Cold War: Cuban Missile Crisis, Part 5

As plans for an invasion continued, on Saturday evening, the President sent his advisors home.  They would make a final decision - war or no war - the next morning. 

While the rest of the advisors dispersed, Robert Kennedy had a secret meeting with Ambassador Dobrynin.  They discussed a top-secret potential deal:  Removal of missiles (in Cuba) for removal of missiles (in Turkey). 

Khrushchev's advisor relates how the Soviet leader responded to the secret terms proposed in the Dobrynin-RFK meeting.  His decision was broadcast, to the world, the next morning.  President Kennedy learned the news in the same manner, and at the same time, as everyone else.

Commenting on Khrushchev's decision, Castro says:  "We were irate.  How did we learn about this?  Through the radio on the morning of the 28th.  They broadcast that an agreement had been reached between the Soviet Union and the United States - that Kennedy was offering Khrushchev a guarantee.  It really was a disgraceful agreement.  It never crossed my mind they [the Soviets] would do anything like this."

But ... as Dobrynin says ... no one knew about the real agreement.  "If you asked who won or who lost, I'd say neither Kennedy nor Khrushchev."

The missiles were dismantled and Soviet ships took them back home.  It would be decades before everyone realized how close the world had actually come to all-out nuclear war - and how an agreement, between two government officials, stepped the two superpowers back from the edge of a nuclear disaster.

See, also:

Cold War: Cuban Missile Crisis, Part 1

Cold War: Cuban Missile Crisis, Part 2

Cold War: Cuban Missile Crisis, Part 3

Cold War: Cuban Missile Crisis, Part 4

Credits

From "Cold War," a 1998 TV series collaboratively created by the Turner Broadcasting System and the BBC, produced by Jeremy Isaacs.  The series originally aired on CNN (in America) and on BBC Two (in the U.K.).

This clip, about the Cuban Missile Crisis,  is from Episode 10, entitled "Cuba (1959–1962)."

Amazon.com describes "Cold War," as follows:

...This 8-volume, 24-episode series, narrated by Kenneth Branagh, is a comprehensive history that examines the key events of the arc of the Soviet Union, from its birth to its fall, and provides a thorough analysis of what was going on behind closed doors.

Informed by the stories of 500 eyewitnesses - from citizens and soldiers to historians and statesmen - and strengthened by painstaking reconstruction of archival historical film footage, CNN's Cold War is a heroic undertaking and a sweeping chronicle of the world's most fragile decades.