Read One minute to midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the brink of nuclear war for Free Online

Cabinet Room. The news from Cuba was becoming more ominous by the day. In addition to the original missile sites in Pinar del Rio, U-2 spy planes had discovered a second cluster of sites in the center of the island. The new sites included facilities for so-called intermediate-range ballistic missiles, or IRBMs, which were capable of hitting targets nearly 2,800 miles away, more than double the distance of the medium-range rockets, or MRBMs, discovered on October 14.
    There was still no evidence that the bigger missiles had arrived in Cuba, so they were a less immediate threat. But work on the original missile sites was proceeding rapidly. The CIA had identified three different medium-range ballistic missile regiments on the island. Each regiment controlled eight missile launchers, making twenty-four in all.
    "Let's see," said Kennedy, reading aloud passages from the intelligence report. "Two of these missiles are operational now...missiles could be launched within eighteen hours after the decision to fire...yields in the low megaton range."
    He had been dreading this meeting, but knew he must at least go through the motions of consulting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He felt that the generals had misled him over the Bay of Pigs, pushing him to support an ill-prepared invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro exiles. He was particularly mistrustful of the Air Force chief of staff, General Curtis LeMay, a cigar-chomping World War II hero with three thousand nuclear bombs under his command. "I don't want that man near me again," Kennedy had said, after listening to one of LeMay's blood-curdling briefings about bombing America's enemies back to the "Stone Age." Profane, tough, and brutally efficient, LeMay was the kind of man you wanted by your side when the fighting started, but not the type who should be making decisions about war and peace.
    LeMay could barely contain himself as the president voiced his fears of a nuclear conflagration. Attempting to put himself in Khrushchev's shoes, Kennedy predicted that a U.S. attack on Cuba would inevitably be followed by a Soviet attack on Berlin. "Which leaves me with only one alternative, which is to fire nuclear weapons--which is a hell of an alternative."
    Nonsense, retorted LeMay, speaking slowly as if addressing a somewhat dim pupil. It was the other way round. Not taking firm action in Cuba would only encourage the Soviets to try their luck in Berlin. A naval blockade of Cuba, as proposed by some of Kennedy's advisers, could send a fatal message of weakness.
    "It will lead right into war. This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich."
    There was a shocked silence around the table. LeMay's remark was an audaciously insulting reference to the president's father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., who had advocated a policy of negotiating with Hitler while serving as U.S. ambassador to London. LeMay was implying that JFK, who had launched his political career as the author of an anti-appeasement book called While England Slept, was about to follow in his father's footsteps.
    LeMay's strategy for dealing with the rival superpower was based on a simple logic. The United States enjoyed overwhelming nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union. However much Khrushchev might threaten and bluster, he had absolutely no interest in provoking a nuclear war that he was bound to lose. Thanks to the Strategic Air Command (SAC), the most powerful military force in the history of the world, America had "the Russian bear" by the balls. "Now that we have gotten him in a trap, let's take his leg off right up to his testicles," he told his associates. "On second thoughts, let's take off his testicles, too."
    Kennedy's logic was very different. The United States might have many more nuclear bombs than its adversary, but "winning a nuclear war" was a pretty meaningless concept. As many as 70 million Americans could die in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. "You're talking about the destruction of a country," he told