Killing Kennedy

Cubans or Soviets will be considered an act of war and that the United States will reciprocate with missiles of its own. The president then places the blame squarely on his nemesis. The entire speech has been building to this moment. “And finally, I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace and stable relations between our two nations. I call upon him further to abandon this course of world domination and to join in an historic effort to end the perilous arms race and transform the history of man.”
    The power of the president’s speech, and the terrible news that he now delivers to the public, will make this moment stand forever in the minds of everyone who is watching. Kennedy once noted that “the only two dates that most people remember where they were was Pearl Harbor and the death of President Roosevelt.”
    His Cuban missile crisis speech now joins that list.
    For as long as they live, men and women will be able to recount where they were and what they were doing when they got this terrible news. They will describe the people standing nearby and how their reactions compared. They will talk about the headlines the next day and how their world was transformed by the traumatic news. They will suddenly appreciate each sunrise, each sunset, each mirthful peal of a child’s laughter.
    Tragically, another event in JFK’s short life will also soon join that list of unforgettable moments. Its shock and horror will eclipse this news of Cuba and missiles and Soviet lies. John Kennedy will never know it happened.
    That event is exactly thirteen months from today. But for now, the Cuban missile crisis is drama enough.
    John Kennedy, being his charismatic self, is incapable of concluding a speech without a stirring moment to galvanize his listeners. Whether with his Gold Star Mothers speech in a Boston American Legion hall during his first run for Congress, or with his inaugural address in 1961, or now on national television, JFK knows how to grab his listeners by the heart—or by “the nuts,” as he so often likes to say—and rally their emotional support.
    “Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right. Not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom—here in this hemisphere and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.”
    The White House set fades to black.
    *   *   *
    American forces around the world immediately prepare for war. All navy and marine personnel are about to have their duty tours extended indefinitely. American warships and submarines are forming a defensive perimeter around Cuba, preparing to stop and search the twenty-five Soviet ships currently sailing toward that defiant island.
    At Torrejón Air Base in Spain, the men of the 509th B-47 bomber wing hear the president’s words over loudspeakers in their rooms, part of a global alert going out to all U.S. military. Captain Alan Dugard, a young bomber pilot, is packing for a week’s leave in Germany. When the air force’s defense readiness condition (Defcon) is upgraded to Defcon 2—only Defcon 1, which means that nuclear war is imminent, is higher—Captain Dugard instantly realizes that there will be no vacation.
    U.S. Air Force bombers are already in the air around the clock. The crews will circle over European and American skies in a racetrack pattern, awaiting the “go” code to break from their flight plan and strike at the heart of the Soviet Union. Their contrails are a visible reminder of what is at stake.
    The nonstop air brigade means just one thing: the United States is ready to retaliate and destroy the USSR.
    *   *   *
    Five thousand miles away, in Moscow, a furious Nikita Khrushchev composes his response to JFK’s televised message.
    The Soviet leader is the dashing JFK’s polar opposite in appearance and aplomb. He is just five foot three, weighs almost two hundred pounds, and is as bald as a circus clown. Khrushchev has an enormous mole under his right eye, a wide gap between his front teeth, and a very unstatesmanlike habit of mugging for the camera. When he stepped off the plane on his 1959 visit to the United States, a woman in the crowd took one look at him and exclaimed, “What a funny little man.”
    But there is nothing funny about Nikita Khrushchev. He believes in diplomacy by “balance of fear.” His decision to place missiles in Cuba is calculated and