only last thursday, as evidence of this rapid offensive build up was already in my hand. soviet foreign minister, d'amico told me in my office that he was instructed, make it clear once again, as he said his government had already done its soviet assistance to cuba and i quote, pursue thoroughly the purpose of contributing to the defense capabilities of cuba, unquote, that and i quote him training soviet specialists of cuban nationals in handling defensive armaments was by no means offensive, and that if he were otherwise wise, mr. d'amico went on, the soviet government would never become involved in, rendering such assistance, unquote. that statement also fast acting, therefore the defense of our own security and of the entire western and under the authority entrusted to me by the constitute as endorsed by the resolution of the congress, i have directed that the following steps be taken immediately to halt this offensive up a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment. and the shipment to cuba is being initiated all of any kind bound for cuba from whatever nation or port will be found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons be turned back shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launch from cuba against any nation in the western hemisphere as an attack by the soviet union on the united states requiring full retaliatory response upon the soviet union. i call upon chairman khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine reckless and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations. i call upon him forever to abandon this course world domination and join in a historic effort to end the perilous arms and to transform the history of man i girl is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right, not peace at the expense of freedom. but both peace. freedom here in this hemisphere. and we hope around the world. good afternoon. i'm alan price director the john f kennedy presidential library and museum. and on behalf all my library and foundation colleagues, i'm delighted to welcome all of you who are watching this afternoon's online, as well as those of you who are with us here in person today to open. i humbly start with a land acknowledgment to recognize the indigenous tribes of the pawtucket and masaccio peoples of the wampanoag tribal confederation territories who are both past and present through many generations, have stewarded the land where the kennedy library sits today, while the land acknowledgment is not enough, it is an important way to promote indigenous visibility and it serves as a reminder that we are on stolen and settled indigenous. i invite all of us contemplate how to better indigenous communities and learn how to honor and take of the land that each of us inhabits. i would like to acknowledge the generous support of our underwriters. the kennedy library forum's lead sponsors, bank of america. the lowell institute and at&t and media sponsor. the boston globe. i would like to thank timothy naftali, new york university professor of public service and of history for serving as an advisor in the development of this conference. thank you. also our archives staff for research and digitization assistance in support of this program, particularly james hill and mary rose. special thank you to ambassador caroline kennedy for permission to use the audio from mrs. kennedy's 1964 oral history interview. and thank you to kennedy library director of education and public programs nancy mccoy, for her contributions to this conference and forum producer liz murphy for her extensive and extraordinary work to bring this program to you today. we would thank you if you would just silence yourself. phones. we look forward to a robust question and answer period following the program this afternoon. you'll see full instructions on screen for submitting your questions via email or comments on our youtube page during the program and the q&a begins. we will invite those of you who are joining us here person today to proceed the microphones which in the aisles as you ask questions. we are so grateful to have this opportunity to explore the cuban missile crisis and how its lessons resonate with contemporary challenges 60 years later. i'm now honored to introduce the sessions distinguished speakers so that there is more for the conversation. a warm virtual welcome to daniel ellsberg. since the vietnam war, he has been a lecturer, scholar, writer and activist on dangers of the nuclear era wrongful u.s. interventions and the urgent need for patriot tech whistleblowing. as an analyst for the rand corporation. he worked on the top secret study on the u.s. and vietnam, which re later which later became known as the pentagon papers, which he ultimately gave to the senate foreign relations committee, the new york times, the washington post and 17 other newspapers. his subsequent trial on 12 felony counts was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him, leading to the convictions of several white house aides and in the impeachment proceedings against president nixon. his author of four books, including most recently the doomsday machine confessions of a nuclear war. it is also pleasure to welcome nancy kane to the library virtually. she is a historian at the harvard business school where she holds the james robeson chair of business administration. her research focuses on crisis, leadership and how leaders and their teams rise. the challenges of high stakes situation. the author of numerous books articles and harvard business school. her most recent book is forged in crisis the power of courageous leadership in turbulent times. i'm also delighted to welcome mary elise ceruti back to the library, an expert in the history of international relations. she is the inaugural holder of the marie jsa and henry r kravis distinguished professorship of historical studies at the johns hopkins school of advanced international studies, as well as a researcher associate at harvard university's center for european studies. she, the author or editor of six books, including most recently not, one inch america, russia and the making of the post war stalemate. i'm very pleased to welcome philip zelikow virtually, the white burkett miller, professor of history at the university of virginia. he has also served all levels of american government since leaving regular government in 1991. he has taught and directed research at harvard university and the university of virginia and is the author of numerous books while in academia, he has remained engaged with public service, including current leadership of the privately sponsored covid commission planning group and public service leadership to direct the 911 commission and to serve as the counselor of the department of state. i am very glad to welcome back to the library timothy naftali a clinical associate professor of public service and a clinical associate professor of at nyu, as well as a cnn presidential historian in he writes on national security and intelligence policy, international history and presidential history. and his work has appeared in national media outlets. he previously served as the founding director of the richard presidential library and museum in yorba linda, california. tim, thank you so much for serving as both panelist and moderator for this session and thank you again for all your contributions to make today's conversations possible. please join me in welcoming our special guests. thank you, alan and. thank you. here person and those of you who are watching the web. this is this is something that you're going to witness, sort of something that only the pandemic have created, which is one person sitting on a stage who appears to contain multitudes. and for people who are joining us from various parts of this country and in mary's case the world, i want to before we hear from my colleagues who are virtually participating, i'd like to set the scene for you in addition to what you heard as you came in, i'd like you to listen to president kennedy talking about what at the beginning of the crisis, the public part of the crisis which the president's speech on october 22nd. what he expected from khrushchev to end this crisis. let's go with the first clip, please. from the president's speech of october 26, i upon chairman crucial to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations. call upon him further to abandon this course world domination and to join in an historic effort to end the perilous arms and to transform the history of man. he an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction by returning his government own words that it had no need to missiles outside its own territory and withdrawing these weapons from by refraining from any action which will widen deepen the present crisis. and then by participating in a search for peaceful and permanent solutions, i've asked each of our participants to start with that 5 minutes of thoughts about the crisis there on study of the crisis as a way introducing a general discussion among us before. we open the floor to questions from all of you. so i'd like to call phil zelikow to start with his five minute or so presentation. welcome, phil. i'll just take a few minutes to about the way our evaluations of president kennedy's role in the process of changed after i experienced the crisis as a schoolchild. i later came to know it a lot better over the years not just through research but because like tim tim and i have through time machine of the tapes have spent actually more time in the kennedy white than almost any member of the kennedy administration ever. and not just on cuban missile crisis meetings, but of meetings and phone calls, all kinds on every subject. and actually, not just going to meetings once, but often going to the same meeting again and again and again. so we had to feel like later in life we got to know these people astonishingly well, as if we had traveled back through a time machine to be with them there in 1962 and then repeat the experience. so let me just carve this up into three phases. the first phase is the phase in president kennedy was widely as having played a heroic role in resolving the crisis dramatized in tv, like the missiles of october, where william devane played, president kennedy and, also the account that his brother wrote in 13 days. president kennedy is seen as having played this decisive, courageous heroic role in striking right balance. and that image carried forward. i would say pretty through the 1970s and maybe into the 1980s. it came under concerted attack for many angles during the 1980s and on into the 1990. the attack was first it was part of the general attack was trying to shatter the myth of camelot and from a lot of different perspectives, including president kennedy's personal life. but second, it was a critique that the myth of americans in the crisis was a dangerous myth that. not only was it wrong, it was dangerous that it was dangerous to have sought and accepted a nuclear crisis just an issue of credibility that he was threatening the world because of his own macho sensibilities in not accepting a deployment that should not have bothered him a sense that the whole myth of kennedy's resolution of the crisis was part of the bravado that then encouraged americans to plunge into intervention in vietnam, and that kennedy had. manipulated the press. so as make the peacemakers, like our allies stevenson, look bad, and that they had concealed the role of assurances about jupiter missiles in turkey in resolving crisis. again, to create this artificial image of strength so that there was has been very strong countervailing. but the third phase of this in which tim and i have taken direct part from the 1990s on in 2000 is you had a further reevaluate. and i think those of us who most connected with the tapes project in general come away with it with a generally more positive image of president leadership and that's doesn't mean that we're not aware of all the challenges to the camelot, but we understand those very well. what we came away with is, first of the crisis was both complex and more dangerous than people at the time had generally realized in because of how closely the crisis was related to the supreme and quite dangerous superpower confrontation known as the berlin and the level what dan ellsberg might regard as almost nuclear insanity. that was the conventional wisdom of the age driving the strategy on both sides. so it included and very much including our posture as to how to deal with the berlin crisis where the united states was defending berlin by threatening to be the ones who would start the nuclear war which was one of the things that khrushchev kept finding so astonishing and arrogant and which we think helped prompt him to put the missiles in to puncture that american arrogance. so if you understand how complex and dangerous the crisis was, also the folks who worked with this a lot tended realize how little in some ways kennedy got in solving a lot of problems in particular crisis which many of us think was actually his finest hour government that a lot of the people had written about the crisis were not actually that people like sorenson schlesinger had not actually been deeply informed about what had happened in ways during crisis. the roles of people like mcnamara had not been very constructive, and actually his national security advisor, mcgeorge bundy, did really provide a lot of effective help the crisis. and so therefore, as we studied this more and more we came away with the sense that in many it was on president kennedy's shoulders to, provide some of the clinical that allowed him to think about what khrushchev might be thinking and to help navigate a way out the crisis along with the role of some people who at the early were not very well known or heralded like the career diplomat llewellyn thompson, known to his colleagues as thompson, who was not a well-known but who i think president kennedy regarded as perhaps his most important single adviser on the crisis. so let me stop. there is just just to introduce these changing portraits from the portrait to the very powerful revisionist critique to them, a further reevaluation. we've gotten to understand the crisis in a much richer way. thank you, philip, i think would be useful at this point. see how john f kennedy described his decision making process when interviewed about it in december 1962, only a few months. the cuban missile crisis. could we have the next clip, please? well, mr. president, that brings up point that i was interested me. how does a president go about making a decision like cuba? example the most recent one was hammered out really policy and decision over a period of five or six days. during that period, 15 people more or less were directly consulted, frequently changed view because whatever action we took had so many disadvantages to it. and each action that we took raised the prospect that the it might escalate with the soviet union into a nuclear war. finally, however, i a general consensus developed and certainly seemed to after all alternatives were examined that the course action that we finally adopted was the right one. i'd like to ask nancy, who thinks a lot crisis leadership? nancy kane, to tell us what she thinks. please. thanks. thanks. thanks. phil, it's always so to hear. you're very, very well informed and wise thoughts. i am a case for the harvard business school about john, but it's actually about use of his emotional intelligence and his emotional awareness and his self-discipline. self-regulation during these pivotal days and. i didn't know a great deal about kennedy this context. i've studied other leaders nelson mandela, john lewis, abraham lincoln. in this context, i really didn't know very much kennedy as a as user of emotional tools that they have external impact. and then i found myself, you know, to a much lesser degree than than you tim and then you fill buried in the transcripts. i spent about six or seven months reading them and then them one more time. now again, not in the form you did, but in the three published, large published. and here's what emerged for me. and it's still emerging. but here's what's so striking to me, kennedy actually, was a great a, superb in many ways a superlative practitioner of using a series of insight about about himself, emotional insights about himself and about the people who advised him and the to what phil referred to as clinical empathy, i might call it calculated empathy, applying that to khrushchev and larger situation. he really relied on a series of tools, i think, or behaviors, we might say that were really quite important. and the i would mention it again, kennedy is not the only leader to have done in a high stakes situation, but the first one was a kind of consistent forbearance. right. this to hold himself back, if you will, or to forbear doing something in the moment, in the heat, the temperature rose mostly rose during those pivotal 13 days. in the heat and in the you know, in some ways very aggressive and and strident energies of some of his his advisors and not just at all times his military advisors. and he consistently at least from day two on from from that first one at first wednesday on just really holds himself back from wright really doesn't take a variety of bait both external and internal to the xcom that are coming at him. that's a very difficult thing to do yet, you know from from lincoln to to katharine graham at the washington in the early 1970s, it's a really important it's a really important tool. and i think he relies on a fair in a lot of different ways. the second thing i have noticed is that kennedy like lincoln, lincoln was the greatest practitioner i found of this tool. what he he used this to attach himself like, you know, moment by moment at the end of the day, in the middle of the day, across the the the most intense days of, the crisis literally detach himself from what was going on in the immediacy of the decisions he was to make or the debates he was listening to. and he kept he kept returning to a kind of larger picture frame, evolving frame, evolving picture of what was happening, revising it. you know, and editing it and making as new evidence. as new information came in so that the ability to remove yourself from the fray is is incredibly important. and he's good at it. you know, the third thing i would say is an old fashioned, though, again, stealing from lincoln, from something lincoln said in 1862. at the end of the a bad year for the for the union armies. he said that the dogmas of the quiet past are adequate to the stormy present, as our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. and then later in the speech, which was an address to congress he uses this of this enthralling ourselves from the immediacy, from older ways of thinking about things. and i think kennedy did that, too, not in the sense of abandoning, you know, political conciliar are abandoning, you know, all kinds of very, very important guardrails, you know, touchstones but he's able at lots of moments and you can see this very clearly when he's in his language, help understand what khrushchev is thinking. help me understand this right in. the way that sense of leading the calm and without taking this on as a you know, as a mano, a mano kind of verbal or energetic struggle in the room, in the cabinet room, being able to keep and looking at this thing a variety of angles. and i think aspect decent rolling is, really important, just something. phil just mentioned this clinical empathy his ability to kind of keep on understanding how do i how do i look at what khrushchev is going on so clinical calculated empathy really really quite important. and the last thing i might say here now just stop is that he uses these these different emotional tools. i think some others as well. they're part not the whole, you know, kind of arsenal, but they're part the tools he uses to control space or to influence pace and, to move back and forth in influencing the distance, the between him and his ex-convict. more important, the distance between and nikita khrushchev. and he does that in a lot of different ways that folks around this room where this zoom, zoom, call in in the kennedy library understand very, very well. but but those those the use of those distance and pace rely very heavily on the ability on this ability to summon one's emotional awareness and intelligence and oneself regulation, to move forward to make decisions and to keep this environment of what he really tried to sustain as productive dialog all right in place so. let me stop there, tim. thank you, nancy. and one of the, of course, challenges when you are engaging in decision making is that need to be sure, you know enough. and even if you don't enough, you have make a decision. our next clip i is of of a conversation involving robert mcnamara i believe here where he's talking about what he and the president and the of the xcom were trying to achieve and what they didn't know. let's go to the next clip, please. he was determined try to avoid war. in connection with the cuban missile crisis, neither he or others of us knew how that situation was. we knew was dangerous, but we didn't know that at the time. at 4 p.m. saturday, october six, the critical hour of the cuban missile crisis, when the chiefs recommended unanimously to. nobody in the room that at that moment time when the cia was recommending was stating estimating there were no nuclear warheads on. the soil of cuba. we had photographs of the missiles, but no nuclear warheads. there. it was no. 23 years later, we learned there were 170 nuclear warheads there roughly whatever, 60 or 70 tactical reviews against invasion nine or so to be on the missiles targeted on 90 million americans, east coast. but he was so determined to keep the nation out of war if it all possible avoided. those risks. and that was a major major foundation to his thinking. our next our next participant was in the pentagon during the missile crisis. dan ellsberg. dan, it is an honor and a privilege to have you participating today. a diane are muted for the time in your life. you're muted. not sure my wife would love to have looked like that. we've just heard my former boss secretary mcnamara make a reasonably long statement. that was accurate. we're unusually privileged on that occurrence and something very unusual for, a former official to say we were mistaken in what we believe at this particular time when i was in office the message, went out to people announcing this conference, had them wrapping it, which i first saw on the first day i was back in the pentagon that was tuesday, october third, the day after the president's speech. like some of the rest, you i watched that speech. my in california was telling him i had no precursor of it. i was particularly struck by one statement that was made that a single nuclear warhead which you can find there were a number the caribbean against, the united states or anyone else in latin america would result in a full retaliatory response like the soviet union might, one that's a pretty strong statement. i wonder if the person writing knows exactly what he was saying and almost surely didn't do as science and i doubt very much. i know pretty much who knew what i doubt very much. but on the north assurance i knew what had learned just a year before. looking for votes, working for the white house but that full retaliatory. to one missile. in other words an attack which had not degraded our own ability carry out our operation plans. the eisenhower operation was estimated by the joint chiefs of staff as an answer to presume 70 would kill. 600 million people. 100 million in europe. our allies, depending on which way the wind moved from our own work. its landing in east europe during radioactivity. but actually the russians did have a lot of americans earlier medium range missiles and bombers short range bombers that we couldn't detect and whatever we did would be sure to annihilate our allies whichever way the wind chill kennedy was shaking that single warhead believed be annihilation of our nato allies. also 100 million areas contiguous to the soviet union, 100 million in east europe. and between russia and china, where every city over 25,000 was targeted, bunch every city. 25,325 were killed by the immediate blast fire. short range radioactivity. so that was a pretty strong threat against one and i wondered you have to call that one that happens on friday and that i called out my friend and former in the pentagon harry was insistent secretary of defense a deputy secretary offense under. assistant secretary paul lewis, who was famous for having almost invented the cold war, which and then the 68 and under and truman. and i asked harry if needed some help there. i had just the pentagon, as they say, writing new guidance for war plans. it would kill. fewer than 600 me, a little bar, much too low. in retrospect to do that. but i ended up with a catastrophic war plan anyway. but i asked him, do you some help there given? what obviously was being presented? the president is a major crisis. he said, why don't we take the next plane? i took our early plane on tuesday morning and got there tuesday afternoon and was shown a map almost identical to the one the true program presented a map of the caribbean area with two circles centered on. and one was about, as i recall, 1100 miles showed up to 11 and another was about 2000 miles, the 700 watt targets could be reached. and i was asked this because i was one of the people in the country who, on the basis of his head knew the targets were knew what a soviet should look like. that's what know holding on to you're gonna say was them and i could see right away that yes several check pieces were covered even by the alabamans obviously miami and two others were close to cuba and specifically the m margaret mckeown, washington, washington d.c and austin air force base, which is a command center of strategic air command. the. 2200 miles. the area which in fact never did arrive thanks to the blockade. but sites were there for as far as we knew they had, could cover almost the entire united states. and that was what, 38 missiles of those was fig. not far from the accurate would do to our security to our defense in particular that it gives them a first strike capability they certainly didn't have at that time. the answer was didn't take too long to arrive in my own mind. no, it doesn't change to change the situation in in in comparison to what the situation was to begin with, they have no relation. we didn't add to it and pretty much not significantly more than a corresponding 38 missiles or 40 missions of icbm range in a in russia. now these missiles could go faster, much faster. decapitate washington on or off again. the air force would certainly take note of that. but they already had submarines, sea with cruise missiles that could deliver a no warning attack on those stations. and thereby, the president had very secretly delegated authority to other commander, regional commanders. if communications were cut off certain attack took place. they follow their own advice, have plans for this and carry out the attack. so we soviet union would in no way be spared any damage by such an attack. and it did not affect the strategic situation. now, that was me. no, i was young at that point, i would say they were at that point, as harry told me, about three or four working groups working under the so-called executive committee. it's come which the president said this meeting every day several times three or four. and i was on tours and the only one that i know of that was on to any outside consultant. it was on every one of them. but i was not at all surprised you the came along 40 years later. if mcnamara had said a week earlier when asked by the president what the significance of this was almost exactly the same as mine the bottom line, he said several times. it makes no strategic difference. this is not a military problem. he said that not once. i think the transcripts time after, time came up. this is not a military problem. it is a domestic problem. and domestic problem arose from the fact that the president and specifically drawn a red line and said, i'm not moving now, the president republicans were urging him to do against the obvious overt soviet buildup on the island. i'm not willing how this was written. i think we can reach the united states. but if they were to put this that would raise the gravest issues that we would have to do something at that point. he said that only almost sure assurance they would not do that. his knowledge, which was they had never done it. he didn't know this before in east secretly never told, learned it later. so i'm sure they would do the -- assurance that later, if he thought that they might do that month, that they would that they might she would never have made that warning. if give them the warning, everyone agreed and us to have to do something you can't do nothing now because i haven't shared that this would be a great issue. the states, if it wasn't. but he had said that to excuse why what he was not reacting to the buildup was not very much that would be something having told the american people that evidence he would have to do something. and that was the crisis. that was domestic political crisis, this congressional election. coming up in a month as now in a presidential. coming up in two years. had he done nothing he believed he would have been impeached. other believe so very likely. but he would not have been president in 64 if his republican senator keating, who was running had said on. 24 the president learned of the results on october 16th. but the results were there and bundy had denied it at sunday yesterday by the count here, and said deny it. and so he would look like a fool would have an election if he did. and he, as a matter of we saw the results, his reaction was this makes senator cheating preserve. now it should be regarded as ogden's first reaction to something like this which in fact didn't affect the strategic editor very much, is dominated by his theory of untruth, the political consequences. no, but i learned in those years that the reaction was that's the first consideration, that the second consideration and that's a pretty it's a good that's a good which is a big secret from the public that such of life and death, war and peace are affected at all by domestic political positions, considerations, gets that's a secret truth. the of this is shown global we're meeting now i have the honor with these scholars who've been working and i came across a it raises the question why was it so dangerous. listen the true problem of anxious was that so two comments. one, president biden and has said that operation shock. no no, dan, no, no, no, no, no. you're great. but what could you hold that for a general discussion when we talk about. okay, he is contrasting that with justin analogy, not about ukraine where we train will not but can if you want. no, it can but you didn't you didn't it. but i guess his words were done without ukraine's but this is the most dangerous approach to armageddon to the final final before the second coming into world since the cuban crisis. and of course the question people are asking most people over weren't alive during that i'm i'm 91 this took place when i. 32/3 in my life and then spent trying to understand the answer to question how was that this is the most dangerous current. kerner orange recession and line and could it have been made less dangerous and so forth. that's obviously relevant to the present. whatever is. and by the answer i want to suggest i came across something i wrote in 1990 after 30 years of six years, after six years of studying this crisis in which participated, as i said to working groups, and then followed it because of concern for the next on a high level classified interagency process to find out why it was that dangerous, why was it truthfully was the making collusion margin in 1991, about midway through our ability to understand the cuban missile crisis suggest for 60 years, because three years have gone by since we're beyond halfway, but not that far. we show whatever we can attribute, but we will be part of that in this film a long way to go. thank you, dan. to get a sense of of how the president prepared american people in the world for the level of danger that his decision to try to push the soviets to remove missiles, i'd like to listen. i'd like you to listen to the president on october second, suggest that this crisis might be a long one. and very dangerous one. next clip, please, andrew, the president, have you noted since you've been in office, that there's terrible responsibility for the fate of mankind? has. and notwithstanding the differences divide you has drawn you and mr. khrushchev somewhat closer in this joint sense responsibility. he seems to betray it, especially in a speech to the supreme soviet earlier. i think in that speech this week, he showed his awareness of the nuclear age. but of course the cuban effort has made it more difficult for us to carry any successful negotiations because. this was an effort to materially change the balance of power. it was done in secret steps were taken really to us by every means they could. and they were planning in november to open to world the fact that they had these missiles. so close to the united states, not that they were intending to fire them, because if they were going get into a nuclear struggle, they can have their own missiles in the soviet union. but it would have changed the balance of power it would have appeared to and appearances contribute to reality. so it's going to be some time. it's possible for us to come to any real understanding of mr. khrushchev. but i do think his speech that he realizes how dangerous a world we live in. mary surrounding. move is back and give us a of the international political moment that this crisis occurred in. yes. first, let me say it's an honor to be here. i wish that i could be there in person with you tonight. i have enjoyed my events at the kennedy library very much, but both daniel ellsberg and phil zelikow have rightly mentioned my current location, which used to be inside east germany, in berlin and put behind me for this evening a photo of the structure that began going up here about a year before the cuban crisis, namely the berlin wall. its construction commenced, of course, suddenly in the wee hours of august 13th, 1961. it represents a further hardening of the cold war frontline between the nuclear superpowers. and it's right that both daniel until it mentioned this because in a sense the shadow of this stretched all the way to cuba. it also stretched all the way to washington and it was on the minds of all the participants was was berlin the point of putting missiles in cuba. would khrushchev demand demand to trade west berlin for the nukes in cuba? so berlin and cuba, even though they are geographically disparate, are obviously very, very tightly linked. now, we know that the war not break out in cuba and did not break out in berlin. i am not an expert on the cuban missile crisis, so i believe the details of how we avoided that fate to the other experts on this panel. but i did want to talk you said, tim, about the moment in which we find ourselves and ways in which it is similar and different to the cuban missile crisis. so i'll just briefly toss out three similar ideas and three differences, and then we can see that that gets us. so on the similarities to the time period of the cuban missile crisis. now, both times, tragically, we we have to think about catastrophic risk. as someone is studying abroad in berlin in 1989, who personally remembers the sense of hope and optimism at the end of the cold war, it is heartbreaking to me now as an older historian to be coming back to the same that haunted childhood. i remember the film the day after. i remember when i first studied in berlin in 1986. it seemed as if the wall would be there forever and the the thermonuclear standoff would be there forever. and i remember that feeling relief when the nuclear saber rattling went away and it is back so that as now we are talking about strategic exchange. obviously, i hope very much that a bluff and just rhetoric and prudence. again, these are three similarities. there are many more, but i'm not supposed to talk for 7 hours, so i'll just it two of you and then another one. another similarity, of course, is that moscow and washington are at odds over. a third country, and that was cuba. now it is ukraine. and third and importantly, this, the showdown over another country is taking place in the current text of a deeper, pervasive of hostility. so those are some of the similarities. but there are obviously a number of differences as well. the first is, i think the difference between the roles that cuba, ukraine are playing. obviously, we the the war that as it is unfolding in ukraine doesn't really have a parallel with the cuban missile crisis, with the cuban troops had not been fighting us u.s. troops on their soil months in the way that ukrainians have. and so the weight of the ukrainians, the amount of say they're going have and the outcome, i think, be qualitatively different than the role the cubans have as cubans had. as we know, ultimately, when push came to shove, it came down to that critical meeting so vividly portrayed in the film, 13 days when president kennedy sent his brother bobby talk to the soviet ambassador. that's the key moment. and those are the two men in the room. bobby is the proxy for the president and the soviet ambassador is a proxy for khrushchev. and that's when the deal was struck. i don't see biden and putin over there representing, us having a secret meeting and a final resolution of the crisis in ukraine. ukraine have shed a lot of blood that ukrainians have now making clear. they want to, for example, go back to the borders of 1991. and i'd like to hear express intense admiration for the ukrainians and how bravely they have been standing up to the unspeakable acts that putin is committing. so i don't think there is a it's an uneasy fit to try to draw parallels between what was happening in cuba and what's happening in ukraine what was happening. what's happened in ukraine now is obviously major european land war. there was not a major land war going on in cuba at the same time, and that's important difference. another important difference is that president kennedy, in my opinion, wisely didn't inform the american public the minute he heard about what was in cuba. and this think was smart because among other things, it gained him time to think again, to time to see europe, to think through options to to some extent, to control the pace and the crisis, not entirely, but to a certain extent. now things are happening a lot more in real time, and a lot more in the public view, especially with social media, both on the battlefront and and even in the way that zelensky, who is very, very skilled, obviously using social media and so forth, is getting out information. so i think the pacing is much faster here and it's i'm not sure if there are actors who are controlling pacing. i think putin would like to be controlling the pacing, but he wanted to take kiev in three days and that pacing could work so well for him. again, thanks to the bravery of the ukrainians and i believe some fairly well handled intelligence cooperation. washington i have no, no insight on that. i'm just guessing from what i read the papers. but i think that the pacing is very much and then also i think now the at the time, you know, the united states, the size of the nuclear arsenal is course, there was the public fear about the missile gap that somehow the united states had fewer missiles from the soviet bloc, but reality, the missile gap was the other way. now, obviously, there is no shortage of nuclear in moscow. and so i don't i think the weighting of the us moscow is different. so i've been trying to think is preparing for this moment. where does this leave us? and i think the short answer no or good because i i'd like the cuban missile crisis to be a relevant guide because the cuban missile crisis ended without a nuclear conflict. and obviously i mean obviously i don't want any kind of and so the challenge is is to stand up to google, who is quite obviously a bully, who only understands the language force. europe is now at war. that is different than peacetime. it demands measures. so the challenge is to resist putin and to support the ukrainians and to avoid. now, we do have experience with that. it was called the cold. and so the question is, do we continue to do that? but i think there's a kind of uneasy fit between the cuban missile crisis, today's crisis and i'm struggling to see the equivalent of that conversation, where bobby kennedy goes to the soviet ambassador and they strike a deal which ends the crisis. now, i know there was a sequel. sequel longer for the missiles to get out than than believed. and we just heard from mcnamara they didn't know just how many actual warheads going in. so i know the crisis didn't just disappear immediately roughly six years ago now. but in essence, when push came to shove, the key moment was that it was when bobby spoke to the ambassador. it's hard. imagine a single key moment like that coming up in the crisis. but if the other panelists remember the audience can envision such a moment, i would very interested to hear that. so i'll stop there and i'll be interested to hear the discussion. thank you, mary. nikita. had grown up with a sense that the soviet union was inferior. strategic terms of strategic power to the united states, that inferior, that sense of inferiority is very important to understand when trying to explain why he put missiles in cuba. historians to debate the list of reasons and their priority. one very as far as my coauthor alexander franklin ii were concerned a very important element in explaining khrushchev's decision which, by the way, it had to be confirmed the entire presidium what they call politburo at the time. but it was his idea was he wanted the americans to fear the soviet union. he wanted to be to contain american power and also wanted to be able to protect soviet allies in this case. most importantly, cuba. but he had this general sense of insecurity and the soviet intercontinental ballistic missile had not been a successful as he had hoped. the soviets were. there was a missile gap, but it it benefited the united dramatically. and so putting missiles in cuba, in a sense, was a cure all the soviets and the cubans had been talking about defending cuba and the soviet military had come up with a convince rational package that cubans actually were quite satisfied with. the cubans did not ask for strategic. but the key for was an assessment about kennedy and nancy kane was talking about empathy and. khrushchev's mistake was he misunderstood kennedy. he was convinced of of two things. one, that john kennedy accept once he out about the deployment of soviet in cuba, that he would accept that deployment and. two, that the united states, if the soviets went to the brink of nuclear war would back down. these are two essential misunderstandings of that moment when kennedy drew that red line that daniel ellsberg that happened in september of 1962, the soviets hadn't expected that that john kennedy hadn't expected the soviet put missiles in cuba. and i agree with dan that john kennedy drew that line, assuming the soviets would never attempt to cross it, that that line was drawn largely for purposes in the president's mind, the way that president obama drew two red lines in 2012 during a presidential campaign regarding both iran and, syria, i say that all members of the kennedy administration thought the way the president did. i think robert, the attorney general and john mccain, the director of central intelligence, both actually wanted the president draw a line to deter the soviets from doing something that they were afraid he might do. but john kennedy, i don't think believed that khrushchev would ever do that. when khrushchev learned of the drawing of the red line, it was, after all, intended for him to learn about instead of backing down, he asked, actually escalates. he decides to send more tactical missiles, nuclear missiles to cuba. he also decides that the the soviets will send in to protect us ships with these strategic cargoes. they will have nuclear tipped torpedoes. so khrushchev's initial reaction to learning that the president at least is drawing a line was not to back down. he actually an opportunity at that point the first the first strategic missiles hadn't been offloaded from any ships at the time the president drew the red line but something will happen quite different. after john kennedy gives his speech on the 22nd of october, i want to listen to two segments now that show you that the president direct projected to the world and to his own family that the united states might be going to the brink of nuclear war in order to get the missiles out of cuba. let's listen to the next segment, please. and i really do think that the crisis i want the i the second october 22nd segment, please, andrew. and then i would like jackie kennedy. there we go. my citizens, let one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. no one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what course or casualties will be incurred. many months of sacrifice and self-discipline lie months in which both our patients and our will will be tested, months in which many threats and denunciations will keep us aware of our dangers. but the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing. the soviets had not anticipated this and khrushchev got text of the speech translated. of course, the resolve the americans showed was very, very to him. what the president said publicly was not for show. this wasn't theater. oh, he meant it. and let's listen to the lady recall her discussions with the president, the weekend before the president made this speech. next segment and. and i remember saying, well, i knew anything happened. we'd all be evacuated, camp david or something. and i don't know if he said anything about to me. i don't think. but i said, please don't send me away to camp david. you know me mean that chair? please don't send me anywhere, anything happen to you at all. going to stay right here, you and. you know. and i said, even if it in that room, in the bomb shelter in the white house, which i'd seen at least then i just wanted to be on the lawn at. no, but i just wouldn't be with you and i'm going to die with you. and the children do too. and and without you. so he said he wished he wouldn't wouldn't send me away and he didn't really want to see me. we'd. the kennedy family was taking this seriously. the president was projecting that the united states would go the brink. this is not what the soviets expected at all. i agree with mary that the the comparison with ukraine is a flawed one. one similarity might be that president underestimated joe biden. he certainly underestimated the german leadership and nato-russia. but what's so about the crisis is that neither wanted war. we heard robert mcnamara say that john kennedy didn't want war. khrushchev didn't want war. the the cuban missile the cuban missile deployment was, part of a psychological struggle for him. he to alter american thinking so that the soviets could force change. but he never wanted his bluff to be called john kennedy had called his bluff. and so when when look at the soviet documents, the period, the first person to talk about an off ramp is nikita khrushchev. off ramp is a term we use these days about putin. it's khrushchev who, three days after kennedy speech to the members of the politburo. presidium, we've got to find a way out of this. why? because of american resolve. that they don't end the at that moment. because khrushchev wants to end it in a way that saves his face. saves face as much as possible. but what's so striking about soviet records is that the the backing happens unilaterally in the politburo because of the fear of nuclear war because they never wanted nuclear war. they never wanted war, which is a big difference from now, because russia did want war. it's in the middle of a war. it's not an issue of avoiding a war. russia's opportunity is not to have a war. it ignored it before february 24th. so it's a big between the two. but what's so striking in the cuban case is the to which what ultimately happens and we'll discuss this the in our general and with you is the extent to which two leaders who come at this crisis for different reasons both have a of humanity they not want even if it means losing face. they do want to be responsible, to use biden's term armageddon. as we start our general, we have a few minutes before we go q&a. i'd like you to listen to mcgeorge bundy at a previous library event, talk about how his under of the importance of the cuban missile crisis would only with time. sadly of course, he can't be with us. he's no longer with us, but that he would later study the crisis. as a historian and always think about it as a participant. can we listen to the mcgeorge bundy clip, please. he was determined to try to avoid going not that one connection. can we to make george marshall crisis. neither he nor others who are dangerous at situation. andrew. it was dangerous. andrew. the bundy place. thank you. it's a it's a really wonderful mcgeorge bundy, in a sense is is prefiguring. well, if not that's it's if we don't have it, that's fine. we'll go to a general and i really do think. thank you. the crisis gets larger and not smaller as you look back on it and the turning point it represents is more important. we haven't been near that level of danger of open conflict between the ussr, the usa since. and you can think of all sorts of second the secondary reasons for that result. but i think the primary one is the public memory of both governments of what that kind of danger feels like. i don't want to throw our panels, panelists, what we think about public memory of that crisis, that right now in europe as europe faces a greatest crisis really since the end of the cold. well i'll chip in just three things, really. one, the point you stressed about the significance of continued resolve. to a high sense tivity, to avoiding all the pathways that could lead to inadvertent and foreseen escalation. and there are a number of those in the midst and people who study missile crisis are very aware of how this shows all the different ways that military forces could create dangers. the leaders had not understood. so first, the significance of resolve. second, the the challenge of understanding and truly understanding the nature of your military deployments and the those could be perceived and the and the problem of control. and then the third is is also significant the continued significance of diplomacy. the what mary described as the pivotal meeting, dobrynin and robert kennedy on saturday, october 27, was actually pivotal. they did not have a negotiation. robert kennedy, an extremely somber warning and then an assurance that to take the jupiter missiles off the table, not have a negotiation about them. but in any case, news of that meeting arrived at the soviet presidium after khrushchev had already made up his mind to give in and announce that decision to the soviet presidium. and he had done that, though partly because of. partly because of the heightened danger this including inadvertent escalation that had been displayed on saturday, october 27th, as the soviet forces shot down a u-2 and killed an american pilot in a situation that khrushchev had not authorized. and that was only one of several things that happened that day as fighting generally began over the skies of cuba. and third, there was diplomacy, but the diplomacy was president kennedy's outreach to basically accept the deal. khrushchev had offered the previous day that hinged on a pledge not to invade cuba, which was something that in several different ways. kennedy had indicated, but already decided he wasn't going to do anyway. kennedy thought that making that concession on not invading cuba was an easy concession to make. he was playing for much bigger stakes, which were the stakes on berlin. do you remember the clip that tim played where president kennedy was explaining how these missiles were going to be unveiled in november and that was going to be so important. what president kennedy did not in that interview is that he knew something else was going to be unveiled in november. khrushchev had told kennedy again and that he was going to bring the crisis to a final resolution in november after your congressional elections, even talking, stewart udall said there was a time when we would have been fearful you but if you try to make a problem time we'll swat your --. that's a direct quote of what khrushchev said to president kennedy's emissary in pursuing that in august 1962 as and then during the crisis on october, the soviet foreign minister gromyko reiterated that threat to that they were going to bring the berlin to a conclusion clearly in november. so when kennedy tells you that these would have been unveiled in november and that that would have changed the political situation that's part of the equation. so when he makes the move to use diplomacy to resolve the crisis with non invasion pledge of cuba. he's balancing diplo must see along with the resolve and along with the sensitivity trying to avoid inadvertent escalation. and i think those three points still resonate today. thank you. anybody else on a chime in something anybody can tell me. i'll just jump in. i think i worry as a professional worrier that the that what the cuban missile crisis was and what the stakes were is really not very well understood. lots and lots and lots of people folks around this table understand it. but i ask any of my business school students or many of my colleagues, and they can't tell you really what it was. they've heard of it. so you, mr. bundy, saying this is, that this will live on and serve a valuable purpose in collective memory. i think that that may been true up to 1990 or 1995 or even possibly the millennium. i don't think so anymore. hmm dan you wanted to say something? yes. yes. jim, remind me if i'm wrong. that you asked the question after, beginning of news hours and others of the actual risks involved in the in the crisis. am i right? yes, please. yeah. anyway, let me let me comment that just a. i was aware. in 1962 to and i knew as went to the pentagon to take part in this work includes. i was aware to an unusual degree of how much the united states was superior in terms of numbers and deployments in strategic terms in the world to the soviet union. i knew that in fact 61 at a time a month after the commander in chief strategic air command offered had announced to me through his chief of war plans that the soviets had 1000 missions aimed at at a time when we had 40 or plus of our polaris submarines. i mean weapons carriers cruise cruise missiles are bases in europe, but a thousand before and a month later we had run through satellite reconnaissance. what they had was not a thousand. it was not 260 that the intelligence people in washington were mentioning much lower. but for for a century nothing. again with for washington and af ofthat but again with the delegation that would have no effect on our fighting. afterwards, she plans to not the player constant centralized control anywhere. so i went then to washington on six years ago tonight with the belief i retained throughout the crisis that there was essentially no possibility of the soviets initiating nuclear war. the president gave the impression with his description of a french officials, it could no other purpose in an offensive capability against the united. he really was talking about an ability to launch a surprise attack on the united states. nearly everyone drew it that way. i knew that this was a essentially not totally insignificant, but basically negligible addition to his line of attack, pretty much insignificant ability to initiate war against the united states. compare to our ability not only to initiate, but even to retaliate. i had a draft of the words which. turns out. i have to say part of my confession which is the subtitle of my book that i had drafted the words a year earlier for secretary kilpatrick to say the russians and the world that our ability to retaliate to a soviet executed surprise attack was larger. if their ability to strike in a first strike and was taken as a humiliation by them and various of responded to the next day by khrushchev. and i'm not so that is true. we are intimidated and indeed that was one factor among it triggered in khrushchev's desire to even that a little bit a little bit by moving some of his existing lrb out across the ocean to be closer to us. he could have done that with hundreds in. which case he would have made quite a difference. 40 not many, but symbolic. and after admit and it is a big image that as i've said in my book, i reached the skids in the fall of 61. caught in missile crisis. so not, i think, on the side of the main reasons for this attack. what i'm saying, though, is that i did not go there. the mode of most of the rest of the world which was that there were great dangers at that time of our war actions in the caribbean namely blockade, which was a clear cut act of war that that might lead to legal but very aggressive response from the soviet union. bertrand russell, understandably was terribly worried that that khrushchev would respond to that with a first strike against the united states and wrote letters to both and state to that that they should refrain from responding in this understandable but dangerous way. i felt there was no chance of that. and in that respect, i was right. i also thought in course of the war with our enormous conventional superiority in the caribbean, that, again there would not be he could not really manage to go to a conventional war with us in the caribbean. in short, that he had strong had to back down the and i her throughout the crisis so working hard to say what night of day sept two of the six nights i was there on a couch in secretary nixon's office for a few hours sleep. i'd rather going back to my motel and hard work but not in great violence danger. it out that as you all know i think all of how dangerous the was has evolved in such fluctuated back and forth a number of times over the years and really improved sample 20 years later and 25 years later. in 1988, mcgeorge bundy the then national security system, wrote a very magisterial on nuclear danger, in which he concluded that for the reasons that joe the timothy naftali pointed out correctly and philip zelikow that neither neither leader had any desire or any intention of going even to conventional war, let alone nuclear lest the condemned conventional escalate to nuclear war, and neither of them either a nuclear war or, therefore a conventional war, despite the fact that they were making precise threats of doing just that and making every preparation to do just that. if those were bush, i said at the time, they sure fooled me they were bluffs and they didn't fool each other. actually, i think many people, it was almost nothing. they could have done to assure a war on crucial. october 31st or 77, raised through october 30th, which likely time for the war. there was little we could have done for a war on october 30th that they didn't do. so looking at it, these were very expensive and i carefully threats and yet, as i say, i believe they were essentially russian, that they had to back down when kennedy did that, khrushchev did back down on the 30th. i feel it was not a great relief. i said, well yeah, that's not expected. and that wasn't fully held by everyone. but it's a shame. 1988, in his book on nuclear war encroachment, he said really we thought at various the war was probably high. other times not so high. now i have to assure that it was very low because. both leaders of were determined not to go to war, but lot of nuclear war which and that true on the premise true and therefore there was not a negligible risk because. she carefully plotted out any of nuclear war is very significant. nevertheless, it was a very low risk, negligible and very low low. i believe she was very wrong. 25 years after more th more tha5 years that that that many other people that dan dan i think we should turn to questions. okay. can i just shut that up in two words? no, no. i think now they don't control. their intention was very low the guess that that meant risk was low, was based on the idea that they both had perfect control not only of their own actions, but their subordinates. they knew that was wrong, that it was much more than they realized there. control, they greatly overestimated control both over their allies. in the case of khrushchev and and their subordinates, in the case of both of them their lower commanders. and the result of that was what, say, risk taking. the danger, which was a preference in their minds, and affecting the terms of a negotiated outcome. in fact, raised risks extremely high by almost miraculous event that we escaped a nuclear war that would have kept us from existing, which is a thank you, which is a good reason why the soviets were upset. let's turn to questions from. those of you watching on the web and those of you who are in the audience, those of you who in the audience please go to the microphones so that people at the web can hear you and questions from the web. i believe we have a system by which. they will come to the microphones. yes. you. i'm peter metz, live in needham and i'm part massachusetts peace action. and i've been looking forward to this about nine months after this incident. a little less. john kennedy gave a very, very remarkable speech at american university on peace. most of the world ignored. i suspect you. presidential know all about it. almost. and which he described the the terrorist of nuclear war and the need for united states to adopt a new attitude to assess our attitude towards. the soviet union and our are attitude towards peace. so i have two questions for you. one, what if president just won? if we could have, because there are other people waiting. just one question, please. your favorite question? well, my question is, what if president kennedy had lived? do you think he would have done with that? of course, he only lived about less than six months later. mary, do you like to think about how the international system might have changed had president kennedy not been shot in dallas? going to tell us that that massive counterfactual me terrorist. i am because i admire you so much and you thought about the but you said i mean anyway, i'm going to prejudge what you say. obviously it's obviously the the question is a huge question that has really intrigued generations of scholars. i you know, the only serious answer can be we don't know. i do think what we do know is it is a great tragedy that president kennedy having gone through a very steep learning curve of the cuban missile crisis as president and experience that was unique to that man, to that person, having gained wisdom from. and i see nancy nodding as well. i know nancy has written a lot about how leaders are formed and going through crises as part of how that happened. having gained that wisdom and that very steep curve, how tragic it was then then lose that wisdom and i think the questioner has rightly the question of romance, peace action. thank you for your work on behalf of ms.. p.s. i think you rightly pointed that there were hints in the american speech of a different way forward, but exactly what that would have been is hard to say. but what is clear is a great tragedy for that, among many other reasons, that we have lost the president so soon thereafter. thank you. do you want to remain there? and would like to chime in, please. i'll just say, i think one of the things that happened just your point, mary, which i think is spot on, is that got more confident in the in the months after the cuban missile crisis. and i think some of that confidence is part of the american university speech. and i think that all the more reason why you what what what if which can answer. right. has just to kind of and grave over to it because he was a man getting better as a leader by by the middle of. of 1963 user. fleming i'm wondering there any experiences in the past of kennedy and khrushchev that they drew upon to help them navigate their way through this crisis? phil you've thought about this. oh. philip yeah. well, had been through serious traumas before. both during the of course, during war. the famous episode of 109. he'd been through. he'd already had crisis encounters with khrushchev, a difficult one when they had met in person. vienna in 1961. he had been working issues involving layoffs and other problems. he he had constantly dealt with and crisis in his personal life, his medical conditions. and so he had developed a sense of detachment in managing periods of high trauma and stress that strikes me as remarkable. and relates to some of the points about emotional intelligence that was drawing out earlier. yes. those came from experi ences both as president, but also before his presidency. khrushchev on. was vastly more experienced with crisis at the national level. he had narrowly escaped being executed during that period with stalin. he was a server. he was a survivor. he had developed a much more mature, real and impulsive personality than kennedy had. and tim, i think, also called attention to the dimension of insecurity that shadows his approach to the whole crisis. yet i think the fact that he had been through those wars that he had been a survivor gave him a fundamental core of unwillingness to take the greatest risks that could plunge his country in the world into the apocalypse, because he knew what an apocalypse might look like. he'd come close. i'd like to add a domestic experience president just had. he had been through the crisis in mississippi and in that crisis in mississippi. he had learned, to his dismay, that even if he ordered the us army to do something, it might not actually happen. and that the army would tell him that they could deploy in a certain amount of time and it would take three or four times that amount of time for the deployments to get there. and i believe that that was a reminder him that not only of the fog of war, but that leaders should not assume quick efficiency. and if the when he asked the us air force how many of the of the missiles could you take out in a surprise attack. and said probably 90%. the answer was probably 60%. next question. just one more quick word, tim expert. sure. go ahead, mary. the also kennedy was thinking about world war one and how quickly powers had stumbled into war. and he didn't to stumble into war in that same way. over here, please. oh, hi. i was brought in the new york city school system, so i remember duck and cover, which these huge windows like this, which were lacerate me unbelievably and. i would dive under my desk, which would become my funeral pyre. and we were all living in a world of terror at the time. now, there's two things that i didn't. one was how much the bay of pigs played into this and where the hell was our da? because he was a monster. all of this junk. thank you. who would like to thank you for your question, sir. now, dan you want to go ahead. yeah, i'll say. i really strongly think among the things that we have not here in hardly anyone except for the presidential. in 1962 was that crisis did not begin after it began before the bay of pigs. in fact, what in the pentagon called cuba one versus cuba ever since self referred to it that we're thinking of two as being so closely related. the creation that kennedy having inherited the plan from eisenhower that kennedy and his brother felt over cuba won over the of pigs. i had gotten the false impression at the time that generally everyone else at kennedy having taken responsibility for this, he said, you know, success a thousand founding fathers. failure has one. he gave the impression we put that behind us as he always described it even long thought that was a mistake so we won't do that anymore. castro and kennedy and khrushchev, we know for sure from that moment on that kennedy brothers revenge that they and that they would do it by using u.s. troops the next time that we don't have enough time to go into this at length now. so let me just show you the most superb way that kennedy and christopher essentially, like we are a country level. kennedy assigned to bobby kennedy, told people including leader boss in vietnam, former general edward lansdale. regime change. use that term. getting rid of castro is the highest priority in this country. the navy was told that making invasion plans in a compartmented way that was kept even lansdale, who was in charge of the covert operations meant to justify an invasion. there are two different stovepipes basically in compartmented information. we're set to get rid of castro on a date was shipped by lansdale coincidentally for october 20th. two years before the next election 1962, and on march 2nd, 1962. our second ten days before the flight of the u-2 march 14th, 12 days later, on march 2nd, eisenhower had directed that abilities for an invasion of terror. second october. what did i say? he said march. i'm sorry i kept on october 2nd correctly directed only action. six possibilities under we were invade including missiles in cuba, but including just when the president it was necessary parts must be entirely ready by. october 2nd. that was a directive on which admiral dennison immediately acted to prepare using the cover of an exercise in the caribbean to cover the naval movements, an operation designed openly to invade obviously a caribbean named or check, which is, khrushchev noted, was castro's stand. dan, we dan, dan, we want to get to the question. how much we had, where we were over time. but i got permission for us to take one more question. so i want to take one more question. thank you, dan. my question is for nancy your comments. really kennedy's personal of being able to transfer and change were really interesting. but my question you, nancy is the prepared leadership and the kind of procedural governance of the xcom like what did they put in place ahead of the crisis or what was shared, that discerning body that that even more than than kennedy's leadership, that up or down according to phil. i'm certainly not the expert here tim phil daniel mary are much more equipped. and i'll say just from a kind of, again, emotional intelligence, self-awareness aspect. i thought setting up the xcom which was basically established the day kennedy discovered that discovered the missiles the day that information was presented to him by mr. bundy. that setting that up and as important by the way that kennedy managed that discussion in meetings he went to the meetings he didn't he didn't go to but this incredible ability basically sit back and in deft ways let an ongoing discussion that rarely turned into dysfunction and dialog occur over the know many different days evolving events. i think again shows a high degree of emotional intelligence, high degree of of deep self-confidence. and this idea that i don't know exactly what's going to happen but i need a lot of different points view to understand how to navigate this uncertainty and the risks involved. thank nancy. you dan. thank you. thank you, philip. and thank all of you. this has been, i believe, a remarkable i hope you've enjoyed it as muchs