24)Thus on the morning of October 16, while Kennedy was lying in bed, Bundy informed that the U-2 mission that flew over Cuba had spotted two nuclear missiles and six missile transports southwest of Havana. Before the summer of that same year had ended, Khrushchev had made the twin promise that “nothing will be undertaken before the American Congressional elections that could complicate the international situation or aggravate the tension in the relations between our two countries,” and ensured the president through his own brother Robert F. Kennedy, the attorney general of the United States and the president’s closet advisor by means of a back channel, that only defensive weapons were to be placed in Cuba.(Brugioni p56) This last and final statement left the young attorney general and the entire administration to believe that no offensive nuclear missiles, and certainly no weapons that were capable of hitting any target in the continental United States were being placed in Cuba at this time.(Chang & William p67) The news brought to the Kennedy administration in the form of the U-2’s telltale photographs made nonsense of both of Khrushchev’s pledges. But most importantly the Soviet Union had equipped Cuba with an arsenal of Soviet nuclear missiles despite a presidential statement only a month early that the United States would not tolerate such a situation in the Western Hemisphere. Kennedy felt personally insulted by the deployment of these missiles.(Fursenko & Naftali p.193) He thought that he had done everything possible to defuse and smooth over tense relations with the Soviet Union even before he took office in 1960. This devastating news from Cuba would result in the tense period in Cold War history to date and perhaps its tensest period in the entire history of the war.Kennedy decided limit the information regarding the devastating news from Cuba to as small a group as possible. This group wo...
