LET ME START WITH A NON-CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS QUESTION. IT WAS CLEAR TO THE ADMINISTRATION THAT THERE WAS NO MISSILE GAP. WHY DID THE ADMINISTRATION GO AHEAD WITH THE MILITARY BUILDUP, IN SPITE OF THE NON-MISSILE GAP?

Well, the first decisions of acceleration of particular and impressive new weapons systems -- Polaris, for example -- were made before it was all that clear, and as a result of a general feeling that improvement in the basic strategic position was still desirable. And as time goes on in the Kennedy administration the... question becomes a rather different one, and it is the limits that the President finally sets -- the limits below which Mr. McNamara does not think he can hold the deployments without real political opposition on the Hill.

COULD YOU JUST PULL DOWN THE BACK OF YOUR JACKET -- IT LOOKS KIND OF....

Why don't you leave that in the script?

SO THIS, IT ENDED UP BEING MORE OF A POLITICAL REASON THAN A MILITARY...

Put it another way -- there was a limit on the number of deployments desired by one for... one service or another that you could cut out, without rebellion on the Hill. And in that first year, we cut way back on the new bomber system, which was what the Air Force wanted most. And that involved the President in a very complex political negotiation, with the chairman of the House Armed Services, which seemed to him and to the secretary of defense, as much of a war as they wanted on that issue at that time.

LET'S BEGIN IN AUGUST-SEPTEMBER, '62. DID YOU THINK THERE WAS ANY CHANCE THE RUSSIANS WOULD PUT DEFENSIVE MISSILES IN CUBA?

Well... "Any chance" is a rather sweeping way of putting it. I think, I thought and I think most of us thought in the administration that they were not likely to do that.

WE'RE NOT GOING TO USE MY QUESTIONS, SO IF YOU COULD....

Oh, I see. Well, I'll just start again. I think that until we actually found the missiles by photography, most of us thought that there would not be that kind of deployment in Cuba.

WHY?

We had seen no deployment at any time on Soviet nuclear capabilities, outside the Soviet Union, and we simply did not think that the evidence we had seen of increasing Soviet assistance to Cuba was sufficient to lead us to believe that they would change from the very prudent policy that they had followed thus far.

YOU WERE ON ISSUES AND ANSWERS, THE ABC TV PROGRAM, THE SUNDAY WHEN THOSE FIRST U-2 PRINTS WERE MADE, AND I THINK YOU SAID MORE OR LESS WHAT YOU SAID JUST NOW. YOU KNEW THOSE PLATES WERE BEING MADE THAT DAY.

I certainly knew that they'd, they were being ordered, and were either going or about to go, yeah.

COULD YOU ANSWER THIS QUESTION FOR ME BY REFERRING TO THAT INTERVIEW?

Oh, I know about the interview, but I don't have it in front of me.

NO, BUT JUST "WHEN I WAS ON..."

Why, are you planning to print the interview?

WELL, WE MIGHT USE PART OF THE INTERVIEW AND THEN HAVE YOU COMMENT ON IT.

Well, what do you want me to say? If...

IF YOU COULD....

I can say, "That's a legitimate interview; that happened...."

MAYBE IF YOU COULD START BY SAYING, WHEN I WAS ON ISSUES AND ANSWERS THAT DAY...

Well, we continued to hold that view until we got the definite photographic evidence and so, when I was on one of the Sunday TV programs on the, what, the 14th of October, I said what I've just said. I -- I'm sorry, you know, you're trying to create an enactment, and I don't think it's a very easy way for me to talk.

YEAH, OKAY. LET'S GO ON. WHEN YOU FIRST HEARD OF THE U-2 PHOTOS, WHAT WAS YOUR INITIAL REACTION? HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THEM?

I heard about them by a phone call from Ray Cline, who was one of the senior officers of the CIA, and he told me in some kind of indirect language, "The thing we have been worried about is something we now have to worry about," or something like that.

AND YOUR IMMEDIATE REACTION, WHAT DID YOU THINK?

My immediate reaction was, "What do we do about it?" and I decided that what we'd do about it was... nothing until the morning, because it was clear from what he'd told me, that the intelligence people were fully occupied in organizing the material, that they would not have it in a form which would be clear to laymen until the morning -- that if I broke up a dinner party to go and tell the President or call the President on the telephone, either one of two things would happen: either he would get on the telephone himself, to anyone that he thought it important to talk to, and that the risk in that process of some sort of alert to a very attentive town was undesirable, and in any event there wasn't much that could be done that night. So I decided to wait and tell him in the morning.

WHAT WAS YOUR OWN PERSONAL SORT OF IMMEDIATE THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?

Well, I really don't recall what I thought that evening. I do recall that when I talked to the President in the morning, we... got to that question, "What do we do?" And one or the other or both of us said, "Well, we'll probably have to take them out." That was our first reaction. Obviously our minds changed.

CAN YOU PAINT THAT PICTURE A LITTLE MORE?

Not very well. Well, I went over to see him, and he was still in his bedroom. I think probably reading the papers -- he often did in the morning -- and I told him quickly why I'd come over, and that the pictures would be available for a full intelligence briefing, when he was ready. And he said something like, "What do you think we're going to have to do?" and I said something like, "I guess we'll have to take them out." I don't want to say that these were the exact words, because I don't have that recollection. And then we began to talk, and he began to tell me who he wanted at a meeting that we... he wanted me to set up, and that was about it.

THAT MORNING THERE WERE OTHER THINGS ON THE PRESIDENT'S AGENDA -- I THINK HE HAD TO SEE WALLY SCHIRRA FOR A PHOTO OPPORTUNITY. CAN YOU TALK A LITTLE ABOUT THE NEED TO KEEP THINGS...

Well, it was apparent right at the beginning that until the President had a chance to make up his own mind as to what he was going to do, it was really very important that there not be any leaks, and in order not to have leaks, there had to be no evidence that anything startling or different was happening in the processes of presidential decision making, and it followed at once that there should not be visible changes in the President's calendar or schedule, which included, of course, campaigning, because we were in the October of a congressional election year.

ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS YOU ASKED IN THE INITIAL EXCOMM MEETINGS WAS, WHAT IS THE STRATEGIC IMPACT ON THE POSITION OF THE UNITED STATES? COULD YOU KIND OF LEAD INTO THAT?

What do you want me to lead into, my question or McNamara's answer?

YOUR QUESTION.

Well...one of the many questions presented by this new fact was whether it really changed the strategic nuclear balance. And so that question came up in that first meeting.

WHAT WAS YOUR FEELING ABOUT IT, INITIALLY?

I never thought, at any stage, that changes in the strategic balance as such were the critical question.

WHY?

Well, because I did not think that the question of how badly one or the other side would... do in a strategic exchange was the way the two governments really looked at a strategic exchange -- both sides would have been losers before, during, and after any such installation.

THAT WAS NOT, I UNDERSTAND, THE OPINION OF EVERYONE IN THE ROOM.

Well I can't reconstruct for you the exact views of... all the people in the room, but, one very important set of views was that of the military forces, and their commanders, and of what you might, for want of a better word, call the strategic-analytic community, which would ordinarily take the view that a new deployment of this kind had a significant effect on the strategic balance, and therefore did make a difference in those terms.

WHAT WAS THE TONE OF THESE EXCOMM DISCUSSIONS?

Well, different tones at different moments, all the way from laughter to very great tension. But, in the broader sense, I think as I recollect it and as I get it back from tapes like the one that has now come off, it was quite cool, quite orderly, somewhat repetitive, because of the difficulty of... sharpening clear answers to some of these questions that really are freshly presented; but the discussion was I think, on balance, good, clear, and very serious, of course.

WERE THERE STRONG POSITIONS HELD BY BOTH SIDES?

Well, there weren't two sides, except in the sense that any time you had a question and there was a division, there were two sides, but there wasn't a hard-boiled camp and a soft-boiled camp, or anything that retained the same numbers of persons doing the s-, taking the same opposed positions, so it isn't a two-sided enterprise.

DID YOUR POSITION CHANGE DURING THE...

More than once, sure.

CAN YOU SAY THAT AND DESCRIBE A LITTLE BIT HOW?

Well... I think the particular role that I thought I ought to try to play was that of making sure that important possibilities were not prematurely discarded, that... discussions that... we might know -- I might put it, another way, that what we had here was a question of such gravity that... the service I could help to play for the President was to make sure that all the really important questions got looked at with as much thoroughness as time allowed. And that necessarily had the effect of making me pay attention to and call for attention to different issues at different times, and that was more important, I thought, for my own role in the affair, than how I might myself come out on a particular point, because I was not representing any service or any particular military or political interest in the government, I was representing, in a sense, or trying to represent, the process by which the President came to his own decisions.

THAT'S WHY I'M INTERESTED IN WHAT YOUR OWN FEELING WAS, SINCE YOU WEREN'T IDENTIFIED WITH ANY CAMP.

Ah, but I don't know what thing do you want to focus on? There's two weeks of work here.

I KNOW. BUT I GET THE SENSE THAT YOUR FEELING ABOUT WHAT HAD TO BE DONE WENT THROUGH TWO OR THREE STAGES.

I can't. I just am not understanding you. What do you mean about what had to be done?

YOU SAID YOUR INITIAL FEELING, OR THE PRESIDENT'S INITIAL FEELING, WAS THAT YOU HAD TO TAKE THEM OUT. OBVIOUSLY, YOU EVENTUALLY FELT THAT THE BLOCKADE WAS THE ANSWER...

That's right, but quite a lot had gone on before we got there.

CAN YOU... ENCAPSULATE THAT FIRST WEEK?

Not very easily, but I can try.

OKAY.

Um... Well, I remarked that the first reaction on Monday morning in the President's bedroom -- I don't remember who said what to who first, was "We'll probably have to take them out." after a day or so of discussion, it was clear that there were enough difficulties with that enterprise so that alternatives ought to be thought about, and the alternative which rapidly became the most impressive was the notion of beginning with a naval blockade -- it came to be called a naval "quarantine." And I thought that had risks to it, and I thought that it was being accepted without a thorough examination or re-examination of the air attack option, and so I urged such a reconsideration, and the President I think with some reluctance, but seeing the point, that we still had time, said, "Well, let's have it looked at again," -- this is, I think, on Friday morning, and we did look, on that Friday, we had disagreements in the executive committee --the president was out campaigning -- there was a decision to have, to break into two groups and study both more carefully, and I became the straw boss of the air attack group, which was really because there wasn't anybody else to do it the man who had most energetically advocated that course of action was Dean Acheson, but he didn't think a former Secretary of State should be in this kind of staff work -- I think probably rightly. In any event, that study demonstrated to the President, and I must say to me too, that there were such questions remaining in the air strike as then proposed, that the naval action was the best first step. One very important element in the emerging... agreement on that point was the fairly obvious point, first I think made to me at least, by Douglas Dillon, that you were in no way giving up the possibility of further action, ground or air or both, by beginning with the quarantine.

YOU SPOKE VERY STRONGLY ABOUT THE ROLE OF THOMPSON. WHAT WAS THE CONTRIBUTION OF TOMMY THOMPSON?

Well, this is from the context of -- where are we now? -- the whole crisis?

IN THESE EXCOMM MEETINGS. IN HIS UNDERSTANDING OF HOW KHRUSHCHEV MIGHT REACT.

It's when Khrushchev begins to react that he's particularly valuable, obviously. But well. We -- one of the most important and valuable and constructive members of the Executive Committee and of the whole process, in those two weeks, was Llewellyn Thompson, who had been the ambassador in the Soviet Union had become very well acquainted with Khrushchev personally, had perhaps more direct access to Khrushchev over a longer period of time than any other American. And was in addition a very serious and experienced student of Soviet behavior and Soviet government's behavior. And, at more than one point during the crisis, as the President considered what he would do next, the... or what a particular Soviet move meant, it was Thompson's analysis, and Thompson's counsel that was of particular importance. He was, for example right about one of the questions that troubled many of us in the first week, which was... What is the likelihood that if we take an active step in Cuba, the Soviets will take a parallel counter step in Central Europe and particularly in or around Berlin. He thought not. He turned out to be right. He also thought at the critical moment on Saturday the 27th, that the President should keep the pressure on Khrushchev, that the overall picture that he had, he thought he saw in Soviet behavior was that the Soviets were on the defensive and that they were not going to do something dangerous and aggressive, that they were looking for a way out, and that it was safe, therefore, to press for the point that mattered most to us. A third case, not as important as these first two, but not trivial, is that in completing the work on the crisis, it was important for us politically, if we could, to get the IL-28 bombers out, even though we had not asked for that at the beginning, and Thompson told the President that he thought that, they would come out, the Soviets would take them out if we made it clear that was essential before we lifted the blockade.

I ASSUME YOU WERE IN ON THE MEETING WITH GROMYKO THAT WEEK.

I don't think I was in that meeting, no.

BUT YOU MUST HAVE SPOKEN WITH THE PRESIDENT AND THEN RUSK SHORTLY AFTER THEY DID.

Are you not going to talk to Rusk, because he was there.

YES. MAYBE WE SHOULD SKIP THAT, OKAY. WHAT DO YOU THINK WAS THE MOST CRITICAL MOMENT DURING THE CRISIS, FOR YOU AND THE PEOPLE IN THE EXCOMM.

Oh, I think the crisis had the way of getting... worse right up until the end, that is to say the worst day was almost surely Saturday, the 27th. Because that was the day when the Soviets changed from their first message to the second message, which put upon us the burden of deciding what we were going to do about the missiles in Turkey, it was the day in which Major Anderson was shot down, it was the day in which an American U-2 wandered off course over the Soviet Union, and in which pressure for prompt additional military action, a direct recommendation from the Joint Chiefs of Staff became strong, so that a sense that there wasn't much time left began to be very strong among us.

WAS IT A SENSE THAT THE "HAWKS" ON THAT SATURDAY WERE SORT OF GAINING STRENGTH?

Some people have said that, but I don't myself think that was the case. no, it was simply that events were beginning to create their own pressure. If your reconnaissance flight is shot down and it is your general feeling, as it was the general feeling, the President's own feeling, that we would have to keep up our reconnaissance over Cuba and keep track of what was going on, because work on the missile sites was continuing, then you faced a very early decision as to how you were going to protect your reconnaissance process, and your reconnaissance people, and that's going to involve military action of one kind or another, and once one side moves to that kind of action, as they seemed to have done, by shooting down the U-2 with Major Anderson in it things may get worse pretty fast, and the requirements of the military enterprise can become very strong and very compelling. So there didn't seem to be very much time.

WHY WAS THERE NOT A RETALIATORY STRIKE? WAS IT A DECISION THAT SOMEONE IN THE EXCOMM MADE?

Well, the decisions you plan to make and the decisions you make are not necessarily the same thing, and what seemed to the President, I think after he had considered this one action...

SORRY.

Oh, I see what you mean. University Place is bothering us.

THAT'S A VERY GOOD POINT. SO PLEASE IF YOU COULD....

Well, the decisions, the act- actions you plan to take, and the actions you actually, decide to take, are not always the same; you can put yourself in a planning position to do something quickly, and then when the time comes to say, go, or no go, you may well feel that you should wait. That's what happened on Saturday. It wasn't clear, we still don't really truly know, who gave the order that fired the missile that shot down the U-2. It wasn't essential to... make a blow back until we had let another day go by, and even decided what particular reconnaissance we wanted to send on the Sunday, and so the President decided that the question of retaliation could wait.

WHAT DO YOU THINK WOULD HAVE HAPPENED ON SUNDAY OR MONDAY IF THE NEWS HADN'T COME.

Well one advantage of taking this kind of decision a day at a time is that you can see what the other side is doing. More and more, as the crisis went on, people would say, "Well, what did, what does he mean by that?" or "What is he going to do next?" and that always meant Khrushchev. So, there either would be an answer, or there would not be an answer to the messages that... Bobby and Scali had delivered on Saturday. There would or would not be a military action against a reconnaissance flight. We were considering -- the President had specifically instructed McNamara to plan -- for a strengthening of the blockade, as a possible early step; that is one of the clear results of the day of deliberation on the 27th, and my own guess is that we would have taken limited military actions to safeguard or to insist upon the necessary reconnaissance, but that before we moved to anything like the full air attack or invasion which were the recommendation of the chiefs less Taylor we would have probably, I think, found it better to take it more slowly, and to strengthen the blockade.

DID PRESIDENT KENNEDY'S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE MILITARY CHANGE DURING THE CRISIS?

Well, you know, "the" military is an abstraction; you're really talking about military men, different ones. The military man who was present in the discussions all the way through, was Maxwell Taylor, the chairman of the joint chiefs, a man for whom the President had great respect going in, and greater respect coming out. I think the President, on the other hand, felt that indeed there was a tendency for military organizations and the military process, considered in a general way, to lean toward military solutions, and not to be alert, as he had to be, to the political consequences of particular military, or the possible consequences of political military steps, so that the sense that it was very, very important to keep political control over decision-making that had a military component was certainly reinforced in his mind by the crisis.

HOW CONCERNED WAS THE PRESIDENT ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF AN ACCIDENT?

What do you mean by an accident?

SOMETHING GOING WRONG, SOMETHING GOING OUT OF CONTROL...

Well, I think the notion -- you know, he did say, about the U-2, that got off course: "There's always some son-of-a-bitch who doesn't get the word." So that he had that on his mind, but I don't think he had any very large fear that some commander of a bomber squadron, or some, even... still less, that any senior military officer was going to take it into his own head to decide what to do, and there was no reason to suppose that a condition of alert would increase the risk of accident.

BUT THERE WAS, I UNDERSTAND, A GREAT CONCERN WITH MCNAMARA AND THE PRESIDENT WITH TALKING TO THE PEOPLE ON THE SHIPS, KEEPING COMMUNICATIONS AND SO ON...

Well, there no question but what the way of conducting any direct encounter with the Soviet, with a Soviet vessel or anything of that sort, was a matter of great concern to the President, and to McNamara as his senior man at the Pentagon, so that there was it was, after all, a naval quarantine with a political objective -- it wasn't a, an ordinary, everyday blockade as part of a war already existing, and it was important to... have that in mind, as quite understandably that people, dealing with the President on a daily basis did, and as some of those operating the quarantine maybe did not.

DO YOU REMEMBER ANY OF THOSE...

I was not that closely involved in those direct processes of management, no.

HAVE YOU GOT A THEORY NOW, ABOUT WHY THE MISSILES WERE PUT THERE BY KHRUSHCHEV?

Well...Khrushchev had been engaged in a game of nuclear diplomacy, of trying to make Soviet nuclear power work to achieve Soviet political ends, most conspicuously, but not uniquely, in the Berlin crisis, which had been going on since late 1958, intermittently. in the course of 1961 it had become clear that if anybody had a strategic nuclear advantage, the United States did...

EXCUSE ME, SIR. OKAY.

So, we want to go back to the question of...

WHY.

Why did he do it? Well... I guess... we can begin with the point that Khrushchev believed in nuclear diplomacy in the, this period, he had been working on it since 1958, most conspicuously in the Berlin crisis that he created and kept going intermittent... In 1961, it had become very clear that there was no Soviet nuclear advantage, that if anyone was ahead we were ahead, and by quite a lot in numerical terms. He tells us, in his memoirs, that all this came to him while he was visiting Bulgaria, and one of the lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis is that great leaders should not be left alone in Bulgaria. That, there he worried, he had a worry and a hope. The worry was that Castro might not last, and the hope was that he could bring home to the Americans the reality of a present nuclear threat. And, in effect, that both of these, and underneath them, the overall strategic balance that... could be helpfully affected, if he could get missiles into Cuba.

HOW MUCH OF THAT NOTION WAS CLEAR TO YOU AT THE TIME?

You mean, what did we think about why he had done it?

AT THE IMMEDIATE ... TIME.

I'm not sure that I can reconstruct just how we felt about it, it was... I think our feelings were governed, or heavily affected by our own feeling that this was quite simply something that we really could not accept. And, the question of exactly why he had done it how far it was to reinforce Castro, how far it was to strengthen his position -- for example, at Berlin -- these were less important questions to us than, Why did he think we would let him do it?

THIS IS ONE OF THE CONTROVERSIAL QUESTIONS OF THE CRISIS, AND I KNOW YOU MUST HAVE A STRONG OPINION ABOUT IT: WHAT ROLE DID NUCLEAR WEAPONS PLAY?

I think nuclear weapons played a very, very important role on both sides; but what I think they did was simply to bring it home to both sides, that the conflict must not become nuclear. I therefore believe that it was the existence of very powerful forces in both countries, and not the balance of nuclear power between those two forces, that was important in the crisis. I think that what gave the Americans crucial advantage was not whether they had more and better bombs and bombers, but that, at the level below the nuclear level, in the Caribbean, American air and naval and ground superiority was simply overwhelming.

SO LET ME GET YOU INTO IT BY SAYING, YOU KNOW OFTEN WHEN ONE READS THESE BOOKS YOU GET THE SENSE THAT EVERYTHING HAS BEEN CAREFULLY THOUGHT THROUGH AND LOGICALLY PROGRESSION OF EVENTS IS THAT THE WAY IT WAS OR WAS IT MORE OF A HAPHAZARD, AD HOC TYPE OF THING?

Well, I think I think the crisis as a whole demonstrates that when you get very tense situation involving political diplomatic military considerations for both sides and in a very important way the reaction of other countries, other governments you cannot expect that you'll have a day then, which something unexpected doesn't happen. So that while in the broad sense I think you can say that this was a carefully considered series of responses by the American Government to an unexpected and dangerous situation from its point of view. You have to be struck also by startling events along the way that nobody really predicted. Some of them happy events, nobody crosses the naval patrol line. It's not really challenged in any way that we find directly dangerous. On the other hand who knows who shot down the U-2 that created such particular tension on Saturday the 27th. People had suggested that the Turkish question might come forward. Why does it come forward on Saturday morning and not earlier and why does it go away on Sunday. There are a whole series of moments of this sort at which the government of the United States is required to confront an unexpected or at least previously uncertain new situation. None of them I think on the American side, is as large as the problem that was posed to Khrushchev by Kennedy's speech of October 22nd. And while Khrushchev al-- certainly he deserves rank as one of the bad guys of the crisis because decisions, of his precipitated it, in another sense he deserves very high rank as a good guy because of the care and good sense with which he responded to the situation he--that was forced upon him.

HOW CLOSE DO YOU THINK THE WORLD CAME TO NUCLEAR WAR?

Well, in the sense that we were ever at point where either government was about to give a nuclear order, I don't think we came close at all. And I think one of the things that the crisis demonstrates...

YOU KNOW WITH SORENSON QUOTES KENNEDY SAYING THE CHANGES OF WAR WERE BETWEEN 1 AND 3...

Uh huh. Well, it's true, that Sorenson reports conversation with the President that the risk of war is between 1 and 3 and even. And that the critical point on the 27th of October, he says to somebody else, "Now it can go either way." I don't think that means if we are at that level of risk of nuclear war. I think it means that we are at that level of risk in his head. Of having to have a further encounter by reconnaissance that may be contested and may lead to attacks on mis--SAM sides, the anti air craft missile sides or that we may have to move toward a stronger action of a more general sort including perhaps a ground landing those things are very much in the air by Saturday. No decision has been made to go in that direction but it's very much a possibility. I think that's the sort of thing that the President's remarks relate to. It is not the same as saying that those actions themselves would have led with the same high risk to an exchange of nuclear weapons. I think that that was not close and that what we now know about the crisis suggests pretty strongly at least to me that that was a very strong determination to avoid that last step in escalation by both sides.

DID THE KNOWLEDGE THAT NUCLEAR WEAPONS WERE AVAILABLE TO BOTH SIDES, YOU KNEW THAT THE SOVIETS HAD...

We certainly had to assume that they were. We didn't ever know for sure that nuclear warheads arrived in Cuba but neither did we know they did not.

BUT HOW MUCH DID THAT FEELING OF IT--KNOWLEDGE THAT NUCLEAR WEAPONS WERE AVAILABLE TO BOTH SIDES SORT OF HANG OVER YOUR THOUGHTS?

I think it hangs over behavior on both sides and makes it that much more cautious. Because there is always a risk that a direct military encounter between the United States and the Soviet Union can get steadily thicker or rapidly thicker. And therefore there is nuclear danger every time there is a direct confrontation of Soviet and American forces and in that sense, the Cuban Missile Crisis is the most dangerous of the nuclear age. But that isn't the same thing as saying that the risk of a nuclear war was as high as 1 and 3 or even I don't myself think it ever was.

WE'RE YOU...HOW YOU GOT THE NEWS AND HOW YOU PASSED IT ON TO THE PRESIDENT AND WHAT HIS REACTION WAS.

Well the news came in a public broadcast from Moscow which was reportedly better than the speed of sound I would think to a Situation Room in the White House and then to me. And so I telephoned it to the president. It was a--it's very good--it's one of the great rewards of being assistant to the president is that sometimes you get to convey good news and this was certainly one of those occasions.

DID YOU GO OVER AND SEE HIM OR WAS IT

Well I think I telephoned it to him and then I think I met him with the text as he was going out to church. And He said "Well what do you think made him do that?" But he was obviously delighted.

HOW DID THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS THIS WHOLE PERIOD AFFECT YOU, PERSONALLY? DID IT CHANGE YOUR NOTION OF THE SOVIETS, NOTION OF KENNEDY, OR WAY OF OPERATING?

I think I think it's obviously not possible to go through a--an episode of this intensity without having things change. I think a lot of things changed the most important in terms of what I observed and was the degree to which the experience made the President himself confident of his own understanding of his role and responsibilities and confident of his relation to members of the administration and his relation to other governments and in a sense his relation also to Nikita Khrushchev.

HOW IMPORTANT WAS THE CRISIS IN LEADING TO THE TEST BAN?

Well it's--there's a period of several months there in which first we have continuing tension over the exact terms of the settlement of the Cuban affair. We have a residue of concern as to what kind of decent relations can you have with people who have in our view deceived us, tried to embarrass us as greatly as Khrushchev did in this case. But then you have a renewal of concern for arms control. The principal change which occurs is not an American change, although there is indeed a real--a really new tone and a--one which is heard in Moscow in the President's American University speech in June. But the big change, the one that permits the test ban agreement is Khrushchev's decision that he will now accept such a treaty--limited test ban treaty which had been offered first by Eisenhower and rejected. Now, Kennedy made a major contribution to that himself in that he decided on his own that he would not continue weapons testing, atmospheric weapons testing, even though there had been two series by Khrushchev and only one in relatively small one by our side since Khrushchev broke the moratorium of 1958, by his tests in early '61. That was very much a Kennedy decision and there is I think a--not much doubt that decision announced in the American University speech helped Khrushchev reach the conclusion that it would be to his advantage to have a test ban at that stage. So I would add that Kennedy's ability to make that kind of decision and announce it as a matter of his own decision and without an internal debate in the government required a kind of confidence which was in part the product of this enormous political success, the successful resolution of the missile crisis.

I GUESS THAT'S A POSITIVE CONSEQUENCE AND NEGATIVE POSSIBLY...SOME OF THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN PLANNED BEFORE...

Well, I don't know what--on what basis they think that the Soviet's would have stood still which ever way the missile crisis came out... Maybe me... that's me. I don't myself believe that the particular way the Missile Crisis comes out is what determines the Soviet strategic build-up over the next well, 10 years. I think that it was always the Soviet intent not to be second in nuclear strength and that it--just as soon as they were able to build intercontinental missiles that were affordable, reliable good systems it was clear that they would do so. Now, they did go on and build more than most people expected that they would during the middle 60s, but I think it very doubtful that they did this by of course they kept saying to themselves, look what happened in the Missile Crisis and I don't myself believe that it would have been a good idea to say keep your missiles in Cuba. And then please don't build any intercontinental missiles. I think that's an unlikely result.

LET'S DEAL WITH THE QUESTION OF THE JUPITERS. WAS IT NOT A DEAL?

It was a one-sided decision that was communicated to them. And you can call it, I don't think it matters too much what you call it. The President had wanted those missiles out of there. The crisis made it even clearer to him that they were a nuisance, not an advantage. He spent most of the day in the discussions on Saturday the 27th, saying you know these things are in the way. These things are a danger, they're not a help. We've known that they're out of date he was reminded during the day by Douglas Dillon that had been the opinion of the Eisenhower administration. So when it was suggested to him that we could say to Khrushchev that those missiles--we could get this crisis satisfactorily resolved, the President is determined that those missiles won't be there, it seemed to him entirely logical that assurance should be given, because he didn't want them there. And they were not doing any good. And once that suggestion was made by Secretary Rusk in a meeting toward the end of the day it was extremely clear to everyone in that meeting that to give this private assurance if it had even a ten percent chance of helping to resolve the matter, was well worth it as against the intensification of the crisis. Did we really want to increase the risk of direct military engagement with the Soviet Union in order not to say something about these missiles that we deeply believed which was that they were a damn nuisance and they ought to come out of there.

DO YOU THINK--WHAT ARE THE ESSENTIAL LESSONS OF THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS...CAN YOU BOIL IT DOWN TO...

One... half a lesson. Well, there are lots of lessons in the Cuban Missile Crisis, but if I had to pick out now, two of the most important, they would be, first that the avoidance of a situation in which the game takes control is of enormous importance in any situation which has a risk of direct conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. And the second would be that when you have decided what you must achieve you then must give the best you can equal attention to what you must not ask beyond that. That standard led to leaving Castro in place being ready to--given assurance that get out of this risk, those stupid Jupiters will come out, that we were not trying to do more than we said, but that we did have to insist on what we did say.

DO YOU THINK THE MISSILE CRISIS WAS A WATERSHED IN ANY SENSE?

Yes, I do. I think that it's a--not an accident that neither side has come anything like that close to a nuclear danger since then.

CAN YOU ELABORATE A LITTLE BIT MORE ON THAT?

Well, I think the direct experience of real danger of a conflict that could go out of control without a control means more than any other one thing the use of weapons, the direct experience of that risk and the recognition of the fact that in this crisis, there was the evident possibility of action by the other side that could lead in that direction. That came home, I think to both governments and is part of the memory of both governments and has contributed to the absence of any such challenge by either government to the other in what is now almost 25 years.