358: Thirteen Days with Joshua Donohue

Dan LeFebvre  03:32

We’ll start today by looking at the movie’s depiction of the Cuban missile crisis from an overall perspective. So if you were to give 13 days a letter grade for its historical accuracy, what would it get?

Joshua Donohue  03:46

I would say Thirteen Days gets a solid B, and I’ll get a little bit more into why that is towards the end of it. So the pot, the film itself is based on a book called The Kennedy tapes by Ernest May and Philip Zeller count, not to be confused with the actual book Thirteen Days by Robert Kennedy, who was obviously, you know, the President’s brother and had a major, major role during the missile crisis. So the book itself consists of the actual recorded conversations which took place throughout the course of the missile crisis. Bruce Greenwood, the lead actor, let’s say the lead actor, but the really lead character of JFK, gives an impressive performance as the president. Stephen Culp plays his brother, Robert Kennedy. I was particularly struck by his performance. It’s not easier for actors, I’m sure, to nail that Boston accent the way he does in the film, but he really does a great job there. And of course, the really the film central character, really the primary character. Of course, Kevin Costner plays Ken O’Donnell, and he’s always been good to me. I’ve always liked his work playing historical figures, though great Elliot Ness and. Untouchables, which is a great film, plays Jim Garrison, and obviously a JFK related film. JFK in 1991 he portrays Ken O’Donnell in the film, who is JFK is what’s termed Special Assistant. And throughout the crisis, the decision making was made from the White House and there from unbeknownst to those who were present, there were hidden tape recorders capturing all the deliberations, word for word. So before becoming president, JFK had made use of a recording device called the dictaphone of mostly for dictating letters and notes. So in the summer of 1962 shortly before the crisis, he would ask Secret Service agent Robert bauck to place concealed recording devices in the Cabinet Room, the Oval Office, the study, the library and the mansion, and without explaining why, bauck basically obtained these 10 Burke reel to reel tape recorders, these high quality machines for the period, from the Army Signal Corps. And he had placed these machines in the basement of the west wing in the White House, in the room reserved for storing private presidential files. So he would also place another in the basement of the Executive Mansion. So the West Wing machines were connected by these different wired microphones into the cabinet room, two in the Oval Office, those in the Cabinet Room on the outside wall were placed behind drapes. I mean, they were they were everywhere, and they will be activated by a switch that the President would activate, which will be easily mistaken for sort of a buzzer to buzz somebody into a room. So of the microphones in the Oval Office, his was, you know, an actual knee hole in the President’s desk, and the other concealed in a coffee table across the room. So this is like CIA, you know, type stuff we’re talking here. Each could be turned on and off with a single, sort of inconspicuous button. So this book is a collection of the transcripts that were based upon the actual conversations in the Oval Office. So like the film itself, the book sort of forces it to stay well within the confines of historical accuracy, since, again, it’s verbatim in many scenes, and every single tense moment is captured during these high level negotiations. And the film also does a great job with representing the characters and their individual personalities. And there are many of very strong personalities, as we see in the film. So of course, Ken O’Donnell and what JFK does and when he forms his cabinet, when he becomes president in 1960 and really takes the office in 1961 Ken O’Donnell is a special assistant. He was a bombardier in World War Two. Flew 30 missions in B, seventeens over Europe, Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State, was a colonel in World War Two serving in the Burma theater. You have the chairman of the army Joint Chiefs, Maxwell Taylor. He was commanded in general of the 100 and first airborne in World War Two. He’s mentioned in Vander brothers, as well as earlier in the war with the 82nd Airborne Division. He was involved in Normandy landings, operation, market garden. And really, all of them share Kennedy’s vision on a global perspective on World War Two and the lessons learned from that. And that’s why he surrounds himself with these advisors. Kennedy, of course, the hero of PT 109 when his PT boats ran by the Japanese destroyer and saves a number of his crew in the process. And McGeorge Bundy, JFK, National Security Advisor, an aide to re ramble Admiral Kirk. He was aboard the USS Augusta during the D Day landings in June 6, 1944 and another character which will all come familiar with, Curtis LeMay, who was Strategic Air Command head during the 1950s he commanded the three Oh, fifth bombardment group, the third Air Division, the European Theater of Operations. Also served in China, India, Burma theater, and later, of course, put in charge of B 29 courses against the Japanese later in the war. So all of these different individuals had complex personalities, different tolerances, different attitudes. And Kennedy was faced with all of this at once and again, the lessons learned by all of them. Through World War Two, they had been through Munich, Pearl Harbor, the battles against the acts, of course, Hitler and the Japanese and of course, Mussolini, they’d been through the early years of the Cold War in the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin heirloom, the Iron Curtain containment, the Korean War, McCarthyism, Suez, Hungary, Sputnik, the nuclear test that began during the 1950s so you’re set. The stage for you know this, you know these negotiations over these 13 days, and you have the right people making these decisions, and some other individuals not making the correct decisions. And Kennedy is, again, faced with a lot of this, and again, he navigates this pretty effective.

Dan LeFebvre  10:20

Yeah, it’s, it’s something that I don’t think we think about a lot when it comes to movies, is in the historical context of things you mentioning. You know, a lot of these people that had World War Two experience, even, and we’re talking about the Cold War, which I think we think a lot of, like, Okay, that was right after World War Two and stuff. But you also don’t seem to, at least, when I’m watching movie like this, you know, you know that there’s tensions in the air, but you don’t even think about the tensions that were there before any of this, these events were even happening in the movie. And you’re thinking of all these World War Two vets and they had to have things in the back of their mind that don’t are never going to be mentioned in the movie.

Joshua Donohue  11:00

Yeah, that’s the that’s one of the motivations why Kennedy surrounds himself. And what’s, what’s termed, the Irish mafia. You have McNamara, McGeorge, Bundy, Ken O’Donnell, you have these are his closest people have been with him throughout his tenure. You know, in politics Following the Second World War. So he trusts his advisors. He he knows he’s going to get sound advice from them. And you know, they have obviously the country’s best interest part. So it’s, it’s pretty remarkable, and considering the fact that not only is Kennedy dealing with, you know, what seemingly could be, you know, an all out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. But he’s has to deal with all these clashing personalities. And also, to mention the fact that, and you see it in the film too, Kennedy’s dealing with some elements. And of course, he has a major back injury as a result of the PT 109 incident. And he also has Addison’s disease, which he has been suffering from, really, since his youth. And what you see some of those scenes where he’s kind of limbering, he’s kind of tense a little bit, and strains at certain points. So I like those little details in the film as well. Well,

Dan LeFebvre  12:15

if we go back to the movie and kind of how it sets up the Cuban Missile Crisis, I know we mentioned it. We kind of talked a little bit about it already, but the way the movie sets up the version of this version of history is there’s an American YouTube spy plane that’s taking photos over Cuba, and these pictures then get analyzed at the very beginning of the movie to reveal that they’re SS, four sandal missiles. And in a briefing with President Kennedy, we find out that these missiles are capable of striking cities as far as Washington, DC, in just under five minutes time. So basically, at a moment’s notice, the Soviet Union can kill movie mentions like 80 million Americans, and the missiles will be installed within 10 to 14 days, meaning that there’s this deadline that the Americans figuring out how to deal with this situation. Is that a pretty good explanation of why the Cuban Missile Crisis was such a major crisis?

Joshua Donohue  13:10

Yeah, it really was, because it’s exactly what you just said. They had such a narrow window of time to figure out what they were going to do, and they knew that they were dealing with much longer missiles than what had been, and I’ll get into that in the moment, but yeah, that’s really the focus throughout the crisis is and Maxwell Taylor was really the one that pushes the issue, Mr. President, we are running out of time. The window of opportunity is closing, and you can just feel the depression. It’s just you can cut it with a knife. But the opening sequences of the film are particularly striking and giving you the viewer a preview of what nuclear Armageddon would look like with the actual test footage of these nuclear explosions, missiles launching in mass. And again, it’s downright frightening Armageddon, again, this is what it would look like, and we would only have mere minutes to prepare, if anything, for that, especially when you think not only this, but how far the technology had come since the end of World War Two, how much more destructive these weapons had come in a very short period of time. It really makes the bombs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima look small. And during the first part of October, President Kennedy starts to receive intelligence of unceasing streams of Soviet military equipment now reaching Cuba. And the CIA informs him that Cuba was now operating the latest MIG miles, the MiG 21 which were capable also of carrying nuclear weapons and nuclear arms, armed air to surface missiles. So on October 9, a US Navy reconnaissance plane would bring back evidence. Defense of Soviet cargo ships carrying il 28 bombers, which were twin engine bombers with a range of about 750 miles. So these il 28 were known to carry nuclear conventional ordinance and were actually of an old design for being phased out of the Soviet Air Force. But these were not the offensive weapons which Kennedy had warned in his public statements of September 4 and September 13, he and his advisors agreed, as mcgeorge bundy would put it, the surface to surface missiles would be the quote, unquote, turning point. So the news about the IL 28 did really it did cause him to authorize u2 flights over Cuba for nearly a month, Director of Central Intelligence John McComb had pressed for such flights to take place, fearing that, on the other hand, Dean Rusk would say and others would say the u2 would eventually be detected or shot down as over the Soviet Union in 1960 recalling, of course, the downing of American YouTube pilot Francis Gary Powers during the last year of President Dwight David Eisenhower’s administration. That particular incident had been a severe setback to between Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. So the fallout over the u2 downing in 1960 resulted in canceling the Paris summit, and they were scheduled to discuss the ongoing situation in a divided Germany, the possible possibility of an arms control agreement or a test ban treaty and a relaxation of tensions between the superpowers but the Gary Powers incident basically nixes the summit, and the very first meeting following the discovery of the of the missiles on the ground in Cuba from YouTube spy plane, would take place on Tuesday, October 16, around 1150 in the morning.

Dan LeFebvre  16:59

Okay, that was going to be one of my other questions. You talking about why they even had spy planes, YouTube planes, flying over Cuba to begin with. The movie doesn’t even talk about that. It’s like they’re just, yeah, they’re just doing it routine, right? Yeah.

Joshua Donohue  17:14

So yeah, is the YouTube I’ll get more into in a moment. It was, it was an important tool, and we had known that, once it was developed and put into service, that you needed to get, obviously, before the age of satellites spy satellites, you needed to get aerial reconnaissance from much higher altitudes, out of the range of surface to air missiles. So during that time it was important to get that kind of reconnaissance.

Dan LeFebvre  17:44

Yeah, that makes that makes sense. That makes sense. Now in the movie, when they find out about the missiles that are in Cuba, it kind of lays out the options that President Kennedy is given by his advisors in the room. So there’s three main options. One, they can do a surgical air strike to take out the missiles themselves. Two, they can do a larger air strike against all of the air defenses there. This being a strike in Cuba. Or three, they can do a ground invasion of Cuba, or maybe a combination of them, you have an air strike first to take out the missiles. They talk about all those kind of things, too. And then the invasion into Cuba to avoid any more missiles being brought in. And then later in the movie, the advisors kind of play out how they think everything’s going to happen. First, JFK would demand the Soviets remove the missiles. They’re going to refuse, of course. So then JFK is going to order the airstrike, followed by the invasion, there’s going to be fighting, but the US probably won’t have trouble overwhelming the Soviet forces there in Cuba to deactivate the missiles, but then that’s going to trigger something else, as the Soviets are going to retaliate, most likely in Berlin, is what they say in the movie. And then when the Soviets attack Berlin, the US is going to be forced to honor treaties, and that’s gonna how to basically going to trigger out all out war. Is the movie accurately portraying the options and then the possible chain of events that Kennedy was debating at the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis? Yeah,

Joshua Donohue  19:13

it really was. They. They were laying up every option imaginable. And in the book The Kennedy tapes in each conversation is going over every single scenario, every single possibility, and even with the photographs that the YouTube spy plane brings back the next day, October 15, experts at the CIA’s National Photographic Intelligence Center The npic, were looking over these photos from the YouTube’s flight from the previous day, and now seeing images of these missiles that were much longer than standard surface to air missiles. They began to leak through the files, as you see in their film, to try and compare what the watch which version of these missiles they have, and as they’re going through them the. Came up with the perfect match in the form of these medium range ballistic missiles, as you mentioned, the SS for sandal family. So as far as their the first negotiations as what they’re going to do, what options are going to have, Berlin was at the center of, really, every major decision in some way, shape or form. In every hypothetical we do this, what are they going to do in Berlin? We do this, what are they going to do in Berlin? So the situation there at the time was as tense as it was really following the end of the Second World War, the Berlin Wall have gone up in 61 effectively dividing the city in two. And these early meetings between Kennedys and advisors would set the tone for a very high level discussion that was going to take place over the next 13 days. So author lundahl, who was the head of the npic, would pass the news to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, with the news then reaching Robert McNamara, he then reaches and meets with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and dozens of lower level officials. The group then reviews plans to conduct massive airstrikes against targets in Cuba with a larger scale invasion of Cuba by the sea. So McGeorge Bundy, who was the National Security Advisor, would find out about these developments, and he gets a cryptic response following the discovery of the SS for saying those things we’ve been worrying about, quote, unquote, as it looks like we’ve really got something now. So Kennedy, at the time, was returning from a trip from New York State and arrived in Washington later that evening. So Bundy doesn’t reveal the news to him until the next day, a decision actually, which Kennedy supports. Bundy thought that he was going to need a good night’s sleep over the next number of days and weeks, because they were going to be some tense times over the next number of days and weeks. So when Kennedy was informed of the news, he has Bundy secretly round up officials later on that morning, not to arouse any suspicion, Kennedy resumes his normal schedule, meeting with NASA astronaut Raleigh Shira, followed by an appointment with Kenny O’Donnell in his office. And O’Donnell later recalls, quote, unquote, you still think the bus about Cuba is unimportant, and Archie Kennedy says that, and O’Donnell responds, absolutely. The voters won’t give a damn about Cuba. So Little does he know, following Sidney gravy or Marshall and Marshall Carter’s description of the missiles to Kennedy’s and advisors that first meeting you see in the film, he has a conversation with McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara on the subject of the YouTube flights, he states his case that he recommends additional flights over Cuba, at which point the President calls on Dean Rusk. And in the film, Dean Rusk gives his thoughts on the unfolding crisis and makes a quote saying, if you permit the introduction of to a Soviet satellite nation in our hemisphere, the diplomatic consequences will be too terrible to contemplate. The Russians are trying to show the world that they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, and we’re powerless to stop them. So if they succeed, at which point Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who was of course, the younger brother of the President makes the quote, it’ll be like Munich all over again. And Rusk replies, Yes, the aggressor will become more aggressive, and the Soviets will be emboldened to push us even harder. And if you look in the film at that very moment, there’s a look that RFK looks up and sees his brother, and he looks back at him. It’s a little moment, but there was a deeper meaning there. Munich would capture an even deeper meaning for the Kennedys, especially for their father, Joseph Kennedy senior, played a role in the event. Munich wasn’t a single event, as one might suggest, but a series of events following the Munich conference with Adolf Hitler in 1938 in order to appease Nazi Germany, they’re taking the Sudetenland. So Joseph Kennedy was the ambassador to Britain under FDR administration, both in cables to the State Department and in speeches and interviews, Kennedy backs Britain’s appeasement policy to Germany, and continued to do so well into World War Two, arguing that Britain had the right to conciliate with Hitler in light of these harsh peace treaties imposed upon Germany at the end of the First World War. So Kennedy, Joe Kennedy labels himself as an appeaser and an isolationist, and JFK would long carry this burden of this legacy. So going back to the proceedings, McNamara then begins his assessment of the findings and outlines of court his course of action. Comes up with two propositions. One is to conduct an airstrike against the missile installations, and he wants to do. So prior to the approximate time that the missiles will become operational. And he further explains that they do become operational before any proposed airstrike, that there is no guarantee that all the missile sites will be eliminated, and the missiles now will have a radius of between 600 to 1000 miles from Cuba. His second proposition is that United States commits itself to an airstrike in Cuba will not only be directed the missile sites, but also the airfields and any potential other aircraft which would pose a threat, also striking potential nuclear storage sites. And he then points out that this will be a large scale strike which estimates Cuban losses of between a few 102 into the 1000s. So he then he outlines a plan of invasion of both air and sea, followed by the air strikes, or following the air structure to say, he then defers to Maxwell Taylor, and Taylor agrees that a surprise attack, outlining all of the above and hitting these missile installations. He reiterates that timing is everything, and the missiles need to be hit

Dan LeFebvre  26:05

before they become out. Wow, yeah, they really did have a lot of different plans, a lot of what is scenarios. It sounds like they were working through a lot of those. Yeah.

Joshua Donohue  26:16

I mean, because they really had to figure out what the Soviet Union was going to do in every possible way. If we do this, what are they going to do? If we do that and do this, what are they going to do? And there’s just that. What if, almost like a like a war game, like scenario playing out in the old office? So he is, his advisors have quite a bit of work to do, but they do have one thing on their side they don’t know. They realize they know something that the Russians don’t think the Americans know yet, and that’s obviously going to play on much later on, Bill, well, you

Dan LeFebvre  26:52

mentioned, you mentioned Munich, and I appreciate you kind of explaining what that was. There’s another few things that the movie mentions here and there, and it kind of assumes that we already know, while Kennedy and his advisors are considering the options, it mentioned that the Bay of Pigs. And then there’s a mention of ortsack, which the movie also points out is just Castro spelled backwards, as if they weren’t. Didn’t even really hide that operation name very well. But can you explain how some of these other things that the movie is mentioning fit into the overall picture. So

Joshua Donohue  27:22

by around mid October of 1962 the Cold War had intensified in unforeseen ways, and Cuba was a long, virtually held colony of the United States, and had effectively moved into the Soviet orbit. You have the revolution in 1959 with the overthrow the dictator Fulgencio Batista, the emergence, of course, of dictator Fidel Castro as the leading figure. Of course, Prime Minister. He’s hand in hand with Khrushchev, and they are forging ties again, which still exists in some way, shape or form today. So this emergence of a new communist regime, becoming the first in the Western Hemisphere is a big deal, especially, of course, for the United States, with geopolitical sort of context, and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, which takes takes place on april of 1961 had only exacerbated tensions between Russia and us, and brought Cuba even closer ties to Russia. And Kennedy has a memorable quote. He was a terrific speaker, and we’ll get to the brains behind that and the true center of it. But he has a quote from after the defeat of the Bay of Pigs, who says, There’s an old saying that victory has 100 fathers, but defeat is an orphan. And I just always latched onto that quote, because even in the face of defeat and just the political disaster, from, you know, from the outside in and with the inside out, from his political advisors, from people who, at the time, didn’t think Kennedy was up to the task of this. He was too young. He doesn’t have the experience. He’s too cocky, he’s arrogant, He’s immature. He was getting all these things thrown at him. So the Bay of Pigs affair had many consequences, which would loom over the missile crisis again, it damaged Kennedy standing among many political circles and beyond, Cuban exiles never quite forgave him for his decision not to reinforce the invasion by air, no support from the Air Force or the Navy. And there’s a moment where you see Bundy and Taylor and the other chiefs talking to Dean Acheson about the Munich effect as they’re walking out in the hallway, and whether he’s up to the task of handling this and a crisis of his magnitude, more or less, and in varying degrees, also the common vert among senior military officers, particularly in the Air Force, the Navy, as well as the CIA’s clan. Estein service awareness. So more closely consequence related to the affair was the development of the inner circle of Kennedy’s advisors of the Animus against Castro, JFK and especially Bobby. Kennedy longed for some redeeming opportunity to get back for the failed Bay of Pigs. And this was also a time where Kennedy authorizes the development of Special Warfare operations, the Green Berets, the Navy SEALs, these groups meant to be deployed to hot spots all over the world at a moment’s notice. So Kennedy would organize a new set of covert operations against Astro called Operation mongoose, which was meant to destabilize the Castro regime by launching operations inside of Cuba to undermine his position and with the goal of removal of power. So some even looked to assassinate Castro under constant Badr by Bobby Kennedy the CIA came up with a number of what veteran Intelligence Officer Richard Helms term nutty schemes. And this explains that tense meeting that Bobby’s presiding over where you say, no, no, no, no, we need to come up with more options. And demanding to come up with more ideas. And McCone, the CIA director, calls out Bobby Kennedy, and says to him, Well, you really weren’t saying all these options when you’re at the CIA and with, you know, Al’s there telling you, okay, we got to get cast around and get rid of him now. So he has that movie, sits down and sort of throws his glasses down, and he just doesn’t even know what to say at that point. So Taylor gives him that surprise look, as you see in the film, sits down, you know, throws his glasses and kind of is just kind of exhausted at that point. So Maxwell Taylor then explains to him and the chiefs and concurs with McNamara’s assessment that the importance of destroying the missiles, because when they come operational, is important before they must prove a full scale invasion of Cuba eight days later, and also you start to hear the first chimings of suggesting a blockade or a quarantine of the island, which will, of course, be the primary strategy, which plays out,

Dan LeFebvre  32:10

yeah, and we’ll get we’ll get to that in a little bit. But in the movies timeline, you mentioned this briefly, and the Americans know about the missiles, but then when JFK meets with the Russian diplomat, he doesn’t let on how much the Americans actually know. And then we see that the Soviets just flat out deny there being missiles in Cuba. They insist that presence in Cuba is for defensive purposes only. Is it true that the Soviets were denying missiles in Cuba when the Americans knew that they had it, and we could see it well. In the movie, we can see them actually actively working on setting them up. Yeah,

Joshua Donohue  32:46

yeah, that’s absolutely true. And this really the decision, as I mentioned earlier, from the get go, was made to keep President Kennedy’s schedule as normal and routine as possible in order to prevent the media, excuse me, really to causing a public panic across the nation. So during that first meeting, Dean Rusk will bring up the issue with Kennedy’s meeting with Soviet Ambassador Andrei greeco’s request to see Kennedy on Thursday, October 18, Rusk quote to the president is, it may be some interest to know what he says, if he even says anything. So there is that idea of going into this meeting, do not let on at all that we know what’s going on there. We want to sort of play this as a chess game, as the really the Cold War, for the most part, is so Russ will also bring up another key issue, which will come into play later on, uh, during the later phases of the crisis. Maxwell Taylor brings it up on on a meeting in October 18. He suggests that there would be advantages in not disclosing American knowledge of the missiles in order to get promico to basically lie and keep up a pattern of denial. So Russ then suggests that Kennedy words it more in terms of a sort of deep disturbance about the provocation in Cuba, quote, unquote. And then adds that Ambassador to Brennan say that there weren’t any offensive weapons in Cuba, but even debris. And may not know either. So Robert Kennedy then brings up the subject of the United Nation, of the United States missiles in Turkey and JFK asked, How many are there? Are in George Bundy response, 15, plus nuclear aircraft and Turkey. And the issue of the Jupiter missiles, there will also be a major bargaining chip, which will come out through that throughout the proceedings. So the meeting between Kennedy and Foreign Minister Andre Gromyko takes place at 5pm on the 18th of October. The meeting lasts until about 7:15pm Gromyko emphasizes the need to settle the Berlin issue, and then repeats his promise the Soviets would do nothing before the November elections the United States. States warning that they could take possible steps at this point to bring the bring the Berlin problem to a conclusion, whatever that meant, and then describe the Western presence in Berlin as a sort of rotten truth that must be pulled out. So Gromyko then complains that the US threats against Cuba and the Soviet Union was only that the Soviets were only training the Cubans and use of defensive weapons, as you mentioned. So the Soviet delegation then responds by saying, Are you sure the President wants more of the policy of the Soviet Union always has and always will be directed at strengthening peace, the elimination of differences in relations between all countries, first of all, the relations between the USSR and the United States. And of course, the Soviet Union wants to have peace and friendship for all mankind. So in regards to the Cuban issue, it’s not been invented by the Soviet Union. It’s regards to the signing of the German peace treaty, a normalization of relations in West Berlin in regards to all other issues in two separate issues for each country, and the policy is peace, friendship and the removing of differences by peaceful means. So Kennedy then recalls his advisors back to the White House, and in another example of the Kennedy administration and their hopes of keeping up with business as usual under that guise, they do not hold the meeting in the West Wing of the White House, since that meeting would be taking place after hours. This was done out of fear that reporters would notice and suspect that something was off. So to the press and the public United States of it, as you said, the President was scheduled to fly to Cleveland on the 19th and then to Illinois for speeches and activities in Springfield and Chicago. You see the meeting with Mayor Daley there. And of course, in the film, Ken O’Donnell tells Pierre Salinger the President is going to have a cold the next day, and O’Donnell then is feeling the pressure from the press contact that you see as well, where he confronts him in the elevator and he rips the door open and basically backs him into a corner and says, you know, you’re not going to release that. No way. And there must have been that pressure in the media to, you know, keep basically, keep shut. Because if you you know, you know, made an enemy, and within the political circle in Kennedy’s administration, your career might be in jeopardy. I’m curious

Dan LeFebvre  37:24

about the element of speaking publicly about it, because that is something that as I was watching the movie, it seems like JFK and his inner circle are really debating what to do, which makes sense. You know, you have all these deliberations over what you’re going to do. But what was interesting to me is in the movie, it seems like he’s going to announce the decision he’s going to make publicly on TV and radio, and it almost seems to imply that the people who are closest to him that he’s been conferring with also don’t know about the decision he’s going to make until They see it publicly, as everybody else does, is it true that Kennedy made this decision and then revealed it publicly for the first time?

Joshua Donohue  38:08

Yeah, he what’s interesting about how he sort of, he’s almost absorbing everything. He’s not making concrete decisions on anything. He’s hearing arguments from one side and the other, and just back and forth, back and forth. The one particular scene as I mentioned, Curtis LeMay. And this actually takes place in the book. It’s recorded very and they really do a great job of it in the film, or JFK, and LeMay have that famous exchange where he meets with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the 19th of October, and LeMay makes the quote, you’re in a pretty bad fix here, Mr. President. And then Kennedy does that slow turn. He goes, what’d you say? He goes, you’re in a pretty bad fix. And Kennedy responds, well, just in case you didn’t know you’re in it with me, that that actually did happen. So LeMay, his attitude was, you know that bomb them back to the Stone Age mentality, let’s attack them now. The Russians aren’t going to do anything. And Kennedy, and there’s that one scene where before that, where O’Donnell basically shields Kennedy from LeMay, it gives him that real stern look. So the decision to have the pre the TV announcement is a major deal, because at that point, this is really going to be where we have all of this information. We are going to let the world know about it. And this is where, again, things start to get pretty interesting, because when it comes to dictating cold war policy and how both the United States and the Soviet Union will return, respond and interpret to each other’s actions, the term blockade does imply, indeed an act of. War. And on the late evening of Thursday the 18th, he confers with McNamara, Gil Patrick Taylor, McGeorge Bundy and others his brother Ted Sorensen. And having the the awareness of what is going to happen, Kennedy will speak to the nation at 7:30pm on the 22nd of October 1962 so having long, long lived with the prospect and the knowledge of nuclear war and its unthinkable consequences, Americans reacted to Kennedy’s words with alarm, but not panic. Everywhere families were you see in the film stocking up on food, gasoline, other emergency supplies I was not around during this time. My father tells me about it. He remind me that the duck and cover days where American school children were subject to these nuclear drills, diving up to deaths in the classrooms in the event of an exchange, reservists were being prepared for call ups in homes and in bars, television watchers saw the footage of airplanes taking off, troop trains moving tanks from soldiers. So the atmosphere of pension was it was pervasive, and all through the night, analysts of the National Photographic interpretation center and elsewhere in the intelligence community actually anxiously await the scrutinized intelligence indicator of any Soviet military activity in response to Kennedy’s speech. Now, while they saw Soviet and Cuban forces being brought up to a higher state of readiness, they detected no real, apparent developments in the field preparing for any type of large scale move against Berlin, or, say, Turkey, for example. So the blockade is announced, and with it in place, the Russian vessels are now underway and under heavy surveillance by the US Navy, with their aerial and seaborn assets now gathering intelligence. So Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had ordered his missile ship carrying vessels to turn around no more than 24 hours before the morning of October 23 and after Kennedy gives his nationwide announcement that the discovery of missiles in Cuba and the imposition of a quarantine around the island, according to Soviet documents and shipping records. Khrushchev only permits five ships already close to Cuba to proceed. So since these ships were only a few hours from sailing time to the closest Cuban port, there was little risk that they would be intercepted by warships. So you have the alexandrovsk carry nuclear warheads to Cuba, its escort ship, the element risks, which arrives in the port of La Isabella, adorned on the october 23 three other ships, the David north, the Dubno and the Nikolay, Soviet leader, ordered four submarines into The area with nuclear torpedoes to remain in the vicinity of the quarantine line. Ships and oil tankers carrying non military equipment were also authorized to head to Cuba. So the closest ships to the quarantine line the kimosk and the Gagarin, as McNamara points out, according to Bobby Kennedy, the US Navy makes contact with both ships at 1030 and 11am Washington time on the 24

Dan LeFebvre  43:28

Okay, so just because the movie does mention briefly that it’s a quarantine, but it can’t call it a blockade, because blockade would be an act of war, but everybody really knew what was going on? Would that be a fair interpretation at

Joshua Donohue  43:44

this point? And what’s the, what’s the thing too, that there’s the, there’s so much tension, and obviously you had the language barrier. So any sort of miscalculation, misstep, you know, any kind of action that may be perceived as an act of war. I mean, there are instances with the Russian summaries where one of the captains lost contact with his communique in Moscow and thought world war three was starting. Didn’t know what to do. One of his subordinates actually made him surface and say, Okay, we need to really think we really want to launch these missiles right now. That is a theme that plays out before the missile crisis and after. In the decades after that, there are so many times throughout the the course of the crisis where there are nuclear accidents, aircraft that are carrying nuclear weapons. They’re, you know, disintegrating in the sky. The nuclear weapons are being scattered all over the place. So we still can find today. I know there’s a, I think, a hydrogen bomb that’s still buried in the mud off the coast of Georgia some point there that was lost, I think by, I think a B 52 or B 47 so when talking about the I would say the most iconic quote from the Cuban Missile Crisis appears in a Saturday evening. Post retrospective in the weeks afterward, describing the confrontation between the blockade line between US warships and the missile carrying freighters. Rusk will say, on october 24 rival the eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.

Dan LeFebvre  45:20

It’s just again, it’s his historically, it’s a different mindset of of times where it’s just things are so, I mean, they call it a crisis, for a reason, but just to think of how many times things can go wrong and and it starts. I mean, once it starts, it starts right? I mean, there’s,

Joshua Donohue  45:46

you know, Kennedy makes the the quotes that you know, there’s, there’s always gonna be some dumb bastard that doesn’t get the message or the or the order, and, and that’s so that’s true. You figure, um LeMay will be this type of person that the Joint Chiefs seem to have their own agenda, that they’re walking down the hallway saying, you know, these damn Kennedys, they don’t know what they’re doing. We need to do something fast before this gets out of control. So you’re trying to control people who want to do something completely the opposite of what you’re trying to do, and to maintain that posture and that discipline statesmanship, of negotiation, the art of negotiation, I would say, between the superpowers, is really born out of these 13 days. Because if you put Kennedy and Khrushchev side by side, they are polar opposites in every which way shape form, and to be able to go to find a middle ground is it would seem almost impossible, but this would obviously play out further as Kennedy makes their first major move. And I’ll sort of give it a little bit of a hint of what comes later on. It’s Ted Sorensen, and he is really the point man. He’s not really essential character in the film itself. You do see him here and there. You know he has some scenes where he interacts with Kennedy, but by all accounts, his role in the missile crisis was much more pronounced than it was in the film. So he’s actually the one that comes up with both versions of the speech, what quarantine blockades gonna look like, or what invasion and airstrikes gonna look like. And he has that great quote where he says, I couldn’t do the other one. I simply could not come up with it. And he was only able to do the speech that was only geared towards, okay, we’re gonna try and use most diplomatic way and peaceful way possible. You know, Sorensen couldn’t, couldn’t bring himself to come up with the worst version.

Dan LeFebvre  47:52

Well, earlier, we talked briefly about the Soviets denying the existence of missiles, and that topic comes back up after the speech, it’s JFK has made this public speech. So it’s it’s public what’s going on there. But in the UN, the ambassador Zorin from the Soviet Union tells the UN that the US is pushing the world to the brink of war, but they have no proof of the missiles that they claim are there. And then there’s all this tension from the American side because they think Adlai Stevenson, the American ambassador, isn’t going to be able to stand up to Zoran. And there’s all this extra tension that the movie adds there because of that. But then he does. He stands up to Zorin in the movie, and then he shows the photos of the missile and missiles in Cuba that prove to the UN that the Soviet Union is escalating the tensions, not the US. And the way that this plays out in the movie, it seems to catch the Soviets off guard, and then it almost seems to turn the pressure of the world’s nations that look like they were more on the US, because everybody thought the US was was doing this, and then it seems to shift it over to the Soviet Union. Was there really a pivotal moment like this that we see in the movie?

Joshua Donohue  49:04

Yeah. And another important scene is where you see President Kennedy talking, talking about the the delegation, the Organization of American States, that that was a particularly important bill. They he needed their support. Unilateral. He wanted unanimous. He makes it well known. I want a unanimous decision. He wants the entire support of the OAS. And this part is where the US has the Soviets really, more or less painted into a corner. Because even before this, we see another important scene the film, which does take place, it doesn’t happen in real life, where we see Ken O’Donnell speak to Commander William Ecker of the US Navy, where they had to see where they fly the two at the Crusader low level mission, the photo reconnaissance over the island. So Ecker was the commanding officer of photo reconnaissance of. Squad in 62 so because of the top secret nature of their mission, Eckers unit was ordered not to wear any insignia on the flight suit. Doesn’t even have his name tag on the on the top of his of his pockets. So interesting piece of trivia for the film. The actor who plays echo in the film is played by the late actor Christopher Lawford. So Lawford should sound familiar. He was the son of Peter Lawford of the Rat Pack. Of course, he was married to Patricia Pat Kennedy, who was JFK and RFK sister. So he’s the actual nephew of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. So the scene where we have Ecker and his wing may Lieutenant Bruce will Helmi take off on their RFA crusaders on october 23 1962 conducting the first low level reconnaissance flight over Cuba. As you see in the film, their aircraft take a series of photographs over one of the missile sites. So Ecker says the movie took some minor liberties about the truth of his mission. As you see, they fly over and the Cubans throw up a pretty heavy volume of fire. He takes a couple of shots sparrows. They were just sparrows, right? Yeah, those are sparrows. He goes, sorry, guys, this is the way it is, right. So, and there’s the scene where, and they there is some truth, where Ecker says the moment of his adventure was depicted pretty accurately in the film, his top secret debriefing, and the round table where He’s escorted immediately after he lands to go talk to LeMay, they didn’t even let him get out of the plane. They whisked him by limousine to the Pentagon room, to the tank, as it was called. Were recalling that Curtis LeMay, the head, of course, the of the former strategic of the head of the Strategic Air Command 1950s he was upset that, basically, the the Navy had upstaged the Air Force in obtaining these critical photos, and later, when Kennedy awards Ecker squadron with a Presidential Citation, LeMay was reported to be in the back of a limousine pouting and chopping on his cigar and refusing to participate. So that was that was what ecker’s version of it was, but that mission that takes place over Cuba was was significant at the end of the day, it gives Ambassador Ali Stevenson the photographs that he will use taken by Ecker at the United Nations as proof that the USSR has installed nuclear ballistic missiles in Cuba, and this would eventually turn opinion against the Soviet Union. So Edward Martin, who is the Secretary, Assistant Secretary of State of American Inter American Affairs, then seeks a resolution and support the Organization of American States. Adley Stevenson lays the matter before the UN Security Council, the ships of the naval quarantine line are now in place around Cuba. Soviet freighters bound for Cuba are now bringing supplies. Are now stopping dead of the motor, as you see in the film. But the oil tanker Bucharest continues towards Cuba, and in the evening, Robert Kennedy meets with Ambassador debride in the Soviet embassy. So talking about Adley Stevenson, he literally calls himself out as a coward in the beginning of the film. Remember, he kind of goes completely the opposite and says, Well, we should offer a deal to end the crisis. And Kennedy says, Oh no, there’s no way we can do that. So we later see him at a sort of political mixer where he talks to Ed O’Donnell and then later has a conversation about early in the evening and says, I basically call myself a coward in front of the whole room today. So from the outset, Stevenson really establishes himself as the most consequential and unacknowledged and unappreciated advisor. There were people simply saying, He’s not up to the past. We need to get somebody else there. Yeah, Bobby Kennedy on the phone saying, Okay, we’re gonna get ready to basically come out, take the cane and yank him off the stage and get somebody else up there to take over for him. So he had a reputation of preferring to concede rather than to confront. In the first days of the crisis, you know, he was worried that his man in New York wasn’t up to the test. And on Thursday, October 25 on the 10th day of the crisis, Stevenson showed that he had the stuff, more sterner stuff than JFK initially thought. And the former two time presidential candidate had effectively dressed down valerian Zorin, Soviet ambassador and UN Security Council meeting as the Americans watched on television, Stevenson listened passively. And that’s there’s that tension there. Come on. Come on. Add the Come on. And the Soviet Ambassador can continues to lace into the United States over and over again, and was finally his turn to speak to. He dispensed with the standard diplomatic niceties. He instead went immediately for the jugular. I want to say to you, Mr. Zoran, I do not have your town for obfuscation or distortion, confusing language and your double talk. I must confess to you that I’m glad I do not. And Stevenson went on to denounce the Russians for lying, treating Zorin in a way that Ambassador likened to the American prosecutor, brow beating a defendant. And then said, All right, sir, let me ask you one simple question, Ambassador, Zorin, do you deny that the USSR has placed medium, intermediate range missiles on the island of Cuba? Yes or no? Don’t wait for the translation, yes or no. So there’s that real, you know, instant there where the room, the room is watching. They cheer. They say, Yeah, way to go. Adley and said, you can answer yes or no. You’ve denied they exist. I want to understand you correctly. I prepared a way for my answer until hell freezes over, and it’s your decision. So with Zorin still continuing to refuse to answer, Stephen Stevenson and his aides then proceed to put up Eckers photos of the missiles in Cuba, the delegates in the room are also the Russians are saying, oh my goodness, what’s going on they, you know. And who knows that? They even are aware of it, you know. So that the Khrushchev would sort of hang a lot of his visors out to dry, not giving the whole picture what’s going on. So the mild mannered Stevenson had an enormous political and diplomatic victory The United States,

Dan LeFebvre  56:30

even just just the timing of it, you know, happening in the 60s. It’s not like, it’s not like Word would travel as fast as it does now, anyway. So you know, even if they weren’t hiding something, or that could just be the time it takes for things to travel, they might not have known.

Joshua Donohue  56:50

Yeah, I mean, like I said, that’s the thing that’s probably the most was, the most alarming is that we don’t live in an age like we do now, with you have everything the world that the palm of your hand, and you can communicate anywhere in the world, basically at a moment’s notice. There is still delays, and there’s that back and forth. We don’t know how the Russians are gonna interpret this, you know, this conversation, or this move, and vice versa. So there’s all these different what ifs and different scenarios. But I think Kennedy, really, this is the point where we start to see, okay, we might have a real solid plan here that’s going to actually work without, you know, World War Three breaking out. And I think that’s just the one of the key points is how Stevenson is just waiting. He’s waiting. He’s waiting, just letting them go through their whole diatribe about how we’re escalating tensions and we’re putting the world at risk of nuclear war, and then just here’s the evidence, here’s the proof, and we’re going to be doing this for a little bit. And I like how he defers to the other. I forget which leader it was, but I think it was one of the it was Panama. Oh yeah, yeah. It says, No, I give up all my time to the

Dan LeFebvre  58:07

ambassador. I yield my time back to the US. Okay,

Joshua Donohue  58:10

love that. I absolutely love it. I

Dan LeFebvre  58:12

was speaking of the communications and such. And in the movie, there’s something that kind of new and unexpected happens around this point, and movie only really mentions His name is John in the dialog. I looked at the casting. I think they were talking about John scali. He’s a ABC News correspondent. He arrives at the White House now in the movie, and he’s telling the President and his advisors that he has a source named Alexander foeman. And according to scali, this guy, foeman knows the Soviet Premier Khrushchev personally, so JFK tasks Ken O’Donnell to going to the FBI validating this story. He’s not able to find definitive proof in the few hours that he has everything’s under a time crunch here, but O’Donnell tells President Kennedy of a possible connection between foeman and Khrushchev from 1941 as war buddies. So that’s enough. Scali meets with fomen and tells him that the American government is open to guaranteeing that they will not invade Cuba in exchange for the missiles being dismantled. But then the two conditions that are that the UN has to is that the UN has to inspect the missiles, not just taking their word for it to prove that they’ve been dismantled. And then the deal has to be made in 48 hours. That’s the other part of the deal. And then soon after this, we see that, you know, a 10 page letter being sent from Khrushchev to Kennedy seems to be going around all of the official communication channels that’s going on behind the scenes here. And in that letter, he says that he’ll remove the missiles in exchange for the no invasion pledge. And so just have me curious about this communication going on behind the scenes. We’re talking about this communication going on in different time period. Did that sort of communication between Khrushchev and Kennedy actually happened the way we see in the

Joshua Donohue  59:58

movie? Yeah. Yeah. It did. And it’s interesting, because there’s this whole other dynamic. It’s the world Island streets of Washington, DC. It’s the world outside the White House and all the major decision making, walking to into a restaurant with with, you know, a Soviet diplomat. So journalists at the time lived for scoops being the first to break a major news story is the ticket to journalistic fortune and fame. And if you’re a journalist covering the biggest story of your lifetime and suddenly become a participant, do you tell the world what you’ve learned, or do you sit on it? So ABC News diplomatic correspondent John Sculley found himself in such a predicament on Friday the 26th of October 1962 on the 11th day. So scali got a call shortly after noon time from Alexander foeman. And foeman was officially a diplomatic counselor at the Soviet embassy in Washington. His real job, though, was a KGB station chief in Washington. So his given name was Alexander beckslaw, and he had to also also run Klaus Fuchs and the Rosenberg spy ring. So he wanted to have lunch with Scally, and he was just finishing a baloney sandwich. She was not inclined to eat anymore, but the urgency that he detected from Bowman’s voice persuaded him that food wasn’t the point of the phone call. So he agrees to meet at the occidental restaurant located just a few blocks from the White House. So scholarly immediately returns to his office at the State Department in the press room, and jots a memo, short memo summarizing what Foreman had told him he gave his the memo to Roger Hillsman, the director of the State Department, Bureau of Intelligence for research. Hillsman immediately recognized it as, as you know, something of significance. Then passes along to Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, and then the secretary turns it on to JFK and Robert McNamara. So Foreman’s offer to scali came now as JFK was becoming increasingly pessimistic about the direction of the crisis and where it was headed. So the Soviet ships carrying missile parts had turned back, but there were still missiles in Cuba. More would become operational every single day. So the morning of the X com meeting, he had told his advisors the missile would come not only if the United States invaded Cuba or offered to trade removal of the missiles of something that the Soviets wanted. Now, with Fauci overture, he now had a possible way out of the crisis. So after scali finishes his appearance on ABC News at Six o’clock pm network broadcast, he doesn’t mention anything about the lunch with fallen he was summoned to the State Department and ushered into Dean rusk’s office. Secretary pulled out a yellow sheet of legal sized paper out of his pocket and began reading the gist of the message. That was that scali should tell fomen that he had been of the highest officials of the state government the United States, that the administration saw possibilities in his offer. So scali immediately arranges to meet Fauci at the coffee shop at the Staller Hotel on Statler Hotel, I should say, half a block away from the Soviet embassy. He would pass along the message, and after being convinced that scarly was leveling him, foeman had picked up the 36 cab fare for two cups of coffee that they ordered, and then the cashier continued talking to a friend, rather than take the payment, the Soviet spy chief stopped a $5 bill on the counter and just disappeared. So it’s just like I said, there’s this whole underworld out there in Washington, DC probably still exists where there’s just, there’s negotiations going on behind the scenes, and as scholarly relays his message to fallen. The White House was now receiving a long and emotional letter from Nikita Khrushchev and confirming that the proposal of fallen that had floated in the first place to scholarly so the letter was delivered to the US Embassy in Moscow around 9:43am and that morning Washington time, it had taken more than 11 hours to translate the letter, and had the State Department brought it to the White House, and again, Khrushchev’s indignant defense of why the Soviet Union had sided with Cuba and Khrushchev then shifts gears and then actually puts an offer on a table. So Kennedy is an advisors infer, it really inferred from Khrushchev’s and Foreman’s letter and their overtures that the Soviets were making a coordinated effort at this point to extend an olive branch. In fact, foreman was really, you know, trying to initiate different developments and really hoping that this was going to break somehow. And. JFK and his advisors were becoming more hopeful that a political resolution, a peaceful resolution, was now possible. Cuban leader Fidel Castro was becoming increasingly convinced that a US innovation was imminent, and he had no intention of backing down from the imperialists without inflicting major pain in return. And then he sends a letter to Khrushchev, saying, we need to attack the United States right now, first strike. And however harsh or terrible, terrible solution, there would be no other. So Castro also orders human forces to fire on any US aircraft which will enter Cubans airspace, which we would see play out.

Dan LeFebvre  1:05:43

You have all the all of these things going on in the movie. Does make a good point. There was a, I don’t remember the exact line of dialog. There was something in there talking about how one of the advisors mentions to JFK how the Soviets lied about the missiles. So what about this letter? How do we know that this isn’t just another Rouge they’re trying to stall for time because, again, they’re, they know that they’re building these missiles, and they’re, you know, the time is until these are ready for launch. So maybe they are just stalling for time. Do we know now of ways that Kennedy was able to authenticate this letter and or was he just mostly working off faith that this was real? I

Joshua Donohue  1:06:17

think it was a little bit of both. I think by this point, you know, Kennedy was again at the point of frustration. I think we start to sort of see his line of thinking sort of said, okay, you know what? We might need to start considering that now that this window of time is closing, we’re not sure what’s going to happen. So this was a sort of glimmer of hope that I think Kennedy was really looking for at the end of the day, he, you know, he was just waiting for a any glimmer of UN even they pushed that issue throughout the film. And even Bobby Kennedy, as I mentioned earlier, they’re trying to push every single diplomatic solution available. And that this letter comes across in the course, you know, the relationship there with Khrushchev, and Khrushchev response back, we now can see that Kennedy is able to effectively reach out to Khrushchev. It’s almost as if you’re you’re dictating policy by doing things. So you know, by this move, you mean this, by doing that move, you mean that. So all of these, as I mentioned earlier, interpretation of things, any kind of miscalculation, everything was so just razor thin as far as the margin of error and the negotiations that were going on, as I mentioned, Castro’s telegram to Khrushchev. Kennedy knew nothing about this. And as as far as he could tell that Friday night, he now had a way out of the crisis that now served us interests. And what he would discover when he awoke the next morning was that the crisis would enter its most dangerous day, the 27th which was Black Saturday, and the decisions that he and Khrushchev made, more importantly, the events that neither men had anticipated more control, would determine whether the world would go to the brink, go go to war, over the over the nuclear break effect.

Dan LeFebvre  1:08:18

Wait, you mentioned Saturday, the 27th and that’s about where we’re at in the timeline of the movie. And as if things were already aren’t escalated tensions, they escalate once again when the Americans get confirmation that the Soviets have deployed what they call frogs, keyboard short range tactical nukes, and the belief is that there might be using this against an invasion force. They assume the US is going to invade Cuba, and so this is the defensive there. But meanwhile, we also see that the according to the movie, at least the Soviets, have stepped up their work on installing the missiles. The first few have become operational already, and then the rest are going to be done within 36 hours. So according to the movie, President Kennedy seems like there’s no other choice, so he orders the airstrike to take place on Monday morning, followed by the invasion. And that means they only have a few hours left if they hope to reach a diplomatic solution. Did Kennedy actually order the airstrike and invasion like we see in the movie?

Joshua Donohue  1:09:19

Yeah, as I said, you know, there was that other there was the one part that was, your Kennedy was okay. There’s a little bit of hope for a peaceful solution to this. But I can’t take my finger off the other option, which is, you know, committing to total release that on october 27 Kennedy would approve McNamara’s suggestion, calling into active duty 24 Air Reserve squadrons of troop carrier aircraft. These aircraft made it possible to airlift the first wave of the airborne invasion, considering about 34,800 paratroopers from Port Bragg and Fort Campbell, they will be followed by surface movement of the first Armored Division. 10 and elements of two infantry divisions designated for further reinforcement if necessary. So what was called out plan 314 or operations. Plan 314 calls for the deliberate and coordinated invasion of Cuba, with the Marines landing on eastern Cuba, or near Guantanamo, and the 18th Air Corps seizing airfields in and around Havana. And the amphibious phase of the operation will be controlled by headquarters second fleet, with joint task force 122, so once these initial landings would be completed, headquarters the 18th Air Corps and the would become a JTF driven Task Force Cuba to control all further operations from that point on, to really facilitate the expected popular uprising against Castro, a separate joint unconventional warfare task force in the Atlantic would deploy Special Forces and other elements into Cuba, as I mentioned, This was the era, of course, you know, they had the John F Kennedy Special Warfare school. Kennedy was really a firm believer in developing these, these elite units like we see, you know, the Green Berets, the seals and so on. So these units involved remained on high alert into November, and long after the public perception of the crisis had effectively disappeared. So this prolonged alert, like the prolonged preparation and prior to discovery of the missiles, indicates the seriousness which the administration had contemplated attacking Cuba. So in effect, the US Army had really prepared for a major war without mobilizing its reserve forces, an anomaly that was similar to the situation which would take place during the Vietnam War. So this high state of readiness was achieved at substantial cost, both in dollars in the long term, efficiency of services, the call for equipment and personnel to bring units into strength, had depleted the army school system, the army never received the authority to extend soldier enlistments or recall reservists, although McNamara ran such authority to both the Navy and the Marines on october 27 So overall, you know, we have the Kennedy would eventually start to sort of, you know, plan for the worst, but not quite rule out. You know, there still might be some hope, holding out hope that this quarantine, and you know this, this is going to work somehow. It’s already showing that it’s, it is that there are already Russian ships that are not really getting close to the quarantine line, turning around, and of course you’re going to get those. You’re going to still pass through, so there’s still very much the tensions that day. And then of course, we have what happens later on with the incident over Cuba with major Rudolph Anderson.

Dan LeFebvre  1:12:55

That leads right into the next question about about major Anderson, because in the movie, again, this is, this is on Saturday the 27th according to the movie, too, and that’s when the first casualty of the Cuban missile crisis occurs. Mention his name, major Anderson. He’s piloting a u2 spy plane at some 72,000 feet, according to the movie, when we see surface to air missiles getting launched, and he tries to evade them, but they end up hitting his plane and breaks up in the air. So if we were to believe the movie’s version of history, this is the first casualty that we see in the crisis. Is that true? Yeah,

Joshua Donohue  1:13:30

it is. And as I mentioned earlier, the YouTube spy plane was a major leap forward in terms of aerospace technology, the brainchild of Clarence Kelly Johnson of Lockheed, and the view two itself was meant to be avoided detection, avoided surface to air missiles, avoid any kind of defense capabilities whatsoever. So Rudolph Anderson does indeed become the first casualty of the crisis when his YouTube was shot down. Anderson was actually not scheduled to fly on this day, but he lobbied hard for the assignment when the mission was edited in schedule. So it was mission 3127 which was Anderson six, mission over Cuba as a part of Operation brass knob, which would be the most dangerous yet. And now what’s occurring is you have the Soviet essay to surface to air, missile operational, and now, seemingly war was going to be imminent in the SA two itself, which many pilots in Vienna during the Vietnam War, we’ll find out, is a deadly, deadly missile with, it’s basically like someone basically firing a telephone call at you that’s coming at you, you know, multiple times the speed of sound, and it’s it’s got a deadly, deadly range. So of course, as soon as the USA, after. You to approach Cuban airspace. It was detected and tracked by Soviet radars and assigned the designation target 33 so together with their commanders, operations nervously. Operators nervously monitor this aircraft as it progressed, crossing from the island from the northwest to a southeast axis and feeding all this real time information and reports to several surface to air missile sites that were now on full combat alert. So right from the start, the Soviets knew that the high flying intruder was neither innocent nor alone. Their work, in turn, was also being tracked by one of the United States Air Force’s RB 40 7h aircraft of the 55th wing, just also coordinating with the crew of the USS Oxford. So this was a multi surface ship airplane operation, not just this one u2 flying by itself. There’s a lot that goes into these missions. So just the presence of the u2 and the RB 40 7h did not escape. You know, the the tension of Soviet radar. So Anderson would steer his u2 over Guantanamo Bay After continuing to a war westerly direction. And the fact that will become crucial, what happened next? This would now bring him directly into the course of a Soviet unit equipped with a the SS c2 a Salish cruise missile deployed outside the village of Filipinas, and the fkr one missile were deployed with also 12 kiloton nuclear warheads meant to neutralize the US base of Guantanamo in case of an invasion. So because the missiles were moved into position during the night of October 26 and the 27th their presence could not have been relayed by earlier revealed, I should say, by earlier reconnaissance flights. So the fact that major Anderson overflew the area in question was arguably one of the main reasons why the Soviet commanders ordered their units to fire and shoot down his u2 so the u2 itself is because it was meant to fly at high altitude to avoid detection and missiles. The SA two was, was the perfect missile to bring the u2 down. If you see the u2 if you notice, pilots of the u2 are always wearing space suits. They are flying really at the edge of the atmosphere. And the u2 itself, with a long wingspan, was not an easy airplane to fly. It’s actually still in service today, but it’s as really bicycle landing. You have to have monitors driving their cars and trucks to monitor the u2 and talk to the pilots to make sure the wings don’t hit the ground. So it’s a tough plane to fly in every from takeoff to landing. So having flown over Guantanamo Anderson tries to fly in a northwesterly direction, and intending to fly over the island, he is constantly monitored. And of course, the missiles are sent up. And by all accounts, they say that A piece of shrapnel pierced the cockpit into Anderson’s flight suit, depressurizing it killed him instantly. And you know, the YouTube crashes there was actually the wreckage of that plane is still on display in certain parts of Cuba. What

Dan LeFebvre  1:18:17

was it like? The tensions like at that had to have been the highest point of the crisis, right?

Joshua Donohue  1:18:22

Yeah. I mean, you have Kennedy is really again, the invasion is on his mind. He has which could take place within 24 to 48 hours. Then you have Rudolph Anderson, you know, being down. And you have LeMay Maxwell, Taylor and others saying, we need to go to war right now, and you have the incident where the threat level is brought to DEFCON two, and Kennedy absolutely loose. He brings, you know, Bobby and Ken O’Donnell into the Oval Office. And it’s just completely, you know, he had a situation where we had a glimmer of hope for peace. And now this happens, and the pressure that must have mounted against Kennedy, and again, he must have been physically and mentally drained by the time this just happens. And of course, you have to now think there’s that scene where he looks out the window he sees, you know, Jackie and his kids out there playing with the other and they’re all thinking the same thing, this could be the end of the world, and the answer that they would be waiting for would come 24 hours later, that Sunday, the world will be pulled back from the brink of war With less than 24 hours to go before American airstrikes are set.

Dan LeFebvre  1:19:45

Wow, which is just one of those things of it’s you can hear it, but it’s still hard to wrap your head around just how close that was. Throughout the movie, there were a couple things that made me think maybe they’re doing it for Hollywood. Timing, because we see some, some military tests going on. It just the, it seems like the absolute worst time. There’s a hydrogen bomb detonation above Johnson island the South Pacific that we see happening. There’s a missile launch test at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and other tests that happened. Were there any other things outside of the crisis that that happened that just, I mean, had had to immediately increase tension. You see a missile launch. How do you know that that’s actually a test as opposed to just a launch, right? Yeah.

Joshua Donohue  1:20:27

So it just so happens. And just to make things even worse, you know, of course, nuclear tests have been going on since the end of the Second World War. Of course, Russia detonates their first atomic bomb in 1949 so since the end of World War Two, the United States and Russia had been conducting nuclear weapons tests with Russia. Of course, in 49 both nations engaged in an arms race with nuclear weapons stockpiles increasing into the hundreds and soon 1000s of nuclear bombs, whether tactical nukes, cruise missiles, multiple independent re entry vehicles, either launched from missile bases, aircraft or submarines. So you can basically miniaturize or maximize these weapons to great effect, as we see with the footage of the test flights and the preparedness flights and nuclear tests. So on August 30, 1961 Nikita Khrushchev announces to at the Soviet Union will break from the three year moratorium and resume nuclear testing. So two days later, they started an unprecedented series of atmospheric nuclear tests, including the detonation of a 50 megaton device. So subsequently, President Kennedy decides that the nation must resume atmospheric nuclear testing and approve what’s known as Operation dominant, which is the largest nuclear testing operation ever conducted. It takes place from april of 1962 all throughout the year, into the Cuban Missile Crisis and beyond that. So this was just, you know, everyday stuff, you know. Oh, yeah, you know, I know this is going on, but yeah, we’re just going to test, you know, fire a nuclear weapon. And beginning in april of 1962 um Dominic was a series of 36 nuclear tests, with the majority of these tests being 29 air drops by B 52 bombers. So three of the tests took place during the crisis. So these weapon development tests were went to evaluate the advanced designs and the labs that were cooking up for all these years and the moratorium and beyond. So the two tests of the operational weapon systems were conducted. The Polaris submarine basically launched ballistic missile and the anti submarine rocket. So during the crisis itself, the US will detonate a one point 1.59 megaton bomb called chama over Johnston Atoll on October 18. Checkmate is detonated over Johnston on the 20th the Soviet Union will detonate k3 on the 22nd at the height of the crisis, the US will detonate two more nuclear devices, bluegill, triple prime and calamity on the 26th and 27th of October, respectively. So the Soviets then respond with another detonation of k4 on the 28th and the megatons are going up and up into the hundreds at this point. So it’s almost as if both nations nuclear weapons were doing the talking in somewhat shape or form. Okay, you have this. Okay, we have this. And just this back and forth. So heeding to this wake up call, in the following months, both parties in alongside the United Kingdom continued negotiations on banning nuclear testing, and with the comprehensive banning of nuclear tests on the table, only a partial ban could be achieved, owing to the pressure from the military establishment on both sides. So the Newton, the 1963 partial Test Ban Treaty bans nuclear testing above ground, in the atmosphere and outer space and underwater, but not under, not underground, I should say, so you can almost make the argument that as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and you know, the continued nuclear tests that were going on simultaneously, you had to back away and say, Okay, this, this could have really gone astray and a detonation here, oh, we’re going to war. So it could have been that easy to sort of make that miscalculation,

Dan LeFebvre  1:24:35

which throws another whole other bit of historical context to what you were talking about earlier, when talking about how you know, Kennedy had to continue with his normal schedule, and everybody has to continue with the normal schedule, because you don’t want the public to know yet. But part of that that public schedule is also doing these tests that might say, say some things you don’t want to say to the opponents. The other side, right? That just adds another whole other level of tension that we haven’t even talked about,

Joshua Donohue  1:25:04

that was there as if, as if, you know the whole situation with the missiles being, you know, the warheads being placed on on them, and the Russian submarines with their with nuclear weapons. Of course, the Americans there too, and still, obviously the downing of major Anderson’s YouTube, and then, of course, the detonation that takes place all throughout. It’s a miracle. It really, it really is and and even to go further beyond into the Cold War years, I remember there was a an instance in 1983 or a Soviet operator on a console detected the launch of nuclear missiles from the United States, and was just seconds away from launching. So is

Dan LeFebvre  1:25:47

that the war games movie? Wasn’t there a movie about that kind of thing? Yes, both. Matthew Broderick,

Joshua Donohue  1:25:52

yeah. So it’s, it’s like I said, there are the way things played out and the way that Kennedy’s just tactful decision making. And just to give him, you know, so much credit, you see in the film how much pressure he is under. And just, you know, again, the physical and mental toll you see, really, like towards the end of it had to have been considerable. And, you know, I guess if you really think about the end of the day. It also damages relations between Russia and Cuba that Castro wants to go to war. He wants to make the first strike. He wants Soviet backing behind him, and when the Russians begin pulling away, he’s saying, wait a minute, what would happen? We had this whole idea we could keep these missiles here and with the Bay of Pigs, and this could happen again. So it really cool. Our heads prevail, and thankfully for all of us, but that this takes place,

Dan LeFebvre  1:26:53

movie focus is mostly from the American side, so we don’t get a lot from the Soviet side. But you did mention earlier the the Jupiter missiles. And that’s that’s a part of it. We’ll get to kind of how the movie shows the whole thing coming to an end. But what were things like from the Soviet side? Because as I was watching the movie, I got the impression that, okay, one of the big reasons why the United States wants the missiles out of Cuba is because they can destroy so many people so quickly. But I also got the impression that the the United States is basically doing the same thing the Soviet Union with missiles in Turkey, that could pretty much kind of do the same thing that we’re seeing over here. So can you give us an overview of what things were like on the Soviet side that we don’t even see in

Joshua Donohue  1:27:37

the movie? So things were much different on the Soviet side, the Soviet Union reacted very differently. So for Americans, especially during World War Two, it’s for the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s unique crisis, because for the first time in their history, they realized that we could be destroyed completely. We didn’t worry about this. During World War Two, we had oceans on either side of us. None of our cities were bombed. Our industries continued to produce the material and weapons we needed to win the war. So for the Soviet people, they had their own war experience. For them, it was no different. There was no panic in the streets of Moscow. Life went on as usual. They experienced threats many times throughout their history, going back, you know, to know, the times of the Mongolian invasions during the time of, you know, in the post Roman world, and in the early part of the Middle Ages, where you have Western Asia was a flurry of activity from outside context. You have the Vikings, the Magyars, the Germanic tribes and so on. You have the fast forward. You have the Russo Japanese war in 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt has to preside over the negotiations to end that conflict. Then you have World War One, where Russia is forced out of the war with the Treaty of Brest litovsk. And yeah, of course, the Russian Revolution of 1917 taking place. And then Stalin enters the picture. You have the great terror. You have the purges from 1936 to 38 then, of course, World War Two, for Nazi Germany breaks from Molotov Ribbentrop and invades the Soviet Union in 1941 with Operation Barbarossa. So the worst fighting of World War Two takes place in Russia. They suffer the highest amount of casualties in the war. Estimates between eight to 10 million soldiers and around 20 million civilian deaths. And Russia will account for about a third of all the losses in all of World War Two, which is staggering. So the Russians misconception was sort of their own reality, the enemy at the gate, the missiles at your borders, like anything, this is all a part of their historical experience. So Europeans had enemies the. States for all their time in history, American bases that surround now the Soviet Union and when Americans replaced missiles bases in Turkey and any other European country, it didn’t create any panic, because the obligation of the government was to deal with the opposite side. It was expected that they were going to take a firm stance on any sort of, you know, potential threat. So again, the Americans, we were lucky, and we enjoyed, you know, the isolation. And Americans were basically scared of everything as a nation. And I would compare, you know, the Americans at this time as a sort of a tiger that grows up in the zoo and then just released into the jungle, you know. So they really didn’t have any kind of conception. World War Two was distant. Pearl Harbor was off in the middle of Hawaii, didn’t touch the mainland. And, you know, with Russia again, it’s that constant threat that we’re going to be, you know, destroyed or conquered was, you know, was really their mindset,

Dan LeFebvre  1:31:01

okay, yeah, that makes, that makes a lot of sense as to why I was so treated so differently, for sure, yeah,

Joshua Donohue  1:31:09

different, different circumstances. And again, they had been, they’d ex, I would even say, you know, it’s still continuing, of course, with, you know, Russia and Ukraine being engaged in this war. You know, for years down, there’s no, no sign of it, you know, study, let’s say North Korean troops are going into the fight now. So, you know, they’re just a country that’s, you know, used to strife and conflict. They’re used to, you know, going out, whether it’s, you know, regaining territory from the old Soviet days, or you’re defending themselves from the Nazis, or, you know, whatever the conflict was, they’re just a nation that is used to having to defend itself at all costs.

Dan LeFebvre  1:31:51

Yeah, yeah, which is not something we’re so used to here and the young lanes of the United States is for sure. Well, at the end of the movie, we see Ken O’Donnell driving Bobby Kennedy to the Soviet embassy in the middle of the night. When they get there, there’s the smell. You can’t smell it in movie, of course, but there’s the smell of smoke and the dimension in the air because the Soviets are burning documents in anticipation of war. And we see Bobby Kennedy talking to the Soviet ambassador to Brennan. He tells the ambassador that the President is willing to accept the deal in Khrushchev’s first letter, in other words, in exchange for the Soviets removing the missiles in Cuba and submitting to the UN inspection to verify that it’s done, the US will publicly promise not to invade or help any other nation invade Cuba, and the US will also Remove we just mentioned those, the Jupiter missiles from Turkey. That’s part of the deal as well, although Kennedy says that they’ll have to do it privately about six months later. They don’t want to look like it’s happening right away, but they’ll have the answer by tomorrow, Sunday, according to the movie, and the answer comes. Khrushchev agrees. So the world is pulled back from the brink of war with less than 24 hours to go before the American air strikes are set to commence. How well does the movie do showing the way the Cuban missile crisis came to an end.

Joshua Donohue  1:33:11

So as Kennedy, as President Kennedy, suspected the missile crisis had turned a decisive corner, but it was not over the weeks of secret, often tense negotiations would follow until a complete Soviet and us understanding was made on November the 20th, so President Kennedy’s position remains sort of awkward through the last sort of days of October led to believe that the crisis was essentially over. Reporters expected that evidence they were gonna be seeing, evidence the missiles being pulled out of Cuba. So the government really had no such evidence, or, you know, to release. So Kennedy had really little to go on. Expect, really expect, except his own belief that Khrushchev was indeed being sincere, and that belief was reinforced by intelligence of both, as I mentioned before, Cuban and Chinese anger of what they see, what they saw was a regard of a Soviet betrayal that they had effect were, you know, pumping themselves up. We’re going to be with the ultimate counter to the United States. We’re the biggest superpower. We’re going to develop more nuclear missiles, and we’re going to be the big, tough leader of the Communist world. And of course, you have China going communist 1949 and of course, Cuba in 1959 as well. So there’s this mounting communist threat that’s existing abroad, and it would really take more intense negotiation and communication between Kennedy and Khrushchev on october 28 Khrushchev would send a private message to Kennedy again trying to nail. Down the deal on the withdrawal of the Jupiter missiles. So this is really a good sort of lesson in statecraft and statesmanship, and even brinksmanship, if you want to sort of term it that way, that the Cold War was was really overall marked by the series of events, by, you know, the, you have the Berlin crisis, and, you know, the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin airline, then the Berlin wall goes up. And there’s all these different phases of what, of course, we’re in well within the Soviet Zone of Occupation, you know, right face to face with the Russians, and it’s this divisiveness. And again, the criticism is level to Kennedy that he can’t handle it. And I think what this demonstrates is that his decision making was critical may have saved the world. I would say in many ways, he probably did, because you think about it, at any given day, say, one day you’re feeling this way, the next, you’re feeling this another way. And someone tells you this, and someone tells you this, and you thinking, okay, how am I going to formulate a reasonable conclusion? How am I going to make a sound decision here? And you got, you have guys like LeMay and Taylor and, you know, Rusk and McGeorge Bundy and McNamara, all of these guys are just, you know, and of course, your flesh and blood brother, Bobby is there right with you. And I was actually surprised to see and read how much of a role he had as the attorney general. He really, I would say, in many ways, didn’t get really a whole lot of credit for really the credit he deserves, because he was putting himself out there, wanting to go out and meet with, you know, the Soviet delegation, and try and nail down a solution. Because he really felt that, I think in a lot of ways, that the brothers both felt that they had to sort of make up for the legacy of their father in a lot of and again, there’s that, there again, that that Munich exchange, that look they have, and there’s, there’s the referencing to it, I think in a lot of ways, they, they want to reverse course and say, No, we’re not going to be appeasing. We want to try and find a diplomatic solution to this issue, because we don’t have any other choice. The other choice is the world goes to nuclear war and it’s all over. We’re not going to have tomorrow to think, oh, maybe we shouldn’t have made this decision. So Kennedy, again, I get his presidency was for the short time that it lasted. He did a lot of things, a lot of important things. And, you know, I was surprised to see towards the end and in the end of the crisis, some of the phone calls he makes are kind of surprised. And I’ll, I’ll sort of tell you about that

Dan LeFebvre  1:37:56

in a moment. Are you open to doing a what if question about that? Because I’m curious about that. As as I was watching the movie, I got the sense that JFK, Bobby Kennedy, and then, of course, Ken O’Donnell, and those are the kind of the three people who repeatedly seem to be pushing back against you mentioned some of the military leaders there, and in the movie, yeah, we see them pushing like, oh, we need to go to war. You know, we need to launch these airstrikes and do that. And of course, we know from history that JFK was assassinated about a year and a month later in november of 1963 so I can’t help but wonder, what if JFK had not been President? Maybe LBJ or, I guess anyone else really, that you could throw in there. But do you think the Cuban missile crisis would have ended differently if JFK was not President?

Joshua Donohue  1:38:42

That’s a great question, because I said, you know, everyone has different attitudes, tolerances, thresholds. Interestingly enough, although the film doesn’t show it, and it’s in the book The Kennedy tapes, and again, there’s the transcripts of the conversation Kennedy would leave the X com meeting on the 28th that Sunday, at 12, 8pm and he does this a couple of times prior, but he placed a call. He would place a call to former President Dwight Eisenhower. And Eisenhower, of course, knows all too well the complexities of the US Russia relationship, especially during the height of the Red Scare during his presidency. Of course, Sputnik takes place, you know, the YouTube and Francis Gary Powers. So Kennedy would brief Eisenhower on the results of the preliminary agreements between himself and Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Kennedy’s literal response to Eisenhower’s critique is one of agreement, and Eisenhower seems to agree with Kennedy’s decision making, which I’m sure had to be reassuring for the young president to get such affirmation from someone like Eisenhower, who was no stranger to making hard decisions, not only during those difficult, intense years of the Cold War During his presidency, but. But of course, as his exemplary leadership as supreme allied commander during World War Two. After he hangs up with Eisenhower, he then calls president, former president, Harry Truman, who was 78 years old at the time, and Truman also well versed in the art of cold war strategy, being really the first president to experience it at the end of the world after end of World War Two. He also expresses his relief and telling Kennedy, I’m pleased to death with the way those things turned out, quote, unquote, and like the Eisenhower call it was brief. So he’s almost looking for affirmation like validation. I would say like, you know, you like my predecessors, guys who make the right decisions. Here. After he hangs up with Truman, he then calls former President Herbert Hoover, who’s 88 years old at the time, Hoover is also pleased to hear the good news about the events, telling Kennedy this represents a good triumph for you. So I think this is a good example of the type of person that and the leader that Jonathan Gerald Kennedy was. He knew his history. He would quote, you know, in the film Sun Tzu the guns of August, he was well aware of what each of his predecessors had experienced during their respective presidencies. So to answer your question, I think if any one of Kennedy’s predecessors, even Richard Nixon, who was of course, Eisenhower’s vice president, ran against Kennedy in 1960 election, he understood the realities of the Cold War. He was a great statesman who knew the art of strategy and policy, negotiation and deal making. So it takes a great deal of diplomacy to deal with the complexities, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Lyndon Johnson, I’m not sure he, he, you know, again, he was vice president with Kennedy. He was in the room. I was surprised that he would when I was reading the book, he would kind of chime in here and there when, when only really asked Kennedy was really more focused on, on his his strategies. Lyndon Johnson was kind of like a, you know, a side, sort of sidebar, if you will. So as I mentioned earlier, the overwhelming consensus between a JFK advisors, between Robert McNamara and Ted Sorensen. Ashley will say that Ken O’Donnell was not the central figure throughout the crisis. So I looked even more into it and found out something interesting about the film. So Kevin O’Donnell, who is Ken O’Donnell’s son, who was a venture capitalist and actually would buy back controlling interest of the production company beacon pictures in 1999 he denied the influence on his father’s character or any portrayal of that. So there’s always that sort of speculation of whether his influence put Ken O’Donnell at the forefront, but from by all accounts and what McNamara and really and Rusk and others said that Ted Sorensen was really the guy. He was the point man. He was the one writing the speeches that Kennedy was going to tell the nation. So Sorenson was really the guy that doesn’t get didn’t get quite the credit that he deserves. Not so much Ken O’Donnell. Sadly enough, Ken O’Donnell would succumb to the effects of alcoholism even 1977 after Kennedy was assassinated in november of 1963 he joined with Robert Kennedy. They were very close, and when Robert was assassinated in June of 1968 he just couldn’t, couldn’t bear it. It was just too he had become, it just completely enmeshed in the Kennedy’s life into Camela. He was right there at the center of things, but it’s sadly, it doesn’t end well for him. So interesting is that he’s not really the focal point of the movie. That’s kind of why I gave it just a B, not really a b plus or an A, if maybe they would have put Ted Sorensen as the central guy. Maybe different story. But I think throughout the end of the day, it’s an important film in terms especially nowadays, where we’re talking about the escalation of tensions in the Middle East, of course, in Russia, in terms of the historical context, it’s the closest we’ve ever come to nuclear Armageddon and the lessons we learned from this crisis. In spite of our differences along ideological lines, political lines, etc, cooler heads can prevail. John F Kennedy had plenty of critics, critics during his President presidency, but I think he proved a lot of those doubters wrong with his. Handling of the crisis. So if we would have attacked Cuba, there was the likelihood that Russian personnel would have been killed as well, which would have easily spiraled out of control. And just an interesting note in with the film itself, Kevin Costner actually traveled to Cuba in 2001 to screen the film for Fidel Castro and and costume would say it was an experience of a lifetime, being able to sit a few feet away from Castro and seeing him relive these events as a young man. So I thought that was pretty interesting,

Dan LeFebvre  1:45:33

huh? Did he you mentioned how what he thought of it?

Joshua Donohue  1:45:39

He thought it was good, really. He didn’t like the film. Yeah. I mean, obviously he wasn’t portrayed in the film, but he agreed. And certain points disagree with some of the things that happened. But overall, I think in terms of the that particular thing that Costner did, which I thought was great, just, you’ll think about it. Oh, why would we do that? They’re communist, but this is how you break down the walls of division between nations. Is this is what we do here in the United States, and exposing people to the things, how we interpret things, that we can break down differences in spite of our different, you know, our beliefs and thinking this way, you think this way. So I think that was a nice little sort of postscript that I read about the film that Costner, you know, was was good enough to do that. I think it was a pretty pointed thing to sort of, you know, end the, you know, the legacy of the film with that because, you know, it’s because it’s important. I think the film does a great job on showing exactly the sequence of events in the league, for the most part, how they played out.

Dan LeFebvre  1:46:50

Yeah, and, I mean, it’s end of the day, it’s, it’s talking to other people. I mean, regardless of whether or not you agree with we agree with them. But I think that’s, it’s, it’s what happened in the movie too, that we saw with Khrushchev being like, Okay, we just got to send, let’s just talk to each other directly. Khrushchev and Kennedy talking to each other directly, I mean, through letters, but, you know, directly as you could in the 60s, right?

Joshua Donohue  1:47:11

Yeah. So, you know, it was the interesting thing about both leaders. Obviously, Kennedy would lose his life in Dallas in November of 63 and, you know, there’s, there’s always that speculation of the what, if, you know, what, what it would have would Vietnam would have happened? You know, Kennedy was, was talking about, you know, not really wanting to get involved there was already, we already committed. You know, troops there. There are operations going on there. So, of course, you know, LBJ then takes over. And then, the course really the worst of what had happened with the Cuban Missile Crisis in past and once Vietnam begins in 1965 that becomes the unfortunate legacy of not only Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, but in a lot of ways, His Kennedy’s old advisors, McNamara, being brought, probably the most prominent Johnson will keep Kennedy’s cat, even Robert Kennedy and they do not like each other whatsoever. That’s fairly well documented. So Nikita Khrushchev and I think in a lot of ways, the results of the Cuban Missile Crisis. For him, it weakens his position considerably, because, as I mentioned, this upsets the Cubans and upsets China. It’s for the first time that the US and the Soviet are right here and the Soviets back off, and that we hold firm with the blockade and removing the missiles, making the deal to make that happen. And this upsets many in the communists on the party lines, and the fall in 1964 that Peter Khrushchev will be forced from power, and that will in many ways. Many historians will say that the Cuban missile crisis will be one of the primary reasons why that happens, and that he basically loses power and influence, and you know, you have I believe it was two more leaders who come in. I think both of them die, and then Leonid Brezhnev comes in there.

Dan LeFebvre  1:49:12

Well, thankful that those what if scenarios did not turn out. Because as bad as they could have been, let’s put it that way, it could have been a lot worse.

Joshua Donohue  1:49:21

Yeah, it really could have been. I mean, especially a guy like LeMay. Lemay’s reputation, they used to call him Bombs away. LeMay, he he wanted more. And if you would have given him the green light, there would have been B 50 twos and every other asset, just leveling and laying waste. And you have that kind of commitment, that kind of attack take place again. You’re going to kill Russians on the ground. There are advisors there. Not they’re not just dropping the missiles off on the island, saying, okay, tell them the Cubans, you can put them together. Well, we’re going to go, no, they’re on the ground. They’re advising the technical data. They have to teach them. How do you. These missiles, how to load the warheads, and it’s a complicated process. And again, if you’re attacking the island with en masse like that, you’re going to have Russia cap. And that was even the concern in the Vietnam War, that we would, in a lot of ways, limit, limit strikes to the north, because there were Russians helping bring in surface to air missiles and other anti aircraft and different military technology into the region, and there was that concern, I think Lyndon Johnson said, God forbid one of our pilots drops a bomb on the smoke stack of a Russian freighter. We have a bigger problem on our head. Yeah,

Dan LeFebvre  1:50:35

you start that trigger of treaties that World War One, basically, yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming back on the show to chat through 13 days. And I know we’ve been talking about the 60s today, but if I recall we were last time we talked, you were working on an article about World War Two. But can you share a bit about what you’re working on now and where listeners can learn more about your

Joshua Donohue  1:50:57

work? Sure. So I mentioned last time I have a article about the attack, so a smaller aspect of the attack on crow harvest, the attack on the Marine Corps Base at Efra field on December 7, 1941 that is on the editor’s table hopefully be coming out in spring in World War Two magazine. And I mentioned to you earlier that I just come back from a recent trip to Gettysburg and a trip to the US Army heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, just got to into the early phases of two new projects and working on one about my uncle service in the Vietnam War. He was with H troop, 17th cavalry, the 198th Infantry Brigade, 23rd America division. That’s a mouthful. And my great grandfather, who was in World War Two, who fought with the 70th Infantry Division during way they got there just the end of the Battle of the Bulge and into the end of the into the surrender of Germany at the end of the Second World War. So I’m also working on a book that I’m collaborating with another author on. It’s going to be about more so aviation, and kind of getting into my love affair with aviation, who I grew up with and still love it, and how it’s pretty much impacted my life and military history and stuff. So a lot of good stuff coming up in the next couple

Dan LeFebvre  1:52:20

months, fantastic, and I’ll add links to those in the show notes. Thanks again. So much for your time, Josh.

Joshua Donohue  1:52:24

Thank you so much for having me on great to be here.