Presidents of the United States are at once heads of state, heads of government, and heads of their political parties. They switch roles repeatedly over the course of their day. One minute they are running meetings on complex policy matters. At the next they are exchanging empty pleasantries with visiting foreign dignitaries, carrying out the ceremonial duties of their office, or whipping up the passions of their fellow partisans as another election approaches. But perhaps no president ran the gamut of presidential roles quite the way that President John F. Kennedy did on Wednesday, October 17, 1962.
The ExComm Meets Again
Most of the members of the ExComm assembled in a conference room on the seventh floor of the State Department at 8:30 a.m. to assess how to respond to the discovery that the Soviet Union was installing nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba. The group was joined for the first time by CIA director John McCone, who was fresh back from escorting the body of his stepson, who had been killed in a car crash in California, to Seattle for burial.
Kennedy’s advisers debated why the Soviets had taken the risky and provocative step of installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. Undersecretary of State George Ball argued that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had simply misjudged the ramifications of the action. Most of the other officials in the room, including McCone, insisted that the Soviet leader knew full well what he was doing and that it was part of a conscious effort to gain leverage over Kennedy in the ongoing confrontation over Berlin, where a year earlier the Soviet-backed East Germans had built the infamous wall dividing the city.
Eisenhower Weighs In
McCone and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy left the meeting early to head over to the White House to brief the president. Kennedy directed McCone to go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to brief former president Dwight D. Eisenhower on the situation and to solicit his advice. McCone immediately set out on the eighty-five-mile trip.
The former president and five-star general agreed that the United States could not tolerate Soviet ballistic missiles based ninety miles off the U.S. coast. The Soviets and Cubans would use any negotiations as a delaying tactic to finish installing the missiles. Once they were operational, it would be impossible to force their removal. In Eisenhower’s view, the only course of action looked to be a preemptive airstrike on the missile sites.
Kennedy Acts As If All Is Normal
As McCone headed to Pennsylvania and other presidential advisers discussed possible U.S. options, Kennedy carried on with his previously arranged schedule. At 10:00 a.m., he met with the West German Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder to discuss the situation in Berlin. He then attended a brief National Day of Prayer service at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. After a lunch with the Crown Prince of Libya, he flew to Connecticut to attend campaign events for Democratic candidates in the upcoming congressional midterm elections, which were just three weeks away.
The News Gets Worse
By the time Kennedy returned to Washington late that night the news, from Cuba had become grimmer. Maj. Richard Heyser’s initial U-2 spy flight had found evidence that the Soviets were installing SS-4 medium-range ballistic missiles. With a range of up to 1,000 miles, they could hit cities in the southeastern United States.
A subsequent U-2 flight had discovered, however, that the Soviets were also installing longer range SS-5 missiles that could hit every one of the forty-eight continental states except for Washington. Unlike the SS-4, the SS-5 required sophisticated launch sites and support facilities, making it virtually certain that the installations were intended to be permanent and not temporary. Unless, of course, the U.S. military destroyed the missiles, or Kennedy found a way to force the Soviets to withdraw them.
Oscar Berry and Jack Patton assisted in the preparation of this article.
The United States celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2026. To mark that milestone, I am resurfacing essays I have written over the years about major events in U.S. foreign policy. A version of this essay was published on October 17, 2012.
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