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more freely. One statement that must have played and replayed in his head was General Taylor’s “It’ll never be one hundred percent, Mr. President.” In other words, an air strike could never be guaranteed to wipe out all the missiles. But Berlin was also central to his thinking. Any attack on Cuba could give Khrushchev his chance. He was only too aware that, back in 1956, when the British, French, and Israelis had gone to war with Egypt, it gave the Soviets the opportunity to crush the Hungarian revolution. If Khrushchev was attempting the same ploy this time, using a U.S. attack on Cuba as a pretext for rolling through West Berlin, Britain and France might well blame the Americans for this mortal breach in the West’s defense.

By Thursday, Bobby was starting to have second thoughts of his own about a raid on Cuba. The issue of America’s moral standing had become part of the debate. After one meeting he passed a note to Sorensen: “I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor.” It was a serious consideration. Despite the photographic evidence, there would be many around the world who would regard any military strike against Cuba as aggression, pure and simple. For the United States to attack such a tiny neighbor would wind up in the history books as a classic example of imperialism.

Friday marked the fourth day since Bundy had shown the president the surveillance pictures. Now the stakes were raised even higher, with new aerial photographs revealing more sites in Cuba, ones serving intermediate-range missiles. Such weapons could travel nearly three thousand miles, all the way to New York. The hawks were now screaming for action. The most ferocious was the air force chief of staff, General Curtis LeMay, the former head of the Strategic Air Command, who, during World War II, had led brutal incendiary attacks over Japan.

Kennedy challenged LeMay’s thinking. Might not an American attack on Cuba quickly start a nuclear chain reaction? We attack their ally, they grab for Berlin. Then, confronted by the overwhelming force of the Red Army, the only resort of the United States would be to use tactical atomic weapons right there in the middle of Europe. The next escalation, involving an exchange of each side’s nuclear arsenals, was not, after that, hard to imagine.

This was all unfamiliar language to the cigar-smoking LeMay, who’d entered the air corps in 1929. His interest was simply spelling out the strategic facts. The United States enjoyed a huge advantage in intercontinental missiles. Why weren’t we playing our strength? A naval blockade of Cuba, the only alternative to an attack on the missile sites, would be a sign of weakness. It would be like “appeasement at Munich,” LeMay said. He’d dared—though he may not have entirely realized what he was doing—to imply that Jack Kennedy was his father’s appeasing son.

Yet, to his credit, Kennedy realized to whom he was talking, understood the mind-set of what he was confronting in this frightening moment. LeMay was telling him that the smart move for the United States was to engage in a nuclear test of strength, as if it were an arm wrestle. We lose tens of millions but we end up winning the test of strength, since the Russians will get the worst of whatever planetary horror is inflicted. “You’re talking about the destruction of a country,” Kennedy said simply. That led to the following exchange:

LeMay:

You’re in a pretty bad fix at the present time.

Kennedy:

What did you say?

LeMay:

You’re in a pretty bad fix.

Kennedy:

Well, you’re in there with me. Personally.

Tapes of the discussions among the Joint Chiefs after their civilian commander left the room show them united against the president. “You pulled the rug right out from under him,” Chief of Staff General David Shoup of the marines applauded LeMay. The military men agreed that anything short of an all-out invasion was “piecemeal.”

Kennedy, fortunately, knew whom he was dealing with. He knew that LeMay and others in the high strategic command leaned toward a “first strike” option, especially in the