, who, confused by the Northern Lights, wanders hundreds of miles into Soviet airspace and somehow escapes without triggering a Soviet reaction. (“There’s always some sonofabitch who doesn’t get the word,” Kennedy notes with characteristic irony.) Dobbs also finds Soviet missile unit commanders in Cuba who, uninstructed by Moscow, prepare to fire missiles at the United States on their own authority if they feel threatened. And all the while, some military leaders in each country agitate for military action.

In Washington, the Joint Chiefs, whose members include several World War II giants, push for action. Gen. Curtis LeMay, the brutal, cigar-chomping Air Force chief of staff, with 3,000 nuclear weapons under his command, barks at Kennedy that his blockade of Cuba is “almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.” In a dramatic confrontation in a Pentagon war room, the chief of naval operations tells Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara that the Navy will handle any engagement with the Soviets in accordance with long-standing Navy procedures and tradition, and needs no supervision from civilians. Furious, McNamara puts new procedures into place that give him and the president greater direct operational control — or so they think.

More than 40 years later, there is no longer any dispute about the most critical meeting of the crisis. It started at 8:05 p.m. on Black Saturday, when, at Kennedy’s instruction, his brother Bobby summoned the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, to his cavernous office in the Justice Department, and told him that the crisis had reached its moment of truth. “We’re going to have to make certain decisions within the next 12, or possibly 24 hours,” he declared. With the downing of the American U-2 that day, Bobby Kennedy said the American military, and not only the generals, were demanding that the president “respond to fire with fire.” This meeting, coupled with a letter to Khrushchev skillfully drafted by Bobby Kennedy, Ted Sorensen and others, led to the Soviet announcement the next day that the missiles would be removed from Cuba.

But threats were only part of Kennedy’s brilliantly calibrated approach. He also offered Khrushchev a public pledge that the United States would not invade Cuba again, a virtually meaningless offer from Washington but politically valuable for Khrushchev with Castro. And there was one more thing — a secret both sides obscured for years — the story of the Jupiter missiles in Turkey. The Soviets had suggested they would remove their missiles from Cuba if the United States withdrew its 15 medium-range Jupiter missiles from Turkey. By the time these missiles had been deployed in early 1962, they were already obsolete; Kennedy had asked that they be removed before the missile crisis, but no action had been taken.

Kennedy was more than willing to dismantle them, but he was determined not to leave a public impression that he had made any sort of deal or “trade” with Moscow. Asked by Dobrynin about the Jupiters, Bobby Kennedy said they were not an “insurmountable obstacle” but that they could not be linked — ever — to the withdrawal of the Soviet missiles. Bobby Kennedy also said that there would have to be a time lag of several months before their removal. It was this “non-deal deal” that opened the door for a resolution. In “Thirteen Days,” his posthumously published chronicle of the crisis, Bobby Kennedy carefully edited his account of the Dobrynin meeting to remove any hint of a deal on Turkey. But almost from the beginning, many people suspected the truth, and looking back on it today, it may seem surprising to see how hard the Kennedys sought to conceal it. But in 1962, with the midterm elections days away, Kennedy did not want to appear weak.

Dobbs’s research uncovers some juicy nuggets for history buffs. My favorite is the debunking of the once-famous “back-channel” between the ABC reporter John Scali and Aleksandr Feklisov, a K.G.B. station chief. The Kennedy administration attached great importance to this connection, and spent much time drafting a message for Scali to give to Feklisov. But on the basis of extensive analysis and interviews, Dobbs believes that the so-called back channel was a self-generated effort by an ambitious spy to send some information to his bosses in Moscow, as well as self-promotion by an ambitious journalist, who parlayed his meetings with the K.G.B. agent into a public legend that eventually led to his becoming the American ambassador to the United Nations. Dobbs, one of the most thorough journalists in Washington, concludes that “there is no evidence” the K.G.B. cable containing Scali’s message “played any role in Kremlin decision-making on the crisis, or was even read by Khrushchev.” He calls it “a classic example of miscommunication.” Nonetheless, Dobbs adds wryly, “the Scali-Feklisov meeting would become part of the mythology of the Cuban missile crisis.”

“One Minute to Midnight” is filled with similar insights that will change the views of experts and help inform a new generation of readers. For those not versed in the full story, I would recommend reading this book in conjunction with Frankel’s short and elegant overview. For those already familiar with the crisis, Dobbs’s account more than stands on its own.

It is hard to read this book without thinking about what would have happened if the current administration had faced such a situation — real weapons of mass destruction only 90 miles from Florida; the Pentagon urging “surgical” air attacks followed by an invasion; threatening letters from the leader of a real superpower and senators calling the president “weak” just weeks before a midterm Congressional election.

Life does not offer us a chance to play out alternative history, but it is not unreasonable to assume that the team that invaded Iraq would have attacked Cuba. And if Dobbs is right, Cuba and the Soviet Union would have fought back, perhaps launching some of the missiles already in place. One can only conclude that our nation was extremely fortunate to have had John F. Kennedy as president in October 1962. Like all presidents, he made his share of mistakes, but when the stakes were the highest imaginable, he rose to the occasion like no other president in the last 60 years — defining his goal clearly and then, against the demands of hawks within his administration, searching skillfully for a peaceful way to achieve it.

Mr. Holbrooke connects the dots to this administration’s attitude and foreign policy actions. I have been thinking about this for years as October 1962 has haunted me for years. Thank you: Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Khrushchev for considering the “Big” picture.

I look forward to reading this book in its entirety. Though I admit that I am afraid of reliving this experience.