"John kennedy:" "We happen to live in the most dangerous time in the history of the human race." "Man:" "I can so vividly remember my first flyover of cuba when I coasted out over corpus christi, texas." "And I could see the yucatan peninsula over to the right, just as the sun was breaking over the horizon." "I could really remember this picture in my mind of the island of cuba and how beautiful it looked." "And I remember the thought in me," ""this beautiful place on earth is dangerous to me."" "Reporter:" "The amount of energy generated by a nuclear explosion is enormous." "Man:" "The world almost came to an end in october of 1962." "It's not fiction." "It's not speculation." "It almost happened, and in fact, in terms of probability, it should have happened." "Interpreter:" "This would have been the beginning of a nuclear world war, of which no one would have come out as winner." "The majority of the population of the soviet union and the united states, and maybe the whole planet, would have died." "Man:" "We always said that we would go to the brink." "And here we were, to the brink, and then we didn't know what the hell to do when we got there." "It was a terrible time." "Believe me." "Reporter:" "There is almost total destruction from blast and heat." "Interpreter:" "It's true that it was a dangerous moment, and maybe later, with time, one realizes that it would have been a world disaster, catastrophic." "Reporter:" "These are the most dangerous..." "Man:" "We have to know everything about the cuban missile crisis to be sure that we don't go down that path again." "Woman:" "It is humans, who are not perfectly rational, who respond to stimulus in unpredictable ways... those people were deciding the fates of humankind." "Narrator:" "Personalities of the three leaders are at the heart and soul of the cuban missile crisis." "All three believed that once the war started, there would be no stopping it." "There were roughly enough nuclear weapons, or enough nuclear power, at the time, to erase human civilization a thousand times over." "Man:" "I received a fateful phone call from the president the morning of tuesday, october 16, in which he asked me to come and talk with him in his office immediately." "And that was the first day of what historians now call" ""the most dangerous 13 days in the history of mankind."" "Man:" "The first inkling that the soviets have missiles in cuba comes from u-2s, high-altitude spy planes," "70,000 feet above the earth." "Man:" "When they found the site, they didn't know what missile it was." "And so they call me." "The photo interpreter said," ""it's longer than the surface-to-air missile."" "I showed the photo interpreter a photograph taken in the streets of moscow of the ss-4 in parades, and he said, "that's it."" "And he said, "you're sure?"" "And he said, "that... that's it."" "Sorensen:" "It was a surprise." "It was a shock." "It had been secretly and swiftly done." "You have to understand, john kennedy, who was a man of few words and not a display of emotional anger out of control..." ""they lied," he said." "He said it grimly." "Brugioni:" "All during the crisis," "I prepared the briefing boards and the notes that were used to brief the president." "I was one step, in a sense, from the president." "And-and-and-and I had to be right." "Man:" "The u-2 photographs of the soviet missile bases are a huge surprise, and also an embarrassment." "Kennedy had made it clear, publicly and privately, that there was a line that he had drawn." "Khrushchev should have understood that." "And he didn't." "And why did he do this?" "Did he not understand that he was risking war?" "This is a story of men and not of governments." "Man:" "Khrushchev was in his 70s." "Kennedy was the youngest president in american history." "Khrushchev was the son of a ukrainian peasant, and kennedy was the son of a millionaire." "They were on completely different planets." "Kennedy believed he had the ability to charm people, and khrushchev was really the first leader that kennedy had met that he was unable to charm." "Man:" "On the one hand, you know, there was nothing illegal about the soviets' putting missiles into cuba." "The united states had put missiles into turkey." "Those missiles were essentially on the border with the soviet union." "Khrushchev has his own motivations." "He wants to erase the psychological advantage that the united states has in having these missiles in turkey, so close to moscow, by having missiles in cuba that are just a few miles off the coast of florida." "Khrushchev sees kennedy as a pushover, thinking that this young u.S. President won't have the cojones, as the cubans would say, to stand up and resist this initiative, scary as it is, by the soviets." "Khrushchev is proven wrong." "Clearly, he did not know john kennedy like he thought he did." "We forget about iron curtain." "On each side, it was a different vision of the world." "Absolutely different." "It was "soviet union, evil empire,"" "from american perspective." "But it was, "united states was evil empire,"" "from the soviet perspective." "Dobbs:" "When kennedy first learned that the soviets had deployed their missiles to cuba, he was outraged." "The question was not, would they accept it?" "It was how they were going to get those missiles removed." "Naftali:" "When kennedy is considering an air strike, it's not clear how precise the bombing will be." "And you're dealing with nuclear weapons." "What if one missile gets launched?" "One nuclear missile could kill hundreds of thousands of people." "One." "Woman:" "The general imbalance is the ratio of 17 to 1 between the united states and the soviet union in deliverable nuclear firepower." "But it all depends on, how much damage are you willing to sustain?" "What's unacceptable for you?" "And for the american administration, even one nuclear warhead on a major city... new york, washington, chicago, any major city... would be unacceptable damage." "Man:" "The soviet union, you know, would be destroyed, and we would only lose a third of our population." "You know, when you think of someone thinking, "only lose a third of your population, and you've won a war," you know, you've sort of left the world of reality." "Savranskaya:" "The story is amazing, the story of deception." "Under the nose of the u.S. Intelligence, the soviets were able to transport close to 42,000 military personnel, innumerable amounts of ammunition, nuclear missiles, to cuba." "The deployment is an incredible military feat." "Sergei khrushchev:" "There's no success military operation without secrecy." "My father thought, what he have to do." ""We have to send very powerful signal to americans, 'don't invade cuba." "We are serious.'"" "man:" "Cuba seems to have the same effect on american political leaders that the full moon once had on werewolves." "We may not froth at the mouth, but we simply can't deal rationally with cuba." "Dobbs:" "There was a revolution in cuba led by fidel castro in 1959, and in 1960, castro declared cuba to be a socialist state allied to the soviet union." "Cuba had been a playground for americans." "They would fly down there, they would go gambling." "The night life was wonderful." "The beaches were wonderful." "So it was kind of seen by many americans as an extension of the united states and as a legitimate extension of the united states." "We had been expecting the invasion since the end of 1960." "The logic of the relationship between cuba and the united states obviously led anyone to believe that there was going to be some sort of invasion." "Cuba was ready to fight." "Castro saw kennedy as a significant threat to the very existence and future, not only of the cuban revolution, but of cuba itself." "He is convinced that the kennedy brothers, being the competitive men that he understands them to be, people who hate to lose, will eventually try and overcome their loss at the bay of pigs by invading cuba again, this time openly," "with the u.S. Military." "That is why he accepts the idea of having these missiles on his territory and the danger that came with it." "Savranskaya:" "Khrushchev likes castro a lot." "It was a lot of early love dynamic... infatuation, flirting, but not completely trusting each other yet, trying to kind of feel each other out, trying to establish the boundaries of the relationship." "Wayne smith:" "Castro may have liked the idea of having the missiles on cuban soil... it certainly turned cuba into a major player in the strategic game... but castro recommended that they not try to do it secretly." "He pointed out the difficulty of that." "The u.S. Has u-2 spy planes overhead almost every day." "Wouldn't it be far better to do it openly?" "Let's sign a new mutual defense agreement." "Interpreter:" "Fidel was never in favor of putting the rockets in secretly... never." "We had the right to defend ourselves and to have the arms that we needed to defend ourselves." "Even if those arms were nuclear and 90 miles from the united states, we had the right to do it." "But khrushchev wasn't in favor of that." "He said, once we had all the rockets here, the united states would know about it and would be able to do absolutely nothing." "That was a big mistake." "Man:" "From october 15th until october 22nd, john kennedy kept the existence of these missiles in cuba a secret." "Sorensen:" "We knew what the russians were up to." "So long as they didn't know that we knew, we might have time to plan our response." "J.F.K., that first morning, asked of us every possible option he had." "Military options, every possible diplomatic option, even the possibility of doing nothing at all, though he himself felt that the country would not stand for that." "Man:" "The cuban missile crisis presented kennedy with a very acute personal challenge, where none of his glamour, his good looks, his religion, his rhetoric, none of the previous virtues, if that's what they were," "that went into the kennedy success story applied any longer in the cuban missile crisis." "He couldn't count on any of those." "And he's left all alone, with a system that's producing all kinds of hot-headed advice." "Kornbluh:" "The nemesis of john f." "Kennedy during the cuban missile crisis is thought to be general curtis lemay, the gruff and grumpy general, who really wanted to just blow cuba to smithereens." "Brugioni:" "When lemay was asked, what would he do with cuba, he said, "I'll fry it," and he meant it." "Man:" "Lemay and all the chiefs... all four services... want to go to war." "This is what they do." "Tense." "You know, it had never happened before." "The people in the white house weren't the most experienced in the world." "The joint chiefs weren't the most flexible." "So there were weaknesses everywhere one turned." "Sorensen:" "The joint chiefs opposed the blockade... in particular, a negotiated solution." "They thought we should go in and hit the russians with everything we had, as one of them said." "Sounded pretty good, sounded pretty tough." "Naftali:" "Kennedy asked his top air chiefs," ""can you assure me that a u.S. Air strike would be surgical, go and knock out all soviet missiles?"" "And they tell him, "no, sir." ""There's a high probability we get most of them." ""There is a possibility of some people" ""in the southeastern part of the united states dying in a nuclear attack."" "Kennedy:" "So it finally comes down to, no many how many advisors you have, frequently, they are divided, and the president must finally choose." "On october 22nd, at 7:00 p.M. Eastern daylight time, president kennedy gave the scariest speech ever given." "I defy anybody to find one that scared more people more profoundly than that speech." "Alzugaray:" "We knew it was going to be about cuba." "It was going to be about cuba, and it was not going to be good." "Sergei khrushchev:" "They announced, "the president will speak with the nation."" "I asked my father what it will be about." "He told, "I think that they discovered the missiles in cuba."" "Kornbluh:" "Up until that moment, they thought they had gotten away with the secret deployment and implementation of these missiles in cuba." "But at that moment, this plan is exposed." "Sergei khrushchev:" "He asked the members of the soviet leadership to come to kremlin, and there, they waited what president would say." "If they declare invasion, it will be very dangerous." "Savranskaya:" "They all expected kennedy would announce an attack." "And what khrushchev says during that session is really interesting." "He is not his normal flamboyant, "we will bury them" kind of guy." "He says, "well, we will respond if they attack." "But that might mean a big war."" "And you can see that he is really grappling with the possibility of a real nuclear war." "Kennedy:" "Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island." "To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to cuba is being initiated." "Sorensen:" "I tried to put some language in the speech that indicated that we were prepared to do what we had to do if we had to do it, but we preferred the blockade, which, in effect, put the ball in khrushchev's court." "It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile, launched from cuba against any nation in the western hemisphere, as an attack by the soviet union on the united states, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the soviet union." "Pretty chilling line." "And these actions may only be the beginning." "Thank you, and good night." "Sorensen:" "Both sides were on that ladder of escalation." "Kornbluh:" "Kennedy's speech has a number of purposes." "One is to define the issue as the united states sees it." "The soviets have committed an act of aggression." "They have done it deceitfully and deceptively, so their motivations are suspect." "But his second purpose is to send a message directly to the soviets very quickly, faster than it would take to send a diplomatic note that would have to be translated." "Naftali:" "This is a different era." "For the 21st-century viewer, it's very important to understand the limits of technology in this period." "Dobbs:" "Communications were very iffy, both between cuba and russia and between washington and moscow." "On the one hand, this was the age of the sputnik, telstar satellite communication systems beginning to be introduced, but they were still dependent on very rudimentary forms of communication." "The soviet ambassador to washington remembered that when he wanted to send a message back to moscow, he would have to summon a messenger from western union, who would appear on his bicycle." "They would hand him the telegram, the man would cycle away on his bicycle, and they would hope that something wouldn't happen to him between him leaving the soviet embassy and reaching the telegraph office, where the message was sort of laboriously typed in," "sent across the atlantic, and then decoded on the other side." "The whole process took 12 hours, which, you know, by the time the message arrived, the whole situation could have changed." "Blight:" "The cia told the president that they were reasonably convinced that not one nuclear warhead had arrived in cuba." "I think the number that had arrived is 162." "Interpreter:" "Modern history knows only two cases of the use of nuclear weapons... the american bombing of the cities of hiroshima and nagasaki." "The capacity of the nuclear device that was used then was between 13 and 20 kilotons." "If we compare this with the capacity of the devices that were deployed in cuba, they were 70 times to 140 times more powerful than that." "Reporter:" "The quarantine went into effect at 10:00 a.M. Eastern daylight time." "Would russian trips try to run the blockade?" "And would our navy sink them?" "♪ It all starts somewhere ♪" "♪ It all starts with one ♪" "♪ Everything comes from something ♪" "♪ It all starts with one ♪" "♪ It all starts somewhere ♪" "♪ It all starts with one ♪" "♪ Nothing comes from nothing ♪" "♪ It all starts with one ♪" "♪ Starts with one ♪ ♪" "On october 24th, the americans implemented the blockade." "The soviet ships were still heading towards the island." "Kornbluh:" "Dozens and dozens of u.S. Naval ships are going to be positioned in international waters in a perimeter around cuba." "Tensions build as these ships come closer and closer, and the concern becomes a confrontation between the u.S. Navy and the soviet navy at sea." "Unbeknownst to kennedy and his advisors, there are nuclear-tipped torpedoes on the soviet submarines that are accompanying the soviet ships." "Interpreter:" "Sure, there are no secrets here." "We had all the standard weapons, the full standard set, and at the last moment, they loaded a special weapon onto our submarine... one nuclear torpedo... although nobody seemed to know what sort of thing it was," "what was it like, and what should we do with it?" "That was for the first time during the whole existence of the navy that a weapon could be used just on the order of a submarine commander, a nuclear weapon." "Naftali:" "The success of moscow's operation depends on the deception never being uncovered." "Khrushchev thought that the americans would not detect the missiles until they were up and operational." "So you'll have these submarines sent out, without proper preparation for a quarantine or for a confrontation on the high seas." "Man:" "The forces under my command... that is to say, under the command of the president... are ordered to interdict delivery of offensive weapons and associated material to cuba." "Those are the instructions we've been given." "Those are the instructions we will carry out." "Interpreter:" "There were quite a few moments when we could have used the weapons, quite a few." "I didn't have any doubt about using it." "I would have done it easily." "News arrived at the excomm that at the last moment, the soviet ships had turned around, and dean rusk, the secretary of state, famously said that we were eyeball-to-eyeball and the other side just blinked." "That moment never actually took place." "Interpreter:" "When they announced the introduction of a sea quarantine, when kennedy ordered the u.S. Military vessels to start the blockade of cuba, khrushchev simply got profoundly scared." "And he ordered our ships to stop and not to cross the quarantine line." "Blight:" "Useful to keep in mind here that all during the cuban missile crisis, huge numbers of all the b-52s in the united states air force are circling the perimeter of the soviet union, carrying humongous bombs." "Are circling the perimeter of the soviet union, imagine if you're khrushchev and knew that the united states air force is now circling like a wolf ready for the kill." "I mean, it would have been terrifying." "Naftali:" "He had the missiles, and he had the warheads there." "He didn't have all the missiles he wanted, but he had enough." "The white house is getting conflicting signals, and obviously they don't have a direct channel to khrushchev." "On the one hand, they do see that some ships are starting to turn around." "That, they can pick up." "On the other hand, work is continuing on the missile sites." "So where are the soviets?" "Is there one soviet government?" "Is there a struggle in the soviet government between hawks and doves..." "as indeed there was in the u.S. Government at the time?" "They don't know, and they can't know." "Well, what's happening is that khrushchev is calibrating his risks." "He decides he's not going to risk the big missiles on the high seas." "Those aren't going to make it to cuba." "But he hasn't given up on his major gambit." "Man:" "The mood was somber... they've certainly realized the danger... but it was also defiant." "Interpreter:" "The people were calm, in the sense that we weren't going to allow the americans to come back over here." "If they disembarked here, they were going to find the people on the warpath." "Naftali:" "Castro is getting angrier and angrier and angrier." "He's angry because kennedy starts launching low-level reconnaissance." "He wants even better coverage of cuba." "And these planes come in really low, just above treetops." "First of all, it's a reminder of american power." "And it's a signal that, if the yankees want to attack, that's not hard." "Man:" "We came across the missile sites so fast and so low that I'm sure that we took them by surprise." "I remember seeing personnel down there," "I remember seeing the actual launch pads that they had prepared, lots of vehicles and buildings and warehouses and storage areas and a lot of camouflage netting." "Interpreter:" "They were flying very close to the ground, and you could even see the pilot faces." "But there was no order to fire." "Neither the cubans nor the soviets had orders to fire." "Obviously, nobody can tolerate a situation like that." "Coffee:" "We could have used fighters and strafed those missile sites." "We could have attacked them with low-level bombs as well." "But they never knew that." "We just... we just took pictures..." "And watched them all run." "The commander of the squadron took the developed film, and the very next day, our ambassador to the united nations, adlai stevenson, used that film, those pictures, those prints, to prove to the world, starting right there in the u.N.," "that those soviet missiles existed in cuba." "Do you, ambassador zorin, deny that the u.S.S.R." "Has placed and is placing medium-and intermediate-range missiles and sites in cuba?" "You will receive the answer in the due course." "I'm prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over, if that's your decision." "We will set up an easel here in the back of the room, where I hope it will be visible to everyone." "Wow..." "I mean, they were really down there." "I mean, they were really close," "I mean, they could have identified people." "Stevenson:" "San cristobal on the island of cuba, southwest of havana." "The purpose being, whatever we would have to do," "I mean, if we would attack cuba to get them to remove the missiles, or go in and destroy the missiles, we wanted the rest of the world to understand that we had good cause, and that there was no way that we were going to live" "with intercontinental ballistic missiles 90 miles off of our coast, which could reach any of our major cities in the united states." "Interpreter:" "If the americans had crossed the fatal line that divides peace from war, a terrible tragedy could have happened." "Dobbs:" "The united states were not aware about the presence of tactical nuclear missiles on cuba." "They were short-range weapons." "Their purpose was to deter an american invasion." "Had the americans invaded, there would have been a very big risk of nuclear weapons' being used." "Once you'd had soviets' using a nuclear weapon against american troops, what would the united states have done in retaliation?" "Naftali:" "As the second week progresses, the level of anxiety increases." "Push is about to come to shove." "Dobbs:" "October 27th became known as "black saturday," because, of all the 13 days of the missile crisis, it was the most dangerous." "Things began happening that neither khrushchev nor kennedy had predicted and that they didn't fully control." "Sorensen:" "One piece of bad news after another." "When we began our meeting that saturday morning, passed around the table was a letter that had come in from khrushchev the night before, and this one was personal, emotional." "It meandered around a bit..." "nevertheless, buried among those threats and denials were some hints that he wanted a way out." "Savranskaya:" "Khrushchev was now feeling very vulnerable." "He also feels personally responsible for the whole gamble." "You can see that he is really grappling with the possibility of a real nuclear war... looking into what is happening and envisioning those mushroom clouds." "Sergei khrushchev:" "It was not edited, it was just what he felt, how he felt to the world, to the future of our countries, and how he was worried that we can make the first step and destroy everything." "He realized full impact of the nuclear war." "He was very scared about this, especially because he learned from the second world war, and he told me many times, he watched documentaries, read stories, watched films." "It is nothing close to the reality." "The reality is much more bloody, much more dangerous, much more dirty." "We have to avoid with any way we can." "Sorensen:" "We sat at the table, trying to figure out how to answer that letter, and then a second letter came in." "This one wasn't personal." "This one sounded as though it had been drafted by the military presidium in moscow." "It demanded that, before they take any action at all, we take nato missiles out of turkey." "Natali:" "Americans couldn't figure out why there seemed to be two different khrushchevs." "There was the khrushchev of the first letter, and there was the khrushchev of the second." "The second, which is read over radio moscow, sort of upped the ante." "It's not enough to promise not to invade cuba." "Now the united states has to dismantle some missiles of its own." "Man:" "Why does khrushchev write two letters?" "He thinks he can push for a better deal." "Naftali:" "The white house reacts by thinking that maybe khrushchev has lost control of the situation, thus making it much more dangerous." "Kornbluh:" "John f." "Kennedy was under intense pressure." "His military generals were saying to him," ""the longer you wait," ""the more operational these missile silos will be." "We need to launch this attack now, mr." "President."" "Dobbs:" "Jack kennedy was in a minority of one." "Everybody else in the room was saying that you cannot take this deal that khrushchev is offering you, this implicit exchange." "Kennedy was the only person in the room who really was determined to explore that exchange." "So how to answer that second letter?" "Or should we answer the second letter?" "While we're..." "Sitting there, debating that, another report comes in." "A u.S. Air force plane had been sent up from alaska to test the atmosphere, to see if the soviets had been testing their nuclear weapons." "Dobbs:" "Chuck maultsby is a reconnaissance pilot." "His job was to collect samples." "As luck would have it, on black saturday, maultsby makes a huge navigational error." "He's blinded by the aurora borealis, and, instead of making a 180° turn and coming back to alaska, he rolls out in the direction of the soviet union." "At the most tense time of the missile crisis, he blunders into soviet territory." "Man:" "If you're flying over the north pole, every direction you turn is south." "And so he's flying south on the moscow south." "And the sun doesn't come up when it's supposed to." "And he says the famous words, "o." "S."" "And he says, "well, what do I do now?"" "Well, he's over the landmass, the soviet landmass, on the 27th of october." "The soviets are looking at him." "You know what they think, don't you?" "Dobbs:" "Maultsby hears russian music over his radio, figures out that he's over the soviet union and not anywhere near alaska." "He's finally turned around, pursued by soviet migs." "He doesn't have any fuel." "He just makes it back across the bering strait." "Sorensen:" "There was a moment..." "a grim moment of silence around that table." ""There's always one son of a bitch,"" "he said, "who never gets the word."" "I later learned that was an old navy saying." "Maybe he heard that." "We didn't think it was too funny." "Naftali:" "This is a moment of extreme tension." "Sergei khrushchev:" "My father repeated all the time," ""we have to prevent the first shot." ""After first shot, the control of situation will shift from our hands"... his and president kennedy's, politicians'..." ""to the military, and they will decide our fate."" "Interpreter:" "The situation was escalating." "And when, on 27th october, we received an order to dig individual trenches for ourselves, to take cover when the bombing started, we understood that it smelled of trouble." "Blight:" "Fidel castro has gone to the russians and said, "you've got the surface-to-air missiles," ""the sam-2s, all over the island." "You can shoot those u-2s down."" "The russians on the island are like," ""yes!" "Because we're going to be just as dead as these cubans" ""if they're scoping us out and they're going to drop these precision bombs and so forth."" "Savranskaya:" "The soviet military on the island, when they expected to fight and die in a nuclear war, they were more attuned, they were more allied, with castro than with their russian leadership." "Interpreter:" "Fidel castro was very good to us and came a few times to see us in the garrison." "Fidel was young, handsome, and full of fervor." "He would give three-hour speeches, and we would be so inspired by his example that we weren't afraid of anything." "Sorensen:" "The military had extracted an agreement at the beginning of the crisis." "Any attempt or success by the soviets in shooting down american spy planes would be met by u.S. Retaliation bombing the soviet surface-to-air missile site that had done the shooting." "Oh, my, the..." "on october the 27th, the most horrible day in my life..." "Get word that one of our flights, u-2 flights, was late, indicating that maybe problems had developed." "Mcilmoyle:" "We all knew the danger." "I mean, we all knew that it could happen." "Our rule was, we flew sequentially." "We all got the same number of missions, weren't exposed to danger any more than any other person." "And a guy named rudy anderson, who was my boss, got scheduled to fly the mission." "Interpreter:" "Naturally, after everything had happened," "I thought and re-thought it thousands of times." "But a task is a task, and you have to do it well, as well as you can." "I just happened to be at the end of this chain." "It was given number 33." "Target number 33." "Events started to develop from the moment the target was detected." "The division commander started worrying." "Something had to be done." "Another couple of minutes, and the target would leave the hitting zone." "Eventually, the order came." "Target 33 is to be destroyed." "After I had pressed the button and the missile was launched..." "There was a tropical downpour." "The sky was completely overcast." "All the trenches were half-filled with water." "So, you know, it's the breaks of the game, I guess." "Interpreter:" "We understood very well what a complex thing it was to shoot at a flying plane, especially with a man on board." "But every soldier is destined to carry out his task at a certain moment, and this is what happened." "But a war is a war." "Sergei khrushchev:" "When the u-2 plane was shot over cuba, my father was very nervous, because it was just sign that, yes, military can make the decision, not with authorization moscow." "Blight:" "Alex johnson, the deputy secretary of state, said, "russians have drawn first blood." "Now's the time to go, mr." "President."" "He was a dove." "Kennedy's head is in a vise." "And I think for a period of time on october 27th, when he first discovered that shoot-down, he didn't know how to get his head out of it." "Brugioni:" "I called my wife, and I said," ""if I call you again, put the kids in the car, and start out for missouri, where my parents live,"" "because I was convinced that we were going to be bombing cuba on monday." "There was an operation plan that the site that shot down our u-2 should be destroyed." "And there were planes ready to do it." "And they pressed that point on that grim saturday afternoon, october 27, saying, "let's do it now!"" "But kennedy knew, once again, that will start the war." "And he said, "time enough for that later." "Let's wait and see how the correspondence turns out."" "Kornbluh:" "Tensions were very, very high." "Cubans were digging holes and preparing for the worst." "They thought their country was going to be invaded, attacked, obliterated." "Invasion plans were massive and uncompromising." "The invasion was code-named "operation raincoat."" "And it essentially involved raining bombs down upon cuba." "Alzugaray:" "We were prepared to die." "I don't think in cuba, people thought that there would have been any other outcome." "As a matter of fact, there was a joke... with time, there would be..." "where cuba was, there would be no cuba, no land, and only a marker in the sea, saying, "here was cuba, the thumb of imperialism in the western hemisphere."" "Naftali:" "It becomes clear to castro that moscow and washington are communicating with each other, and moscow is not letting castro know." "There's no consultation with the cubans." "So fidel is thinking, "wait a second." ""I let the soviets put missiles here." ""Now I'm the center of world politics." ""Our future is at risk, and moscow isn't telling me anything."" "That anger leads to one of those dramatic moments in history that even the best novelist couldn't devise." "It's a long night spent with the soviet ambassador, and over sausages and a lot of beer, he wants khrushchev to know that if moscow decides to launch a strike against the united states, even if the consequences of that strike" "would be the decimation of cuba, fidel supports khrushchev." ""We are willing to sacrifice ourselves for the socialist cause."" "Alzugaray:" "Fidel had two purposes in his letter." "One was to tell nikita khrushchev," ""listen, if you're worried about us, don't be worried..." "we are ready to pay the price."" "The second purpose was, "we have to guarantee victory."" "The logic is, you strike first." "Blight:" "Khrushchev received it and was heard to say," ""this is insane!" "He has lost his mind."" "Quote, "fidel is trying to drag us into the grave with him."" "Dobbs:" "Khrushchev takes it as evidence that castro is beginning to get a little unhinged." "Castro's gambit actually backfired." "Sergei khrushchev:" "It is the responsibility of the leaders at the time of crisis that you have to take all the responsibility and you have to make the decision." "You, kennedy, not excomm." "You, khrushchev, not the central committee." "Naftali:" "The two statesmen, however much they were committed to peace, might have found themselves at war." "You hear him on tape saying to his advisors," ""you know, how am I going to tell the world" ""why I'm going to war," ""when khrushchev has offered me something" ""that really doesn't cost very much?" ""We don't really like the missiles in turkey." ""They're old missiles, really quite useless." ""And they're provocative." "How can I go to war... " because he knew the next step was war..." ""how can I go to war to defend this missile system?" ""The world will never accept it." ""They'll say, 'why didn't you just trade away those missiles?" "You didn't believe in them, anyway.'"" "but most of his advisors didn't agree with him, and ultimately he decided that he was going to just ignore them." "Kornbluh:" "He sent his brother, robert kennedy, to talk to ANATOLY dobrynin, the soviet ambassador to washington, to say, "we will secretly swap the obsolete u.S. Missiles" ""aimed at the soviet union from turkey" ""if you withdraw the missiles from cuba." ""We will not admit that we agreed to a swap." ""And we will not do it at the same time." "But we will do it... you'll have to trust us that we will do it."" "Naftali:" "It's the night of october 27th, black saturday." "Kennedy felt that if this didn't work, he'd have to order the invasion of cuba." "Sorensen:" "Bob mcnamara has often said he went home that night thinking it might be the last sunset he would ever see." "Blight:" "Really scary, because there's nothing you can do except wait." "Alzugaray:" "That night, somebody asked me," ""what about a nuclear war?" "What happens if we are attacked tonight?"" "And I said," ""believe me, we don't have to worry very much." "We'll see a flash, a big flash, and then we will be dead."" "♪ Said the night wind to the little lamb ♪" "♪ Do you see what I see?" "♪" "♪ Do you see what I see?" "♪" "♪ Way up in the sky, little lamb ♪" "♪ Do you see what I see?" "♪" "♪ Do you see what I see?" "♪" "♪ A star, a star, dancing in the night ♪" "♪ With a tail as big as a kite ♪" "Reporter:" "This is radio moscow." "Premier khrushchev has sent a message to president kennedy today that his government has ordered the dismantling of weapons in cuba as well as their cratings, and return to the soviet union." "Reporter:" "The world seems to have veered off, at least for the moment, the collision course toward global annihilation." "Sorensen:" "When I woke up sunday morning," "I turned on the radio at my bedside." "And there, on the radio, was the news that the soviet nuclear missiles were being withdrawn under public inspection." "I couldn't believe it!" "Thunderstruck with happiness, relief." "Interpreter:" "When we discovered that an agreement had been reached between khrushchev and kennedy and that our troops were being withdrawn, we were over the moon." "We had completed our mission and come out alive." "We were glad to be going home." "Kornbluh:" "Nikita khrushchev agrees to withdraw the missiles, first and foremost, because he has a secret deal that the united states will eventually withdraw its missiles from turkey." "And this will change the psychological equation of the balance of power, and so he got something he wanted, secretly, something he could tell his generals was a good reason to withdraw the missiles from cuba, and deal with the embarrassment" "in the eyes of the world of retreating." "And so the missile crisis came to an end." "Savranskaya:" "Fear saved the day on october 27th." "Khrushchev's fear and kennedy's fear." "Both of them experienced this existential, basic, primeval fear of nuclear war and actual destruction of the civilization as they knew it." "Naftali:" "How interesting that khrushchev did not make a big deal about the jupiter concession." "How easy it would have been for him to say," ""well, I forced the americans," ""I scared them so much, I forced john kennedy to go to the turks and take away missiles from the turks."" "He didn't do that." "Khrushchev kept his word." "The soviet government kept its word." "It promised not to go public with this, and it didn't." "Never... and it didn't." "It's an amazing part of the story." "Sergei khrushchev:" "Who won?" "Everybody won, because we're still alive." "We're very lucky that both in white house and kremlin, we have politicians not like, "first shoot, then think,"" "they're politicians who first think, then think second time, and they decided not to shoot at all." "Personality counts for an enormous amount." "At key moments in history, personality can make the difference, and I think the cuban missile crisis is one of those times." "It's quite possible that it could have ended in a nuclear war, with less controlled, less responsible people in the white house and the kremlin." "For more information on three men go to war,"" "visit pbs.Org." "This program is available on dvd." "To order, visit shoppbs.Org or call us at 1-800-play-pbs." "♪ It all starts with one ♪" "♪ It all starts somewhere ♪" "♪ It all starts with one ♪" "♪ Nothing comes from nothing ♪" "♪ It all starts with one ♪" "♪ Starts with one ♪ ♪"