ould feel about the American pledge to defend them against Soviet aggression if they were to be removed? How would NATO react? Such a drastic removal could lead to serious fracturing of NATO alliance. Negotiations would have to be conducted fast. In the negotiations that would follow, both sides would have to be satisfied and both sides would have to be able to save face. The President decides to send his brother Robert F. Kennedy to negotiate with Washington’s Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin.(Hershburg p.3) Robert Kennedy account of the meeting between the two officials from both superpowers reads as follows directly from his own memoirs.“At the request of Secretary Rusk, I telephoned Ambassador Dobrynin at approximately 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, October 27th. I asked him if he would come to the Justice Department at a quarter of eight. We met in my office. I told him first that we understood that the work was continuing on the Soviet missile bases in Cuba. Further, I explained to him that in the last two hours we had found that our planes flying over Cuba had been fired upon and that one of our U-2's had been shot down and the pilot killed. I said these men were flying unarmed planes.I told him that this was an extremely serious turn in events. We would have to make certain decisions within the next 12 or possibly 24 hours. There was a very little time left. If the Cubans were shooting at our planes, then we were going to shoot back. This could not help but bring on further incidents and that he had better understand the full implications of this matter.He raised the point that the argument the Cubans were making was that we were violating Cuban air space. I replied that if we had not been violating Cuban air space then we would still be believing what he and Khrushchev had said--that there were no long-range missiles in Cuba. In any case I said that this matter was far more serious than the air space over Cuba a...
