I UNDERSTAND THAT THERE WAS A SPECIAL GROUP SET UP TO COORDINATE THE GOVERNMENTS ACTIONS...

President Kennedy did set up a special group. I think it was called the Special Group Insurgency Augmented, if I'm not mistaken. The chairman of this was Attorney General Robert Kennedy. It had on it such worthies as uh...General Maxwell Taylor and Ambassador Averell Harriman and uh...various others uh...that uh...were all interested in this problem. And it uh...was doing its very best to uh...after the Bay of Pigs to find someway to unseat Castro other than the way that they had tried and failed with,

YOU BECAME THE DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF PLANS IN LATE '61, EARLY...

In '62.

IN EARLY '62,

Early '62. In other words I was Deputy Director of Plans at the time of the uh...uh...Cuban Missile Crisis. But I was not yet Deputy Director of Plans at the time of the Bay of Pigs.

IN THE FIRST PART OF '62, WHAT WERE YOUR PROBLEMS WITH COVERT OPERATIONS IN CUBA?

Well this uh...we have a terminological problem here uh.. A semantics problem if you'd prefer: Covert operations describe things like the Bay of Pigs and uh...our operations designed for some political or military purpose. Secret intelligence we uh...ran separately because that was the device whereby we were trying to get clandestine intelligence out of Cuba. Uh...we had plenty of uh...frustration on that trying to recruit good agents inside Castro's Cuba. Because no sooner had Castro come to power than the Soviet KGB moved in to advise his intelligence service. The net result of which was that the Russians were really running that intelligence service and therefore they were very efficient and good at it. So that it was difficult to uh...pick up individuals who were prepared to spy for the United States. Uh... a lot of the good intelligence that uh...we acquired during this period actually came from refugees who fled Cuba and whom we interrogated at an interrogation center in Florida located in the town of Opalaca.

SO THERE WERE TWO ASPECTS OF IT. THERE WAS THIS INTELLIGENCE GATHERING STUFF AND THERE WERE ALSO THE OPERATIONS...

That's correct.

AND THESE WERE BOTH UNDER YOUR...

Now, obviously they uh...worked together at some uh...higher up the line so that uh.. although I did uh.. survey this uh...I had different people running different parts of it.

DID YOU EVER GET THE FEELING THAT WITH THIS SUPER-BODY SET UP UNDER ROBERT KENNEDY THAT THE WHITE HOUSE WAS INTERFERING IN YOUR WORK?

No, this had nothing to do with the interference in our work. What President Kennedy was attempting to do was to organize the...all the resources of the United States government to work on this problem. The State Department was to be involved. The Department of Defense to be involved. The CIA was to be involved. Anybody that could help was to be involved. It was the customs service or the FBI or anyone. They wanted everybody giving a full court press to this problem.

DID YOU GET INVOLVED WITH LANDSDALES'S OPERATION?

Landsdale was part of this. He uh...he was uh... given a job in the Pentagon to organize uh... the kind of operation against Cuba which it once before organized in the Philippines. This didn't go very far. And uh...although Landsdale was there for quite some time, I believe some weeks nothing much evolved out of it and it just sort of dribbled away.

THIS IS WHAT BECAME KNOWN AS MONGOOSE...

Mongoose, that's right.

WHERE DOES THAT NAME COME FROM?

I have no idea why they picked on Operation Mongoose. But that was the name it was given.

NOW I THINK YOU HAVE STRONG OPINIONS ON THIS. SOME PEOPLE HAVE THEORIZED THAT IT WAS PARTLY BECAUSE OF ALL THESE OPERATION — THE CIA, THE KENNEDY TASK FORCE THAT MIGHT HAVE LED CASTRO TO ACCEPT THESE MISSILES...

I have never felt that uh...that had anything to do with it. Uh...obviously uh...

(REPEAT QUESTION)

With respect to uh...these operation, The Bay of Pigs, for example, which failed, and then these other operations to try and acquire intelligence occasionally to do a sabotage operation uh...These were hardly of a magnitude that at that point threatened Castro's hold on his regime. I have never believed that that they had anything, whatever to do, with Castro's acceptance of Russian intermediate range missiles. I believe that this was Khrushchev's idea. That he wanted to plant them in there. That he wanted to pull off the coup of the century by implanting missiles that could shoot into the heartland of the United States from Cuba. And that he would thereby get a great advantage in this whole business of the...of so called confrontation between the two superpowers. And I believe that he sold Castro on the desirability of doing this. I'm even persuaded that if Castro had not been prepared to go along, the Russians might have found somebody else who was. So that I think that the conception was a Russian conception. And that Khrushchev had a lot at stake on this. And that therefore when it didn't work, and uh...he had to withdraw the missiles, I think it was the start of the end of his regime as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

WHAT ROLE DID THE OPALACA...

That was a...that was a very useful device, because refugees coming out of Castro's Cuba uh...could be immediately interrogated there under comfortable circumstances. And the information could be pulled together and got to Washington very promptly. And it was from these interrogations and a couple of agents we had in there who used secret writing to get the first intimation that there were indeed missiles of some sort being put in Cuba.

I UNDERSTAND THERE WAS ONE DOCTOR WHO SAW THEM AT NIGHT BEING PULLED THROUGH THE STREETS AT NIGHT...

Well, that may be. I don't remember the details anymore, but uh... This was information which was sufficiently convincing that it finally led President Kennedy to be willing to permit a U-2 to fly over Cuba which had been banned for some weeks in order to get photographs and to see if there was some hard evidence that indeed the missiles were there.

MCCONE HAD THIS NOTION QUITE EARLY ON THAT THE RUSSIANS WERE GOING TO PUT SOME MISSILES IN THERE, I GATHER THAT HIS OPINION WASN'T TAKEN VERY SERIOUSLY.

Well there wasn't an... any question that uh... John McCone did have the idea that the Russians would put missiles in Cuba. In saying this he was going against the conventional wisdom of all the Russian experts and the intelligence experts in the United States government, incl.. including Ambassadors Bolan and Thompson and various others. Since Mr. McCone didn't have any solid information on which to base this thesis of his it did not make him very popular with President Kennedy when it turned it out that he was correct. Because I think the President had every right to believe that if you were going to go against all the other advisers that you should have something to go on which they didn't have. And this was Mr. McCone's rationale that they were going to put the missiles in there. Uh...in fact uh...when he went on his honeymoon with his uh...uh... Mrs. Pigiet in uh, I think it was on the Riviera, he sent telegrams back to his uh... deputy, General Carter, who was uh...in...acting director at the time. And they became known as the honeymoon cables in which he said I want you to make this case at the White House that your Russians probably will put missiles in Cuba or they may have put them there already. I don't remember the exact details.

HOW MUCH PRESSURE DID YOU FEEL FROM THE KENNEDYS?

There was no question that the President and the Attorney General were most interested in getting results in uh...Cuba. There is no denying this. I know that uh...some people have attempted to soft pedal it. But I don't know why they should. I mean, it was abundantly clear to anybody who was working on these matters that the pressure was very considerable. Uh...the Attorney General would call up individual uh...lower ranking members of the CIA and say How is this operation going or Have you finally landed this team or Are you working on this. And so forth. And uh... the pressure was constant. And it was over a period of weeks and months.

ONCE THE MISSILE CRISIS WAS ON, FOR SOMEONE WHO HAD BEEN AS YOU SAY PRESSURED AND UNDER THE GUN TO TRY AND GET SOME RESULTS IN CUBA, WERE YOU OF THAT GROUP OF PEOPLE THAT FELT LET'S GO IN AND GET THIS CUBAN THING OVER.

I don't recall that I was asked for my opinion. One. Nor do I recall that I had any particular opinion. Two. My job was to try and get more information and I was working as hard as I could on that. I was not trying to get into the policy picture. I always figured that there were plenty of people that were working on that. So uh...I don't recall that...what my views were at the time as to what the desirable action was.

I UNDERSTAND THAT EVEN AFTER THE MISSILE CRISIS THE KENNEDYS WERE STILL KEEN ON TRYING TO DO SOMETHING...

Well there was no doubt that these uh...operations uh... sabotage operations and intelligence operations continued on through until well after President Kennedy's death.

BUT THEY CHANGED IN THEIR ASPECT. DID YOU HAVE TO CHANGE YOUR TACTICS IN SOME WAYS?

Well, we were just enjoined to keep...keep them secret and we were enjoined uh...to uh...to do as much as we could to unseat Mr. Castro. To bring down his government. There wasn't any argument about the purpose of these operations. But they were very difficult to carry out. I've already mentioned to you that the Cuban intelligence, under Russian guidance and control was very tough to operate against. Uh...that body of water that we had to land these people on uh...that we had to go across in order to land people on the coast was a wide open body of water which made it very difficult to approach the coast with an secrecy. In other words uh... when you get that far south, it's pretty clear at night most of the time. Maybe it'll seem black to you but it isn't to anybody who is trying to protect the coastline. So that this was a...a pretty tough uh...series of operations, And uh...I know that we were not too successful with several of them. And uh...the irritation or anger, if you like, on the part of the uh.. President and his brother was manifest. It was made clear that they were disapproving of the fact that we couldn't do better.

IT MUST HAVE BEEN FRUSTRATING FOR YOU...

Well it was frustrating, but that's... that's life.

WHAT WAS YOUR ROLE DURING THE ACTUAL 13 DAYS ITSELF?

13 days of the missile crisis? I was working away as hard as I knew how to get any additional information we could about what was happening in Cuba. First we were trying to get information about whether there were missiles there. Then when we were persuaded that the missiles were there uh...the next job was to find out were they being moved back after the agreement had been made. Were the IL-28s still there. What was going on and Cuba. And this was a uh...a full time job. The uh, in point of fact, the way it was uh...discovered and nailed down that these intermediate range ballistic missiles were in fact in Cuba was when the U-2 flew over San Cristobal and photographed an area that was being cleared and where uh...various kinds of equipment was being installed. And the analysts in the agency, once they saw those pictures were smart enough to remember that Colonel Penkovsky, who had spied for the United States in the Soviet Union had given the agency a manual about these missiles, these very missiles, with charts in them, or diagrams in them, as to how they were to be installed. So that when they saw this clearing and the arrangement of the technical devices there, they were immediately aware that this was the kind of missile that was going to be installed there. And that was what called the quote 'hard evidence' unquote, that the Soviets had indeed done this. And it was those photographs which were used to persuade the British Prime Minister, President De Gaulle and France, and others in Europe that this was a serious threat on the part of the Soviets.

DO YOU RECALL DURING THIS PERIOD, THE PEOPLE IN THE EXCOMM MUST HAVE BEEN VERY CONCERNED ABOUT THE SOVIET READINESS APART WHAT WAS HAPPENING IN CUBA. DO YOU RECALL ANY...

Well naturally they would have been uh...concerned about uh...Soviet readiness. I mean, that's an almost automatic military reaction to any kind of crisis. But there is no doubt whatever that the United States' military advantage, particularly in delivery systems for nuclear warheads was vastly superior to the Soviets in the year 1962. So that uh...from the US point of view the damage that we could have wrought on the Soviet Union was clearly unacceptable to any Soviet Government. The point about this whole issue is that today, no sane man would want to see a rerun of the Cuban Missile Crisis, because in the ensuing period the Soviets have so built up their missile forces, particularly their land based missiles that it is practically a stand off with the United States now. And having a conflict in which naval vessels were in the ocean stopping Russian vessels from preceding, in other words an act of war would be an almost unthinkable confrontation in this day and age.

ROBERT MCNAMARA AND OTHERS HAVE ARGUED THAT DESPITE THE US OVERWHELMING NUCLEAR SUPERIORITY IN 1962 THAT A MISSILE IS A MISSILE AND THAT IF ONLY ONE OP THOSE MISSILES FROM CUBA HAD FIRED OR A MISSILE FROM AN ICBM --HE SAID, YOU MIGHT BE SURPRISED TO HEAR ME SAY THIS, BUT WE HAD NUCLEAR PARITY IN 1962 EVEN THOUGH WE HAD 200 ICBMS AND THEY HAD HALF A DOZEN. HOW DO YOU RESPOND TO THAT?

Well, I have a hard time accepting the fact that a man with one missile is the equivalent of a man with a thousand missiles or a hundred missile or 500 missiles for the simple reason that that makes the assumption that the man with one missile is prepared to shoot that off. In other words, that he's crazy or irrational or has no concept of uh...the world as it is and would invite retaliation, which would be enormously devastating to his country. And I don't think that anybody thought at this time that Khrushchev was a crazy man and therefore one would assume that he had a certain prudence even though he'd attempted to do this stealthy job of inserting these missiles. And consequently it was most unlikely that he would want to have a nuclear conflagration. Therefore, this idea that a missile stand off between one and a lot of other missiles — I think it's very hard to accept. And I think it's a kind of sophistry.

MANY PEOPLE HAVE TALKED ABOUT THE DANGER OF NUCLEAR WAR DURING THE MISSILE CRISIS, KENNEDY IS QUOTED BY HISTORIANS BY SAYING THAT THE CHANCES WERE BETWEEN ONE AND THREE... MCNAMARA SAID...DO YOU THINK THIS IS OVERSTATED? HOW CLOSE DO YOU THINK WE CAME TO A NUCLEAR WAR?

I would have thought that we did not come very close, very close at all, let me put it that way, to nuclear during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is incumbent on every President to think about that. That's one of the considerations that he must put in his calculus when he's attempting to deal with a crisis of this kind. But I cannot believe that this idea that well, we might wake up in the morning and find out we couldn't wake up and so forth is an exaggeration. It's just hyperbole. And in the temper of the days during the Cuban Missile Crisis, that feeling was not conveyed to the public. There were no people going around biting their nails on the subways in New York or anything of that kind, And I don't think it was in the atmosphere. And I don't think it was a reality.

DO YOU THINK IT'S DANGEROUS FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE IN STRESSFUL SITUATIONS LIKE THAT TO THINK THAT THEY ARE THAT CLOSE TO EDGE?

I think that when people become involved in any crisis, obviously the adrenaline runs, the imagination tends to take on an added vividness, and that therefore one is inclined to think, gosh, what if that happened or what if this happened, etc. But if one allows oneself to be overtaken by that kind of emotion, it becomes hard to think straight. And that I would regard as dangerous. But I don't believe that these people on the EXCOM at that particular period were seized with this kind of emotion to that extent.

YOU MENTIONED EARLIER THAT IT WAS KHRUSHCHEV'S IDEAS TO PUT THESE MISSILES IN, WAS HIS KIND OF HAREBRAINED. WHAT IS YOUR EVIDENCE FOR THAT. YOUR FEELING OF THIS. IS IT A FEELING YOU HAD...

I think that when one goes back over,

LET'S STOP FOR A SECOND...

I think that when one goes back over the events at the time, and what Khrushchev has allegedly written in those books that were put out and the analysis of people in the United States, that this has to have been Khrushchev's idea. And when one looks at the logic of it, he was taking a big chance but it would have produced a great coup for him. He would have been a great hero in the Soviet Union if he'd been able to do something like this. In other words, it was an act of daring. I can't conceived that Castro would have been motivated to suggest this because Castro is not a stupid man. And he would recognize that those missiles and bombers in Cuba were a prime target for the United States Air Force. And he knew he didn't have airplanes that could have gone against the US Air Force, nor did the Russians have enough planes in there to do any particular damage to the US Air Force. So that he was running a big risk and therefore, it seems to me the logic of the situation was that he had to be persuaded or coerced, if you like, to do something like this. Or to permit it to happen.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE ESSENTIAL LESSON WE SHOULD LEARN FROM THIS PERIOD, FROM THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS TO HELP US TODAY?

I suppose there are lessons from every crisis in history. Frankly, in, with respect to the Cuban Missile Crisis, I would have thought that the Soviets might have learned a lesson not to try a trick like this again. And I think on the US side, a lesson might have been learned not to try a trick like that on the Soviets. And when one looks at the whole history of the difficulty of getting the European allies to permit the Pershing Missiles to be put into the various countries in Western Europe, one realizes that they were thinking back to something like the Cuban Missile Crisis and recognizing that this was putting them at risk because they're closer to the Soviet Union than we are. And therefore, there was a sensation on the part of some people in those countries that they were carrying the...for us. But it seems to me that is the kind of lesson one learns from a crisis of this kind, and as for other lessons, obviously one of the clear ones was that you would prefer to have more deterrent than the other fellow. And since that doesn't exist to anywhere's near the same extent today as it did in 1962, it means that the United States is going to have to be careful the way it plays it's military hand vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. The place where this is most likely to occur obviously is in the Middle East. In 1967, nuclear bombs were moved around in the Mediterranean. In 1973, they were on ships coming through the Dardanelles. In short, once a conflict takes place between proxies of the Soviets on one side and the United States on the other, one is likely to have this type of confrontation. It's dangerous and every attempt ought to be made to try to avoid it.

NOW SINCE THE MISSILE CRISIS, AND IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING, THE SOVIETS BUILT UP THEIR NUCLEAR ARSENAL ENORMOUSLY. I THINK...IS QUOTED AS SAYING JOHN MCCLOY WILL NEVER DO THIS TO US AGAIN. TO SOME EXTENT THE LEGACY OF THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS IS IT ENDED UP BEING KIND OF A NUCLEAR PARODY.

I believe that to be true. Mr. McCloy has told me the story of his sitting on a white fence that runs along the side of his property up in Connecticut with Kusnetsov on a Sunday morning, or a Saturday afternoon, I've forgotten which, and they were negotiating the removal of the IL28 airplanes. The missiles had already got out. The IL28's were still there, and President Kennedy wanted them out as well. And as I recall the story, at the end of the conversation, Mr. Kusnetsov said, 'alright, Mr. McCloy, we will abide by our agreement. We will take the IL28's out. But I just want to tell you that we will not, in the future, every permit ourselves to be put in this position again.' And it is actually factually true that from 1962 on the Soviets did everything they could to build up their missile force as rapidly as they possibly could. I remember that in the Johnson Administration when there were some of the same people that had worked for President Kennedy, that they simply didn't believe that the Soviets would try to gain an advantage in missiles over the United States. Why they didn't believe this at the time is not clear to me anymore. But for certain they were saying this around town. We mustn't worry about it, the Soviets wouldn't want to have an arms race with the United States. They would never...to do anything like this. But, of course, they have done it.

DO YOU THINK THAT ONE OF THE IMPORTANT LESSONS... WAS THAT WE MUST, ONE OF THE IMPORTANT LESSONS WAS THAT IT WAS BECAUSE OF THE NUCLEAR SUPERIORITY OF THE UNITED STATES THAT THE UNITED STATES PREVAILED. I THINK THAT...

I don't think there is any doubt about this. That the United States was in position to make its will felt. I think the way it was handled with the Russians, giving them a certain out and not trying to really corner Khrushchev, so that he got the kind of cornered rat syndrome, if you like, but leaving him a somewhat graceful way out was desirable certainly. But the fact remains that the United States had every military power to force its will through that quarantine. In other words, no ships would be permitted to pass. And if they insisted on trying to pass, they would disarm them in some fashion or other. Maybe not sink them, but at least disarm them so they'd never get to Cuba.

ARE YOU CONCERNED THAT THIS IS ESSENTIAL LESSON AS FOR MANY PEOPLE HAS BEEN LOST TODAY? THAT WITH THE ARMS CONTROL TALKS AN, OR SOME PEOPLE CLAIM AN INFERIORITY SITUATION FOR THE UNITED STATES NUCLEAR ARSENAL. THAT THIS IMPORTANT LESSON HAS BEEN LOST...

The lesson of deterrence, I don't think it's been lost on the people of the United States. I think that it's relatively clear to the public that we must have a strong missile force. That we must have strong delivery systems. That we must be in the position where we, if the Russians were to force something at us, we could stand up for our own side. If they do not understand this, I'm really very surprised. Because the whole arms control desire on the part of the American public is to try to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, to take some of the acid, if you like, out of the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, and get into sort of an era at least of an uneasy peace, so that people's imagination doesn't get to think that they're suddenly going to be bombed out of their mind by nuclear missiles. On the other hand, I don't think that there are any sensible Americans who don't believe that we ought to be good and strong. Now I grant you that there is one area in which there seems to be some misunderstanding on the part of many people in the public. And that's over what is known as diplomacy. One constantly sees in the newspapers references to the fact we shouldn't take any military action, we ought to resort to diplomacy. But one has to recognize that diplomacy is nothing if it is not backed up by some kind of force, either military or economic or political or something. Because if you and I sit down to have a diplomatic negotiation, and I've got no cards and you've got all the cards, where's that negotiation going to go from my point of view? Am I going to throw myself on your mercy? So, diplomacy in and of itself is a nothing unless it's backed up by strength of some kind.

DO YOU THINK THE MISSILE CRISIS CHANGED KENNEDY, THE PEOPLE AROUND KENNEDY. DID YOU NOTICE A CHANGE?

I don't think there was any doubt that after the missile crisis President Kennedy had squarely in his sites what he was against with the Soviet Union. I think he understood that before. I don't think that he ever had many illusions about it. But each President seems to come to office with the feeling that maybe he'd get along with the Soviets, the American people want peace, maybe he could satisfy their desire for peace, so that usually they need some kind of a shock to convince them that they're really dealing with a tough enemy, who really intends to continue to be tough.

SOME PEOPLE HAVE THE NOTION THAT THERE WAS A MISSILE CRISIS ON THE SORT OF FEAR OF NUCLEAR CONFRONTATION THAT DROVE BOTH, PUSHED BOTH THE LEADERS INTO THE LIMITED TEST BAN. DO YOU AGREE WITH THAT?

Well I am not saying, nor do I intend to say in anything that we have discussed here this afternoon that it isn't possible to make treaties with the Soviet Union. That it isn't possible to make agreements if they, if it's in their interests as well as in our interests, we can get an agreement. And the limited test ban, I think, they felt to be in their interests. We felt it to be in our interests. And so when...was sent to Moscow to negotiate this, ah, he got it rather rapidly. He attributes this himself to the fact that he's sort of, when he arrived made an implied threat if Khrushchev wanted this as much as President Kennedy, they'd get it in two or three weeks, and I think Khrushchev sort of got the message and they tidied it up in very short order. But But this was not a difficult negotiation in the sense that it wasn't full of these anomalies or asymmetries or the other factors which make arms control talks so difficult.

ARE YOU CONCERNED THAT THE UNITED STATES MIGHT BE LOSING ITS SUPREMACY. ITS NUCLEAR SUPREMACY?

Well I don't think we've lost it thus far. I'm not concerned as of the moment. I have to confess that I do become a little absorbed with the fact that we don't seem to able to straighten ourselves out about our ICMB Program. We don't seem to be able to get the number of MX Missiles that the Department of Defense would like to have. We don't seem to be able to decide whether we really want a midget man or a single warhead small missile. And therefore, I get a bit concerned that we can't decide which direction we want to go in and get the program going because these things take a long time to build and to install.

THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE WHO HAVE SAID...THAT THE UNITED STATES LOST THE GREAT OPPORTUNITY DURING THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS. HERE WAS AN OPPORTUNITY TO GET THIS CUBAN PROBLEM SOLVED..

Well that is a contention that one could have solved the Cuban problem for all time at this particular juncture. But I can well understand why it was that the President and his advisers decided not to go for the whole cloth, if you like. For the simple reason that if they had really cornered Khrushchev, and had really put him in that, as I had mentioned a moment ago, that cornered rat syndrome, that he might have done something to get himself out of it which would have made this incident even nastier than it was. I'm not saying there would have been a nuclear exchange. I don't mean that. But he had some options in Europe. He could make things tough for us in Berlin. There are various ways in which he could have made life unpleasant. And I think there was some concern that these options were open to him and that they thought that they had gotten out of this relatively well and that enough was enough. Now, I grant you that if they'd really wanted to press and press and press, they might have been able to achieve a great deal more than they did. But I can understand, nevertheless, why they didn't want to press that far.

ONE OF THE CRITICISMS OF KENNEDY'S OPERATION DURING THE MISSILE CRISIS WAS, OR PRIOR TO THE MISSILE CRISIS, WHEN YOU WERE ALSO INVOLVED IN CUBA, WAS THAT HE SHOULD HAVE, IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN CLEARER, HE SHOULD HAVE MADE HIS POSITION CLEARER AND THAT WHAT WE REALLY HAVE TO AVOID IS GETTING INTO CRISIS, AND ONE SHOULD DO THAT BY CLEARLY SAYING THAT THESE ARE THE LIMITS. THAT THIS IS HOW FAR THE UNITED STATES CAN STEP...

Well sometimes that's a good idea and sometimes it's a bad idea. I mean there is a historical parallel when Secretary Dean Acheson made a statement or a speech at one time that there was a certain area of national interest to the United States and kind of drew a line out in the Pacific, which a lot of people thought brought on the Korean War because the North Koreans figured that, well, that was outside this perimeter and therefore it wouldn't interest the United States. So we had a war to fight, not necessarily as a...

FINAL QUESTION. THE LAST PART OF ALL THESE FILMS IS WHAT WE'RE CALLING THE LEGACY SECTION...WE TRY TO COME TO GRIPS WITH WHAT THIS PERIOD IN HISTORY MEANS TODAY. COULD YOU PUT TOGETHER WHAT YOU FEEL...THERE ARE MANY MYTHS ABOUT THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND WHAT'S HAPPENED THERE, WHAT DO YOU FEEL IS THE ESSENTIAL LESSON WE SHOULD LEARN, AND HAS IT, IS IT CLEAR IN THE PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS TODAY?

The Cuban Missile Crisis was unique in the sense that this was the first time ah, that the Soviet Union had ever attempted to mount this type of coup against the United States. Therefore, it was no doubt that it came as a distinct surprise. The fact that the Soviet experts, the United States government and the intelligence analysts and so forth, all felt that Khrushchev would not be so foolish as to put missiles in Cuba that could fire into the heartland of America was a plausible assumption. That he would not be that foolish. Well, he took the chance, and he did it, because he felt that there was a lot riding on this. As far as his strength and his power and his authority at home was concerned. Now, there is very little that one can learn to prevent surprises. I mean this is part of the nature of life. That one does get surprised. That was one of the big surprises of modern times was when the Egyptian army was able to breach the Bar Lev Line in the Sinai, which began the 1973 war. No American or Israeli analysts who had looked at that Bar Lev Line, which was a formidable defense line, believed that any military force could get through there. So this was another surprise. One is never going to be able to obviate those because in this life, there is always a man who is prepared to take that outsized chance that he can accomplish something which will give him a big jump on his adversary or his friend or whoever he wants to take advantage of. Now, in the sense of a legacy from the Cuban Missile Crisis, one of the things I think that become abundantly clear, is that one should not corner one's opponent and leave him no graceful exit. This can lead to damaging events.

Certainly, one of the less legacies of the Cuban missile crisis is for a country to recognize that when in a predicament of this kind its is a bad idea to corner one's enemy and not leave him a graceful exit. I truly believe that if uh, President Kennedy had really put a full court press on Mr. Khrushchev at the time, not only about the missiles and the IL-28's, but about getting all things Russian out of Cuba and so forth. But it might very well have resulted in some nastiness for American foreign policy in with trouble in Berlin or somewhere in the world where the Russians had the control and the United States did not. So one has to keep a balance in these things. Uh, it is also uh, dangerous in the modern world to uh, get into a military confrontation if it's possible to avoid it. And if there is one thing that the United States and the Soviet Union should be constantly worrying about, it is not to permit those local situations to develop where proxies of one country or the other are going to be fighting with each other. The Middle East is a prime example of this. There've been in a way confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1957, in 1967, in 1973. These things, it is desirable for foreign policy to try to avoid, because it is not so easy to sit comfortably in a chair and say well nothing would ever happen. They might have a confrontation but they would back off before it was too late. But it was very difficult in life, not to be surprised, not to have something develop which one didn't understand or predict and therefore, it's desirable not to have the confrontation in the first place. And I would have thought that was the prime legacy of the Cuban Missile Crisis to avoid these confrontations if at all possible. In short to avoid the root causes of what would bring about the confrontation.