The Missiles of October: A Book Review

(C) 1992 Simon & Schuster

The trouble with history, particularly modern history, is that events can be interpreted and presented in different ways.

Consider, for instance, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Some books, such as Jim Bishop's The Day Kennedy Was Shot and Gerald Posner's Case Closed, point the finger at Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman.

Others, such as David Lifton's Best Evidence, claim there was a vast conspiracy to shoot Kennedy in Dallas, Texas and to cover this violent coup d'etat up so Lyndon Johnson could be President and escalate the Vietnam War.

I don't believe the conspiracy theorists and they'll never get a dime from me, but nevertheless there are plenty of people who do believe Lifton and his other "there was a second gunman in the grassy knoll" compadres. By taking a fact here, adding a supposition there, and by presenting information selectively to make it fit an author's particular slant, any historical event can be revised...even making outrageous claims seem very credible.

Of all the events in President Kennedy's 1,000 day administration (other than the tragedy at Dealey Plaza 49 years ago), perhaps the one that everyone remembers is the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. In most accounts, JFK is taken by surprise when U-2 spy planes photograph Soviet intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBM's) being set up on the island of Cuba, only 90 miles away from U.S. shores.

 Galvanized by this bit of Soviet sleight of hand, the President and his advisers courageously mobilize American forces, improvise a non-invasive strategy of "quarantining" the communist-ruled island and stare down the wily Khruschev and make the Soviet leader decide between removing the missiles or starting a nuclear war.

I admit that I am not a scholar on the Cold War. I am also not an expert on Cuba or even the Kennedy clan. But when I read Robert Smith Thompson's The Missiles of October: The Declassified Story of John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis, it soon became apparent that the author is not a fan of JFK.

Indeed, Thompson says the familiar accounts of the crisis (as presented in the 2000 film Thirteen Days and most histories) is a myth. By cleverly mixing a certain amount of "dirty laundry" related to Kennedy's political career, U.S. foreign policy vis a vis the Soviet Union, the massive political influence of the United Fruit Company in Washington, and even the TFX scandal of the early 1960s, Thompson states that not only did American foreign policy from 1945 on force the Soviet Union to take defensive measures of its own, but that Kennedy (who apparently ran a dirty campaign in 1960 with the assistance of old Joe Kennedy) knew of the Soviet missile buildup far before October 1962. JFK then, Thompson says, used the crisis for domestic political reasons.

Admittedly, Thompson, a professor who teaches foreign policy at the University of South Carolina, is a good prose writer and at times The Missiles of October reads like a technothriller. In the end, though, this book leaves behind a bitter aftertaste with its half-baked conspiracy theories centering on a crisis which could have ended in nuclear war.

(C) 2012 by Alex Diaz-Granados