Kennedy and Kruschev began their celebrated exchange of personal letters on Tuesday, October 23, while Soviet warships continued on course toward Cuba. What might have become a tragic complication evaporated 24 hours later, when the Soviet ships Gagarin and Komiles, accompanied by a submarine, stopped just short of the American blockade. Other ships turned around and headed away from Cuba.
"We were scared of war throughout," recalls Douglas C. Dillon '31, then Secretary of the Treasury and a member of the ad hoc White House committee formed to advise the President. A longtime Harvard visiting committee member and former president of the Board of Overseers, Dillon adds that the two-week ordeal consisted of a series of optimistic surges and crashing depressions.
On Thursday the 25th, new U-2 photos showed that construction of Soviet bombers was continuing at an increased pace. Cuban United Nations representative Mario Garcia-Inchanstegui told Crimson reporters in an exclusive interview that his nation would not negotiate with the United States under any circumstances.
While one Kennedy corresponded with Kruschev in the fall of 1962, another one ran for his first term in the U.S. Senate Edward M. Kennedy '54 participated in an all-Harvard campaign against Republican George Cabot Lodge '50 and Independent H. Stuart Hughes, a professor of History. The seat went to the President's brother in a runaway, but the Hughes crusade, which focused on the scholar's leftist international politics aroused substantial interest on campus during the missile crisis.
More than 900 spectators attended an October 24 Cuba forum in Lowell Lecture Hall sponsored by the national disarmament group, Tocsin. The gathering featured Hughes, who lambasted JFK for creating "a contrived and theatrical atmosphere" of military confrontation rather than relying primarily on peaceful United Nations intervention. History Professor Stephan A. Thernstrom, then a first-year instructor and a Hughes organizer, recalls that Tocsin sympathizers "had a horrible sinking feeling everyone would rally around the flag and move us closer to war." The Crimson agreed, editorializing that Kennedy should have dealt more directly with Cuban leader Fidel Castro rather than flying "on wings of war into an ambiguous 'quarantine'" against the Soviets. "I really thought at the time that this was part of Kennedy's macho-jocko routine to prove American resolve," says Thernstrom. But he adds that his political views were not widely held on campus. Several petitions actually circulated in favor of JFK, and Hertzberg of the Liberal Union formally endorsed the blockade, saying, "Action is now necessary." Almost every anti-war event Tocsin or Hughes organized that October met with mainstream opposition.
Enjoying a brief period of relative strength, the Harvard Young Republicans Club endorsed a strong American response in an unusual show of support for Kennedy Danny J. Boggs '65, vice president of the conservative organization at the time, recalls that amid all of the excitement, his group received a notable boost from a visiting scholar from Columbia named Zbigniew Brzezinski. The one time Harvard professor and national security advisor under President Jimmy Carter told an International Relations Club audience on Thursday, the 25th. "I would initiate an intensive air strike on the missile sites, which are still comparatively few."
"The attention did very well for our club," remembers Boggs, who now serves as a domestic policy aide in the Reagan Administration.
White House officials faced the absolute nadir of the confrontation on October 27, "Black Saturday," as Kennedy's assistant appointments secretary, David Powers, still calls it. The White House had received a combative letter from Khrushchev which seemed to contradict an earlier message indicating a willingness to compromise. That night, the President and Powers, long-time personal friends, shared a late dinner of chicken, in the Oval Office while Kennedy silently weighed his options.
"The President," Powers recalls, "said to me at one point, 'Dave, you are eating that chicken and drinking that wine like it's your last supper.' I told him, 'Mr. President, I'm not sure that it's not.' It was difficult to have hope, even though we had faith in the President."
McGeorge Bundy, who left his position as dean of the Faculty here to become Kennedy's chief national security advisor, describes the missile crisis in familiar terms: "the most dangerous moment in the nuclear confrontation because of the degree to which things could get out of control." But Bundy, who now teaches history at New York University, adds that there was a huge discrepancy between the public's impression of the missile crisis and what was actually going on. "One advantage of being inside the government process was that you knew what was not going to happen, and in that sense there wasn't one night when we went to bed and assumed that would be the last time."
Dan Fenn recalls a tense meal with fellow aides in the White House mess sometime late in the second week of the crisis: "Pierre Salinger [the White House press secretary] came sauntering in...and we all asked him what was new, had anything happened. He cocked his ear to the skies, waited a second or two, and said, 'Still quiet, so I guess nothing.' That's what you call gallows humor."
The White House did not have formal institutional ties to specific college faculties for consulting purposes in 1962, Bundy says, but several Harvard professors had access to inside information through official and unofficial sources. Kistiakowsky, for example, remained in contact with members of the Presidential Science Advisory Committee, which he had headed under the Eisenhower Administration. He attributes his decision to cancel classes at the peak of the crisis to the gloomy reports he received: "I just couldn't make myself prepare the lecture, so I went in and said I was not going to lecture," he explains.
Paul M. Doty, also a chemistry professor, served formally on the science advisory board in 1962 while retaining his academic position. He speaks of "two levels of perception" inside and outside government and amplifies Bundy's assertion that nuclear conflict remained "a long ways away," despite very real concern in the White House. Doty recalls that "half the people at lower levels of government were packing their station wagons to leave with their families for their homes in Vermont." He was also aware of disturbing logistical details: for example, that the B-52s constantly landing and taking off at Logan Airport during the week after Kennedy's first speech were crammed full of nuclear bombs.
On the advice of his brother Robert, the Attorney General, JFK decided late Saturday night to ignore Khruschev's more belligerent letter but warned that if the missiles were not withdrawn by Sunday, invasions or air strikes would follow. The next day, Khruschev announced the withdrawal of the Soviet missiles, saying, "We are confident that reason will triumph, that war will not be unleashed, and peace and security of the peoples will be insured."
Those who lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis agree that it brought into better focus the danger of the U.S.-Soviet nuclear standoff. Some attribute the successful drive for the 1963 partial Test Ban Treaty to the concern aroused in October 1962. But the Caribbean confrontation did not itself produce significant new critiques of American government and foreign policy among students and professors. "Students were very little activated politically," says Adam Ulam. "The mood of Vietnam had not yet emerged, and there was nothing like the interest in political issues that came to exist."
Less than a week after the Crimson front page had been filled with speeches on the apocalypse and calls for U.S. invasions, the stories on student government and debates over General Education returned. "The lasting memory is one of fear followed by relief," says Frederic Ballard. "We were all just so relieved that there wasn't warfare." By election day, missiles and surgical air strikes were all but forgotten. "Cliffies Endorse Teddy Kennedy As Sexiest Candidate for Senator," proclaimed a page-one headline. Stuart Hughes received a grand total of 50,000 votes for his anti-war campaign, and three days after JFK had removed the last blockade ships, Harvard beat Yale, 14-6, at Soldiers' Field.