Original subtitles

- I, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear

that I will faithfully execute

the Office of President of the United States.

- He was instantly overwhelmed by it.

There were crises mounting.

- The African Americans are asking

the federal government to do its job.

- With Bobby and John Kennedy,

if you don't have the Freedom Rides,

they don't start moving to a position where

they are going to support the Civil Rights movement.

- The idea we could get into a nuclear war

during the '60s was very real.

- And we shall be remembered either

as part of the generation that turned this planet

into a flaming funeral pyre,

or the generation that met its vow

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.

♪ ♪

- To lead us to a fruitful America

from the state of Massachusetts,

John F. Kennedy.

- John F. Kennedy lived a life that would help

define an entire generation.

♪ ♪

- Together we shall save our planet,

or together we shall perish in its flames.

- What was it about that guy?

- Looks, style,

empathy, he was incredibly charming.

- Intellectual, and progressive.

- He was the future. He was next.

♪ ♪

- President for just over 1,000 days,

Kennedy navigated events and crises that changed the world.

- Kennedy is feeling the pressure

from the Civil Rights activists.

- This was a country on nuclear war footing.

[dramatic music]

- This could be the last mistake that

anybody makes politically.

♪ ♪

- He changed us in the process of his own growth.

- We choose to go to the moon in this decade

and do the other things, not because they are easy,

but because they are hard.

♪ ♪

- 60 years after his assassination,

we are still fascinated by the triumphs

and flaws of the youngest president ever elected.

- I ask you to join us in all the tomorrows yet to come,

in building America, moving America,

taking this country of ours up, and sending it into the '60s.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- After only one year, it was clear the White House

had a new, modern, and youthful atmosphere,

invigorated by music,

the arts, and the contemporary style.

Jackie later admired the unique atmosphere

of the Kennedy White House, comparing it to Camelot.

- He and Jackie created a court.

There was a court of Camelot.

- Kennedy is young and handsome.

He dresses very well.

His wife is a beautiful woman,

dresses in designer gowns and clothes.

They begin to throw parties and soirees

and receptions that have great wine and entertainment.

♪ ♪

- I would go to the White House if they had any sort

of an affair going on.

The room was full, and the music was playing.

One of the senator's wives walked over to the president,

said, Mr. President, would you like to dance?

And he said, I would love to.

And so they walked away,

and I'm standing there next to Jackie Kennedy.

And after about 30 seconds, she looks at me

and says, damn it, Lieutenant, don't just stand there.

Dance with me. [laughs]

And so I danced with Jackie Kennedy.

- 31 is very young to be first lady.

- She also understood that culture was very important,

and she wanted to make the White House

a center for these great cultural events.

- The White House celebrated American leadership

in the arts and sciences alike.

In 1962, they held events whose guests ranged from

the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer,

to poet Robert Frost, to singer Tony Bennett.

- Shakespeare's plays are performed.

Jackie introduces a French culinary menu

to White House state dinners.

There is a new appreciation for the artist in society.

- If sometimes our great artists

have been the most critical of our society,

it is because their sensitivity.

Their concern for justice makes them aware

that our nation falls short of its highest potential.

♪ ♪

- Long before Camelot is called Camelot,

they have created a celebrity of their own.

- Upon moving into the White House in January 1961,

Jackie began an ambitious project,

working to renovate and restore the historic building

she called home.

- She can't believe all these ugly Victorian mirrors

and this kind of ersatz furniture.

You know, where's all the real stuff?

And she goes and finds a lot of the pieces of furniture

were just laying on dirt floors in a warehouse.

And it was appalling to her.

And so she made that her life's work.

- This house will always grow and should.

It just seemed to me such a shame

when we came here to find hardly anything

of the past in the house.

- And even today, much of the White House

reflects Jackie's redesign of it.

It reflects Jackie's aesthetic in so many ways.

♪ ♪

- You know, his wife was this cultured, articulate,

multidimensional person,

who also happened to be an incredible mom.

♪ ♪

- John F. Kennedy's love for his children

was a reflection of his love for family.

The Kennedy family was tight.

♪ ♪

- Jackie tried to protect her children's privacy,

but photos of them were often published in the media.

- They would occasionally come running into the Oval Office.

- Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

I'm speaking to you from the White House.

- Dad. - Wait a minute, John.

Wait a sec.

Don't say anything, because I've got to give this speech.

Would you just sit down over there now and be a good boy?

Come on, now, be a good boy.

- While Kennedy continued to enjoy the good-natured chaos

of his family in the White House,

come February, the nation's eyes

were once again focused on the skies.

- Behind this day stands years of preparation.

- When NASA selected its first group of astronauts,

the Mercury Seven, in the spring of 1959,

only one of them was already famous, and it was John Glenn.

♪ ♪

He'd been a test pilot.

And he had become something of a celebrity in the late 1950s

when he set a transcontinental speed record

flying from Los Angeles to New York

in a little over three hours.

The first two Americans who went into space,

Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom,

flew on what were called

ballistic flights or suborbital flights.

They went up, and they came down, 15 minutes.

As it turned out, being bypassed for the first flight

and the second flight actually allowed

Glenn to become the first American to orbit the Earth.

- Shepherd went up, came down, and he became a hero.

And Kennedy now recognized,

any Mercury astronaut I put up,

it's going to be seen as a Kennedy astronaut,

a Kennedy cadet.

And the public loves it, and my public ratings go sky high.

By the time we're putting up John Glenn in '62,

the world's leaning in,

watching what's going on at Cape Canaveral.

- If I use the talents and capabilities I happen to have

been given to the best of my ability,

I think there is a power greater than I am

that will certainly see that I am taken care of,

if I do my part of the bargain.

- Fine to start VPI on--

- On February 20, 1962,

Kennedy and more than 100 million Americans

gathered around television screens and radios,

awaiting news of Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn,

the first American to orbit the Earth.

[indistinct radio chatter]

- Mercury capsule, go. All prestart power--

- Glenn, a Midwesterner, who flew 150 combat missions

in World War II and Korea,

was about to make history at age 40.

- All recorders to fast T minus 18 seconds

and counting engine start.

- Good, Lord, ride all the way.

Godspeed, John Glenn.

[rousing music]

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- After circling the Earth three times,

Glenn landed safely in the ocean near Bermuda.

- John Glenn of Ohio, he doesn't just

go to the White House or have parades for him.

He'll go all over the world as an ambassador.

His Friendship 7 capsule tours the planet,

and people wait up like they would to see

something rare in the Louvre.

- This is Colonel Glenn.

- Oh, listen, Colonel, we're really proud of you.

And I must say, you did a wonderful job.

- Thank you, Mr. President.

- Kennedy has turned the space race

into what, in many ways, it is.

It's a great adventure.

- Glenn's flight was a triumphant step for a nation

determined to go to the moon.

However, Kennedy knew this accomplishment

did not lessen the looming threat of the Cold War.

In 1962, he would need to be vigilant

as the Soviet Union attempted to best

the United States here on Earth.

- As he had in his youth, Kennedy continued

to read feverishly during his time in office.

In mid-1962, as excitement over astronaut John Glenn's

achievement continued, Kennedy's imagination

was caught by a best-selling book,

Barbara Tuckman's "The Guns of August."

The book chronicles the events

that led to World War I and documents

how easily missteps and miscalculations

spiraled out of control.

- If you're a president burned in your first major

foreign policy initiative,

a book about how little mistakes,

miscommunications, or small steps

can lead into terrible mistakes,

it's going to be attractive.

I think that's why it was attractive to Kennedy.

- Kennedy felt so strongly about the book

and its analysis of global conflicts,

that he distributed copies to his staff and his generals

as a reading assignment.

To Kennedy, the themes of "The Guns of August"

could not be more relevant.

On October 30, 1961,

the Soviet Union tested the largest nuclear bomb

in history, at 58 megatons.

It was 4,000 times larger than the bomb in Hiroshima.

♪ ♪

[rumbling]

The Soviet explosion was so violent,

it shattered windows over 500 miles away.

- The Soviet Union callously broke the moratorium

with a two months' series of tests of more than 40 weapons.

In response to the escalating Soviet program,

Kennedy announced the United States

would restart its nuclear testing.

- I have today authorized the Atomic Energy Commission

and the Department of Defense

to conduct a series of nuclear tests.

- Both Kennedy and Khrushchev controlled nuclear arsenals

capable of killing millions

and rendering the world uninhabitable.

As this reality set in, the themes from

"The Guns of August" rang clear.

The book made explicit that patience and clear thinking

were key to preventing another world war.

- In essence, there was no way to fight a nuclear war

on a small scale.

Invariably, it was going to lead to global destruction.

And by the mid-1950s, that was the case.

So when Kennedy comes into office as president,

he realizes that the moment

the first mushroom cloud appears,

it's game over.

And I mean that for all of civilization.

♪ ♪

- The themes explored in "The Guns of August"

would have a pivotal role in the conflict on the horizon.

♪ ♪

Dealing with the ongoing threat of a nuclear disaster,

there was one place that offered comfort and stability

to Kennedy, Hyannis Port.

Like many Americans, the president and his family

eagerly awaited their vacation.

Because of her equestrian background,

Jackie preferred trips to Virginia,

with the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains.

While Jackie rode her horses or sunbathed,

and John Junior explored the grounds,

four-year-old Caroline played with Macaroni,

the Pony gifted to her by Vice President Lyndon Johnson.

♪ ♪

While Virginia was a beautiful destination,

as far as Kennedy was concerned,

it was no Hyannis Port.

Hyannis Port was where he had grown up,

where his family was situated,

and of course, there was water.

- He just loved the Atlantic seaboard and the Coast.

Part of it, it soothed him.

It was like medicine for him.

♪ ♪

And Jackie, his wife, knew that.

She'd drawn watercolors of the Coast for him.

And even in key moments of decision,

he would draw sailboats.

♪ ♪

That seafaring tradition of John F. Kennedy

is, I think, a big part of him.

♪ ♪

- For him, being on the water was natural and relaxing.

♪ ♪

It was only so long before it was back to the White House.

♪ ♪

September 30, 1962,

another crisis flared in the ongoing

American Civil Rights struggle.

James Meredith, an African American man,

attempted to enroll at the all white

University of Mississippi.

♪ ♪

- I think Mississippi is the hardest

of the hard-core segregationist states.

♪ ♪

- James Meredith applied to the University of Mississippi

in January 1961, but was denied admission.

With the help of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund,

Meredith filed a lawsuit against the University,

alleging racial discrimination.

In September 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court

ruled in Meredith's favor.

- James Meredith had talked about taking on

this whole barrier of white supremacy

when he was a student at Jackson State.

But it's a whole nother thing different in terms of

filling out this application

and then going through this entire process,

that he actually went through to integrate

the University of Mississippi.

- Trying to integrate a notoriously

all white University was a life-threatening endeavor.

Meredith knew the danger he was putting himself in,

but he was determined to enroll at the University.

♪ ♪

- And he understood that from day one,

that you can't be average to do this.

You've got to be willing to say,

hey, if I'm going to start this, I cannot give up.

I've got to stick through it the whole way.

And if it costs me my life, it costs me my life.

- James Meredith had been granted admission

to the University of Mississippi.

But the process of enrolling would not be easy.

In the fall of 1962,

Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett

defied federal rulings and personally

interfered with Meredith's attempts

to register on campus.

- He was a die-hard segregationist,

and he was militantly opposed to Meredith's entrance.

- They say now they're enthusiastically supporting

this platform, and they're going to integrate

all of the schools by 1963.

And that's something that we just can't take.

- Governor Barnett

and Attorney General Robert Kennedy

reached a deal to allow Meredith to enroll.

However, on September 30, 1962,

when Meredith arrived on campus,

escorted by U.S. marshals who were sent

by the Kennedy administration,

a racist mob was waiting for him.

[distant discordant voices]

♪ ♪

- And it's a federal presence on the campus at Ole Miss,

with people ready for this, coming in from other states,

crowding the campus to resist and fight

the entry of Meredith.

♪ ♪

- Meredith was quickly moved into a dormitory

for his own protection as the conflicts

between the violent mob and federal marshals

came to a head.

- Meredith's on campus. He's gone in secretly.

He's in his dorm room. He's safe.

And the order is given to the marshals

not to shoot unless it is to protect

the life of James Meredith.

So a full-scale riot breaks out,

with the mob targeting the marshals.

[distant siren]

- White mobs began lobbing bricks and acid

at federal marshals stationed outside the University's

Lyceum building.

The marshals responded by throwing

tear gas into the crowds.

- It was as though they had

you know, swatted a beehive.

And once tear gas now is shot, canisters are thrown back.

And then once it becomes dark,

and then people began to shoot guns.

And the marshals now, several marshals are wounded.

♪ ♪

- Soon the mobs grew to hundreds in size.

- State police had blocked the campus.

Nobody could get on the campus without an ID.

But hundreds of these Klansmen, hate groups,

were masked here in Oxford off campus,

ready to take up the fight.

- At the height of the riots,

the mob tried to gain control of vehicles,

like fire trucks, which they intended

to ram into the crowds of demonstrators.

- 14, 13, 14-year-old kids picking up concrete blocks,

throwing them at us.

- It was just crazy.

I stayed out there on the edge of watching it from a distance

until I realized I could get killed out here

because so many bullets are flying around.

- And then Kennedy is made aware of all of this.

- Kennedy worked to bring about order,

speaking to Barnett on the phone from the White House.

- The governor refused to follow up with firm efforts

to help quell the violence in Oxford.

♪ ♪

Amidst the chaos, Kennedy activated

the Mississippi National Guard.

The violence continued unabated for hours

and well into the early morning of October 1st,

when federal troops finally arrived and crushed the riot.

Two people were killed, hundreds were wounded,

and many were arrested during the riots.

At last, on October 1, 1962,

Meredith was able to register for courses.

He was the first African American student

registered at the University of Mississippi.

- When you have that kind of tenacity,

and you've got internal fortitude,

you've got this courage.

He's a tremendous model

for what it means to be an American.

- James Meredith's integration

at the University of Mississippi showed Kennedy

the deadly consequences

of trying to negotiate with figures like Ross Barnett.

♪ ♪

In the future, his administration

would have to be quicker, more vigilant,

and less patient

to prevent chaos like that of Oxford.

- He was cautious.

I think on a lot of issues,

Kennedy was very hesitant to take bold action.

He was scared of either overseas

causing a problem that would turn

into a major and deadly conflict.

And here in the States, he was often scared

to use his political capital.

He was worried about re-election.

He was worried about angering conservatives

in his own party.

- Kennedy was not, by nature, a big risk taker.

But he was by nature a responsible leader.

He was one of those that took a long time

to make a decision.

- You know, caution has its limits,

and it can be incredibly problematic.

But I think there is something to it that's important,

even when the stakes are intense,

and deadly, and every minute counts.

- Over time, Kennedy would learn the presidency could

only be a tool for change if the one who held the office

had the courage to act.

And soon, a situation in Cuba would force his hand.

♪ ♪

- Just weeks after the crisis

at the University of Mississippi,

the world was catapulted into

the most dangerous chapter in its history.

As early as August 1962,

director of Central Intelligence John McCone

began to receive unusual intelligence reports.

These reports described Russian ships

transporting Soviet soldiers and technicians to Cuba,

which was governed by dictator Fidel Castro.

- [speaking Spanish]

- The Cuban Coast was only 90 miles from Florida.

- Many Soviet ships were crossing the Atlantic.

That was, you know, very obvious.

We were tracking the ships, and it soon became clear

that they were not just taking agricultural equipment

and food supplies to Cuba.

They were taking military equipment.

And we picked up from electronic intelligence

signals the fact that they were deploying

a anti-aircraft system all around the periphery of Cuba.

♪ ♪

- On August 22, it was reported that

as many as 20 Soviet vessels may have arrived

in Cuba with military cargo.

- These new shipments do not constitute

a serious threat to any other part of this hemisphere.

If, at any time, the Communist buildup in Cuba

were to endanger or interfere with our security in any way

or become an offensive military base of significant capacity

for the Soviet Union, then this country

will do whatever must be done to protect its own security

and that of its allies.

It is under our most careful surveillance.

♪ ♪

- That became a debate in the U.S. government,

actually, largely between the head of the CIA

and other people in the government about

what the Soviets were up to.

And then the U.S. also had people on the ground

who were sending reports back to Washington

about these strange objects that were trundling through

Cuban towns, you know, long, tube-like things.

Career people in the CIA didn't believe

that Khrushchev would gamble so heavily

as to send nuclear missiles to Cuba.

They thought this was some other kind of military equipment.

- And the only way to check its reliability

was by sending U-2 spy planes.

♪ ♪

- The Americans, of course, were flying

U-2 high altitude spy aircraft over Cuba routinely.

- There's an area that's not far from Havana,

where a spy has provided information

that is very, very worrisome.

And so the intelligence community convinces

Bobby Kennedy, who was the president's representative

on the group that decides these U-2 flights,

convinces him and convinces the National Security Advisor

McGeorge Bundy to take the risk of one more flight.

♪ ♪

- They sent a U-2 over Cuba.

They took photographs and were able to measure precisely

the length of these tubes.

And they discovered that they were,

in fact, nuclear missiles.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

This material was being shipped to Cuba by the Soviets

for two main reasons--

to defend Castro and his regime against another attack

like the Bay of Pigs,

and to retaliate against the United States.

The U.S. had Jupiter missiles stationed

in Turkey within firing distance of the Soviet Union.

And the Soviet Premier decided it was time to even the score.

- The missiles looks like the way

to deal with both problems, the issue of the losing

the arms race to the United States

and establish his position as the leader

of the Communist world.

- For the Soviet Union

to have a Communist government

90 miles from the United States

in the Western hemisphere

was a tremendous advantage.

♪ ♪

- He was just simply fed up with seeing America

kind of flex its muscles.

The way he thought he would get even

was to station nuclear missiles

right next to the United States in Cuba.

So he thought he could push Kennedy around.

- [speaking Russian]

- The CIA estimated that there were

10,000 Soviet troops in Cuba.

There were 42,000.

♪ ♪

[crowds cheering]

- Khrushchev saw his

secret deployment of missiles to Cuba

as the most dramatic

and potentially successful action

of his entire career.

♪ ♪

- The United States government now had definitive proof

from hundreds of photographs taken by U.S. spy planes

that the Soviets were installing

missile launching sites in Cuba.

The photos showed a series of newly-built installations

in the Cuban countryside.

The man who took these photos, Major Richard Heiser,

later remarked that he was worried his photographs

would start a war.

On October 15, the CIA observed launchers, missiles,

and transport trucks amid active construction

at the launching sites.

Shipments to the island included nuclear weapons

within firing distance of major U.S. cities,

like Washington, DC, and New York City.

The might of Soviet nuclear power

was now on America's doorstep.

♪ ♪

- On the morning of the 16th,

Kennedy's National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy

knocks on his bedroom door and says,

we've discovered missiles in Cuba.

♪ ♪

- What had seemed impossible was now a stark reality.

♪ ♪

- Kennedy creates a committee of his closest advisors,

which they call the Executive Committee

of the National Security Council, or the EXCOMM.

- Too much aggression could start a war,

but doing nothing was not an option.

Kennedy had a choice to make--

attack the Soviet missile sites, launch an invasion,

or install a blockade around the island.

- There were some in the Kennedy administration,

notably Curtis LeMay, who was advocating,

we just need to bomb Cuba.

We need to attack and wipe out these missiles

before they can become operational.

- According to Ted Sorensen, Vice President Lyndon Johnson

voiced his support for bombing.

- The Joint Chiefs of Staff are unified in their determination

that we should bomb and we should invade.

And they keep pressing that position.

♪ ♪

- Kennedy was worried because the blockade

didn't remove the missiles that were already there.

The blockade would only prevent

more missiles from coming there.

He's holding out the possibility

of launching an airstrike.

But he goes to the Air Force and he says,

can you assure me that you can get all of them?

And they say to him, we have, for the records,

no, Mr. President, we can't.

Secondly, we don't know if we will actually

hit all the targets in our first airstrike.

And then Kennedy asked, well, what happens if you don't?

And they say to him, about 30 million people

in the southeast of the United States are in jeopardy.

♪ ♪

- The first thing that I think about

when I think about the Cuban Missile Crisis

is how much worse the situation was

than the people at the time knew.

- Kennedy's administration did not know that Soviet missiles

were already prepared to fire.

♪ ♪

- Now, can you imagine our 90,000 troops

hitting the beaches, parachuting in,

and being blown off the beaches

by tactical nuclear weapons?

How could the United States not respond in some way?

And then how could the Soviets not respond

to the United States' response?

- This was--

this was not just the last mistake

he would make politically.

This was-- could be the last mistake

that anybody makes politically.

- It would have been very easy

for a "Guns of August" situation,

where this escalates quickly into a nuclear confrontation.

And there's lessons we can take,

even without romanticizing

how perfect Kennedy was during this.

One is the importance of deliberation.

I mean, it is remarkable that the president,

in these moments of heightened crisis,

doesn't always act first.

He thinks. He listens. He analyzes.

- Had he been impatient,

he would have gone with his first instinct,

which was the first instinct of his advisors.

But he looked at Khrushchev not as a madman,

but as a fellow politician

who has gotten himself in a pretty rough spot.

And it is my job, Jack Kennedy,

president of the United States,

to help him get out of this place.

And I need to do it patiently.

- I think we were very lucky that it was Kennedy.

Because there's no question in my mind

that whether it was Johnson or Nixon or Eisenhower,

they would have invaded Cuba.

- And Kennedy was not convinced that a blockade

would lead to the Soviets withdrawing their missiles.

There was no reason to believe that.

But he recognized, and that's what makes him

such an interesting leader.

He recognized that he had no better options.

- A blockade could be considered

a declaration of war.

But Kennedy saw it as the best path forward.

With the president's decision made and millions of lives

on the line, the two most powerful countries

in the world stared each other down at point blank range.

- We stood on the brink of a nuclear war.

We could not be certain what the Soviet response

would be to the actions taken by the president.

There were times when it looked as though it would be

a violent response, in which case

he was determined to go ahead, come what may.

♪ ♪

- One of the problems, when we think about nuclear war,

is the fact that we've only ever seen nuclear bombs

used twice during war,

once in Hiroshima and once in Nagasaki.

And the reality is, in 1945, those were two comparatively

tiny, experimental prototype weapons,

that did, yes, of course, devastating amount of damage--

about a radius of four miles of Hiroshima

was wiped off the map.

But 20 years later, by the 1960s,

nuclear weapons had become exponentially more powerful.

These weren't city killers anymore,

as the Hiroshima bomb was.

These were country killers.

♪ ♪

- Instead of 20,000 tons of TNT equivalent,

you're talking about 30 or 40 million tons of TNT.

So the destructive power of this stuff was enormous.

The ability to deliver it through missiles

meant that the warning time was a matter

of minutes, not hours.

- If we begin this blockade,

then we will continue the surveillance.

I would anticipate two or three things-- first,

that Khrushchev will make a statement that any attack

upon Cuba will be regarded as an attack

upon the Soviet Union and be responded to

by all the weapons at their command, number one.

Number two is we have to assume,

that as this surveillance continues, with the U-2s,

that these SAM sites may shoot one down.

At that point, then, we were just

discussing what action we will take

in attacking the SAM site.

So I would assume that this will only

be the first of a rather--

of an increasing number of steps.

We're not going to be in any position to carry out

an invasion for some days because

we have to move those troops around from San Diego.

But we're going to do all those things, and as I say,

we can anticipate that it will be getting more intense.

- In the words of writer Mark Twain,

history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

As speechwriter Ted Sorensen prepared Kennedy's speech

on the Cuban Missile Crisis, he referenced Woodrow Wilson's

World War I and Franklin Roosevelt's World War II

declaration of war speeches.

Sorensen drafted each word with the utmost caution.

Like the Bay of Pigs the year before,

a dark cloud of stress and anxiety

settled over the White House.

During discussions,

Kennedy turned to his old rival,

now Senate Majority Whip Hubert Humphrey.

If I'd known the job was this tough, said Kennedy,

I wouldn't have beaten you in West Virginia.

After days of preparation, including countless meetings

with his brother Bobby, Ted Sorensen,

and other close advisors, Kennedy decided it was time

to address the nation as the country prepared

for a full-scale nuclear war.

♪ ♪

- In terms of how dangerous the situation is,

and at this point, we were at one step from going to war.

♪ ♪

- On the evening of October 22,

Kennedy sat behind his desk in the Oval Office,

surrounded by cameras and members of the press.

Finally, he spoke.

- Good evening, my fellow citizens.

This government, as promised, has maintained the closest

surveillance of the Soviet military buildup

on the island of Cuba.

Within the past week, unmistakable evidence

has established the fact that a series

of offensive missile sites is now in preparation

on that imprisoned island.

♪ ♪

My fellow citizens, let no one doubt

that this is a difficult and dangerous effort

on which we have set out.

Many months of sacrifice and self-discipline lie ahead,

months in which both our patience

and our will will be tested.

[drums beating]

- I have directed the armed forces to prepare

for any eventuality.

- That's the only time I felt as though it could be over.

- The two sides were close to nuclear war.

- We must labor on,

not towards a strategy of annihilation,

but towards a strategy of peace.

- Kennedy is feeling the pressure

from the Civil Rights activists.

- I say, segregation now,

segregation tomorrow,

and segregation forever.

- George Wallace says, I will bar James Hood

and Vivian Malone from this citadel of white supremacy,

the University of Alabama.

♪ ♪