All language subtitles for 06-JFK-To the Brink

Even if there were only one communist
in the state department,

that'd still be one communist too many.

Everywhere I look around the world,
the question is,

what -maybe- we gonna lose next?

This is the first intercontinental conference

of so-called colored people

We have been compelled to create
a permanent armaments industry

of vast proportions.

Do you want a man for president
who's seasoned through and through

but not so doggone seasoned that
he won't try something new?

A man who's old enough to know
and young enough to do

Well, it's up to you, it's up to you
it's strictly up to you.

The 1960 presidential election was
fought primarily on the issue of

communism.

Above everything else, the American
people want leaders

who will keep the peace without
surrender for America and the world.

Positioning himself like Barack Obama in 2008

as the candidate of change

young challenger John F. Kennedy
was able to take the strongly

anti-communist republican Richard Nixon
to task for failing to prevent

a missile gap and for permitting the
establishment of a communist regime

only 90 miles from the Florida
coast line.

It certainly appears that the 34th man
to occupy the white house will be

43 year old John Fitzgerald Kennedy

to those nations who would make
themselves our adversary,

we offer not a pledge, but a request
that both sides begin anew the quest

for peace, before the dark powers
of destruction unleashed by science

engulf all humanity in planned
or accidental self-destruction.

Kennedy, America's first catholic president,
won a narrow and, perhaps a stolen, election.

But he did take Washington and the
world by storm with his wits and

graceful elegance.

His administration was nicknamed
Camelot, after king Arthur's mythical

round table of peace.

His opportunistic but politically astute
choice of Lyndon Johnson of Texas as

vice-president confirmed the liberal
wing of the party's distrust of him.

Elected to the senate in '52, Kennedy
had been a cold war liberal who had

avoided criticizing Joseph McCarthy,
an old family friend.

His younger brother, Robert, had even
served on McCarthy's staff.

Alluding to the title of his Pulitzer prize
winning book Profiles in Courage,

Eleanor Roosevelt said she wished that
Kennedy had had a little less profile

and a little more courage.

His team, a combination of insiders
from foundations, corporations and

Wall St. firms as well as progressives
and intellectuals, was labeled the

best and the brightest for their intelligence,
achievements and can-do spirit

typified by national security advisor
McGeorge Bundy, the first applicant

to get perfect scores on all 3
Yale entrance exams.

At defense, Kennedy brought in a
civilian outsider, Robert McNamara

renowned for his computer-like
mind in leading the Ford Motor Co.

he quickly earned the immediate
distrust of his generals by putting

the Pentagon under microscopic
scrutiny.

A devastating nuclear war plan
had been handed down to them

from Eisenhower. McNamara was
appalled by what he found:

a culture of paranoid,
worst case scenarios.

When Kennedy asked the
statistically minded McNamara

to ascertain just how big the
missile gap really was, it took

3 weeks to confirm that there was
no gap, and several months to

find out that there was quite
a huge difference:

The US had approximately 25,000
nuclear weapons, the Soviets 2,500

the US 1,500 heavy bombers 1,000 of
them in Europe within Soviet range

the Soviets, 192.

the US 45 ICBM's
the Soviets 4.

This is Cuba, where communism has
established its first rich head in the

western hemisphere. It provides
communism with a convenient

arsenal of planes, tanks and modern weapons
just 90 miles from American shore,

only 7 minutes by jet.

Kennedy was briefed on Eisenhower's
invasion plan for Cuba by Allen Dulles

who assured "off-led, the Cuban people
would rise in support".

Several civilian advisors took sharp
issue with the plan.

but the inexperienced president
feared blocking an operation backed

by Eisenhower and the Joint Chiefs.

3 days before the operation, in April 1961,
8 US B-26 bombers flown by Cuban exiles

incapacitated half of Castro's
air force.

The US has committed no aggression
against Cuba and no offensive has been

launched from Florida or from any
other part of the US.

Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, in an
embarrassing prequel to Colin Powell's

performance at the UN over Iraq
in 2003, showed a photograph

of a plane supposedly flown by a
Cuban defector, but quickly exposed

as belonging to the CIA.

The assault has begun on the
dictatorship of Fidel Castro.

Almost 1600 Cuban exiles arrived at
the Bay of Pigs in 7 ships, 2 of them

owned by United Fruit.
But Cuban troops were ready.

And no popular uprising
ever occured.

The invaders begged for direct US support,
and much to the shock of the CIA,

Kennedy refused this support, as he warned
he would, fearing a Soviet counter move

against west Berlin.

At a midnight meeting military leaders and
the CIA's chief of clandestine services

pressed Kennedy for 3 hours to send
ground and air support. They expected it.

Eisenhower would've done it.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

said it was reprehensible, almost
criminal, to pull the rug out.

But Kennedy stood his ground.

The 114 rebels were killed, roughly
1200 captured.

It was to be a chilling beginning to
one of the most turbulent decades of

whatever changed the world in 1960s.

Heads up America
Let's stand, be brave, keep our defenses high

Heads up America
A land that is prepared can never die

There's an old saying that, a victory has
a 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan

through the statements, detailed discussions
on not to conceal responsibility,

because I'm the responsible officer
of the government

The entire sordid affair had a profound
effect on the president, who told

an influential journalist friend:
The first advice I'm going to give

my successor is to watch the generals
and to avoid feeling that, just because

they were military men, their opinions
on military matters were worth a damn.

He seemed to begin to understand what
Eisenhower was warning about, but his

learning curve would need to be a sharp one
to escape the steel trap of cold war thinking.

Publicly, Kennedy took full responsibility
for the fiasco, privately he was furious at

the Joint Chiefs sons of bitches and
those CIA bastards, threatening to

Incredibly, he fired Allen Dulles, albeit
diplomatically, and two other top officials

and all CIA overseas personnel were placed
under state department control

Kennedy's growing mistrust of his military
and intelligence advisors made it easier to

rebuff their pressure to send troops in 1961
into the tiny landlocked Asian nation of Laos

something that Eisenhower had warned him
might be necessary to defeat the communists.

Laos, strategic buffer state between
the red block and free Asia is watched

with concern by all the world.

The Joint Chiefs wanted Kennedy to give
prior commitment to a large scale

invading force. Arthur Schlesinger, an
aide and respected historian, later said:

After the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy had contempt
for the Joint Chiefs. He dismissed them as

a bunch of old men. He thought
Lemnitzer was a dope.

And as a result, Kennedy opted for a
neutralist solution which angered the Pentagon.

It would come back to haunt him.

The mood was dark when Kennedy
travelled to Vienna to meet Khrushchev

at their first summit conference
at June of '61

Khrushchev berated the young president
for America's global imperialism:

We in the USSR feel that the revolutionary
process should have a right to exist

The major issue for Khruschev was
Germany.

What terrified him was the prospect of
west Germany finally getting control

over US nukes deployed so close
to the Soviet union.

And also by 1961, approximately 20% of
east German population, some 2.5 million people

had fled through the open borders
seeking a better life in west Germany.

It was an open sore humiliation
for the Soviets who now wanted

a treaty recognizing 2 separate Germany's
and the withdrawal of western forces

from west Berlin.

Khruschev explained to an
american journalist:

We have a much longer history with
Germany. We have seen how quickly

governments in Germany can change, and
how easy it is for Germany to become

an instrument of mass murder.
You like to think ...

we have no public opinion.
Don't be sure about this.

We have a saying here:

Give a German a gun, sooner or
later he will point it at Russians,

that we could crush Germany, in
a few minutes.

But we fear the ability of Germany
to commit the US to start a war,

an atomic war.

How many times do you have to be
burned before you respect fire?

Kennedy's parting comment to Kruschev was:
I see it's going to be a very cold winter.

We have wholly different views of
right and wrong,

of what is an internal affair and
what is an aggression.

And above all, we have wholly different
concepts of where the world is

and where it is going.

Later that summer, Kennedy intensified
the crisis with a sabre-rattling speech

The source of world troubling tension
is Moscow, not Berlin.

And if war begins it will have
begun in Moscow, and not Berlin.

increasing the army by 300,000 men
tripling the draft, and called for a

national program to construct public
and private fallout shelters,

he reminded citizens:
In the thermonuclear age,

any misjudgements on either side
about the intentions of the other

could rain more devastation in
several hours than has been wrought

in all the wars of human history.

The Warsaw pact nations responded
in dramatic fashion.

On August 13, east German troops began
erecting barricades and road blocks

all across Germany to shut off
the stream of escaping east Germans.

The barb wire was soon replaced
with concrete.

Kennedy, in defiance, sent 1500 US troops
by road from west Germany into

west Berlin where they were met by
vice-president Johnson.

That's a month Khrushchev
resumed nuclear testing.

When Kennedy learned of this
he erupted,

fucked again.

Despite the US's nuclear superiority
the Air Force wanted to increase

the missile count to 3,000

McNamara fought them down to 1000
as the compromised number.

The Soviets by October were
detonating a 30 mega ton bomb

the biggest yet exploded.

And the next week, a 50+ mega ton
bomb, over 3,000 times as powerful

as the one dropped on Hiroshima.

Kennedy had inherited by now the
full route of Dulles' brinksmanship.

To an outside observer, it might have seem
that Americans had taken leave of their senses

in the summer and fall of '61 as the
nation conducted an extended conversation

on buidling fallout shelters in their homes,
as well as the ethics of killing neighbors

or friends to protect their shelter.

You got a bunch of your neighbors
outside who want to stay alive

keep on doing what you're doing
and we'll bust out where you're now

Despite media pressure, surprisingly few
people actually built shelters

either out of a sense of non-resignation
or the recognition of the difficulties of a

meaningful survival.

In hindsight, the construction of the
monstrous Berlin wall actually diffused

the immediate threat of war, enabling
Khrushchev to appease his hard liners.

Kennedy confided: it's not a very nice solution
but a wall is a hell of lot better than a war.

In another part of the world however,
Kennedy had given his commitment

to the politically important Cuban exile
community in Florida

to overthrow the Castro goverment.

This would spark significant tensions
with the Soviet union.

In early November he unleashed
operation Mongoose,

a terror campaign overseen by his brother
Robert and run by Edward Lansdale,

designed to wreck Cuba's economy and,
among other things, secretly continue the

up-to-now bungled assasination attempts
on Castro.

Seeking a pretext for military action, the
Joint Chiefs approved operation Northwoods

which included a Remember the Maine incident
modeled on the ship sinking that triggered

the Spanish-American war in 1898.

Girls delightful in Cuba. stop.
Could send you prose poems

about scenery but don't feel right
spending your money. stop.

There is no war in Cuba.
Signed Wheeler. Any answer?

Yes. Dear Wheeler: You provide
the prose poems, I'll provide the war.

This plan included staging a Cuban
government hijacking, shooting down of a

civilian airliner, sinking boatloads of
Cubans escaping to Florida,

and blaming the communist government.

Kennedy rejected the plan, but
US actions throughout 1962

convinced the Soviets that a
Cuban invasion was imminent.

In january, the US coerced Latin
American countries to suspend

Cuba's membership in the OAS.

The US conducted a series of large scale
military execises in the Caribbean in the

spring, summer and fall of '62

one involving 79 ships, 300 aircraft
and more than 40,000 troops.

The last one in october with 7500 marines
set to participate was codenamed Ortsac

a mock invasion of an island replete
with the overthrow of its government.

The message was clear.

Kennedy was equally intent on standing up
to the communists in Vietnam.

But as a student of history, he
must have harbored doubts about

another land war in Asia.

As a young congressman he'd visited
Vietnam in 1951 during the debacle

of the Korean war, and advised against
aiding the French colonialists, and

later spoke broadly of needing to win
the support of the Arabs, Africans

and Asians who

he had already pointed out the
contradiction of supporting the

French empire in Africa and Asia while
opposing Soviet moves in Hungary and Poland

But he was now president, and was soon
defending a corrupt south Vietnamese

government that was banning public assembly,
some political parties and even public dancing

Embracing Eisenhower's dominoe theory
Kennedy was now insisting that Vietnam

represented the cornerstone of the free
world in south east Asia:

the finger in the dike.

Lyndon Johnson went to Vietnam in May
of '61 and annointed Ngo Dinh Diem

and painting a bleak picture pressed
for a much larger US involvement.

The generals and even McNamara agreed that
only US combat troops could forestall a

communist victory.

However Kennedy, a decorated veteran of
WW2, resisted sending in combat troops.

He said to Arthur Schlesinger:

The troops will march in, the bands
will play, the crowds will cheer, and

in 4 days everyone will have forgotten.
Then we will be told we have to send in

more troops. Well, it's like
taking a drink: the effect wears off

and you have to take another.

But he was an admirer of guerilla warfare
in WW2, where British and Americans had

fought behind the lines in places
like the Burma jungle.

And he did approve his generals' other
recommendations expanding military involvement

The US personnel in Vietnam jumped from
800 when Kennedy took office

to over 16,000 advisors in 1963.

He also allowed a growing army of
CIA and numerous American civilian

contractors to flock to this new
honeypot of enterprise.

Under Kennedy's 3 year watch CIA
launched 163 major covert operations

worldwide. Only 7 fewer than had been
conducted under Eisenhower in 8 years.

Vietnam in its early stages was sometimes
referred as a CIA war.

At West Point, Kennedy reinforced this by
saying: it was another type of war

new in its intensity, ancient in its origins
war by ambush, eroding and exhausting

the enemy, instead of engaging them.

History knows the contrary proved
to be true in Vietnam.

Under Kennedy, and mostly unknown
to the American public, the US began

resettling villagers at gun point in
barbwire-enclosed compounds

guarded by unreliable south Vietnamese
government troops, and

using herbicides to defoliate
guerilla areas

the long term environmental and health
effects would turn out disastrously

for Vietnamese and Americans alike.

But, it would be the Cuban missile crisis in
Oct 1962 that trully impressed upon Kennedy

the potentially disastrous repercussions
of his hardlined cold war policies.

On a sunday Oct 14th, a U2 surveillance
plane brought back photographic evidence

of Soviet medium range ballistic missiles
in position in Cuba.

It was quite a shock.

Khrushchev had lied to him, promising
no offensive weapons in Cuba.

But he was making a blunder of
epic proportions.

The last thing Soviets wanted in 1962 was
a direct military confrontation with the US

With little more than 10 ICBMs that could
reliably reach US soil and fewer than 300

nuclear warheads, they stood no change
against the US's 5000 deliverable

nuclear bombs and nearly 2000 ICBMs
and bombers.

Why did Khrushchev do this?

The American public never understood.

The media presented Soviet actions in Cuba
as a case of outright Soviet aggression.

But from the Soviet point of view,
it was a reasonable response to

repeated signs at the US was preparing a
first strike against the Soviet union.

The missiles might also deter the ...
invasion of Cuba,

which in a sense had now
become a pawn in the game.

The missiles would make US think
twice before attacking, as Khrushchev said

giving the Americans

There was also no question that
Khrushchev genuinely admired Castro

who had come to power on his own
without outside help,

and had enormous symbolic value
in the third world.

Finally, the missiles were an inexpensive
way for Khrushchev to placate those who

questioned his leadership
in the communist world.

But it was so dangerous what he did.

So dangerous.

In his thinking, Khrushchev had intended
to announce the presence of

the nuclear missiles on Nov 7th
at the 45th anniversary of the

Bolshevik revolution.

But as military analyst Daniel Ellsberg

has pointed out, by keeping secret the
fact that he had delivered tactical

cruise and ballistic missiles along
with their nuclear warheads,

Khrushchev had transformed a potentially
effective means of deterring a US invasion

into a destabilizing provocation
that backfired.

The US never understood the warheads
had already arrived.

The whole point of the doomsday machine

is lost, if you keep it a secret

why didn't you tell the world, eh?

It was to be announced at the
party congress on monday

as you know, the premier loves surprises.

Even today, few realize the gravity of
the Cuban missile crisis, and

even fewer seem to grasp
its enduring lessons.

Dulles' legacy of brinksmanship of
going to the edge had

finally spawned its Frankenstein monster.

Two days later, Kennedy met with
his key advisors in a top secret

meeting hoping to stop the missiles
before they were fully installed.

3 days later on Oct. 19th
he met with his Joint Chiefs.

They pushed for a surgical airstrike
without warning to remove the missiles

followed by an all-out
invasion of Cuba.

Lemay assured Kennedy that the
Soviets would not respond.

Lemay welcomed nuclear war as
inevitable, and a war that

his country was currently in
a position to win.

There might not be a second opportunity.

He fulminated against the
Russian bear:

Let's take his leg off, right up
to his testicles

at second thought, let's take
his testicles too.

After the meeting, Kennedy remarked to
his aide Kenneth O'Donnell:

If we listen to them and do what they
want us to do, none of us

will be alive later to tell them
that they were wrong.

With US missiles in Turkey, so close
to the Soviet union, McNamara contended

that the strategic balance of power
was not changed.

Kennedy agreed. But,

understanding the political symbolism,
said that allowing the missiles to stay

would weaken the perception of the US
across the world, and

especially in Latin America.

He confided to his brother Robert
that if he didn't take strong action now

after what he did at the Bay of Pigs,
he'd be impeached.

This moment became a crucial test
of Kennedy's character.

In the context of building that
character, he'd fought bravely and

saved men's lives as a Naval lt.
in the south pacific

and now was no longer as intimidated
by uniformed generals.

In the coming days, he would reject
the advice of such older men

as well as Paul Nitze, Dean Acheson
and even Dwight Eisenhower

He opted instead for a blockade, which
he referred to as a quarantine

to downplay the fact that this too
was an act of war.

on Oct. 22, 8 days after the pictures
were taken, Kennedy solemnly informed

the American people:

All ships of any kind bound for Cuba

from whatever nation or port

will, if found to contain cargoes of
offensive weapons, be turned back.

He portrayed the US as an innocent
victim of unprovoked Soviet aggression

not revealing that we've been fighting a
terrorist war against Cuba since late 1959.

I know that some action
should be taken, but

he's gonna have to tread
very lightly, short of war.

I think it's high time we stop Russia
and have things our own way.

The temperature of the world shut up

People were on edge, transfixed to
their TVs and radios

children watched the news with
their parents full of fear

that same day the Strategic
Air Command went to Defcon 3

2 days later, for the first time
in history, to Defcon 2

prepared to strike targets
in the Soviet union.

The decision to go to the precipice
of nuclear war was made under

the authority given by Eisenhower, by
SAC commander Gen. Thomas Power

without consulting the president.

Thereafter, the SAC fleet remained airborne
refueled by aerial tankers.

It was Power who, in 1960, told a
defense analyst:

the whole idea is to kill the bastards

look, at the end of the war if there are
2 americans and 1 russian, we win

the analyst reponded:

well, you better make sure
there are a man and a woman.

The series of heroine incidents occured,
anyone of which could have triggered

a holocaust.

The SAC test missile was launched from US
towards the Marshall islands, and officials

mistakenly reported that Tampa
and Minnesota were under attack.

on Oct. 25 the Soviet leaders decided that
they would have to remove the missiles

but still hoped to trade them in Cuba
for US Jupiters in Turkey.

Before they could act on that decision,
Khrushchev received faulty information

that the invasion of Cuba was beginning.

By the 26th of Oct. american planes
were flying over Cuba at tree-top level

250,000 troops were assembled off the
Florida coastline ready to move

2000 bombing sorties were planned.

Castro predicted a US strike
within 72 hours.

The 42,000 strong Soviet force,
commanded by a Stalingrad veteran,

and backed by 100,000 Cubans

possessed, unknown to American int. ,
approx. 100 battlefield nuclear weapons.

Khrushchev was losing control
of the situation.

In amazing moment he asked his generals
if they could guarantee that holding

this course would not result in
the death of 500 million people:

What good would it have done me
in the last hour of my life to know that

though our great nation and the US were
in complete ruin, the national honor of

the Soviet union was intact?

In what McNamara described as the

Khrushchev sent Kennedy an urgent
letter asking simply for a promise

not to invade Cuba.

He warned that the 2 countries were
heading inextricably towards war:

It would not be in our power to stop that

war ends when it has ruled through cities
and villages everywhere sowing death

and destruction.

on Oct. 27th an incident occured that
Schlesinger described as:

not only the most dangerous moment
of the cold war, it was

the Russian ships were heading toward
the quarantine line

one of four Soviet submarines sent to
protect the ships was being hunted all day

by the carrier USS Randolf

More than 100 miles outside the blockade
the Randolph began dropping depth charges

unaware the sub was carrying nuclear weapons:

The explosion rocked the submarine
which went dark, except for emegency lines

The temp. rose sharply, the CO2 in
the air reached near lethal levels

and people could barely breathe.

Men began to faint and fall down.

The suffering went on for 4 hours.
Then, the americans hit us

with something stronger.
We thought that's it, the end.

Panic ensued.
Commander Valentin Savitsky tried

without success to reach the general staff.
He assumed the war had already started,

and that we were gonna die in
disgrace for having done nothing.

He ordered the nuclear torpedo
to be prepared for firing.

He turned to the other 2 officers aboard.

Fortunately for mankind, the political officer
Vasili Arkhipov was able to calm him down

and convince him not to launch,

probably single-handedly preventing
nuclear war.

In the midst of this heroine confrontation
the break point came when the national

security council received word that a
U2 plane had been shot down over Cuba.

Khrushchev had not authorized this.

The Joint Chiefs wanted to act immediately
and take out all the firing sites and missiles.

Kennedy said: no.

The shooting down of the U2 made both
Kennedy and Khrushchev realize

they were losing control of their
enormous military machines.

Americans receiving continual TV
broadcasts were paralyzed in the grip

of something they had only dreamed about.

Robert McNamara later said, as he
watched the sunset come over the

saturday night the 27th of Oct:
It was a beautiful fall evening

height of the crisis

and I went up into the open air
to look and to smell it

because I thought it was the last
saturday I would ever see.

Soviet diplomats were burning their
files in Washington and New York

Washington insiders had begun to quietly
evacuate their families from the capital

telling wives and children to drive as
far south as quickly as possible.

In a last desperate effort, Kennedy sent his
brother to meet with the Soviet ambassador

Anatoly Dobrynin on that saturday
to tell him the US was about to attack

unless it received an immediate Soviet
commitment to remove its bases from Cuba.

the US will pledge to never invade
Cuba or aid others in that enterprise.

If your Jupiter missiles in Turkey
were removed also

such an accommodation could be reached

That's not possible

The United States cannot agree
to such terms under threat

Any belief to the contrary
was in error

You want war?

However, while there can be
no quid pro on this issue

the United States
can offer a private assurance

Our Jupiter missiles in Turkey
are obsolete

and have been scheduled
for withdrawal for some time

This withdrawal should take place,
within ,say, six months

Of course, any public disclosure of
this assurance would negate the deal

and produce the most stringent
denials from our government

This private assurance represents
the word of the highest authority?

Dobrynin conveyed the urgency
to Khrushchev

who claimed in his memoirs that
Robert Kennedy's message was

even more desperate, that the president
is not sure that the military will not

overthrow him and seize power.

The next morning, a sunday
Oct. 28th dawned with mercy

Soviets announced they would withdraw
the missiles.

The world breathed as if there was
only one collective breath for all

The crisis would actually continue
behind the scenes for 3 more weeks

and finally ended on Nov 22 when the
Soviets were able to regain control of

their battlefield nuclear weapons
from the Cubans.

The weapons would actually
leave Cuba.

It's interesting to note in hindsight
that during the entire crisis

Soviet missiles were never fueled,
Red Army reservists were not called up

and no threats were made against Berlin

30 years later in 1992, McNamara
was shocked when told that

if american troops had invaded,

not only were there 4 times as many
armed Soviets in Cuba as reported,

but 100 battlefield nuclear weapons
would likely have been used.

Realizing that 100,000 americans
would probably have died,

McNamara said the US would have
responded by wiping out Cuba with the

high risk of an all-out nuclear war
between the US and the Soviet union.

hundreds of millions of people
might have perished.

Possibly all mankind.

It is recently been discovered that
on the island of Okinawa

a large force of missiles with
megaton nuclear warheads and

F-100 fighter bombers armed with
hydrogen bombs

were preparing for action.

Their likely target was not
the Soviet union, but China.

Military leaders were furious when the
crisis ended without an attack on Cuba

McNamara recalled their bitterness:

The president invited the Chiefs in
to thank them for their support

during the crisis.
It was one hell of a scene.

Curtis Lemay came out saying:

We lost. We ought to just go in there
today, and knock him off.

It was Khrushchev, even more than
Kennedy, who deserves the

lion's share of credit for
having avoided war.

And for this, he was villified, as
Mikhail Gorbachev would be

3 decades later when he democratically
presided against his will over the

disillusion of the
Soviet union.

The Chinese charged Khrushchev
with cowardess for caving in

Russian hardliners said he
had shit his pants.

Much of the Pentagon however

believing that its willingness to go to
war had forced Soviets to back down

determined that superior force
would also work elsewhere

especially in Vietnam, where it was
necessary once more to make a

stand against communism.

The Soviets drew the oppposite lesson
determined never again to be

so humiliated and forced to
capitulate for weakness.

They began a massive buildup of nuclear
weapons to achieve parity with the US

Weakened by the crisis, Khrushchcev
would be forced out of power

the following year.

But first he wrote Kennedy
a long letter:

Evil has brought some good.
People have felt more tangibly

the breathing of the burning flames
of thermonuclear war.

In light of this, he made a series
of bold proposals for eliminating

everything in our relations
capable of generating a new crisis.

He suggested a non-aggression treaty
between Nato and the Warsaw pact nations.

Why not, he said,
disband all military blocs

seize testing all nuclear weapons
in the atmosphere, in the outer space

under water, and also underground?

He proposed solutions to conflicts
over Germany and China.

It's interesting to note that
there was a remarkable revival of

christianity at the same time,
with the short lived papacy of

Pope John 23rd, one of the
most popular popes ever.

He called to gather the 2nd Vatican
council which issued a new encyclical

that shook up the catholic world
that was called Pacem in Terris

peace on earth

and ushered in a change in thinking

particulary in latin america where its
priests, nuns and lay persons took the

message of the gospels to the poor
and the persecuted, encouraging them

to take their fate into their own hands
to overcome the misery of their existence.

What became known as
liberation theology

led to many ensuing problems
with Kennedy's successors

in the backyard of the US.

Although more tepid to Khrushchev
in his response, Kennedy's thinking

was evolving, and in the year
following missile crisis

underwent a remarkable transformation.

He bagan to see Vietnam as one place to
step back from the east-west confrontation,

but he knew it would not be easy.

The debate over Kennedy's true
intentions in Vietnam has

at times been quite acromonious
and his own contradictory statements

and mixed signals have added
to the confusion.

Clearly, he was under enormous pressure
to stay at the course

and as late as july 1963, Kennedy
told a new conference

for us, to withdraw would mean a
collapse of not only south Vietnam

but south east Asia.

in private however he was voicing doubts.

in late '62 he asked influential
senator Mike Mansfiield to

go there and evaluate the situation.

Mansfield returned with a
highly pessimistic assessment

recommending the US withdraw
its forces

aide Kenny O'Donnell described
Kennedy's reaction:

the president was too disturbed
by the senator's unexpected argument

He said to me when we later
talked about it:

I got angry with Mike for disagreeing
with our policy so completely

and I got angry with myself, because
I found myself agreeing with him.

on 11th of June '63 in an image
that shocked the world

Vietnamese Buddist monk Thich Quang
Duc burned himself to death at a

busy Saigon intersection to protest the
corrupt south Vietnamese government

McNamara began pressing the Joint
Chiefs for a plan of phased withdrawal

Kennedy approved the plan in May '63
but could not formalize it.

The first 1000 man were set to
depart at the end of that year.

In september he sent McNamara and
his trusted new chief of staff

general Maxwell Taylor on a 10 day
fact finding expedition to Vietnam

They gave the president their report
on Oct 2, that called for

withdrawing troops before the end of '63

and completing it by the end of '65

Kennedy now formalized his commitment
in his national security action memorandum

263, which he signed on Oct 11th
then released to the press

Kennedy no doubt was torn

He'd explain to his close aide
Kenny O'Donnell:

in 1965 I'll become one of
the most unpopular presidents

in history. I'll be damned everywhere
as a communist appeaser. But I don't care.

If I try to pull out completely now
from Vietnam, we'd have another

Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands.
But I can do i after I'm re-elected.

So, we better make damn sure
I am re-elected.

The republicans were after his scalp.

NY governor Nelson Rockefeller charged
that he was soft on communism,

naively believing the Soviet leaders
were reasonable and desirous of

reaching a fundamental settlement
with the west

Rockefeller, who was a moderate republican,
said

Kennedy hadn't stopped communist aggression
in Laos, he had failed to provide

air support during the Bay of Pigs
and stood

Coming up behind Rockefeller was
extremist republican senator

Barry Goldwater who would actually win
the nomination in '64

as late as Oct 1963 in the hope
that the situation in south Vietnam

could improve, Kennedy supported
the overthrow, but not the assasination

of the oppressive Dinh Diem regime

When the Vietnamese president and
his brother were killed by the

south Vietnamese military, Kennedy
was visibly and extremely upset.

Nonetheless, his mindset did not change.

Among those who later came forward
confirmation of Kennedy's intention to

withdraw were Robert McNamara,
Arthur Schlesinger,

senate majority leader Mike Mansfield,
and asst. secretary of state Roger Hilsman

Daniel Elsberg later in 1967 interviewed
Rober Kennedy, prior to the shift in

public opinion on the war.

Kennedy said his bother was

Elsberg asked him, would his brother
have accepted defeat at the hands of

the communists, and Robert Kennedy
replied: we would have ... it up,

we would have gotten the government in
then asked us out

or that would have negotiate it with the
other side

we would have handled it like Laos.

Elsberg asked him why his brother was
so clear headed when most of his

senior advisors were still committed to
prevailing, Robert responded emotionally:

because we were there, we were there in
1951, we saw what was happening to the

French, we saw it. My brother determined,
determined never to let that happen to us.

During the remarkable last few months
of his life, Kennedy even contemplated

a course reversal on Castro's Cuba,

a relationship in which his policies
were consistently wrong headed.

But just as he clung to the hope of
victory in Vietnam, while

taking steps towards withdrawal
he endorsed a new round of

CIA sabotage in Cuba

while exploring ... of discreet
contact with Castro himself

He told Jean Daniel, an influential
french journalist who was about

to meet Castro: I believe that
there's no country in the world

where economic colonization, humiliation
and exploitation were worse than in Cuba

in part owing to my country's policies
during the Batista regime.

Daniel finally met with Castro
2 days before Kennedy's assasination

Castro expressing criticism of US behaviour
but admiring Kennedy's potential

also held out hope for a new departure.

Kennedy in the heart of the cold war
was facing the abiding truth of

American politics:

one must be strong, and if one
is perceived as soft or weak

one does not endure

and that is the confusing thing
about power

Kennedy himself was quite ill
from Addison's disease and

effects of spinal operations from
WW2 injuries

addicted to pain killers in his own
ravenous appetites

finding himself in a cocoon of deceits
not only to himself but to his wife

to his Cuba and Vietnam policies
and to the country

John Kennedy, yet, seemed aloof
from fear

like Roosevelt, he embodied a grace that
forgave much in the new era of TV reality

in june of 1963 in a commencement
address at American University,

without input from the Joint Chiefs,
the CIA or the state department

Kennedy gave one of the most extraordinary
presidential speeches of the 20th century

encouraged his listeners to think
about the Soviet people in human terms

and called for an end to the cold war

What kind of a peace do I mean, and
what kind of a peace do we seek?

not a Pax Americana, enforced on
the world by american weapons of war

let us re-examine our attitude
towards the Soviet union

it is sad to realize the extend
of the gulf between us

and if we cannot end now our
differences, at least we can help

make the world safe for diversity

For, in the final analysis, our most basic
common link is that we all inhabit

this small planet. We all breathe the same air.
We all cherish our children's future.

And we are all mortal.

in september of that year, the senate
passed the partial nuclear test ban treaty

by a vote of 80 to 19.

presidential speech writer Ted Sorenson
believed that no other accomplishment

in the white house ever gave
Kennedy greater satisfaction.

this treaty is for all of us
it is particularly for our children

and our grandchildren, and they
have no lobby here in Washington

According to the ancient Chinese proverb
a journey of a 1000 miles must begin with

a single step. My fellow americans,
let us take that first step.

and in another stunning reversal,
Kennedy called for replacing the

space race, perhaps his most
signature initiative, with joint

US-Soviet exploration of space and
an expedition to the moon.

He said: international law, and the UN
charter will apply. Why should man's

first flight to the moon be
a national competition?

By the time John Kennedy drove into
downtown Dallas to begin his

re-election campaign for '64
he'd made powerful enemies

in the upper echelons of the intelligence,
military and business commmunities

not to mention the mafia,
southern segregationists and

both pro- and anti-Castro Cubans.

in their minds, he was guilty of not
following through on the Bay of Pigs

disempowering the CIA,
firing its leaders,

resisting involvement in Laos,
concluding the test ban treaty,

planning to disengage from Vietnam,

abandoning the space race,

encouraging 3rd world nationalism,

flirting with ending the cold war,
and perhaps most damningly

accepting a negotiated settlement
in the Cuban missile crisis.

The rage towards him
was visceral.

Kennedy had read the best selling
1962 novel Seven Days in May, which

portrays a coup d'etat by a
Joint Chiefs of Staff furious

over a liberal president's new
nuclear treaty with the Soviets.

Your course of action in the past year
has bordered on criminal negligence

this treaty with the Russians is
a violation of any concept of security

You're not a weak sister, Mr. President.

You're a criminally weak sister.

He told a friend: it's possible, it
could happen in this country.

If there were a 3rd Bay of Pigs,
it could happen

This is Walter in our newsroom

there has been an attempt that perhaps you
know now on the life of president Kennedy

he was wounded in an automobile driving
from Dallas airport into downtown Dallas

A dark page on the annals of America
has been written to the crack of an

assassin's bullet.
A nation mourns, the world grieves.

The man who became 35th president
less than three years ago, is dead.

The Warren commission, strongly
influenced by ex-CIA director Allen Dulles,

later concluded that Lee Harvey
Oswald was the lone assassin

although, unlike most single assassins
with a cause, he firmly denied his guilt.

The case against him was made
effectively by the national media

but 4 of the 7 Warren commission
members expressed doubts.

Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy,
governor John Connely who'd been wounded

also questioned the findings.

The public found the report unconvincing.

We may never know who was responsible
or what their motive was, but we do know

that Kennedy's enemies included some
of the same forces who would cut down

Henry Wallace in 1944 when
he was trying to lead United States

down a similar path of peace.

Khrushchev would suffer an equally
ignominious though less bloody

fate, as he was ousted by Kremlin
hardliners the following year.

He became a critic of the Soviet
government and smuggled his memoirs

out of the country to be published
in the west under the title

Khrushchev Remembers

became a best-seller.

When he died in 1971, he was buried in
a corner of a Moscow cemetery.

No monument was erected for years.

Future generations owe an enormous debt
and possibly their very existence

to these two brave men, who
stared into the abyss, and

recoiled from what they saw.

And they owe a special debt to an
obscure Soviet submarine commander

who single-handedly blocked the start
of a nuclear war.

With the ascension of vice-president
Lyndon Johnson, there would be

important changes in many of
Kennedy's policies

particularly toward Soviet union
and Vietnam.

I will do my best, that is
all I can do.

In his inaugural address, in the
morning of that decade in jan 1961

let the word go forth from this time
and place, to friend and foe alike,

that the torch has been passed to
a new generation of Americans

but with his murder, the torch was
passed back to an old generation,

the generation of Johnson, Nixon,
Ford and Reagan; leaders, who would

systematically destroy the promise of
Kennedy's last year,

as they returned the country to war
and repression.

Though the vision Khrushchev and Kennedy
had expressed would fall with them,

it would not die.

The seeds they had planted would
germinate and sprout again

long after their deaths.

For those of us who lived through the
1960's, the Cuban missile crisis

coming on the heels of the war scare
over Berlin, was a terrifying event.

It was one of many nightmares, call it

punches to the stomach of a new
generation of American people

who had never seen history unfold so
quickly, so dramatically and in such a

violent fashion.

It would soon be followed by the
invasion of Vietnam, a blood bath

a nightmare of America's own making
that would eat Vietnamese and Americans

alive for almost a decade.

More horrifying things were to come
by the end of that decade.

But in hindsight, it was on that afternoon
in Dallas when John Kennedy's head was

blown off in broad daylight. It was as if
a giant, horrific Greek medusa had

unearthed its hideous face to
the American people,

freezing us with an oracle of
things yet to come.