Michael Dobbs - One Minute to Midnight

Researching and writing can be lonely pursuits, which makes me even more grateful to the institutions and individuals who have helped me along the way. I owe a special debt to the U.S. Institute of Peace, which awarded me a senior fellowship for the academic year 2006-07. The support from USIP made it possible for me to make extra trips to Russia and Cuba and to devote more time to writing than would otherwise have been the case. Thanks to USIP, I was able to make this a two-year project rather than a sixteen-month project, and it is a better book as a result. There are many people at USIP who made this possible, but I would particularly like to thank Richard Solomon, Virginia Bouvier, and my researcher, Chris Holbrook.

I would like to thank Sergo Mikoyan and Sergei Khrushchev for their firsthand insights into the Soviet political system and for lifting the curtain into the lifestyle of senior Politburo members. Sergo served as an informal adviser to his father, Anastas Mikoyan, and accompanied him on several trips to Cuba. Sergei edited his father’s memoirs and worked on the Soviet rocket program.

Researching a book on a subject like the Cuban missile crisis is a wonderful opportunity to study foreign countries and cultures. Thanks to a posting in Moscow as a reporter for The Washington Post from 1988 to 1993, I started this project with a pretty good knowledge of Russia and Russian, but my return visits to Moscow were greatly facilitated by Svetlana Chervonnaya. My guide in Kiev was Lena Bogdanova, a talented Ph.D. sociology student. Cuba and Latin America were largely new to me. For teaching me Spanish, and introducing me to Latin American culture, history, and literature, a very special gracias to Miryam Arosemena. Thanks to Miryam, I was able to get around Cuba by myself without relying on translators and official guides.

As with my previous books, I have benefited enormously from the advice of Ashbel Green, one of America’s most distinguished editors, who retired at the end of 2007 after twenty-three years at Knopf. His authors included Andrei Sakharov, Vaclav Havel, and Milovan Djilas, so I could hardly have been in better company. I will miss him greatly, but he handed me on to Andrew Miller, who made many invaluable suggestions about how to improve this book. Others at Knopf I would like to thank include Sara Sherbill, who made the trains run on time; Ann Adelman, the copyeditor; Robert Olsson, the book designer; David Lindroth, the map maker; Meghan Wilson, the production editor; and Jason Booher, for the fabulous jacket. A special thanks, too, to my agent, Rafe Sagalyn, for his friendship and support.

Peter Baker, Susan Glasser, Peter Finn, Sergei Ivanov, and Masha Lipman went out of their way to be helpful when I was in Moscow. I enjoyed the hospitality of Alex Beam and Kiki Lundberg while I was in Boston. In London, Peter and Michelle Dobbs were unfailingly generous with offers of meals and accommodation, as was my brother Geoffrey.

In addition to the editors at Knopf, a number of people took the trouble to read the manuscript and make useful suggestions, including Tom Blanton, Svetlana Savranskaya, Raymond Garthoff, David Hoffman, Masha Lipman, and especially Martin Sherwin, who wielded a judicious scalpel. My mother, Marie Dobbs, an author in her own right, critiqued an early draft so extensively that I spent the next two months revising it.

My greatest debt of gratitude, as always, is to my wife, Lisa, and our three children, Alex, Olivia, and Jojo. I am dedicating this book to Olivia, whose music-making abilities, language talents, and curiosity about the world have blossomed during the two years I have been immersed in this book.

AFHRA: Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base

AFSC: Air Force Safety Center, Kirtland Air Force Base

CINCLANT: Commander in Chief Atlantic

CNN CW: CNN Cold War TV series, 1998. Transcripts of interviews at King’s College London

CNO: Chief of Naval Operations

CNO Cuba: CNO Cuba history files, Boxes 58-72, Operational Archives, USNHC

CREST: CIA Records Search Tool, NARA

CWIHP: Cold War International History Project bulletin

DOE: Department of Energy OpenNet

FBIS: Foreign Broadcast Information Service.

FOIA: Response to Freedom of Information Act request

FRUS: Foreign Relations of the United States Series, 1961-1963, Vols. X, XI, XV. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997, 1996, 1994.

Havana 2002: Havana Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962. Conference briefing books prepared by the National Security Archive

JFKARC: John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection at NARA

JFKL: John F. Kennedy Library, Boston

JFK2, JFK3: Philip Zelikow and Ernest May, eds., The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy, The Great Crises, Vols. 2-3, Miller Center for Public Affairs, University of Virginia

LAT: Los Angeles Times

LCV: Library of Congress Dmitrii Volkogonov Collection

MAVI: Archives of Mezhregional’naya Assotsiatsia Voinov-Internatsionalistov, Moscow

NARA: National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD

NDU: National Defense University, Washington, D.C.

NIE: National Intelligence Estimate

NK1: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970

NK2: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974

NPRC: National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, MO

NSA: National Security Agency

NSAW: National Security Archive, Washington, DC

NSAW Cuba: National Security Archive, Cuba Collection

NYT: New York Times

OH: Oral History

OSD: Office of Secretary of Defense, Cuba Files, NARA

RFK: Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days. New York: W. W. Norton, 1969

SCA: Records of State Department Coordinator for Cuban Affairs, NARA

SDX: Records of State Department Executive Secretariat, NARA

SVR: Archives of Soviet Foreign Intelligence, Moscow

USCONARC: U.S. Continental Army Command

USIA: U.S. Intelligence Agency

USNHC: U.S. Navy Historical Center, U.S. Continental Army Command, Washington, DC.

WP: Washington Post

Z: Zulu time or GMT, four hours ahead of Quebec time (Eastern Daylight Time), five hours ahead of Romeo time (Eastern Standard Time). Time group 241504Z is equivalent to October 24, 1504GMT, which is the same as 241104Q, or 1104EDT

“the clearing of a field”: Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969, hereafter RFK), 24. Photographs of missile sites are available through the John F. Kennedy Library, the National Security Archive, the Naval Historical Research Center, and NARA.

“Daddy, daddy”: CNN interview with Sidney Graybeal, January 1998, CNN CW. 3 “Caroline, have you”: Dino Brugioni, “The Cuban Missile Crisis—Phase 1,” CIA Studies in Intelligence (Fall 1972), 49-50, CREST; Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 371; author’s interview with Robert McNamara, October 2005.

Once armed and ready to fire: CIA, Joint Evaluation of Soviet Missile Threat in Cuba, October 19, 1962, CREST. The CIA estimated the range of the R-12 (SS-4) missile as 1,020 nautical miles; the true range was 2,080 kilometers, or 1,292 miles. For simplicity, I have converted all nautical mile measurements to the more commonly used statute miles.

“The length, sir”: For dialogue from ExComm meetings, I have relied on the transcripts produced by the Miller Center for Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Philip Zelikow and Ernest May, eds., The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy, The Great Crises, Vols. 2 and 3 (hereafter JFK2 and JFK3). The transcripts are available at the Miller Center Web site. I have also consulted Sheldon M. Stern, Averting “the Final Failure”: John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). For atmosphere, and to check discrepancies, I have listened to the original tapes, available through the Miller Center and the JFK Library.