...
Kennedy repeated the substance of the new letter to Khrushchev that his brother was about to send. The president considered Khrushchev's order to withdraw the missiles in return for a U.S. commitment not to invade as a "suitable basis for regulating the entire Cuban affair." In the meantime, Robert Kennedy stressed that the cardinal point of the U.S. strategy was to get the Soviets to stop their work on the missile sites.
In exchange for stopping work and disabling the missile sites, the United States would repeal the embargo and, the attorney general promised, "give assurances that there would not be any invasion of Cuba and that other countries of the Western Hemisphere are ready to give the same assurance-the U.S. government is certain of this."
"And what about Turkey?" Dobrynin asked.
Here Robert Kennedy presented the oral coda to John Kennedy's earlier response: "If that is the only obstacle to achieving the regulation I mentioned earlier, then the president doesn't see any insurmountable difficulties in resolving this issue."
As he had done a year earlier with Ceorgi Bolshakov, the attorney general explained to a Soviet representative what a U.S. president could and could not say publicly. "The greatest difficulty for the president is the public discussion of the issue of Turkey." He told Dobrynin that beside himself and the president only two or three other members of the administration knew about this. He said that the United States would "need four to five months" to remove the missile bases from Turkey. "[I]f such a decision were announced now," he explained, "it would seriously tear apart NATO." Tearing apart NATO had been a Soviet objective since the late 1940s. However, at this moment the offer, despite these conditions, was welcomed.
Kennedy ended his presentation with "a request ... not an ultimatum." The president wanted a "businesslike, clear answer in principle" through Dobrynin. The White House, Robert Kennedy explained, wanted to bring this alarming moment, with events "developing too quickly," to an end as soon as possible. Kennedy asked specifically that Khrushchev not send one of his trademark rambling letters that tied the interpreters at the State Department in knots and "which might drag these out." He also provided Dobrynin with some direct telephone numbers to the president.
Robert Kennedy returned to the White House in time for Saturday's third Ex Comm session. More than half of the members did not know that the president had authorized this special meeting with the Soviet ambassador...
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At this point Oleg Troyanovsky, one of Khrushchev's assistants who was also at the dacha, received a telephone call from the Foreign Ministry. A report from Anatoly Dobrynin had just arrived that described an interesting meeting with the president's brother. With an ear cocked to the telephone, Troyanovksy noted down the essentials. Regarding trading the Turkish missiles: he "doesn't see any insurmountable difficulties." Regarding the pace of future negotiations: "[This is] a request . . . not an ultimatum." One part to all of this, however, worried Troyanovsky. Apparently the American president was under severe pressure from the Pentagon to act. Robert Kennedy stressed that the Americans needed an answer from Moscow on Sunday, that very day: "[T]here is very little time to resolve this whole issue. . . . [E]vents are developing too quickly." His notes complete, Troyanovsky entered the hall and interrupted the session: "I ... began to read my notes on Dobrynin's report. They [Khrushchev and the others] asked me to read the notes again. It goes without saying that the contents of the dispatch increased the nervousness in the hall by some degrees."
There was no time to waste. Khrushchev called a stenographer over and began to dictate in the meeting hall his acceptance of the White House's proposals:
I have received your message of October 27. I express my satisfaction and thank you for the sense of proportion you have displayed. .
In order to eliminate as rapidly as possible the conflict which endangers the cause of peace . . the Soviet Government, in addition to earlier instructions on the discontinuation of further work on weapons construction sites, has given a new order to dismantle the arms which you described as offensive, and to crate and return them to the Soviet Union."
In addition to the public letter, Khrushchev sent two private messages to Kennedy, which Dobrynin was to convey orally to Robert Kennedy. The first confirmed what Kennedy would soon hear on the radio:
The views which R. Kennedy expressed at the request of the President in the meeting with Dobrynin in the evening of October 27, are known in Moscow. Today the response will be given by radio to the president and this response will be positive. In the main, the issue that agitates the president-namely, the removal of the missile bases from Cuba under international control-does not meet with any objections and will be explicated in detail in the message of N. S. Khrushchev.
The second, a more secret message, explained that the Kremlin expected the White House to keep its promise to withdraw the Turkish missiles. Khrushchev explained that he took Robert Kennedy's statement that "it would take 4-5 months to remove the missile bases from Turkey" and his subsequent request that all discussion of a resolution of the Turkish issue be kept highly confidential to mean that the Kennedy administration had accepted his Turkish demand.
In my letter to you of October 28, which was designed for publication, I did not touch on this matter because of your wish, as conveyed by Robert Kennedy. But all of the offers, which were included in this letter, were given on account of your having agreed to the Turkish issue raised in my letter of October 27 and announced by Robert Kennedy, from your side, in his meeting with the Soviet ambassador that same day.
Though pleased with how well the negotiations were turning out, Khrushchev feared a last-minute surprise. Concerned that some third party-a trigger-happy antiaircraft gunman in Cuba or a disgruntled general in the Pentagon-might undermine a settlement, the Presidium decided, as it had on Saturday, to have the main letter to Kennedy read over Radio Moscow so that it would be received quickly in Washington. Khrushchev instructed Leonid F. Ilichov, one of the Central Committee secretaries, to rush a copy of the letter to Radio Moscow for immediate broadcast. He also wanted the Soviet command in Cuba to exercise better control over the situation on the island. "We think that you were in a hurry to shoot down a U.S. reconnaissance U-2 plane," Khrushchev cabled to Pliyev. Moscow now strictly forbade Pliyev to use the SA-2 missiles and grounded all Soviet jets in Cuba "to avoid a clash with U.S. reconnaissance planes."