The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [418]
Bundy tossed and turned all night long, musing about all the imponderables. In the morning he went in and saw the president before he left to tell him that he was not quite comfortable with the blockade option. “Well, I’m having some of those same worries,” Kennedy said, as Bundy recalled a few months later in a private memo, “and you know my first reaction was the air strike. Have another look at that and keep it alive.” Kennedy was thinking of a limited air strike, not setting the island aflame the way the generals were proposing.
Sorensen said later that the president had been “a bit disgusted” at Bundy’s academic pondering when he should have been leading Ex Comm to a consensus for the blockade. The president had suggested opposite things to the two men. Kennedy was not a man like Franklin Roosevelt who believed that nothing flattered one aide more than hearing the president slander another. But Kennedy used people, his brother as well as his closest aides, to further policies and issues and matters that only he understood.
Ex Comm was the stage on which much of the drama played out, and Kennedy was the unseen writer of many of the lines. The fact that he was secretly recording most of the sessions only made the theatrical nature of the committee’s work more pronounced. He could not afford to have the military and civilian leaders at loggerheads, and much of this endless musing was probably an attempt to gently lead these men toward consensus. The fact that the president was instructing his man Bundy to speak positively about air strikes may have been partially an attempt to signal to the Joint Chiefs that their views had not been summarily discarded.
At the meeting Friday, October 19, after Kennedy had flown off on his midwestern trip, Bundy began by saying he had just “spoken with the president this morning, and he felt there was further work to be done.” These were attention-getting words. He went on to say that a mere “blockade would not remove the missiles. An air strike would be quick and would take out the bases in a clean surgical operation. He favored decisive action with its advantages of surprises and confronting the world with a fait accompli.”
That was an extraordinary statement; it changed the whole tenor of the meeting and allowed others to raise their swords. Acheson weighed in supporting air strikes. So did Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon and McCone. General Taylor reiterated his call for bold, immediate action. Even Undersecretary of State George Ball, who usually wore the feathers of a dove, admitted that he was of two minds, wavering between the two courses.
Bobby said that he had talked to his brother “very recently this morning,” as if to say that he who touched the throne last carried the mantle of power. The attorney general was smiling, but he was doubly emphasizing the authority that he and his words carried. He was the fiercest of cold war warriors, a champion of sabotage against Castro and almost certainly of his assassination. Many of the men in the room had heard his endless tirades against Castro, but they had not heard the Robert Kennedy who spoke that morning. As always, he was for action, but not a sudden air attack against the missile bases. He talked of 175 years of American history, without the shame of a Pearl Harbor to darken the national honor. He said that a “sneak attack was not in our traditions. Thousands of Cubans would be killed without warning, and a lot of Russians too.” He called for a blockade that would seem nearly inevitably to lead within a few days to full-scale military action. “In looking forward into the future, it would be better for our children and grandchildren if we decided to face the Soviet threat [in the Western Hemisphere], stand up to it, and eliminate it now,” the attorney general told the group. “The circumstances