Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [160]
Out campaigning in Chicago, fulfilling his obligation to attend a Democratic fund-raiser for Mayor Richard J. Daley, Jack received a call from Bobby. His brother didn’t mince words. The time had come to make a decision, he said. Flying back to D.C. on Air Force One, Jack warned Pierre Salinger: grab your balls.
A phalanx of powerful men now was allied against him. The Joint Chiefs, McGeorge Bundy, John McCone, Douglas Dillon—all supported an air strike. Here was the Establishment—intelligence, military, and finance—mutually agreeing that the best move was to send in the bombers. And other influential voices were about to join the chorus. On Monday, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, stood by LeMay, urging an air strike followed by an all-out invasion. The time for the showdown with the Soviets had arrived. Yet, still, Kennedy persisted in disagreeing.
Here was a perfect affirmation of the Founding Fathers’ reasoning, which had led them to place ultimate constitutional authority in the hands of the person elected by the American people. As the French statesman Georges Clemenceau more recently had observed, “War is far too important to be left to the generals.” Thus, even after hearing the expert arguments, Kennedy rejected the air-attack option, ordering instead a blockade on all offensive weapons headed to Cuba, a suggestion earlier made by Dean Rusk. He would announce it three days later in a nationally broadcast address.
“This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba,” he told American listeners, the aerial photographs in hand. “Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.”
The missiles had to go, Kennedy declared, decreeing a naval blockade of all ships carrying offensive weapons or missile-firing equipment to Cuba. Any such vessel would be stopped and turned back. “It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response to the Soviet Union.” He then recited the Cold War canon: “The 1930s taught us a clear lesson: aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war.”
Now began the waiting. During this period he distracted himself, as usual, by having his buddies to dinner at the White House. “I think the pressure of this period made him desire more to have friends around,” recalled Charlie Bartlett. “I think I was over there for dinner three times in the week . . . just small groups, which he would break up about nine thirty and go back to the cables.”
He shared what he could. On one of those nights, Bartlett was climbing into bed around eleven thirty when the phone rang. Kennedy told him, “You’d be interested to know I got a cable from our friend, and he says that those ships are coming through, they’re coming through tomorrow.” To hear such information gave his listener a very clear notion of what kind of pressure Jack was under. Bartlett realized “it was on that kind of a note that he had to go to sleep. But I must say that the president’s coolness and temper were never more evident than they were that week.”
Under the careful supervision of Robert McNamara, the navy enforced the blockade without attacking the Soviet ships, which retreated from the Cuban sea channels. Within the Department of the Navy, however, it was an unpopular decision. That’s because, as Red Fay explained it, his friend was stepping all over what the navy brass saw as the