Interviewer: ...LET'S DEAL FIRST OF ALL WITH THE SEPTEMBER 19TH CIA ESTIMATE...
Interviewer: NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE...
Interviewer: WHY WAS THAT WRONG...?
Hilsman: Well, I would argue that it wasn't wrong, uh the estimate said really two things.
Hilsman: The first was, it said that the Soviet Union was not likely to put missiles in Cuba.
Hilsman: They ticked off the reasons, they'd never put uh, nuclear weapons outside even in the, in the satellite countries, uh, they knew that we would react strongly, all the logical reasons.
Hilsman: And I think that judgment was fair.
Hilsman: I remember a Soviet-ologist afterwards saying you can't ask us to predict when the Soviets will make a mistake, we only predict when they will behave rationally.
Hilsman: So I don't think it was wrong.
Hilsman: The second thing that the missile estimate did was it said, "However the potential advantage of putting the missiles in Cuba is sufficiently high so that they may take this extreme gamble and therefore the intelligence community should be extremely alert.
Hilsman: Now, it was.
Hilsman: If Washington was quivering, it was so scared.
Hilsman: Kennedy put in a special security clearance called psalm, saying that any information about missiles in Cuba or offensive weapons would be restricted to a very small number of people.
Hilsman: Now, that's sensitive.
Hilsman: We tried to reprogram the satellite.
Hilsman: We were all terribly sensitive to the possibility.
Hilsman: I think the estimate was right.
Hilsman: Unlikely to do it, but they may in the risk, may take the risk and if so we better be alert.
Interviewer: WHAT CHANGED DO YOU THINK THE WEAPONS MADE IN THE NUCLEAR BALANCE, WHAT WAS THE FIRST SORT OF ESTIMATE...
Hilsman: Well, the official estimate that is again a national intelligence estimate was that it did not you know, there was a missile gap in reverse by this time.
Hilsman: We were way ahead and the Soviets were way behind and that was one of the reasons, it was assumed that the Soviets put them there, because they had a plethora of MRBMs and IRBMs. But it did not equal it.
Hilsman: It didn't make it the same.
Hilsman: These were uh, low—smaller, uh, long countdown times, very vulnerable and so on.
Hilsman: What it began to do in the words of the national testament—estimate was that it began to degrade the American second strike capability.
Hilsman: Now, having said that, I would like to argue that for most of us, I believe this is accurate, it certainly was true for most of the people I'm intimate with, it was the political consequences that were the most urgent thing.
Hilsman: That is if the Soviets could change or alter the balance by the rapid, secret deployment of nuclear weapons, this is just not acceptable to the nuclear age, the political consequences would have been enormous, the affects on Berlin on western Europe on all of our lives.
Hilsman: So it was the political consequences that I think concerned us most of all.
Hilsman: Nobody thought that the Soviets put the missiles there to attack us.
Hilsman: It was not the first step in a pre-emptive or an aggression.
Hilsman: It was political.
Hilsman: Their motives were political and the dangers were political.
Hilsman: The real military change would be that if further down the line they began to take advantage political advantage of the new balance then, the risks of war were much greater and the risks of uh, and the advantages on their side would be improved in a future way.
Hilsman: It wasn't immediate war that we were worried about, it was the political consequences and the ultimate in military consequences.
Interviewer: WHAT WERE THE SECURITY ARRANGEMENTS IN—IN CUBA WHEN THESE MISSILES WERE BEING UNLOADED, YOU HAD SOME INTERESTING...
Hilsman: Yeah, they were very tight.
Hilsman: Uh, and this you know really points out the importance of the U-2.
Hilsman: The Soviets had built 18-20 foot fences around the port area, uh, you couldn't see in them or over them.
Hilsman: The people who unloaded the ships were only Soviet personnel not Cubans.
Hilsman: When they took the missiles out or the equipment out, especially the missiles, they took it out at midnight in trailers that were covered over with canvas.
Hilsman: Now in the post-mortem, there were three reports that were significant.
Hilsman: Uh, that you know three intelligence reports that might have uh alarmed us.
Hilsman: One was Castro's pilot in a drunken night saying well we don't need to worry about nukes anymore, but who's going to—you can't base a quarantine or a blockade on the rantings of a drunken pilot.
Hilsman: A second was refugee report that said there were missiles in the Bay of Pigs area, there were missiles in Cuba.
Hilsman: After the crisis I looked at the refugee reports and there was a stack two and a half inches lo, high of report of refugees saying there were missiles in Cuba going back 3 or 4 years and there were none.
Hilsman: This refugee however, and the only thing about it, the report finally arrived at CIA after debriefing in Miami two weeks after the crisis was over, so that was not it.
Hilsman: The third report was significant.
Hilsman: It was a CIA agent who peaked through the blinds at midnight on a road, on a street of of Havana and he saw a truck pulling a trailer covered with canvas and he said, I estimate that to be 60 feet long.
Hilsman: Well the CIA parenthetical comment was it was late at night, you know in the middle of the night, the guy was scared, if he was caught he was in trouble, what he probably saw was a 30 foot long SAM.
Hilsman: Well he did see 60 foot long missile but, who could believe him, given the circumstances.
Interviewer: COULD YOU GIVE US THAT LAST ONE AGAIN AND START, INSTEAD OF SAYING THE 3RD...
Hilsman: Let me say one other thing.
Hilsman: The areas where the missiles were put, that is the areas in the remote parts of Cuba were evacuated of people.
Hilsman: So that was, that's a very important thing.
Hilsman: They move the Cubans out before they move the missiles in.
Hilsman: The most significant of the reports through intelligence agents was a CIA agent who peaked out through the blinds and uh, in the middle of the night and saw a Soviet truck go by pulling a trailer covered with canvas, couldn't see what was under the canvas, but he estimated it to be 60 feet long.
Hilsman: The CIA comment was that he was in the middle of night, he was probably frightened, he probably saw a 30 foot SAM, surface to air missile rather than a 60 foot IRBM.
Hilsman: But uh, no one would have taken action even if the CIA had not made that comment.
Interviewer: YOU MENTIONED IN PASSING, WE'RE TRYING TO REPROGRAM SOME SATELLITES IN SOME WAY?
Hilsman: Yes, uh, that's not, it's not worth taking up your TV time for.
Hilsman: The, here's Cuba and its, you know here's the globe and Cuba is this way.
Interviewer: START THAT AGAIN.
Hilsman: Alright...
Hilsman: Cuba is like this.
Hilsman: Here's the globe, here's the North Pole you see.
Hilsman: The satellites go like this or went like this, so it takes a lot of passes to cover little old Cuba.
Hilsman: If you going to reprogram them at some way that it would have gone like this you could have gotten it in one swipe.
Hilsman: But it, we explored this possibility and it turned out it was better to send the U-2.
Hilsman: The point being is that the reason we were having a little trouble there and had a couple of days delay was that the little quadrangle that had not been photographed since August uh, was also where the SAMs were most nearly operational so we were afraid for the life of the U-2 pilot and it took a couple of days to figure out a flight for him that would take him over that quadrangle with the least risk.
Hilsman: That's what I went into that 'business about the 19th estimate.
Interviewer: WHY DID MCCONE HAVE THIS NOTION DO YOU THINK THAT UH,...
Hilsman: Well thereby hangs another tale, which uh, you know everybody wants to take as much credit as possible in hindsight.
Hilsman: Now, in the case of McCone, was what happened was that he in an offhand moment in the White House after you know how the meetings break up and people make comments that are not part of meeting and he said, you know those bastards I know I keep thinking that they must have some ulterior motive in putting all these SAMs here.
Hilsman: I bet the bastards going to put missiles in there, you know, offhand thing, well afterwards he takes great credit for this.
Hilsman: But let me just point out two things.
Hilsman: The September 19th estimate he was on his honeymoon with his second wife...
Interviewer: CAN YOU START THAT AGAIN.
Hilsman: On the September 19th estimate, McCone was on his second honeymoon or his honeymoon with his second wife in the south of France, now that sounds like he was out of it.
Hilsman: But he wasn't out of it.
Hilsman: The CIA had offices in France and he had arranged that all-important estimates be cabled to the CIA in France and that he be shown them.
Hilsman: He had an opportunity to veto that estimate, he did not veto it, that's one thing.
Hilsman: The second thing is that after the crisis was over, uh, George Ball uh, was uh, accused of having brushed uh, the stuff under the rug and McCone in front of the—of the committee that was investigating the Cuban Missile Crisis kind of suggested this to the committee.
Hilsman: Well, as it happened in the midst of the fall before the Cuban Missile Crisis, McCone—Ball had been required to testify.
Hilsman: I had taken the CIA estimate about no missile; you know 19th estimate in that and drafted a public statement for Ball.
Hilsman: I then picked up the telephone and read it to John McCone and I had a record of having read that to John McCone and he okayed it.
Hilsman: So the testimony which McCone was trying to suggest that Ball was brushing under the rug, he had in fact improved and he went to the committee and withdrew his uh, his suggestion.
Interviewer: BUT McCONE HAD A KIND OF DEEP IDEOLOGICAL...
Hilsman: That's right and he did, he was--you see McCone was a very far, I don't wish to appear hostile to McCone, McCone is a very fair minded and I think a fine man myself.
Hilsman: He has a little like President Reagan, a very deep ideological commitment uh, but he is very reasonable in that he has never let or he never did in my time, let his ideological commitment anti-communist ideological commitment permit him to ignore facts or to push the facts too far.
Hilsman: He was always meticulous about this.
Hilsman: So he would indulge himself in offhand comments that were ideological but he never would let that influence his judgment when it came down to, to an estimate.
Hilsman: I, he was really a fair-minded I thought.
Interviewer: DO YOU THINK THE WARHEADS WERE DELIVERED TO CUBA?
Hilsman: I don't think so.
Hilsman: Uh, the uh, the storage facilities were there.
Hilsman: They were building those.
Hilsman: They had not quite completed them...
Hilsman: I don't think the warheads were ever delivered.
Hilsman: The storage areas clearly for atomic warheads were built, you can tell from looking at them what they're for but I think that the warheads never got there.
Hilsman: I think they may have been some of them on the ships that were stopped in the middle of the Atlantic and wallowed in the sea for, dead in the water for 3 days and turned back.
Hilsman: But I think even more likely was that the warheads were intended to come in by air.
Hilsman: Now, this is very important because here the Third World African countries were very helpful to us.
Hilsman: Now partly the reason they were helpful was because we had photographs, we had the U-2 photographs and there was no doubt that this was Cuba and that there were missiles there.
Hilsman: But we asked the Third World countries to deny Soviet aircraft landing rights and they did.
Hilsman: So I think the warheads were probably scheduled to come in by air.
Hilsman: I think they probably never arrived.
Interviewer: WAS THERE A THREAT IN CUBA...?
Hilsman: Well, again I think that if we had not acted and the missiles had become fully operational it would have been a—not a dangerous world because the Soviets were about to attack us, but a very dangerous world because the Soviets would have then done things in Berlin, in Latin America and every where else which would cause crisis which would become very dangerous militarily.
Hilsman: So the fact that we caught them before the warheads got there I think was enormously important but for political reasons and eventually down the line 2 or 3 years for military reasons but not for any immediate military, reason.
Hilsman: I don't think we were on the brink of nuclear war by any manner of means.
Hilsman: We were a long long way from that.
Hilsman: We were on the brink of perhaps uh, I think the next step would have been to take out the surface to air missile that shot the U-2 down then several days would have passed, if the Soviets again refused to negotiate, refused to pull the missiles out, we undoubtedly would have taken out all the surface to air missiles.
Hilsman: But then down the line, if they'd still been adamant we would have launched a conventional invasion of uh, of Cuba.
Hilsman: The warheads were not there.
Hilsman: The Soviets would not use uh, missiles in that face.
Hilsman: It would have been a very bad, a very hairy situation, but it was a long long way from an immediate nuclear war.
Hilsman: It was the worse, world's first nuclear crisis.
Interviewer: START THAT ONE AGAIN.
Hilsman: It was the world's first nuclear crisis.
Hilsman: And that makes it dangerous.
Hilsman: But the danger was political in the immediate sense and only in the long run over several years in a military sense.
Interviewer: CAN YOU START THAT AGAIN...
Hilsman: Okay...It was the world's first nuclear crisis.
Hilsman: There's no doubt of that.
Hilsman: But I don't think there was any danger of immediate nuclear war.
Hilsman: Uh, it would have been a very touchy, a very hairy situation.
Hilsman: American troops, conventional forces attacking and removing uh, Soviet troops.
Hilsman: But I don't think it was a nuclear war that we were on the verge of.
Hilsman: Uh, it was political in the its immediate urgency and that would have been very dangerous in a military sense it would have been very dangerous 2 or 3 years down the line, but not immediately.
Interviewer: THERE WERE HOWEVER...
Hilsman: There were.
Interviewer: [QUESTION INAUDIBLE]
Hilsman: Well, at the time we did not realize that there were four Soviet battle groups there.
Hilsman: We knew there were Soviet ground troops to guard the areas, there were in fact four Soviet battle groups.
Hilsman: Later after the crisis, we learned that they, again I'm not sure whether the warheads were there or not, but they—we learned that these battle groups were equipped with very short range battle field nuclear weapons.
Hilsman: Now you're talking weapons of a few kilotons.
Hilsman: You're not talking uh, intermediate range ballistic missiles or missiles that have any range.
Hilsman: They couldn't have struck at the United States for example.
Hilsman: You see these are missiles with a range of 2 or 3 miles.
Hilsman: And with a—with a nuclear warhead of very very low yield, no bigger than a fairly medium sized conventional bomb but that's just a horse of an entirely different color.
Hilsman: Uh, these would be, you know in the phraseology that Kennedy used before the crisis always warning the Soviets don't put offensive weapons in Cuba.
Hilsman: These were not offensive weapons even by his definition even though they were nuclear.
Interviewer: ..SO YOU DIDN'T LEARN ABOUT THE TACTICAL SOVIET TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS UNTIL AFTER THE WHOLE CRISIS WAS OVER?
Hilsman: After it was all over.
Interviewer: DO YOU THINK IF THAT HAD BEEN REVEALED EARLIER THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHS OR—OR...IT MIGHT HAVE CHANGED SOME OF THE COMPONENTS OF...
Hilsman: Uh well, if we, first of all, again I don't believe the warheads were there you see so, so uh, and I don't think the battle groups were there with all their panoply of, uh integrated weapons you see that the soldiers were there but I don't think they'd become fully equipped or fully operational.
Hilsman: But if they had let us suppose and let us suppose the Soviets refused to negotiate, refused to pull the missiles out, we I think would have, you know, you know we would have knocked the SAM out, knocked the SAMs out then we would might have invaded with conventionals.
Hilsman: See if we had known that we might have included a few of our own weapons of the same size.
Hilsman: But it really didn't really make a lot of difference because we had overwhelming air power just absolutely overwhelming, we could have brought you know all the fighter bombers in, everything from bases all over the United States, we could have just without ever using a nuke, we could have smashed those four battle troops, pulverized them.
Hilsman: You know I, that's what really I think caused the Soviets to cave was the fact that 90 miles from out coast, 9 thousand miles from them, and we had overwhelming conventional air power, ground power, naval power, that— there was just no way they could have stood up to us and they knew it.
Interviewer: SOME PEOPLE NOW THOUGH HAVE USED THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AS A RATIONALIZATION FOR NUCLEAR SUPERIORITY, THEY SAID THE REASON WE WON THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS IS THAT WE HAD NUCLEAR SUPERIORITY AND YOU'VE GOT TO MAINTAIN THE NUCLEAR SUPERIORITY OVER THE SOVIET UNION.
Hilsman: Well, I think that's nonsense.
Hilsman: Uh, you're, you're getting into an entirely different era, uh, area now, but let me say that uh, strategy, nuclear strategy is my profession.
Hilsman: Um, I think that nuclear weapons have totally changed the world, so that anything that happened really before uh, before the advent of nuclear weapons is really pretty much irrelevant.
Hilsman: And I think that Mr. Reagan and his star wars you know even if, they can develop it and solve the scientific problems which is highly questionable, I still think it's ridiculous because what it's trying to do is to rehabilitate war, to make war possible again, you know and we, it just is not possible again.
Hilsman: But let me just cast my stones in every direction.
Hilsman: Uh, my old friend Mac Bundy and Bob McNamara and George Kennan and Jerry Smith have joined proposing a massive build-up of conventional forces in Europe so that if trouble comes the Soviets and the Americans can fight in the conventional war and not use nuclear weapons.
Hilsman: I think that is equally ridiculous to star wars.
Hilsman: I remember uh, when I, this is a little long, but I remember when I first went to NATO in the, in the Korean War, they had a briefing with a picture of the Normandy beach head and they dropped an overlay of Hiroshima on it and it was totally wiped out.
Hilsman: And the briefing officer said, there will be no more Normandies.
Hilsman: If ever get kicked off we'll never get back.
Hilsman: Well what will happen if the Soviets and the Americans ever engage each other conventionally, within two weeks one or the other will begin to lose a little bit.
Hilsman: And the one that's losing will have to say do we negotiate or do we use nuclear weapons, within two weeks, they'll either be at the negotiating table or you'll be in World War III and conventional forces are largely irrelevant, irrelevant except as a plate glass window.
Interviewer: WHAT ROLE DO YOU THINK NUCLEAR WEAPONS PLAY IN THE...TO THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS? CAN YOU USE THAT AS A ARGUMENT TODAY?
Hilsman: I don't think so.
Hilsman: I think that the argument that the—one of the motives for the Soviets putting missiles in Cuba was because they were on the short end of the missile balance and they had a lot of MRBMs, a plethora of them, an oversupply.
Hilsman: I think that was one of several reasons that they put missiles in Cuba.
Hilsman: But in terms of the resolution of the crisis I think that nuclear weapons were absolutely irrelevant.
Hilsman: What happened here was that we had uh, you know alright, we had a certain superiority in nuclear weapons but even if we hadn't had even it'd been the other way, they nullified each other.
Hilsman: In other words, their ICBMs that they had in, the Soviet Union and ours that we had here and B-52s cancelled each other out.
Hilsman: It doesn't matter whether one is got ten times more than the other each side had enough to really turn most of the homeland of the other into ashes and it doesn't make any difference whether you got 10 times as many or not.
Hilsman: If you've got enough, enough is enough.
Hilsman: So I don't think that had anything to do with it.
Hilsman: I think what happened was that you have Cuba, 90 miles from the American coast, and 9 thousand from the Soviet Union, a very long pipeline, within 90 miles we had overwhelming naval power, we had overwhelming air power, we had overwhelming conventional power, we even had a base at Guantanamo, you know which we could use as a diversionary attack.
Hilsman: So I think the reason the Soviets caved was because they realized that we were taking it seriously for political reasons uh, that is the political consequences of it were enormous and we weren't going to tolerate it.
Hilsman: Uh, and they realized that you know we would go up the ladder slowly uh, and—and use conventional forces, but—the—but that the odds were against them on the conventional level in that thing.
Hilsman: Now the nuclears just cancelled each other out.
Interviewer: WE HAVE INTERVIEWED SOME PEOPLE WHO WILL ARGUE THAT BECAUSE THE UNITED STATES HAD NUCLEAR SUPERIORITY WE HAD STUFF LIKE 200 ICBMS...
Interviewer: THE UNITED STATES WON THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS...
Interviewer: THAT AMERICAN NUCLEAR SUPERIORITY WAS THE REASON FOR OUR PREVAILING...
Hilsman: By the way...
Interviewer: [INAUDIBLE QUESTION]?
Hilsman: By the way many also say that—that in the crisis the Bureau of Intelligence and Research got all the Soviets and we wrote an analysis of why the Soviets did it.
Hilsman: Of which missiles and, the missile gap was only one of the reasons and I think that stands up very well now, that there was a lot of internal Sino-Soviet dispute uh, the opportunities in Latin America, Berlin.
Hilsman: All of these things entered into it and somebody and the missile gap was important only because the industrialists and others were resisting a crash ICBM program you see.
Hilsman: And this was a gimmick.
Hilsman: So I don't...
Hilsman: enemies think that the only reason was—was—was uh, that the Soviets put it in where—was this.
Hilsman: Um...
Interviewer: LET'S DO THIS OTHER ONE FIRST.
Hilsman: I just wanted to get that on the record.
Hilsman: Because of...I do not believe that the reason that the crisis was resolved was because the Americans had nuclear superiority.
Hilsman: We did have.
Hilsman: But 40 ICBMs which is about what the Soviets had, is enough to destroy 40 American cities.
Hilsman: Now I think if that was the—the—the gamble or that was the what was at stake, we would have accepted these outmoded, obsolescence, uh, long countdown, MRBMs, IRBMs, very vulnerable IRBMs, we would have accepted that, rather than put 40 cities at risk.
Hilsman: I don't that had anything to do with the resolution of the crisis.
Hilsman: The reason we acted was because of the political consequences of their deploying secretly nuclear weapons in this new nuclear age and what that would have its affect on, Berlin, on Western Europe, on our lives, on NATO, on everything.
Hilsman: That was what we were worried about.
Hilsman: And I don't think that the balance or imbalance of nuclear weapons had anything to do with either side's resolution with the crisis.
Interviewer: WHY KHRUSHCHEV PUT THE MISSILES IN CUBA...
Hilsman: The question is why the Soviets put missiles in Cuba.
Hilsman: Well in the midst of the crisis the Bureau of Intelligence and Research sat down one day with all the Sovietologists and—and—and tried to answer this question.
Hilsman: Quite clearly the fact that we had told them publically and privately that we no longer believed in the missile gap and that we knew that we had superiority in the fall of '61, that clearly was one reason.
Hilsman: They had a problem uh, a problem of being on the small end of, of the balance.
Hilsman: Their solution could easily have been to have an ICBM program stretched out over years which is they did.
Hilsman: I think that they put the missiles in Cuba partly for that.
Hilsman: But the midst of the crisis we had a memo which said that was only one of several reasons.
Hilsman: They had the Sino-Soviet dispute on their hands, they had Berlin on their hands, they had Castro clamoring for help on their hands.
Hilsman: They had a lot of problems.
Hilsman: Somebody said look we've got all these surplus MRBMs, IRBMs, let's put them in Cuba and that'll keep some of these people quiet for awhile.
Hilsman: And I think the answer was that this was a kind of a compromise so that the military would feel they got something and the industrialists didn't have to go into a crash ICBM program.
Hilsman: And you know they could say to the Chinese, well we got a great victory over the United States, so I think there were a lot of little reasons that caused different power centers, the KGB, the military, the industrialists in the Soviet Union to climb on board for what was obviously a gimmick.
Hilsman: Now that memo was written in the midst of the crisis, before it was resolved.
Interviewer: THE CHEAP FIX IN A WAY.
Hilsman: A cheap fix for a lot of people's problems.
Hilsman: I think it's also important...
Interviewer: START THAT AGAIN.
Hilsman: I think it's also important to say that Khrushchev was apparently very careful to make sure that all the major power centers had agreed to this.
Hilsman: I initially thought, I must confess, that the Cuban Missile Crisis contributed to Khrushchev's downfall.
Hilsman: My sovietologist friends point out to me that the evidence is overwhelming the other way.
Hilsman: That he had taken such care to make sure that everybody that was a potential enemy in, the—in the Soviet Union had agreed to put missiles in Cuba so that when they were uh, they were caught and forced to withdraw, he didn't have any particular heat from it.
Interviewer: TELL ME YOUR GREAT STORY ABOUT THAT DAY WHEN YOU WERE LEAVING—SATURDAY—WHEN YOU WERE LEAVING...
Hilsman: Strange love.
Interviewer: TELL ME THE STRANGE LOVE STORY.
Hilsman: Well, this was in the midst of the crisis and uh, um, the thing peaked on a Saturday about noon.
Hilsman: The night before Khrushchev had sent his four part cable which seemed to offer some uh, way out.
Hilsman: Uh, also the night before the KGB had contacted John Scali uh, to ask him to come to me, because they knew I could deliver a message to—to Kennedy and the message was "We will take the missiles out, you promise not to invade and we'll do it under UN supervision." And of course Castro vetoed the letter.
Hilsman: Then, that night we stayed up all night in the Bureau of Intelligence, we only had four hours of sleep a night for about 2 weeks at that stage, but that night we didn't get any sleep at all and uh, we were doing an analysis of the 4-part cable.
Hilsman: The next day Chip Bolden and Dean Rusk and I had uh—were together and they had drafted a possible response, I should say the Saturday morning, the U-2 was shot down and a Radio Moscow broadcast picked up on uh, on Lippman's thing and started screaming about the missiles in Turkey which were irrelevant.
Hilsman: And I--I don't know why but Rusk and Chip asked me to, I was going over to the White House anyway I guess, so I took this message over.
Hilsman: As I was coming, I went up, delivered the message and started back to the State Department and—in the basement was Mac Bundy's office.
Hilsman: And as I went by his office a guy grabbed me and said your office is on the phone.
Hilsman: Well the guy on the other end said, "I've got 2 telephones one to you and the other is to the war room in the Pentagon." And I can the pilot of a U-2 who has strayed from a perfectly innocent mission air sampling over the North Pole picked the wrong star, he's over the Soviet Union and he's screaming about the the Mig-21s that are scrambling below him uh, and he's screaming for help, what do we do? So I put the phone down and ran upstairs.
Hilsman: Well after so little sleep I arrived absolutely wh—white faced and exhausted, panting and I went into Mrs. Lincoln's office and the President was there and Mac Bundy was there and a couple other people and I blurted out this story.
Hilsman: There's this awful silence because everybody thought Oh my god, the Soviets will think this is U-2 reconnaissance plane preparatory to a—an American pre-emptive strike and you know we'd better start this is war.
Hilsman: And it was this long awkward pause and President Kennedy was the coolest fellow in the room, because he laughed and he said "There's always some so and so who doesn't get the word." And he said to me, "You handle this." And I turned around and I was so lack of sleep I kind of spun you know and Mac caught me and said "Mr. President Roger hadn't been to sleep for several days, why don't you let somebody else handle this one." So they and I went home and went to bed.
Hilsman: But he was the coolest fellow in the room.
Interviewer: I WONDER IF YOU CAN TELL ME THAT STORY AGAIN.
Interviewer: AND START WITH I WAS LEAVING THE WHITE HOUSE.
Hilsman: I was leaving the White house and passed Mac Bundy's office in the basement and an aide grabbed me and said my office was on the phone and the guy was talking to me said, I've got a phone to you and I've got a phone to the war, Pentagon, I can hear the pilot of a U-2 who has strayed from a mission over the North Pole gathering air samples and he's over the Soviet Union, the Migs are scrambling and he's screaming for help and I can hear him.
Hilsman: So I put the phone down and ran upstairs to the President.
Hilsman: And he was in Mrs. Lincoln's office with the President and Mac Bundy and I blurted out this news and of course there was this terrible silence because everybody thought oh my god, the Soviets are going to think that we have sent a reconnaissance plane in preparation for a pre-emptive strike.
Hilsman: Maybe this is the war.
Hilsman: And there was a long pause, and Kennedy who was I say, the coolest fellow in the room, laughed and he said, "There's always some so-and-so who doesn't get the word.
Hilsman: Take care of this."
Interviewer: THAT DIDN'T AMOUNT TO ANYTHING THAT, IN THE END WAS NOT...
Hilsman: Well, what happened was I think what it amounted to was first of all we took steps to make sure that—that—that—that the message was not that we were on a reconnaissance flight.
Hilsman: We brought the fellow back very quickly and so and so forth, but I think it had two significances.
Hilsman: One is Khrushchev used it as propaganda in his uh, uh, in his public statements about the—the, here in the midst of the crisis by the way there's a lovely line in that, when there was a smell of burning in the air.
Hilsman: Tell you a story about that one too.
Hilsman: But, anyway Khrushchev used it for propaganda purposes But it was this incident that really caused the hotline.
Hilsman: I mean it was because of this that we decided afterwards to propose a—a hotline.
Hilsman: So I think the incident was very dangerous, handled very quickly, very efficiently by everybody concerned, but it also produced the hotline.
Interviewer: IS THIS THE INCIDENT THAT...
Hilsman: No, no this was the night before the public speech.
Hilsman: He said you know, it uh, by tomorrow we'll be in a flaming crisis.
Hilsman: Um, no...
Interviewer: LET ME ASK YOU ABOUT SCALI...
Hilsman: Well, Scali uh, was a friend and he came to me and said that the head of the KGB Fomin had called him and asked him if he could get a message through me to Kennedy.
Hilsman: And the message was very simple, just three points, uh, one was, we--we the Soviets will withdraw the missiles, you the Americans promise not to invade Cuba and we'll remove the missiles under UN supervision.
Hilsman: Now, Castro eventually vetoed that one.
Hilsman: Now the reason that I thought this was significant was that the Soviets have a habit of making a--an official statement that Cu--the four-part cable, which is you know forthcoming but not specific.
Hilsman: And then they will frequently co—uh, couple this with a statement that's very hard, very specific— very nuts and boltsy which is denial, comes through a press channel or something else.
Hilsman: Now I was familiar with this technique the Soviets use so I—I thought that this was very significant and so what I did, was I— I did I got it to--to Kennedy.
Hilsman: And interestingly enough, it—it was Bobby Kennedy who put it all together.
Hilsman: Because you see that was Friday night so you get the—the—the four-part message coming in through official channels, the KGB approach from Scali to me to Kennedy then the next morning the U-2 shot down and the next morning there's this Moscow broadcast that's terribly harsh.
Hilsman: Well what we theorized in the Bureau of Intelligence Research that that broadcast had been okayed as early as Thursday and that had really been overtaken by the four-part cable and that they'd come in at different times but they actually were unrelated.
Hilsman: Later I've talked to some Soviets and that does turn out to be true.
Hilsman: So that afternoon in the height of the crisis when everything looked so black, the U-2 was shot down, it was Bobby Kennedy who invented the Trollope ploy, this is you know in the novels of Trollope a boy squeezes a girl's hand and she turns and says I accept your proposal of marriage.
Hilsman: And so what Bobby proposed that Saturday night was that we take the best of what was in the Khrushchev cable and the Fomin-Scali-Hilsman bit and put it together and say, we understand that what you are proposing is the following and if this is correct we accept.
Hilsman: That cable went out Saturday night and Sunday, Khrushchev accepted.
Interviewer: WHAT DO YOU THINK WOULD HAVE HAPPENED NEXT IF KHRUSHCHEV HAD NOT ACCEPTED?
Hilsman: I'm virtually certain I know what would have happened for the next 2 stages.
Hilsman: Uh, after a couple of days...
Interviewer: [REPHRASES QUESTION]
Hilsman: I'm virtually certain I know what would happened the next two stages if Khrushchev had not agreed to remove the missiles.
Hilsman: After a suitable interval to give them time to think, we would have taken out the single surface-to-air missile that had shot down the pilot, the American pilot.
Hilsman: Then after a suitable interval of several days, we would have taken out all the SAMs, every single one of them.
Hilsman: Yep, if other American planes had been shot down in-- in the meantime, we would had taken those out.
Hilsman: Then, further down the road, I am less certain of what would have happened accept that I know that it would not have been nuclear that we would have uh, we would have used uh, conventional air power, conventional sea power, conventional land power to remove uh, the missiles.
Hilsman: Uh, and what would have happened two months down the line, of course no one could tell.
Interviewer: WHEN WE CAME IN YOU TOLD ME THIS NICE, SORT OF ATMOSPHERIC FEELING IN WASHINGTON OF OCTOBER OF 62 AND THE CONTRAST WITH WHAT WAS GOING ON INSIDE...
Interviewer: WHAT WAS IT LIKE IN WASHINGTON IN OCTOBER 1962?
Hilsman: Well, October in Washington is frequently the best month of the year.
Hilsman: Uh, there were these golden October days where the--you know it was cool but bright sunshine, there was a tang in the air.
Hilsman: It was just absolutely lovely and we were spending 10, 12 hours a day talking about, if we do this and they do that, and we do this and they do that, then boom.
Hilsman: And you know nuclear holocaust and then we come out of those meetings to this absolutely superb autumn days that it was—it was poignant I think is the word.
Interviewer: IF YOU COULD TELL ME THE AIR RAID SHELTER STORY— PUT IT IN THE CONTEXT OF UH, FEAR IN THE COUNTRY AND SOME PEOPLE MOVING OUT OF THE CITIES AND SOME PEOPLE MOVING...
Hilsman: I later learned that out in the, in some of the cities in the middle west, people evacuated the cities, there was array, uh, runs uh, on canned goods, uh, I was not aware of that among our own friends, though I did become aware that since I was the assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research that all of our neighbors were watching what Eleanor and our two children were doing very carefully.
Hilsman: And the fact that they went about their daily business without evacuating the city seemed to be important to our neighbors later.
Hilsman: But there was one incident that uh, we had redone our porch and made it uh, a cement thing and thought well as long as we're doing this, this was back in the, we started this during the Eisenhower administration, we made it into a kind of a fallout shelter, thick things.
Hilsman: And and part of the deal had been to have some empty sand bags in case of, of something happening.
Hilsman: As I say this has pre-dated this by about 2 years.
Hilsman: But in the midst of nuclear crisis, the sand bags arrived, the empty sand bags, and they were on our porch, and I suddenly realized what this might mean to out neighbors if the head of the Intelligence Bureau of the State Department suddenly gets sand bags on his front porch.
Hilsman: So I call my wife up and say get those damn bags in the basement as quickly as you can, we don't want to alarm anybody.
Hilsman: So that was kind of a personal note.
Interviewer: IN REFERENCE TO THAT, I MEAN MANY PEOPLE HAVE SAID THAT WE'VE INTERVIEWED—KENNEDY SAID TO SORENSON, I THINK THE CHANCE OF A NUCLEAR WAR WERE BETWEEN 1 AND 3...HOW CLOSE DO YOU THINK THE WORLD WAS TO A NUCLEAR WAR?
Hilsman: Not close at all.
Interviewer: SAY THAT IN A SENTENCE.
Hilsman: I don't think the world was any where near close to the brink of nuclear war.
Hilsman: Uh, no let me start all over again.
Hilsman: I don't think the world was any where near to the brink of nuclear war.
Hilsman: It was a nuclear crisis, there's no question about that and it was important for that.
Hilsman: But we were no where near the brink of a nuclear war.
Hilsman: Uh, if uh, well let me say that Kennedy throughout the whole crisis kept saying we must not do anything that will give them, uh, make them do a spasm reaction.
Hilsman: We must avoid backing them into a corner.
Hilsman: We must give them time to think.
Hilsman: He made the public announcement over TV and waited 24 hours to get the permission of the organization of American states to put in a—a blockade, called quarantine.
Hilsman: He waited another 24 hours, before he—he publically announced a quarantine.
Hilsman: He waited another 24 hours, we're already 4 or 5 days into the crisis, he stopped a Lebanese freighter on Soviet charter.
Hilsman: The Soviets are not going to put a missile in a Lebanese freighter.
Hilsman: He waits another 48 hours as I recall, and stopped the Soviet oil tanker.
Hilsman: You can't put a missile on an oil tanker.
Hilsman: We're already 6 or 7 days into the crisis.
Hilsman: So each move he made, he built into it 24 or 48 hours to let them think.
Hilsman: We were a long long way from any use of force, except that if they had refused to remove the missiles on that Sunday that they accepted, we would have taken out the surface to air missile that had shot down the American U-2.
Hilsman: We'd have waited several more days and taken out, and if other American planes had been shot down on reconnaissance flights we would have uh, taken out the rest of the surface to air missiles somewhere 2 or 3 weeks down the line if they'd been adamant we would have used conventional air power, conventional sea, conventional ground forces to remove the missiles.
Hilsman: But that's a long way from nuclear war.
Interviewer: YOU ARE ARGUING THAT WE WEREN'T CLOSE TO NUCLEAR WAR BECAUSE KENNEDY WAS GOING ABOUT THIS IN CAREFULLY SLOW WAY...I GET THE SENSE FROM MCNAMARA...THAT THEY FELT THEY WERE ON THE AGE OF A NUCLEAR...
Interviewer: BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHAT WAS GOING TO COME FROM THE OTHER SIDE NOT BECAUSE OF ACTION...
Hilsman: Well, let me say also that that I never had any sense in the middle of the crisis that the next day was disaster.
Hilsman: I certainly had the sense and everybody I dealt with had the sense that we were in the world's first nuclear crisis and it's awful hard to make this distinction I know.
Hilsman: But, but, just consider for a moment, we had overwhelming conventional strength.
Hilsman: The Soviets would have been fools to have fought under those circumstances.
Hilsman: If they had resorted to nuclear weapons, they had 40 or 50, they would have taken out 40 or 50 American cities.
Hilsman: We had several hundred.
Hilsman: We would have taken out the top 100 of their cities and followed it up with a lot more.
Hilsman: The odds were stacked against them.
Hilsman: Now, I suppose that the reason I feel so confident that we were not at the brink of nuclear war, and the reason that I felt confident at the time, we were not, was that Khrushchev and the Soviets made a very serious error in putting missiles in Cuba.
Hilsman: But once that was done and once they, we got into the crisis, the Soviets were— behaved very rationally and very responsibly.
Hilsman: They stopped the ships in the middle of the Atlantic.
Hilsman: They wallowed in the water.
Hilsman: I cc- Rusk said the other side's just blinked.
Hilsman: Well they had done more than blink, they had stopped the ships dead in the water.
Hilsman: And then they turned around and went back.
Hilsman: Once that happened I was absolutely certain we were no where near nuclear war, you see, once that happ, and that's, that's only about the 4th or 5th day of the public crisis, you see.
Interviewer: OTHERS HAVE SAID THAT THE REASON THEY FELT SO FRIGHTENED WAS THE DANGER OF AN ACCIDENT.
Interviewer: THAT SOMEHOW A MISSILE MIGHT BE LAUNCHED FROM CUBA AND THEY WEREN'T SURE THAT THE MISSILES WERE NOT IN CUBA...THAT THE AMERICAN NAVY WAS OUT THERE DROPPING CHARGES ON SOVIET SUBS TRYING TO GET THEM TO THE SURFACE.
Interviewer: YOUR STORY OF THE U-2 GETTING LOST OVER THE SOVIET UNION, BUT WHEN YOU'RE IN THE MIDST OF A CRISIS, WHEN...
Interviewer: AND EVERYTHING'S AT THAT LEVEL...
Hilsman: My position is difficult to articulate.
Hilsman: Uh, I am trying to make a distinction between a nuclear crisis and the brink of nuclear war.
Hilsman: I think we were in a nuclear crisis.
Hilsman: It's highly dangerous, for political reasons more than anything else.
Hilsman: But that's different from being on the brink of nuclear war.
Hilsman: Now, uh, again I don't want to minimize the seriousness of the crisis.
Hilsman: It was a very serious crisis.
Hilsman: I personally think that if nuclear war comes to this planet it will come through a series of, of steps by each side that seems logical and rational on its own bottom, but them when you get to the end it ends up in a nuclear war.
Hilsman: So that I'm not quarrel with that.
Hilsman: I think an accident, I—I really don't think an accident would have caused war.
Hilsman: There's a—there's a joke in the RAND Corporation you know that if one of our missiles or one of their missiles goes astray and is headed for Detroit, you know Khrushchev will call up and say, "Take Stalingrad it's yours you know it's a gift." Uh, and—and I think that's more likely what would happen in there was an accident.
Hilsman: But the sooner the again let me point out to you uh, again which I've said before, I don't believe the warheads were there.
Hilsman: I'm virtually certain the warheads had not yet arrived and that's because they were probably scheduled to come by air or if they were by sea they were in that group that wallowed in, in the middle of the Atlantic, so I don't think there were any warheads there.
Interviewer: WHAT DO YOU THINK ARE THE ESSENTIAL LESSONS THAT WE SHOULD LEARN FROM THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS IN HELPING US TODAY?
Hilsman: Well, I my answer is going to be a little uh, different than I think you might expect.
Hilsman: I think in the midst of the crisis most of us, or a lot of us who sat around that table saying if they do this, if we do that and then boom, began to realize that the nuclear deterrent, mutual assured destruction which we had relied upon and which we all believed uh, was a fairly stable piece as Winston Churchill said, "It's a balance of terror but it's a rather stable balance of terror." I think that a lot of us around the table began to doubt that at the time, and what I think is that after pondering and reflecting on it is the lesson is that the Soviets and the Americans can never engage in any form of combat whether it's conventional or whatever, because if they do one side or the other will begin to lose a little bit and that side that's losing will have to say we either negotiate or we go nuclear.
Hilsman: Within 2 weeks of any con—of any v—violent confrontation no matter what level between the Soviets and Americans, I think will end up either negotiating or nuclear war.
Hilsman: Now, my lesson is that.
Hilsman: That warfare is simply out between the Soviet and this business of conventional forces, star wars, to try to rehabilitate war I think is just nonsense.
Hilsman: And therefore, I have been spending my time trying to search for some way of accomplishing social and political change without organized violence, without war.
Hilsman: I haven't found it and I haven't found anybody who had found it.
Hilsman: That's our dilemma.
Hilsman: I think war, the function of war, war as a social instrument has ceased to have any affect between nuclear powers.
Hilsman: Not between India and Pakistan but between nuclear powers, and that there is no yet, all—any alternative so we're stuck with mutual assured destruction, we're stuck with the deterrent and it's not very satisfactory.
Interviewer: THAT'S GREAT.
Interviewer: IS THERE ANY WAY YOU CAN GIVE ME THAT IN A SHORTER THING AND WHAT I MIGHT SUGGEST AT STARTING IT IS...
Hilsman: The lesson that I have drawn from reflecting on the Cuban Missile Crisis and it's not one that's I believe widely understood, is that any form of combat between two great nuclear powers, the Soviet Union and the United States is impossible.
Hilsman: That any form of combat, any confrontation that's violent will end up very shortly within a couple of weeks either where one side's beginning to lose a little and the other side then will have to choose negotiations or nuclear war.
Hilsman: Therefore war has ceased to have the social function that it's had all these years.
Hilsman: And I think that my doubts began to rise about deterrence.
Hilsman: Now, this is the only thing we've got.
Hilsman: Uh, people try star wars, they try a large scale conventional forces in Europe, neither one will make any sense, it's nonsense.
Hilsman: We've got to rely on deterrence until we develop some alternative for accomplishing social and political change other than organized violence.
Hilsman: We haven't got it, I haven't got it, so we're stuck with deterrence.
Hilsman: But I think it's silly to talk about star wars or to talk about a large scale conventional forces between nuclear powers.
Interviewer: GREAT.
Interviewer: TELL ME THE PORCUPINE STORY...
Hilsman: Well, in the Bureau of Intelligence of Research which I headed, we had a briefing room which was in use 24 hours a day throughout the whole crisis, you know cigarette butts around, coffee half filled coffee cups.
Hilsman: One end of the uh, of the briefing room had a black board and somebody had you know chalked across the top, "In a nuclear age, nations make war as porcupines make love, carefully."
Interviewer: DO YOU THINK THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS UH, WAS A WATERSHED...
Hilsman: I know that the people around that table in Washington looked down a gun barrel of nuclear war as I say and shrank back from the holocaust and that that was the beginning of the destruction of the consensus in America that the way to solve the problem of the Soviet Union was deterrence and deterrence alone.
Hilsman: And we've been—some of us have been searching for an alternative to deterrence since.
Hilsman: Foolishly in the case of star wars and conventional but, but anyway.
Hilsman: The Soviets I have talked to in the years following I think had the same experience that uh, hell I've forgotten the god damn question.
Hilsman: Watershed.
Interviewer: START AT THE BEGINNING AGAIN.
Interviewer: HOW MUCH SHOULD WE SEE AS A HISTORIAN AS SOMEONE WHO'S SEEN THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND AS A WATERSHED AS A CHANGE OF NOTION...
Hilsman: I think the Cuban Missile Crisis was a watershed in only two senses.
Hilsman: The first sense was that the people around the table in Washington looked down a gun barrel of nuclear war and shrank back from what they saw there.
Hilsman: And doubts came about how stable deterrence was, how effective and they'd been looking for an alternative.
Hilsman: But probably more importantly is that they uh, they began to uh, to realize just how serious nuclear war between the powers would be.
Hilsman: Since then, I have uh, I have talked to Soviets and they had the same experience, so watershed in the sense that I think the leaders of both sides, some of the leaders of both sides began to realize just how dangerous confrontation between the Soviets and the Americans was.
Hilsman: The second thing is I think, the watershed is in America that it's broken the consensus, that that was the beginning of the breakdown in the American consensus about foreign policy.
Hilsman: Viet Nam contributed to it enormously but it was, it had already begun before the Vietnam War.
Interviewer: WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT—SHOULD CHANGE IN AMERICAN ATTITUDES TOWARDS AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY?
Hilsman: Well between 1945 and uh, you know and the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was a consensus in America, right, left, Republican, Democrat agreed that the way we deal with the Soviet Union is a stockpile of nuclear weapons B-52 bombers, missiles and that that was fairly stable and reliable piece, you see.
Hilsman: And that's about all we needed.
Hilsman: I think that the crack appeared in the Cuban Missile Crisis when a number of people who were in the crisis and those who watched it, academics, journalists, uh, attentive publics, began to realize that this was not enough, that we—that deterrence, no matter how good could still result in nuclear war for perfectly you know responsible people on both sides making a series of decisions that seemed correct but ended up in war and had been searching J for an alternative.
Hilsman: So since then, the gap between the different parts of the America American people and leaders has widened.
Hilsman: So now you have uh, and then Viet Nam widened it either, even further, so you now have star wars on one side uh, back Bundy and Bob McNamara talking about massive conventional forces on the other and you know it—we're all fragmented because we don't have an agreement for perfectly sound reasons, because nobody's figured out a good alternative to deterrence, so we're stuck with that for the time being.
Interviewer: IN THOSE SORT OF NOVEMBER, DECEMBER '62, DO YOU THINK THE EXPERIENCE OF THE MISSILE CRISIS HELPED TO LEAD THE KENNEDY AND KHRUSHCHEV TO THE PARTIAL TEST BAN, TO— DID IT SCARE THEM, DID IT...
Hilsman: I don't think the Cuban Missile Crisis led Khrushchev and Kennedy to a, to the test ban treaty.
Hilsman: I know that Kennedy decided to use the Cuban Missile Crisis for his own purposes, to get detente.
Hilsman: In the immediate aftermath of the crisis, he issued orders to all of us.
Hilsman: "I do not want any bragging, any boasting, anything of that nature." He said, "I want to use this." He then made his great American University speech in which he said, as a result of the crisis, and he was talking as much to the American people as he was to the Soviets, "We can't live this way, we must move towards what we now think of as detente." And out of that grew the limited nuclear test ban treaty, if Kennedy had lived, the reason he acce—he accepted a limited treaty as opposed to a comprehensive treaty, because he thought it was the only the first step.
Hilsman: You see he didn't realize he was going to be killed.
Hilsman: But, my answer to that one is that Kennedy deliberately self-consciously used the Cuban Missile Crisis to move toward an accom—ah, ah, normalization of relations between the Soviets and the Americans.