President Kennedy had Just had a Nasty Shock - 20 September 2002

On a beautiful fall day 40 years ago I was on a plane on its way to Chicago.

I hasten to say I was not alone - it was in fact the presidential press plane, which always flew on just ahead of Air Force One, so that the reporters could be on hand to hear any word the president had to say on landing.

President Kennedy was not travelling on a grave matter of state, he was going to make a speech for an Illinois Democrat who was running for re-election the next month and evidently his candidacy needed a boost.

We were well on our way when the president's press secretary emerged from the cockpit, held up his hand and made an announcement.

We were turning round and going back to Washington. He was sorry to report that President Kennedy, apparently, had the flu.

Well President Kennedy didn't have the flu, he'd just had a very nasty shock.

The secretary of defence, or whoever was responsible for aerial reconnaissance, had telephoned the president on his plane and told him they had proof positive - in the form of high-altitude photographs - that 22 ballistic missiles with atomic warheads were at this moment being installed on the island of Cuba and ocean reconnaissance showed that Soviet ships, probably containing many more, were on their way.

The shock of their discovery must have been just as sharp for the Soviet leader, Mr Khrushchev, who at first denied that the Soviet's were sending to Castro's Cuba anything more offensive than weapons, he said, for self-defence.

What Mr Khrushchev didn't know was that the United States had developed a new system of aerial photography which could, they came to say later, distinguish between a male and a female from a height somewhere in the stratosphere.

President Kennedy went on television to warn Mr Khrushchev that the missiles must be removed.

Mr Khrushchev insisted for several days that they did not exist until President Kennedy called in the Soviet's most dependable old ambassador, the inimitable Andrei Gromyko to the White House and showed him the blow-ups of the aerial photographs and there were the totally recognisable missiles, their warheads and all the attendant paraphernalia of a launching site.

The president declared on television that the United States was imposing a quarantine - blockade is a military term - on the island and if Mr Khrushchev did not order his fleet to turn round the United States would have, had now, at the ready in Florida the largest land, sea and air force ever assembled.

After some terrifying huffing and puffing Mr Khrushchev gave in.

But on that unforgettable last Saturday night in October, to all of us on this continent it seemed a toss-up - whether we were or were not on the verge of nuclear war.

On Sunday morning we woke to hear the Russian ships had turned back.

And what an unforgettable Sunday morning - I pulled the shades up in my study and looked out on one of those crystalline fall days.

As my shades swept up a seagull that had been looking things over from the ledge of a little balcony outside my window took off with a wing and a prayer, made a great celebratory circle of the park and then flew like an arrow south west and off to the ocean.

That seagull, for an instant, looked like the dove of peace.

Anyway it was one of those tiny personal things that register on the tablets and stay with you forever.

And this past Tuesday morning I pulled up the shades once again and looked out on the same jewel of a fall day - so dry and crystal clear you think your eyesight has improved dramatically overnight.

Saddam Hussein had agreed to inspections.

There was no symbolic seagull or dove around but for a while I felt something of the same wave of relief.

The euphoria did not last long.

I'd imagined along with perhaps most Americans that the United Nations would quickly respond to Secretary of State Powell's draft of a resolution they could all agree to - namely, an acceptance by the UN's inspection team but under new provisions that could not be evaded as they had been during what the president called "a decade of defiance".

But within 24 hours the Russians, the French, the Germans, the Arab League protested that no United Nations resolution was necessary, certainly not one spelling out penalties or even the possibility of war. Let's take him at his word - he says "No conditions".

What nobody on either side said loud and clear was that without a new resolution and new conditions, Saddam Hussein would be in full obedience with the United Nations if he insisted that the inspections be conducted under the existing rules.

Nobody, so far as I know, mentioned the Security Council resolution 1284, passed three years ago. That resolution laid out the procedure that the inspectors should follow.

First, let's say who the inspectors are. They must not belong to the government of any country.

The nuclear team has 16 permanent members and means to add five more and is based in Vienna.

The biological and chemical weapons team has 63 experts from 27 nations. At the standby are 200 other experts from many nations.

Once the two teams are reassembled on the ground in Iraq they're given two months to lay out how they would like to proceed with their inspecting, if of course it's all right with Saddam.

They would then report back to the Security Council which would mull over their proposals, criticise or modify, and if all was well then order them to go back to Iraq and spend six months to put together and report a tentative, not a final, a tentative decision about whether or not Iraq is developing any of the prohibited weapons.

If this sounds preposterously easy going in terms of the UN's detective work versus Saddam's secret industry we ought to remember that Iraq is not far from twice the area of the United Kingdom.

Quite bluntly what the United States wants, if Saddam defies the inspections or is seen to be building the forbidding weapons, is to have the United Nations and the Congress agree to sanction military action by Christmas time.

As I talk the British ambassador to the United Nations was busy drafting a Security Council resolution on behalf of the United States and Britain which would make clear, in their first report, that the inspectors' work would lead to Iraq's disarmament of the weapons in question.

Of course the whole purpose of the American stand, since President Bush first sounded the alarm, was to eliminate the dangerous weapons and eliminate meant first to identify, then to supervise their destruction and the destruction of the materials that make them.

This is a big order, and the administration - and in the last few days the leaders of Congress of both parties - all have seen that it is a process not mentioned in Saddam's concession to allow simply unfettered inspection. Nothing is said about disarmament.

But even if the British-American resolution passes Saddam has one other beautiful, wide, unmentioned loophole that would keep him in full compliance with the current rules of inspection.

The 1999 Council resolution has a clause telling the inspectors to honour a commitment at all times to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq.

Meanwhile the German chancellor stays adamant in his opposition to any military strike.

The world, he said this past Thursday, should rather overthrow Saddam's government by working from within.

The line reminds me irresistibly of a time when the governor of New York, a Republican, was running for the presidential nomination against another Republican - one Richard M Nixon.

Reporters asked the governor if it was true that his baby son had stock in a private club that did not admit blacks as members.

"Good gracious!" cried the governor - and sold his baby's stock.

Then the reporters hunted down the former vice-president of the United States: "Is it true that you belong to a famous golf club in New Jersey that does not admit blacks?"

The wise and wily Mr Nixon was not abashed.

"I know," he said darkly. "I'm working from within."

Evidently his noble, secret efforts had been in vain. He resigned from the club the next day.

THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

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