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John F. Kennedy & The Cuban
Missile Crisis
For nearly a year after the CIA-sponsored invasion of
Cuba's Bay of Pigs in April 1961, memos flew back and forth challenging the objectivity
and appropriateness of criticism of the agency's performance in the official report of its
own inspector general, Lyman Kirkpatrick. For nearly 40 years thereafter, the
CIA fought to keep the report and responses by operatives involved in the fiasco
secret. The Freedom of Information Act, a CIA "openness" campaign,
and a 1995 executive order finally made the documents available. It is clear
why the report generated controversy: at a time when the agency was trying to shift
responsibility to others in government, especially President Kennedy and the Defense and
State departments, Kirkpatrick outlined CIA errors, from bad planning, poor staffing, and
faulty intelligence to "failure to advise the President that success had become
dubious." Most general readers won't care to wallow through either
report or responses, yet libraries with special collection and study interests may want
these essential historical documents. copyright© 1998, American Library Association. All
rights reserved
The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962
was a volcanic event in American foreign relations and arguably the most perilous moment
in world history. For thirteen days, as the United States and the Soviet Union
teetered on the brink of nuclear war, a young and charismatic American president faced off
with an aggressive Soviet premier over the secret installation of Soviet missiles on the
island of Cuba, just ninety miles from the Florida coast and under the Communist government of the revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
For many years historians of the crisis have concentrated on the events of
those thirteen days in October. Mark White's new study adds an equally intense
scrutiny of the causes and consequences of the affair. Missiles in Cuba is
based on a wide range of up-to-date scholarship plus Mr. White's own findings in National
Security Archive materials, Kennedy Library tapes of ExComm meetings during the crisis,
and correspondence involving Soviet officials in Washington and Havana - all newly
released. This more rounded picture gives us a much clearer understanding of
the policy strategies pursued by the United States and the Soviet Union (and, to a lesser
extent, Cuba) that brought on the crisis. Mr. White's almost hour-by-hour
account of the confrontation itself also destroys some venerable myths, such as the unique
initiatives attributed to Robert Kennedy. And the author's assessment of the
consequences of the crisis points to salutary effects on Soviet-American relations and on
U.S. nuclear defense strategy, but questionable influences on Soviet defense spending and
on Washington's perception of its talents for "crisis management" - which were
later to be tested in Vietnam.
The first paperback edition of the popular primary
source reader, including many newly released documents. "In this age of
high technology weapons, crisis-management is dangerous, difficult, and
uncertain.... The record of the missile crisis is replete with examples of
misinformation, misjudgment, miscalculation. Such errors are costly in
conventional warfare. When they affect decisions relating to nuclear forces, they can result in the destruction of
nations." (from the foreword by Robert S. McNamara)
Thirty-six years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, these declassified documents stand as
testament to just how dangerously close the world came to nuclear destruction in 1962, and
challenge the official history of the event as a model of crisis management.
This collection of formerly secret records, available now in paperback for the first time,
includes correspondence between John F. Kennedy, Nikita Krushchev, and Fidel Castro;
intelligence reports; minutes; cables; and new documents released since the publication of
the hardcover. The editors have provided a document-by-document account of the
most important superpower confrontation of the twentieth century.
Reading these transcripts place you in a chair at the
table in the Cabinet Room in 1962. What is history now is a current event
then. Pearl Harbor and Berlin. The Cold War at
it's peak. The world's worst potentially deadly crisis is being debated right
before your eyes. Many options are available, and each could lead to global
nuclear war. Immediate strike with no warning. Strike with
warning. Blockade and no strike. All options are considered an act
of war. This book allows you to see a president in office who listens to and
learns from advisors, sifts through evidence, and makes decisions as best any man
can. Definitely a book that future presidents can and should learn
from. It taught me that my vote for president is the most important thing that
I do in my life. Incredible. I hope there's an Inside the Kremlin Companion
You may be looking for the famous generals of the US civil
war, the hunt for Osama bin
Laden, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis
or the
holocaust,
Vietnam or the Second World War, weapons through the
ages, US Military
Regulation Dress Swords, Medieval
Swords, costumes and uniforms,
Napoleon Bonaparte, the French
Revolution, Masonic Pope
or
Royal Regalia or GI Joe.
Australian Order of Precedence
Missile Crisis in Cuba - President John F. Kennedy - Bay of Pigs
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