'They handled it exactly the right way': How the Kennedys averted the 1962 Cuban missile crisis

Between 14 and 28 October 1962, the world came to the brink of nuclear war. According to insiders who spoke to the BBC, the expertise of US President John F Kennedy and his brother Robert saved the day.

It was, said a BBC Panorama presenter on 29 October 1962, "the most dangerous week in the whole history of mankind".

On 14 October, US aerial photographs had shown that the Soviets had secretly been installing nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba, 90 miles (150km) from the US coast. Over the following 14 days, a confrontation between the two superpowers threatened to boil over – and the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war. 

The crisis was ultimately averted when the Soviets agreed to remove their weapons. In the years since then, insiders have spoken to the BBC, revealing surprising insights into the tactics behind the scenes during 14 days that shook the world. The Soviets' climb-down, it turned out, was influenced by US President John F Kennedy and Robert Kennedy's expert statesmanship – and a chance conversation overheard in a Washington bar.

Throughout the summer of 1962, more than 40,000 Soviet soldiers, engineers and technicians arrived in the Cuban port of Havana, posing as tourists and agricultural specialists, and covertly installing nuclear missiles on the island. 

On 14 October, a US spy plane spotted evidence of the missiles, sparking the crisis. Arthur Lundahl, then the CIA's head of photo intelligence, told the BBC's Timewatch in 1992 about the moment when they realised exactly what they were seeing. "I put my head over the eyepiece and adjusted the viewfinders and took one long look at that. And I looked up at them and I said, 'I know what you're thinking. And I'm thinking the same thing… We're looking at Soviet-type medium-range ballistic missile sites, right?'"

In fact, Soviet activity in Cuba had sparked concerns in the US for weeks beforehand, prompting President Kennedy to request more detailed intelligence. According to the US Secretary of Defense at that time, Robert McNamara, the spy plane revelation came after multiple previous warnings.

"I think the [US military] received 5,000 reports of missiles being introduced into Cuba, and they investigated them and finally concluded they were erroneous," he told Timewatch. "They couldn't believe that wise political authorities… would run the risk of introducing those missiles into Cuba because there was very little advantage to be gained by it and very heavy risks associated with it."

The discovery of Soviet missiles on Cuba was kept secret from the world by order of the US president, until he announced it in a speech on 22 October. In the meantime, Kennedy had a pre-arranged meeting with the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, on 18 October. 

What happened next was relayed to the BBC in 2002 by Gromyko's translator that day, the British-educated Viktor Sukhodrev. "We went, as usual, to the Oval Office. Kennedy was sitting in his customary rocking chair and Gromyko was sort of next to him and there were two couches opposite each other and a little table in between with a drawer," he told the BBC's former Moscow correspondent Allan Little. "It was civilised, if not the friendliest of discussions. I somehow felt that Kennedy was rather tense."

As Little summed it up, "Gromyko knew about the missiles. Kennedy knew about the missiles. But neither man revealed his hand. What passed between them was a dialogue of illusion and insinuation, a poker game in which the stakes were the lives of all of us."

Kennedy had the aerial photographs at arm's length – but chose not to confront Gromyko with the images. "They were in the drawer of that table," said Sukhodrev. "Kennedy never once mentioned the word missile, and he never touched that drawer. And I don't know, and no one ever will know, what Gromyko would have said had Kennedy shown him those photographs… But the plain fact is that Gromyko did not have to lie. The question was not put to him."

Instead, Kennedy repeated a public statement he'd given on 4 September, warning that the introduction of offensive weapons into Cuba would bring the "gravest consequences" – and Gromyko read out his own statement, asserting that Soviet aid to Cuba was purely defensive and did not pose a threat to the US.

Yet Kennedy had already convened a war cabinet, known as Excomm, and within days would declare the existence of the photos to the world. Secret recordings of the cabinet revealed the guessing games being played by the US during those tense days.

"He's initiated the danger, really, hasn't he? He's the one playing God, not us," said Kennedy, with a member of Excomm replying: "We've never really believed that Khrushchev would take on a general nuclear war over Cuba… I must say I don't really see the rationality of the Soviets pushing it this far."

The cabinet was divided over what action to take, with further U-2 flights revealing that the missile bases were nearing completion. The Joint Chiefs of Staff preferred a course that involved military action. "There had to be a final decision made… as to what our reaction was going to be," Dean Rusk, the then US Secretary of State, told Timewatch. "We were sitting around the cabinet table, and the president was the last one to come in, and we rose as he entered the room. And he looked around the table and said, 'Well, gentlemen, today we're going to earn our pay.'"

Kennedy ruled out an immediate airstrike followed by invasion, fearing the dangers of escalation. Instead he announced a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba, demanding that the missile sites be dismantled.

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Khrushchev's subsequent decision to withdraw was also influenced by an incident that only came to light after the Soviet Union collapsed. On 25 October, "Khrushchev, eyeball-to-eyeball with the West for three days, blinked," reported Allan Little in 2002. "The story of why he blinked is extraordinary and chilling."

An undercover KGB agent in Washington, posing as the Washington correspondent for the Soviet news agency Tass, had called in at the National Press Club for a drink just as the bar was closing the night before. Anatoly Gorsky got chatting to the bartender, a Russian emigre called Johnny Prokoff – who told him about a private conversation he'd overheard a couple of hours earlier between two journalists from the New York Herald Tribune, Warren Rogers and Robert Donovan.

According to Prokoff, Donovan was planning to fly to Miami that night as one of a small group of correspondents joining a US invasion force due to attack Cuba the next day. Gorsky rushed back to the Soviet embassy and messaged Moscow that an invasion was imminent. 

Soviet intelligence gathering was not as advanced as Cold War paranoia might have led the US to believe, however. It turned out that the journalists had only been discussing contingency plans for covering a US invasion of Cuba, rather than confirming that an invasion was planned. Prokoff, who is not believed to have been a KGB agent, had misheard.

Yet news of the chance encounter was sent straight to Khrushchev's desk. A close aide to the Soviet Premier, Oleg Troyanovsky, recalled that he had been extremely alarmed by the message. "By that time, I think, he realised that this is a pretty dirty business which he got himself into."

Some believed Kennedy was playing for time all along. "People were thinking in terms of this is a situation that unless it is handled with great skill and delicacy, could certainly finish up with nuclear war," Lord Harlech, the British ambassador to the US, told the BBC in 1969. Harlech also happened to be a personal friend of Kennedy's – and his brother Robert, JFK's most trusted adviser.

"The president and Bobby entirely accepted that Khrushchev had some very, very difficult decisions to take. He had committed himself to this course of action. If he was to withdraw from it, he would need a lot of time in order to reorganise his position in the Kremlin, reorganise the Soviet position vis-à-vis its allies, vis-à-vis Cuba. And every few hours extra that they would give him would help."

Harold Macmillan, who was the British prime minister at the time of the crisis, told the BBC that the US president and his brother had precisely the right qualities that were needed during the crisis. "First, a statesman – and both Kennedys had that statesmanship – must try and see the other man's point of view. How he's got himself into that position and how to help him to get out of it... And that was the policy they pursued." 

The second quality they needed was a full appreciation of "the horror… the terrible destruction" of a nuclear war. "And yet they mustn't be overwhelmed by this horror… There's a point at which we've got to stand and make it clear to the other man we are going to stand. We mustn't therefore be frightened out of a firm and honourable position by the terrors of a world war."

In Macmillan's view, the Kennedys combined that "understanding for their opponent" with an "absolute firmness for the position which they would ultimately defend". The resolution of the crisis showed that "the men who handled it, handled it exactly the right way". 

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