Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

“lead to the destruction of our hostages”: “Statement at Athens,” p. 7.

“the catastrophe which we most urgently wish to avoid”: Ibid.

“Not targeting cities — how aggressive!”: Quoted in Fursenko and Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War , p. 442.

“To get the population used to the idea”: Ibid.

If Khrushchev’s scheme worked: Dozens of books have been written about the Cuban missile crisis. I found these to be the most interesting and compelling: Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997); Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Longman, 1999); Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002); Max Frankel, High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cold War (New York: Ballantine Books, 2005); and Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (New York: Knopf, 2008). Fursenko and Naftali skillfully include material from the Soviet archives. Frankel covered the crisis for the New York Times and brings a firsthand feel to the drama. Allison and Zelikow use the crisis as a means of understanding larger questions of leadership and government behavior. The Kennedy Tapes, although based on edited transcripts, allows many of the principal actors to speak for themselves. And Dobbs conveys the simple fact that this is an incredible story, with stakes that couldn’t possibly be higher.

twenty-four medium-range ballistic missiles, sixteen intermediate-range ballistic missiles: Cited in Fursenko and Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble,” p. 188.

forty-two bombers… and about 50,000 personnel: Ibid.

triple the number of Soviet land-based missiles that could hit the United States: The Soviet Union had about twenty long-range missiles in 1962. Cited in Allison and Zelikow, Essence of Decision , p. 92.

“We have no bases in Cuba”: “Letter from Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy,” April 22, 1961, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume VI, Kennedy-Khrushchev Exchanges (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1996), p. 12.

“Our nuclear weapons are so powerful”: “Text of Soviet Statement Saying That Any U.S. Attack on Cuba Would Mean War,” New York Times , September 12, 1962.

their strategic purpose seemed to be a decapitation attack: Regardless of Khrushchev’s actual motive for deploying the missiles, they had the capability to destroy American command-and-control centers with little warning. And that made their presence in Cuba all the more unacceptable for the Kennedy administration. See May, et al., “History of the Strategic Arms Competition,” Part 2, pp. 663–68.

“It doesn’t make any difference if you get blown up”: “Off the Record Meeting on Cuba,” October 16, 1962, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XI, Cuban Missile Crisis and Aftermath (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1996), p. 61.

“If we attack Cuba… in any way”: May and Zelikow, Kennedy Tapes , p. 111.

“We’ve got the Berlin problem staring us in the face”: Ibid., p. 113.

“almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich”: Ibid.

“LeMay: I think that a blockade”: Ibid., p. 117.

“I just agree with you”: Ibid., p. 122.

“eliminate this clandestine, reckless and provocative threat”: “Text of Kennedy’s Address on Moves to Meet the Soviet BuildUp in Cuba,” New York Times , October 23, 1962.

“move the world back from the abyss”: Ibid.

Nearly two hundred B-47 bombers left SAC bases: Cited in “Strategic Air Command Operations in the Cuban Crisis of 1962,” Historical Study , vol. 1, no. 90 (1963) (TOP SECRET/declassified), NSA, p. 49.

Every day about sixty-five of the bombers circled: Cited in ibid., p. 97.

“I am addressing you for the purpose”: Quoted in ibid., p. vii.

The American custodians of the Jupiters were ordered: “The Jupiters,” according to the historian Philip Nash, “continued to represent one of the gravest command-and-control problems in the Western arsenal.” McNamara was so concerned about unauthorized use of the missiles that he ordered they not be fired, even in response to a Soviet attack on Italy or Turkey. See Nash, Other Missiles of October , pp. 125–127.

“an act of aggression which pushes mankind”: “Letter from Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy,” October 24, 1962, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume VI, Kennedy-Khrushchev Exchanges , p. 170.

“Your action desperate”: Quoted in Al Seckel, “Russell and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies , vol. 4, no. 2 (Winter 1984–1985), p. 255.

“As I left the White House… on that beautiful fall evening”: Robert S. McNamara, Blundering into Disaster: Surviving the First Century of the Nuclear Age (New York: Pantheon, 1987), p. 11.

almost one hundred tactical nuclear weapons on the island: See Fursenko and Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble,” p. 188.

“Absolutely not… the Soviet Government did raise the issue”: Quoted in Nash, Other Missiles of October , p. 157.

In order to deflect attention from the charge: Nash does a superb job of describing how the Kennedy administration covered up the truth and spread the fiction that no secret deal had been with Khrushchev. See Nash, Other Missiles of October , pp. 150–71.

“genuine peace” with the Soviets: “Text of Kennedy Speech to Class at American U.,” Washington Post and Times Herald , June 11, 1963.

And a hot line was finally created: For the history and workings of the hot line, see Desmond Ball, “Improving Communications Links Between Moscow and Washington,” Journal of Peace Research , vol. 8, no. 2 (1991), pp. 135–59; and Haraldur Þór Egilsson, “The Origins, Use and Development of Hot Line Diplomacy,” Netherlands Institute of International Relations, Issue 85 in Discussion Papers in Diplomacy, No. 85, March 2003.

“We at the embassy could only pray”: Quoted in Egilsson, “Origins, Use and Development of Hot Line,” pp. 2–3.

2,088 airborne alert missions… almost fifty thousand hours of flying time: Cited in “Strategic Air Command Operations in the Cuban Crisis,” p. 48.

The case was settled out of court: For details of the legal battle between Peter George and the creators of Fail-Saft, see Scherman, “Everbody Blows UP.”

“The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost”: The full title of the film is Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb . The screenplay was written by Stanley Kubrick, Peter George, and Terry Southern. Strangelove was directed by Kubrick and released in 1964 by Columbia Pictures.

“The probability of a mechanical failure”: Sidney Hook, The Fail-Safe Fallacy (New York: Stein and Day, 1963), p. 14.

“the Communist determination to dominate the world”: The quote appears on the back cover of The Fail-Safe Fallacy .

“‘fail safe,’ not unsafe”: Roswell L. Gilpatric, “‘Strangelove’? ‘Seven Days’? Not Likely,” New York Times , May 17, 1964. A similarly reassuring article had appeared the previous year in a Sunday magazine carried by the Los Angeles Times and dozens of other large newspapers. See Donald Robinson, “How Safe Is Fail Safe? Are We in Danger of an Accidental War?” This Week Magazine , January 27, 1963.