SO IT'S FRIDAY OF THE WEEK, THE FIRST WEEK OF THIS MISSILE CRISIS AND IT'S ABOUT, WHAT, ONE O'CLOCK?

About 1:30 in the afternoon.

MAYBE YOU COULD START WITH, "IT WAS FRIDAY, 1:30..." OK, GO AHEAD.

First of all, I want to say that I'm an accident of history. Without seeking to, I became directly involved in the settlement of the Cuban Missile Crisis and as things turned out I was forced to keep it a secret for two long years, and was scooped on my own story. It was a Friday about one-thirty in the afternoon when I received a telephone call and I recognized the voice immediately. I was sitting in the state department press…this chair is impossible.

TOO SQUEAKY?

Scali, take two. First of all I want to state that I'm an accident of history. Without seeking to, I became directly involved in the settlement of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a role that turned out to be historic but which at the time just added to the confusion because I was covering this crisis full-time. My role began on a Friday afternoon, the fourth day of the crisis, when I received a telephone call about one-thirty in the afternoon. I was munching on a boloney sandwich at that time, which was to be my lunch for the day. I recognized the man on the phone immediately as the Embassy counselor of the Soviet Embassy. He ah—asked for us to have lunch immediately so we could discuss an important matter. I was about to tell him that I'd already had lunch. It was namely the sandwich in my hand, when he added that it was very important and that ah, could I possibly find the time. I felt that perhaps he had something of an unusual nature on his mind and so despite all of the work involved in covering every twist and turn of the crisis, I agreed. And we met about twenty minutes later at the Occidental Restaurant, which was one of Washington's old landmarks about two blocks from the White House. We sat at a table for two up against the wall and it was a rather icy and kind of meeting. Was no back slapping and no frivolity involved as we sometimes did when we met before. But ah—he then finally said the situation is very serious and ah— something has to be done. And I said, well, your government should have thought of that before it triggered this crisis because what you have done is total insanity. He said nothing and we ordered and I noted that the gentleman involved, Aleksandr Fomin, we can reveal his name now, seemed indifferent to the food that he ordered which was a sharp contrast to the gourmet type attitude that he had when we had had lunch on maybe a dozen occasions. We said very little and picked at our food and he said, perhaps there's a way out of this. I said, oh. He said that the Cuban delegate to UN had mentioned something which ah, should be pursued. I said, well I had been following the United Nations debate very carefully and I don't remember that the Cuban delegate had said anything. Incidentally, later checks showed that the Cuban delegate never said anything of the kind that he then put forward. He said, what would you think of a solution to the crisis which would involve first our withdrawing these missiles from Cuba, and doing this under United Nations inspection. Do you think that your government would be interested? I said, I was just a reporter and I didn't know, but it sounded to me, I said, like it was something that could be discussed. He then went on to say that could I check urgently with my high friends in the administration. And on this we didn't have to play any games because he knew that I was a personal friend of the President and that as diplomatic correspondent for ABC News, I had virtually instant access to Secretary of State Rusk, if it was needed. At that time I was the only reporter who had covered all of Secretary Rusk's overseas trips so that we were on a first name basis. I said, well, I didn't know whether I could get to the Secretary of State immediately because he was very business, very busy covering this same crisis. He said, please do, please try. It is very urgent and then he gave me two telephone numbers which I had not ever known about before. One was his private number at the Embassy, after the switchboard closed down and number two, his ah—number at home. And he said I must understand that I am to phone him anytime day or night because much depends on what is to happen next. As I went back to the State Department in the cab, I got to wondering whether this meeting was as ah, important as I thought it was at the time because why would the Russians turn to me to float even a trial balloon and how did I not know that half a dozen other Soviets in half a dozen other places were talking to X number of additional people? By the time I arrived in the pressroom, I had more or less convinced myself that it wasn't as significant as I thought it was. Just as a precaution, I called a friend of mine in the FBI and said to him is Fomin important enough for the Soviets to float a trial balloon or a legitimate proposal for solving the Cuban Missile Crisis? And he asked why. I said, well I just had lunch with him. He said, you did? He said ah—the answer to your question is, hell yes. And we would sure like to know what it was he said. I said, well, I'll pass it along to Roger Hilsman, who was the then Director of the State Department Intelligence Operation. So I sat down in my, at my desk in the State Department Press room and wrote a very brief memo to him of about 100 words. I said, Aleksandr Fomin at a luncheon which he urgently requested, asked that I check with my high administration officials about what the US attitude would be to the following proposition: Soviets would remove all missiles from Cuba under...two that there would be United Nations inspection. Three, would US Government then be willing to pledge publically there would be no invasion of the, of Cuba. I said I did not know, but that perhaps the matter could be discussed. Period. And I took the memo, which I had just finished typing up to the sixth floor where Roger Hilsman's office was and he was just coming out the door as I came up. And I handed him the memo and we walked down the hall together as he walking to his next meeting and he stopped and read it, and looked at me and read it a second time. He said, this is very interesting. He said, where are you going to be the rest of the day? I said, I'm going to be back down in the pressroom continuing to cover this thing. He said, well, don't go away. So I went back to work and after appearing on the ABC television network news that evening, I suddenly got a telephone call. Incidentally, I didn't mention this during the six o'clock broadcast. It was on the phone saying, without telling a soul, he says, get in the car that we have waiting for you directly outside the ABC studios and come to the State Department, you may be onto something big. Well, I'd been around as a reporter many years, and I knew that I couldn't leave in a crisis situation without at least telling my bureau chief where I was going and approximately why. But I knew he could be trusted. And I asked him in turn to to phone Jim Hagerty, the former press secretary to President Eisenhower who was then the new President of ABC news and to give him a brief fill in. I was taken to the office of the Secretary of State. He came out of his office in his shirtsleeves and said, John, he says, you may be something, you may be on to something which is very important. It fits with something which we think we are picking up at the UN. He said, I want you to go back to your friend and tell him the following. And he reached into his pocket and put out—pulled out a yellow legal sized lined piece of paper in which he had hand written the following: The US G. sees possibilities in this suggestion and imagines that this matter could be worked out at the UN with Secretary General U Thant and the Soviet and US Representatives. But I must emphasis that time is very short. And he then said if they ask you, if he asks you, where this comes from, you can tell him that it comes from the highest officials in the United States government. But he said, try to say nothing else. And on this matter, I found out later, that the highest officials in the US government was just that. He had called President Kennedy as soon as my memo hit his desk and had also discussed it with Defense Secretary McNamara and after hours of discussion within the administration, they had decided it was an opening that was well worth following up and thus they turned to me to go ahead and see Mr. Fomin a second time. I called him from the office of the State Department Intelligence Chief, Mr. Hilsman and suggested that we meet immediately in the coffee shop of the Statler Hotel. The reason I chose the Statler Hotel was that it was only a half a block from the Embassy. And at that time I figured that a coffee shop would be somewhat deserted and sure enough, we met there in ten minutes and I repeated the message word for word and he listened very carefully and then said that...he then, Fomin then asked me how does he know that this comes from important figures. I said, well it comes from the highest sources in the United States government. The highest officials. He said, Mr. Scali, if I were to report what you tell me, and it did not come from the highest officials in the United States government, I could be made to look like a fool at a very crucial moment in history. I said, Mr. Fomin, if I were to lie about this very important point, I would be the most irresponsible man in history. And I said and I am not irresponsible. Whereupon he seemed to be satisfied that it was an authentic message and then he tried something that the Soviets do every now and then, they raise the ante when they believe they have you hooked. He said, well, he said, you know, he says this is a very interesting message, but, he says, if there is to be inspection of the removal of the missiles from Cuba, why shouldn't there be simultaneous inspection of the coast of Florida where you have this big mobilization of forces and of some of the other islands nearby where perhaps there could be which could be the spring board for an invasion of Cuba even after this? I didn't have any clue as to what I should say then, but I've covered foreign policy enough to take a chance and I said, Mr. Fomin, it seems to me that what you are raising is a terrible complication which might make it impossible for this agreement. I said the President of the United States could not, in any way, allow Soviet or United Nations inspectors to roam up and down the coast of Florida during this particular time because you want to remember the cause of this terrible crisis is not our mobilization in Florida and elsewhere but the fact that you, the Soviet Union, have illegally sneaked missiles into Cuba. I said, that is the source of the problem. And what we are doing in Cuba, what we are doing in Florida is a counter mobilization which presumably would have no further purpose if and when you remove the missiles. He tried to argue a bit and then finally gave up and he said, Mr. Scali, I can assure you that this information will be relayed immediately to Moscow and to the highest officials in the Soviet government. Whereupon he got up, he said, we should be back in touch together. And he picked up the check from the table. We had had each a cup of coffee. At that time coffee at the Statler Hotel at least was only fifteen cents a cup. And the total check was 30 cents. And he took it to the cashier, who at that time was talking to a lady friend, ah—he waited impatiently for the conversation to end because he clearly didn't have any change. He had only a five-dollar bill. And the two dear ladies continued their conversation and they continued their conversation, so finally, in exasperation, he took the 30 cent check and the five dollar bill and slapped it on the counter and took off, shot up the steps and went off to the Soviet Embassy. I had decided that perhaps he was a little excited. In any event, I went back to the went back to the State Department and dictated to four different secretaries in relays a full report on this meeting. And we took it to the Secretary of State, who came out and skimmed through it and he said, John, he said, you know, he said, this could be the first important sign that the Soviets want to back off because it fits with the secret message that we've just received from Khrushchev. We've translated and are aware of the contents of the first two sections and more or less have a general idea of what the third section contains. It comes from a man who is stupefied with anxiety. He said, there's no mention of the proposal that they are suggesting through you in this message. But, he said, if you put them side by side, they fit like a glove. He said, there are two things I want to tell you. He said remember when you report this that eyeball to eyeball that they blinked first. And secondly, he said, if this works out, he said, I'm going to give you the biggest dinner any correspondent has ever been given in the city of Washington. I nodded appreciatively. Incidentally, as much as I love Dean Rusk, and I think he is a great man, that was the last time I heard about that dinner. So, he then turned around to Hilsman who was with us and said, I want your people to look through this word for word, upside down and inside out to determine whether there are any hookers in this. But he said offhand, he says, I don't see any. So, we parted. I went to bed feeling that perhaps that... at a minimum, that was the end of that.

But the next morning, there was a new and more urgent crisis. The Soviets had broadcast from Moscow another message from Nikita Khrushchev which bore no resemblance to the first one. And which said nothing not ever about pulling out the missiles. Instead, it repeated in some places almost word for word a column that Walter Lippmann had written for the morning papers which proposed a swap of missiles. That the Soviets would pull their missiles out of Cuba, but the United States would have to withdraw it's inter-range intermediate range missiles from...

This new Soviet note made it look as if what they had said through me and indeed, what had been said in the secret message which the White House never did disclose, was unimportant and there had been a sharp and almost shocking change of attitude on the part of the Soviets. Even as I heard about this, Secretary Rusk's office called me and asked for me to come by urgently. I went by to see the Secretary and he came out of his office looking very cold. And asked me, he says, well John, what happened? I said, I don't know Mr. Secretary but I've been thinking about this as I came to see you and I can come to no other conclusion than that the whole exercise has been a trap, an effort to force us to concentrate on the possibility of a peaceful settlement and to prevent us from doing anything while they rush the missiles to completion in Cuba and confronted us with a new proposition. He didn't say anything, he said, well, you go to see your friend and see what you can find out. So I called and asked to see him and this time thought that it would be good idea not to meet in a fully public place. Instead, I chose the mezzanine floor, deserted main ballroom of the Statler Hotel. I knew how upset I was and I thought perhaps I would raise my voice. So we met almost immediately and I jumped at him immediately with the same question that the Secretary of State had asked me. I said, what happened? And he threw up his hands and he said he didn't know what had happened. He said, there was such a delay in exchanging messages, even the most urgent with Moscow now that perhaps Mr. Khrushchev had not received the Embassy report on what had been relayed of my message. I said, I found this exceeding difficult to believe. I said, I would have to be a fool to believe that in a moment of big crisis such as this, you can't move a message to Moscow in twelve to eighteen hours as you claim. I said, I can only come to one conclusion and that is that is that this is part of a stinking double cross. And I virtually shouted this at him but I must say that I, at that time, felt that perhaps I had been used by the Soviets to betray or at least to confuse my own government. So to say that I was upset was an understatement. And he threw up his hands again and said, no, no, no, he says, don't get excited, this is not so. He said both the Ambassador and I are urgently waiting for a reply. You must not believe that we are trying to deceive you. I said, well, anybody who would come up with any other conclusion, I said, would be a fool. I said there's one thing that you must understand above all else. And that is that if you believe that you can bluff or that you can somehow trick the United States at a crucial moment, I said, you're part of one of the most serious misjudgments of American intentions in history. And I said, this President is determined to get those missiles out of Cuba. And he will. And for you to believe or to misunderstand the depth of that determination, I said, is a disaster. One of the things that is so disturbing about what you are telling us is that an American U-2 plane that was photographing these missiles, has just been shot down and we know that it wasn't the Cubans who pulled the trigger on that missile. It had to be the Soviets. So how can you say that the offer is still valid? He said, well, he said, I didn't know what had happened. His face had almost turned ashen at that development. He said, all I can tell you is believe me. He said, and I promise you, I'll be in touch with you at the earliest moment. I said, well, I didn't know, but I felt that there was something very, very strange so, I went back to the state department and dictated another message. Another summary of what was said. By that time, Roger Hilsman, the State Department Intelligence Chief, had collapsed because he had been awake for almost 72 hours and his deputy, Thomas Hughes, then took me to the White House because the Secretary of State had been called there just a half hour earlier for an extraordinary meeting which was, as it turned out, a crisis conference of the entire establishment to determine whether there should be a bombing attack at a minimum on that... missile site which had shot down the U-2. I was taken into the White House via side entrance, to the President's office secretly and I sat just a few yards away from where the meeting was going on talking with Evelyn Lincoln, who was President Kennedy's secretary. And I was sipping on a cup of coffee when Pierre Salinger, the White House press secretary walked in. And he looked, he said, John Scali? He said what are you doing in here? And I was about to reply, well, I've been invited and he turned and talked to two of the security people who were standing nearby and was told that, yes, he is here for a reason and he has been invited. Now you have to remember, there were about 200 or maybe 300 reporters all standing eagerly in the White House lobby, waiting for even the single drop of news, and there was John Scali sitting serenely inside the inner most chambers there sipping a cup of coffee and acting as if he belonged. And Pierre had raised his hand and was about to tell me out, when Hilsman, when Thomas Hughes walked into the room, he said, oh, no, no Pierre, he's all right. And Pierre turned around and saw Hughes, who he had never met before, after all, he was just a Deputy Chief to Hilsman and he said, and who the hell are you? And he explained who he was and as the conversation was going on, in walked Rusk and Rusk said, Pierre it's all right, we'll tell you about it later. And so, Pierre, muttering about something like nobody ever tells me anything anymore, left. I mentioned this because it was one of the footnotes of history that Pierre and I have reminisced about every now and then. In any event, Rusk asked me, John, he said, do you have the feeling that this man is telling you the truth? I said, well Mr. Secretary, I didn't know. Urn, if he's lying, I said, he's an awfully good actor. But he gives me the very strong impression that he is deeply worried, maybe almost panicking and he looks like he's passing on a genuine message of deep concern, confusion and wonderment about what the hell is happening. So, he said, well all right, and then he went back into the meeting. My message had been read at that meeting and there had been a discussion about how it fit into the overall mix and I have been told that it was a factor in the decision not to bomb, but to delay any important for at least another 24 hours until there was more information about two important points. Number one of which was, was the new message that had been broadcasted, a genuine Khrushchev message from Khrushchev or was it a signal that perhaps Khrushchev had been overthrown, or put aside and a new group was in power. And there was also an… a feeling that perhaps it was too early to move. So it was at that meeting, that Bobby Kennedy came up with the, it was at that meeting that Bobby Kennedy, who as Attorney General, was a member of the Inner Council, came up with an incredible solution and it was that the President should ignore both the broadcast message and the message that had been sent secretly and concentrate on the offer that had been relayed through me, accepting it as genuine. Even though the offer had not been repeated either in the secret message or in the broadcast. And to ignore the others. And if it was a fake, what they had said through me was not meant to be regarded as serious, then we would know soon enough. But in any event, to try it. And this is why the President's message, which was made public, about an hour after that meeting ended, said your message to Mr. Khrushchev, your message Mr. Khrushchev, as we understand it, is that you will remove the missiles from Cuba under United Nations inspection. That the United States, in turn, will promise publicly not to invade Cuba, he says, which we are quite prepared to do. And so, your proposal is a satisfactory way to end this. That's approximately what the message said. Afterwards, he called me in and said, I want to thank you. But he said, ah, there's something that both of us have to worry about and that we have to pray about and that is that we have correctly understood what the Soviets are trying to say. He said, do you go to church, John? I said, yes I do, Mr. President. He said, well, this afternoon or this evening, he says, most of us should go to church and pray that we have not misunderstood and that we have correctly read what the Soviets are preparing to do because there could be a very long tomorrow. The President did go to church that evening, and I went separately to church, and I think we both prayed for that message that was broadcast about nine o'clock the next morning, which was... in the name of Nikita Khrushchev an acceptance of the idea that the Soviet's would withdraw their missiles under United Nations inspection in return for the President's pledge not to invade Cuba.

Now, the withdrawal, did happen, but it was not one that was observed by the United Nations because Fidel Castro, who had been kept in the dark throughout all of this maneuvering rebelled, and he declined to permit any international observers on his territory. And the Soviets solved it, as you remember, by withdrawing all 48 of the missiles and allowing American observer planes to fly low over them while the Soviet sailors then pulled the tarpaulins back so that we could count them, and we counted every one of them as having left and so, that solved it. Once the crisis ended, I went to the President and said, well, I wanted to tell the story. And I recalled to him that the Secretary of State had said to me, John, when you report this, so, he fully knew that at one point, I should be allowed to tell the story and he then appealed to me not to write it yet. Not to report it because it was imperative, he said, that we seize the moment as a government to improve our relations with the Soviets. And if I, in turn, disclosed the story of how, at a critical moment, they backed down and all of the maneuvering that went on behind the scenes, the Soviets would believe that I was speaking with the full authorization of the administration and would regard it as an American effort to humiliate them publicly. The President said, any move to humiliate them may ruin this magnificent opportunity to move toward peace. Well, as a student of foreign policy, I had to accept that. Because I believe that would have been the result of my disclosing it. Even as a reporter, I wanted very much to tell the exclusive. In addition the President said, we want you to continue to maintain your contact with Fomin because the next step should be to get the Soviets to remove the jet bombers which they have moved into Cuba as the delivery vehicle for these ah—missiles. So, I consented and I continued to meet with Fomin for a period of about two or three more months until Fomin disclosed to me some 48 hours before an official message arrived, that they indeed would remove the ah— the planes too. Once that had happened, and now with maybe four or five months having gone by, I thought that it would be no danger of a misunderstanding or not even any Russian suspicion that it was a belated effort to humiliate them. I again went to the President. And the President said, well, not now. Not now. Later, but not now. I had a second meeting with him, at which point he said, I'm still uneasy about disclosing this right now. He said, here's what I will do. I will write you a letter in my own personal hand in which, and I will quote, because I remember the words so vividly, I will extoll your contribution to the nation at this time of crisis. I will sign it of course. But he said, you cannot disclose this letter until I have left the White House. Well, at that time, if you recall, the President was being hailed as one of the great peace statesman of all time, and his popularity was an all time high. And his asking me to accept this letter, which I could not disclose for another four years, because his reelection seemed a certainty, was pretty tough for me to take. And I said, Mr. President, if you were very, very good. If you work very hard. You go to church every Sunday, you help old ladies and children across the street, and then on top of that, if, as a reporter, you are lucky, I said, you will have a story like this only once in a lifetime. I says, you're asking me to accept a letter from you, which I cannot disclose for another five years is like my asking you to accept, to be satisfied with re-nomination by the Democratic convention in secret. And, he laughed and threw back his head and said, I see what you mean. He said, well, let's talk about this later. By then it was October of 1962. One month before he was killed in Dallas…

The President threw back his head and he laughed and said, well, I see what you mean. He said, maybe we should talk about this later, ah—once I come back from some trips I have scheduled. That was in October 1963, only about a month before he was assassinated. After the assassination, I was just so devastated by what had happened that I didn't pursue this for a period of time because I wasn't sure that ah— President Lyndon Johnson knew the full background of this and so I began to ah— try to figure out how best I could ah— renew the whole project. Finally the Secretary of State Rusk agreed that I could write it, but he said you have to get White House confirmation. Well, that confirmation never came because what happened instead was that Roger Hilsman decided to write a book, called "To Move a Nation." It was basically a treatise and a study of how government, how the United States moves at times of crisis. And he told me before writing it that he intended to tell my story about the Cuban Missile Crisis because he thought that the United States Government would never give me permission to tell this story. And he said, and I know the President wanted to give you recognition so he said, I will be your biographer. I told Roger that ah—I took a pretty dim view of this because it was my story I felt. And that while it was kind of him to offer to be my biographer, I thought I could find another way to meet that problem. But, as we all know, Roger did write it and in August of 1964, Look magazine disclosed it in a cover story and ah--my secret role became part of history. And the fact that John Scali was scooped on his own story and his own secret also became a part of journalistic history.

WHAT MORE DO YOU KNOW ABOUT FOMIN?

I don't know anything more about Fomin. All I know is that he left about, he left in the spring of 1963. And ah—we ah—talked and chatted for X period of time. And he disappeared just like he had dropped into a big hole. When I went to the Soviet Union in ah--April as a member of President Nixon's foreign policy advisers staff, I asked about him. And this was in '73. I was told by one of their key people that he is out of the city. I expressed a desire to see him or talk with him and they said, well we will note that.

DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING MORE ABOUT HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH KRUSCHEV OR HIS…

No.

I ASSUME THAT HE WAS VERY CLOSE TO HIM. WAS HE KGB? WAS...

He was a full-colonel in the KGB and my briefing from the people who knew about his background was that he was a personal friend of ah—Nikita Khrushchev. And it was known that as the KGB chief for the United States, he has his own independent communications to Moscow. So he didn't have to rely on the Embassy cable apparatus.

ONE LAST THING ON YOUR RUSK MEETING. WHAT WAS YOUR SENSE OF RUSK'S STATE...WHAT WAS HE LIKE?

Throughout the entire Cuban Missile crisis, Rusk behaved and acted with remarkable calmness. I think he had to be a very important balancing figure in deciding what sort of military action to take. If and when, and I can't help believe but that he was a very important influence for a sober moves that were carefully studied in advance. I didn't find him to be among the hawks who wanted to shoot and then ask questions later.

AND YOUR MEETING WITH KENNEDY WHERE HE SUGGESTS YOU GO TO CHURCH. WHAT WAS YOUR SENSE OF HIS...

Well, when the President talked to me, having just made public his reply to Khrushchev and not knowing whether there: would be a tomorrow, he was very, very subdued, grave in demeanor. And when he suggested that we go to church to pray, this was not just a throwaway line. This was something that came from deep within him.

DID IT FRIGHTEN YOU? I MEAN AS A REPORTER...

Yes, it frightened me. Ah—partly because the White House ah—just about an hour earlier had made public the names of the twelve reporters who were to be evacuated with President Kennedy in the event of a war. And they were to be flown up into the Catoctin Mountains where we have this secret command headquarters and my name wasn't on that list. I thought that was a pretty eloquent commentary on the importance of whatever it was I was doing.

BUT WAS THAT THE FIRST TIME IN A SENSE THAT, ALTHOUGH YOU WERE COVERING THIS THING, WAS THAT THE FIRST TIME YOU FELT HOW URGENT THE WHOLE THING WAS?

Well, yes. At that moment I don't know what the President's odds were for war or peace but I thought that ah—we had maybe a twenty percent chance of avoiding war. Because I wasn't sure that the message that they were relaying to me was that significant. Everything was happening so fast and I declined to believe that I was playing a central or even a significant role. I was just doing what I could to avert a nuclear war. I think it's something that X number of other reporters would have been willing to do. I just happened to be there. And I took the necessary responsibility I think.

STRANGE THAT THEY WOULD USE THAT APPROACH, YOU MUST HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT THAT?

Well, actually it's not that strange. If you go back in history, Soviet experts tell me it is not unusual for the Soviets to use a third party on the fringes of a crisis to pass on secret messages and, or to use, to test the climate to determine what kind of deal they can make so that they can get the maximum in the situation. They can always disavow whatever it was that they were saying to people like me. In this case, why they, everything happened so fast that even if they wanted to disavow me, it represented the only avenue of, of averting a nuclear war and even though it wound up in an ignominious retreat for them, they at least lived to find another day.

DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR FEELING ON SUNDAY MORNING WHEN YOU HEARD THE NEWS...

Oh yes. Yeah, I felt as if a massive weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I was happier, not so much because it seemed that it worked out with whatever assistance I could provide but because we had stepped back from what appeared to be an almost certain war. I met with Fomin on that Sunday night, about six hours after it was clear that the crisis had been settled and he said we should go to have a celebration. IN 1962, there were very few restaurants open on a Sunday night in Washington, D.C., but there was a Chinese restaurant which I remembered and so we went to a Chinese restaurant where we had one or two or three or four or five toasts to peace and friendship. I remember how remarkable that evening was for several reasons, but the most important one was that he said, you know, our two countries should never again come this close to war. I said, well, I can drink to that. I said but you have to remember that the reason we came close to war this time was not because of what the United States did. It was because of some very rash and and impulsive actions on your government's part. He said, you know, in order to avoid misunderstandings, Secretary Rusk should meet with Ambassador Dobrynin three times a day to make sure that everything is clear. I said, well, that wouldn't leave Mr. Rusk with much time to do anything else. He said, well, that is not what is important. What is more important is that there should not be this kind of misunderstanding again. Because nothing is more important than peace between the United States and the Soviet Union. I said, I'll be inclined to drink a toast to that.

I'M ASKING EVERYONE I TALK TO ABOUT THIS, WHO'VE BEEN INVOLVED IN ALL FACETS OF IT, WHAT THEY FEEL ARE THE MOST ESSENTIAL LESSONS THAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS IN OPERATING TODAY IN SUPERPOWER RELATIONSHIP...

I think that the Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrated very clearly that no matter how grave the provocation, and no matter how evil the motive that we attribute to the Soviets, it is imperative that there be a period of very solemn reflection before we decide that the alternative is for the United States to use it's full military force in response because during the Cuban Missile Crisis, there were two or three points when the military advice was to act quickly. I think the President demonstrated a remarkable wisdom and forbearance and a maturity which I think is something I think we should reflect on.

DO YOU THINK THAT LESSON HAS BEEN LEARNED. MAYBE THEY CAN CLOSE THE DOOR?

OK, this is the end right?

YEAH. DO YOU THINK THESE LESSONS HAVE BEEN LEARNED?

Has that lesson been learned? I hope so, but each crisis is not the same and the lessons that we learn from one crisis does not necessarily point the way to solving the next because there is always something different.