THIRTEEN DAYS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200630005-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 20, 2004
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: January 19, 1969
• Content Type: NSPR

The New iYoo~rk Tintae Book Review Si-AI
Approved For Release 217114 C&9-k%P88-013 000200630005-0
That dramatic. scene Is de-'
scribed by the late Senator Rob-
Thirteen Days ert F. Kennedy in this book on
the Cuban missile crisis, the
f S
ov.et missiles in Cuba
By Robert-F. Kennedy. .4,,y o
on Tuesday, Oct. 16. 1962, to
With Introductions by Robert S. McNamara and Harold Mbcmillan. Khrushchev's agreeing to their
illustrated. 224 pp. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. $5.50. ,withdrawal on Sunday, Oct.
28. The vignette of that fate
. ...Jul Saturday is told simply, almost
By DAVID SCNOENBRUN starkly, in seven swift pages, the
Early in the morning of Saturday, Oct. 27, 1962, Attorney-General Rob-
ert Kennedy received a memorandum from J. Edgar .Hoover, informing him
that Soviet personnel were preparing to destroy all sensitive documents in
their New York headquarters. This was a classic sign of final preparations
for war. Robert Kennedy went promptly to the White House, with "a sense
of foreboding."
The sense was heightened by the events of that morning, when the
world stood still for one long moment on the brink of nuclear destruction.
A letter had arrived overnight from Chairman Khrushchev, proposing that
the Russians withdraw their missiles from Cuba, but only on condition that
,the Americans withdraw theirs from Turkey; Russia would then pledge not
to invade Turkey, America giving the same pledge on Cuba. This letter came
onI a few hours 'after a first letter offering to withdraw the missiles from
-drama building and breaking
without ' benefit of any special
prose effects. The main story is
,well known, but as a principal fig
,,.ure in 'resolving the crisis Rob-
ert Kennedy brings to it extraor-
.dinary authority, with his own
insights, perspectives and very
important revelations of the de-
cision- (Continued on Page 30)
Mr. Schoenbrun was the C.B.S.
News chief correspondent and
C.B.S. Washington Bureau chief
y
.
Cuba in exchange only for a no-invasion pledge, without demanding our during the thirteen-dav crisis
withdrawing anything from Turkey. maiung process at the highest
This sudden change confused President Kennedy's top advisers, meeting 'level, on the brink of nuclear,
"Ex Comm;' holocaust. Robert Kennedy;
f th
i
.
e
on o
with him in the Cabinet Room that morning in a sess
the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. No one knew shows us what happens to the
why Khrushchev had sent two consecutive letters strikingly different in most competent and trusted
tone and content. No one had any answers. The President himself. was men under stress, Above all,.
furious, for he had several times in the past year given orders to Dean Rusk perhaps his most valuable con-
to remove the missiles from Turkey. Now they were the object of Soviet Aribution 'is the way he re-
0 blackmail because Rusk had failed to carry out those orders and had counts the events of what
neglected to inform him of this. superficially seems to have
been exclusively a military
angry meeting proceeded, Robert McNamara deepened crisis
while constantly posing
rim
the
A
,
g
,
s
the gloom by reporting that the Russians were intensifying their efforts to,
moral and philosophical prob-
rves
N
b
i
e
a.
n Cu
~.;, assemble their missile sites and their IL-28 nuclear bombers
lams..
stretched and some snapped when an urgent Air Force message arrived' announcing that America's most famous and skillful U-2 pilot, Major Rudolph for right instato ance, he large nation questions
ti to
Anderson Jr., had just been shot down and killed over Cuba by a SAM the
attack a very small one, and
' ? missile. the right of leaders to make
Almost everyone at the meeting instantly called upon the President, decisions that would end the
ttack to destroy the SAM sites. The surprising dissenters,' d
women and chit-
f men
i
,
r a
ues o
to order an a
opposing the strike, were Robert McNamara and Robert Kennedy, that
dren who never had a voice in
supposedly "tough" men of the Cabinet. The President dismissed the pro-i those decisions, He exposes the <
posal. "It Isn t the first step that concerns me, but both sides escalating' totally decisions.
nature of
to I. sixth because there is
't
d
go
on
power-relationships , in the
to the fourth and fifth step--and we
no one around to,,,do..'xo.!' ; He ; ordered, , instead, an urgent and complete thermonuclear age, so that the
f th ;- lications of all
' possline courses o to much larger questions that
. he sobered and chastened every', ?one hopes will be, indeed must
tman at the table by ordcring'i be, debated and examined in-
that every American missile with
s 1 tensely by all world leaders if
an atomic warhead be defused,; the world is to survive.
so that he, personally and alone,' "Thirteen Days" will certain
would take responsibility for
t ly be read, and one prays re-
His,
ordering them to be used. His read and reread, by President
d
K
y
enne
brother Robert
Nixon and his chief advisers.'
that the President reminded alli One hopes, too, that Kosygin
jpresent that he "was deciding fort and Bras, too, Wilson, de
the U. S., the Soviet Union, Tur-1 Gaulle, Mao and their succes-
key, NATO, and really for all man sors, all with the personal pow
kind:' er to end human history, will
read this definitive text on
atomic confrontation. It, should
Approved For Release 2004/10/13 : CIA-RDP88-0135OR000200630005-0
review a c p . specifics of his report relate
f action Thenl
i^~i^~1.zic!~etl