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

the Joint Chiefs. He wanted to avoid provoking Khrushchev into what McNamara called "a spasm response," an involuntary knee-jerk reaction that would end up in a nuclear exchange.
    The commander in chief was shocked by the impertinence of the Air Force general. When LeMay told him that "you're in a pretty bad fix at the present time," Kennedy thought he hadn't heard right.
    "What did you say?"
    "You're in a pretty bad fix," LeMay repeated calmly, in his flat midwestern voice.
    "Well, you're in there with me. Personally."
    The reply provoked some strained laughter around the table. A few minutes later, LeMay assured the president that the Air Force could be "ready for attack at dawn" on Sunday, although the "optimum date" would be the following Tuesday. Kennedy left the room shortly afterward.
    With the president gone, the generals felt free to dissect the debate. The hidden tape recorders were still running.
    "You, you pulled the rug right out from under him," the commandant of the Marine Corps, General David M. Shoup, told LeMay.
    "Jesus Christ, what the hell do you mean?" replied the Air Force chief, eager for praise.
    The problem with politicians, said Shoup, was that they always tried to do everything "piecemeal." As a military man, he preferred settling matters with "that little pipsqueak of a place" once and for all.
    "You go in there and friggin' around with the missiles. You're screwed. You go in and friggin' around with little else. You're screwed."
    "That's right."
    "You're screwed, screwed, screwed."
    Later, in the privacy of his office, the president conducted his own postmortem on the performance of his generals. He was amazed by LeMay's blithe assurance that Khrushchev would fail to react to the bombing of the missile sites and the deaths of hundreds of Russians.
    "These brass hats have one great advantage in their favor," he told his personal assistant and friend Dave Powers. "If we listen to them and do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong."
    FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19, NIGHT
    Jack Kennedy had a keen appreciation for the vagaries of history. His experiences commanding a patrol boat in the Pacific during World War II, reinforced by the lessons from the Bay of Pigs, had taught him to mistrust the assurances of military leaders. He knew that there can be a huge gulf between the orders and wishes of the man in the Oval Office and how that policy is actually implemented on the ground. One of his lasting impressions from the war was that "the military always screws up everything."
    The events of the next few days would confirm JFK's view of history as a chaotic process that can occasionally be given a shove in a desired direction, but can never be completely controlled. A president can propose, but ordinary human beings often dispose. In the end, history is shaped by the actions of thousands of individuals: some famous, others obscure; some in positions of great authority, others who want to tear down the established order; some who strive mightily to put themselves in a position to alter events, others who stumble onto the political stage almost by chance. The story of what would later become known as the Cuban missile crisis is replete with accidental figures whose role in history is often overlooked: pilots and submariners, spies and missileers, bureaucrats and propagandists, radar operators and saboteurs.
    As the president agonized over what to do about the missile sites, two such humble Cold War warriors were steering a rubber dinghy through the mangrove swamps of western Cuba. Miguel Orozco and Pedro Vera had blackened their faces and were wearing military-style ponchos. Their backpacks contained explosives, fuses, a two-way radio set, an M-3 rifle, a couple of pistols, and enough food and water to survive for a week. The electric engine on the RB-12 dinghy was equipped with silencers. The little boat made practically no noise as it drifted through the winding