One minute to midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the brink of nuclear war (75 page)

"a dove from the start": Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times,
529.

"a thought of breathtaking ingenuity": Schlesinger,
A Thousand Days,
828.

"the enormous tension that gripped us": Dobrynin, 83.

Most books on the missile crisis: An exception is
The Limits of Safety
(1993), by Scott Sagan, a study about accidents involving nuclear weapons.

"100 per cent successful": History of 4080th Strategic Wing, October 1962, FOIA.

"an inner sense of confidence": Alsop and Bartlett, "In Time of Crisis."

a policy of "progressive squeeze-and-talk": Kaplan, 334.

"deeply influenced": Clark M. Clifford,
Counsel to the President
(New York: Random House, 1991), 411.

"Very gung-ho fellows": Michael Charlton and Anthony Moncrieff,
Many Reasons Why: The American Involvement in Vietnam
(New York: Hill & Wang, 1978), 82, cited in Eliot A. Cohen, "Why We Should Stop Studying the Cuban Missile Crisis,"
The National Interest
(Winter 1985-86).

"You got away with it": Reeves, 424.

"bright and energetic": Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times,
548.

"incompatible with Soviet practice": NIE 85-3-62, September 19, 1962; for postmortem, see February 4, 1963, memo from President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in McAuliffe, 362-71.

"We all inhabit": JFK Commencement Address at American University, June 10, 1963.

"plain dumb luck": Reeves, 425; see also "Acheson Says Luck Saved JFK on Cuba,"
WP,
January 19, 1969.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Dobbs was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and educated at the University of York, with fellowships at Princeton and Harvard. He is a reporter for
The Washington Post,
where he spent much of his career as a foreign correspondent covering the collapse of communism. His
Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire
was a runner-up for the 1997 PEN award for nonfiction. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

ALSO BY MICHAEL DOBBS

Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America

Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey

Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright (c) 2008 by Michael Dobbs
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Dobbs, Michael, 1950-
One minute to midnight : Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the brink of nuclear war / by Michael Dobbs.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN: 978-0-307-26936-2
1. Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962. 2. Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962--Sources. I. Title.
E841.D573 2008
972.9106'4--dc22 2007052250

v2.0

Table of Contents

Dedication

List of Maps

Preface

CHAPTER ONE : Americans

CHAPTER TWO : Russians

CHAPTER THREE : Cubans

Photo Insert One

CHAPTER FOUR : “Eyeball to Eyeball”

CHAPTER FIVE : “Till Hell Freezes Over”

CHAPTER SIX : Intel

CHAPTER SEVEN : Nukes

CHAPTER EIGHT : Strike First

Photo Insert Two

CHAPTER NINE : Hunt for the Grozny

CHAPTER TEN : Shootdown

CHAPTER ELEVEN : “Some Sonofabitch”

CHAPTER TWELVE : “Run Like Hell”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN : Cat and Mouse

CHAPTER FOURTEEN : “Crate and Return”

Photo Insert Three

Afterword

Acknowledgments and a Note on Sources

Notes

A Note About the Author

Also by Michael Dobbs

Copyright

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