The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: Myths versus Reality (Stanford Nuclear Age Series) Paperback – September 5, 2012

This is one of the most remarkable books of all time. Not only does the author show how close to nuclear war the US and Soviet Union were, but through the tapes of almost all the meetings of President Kennedy and his advisors shows that JFK was the only sane one of the bunch and single-handedly prevented an escalation that likely would have triggered a nuclear war.The reliance of this author on the tapes of the discussions creates an accuracy that is in sharp contrast to all the Camelot mythmakers like Ted Sorenson who survived JFK and sought to burnish their own reputations and that of Robert Kennedy by peddling falsehoods about their own moral stands and caution during the crisis.Among the authors that Stern's book shows to have been misled is Robert Caro, the most important biographer of Lyndon Johnson. In Caro's recent book, Passage of Power, he repeats the post-hoc stories that are shown to be lies by the Stern book and the Kennedy tapes. On page 221 for example, Caro reports that everyone agreed with Dean Rusk's proposal to resolve the crisis by offering a private trade of Soviet withdrawal of missiles in Cuba in exchange for US removal of missiles in Turkey. Yet the transcripts show that RFK opposed this offer, even after he was forced to make it by his brother. On page 210 Caro portrays RFK as measured, moderate, and someone who was focused on the moral questions at stake. Caro says that RFK was concerned with the moral implications of a strike against Cuba being a Pearl Harbor in reverse. All of this is untrue. RFK (along with Curtis Le May) was the most hawkish of the Presidents advisers; in the beginning, RFK advocated a full scale invasion of Cuba immediately after Joint Chiefs of Staff Maxwell Taylor warned against such an invasion. Even after the President and the majority had agreed on a blockade rather than an invasion or air strike, RFK pressed for an invasion as "the last chance we will have to destroy Castro." RFK carelessly insisted that the Soviet's would not retaliate with nuclear weapons and argued "we should just get into it, and get it over with and take our losses if [Kruschev] wants to get into a war over this...." There is nothing in the tapes of anyone except the President expressly being influenced in choices by civilian casualties. The President acknowledged that the Cuban missiles had no more technical ability to kill Americans than other Soviet missiles placed around the world. RFKs expressed reference to Pearl Harbor was not a moral concern but a concern of how an invasion might be perceived by the rest of the world. Repeatedly, RFK advocated the creation of a false pretext to justify an invasion. In the beginning he advocated using a Berlin crisis as an excuse to invade Cuba. Later, after the embargo had been agreed to, RFK suggested using the Guantanamo base to stage an incident that would be a pretext for invasion, in his words: "You know, sink the Maine again or something.!" As the crisis was close to resolution, RFK lamented: "I'd like to take Cuba back. That would be nice." The central fact that RFK, the President, LBJ and other decision-makers were willing to risk nuclear war and catastrophic civilian losses in efforts to stop the Soviets from protecting their ally Cuba against a US invasion goes unmentioned by Caro. In contrast, the tapes as revealed by Sheldon Stern reveal President Kennedy to be the one exhibiting moral reasoning. The tapes show President Kennedy saying: "It doesn't make any difference if you get blown up by an ICBM flying from the Soviet Union or one that was ninety miles away. Geography doesn't mean that much . . . . After all this is a political struggle as much as military."

This book is an excellent check against distortions of the discussions around JFK, distortions by his own advisors after the fact, and also manages to illuminate critical moments of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

As a 15-year-old at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I vividly remember the crisis. Churches in my hometown in rural South Carolina went on a 24/7 prayer vigil.As a history major who served 30 years in the Army including a combat tour in Vietnam followed by 13 years as a high school history teacher, I found “The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory…” to be a hard-hitting, accurate account. Written on the 50th anniversary of the crisis, the author has access to far more declassified material and actual tape recordings than did previous writers.Meticulously researched and documented, the author examines the role of each of the major players. He does not pull any punches. The second chapter is devoted to debunking Robert F. Kennedy’s “Thirteen Days” in which RFK painted his late brother, President John Kennedy, in a heroic manner and portrayed himself as a moderate / dove when in fact declassified tape recordings of the meetings clearly show that RFK was hawkish. This distortion of the facts was probably due to RFK preparing to run for a senate seat in 1968.My only criticisms are that I wish the author had included a map of Cuba and a chronology so that the reader could follow events as the crisis unfolded.As a historian, I loved the following excerpt: “Studying history, of course, is not like assembling a neatly cut jigsaw puzzle. Pieces of historical evidence do not have to fit together tidily or logically within fixed and predetermined borders. Indeed, despite the best efforts of historians, they do not have to fit together at all. History defines its own parameters, and real historical figures often defy our assumptions and expectations. Contradictions and inconsistencies are the rule rather than the exception in human affairs. History is not a play. There is no script.“

Almost everyone knows that Richard Nixon recorded every conversation that went on in the Oval Office. Nobody, including distinguished journalists whom I have met, are aware that Pres. Kennedy did the same thing. Why not? Because as those who read Sheldon Stern's book about the role of JFK in the Cuban missile crisis will learn from the transcripts of those tapes, the president was alone among those around him, who consistent;y opposed launching an attack on Cuba. Those advocating such an attack, at one time or another during the crisis, included his brother Bobby, all "the best and the brightest" in his cabinet and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.What those in the Oval Office and most Americans still don't know was that JFK was secretly communicating with the USSR's Nikita Khruschev through journalist Pierre Salinger to find a mutually agreed solution to the crisis that would overcome push for war of their respective hawks. And so they did.What wasn't known at the time was that the Russian missile launchers were loaded and ready to fire in the case of an American attack. That would have resulted in a nuclear war war in which much, if not all of humanity would have been wiped out. In other words, were it not for JFK's decision to conduct back channel communications with the Russians we wouldn't be here today. That he did this secretly, without notifying the CIA, in the middle of the Cold War, may have led to him to be killed by those in the CIA who considered him a traitor,. That Stern doesn't agree with that premise and doesn't mention it in his book is beside the point. As the custodian of the JFK Library where the tapes can be heard (as well, with some difficulty, on line) and the transcripts are on file, by producing this book, he had performed an exemplary public service which cannot be said of the mainstream media which largely ignored

What we know is that sensitive government papers, tapes, etc. remain closed for many years, often 50. This was true for Israel and released documents about the founding generated a whole new group of historians there. Similar things are happening re: US history. Here we have a book based on the actual tapes made of the meetings between JFK and his advisors during the Cuban missile crisis. And what we find out is that what we have been told by the participants over the years (including RFK' s book about the crisis) has no basis in actual fact.For anyone who has a passion for trying to understand what we lived through those many years ago, this is an excellent book. When I read something like this I think it must be incredibly difficult to be an historian of current events - because there is this long lag in the release of the documents that recorded the event. Think of the release of documents after the fall of the USSR and what that added to our knowledge.