WELL LET'S JUST START WITH THE BASIC SORT OF... WHAT WAS THE BASIS OF LAW FOR THE BLOCKADE ACTION?

Well, the real problem for the blockade is that the blockade is a use of force. It's a use of naval force at sea against the ships of the not only the Russians but neutral nations as well. And the United Nations charter says that member states shall refrain from the use of force in their international relations. So the question is what justification do you have for using force under these circumstances? Well the obvious first answer is self-defense. But the United Nations charter has something to say about that, too. It says that you can exercise your inherent right of self-defense in case of armed attack by against a member of the United Nations. Well the question was could you call the placement of missiles in Cuba an armed attack against the United States, and that raised a lot of problems, too, because if the missiles in Cuba were an armed attack against the United States, what about our missiles in Turkey or Italy or in Europe. So we then developed a theory that the, which I think is a sound theory, that the Organization of American States, under its charter, is authorized to provide for the use of force in situations short of armed attack. And so it's not a unilateral use of force, but a use of force under the charter of the Organization of American States, and we put forward that theory of legal justification in the discussions of the Executive Committee before the decision was taken, and argued my office argued -- I wasn't there at the particular moment that this argument was made, and my deputy made the argument --that we could justify a forceful response, but not as a unilateral action. Only as an action authorized by the Organization of American States. So our advice was that you had to go to the OAS before you could take any action, whether it be blockade or air strike or invasion. Now, obviously, if you had to go to the OAS, it was harder to go to the OAS if you were going to do an air strike, because you don't tell people in the OAS you're going to do an air strike and do the air strike. The, the element of surprise — and the same is true of an invasion — really almost ruled out the possibility of going first to the OAS and getting approval if you chose either of those options. So the advice that we gave was tantamount to saying, ya can't have an air strike and ya can't have a a an invasion. The only thing you can actually have, at least at the beginning, is a is a, is a blockade, which we renamed the quarantine.

THAT'S THE ONLY THING THEY CAN DO IF THEY WANT TO ACT LEGALLY.

That's right.

HOW MUCH WAS THE... CAN WE DO A WIDER? HOW MUCH WAS THE LEGAL CONCERN TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT?

Well, you never can say how much it affected the decision. In this case, though it was clearly not the sort of stereotype case where the President decides to do something and then calls his lawyer and says, "Figure out a legal reason why I can do this." The legal aspects of this thing had been gone into very fully as much as a month before in end of September and— end of August and early September of 1962, as the missile buildup in Cuba began to look more ominous. And it had been done not only in the State Department but in the Justice Department and in the Defense Department. And the legal issues had been reviewed separately by all the senior officials, Secretary Rusk, Secretary McNamara, Mac Bundy and so on. And incidentally, sort of interesting that for the most part, the separate analyses done by the legal offices in the three different in the three different departments came out pretty much the same. Then of course, there was the famous legal argument in the Executive Committee before any decision was made as to what the course of action would be. And it's almost it's really hard to believe it's that these 13 people who were responsible for the whole advice to the President, sat down and took a whole morning, and it was kind of like a moot court. There was Mr. Acheson saying one thing, and Nick Katzenbach saying another, and Len Meeker, my deputy, saying a third. And they were all arguing the legal merits or demerits of the various courses of action. Now, then you ask, well, did it have any effect on the, on the outcome, on the decision that was made. Well, my own guess is the decision was over-determined in a way. There were a lot of things pushing for a more moderate rather than a more provocative response. But it's certainly true that the legal arguments pushed in that direction, so that the people on the Executive Committee who were for the blockade as opposed to air strike and inven— and invasion emphasized the legal, the legal aspects. Whereas the people who were for air strike and invasion tended to denigrate the legal aspects. It's a question when you're in one of those meetings or sessions, you use whatever arguments go for your side. It was clear that the legal arguments went for the quarantine as opposed to harsher action. And so they were, they were stressed by the people who wanted that kind of action.

I UNDERSTAND THAT DURING THE EXCOMM, I THINK IT WAS THOMPSON OR SOMEONE, WHO SAID THAT THE SOVIETS WOULD HAVE A HIGH REGARD FOR SORT OF A LEGAL ARGUMENT, THEY HAVE A LEGALISTIC WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS.

Yeah, I think that's what got the legal session started. That is, on I think Thursday night, or whatever, one evening Llewellyn Thompson, who was a superb man and had just come back from a long tour as ambassador to the Soviet Union and was then advising the President as his senior Soviet specialist, said, "Well, we better have a good legal argument, because the Soviets like legal arguments." And that sort of set off the exercise to— for the following day. And Len Meeker, my deputy, was working all night putting this legal argument together for the next day. But I don't think when you when you think about how it affected the decision it wasn't because we had a kind of technical brief for the Soviet Union. It went— it fed into the arguments about policy on a substantive level. And as I say, in that sense this was remarkable and may be as a, as an old-time international lawyer, I might say it might be better if more decisions by Presidents were preceded by this kind of a legal workup.

WERE THERE ANY ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE OAS, USING THE OAS CHARTER? I MEAN, WAS IT CUT AND DRY? WAS IT CLEAR THAT YOU COULD USE THE OAS?

Well, there are both policy and legal arguments against using the OAS charter. Obviously if you if you wanted to do an invasion, if you thought you really had a go there was an argument against using the OAS charter. Even if you were talking about blockade, there were sort of pragmatic arguments against going to the OAS It was, I suppose, within the realm of possibility, and it was discussed in the EXCOMM that the OAS would turn you down. Well, I don't think it was possible that the OAS would have turned the US down in a situation of that kind. But it might have been possible that some particularly major countries might have dissented or abstained or something like that. And I think it would have been rather dangerous, and it certainly would have had a-- would have had a very different impact if the OAS had come out with a non-unanimous vote. So you were taking that kind of a risk. Perhaps the most important, practical risk that you were taking was time. That is, it took us an extra day for the people in the State Department, Ed Martin and his people — he was the Assistant Secretary for Latin American Affairs — to get to the heads of state in the Latin American countries to talk to them about the importance of this thing before the OAS convened. Now you say, well what's the difference one day or not. But we were worried about two things. First of all, we were worried about when the missiles were going to be operational, and a day might have made a big difference on that. Because if the missiles were operational, we thought we would be facing a very different situation. But even without that, there was a problem with the press. This thing was getting hard to keep under control. And if it leaked, the President was concerned that we wouldn't have the initiative in the policy statement. So giving an extra 24 hours was not something that we thought— we did lightly. And then it was even possible that you know, the OAS is not the most succinct body in the world. It's a debating society, and people might have talked for a long time before they, before they voted. I was very surprised, and I think the Soviets were even more surprised that we got the resolution out with a unanimous vote at the— within five or six hours. And I remember when at least I was— I was in the OAS with Secretary Rusk when we were doing that. But we wired it up to Stevenson at the UN right away, and Stevenson was in the middle of making a speech to the Security Council when this stuff came in, and somebody sort of pulled him by the coat-tail to hand him this telegram, and he sort of said you know, go away boy, don't bother me. But finally he pushed the telegram under Stevenson's nose, and Stevenson looked at it, and then stopped his speech and read it to the to the Security Council. And of course, it was more than the Security Council, because everybody was there. And that had an enormous impact on the atmosphere in the UN, that the OAS came out unanimously for the for the quarantine. An impact that went way beyond its legal significance. The unanimous support of Latin America for this thing meant that a lot of countries saw the threat in the same way we did and were prepared to go on the line with us in that way. Well, when it was all over I ran and the Pan American union is just down about a— at the bottom of 17th Street and Constitution Avenue, and the White House about three blocks up. And I grabbed the you know, the original of the resolution and ran the three blocks up to the White House got in there and the President had not yet signed the quarantine proclamation, because we wanted the OAS resolution to be in the preamble to the quarantine proclamation. And I ran into Mac Bundy's office and handed it to Alice, his secretary, and she retyped -- no computers in those days, you had to do the typing with your fingers — retyped the entire proclamation with the OAS resolution in it. And we went into I guess the Cabinet Room where the President was meeting with the Ex. Com. And he immediately interrupted his the meeting, and walked into the Oval Office, which was next door, and signed the proclamation. I don't know if you've heard the story, but Evelyn Lincoln, you know, the usual case is when the, when the President signs a bill or a document, he uses a lot of pens and hands out souvenir pens to the people to the people in the, in the audience. But this time, Evelyn Lincoln brought out the tray of pens, and he waved her away, and he said "I think I'm just going to keep this one myself." And he signed it with one pen and put the wet pen in his press pocket and walked back into the into the Cabinet Room. So that was that was the first time that the Navy was actually authorized to intercept vessels, was not until after the OAS had acted and the President gave the order.

HOW SIGNIFICANT WAS THAT TO YOU? THE OAS APPROVAL? I MEAN, DID IT FINALLY YOU HAD A KIND OF LEGAL BASE?

Well, you asked earlier were there legal arguments, and of course there are. I mean, no legal argument is copper-riveted. And this one had some soft spots in it, I don't, I don't deny that. And in fact, a lot of my colleagues in the International Law Fraternity have criticized it very heavily, both at the time and since. Most people thought the quarantine was legal, but most people preferred to defend it on the ground of self-defense rather than on the ground of this OAS S. resolution. But I think it meant a lot actually. It meant a lot in fact maybe more symbolically than it did in terms of how strong a legal argument it was because I think it conveyed to people both at home and to other countries that we had taken the legal issue seriously. We hadn't just said— as I said, called somebody in and said cook up a, a, a legal brief for this. And I think it was important to people that at the brink, if you want to call it that the United States didn't just disregard whatever legal norms were applicable. That isn't to say that necessarily one has to be bound by constraints of that kind in a moment of that kind. We all know, for example, that Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War took actions that were inconsistent with the Constitution, and he said, "Am I going to preserve this clause of the Constitution and let the whole Constitution come crumbling down?" So there are times when one ought not to— when it may be justified. But on the other hand it's very different to just disregard all this stuff, or on the other hand, to take seriously the issues of law that are involved in your action. Because after all, the law isn't just something that somebody made up. It is in fact a repository of the wisdom and experience of nations over the ages in dealing with these kinds of problems.

WAS THE UNITED STATES PRIOR TO THAT KIND OF AN OUTLAW? I MEAN THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN ACTING...

Well that's what Bob Kennedy said, he said that the action of the of the OAS converted us from an outlaw using force in defiance of international law to a, to a country concerned in defending its rights, concerted with its allies in defense of its rights. And so I might not have gone quite that far, but that's pretty far to go for Bob Kennedy. I would have said, and I would say that the important thing about it is we did work at the legal problem. We treated it seriously. We didn't say that this is something that we can just slough off.

WHAT IF YOU HADN'T GOTTEN THE OAS APPROVAL? IF IT HADN'T BEEN UNANIMOUS OR IT HADN'T--

Well, as I say, I think as a practical matter, there was very little doubt that we would get 13 votes in the OAS If, if we hadn't— if we had a division in the OAS, if there had been delay, I think I said before, that would have been— that would have raised serious problems. If the OAS was badly split we would have had, we would have had difficulty in the UN, we would have had difficulty with our allies in Europe. You know, everybody was not rallying around President Kennedy. There were marchers in the streets of London. Both Macmillan and De Gaulle, although they were formally supportive, were really quite cautious in the way they supported it. They— all the European allies had serious domestic opposition. If you had people sharing the same hemisphere with us, under the same gun with us saying it doesn't look so serious to us that's a big, that's a big difference. And I think the Soviets expected — first of all, I don't know that they expected that we would go to the OAS I'm not at all sure that they thought we would go to the OAS But but I think they expected to get some resistance in the OAS After all, we had been there three or four times before, starting in 1954, and only the year before against Cuba. And we had people watering down the resolutions we presented, we had people dissenting in the OAS from resolutions the United States presented. So there was no real you know, there was no assurance going in that the OAS would come out unanimous.

WHAT WAS YOUR FEELING WHEN YOU RAN UP TO... YOU ACTUALLY RAN THREE BLOCKS?

Well, it's not such a long three blocks. I mean Constitution Avenue up to Pennsylvania Avenue.

YOU HAD SOME HISTORY IN YOUR HANDS.

The historic moment was really in the Oval Office there, watching Kennedy sign that thing. John McNaughton, who was a colleague of mine here actually and then was at that time General Counsel to the Defense Department, he and I were the only non-newspaper people in the room, except for the President. And and there was a time when you really thought it was a moment that you don't see very often in a lifetime.

HOW IMPATIENT WERE THE MILITARY WITH THE LEGALITY?

Well there's the famous story about Maxwell Taylor. This wasn't about the law, it was when Bob Kennedy said he didn't want his brother to go down as the Tojo of the American Tojo by making a surprise air attack on Cuba. And Max Taylor said, "Yes," he said, "that's true. We, we shouldn't do that. We should warn them and then make a bombing attack." So there were some I don't think the impatience was with the legalities. I think the impatience— there was— there were people who wanted to do the invasion or do the air strike. They had to deal with the legal arguments just as they had to deal with other arguments. And they dealt with the arguments in a variety of ways. Some of them said you can do it's Article 51, it's self-defense, don't worry. Mr. Acheson said law just doesn't apply in a situation like this, something that I sort of said earlier might be the case. So they dealt with those arguments just like they dealt with arguments — people would say, well you can't give us a hundred percent assurance that all the sites will be gone? and they had to deal with those arguments. So I wouldn't say they were particularly impatient with the legal arguments. They were impatient with the general idea of a milder response. There, there were people who wanted to go.

WERE THEY SORT OF STRAINING AT THE LEASH ON THE LAST DAYS THERE?

Well, again, it's hard to make generalizations. But I think there were some people who were straining, who wanted in fact again, I think there was a, there was a story -- maybe it's documented, you could find out about it-- that General LeMay said we ought to have gone in on Monday anyway, after the settlement on Sunday. But I, I do--didn't hear that personally. But certainly there were people who thought that the right thing to do at that point was to have gotten rid of the Castro government.

THE ROLE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

Well, I think the role of nuclear weapons was quite important, on both sides now. Everybody says well, the missile crisis is an example of the importance of nuclear superiority because it was our nuclear superiority that stood off the Soviets and made them back down, because they were concerned that our overwhelmingly superior nuclear power could reach them. And I think it's certainly true that the Soviet were very worried about the possibility of a nuclear exchange and attack on the Soviet homeland. And there's no doubt, and it just appears on the face of Khrushchev's letters — there's no reason to think that he was being insincere — that they were very worried about our nuclear power. The more interesting thing to me is how worried we were about the Soviet pow— nuclear force, which was a very small and very relatively ineffective force. A couple of hundred missiles — or, I'm not sure they even had a couple hundred missiles, I can't remember, but it was a very small force. But the— so even though it was way outnumbered by our force nonetheless, I think, the possibility that there might have been a Soviet missile attack on the US mainland was one of the things that very strongly inhibited the President constrained the President. I mean, we had, after all, total conventional superiority on land, sea and air in the area of Cuba. In the absence of a nuclear threat from the Soviet Union, there wasn't anything we couldn't do in Cuba. We could have just moved in there and mopped up. And the interesting question is, why didn't we do that? And I think again, if you look at the debates, and if you look at what the President has written, what— w— well, the President said in his press conference afterward, what Bob Kennedy has written and others that the constraining element was the possibility, very remote possibility, that one or two or three or five Soviet weapons would hit this country. Well, I think that has a lot of relevance to current debates on strategic balance, when sometimes it seems that all the difference in the world if we have 25 more missiles or 25 less missiles or something like that, and it's pretty clear there that we had undoubted, overwhelming nuclear superiority, but that didn't keep us from being scared that the Soviets might come back at us.

HOW SCARED WERE YOU DURING THIS TIME?

Well, I didn't ever, for example, tell my family that they ought to leave Washington or anything like that, or even hint that. I think there's a s— you know, when the adrenalin gets running and you're right in the thing, and you're occupied with it's not with-- things that have to be done and have to be gotten out on short deadlines, and you're focused in a, in a, in a very extraordinary way, it's hard to be thinking about the broader possibilities. But I thought actually, fairly early on, that is, by tie time the President had made his decision, that the chances for nuclear war were relatively small. I mean, quite small indeed. The President actually, if you look at his whole pattern of reaction, from the moment that he heard about the missiles, the first thing he said, well, we're going to have to go in and take 'em out. And then every statement or action that he took after that was a move away from that extreme position, a move to a more moderate, more cautious, more prudent position. And I am confident that the same thing was going on the other side. I don't-- I mean, it's true that people were playing ga-- you know, a kind of a, kind of a face-off with each other. But it's also true — as Khrushchev said — he said, "You and I" to the President, "know what's at stake here, and we can't let this get out of control." And I think that was the dominating consideration in the— in President Kennedy's mind as soon as he began to focus on the problem.

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON WE CAN LEARN FROM THIS PERIOD OF HISTORY, TODAY, TO HELP US TODAY?

Well, it's very complicated. Today my students for example just cannot understand how it was possible to take a risk of nuclear war, the President said it was a one in three chance — well, I don't think he even believed it was a one in three chance — but even a significant finite risk of nuclear war over such an incident when it was clear that the Soviet emplacement of missiles in Cuba didn't change the military balance. And it's hard to explain to them that sometimes the immediate consequences of an action of that kind are less significant than the long term consequences of it. That is, it, if the Soviets had done that and pulled it off Khrushchev was not the most you know, sort of cautious and rational of men. He might have found some other things to do and at a certain point pushed us so far that our response would have been much more much sharper and much less prudent. So ...even though, as McNamara said right at the beginning, the missiles in Cuba would not change the military situation at all I think it would have changed the political situation if we had stayed there. Moreover it's quite clear I think that the fact that Kennedy had quote, won, end quote, the missile crisis was what gave him the authority to go forward and do the test ban treaty. And I'm not sure he would have gone forward and done the test ban treaty if he didn't have that behind him and that kind of legitimation and mandate from the American people. So again, you don't quite know how things how things play out. I think the lesson, at least what I would hope the lesson learned is that this is a, I mean, easy talk about pushing buttons and nuclear responses and sending one over just to show we're serious and things like that are really— that's really dangerous talk. This is very scary stuff, and we've got and pray that our leaders whatever their sort of verbal statements, when the moment of confrontation comes, exercise the kind of caution and restraint that both of the both of the leaders did then. Because it is I mean, they did, they were, they did have the world in their hands, those two men, and ... they were good hands.

THAT'S VERY GOOD. THE OTHER, YOU KNOW, ONE OTHER THING THAT'S COME OUT OF THE MISSILE CRISIS IS THAT THE SOVIETS BUILT UP. THAT THEY FELT HUMILIATED IN SOME RESPECTS. BECAUSE NATSOV SAID TO McCOY, YOU KNOW, YOU'LL NEVER DO THIS TO US AGAIN. THAT IN A SENSE IS A NEGATIVE

Well, but I think the missile crisis was itself a build-up. That is, I think the missile crisis was Khrushchev's way of trying to do the buildup on the cheap, so that he could pre— preserve the resources that he wanted for domestic economic gains. And there was no way the Soviets were going to stay in the relative position that they were as against us in the early '60s, I mean, where we had 15 hundred or something I don't know if we had a thousand or 900 Minutemen and all the polar uses. And they were just not going to take that position. So one way or another they were gonna, they were gonna catch up. Now, I think what Khrushchev thought was he could buy himself a few years by putting in the missiles in Cuba and get the domestic thing going. But in the end I think the Soviets would have had to, would have had to I mean their Avis complex would have taken over and they would have tried harder.

DID ANYONE WIN THE MISSILE CRISIS?

All of US.

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

I see. Yeah. Well, I guess if you ask who won the crisis, it might it might be said that all of us won, because we're all still here. President Kennedy was very anxious afterwards that we should not gloat, that Americans should not be caught— and particularly people in the administration should not be caught sort of snapping their galluses and saying how great it was and so on. And I think that's a very— another very important lesson that we could learn. I think our leaders are sometimes so anxious to squeeze every bit of credit out of successful maneuvers that the consequences become negative. The other— the other guy thinks, well, as you said, I'm not going to let that happen again. And, and you get a kind of a of a response. So as I say, I think obviously the Soviets were forced to move. They were forced to get out. And in terms of who imposed its will on whom the United States imposed its will on the Soviet Union. On the other hand, we took our missiles out of Turkey and Italy. And in my view that was a perfectly clearly understood tacit exchange for the Soviets' withdrawal. Now the circumstances in which that done, was done made it less visible and less clearly related. But but the idea that the United States simply forced the Soviets to retreat and made no concession on our side is I think incorrect.

COULD YOU GIVE ME A TWO-MINUTE WARNING. I'D LIKE YOU TO GIVE ME THAT LAST PART AGAIN A LITTLE STRONGER. I MEAN, BUNDY DOESN'T LIKE TO SAY THERE'S A DEAL. YOU KNOW--

All right.

THE MYTHOLOGY, WE INTERVIEWED SOME STUDENTS THE OTHER DAY AT THE KENNEDY GRADE SCHOOL IN ARLINGTON. AND THEY SAID, OH, WE WON THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS, YOU KNOW, WE WERE TOUGH AND WE FACED THEM DOWN AND WE DIDN'T HAVE TO GIVE UP ANYTHING AND THEY PULLED THE MISSILES OUT.

All right, now where do you want me to start?

ANSWER MY QUESTION PERHAPS. WAS THERE A DEAL OR WHO WON, YOU KNOW?

All right. Well Look, on the Saturday night before the settlement, Bob Kennedy went to see Dobrynin, and he said, "We don't have much time. We gotta get this thing settled." This was person to person, and the two of them had a relationship. And besides the relationship there was all the pressure of the moment. And they talked about it a lot. And then Dobrynin said, "Well what about the missiles in Turkey." And Bob said, "We can't say anything under pressure, under, with a gun at our heads. But I can tell you that if those missiles go out of Cuba I would not at all be surprised to see our missiles go out of Turkey very soon afterwards." And of course the following Monday, that was the day after the settlement, John McNaughton convened a task force, a State Defense Task Force, in the State Department, he was the chairman, and he said, "Those missiles are going to be out of Turkey by April 1st or I'm going to shoot 'em out." Now, was that a deal? Well, that was the exchange between Bob Kennedy and Dobrynin. Anybody who hears that can understa— can make his own decision whether there was a deal. I think there was a tacit quid pro quo. And the only thing the only question remaining was whether the United States would be willing to do that above-board. As you recall, the Soviets had made two separate offers. One was just stand down. The other was trade the Cuban missiles for the Turkish missiles. And the great maneuver was to accept their first offer and disregard the other, the Trollop Ploy, so-called. Well I don't know, nobody can say of course what would have happened if the Soviets had insisted on the removal of those missiles above board. My own strong belief was that the President was not going to go to war over whether he gave those missiles away under the table or as an explicit quid pro quo.

JUST THE LAST QUESTION NOW, AND IF YOU CAN KEEP IT A VERY SHORT ANSWER. YOU SAID ONE OF THE MAJOR LESSONS WAS THESE MEN HAD THE WORLD IN THEIR HANDS AND THEY WERE GOOD HANDS. HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW ABOUT PEOPLE RUNNING THE SHOW, IF THERE WAS A MISSILE CRISIS OR SOME SORT OF A CRISIS AS SERIOUS? HAVE WE LEARNED THE LESSON OF THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS?

Well, you can never— one of the terrible things about this of course is you never know what the person is going to do until he's in that situation. I think myself that the awesome quality of a moment of that kind is such that there isn't anybody who is sane, who could possibly sort of react in the kind of ways that some of my strategic theory colleagues talk about. I mean I think people do know and do understand that it's the fate of the world they're dealing with and not just a military problem.