One of the U.S. Jupiter missiles in Turkey that Kennedy secretly traded for the removal of Soviet missiles in Cuba. (Source: U.S. Army, Redstone Arsenal, Jupiter Missile History)
Documents Record how Kennedy Administration Buried
Quid Pro Quo that Resolved Missile Crisis
Letters Implicate President Kennedy as Author of Political Attack
On U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson
Washington D.C., October 28, 2022 - Sixty years ago today, the most dangerous days of the Cuban Missile Crisis came to an end—and the cover-up of the deal that would end the crisis began. President John F. Kennedy rejected Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's proposal to formalize a secret missile trade on paper. Kennedy then secretly orchestrated a political attack on U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, who had advised the president to make the missile deal, in a controversial article published by the Saturday Evening Post, according to private letters published for the first time today by the National Security Archive. The correspondence between a co-author of the article, Stewart Alsop, and the magazine’s executive editor, Clay Blair Jr., indicates that President Kennedy himself was the “unadmiring official” quoted in the story as stating, “Adlai wanted a Munich. He wanted to trade U.S. bases for Cuban bases.”
The accusation about Stevenson, which Kennedy’s own White House aides called “false and malicious,” created a political furor in Washington when the article, “In Time of Crisis,” was published in early December 1962. But the article helped Kennedy cover up the fact that he had implemented Stevenson’s private advice during the missile crisis and secretly traded the removal of U.S. missiles in Turkey for the withdrawal of the Soviet missiles in Cuba.
In a letter dated March 10, 1964, Alsop’s editor, Clay Blair Jr., pressed him to write a “tell all” article about Kennedy’s involvement in the attack on Stevenson. “Imagine, if you will, the impact of such a revelation by you just a few weeks before the [1964] Democratic convention opens. Startling?” Blair then identified the pivotal piece of evidence—the page of the article manuscript where Kennedy, identified as “an unadmiring official,” penciled in the “Munich” quote. “Do you, by chance, have in your possession an original copy of the manuscript with JFK’s editing marks on it?” Blair asked. “If so, it would certainly lend to the piece’s importance as well as stifle, in advance, the automatic reaction of the doctrinaire liberals who refuse to believe that The Man ever really said that about Adlai.”
The first paragraph of a private letter from Stewart Alsop to his editor at the Saturday Evening Post, Clay Blair Jr.
In his response, Alsop reminded his editor that the president’s role “must remain Top Secret, Eyes Only, Burn After Reading, and so on.” “The whole business was on a sealed-lip basis, as you know, and if I so much as hinted that JFK was in any way involved, I’d be run out of town,” he advised. The manuscript pages, he said, had been returned to Kennedy and destroyed. “I sent the ms. to Himself as a Christmas present, through Charlie [Bartlett, co-author of “In Time of Crisis”]. It has long since been reduced to ashes,” Alsop wrote. “It would have made an interesting footnote to history, at that.”
The letters were obtained by University of California Emeritus historian Gregg Herken and quoted in his 2014 book, The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington. Herken wrote that “The president had penciled in the ‘Munich’ line when he annotated a typescript of the draft article,” drawing on notes from an interview with Alsop’s son, Joseph Wright Alsop VI, who said his father had told him “that it had actually been JFK who added the phrase ‘Adlai wanted a Munich’ in his own handwriting.”
The widely circulated attack on Stevenson inoculated the White House from speculation that there had been a quid pro quo to end the missile crisis, while elevating President Kennedy’s steely resolve as the key factor that forced Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to “blink” and retreat. Indeed, the Saturday Evening Post article, as missile crisis historian Sheldon Stern observed, “squared perfectly with the emerging administration cover story that the president had rejected a Cuba-Turkey missile trade and had forced the Soviets to back down.”
John and Robert Kennedy confer during the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962.
On the 60th anniversary of the day the missile crisis abated, and the dire threat of nuclear war subsided, the National Security Archive is posting a selection of key U.S. and Soviet documents that record how the White House effort to cover up the real resolution of the crisis evolved. The documents include the translated texts of Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin’s cables to Moscow, reporting on his meetings with Attorney General Robert Kennedy; the private correspondence sent by Khrushchev to the president on October 28, 1962, seeking to affirm in writing the verbal deal that Robert Kennedy had made with Dobrynin to trade the U.S. missiles in Turkey for the Soviet missiles in Cuba; the tape recordings of President Kennedy’s phone conversations with former presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover, during which Kennedy denied any quid pro quo deal had been made to end the missile crisis; and the unpublished letters between Stewart Alsop, co-author of the controversial Saturday Evening Post article, “In Time of Crisis,” and his executive editor, Clay Blair Jr., which reveal that the president played a significant role in crafting the article.
A passage from Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin's October 27, 1962, telegram to Moscow reporting on Robert Kennedy's secret pledge to remove U.S. missiles in Turkey in "4-5 months" in return for the withdrawal of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
“The true story behind the resolution of the missile crisis was for years kept secret in one of the most consequential cover-ups in the history of U.S. foreign policy,” observed Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Archive’s Cuba Documentation Project. “A generation of scholars, analysts, foreign policy makers and even presidents were deprived of a full understanding and appreciation of how the leaders of the superpowers avoided nuclear catastrophe. It is a history the international community needs to know because it remains immediately relevant to the events of today.”
Acknowledgement: The National Security Archive is grateful to George Washington University historian James G. Hershberg and the Cold War International History Project for pioneering work on the issues addressed in this posting.
Document 1
Russian Foreign Ministry archives, published in The Cold War International History Project Bulletin Issue 5, Spring 1995 by James G. Hershberg, pp. 79-80
In the most consequential meeting during the Cuban missile crisis, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, acting as a personal emissary for his brother, conveys to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin that President Kennedy will remove U.S. missiles in Turkey as part of a quid pro quo to end the missile crisis—but only if that part of the agreement is kept secret. On Turkey, RFK says that “President Kennedy is ready to come to agree on that question with N.S. Khrushchev,” according to Dobrynin’s account of the meetring, transmitted in this telegram to Moscow.. ‘dd’ “‘I think that in order to withdraw these bases from Turkey,’ R. Kennedy said, ‘we need 4-5 months,’” the cable continued. “‘However, the president can't say anything public in this regard about Turkey,’ R. Kennedy said again. R. Kennedy then warned that his comments about Turkey are extremely confidential; besides him and his brother, only 2-3 people know about it in Washington.” RFK demands a quick answer from Khrushchev, telling Dobrynin that the shootdown of a U-2 plane over Cuba that day has increased pressure on the Kennedy administration to respond with force. “But if we start to fire in response—a chain reaction will quickly start that will be very hard to stop,” he tells the Soviet ambassador. “A real war will begin, in which millions of Americans and Russians will die. We want to avoid that any way we can, I'm sure that the government of the USSR has the same wish.”
Dobrynin’s cable documented the quid pro quo agreement that resolved the missile crisis. But it remained secret for 27 years. At a conference in Moscow in 1989, organized by James Blight and janet Lang, and the National Security Archive in anticipation of the 30th anniversary of the missile crisis, Dobrynin for the first time shared his notes on the actual cable—the missing link in the history of how the missile crisis actually concluded.
Document 2
National Security Archive Cuban Missile Crisis collection
Attorney General Robert Kennedy files a report to Secretary of State Dean Rusk on his pivotal meeting with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin the evening of October 27. He recounts how he pressed the Soviets to immediately withdraw the missiles from Cuba, warning that “there was very little time left.” “I said those missiles had to go and they had to go right away. We had to have a commitment by at least tomorrow that those bases would be removed,” Kennedy reports. “He should understand that if they did not remove those bases then we would remove them.” When Dobrynin asks about the missiles in Turkey, Kennedy writes, “I replied that there could be no quid pro quo—no deal of this kind could be made.” But he then reports that, in fact, he did obliquely agree to such a deal. “If some time elapsed—and per your instructions I mentioned four or five months—I said I was sure that these matters could be resolved satisfactorily.” In this draft of the memorandum, that passage is crossed out, presumably by Kennedy himself, to remove any reference to the missile trade that President Kennedy had actually agreed to make.
Document 3
U.S. State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume VI, Kennedy-Khrushchev Exchanges
On the same day that Soviet Premier Khrushchev publicly announces that he has ordered the withdrawal of the missiles in Cuba in return for a U.S. non-invasion guarantee, he sends a private letter to President Kennedy thanking him for the secret deal that has brought an end to the dangerous crisis and seeking to confirm that the U.S. missiles will, in fact, eventually be removed from Turkey. “I feel I must state to you that I do understand the delicacy involved for you in an open consideration of the issue of eliminating the US missile bases in Turkey,” Khrushchev writes. “I take into account the complexity of this issue and I believe you are right about not wishing to publicly discuss it.” Khrushchev advises the President that he will also keep quiet about the quid pro quo, communicating confidentially about it only through Robert Kennedy in the future. The letter concludes with Khrushchev pushing Kennedy to use the resolution of the missile crisis as a stepping stone toward world peace. “I hope, Mr. President, that agreement on this matter, too, shall be no small step advancing the cause of relaxation of international tensions and the tensions between our two powers,” he writes. “Mr. President, the crisis that we have gone through may repeat again,” he warns. “This means that we need to address the issues which contain too much explosive material.”
The letter is transmitted to the Soviet ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, who personally provides it to Attorney General Robert Kennedy for delivery to the president.
Document 4
Archive of Foreign Policy, Russian Federation, translation by John Henriksen, published by the Cold War International History Project in James G. Hershberg’s compilation “New Evidence on the Cuban Missile Crisis: More Documents from the Russian Archives.”
Instead of giving Khrushchev’s letter on the quid pro quo to President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy returns the letter to Ambassador Dobrynin on October 30th. Robert Kennedy tells Dobrynin that his brother is “not prepared to formulate such an understanding [on the missiles in Turkey] in the form of letters, even the most confidential letters, between the President and the head of the Soviet government, when it concerns such a highly delicate issue.” According to Dobrynin’s summary of the meeting, Robert Kennedy states that “I myself, for example, do not want to risk getting involved in the transmission of this sort of letter, since who knows where and when such letters can surface or be somehow published—not now, but in the future—and any changes in the course of events are possible. The appearance of such a document could cause irreparable harm to my political career in the future. This is why we request that you take this letter back.”
Nevertheless, Robert Kennedy offers multiple assurances that “we will, however, live up to our promise, even if it is given in this oral form” and offers to continue what he calls his “solitary diplomacy” as a back channel between Khrushchev and President Kennedy.
Document 5
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Robert Kennedy papers collection
Robert Kennedy sends a report to Secretary of State Dean Rusk on his 15-minute meeting with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin on October 30, during which he returns Khrushchev’s October 28 letter about the quid pro quo resolving the missile crisis. Whereas Dobrynin’s account of the meeting emphasizes that the Attorney General rejected the letter but re-affirmed the quid pro quo, Robert Kennedy’s report states that he rejected the concept of a quid pro quo. “I also repeated what I had said earlier that there never could be any kind of a deal or arrangement as far as the Turkish missile bases were concerned,” RFK says in his account of the conversation, and told the Soviet ambassador that “within the next four or five months we expected to work out with our NATO allies a satisfactory resolution of this problem.” He informed Dobrynin that “President Kennedy and I did not feel correspondence on our conversations was very helpful at this time,” and told him,“in my judgement nothing more was necessary.” Dobrynin “said he understood,” according to Kennedy, “picked up the letter, and with several polite exchanges, I took him down to the elevator and he left.”
Document 6
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Audio Visual Dept.
Listen to the recording:
Only hours after Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announces he is ordering the dismantling and withdrawal of the missiles in Cuba, President Kennedy places a phone call to his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower. He falsely tells Eisenhower that “we couldn’t get into that deal” on the Turkish missiles. Kennedy’s secret telephone taping system records the call.
Document 7
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Audio Visual Dept.
Listen to the recording:
Only hours after Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announces he is ordering the dismantling and withdrawal of the missiles in Cuba, President Kennedy places a phone call to former president Harry Truman. He falsely tells Truman that “we rejected” trading the Jupiter missiles in Turkey for the Soviet missiles in Cuba. Kennedy’s secret telephone taping system records the call.
Document 8
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Audio Visual Dept.
Listen to the recording:
Only hours after Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announces he is ordering the dismantling and withdrawal of the missiles in Cuba, President Kennedy places a phone call to former president Herbert Hoover. He falsely tells him that the Soviet’s had gone back “to their more reasonable position” on accepting a non-invasion pledge in return for withdrawing the missiles. Kennedy’s secret telephone taping system records the call.
Document 9
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, American Republics; Cuba 1961–1962; Cuban Missile crisis and aftermath, volumes x/xi/xii, microfiche supplement
After an article titled “In Time of Crisis” from the Saturday Evening Post begins to circulate in Washington, White House aide Arthur Schlesinger sends the first of two protests to President Kennedy urging him to defend U.N. ambassador Adlai Stevenson whose “soft” positions during the crisis deliberations are targeted in the story. The article quotes a U.S. official as saying that Stevenson “wanted a Munich” and wanted to “trade U.S. bases for Cuban bases.” Written by two close Kennedy confidants, Charles Bartlett and Stewart Alsop, the story “seems to be wrong in every particular,” Schlesinger advises. The suggestion, he writes, that Stevenson “favored a Caribbean Munich is grossly unfair—and shows the number of people who still have their knives out for him.” Schlesinger advises Kennedy to authorize the release of a statement to the press calling the story “false and malicious.”
Document 10
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Saturday Evening Post file
At 5:15 on December 2, 1962, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. calls President Kennedy to report on how the Saturday Evening Post is circulating a press release on its forthcoming story on the missile crisis that directly targets U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. The release is titled “The Controversial and Hitherto Unrevealed Role Played by U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson During the Height of the Cuba Crisis.” Schlesinger reports that key aides are retrieving documentation to challenge the article, which quotes an anonymous “nonadmiring official” as stating “Adlai wanted a Munich” and had proposed the option of trading U.S. bases for Cuban bases.
Document 11
Gregg Herken donation
In a personal letter to the co-author of the Saturday Evening Post article, Stewart Alsop, his editor Clay Blair urges him to write a “tell all” article about how President Kennedy personally provided the “Adlai wanted a Munich” line in the “In Time of Crisis” article. The Saturday Evening Post was competing with other magazines to serialize the memoirs of former Kennedy White House officials in 1964, Blair suggests, but the “inside” story of the president’s role in the controversial attack on U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson’s positions during the missile crisis, published in December 1962, would generate major attention. “Imagine, if you will, the impact of such a revelation by you just a few weeks before the [1964] Democratic convention opens. Startling?” Blair prods Alsop. He then identifies the pivotal piece of evidence—the page of the article manuscript where Kennedy, identified as “an unadmiring official,” penciled in what would become the most controversial words of the article: “Adlai wanted a Munich.” “Do you, by chance, have in your possession an original copy of the manuscript with JFK’s editing marks on it?” Blair asks. “If so, it would certainly lend to the piece’s importance as well as stifle, in advance, the automatic reaction of the doctrinaire liberals who refuse to believe that The Man ever really said that about Adlai.”
Document 12
Gregg Herken donation
In this letter, Stewart Alsop responds to his editor’s inquiry about doing a “tell all” article on Kennedy’s role in the controversial “In Time of Crisis” article. “The whole business was on a sealed-lip basis, as you know,” he reminds Blair, “and if I so much as hinted that JFK was in any way involved, I’d be run out of town.” Alsop informs Blair that the manuscript page with the president’s handwritten remarks was returned to Kennedy and destroyed. “I sent the ms. to Himself as a Christmas present, through Charlie [Bartlett]. It has long since been reduced to ashes,” he writes to Blair. “It would have made an interesting footnote to history, at that.” Alsop concludes his letter by reminding his editor that, even after Kennedy’s assassination, they cannot reveal his role in the political attack on Stevenson. “It must remain Top Secret, Eyes Only, Burn After Reading, and so on,” he advises.