The Charlotte News

Thursday, October 28, 1937

FIVE EDITORIALS

The President informed former Presidents Eisenhower, Truman, and Hoover of the good news.

Reconnaissance flights were suspended for the day and no activity was reported at the quarantine line. The Graznyy, moving steadily toward the zone on Saturday, had now again stopped dead in the water.

President Kennedy would not live long enough to see the word used by Khrushchev, détente, become a policy of the Nixon White House after Leonid Brezhnev, along with Aleksej Kosygin--who would assume the titular role previously occupied by Khrushchev, that of Premier, but with greater authority now vested in the General Secretary, Brezhnev--, would come to power two years later, as the 70-year old Khrushchev was edged out by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, forcing his resignation in October, 1964, in large part over what it considered mishandling of the missile crisis. Khrushchev had led his country through the most troubling times of the Cold War, from 1956 to 1964, and to his great credit, this simple Russian peasant without any formal college education, had come to power denouncing the atrocities and other abuses of his predecessor, Josef Stalin, vowing a new era which would stress economic and social development rather than militarism as a goal of the Soviet Union. In practice, of course--perhaps strapped by the Party bosses, much as some of our leaders were and remained strapped from progress toward ideals by the same forces within the United States historically, those grasping forces of greed, both materially and for power--it would not turn out the way of his desires.

But, out of the Crisis did come a sense of this elderly gentleman’s humanity and ultimate sensibility, and a dead reckoning with the fate of the world if left in the hands of those bent on global destruction.

And a common bond was born from it.

Yes, Khrushchev and the Soviets had clearly precipitated this Crisis which nearly brought the end of the world; yes it was reckless, even degenerate in its ultimate potential for disaster.

But then, in reflection, one can make the same argument for the whole of the arms build-up since World War II by the two super-giants, on both sides—a heightened tension which President Kennedy had dedicated himself to undoing with the controversial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, ratified by President Kennedy, after Congressional approval, on October 7, 1963, banning all above-ground atmospheric testing of thermonuclear weapons. The Soviets had agreed to its terms in August, 1963.

Khrushchev insisted still in his letter of October 28 the contrary, that the Crisis was caused by the American threat of invasion to Cuba, precipitated by the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the loose talk in the United States since that time, both by politicians in Congress and by pockets of anti-Castro Cubans, at least as Khrushchev viewed the situation.

And, of course, in hindsight, reading Operation Mongoose’s stated means and goals, and even more so, that of Operation Northwoods, both plans proposed in early March, 1962, one can begin to understand where it was that the Soviet eyes and ears on American soil got their troubling information; as disingenuous as the sources were, this fact could not be known then to the halls of the Kremlin.

It was as hard to distinguish official policy of the Government from the lunatic fringe in this country as it was for EXCOMM to determine on the Friday and Saturday past the reasons for the variations in the two letters from the Kremlin, for this group of the nation’s best and brightest, as David Halberstam later called them, to understand originally why the missiles were being placed in Cuba when no decisive strategic advantage was gained by it.

They say the Devil confuses. And when one is confronted with confusion and confusing and conflicting representations, one becomes confused and subject to acting then on emotion, fight or flight, instincts left from the jungle. Straight talk and plain talk, less secrecy in the world, is required to prevent the resurgence of the Cold War mentality. Trust and faith, a true faith, not just a word bantered about to impress voters in the Bible Belt and thereby cynically to achieve a shallow and hollow victory, a power which in the end becomes useless for its vapidity in its origins.

It would take the diligent efforts of yet six more presidents of the United States, the leaders of the NATO bloc, and the leaders of the resistance in places like Poland and Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the Soviet satellites thrust under the yoke of Communism, endless negotiations, speeches, threats and counter-threats, before the Iron Curtain, as Churchill had dubbed it in the 1950’s, finally fell, and along with it, its most historic symbol, the Berlin Wall, erected in August, 1961, torn down in November, 1989.

But this day, October 28, 1962, as the church bells rang as people headed home from their Sunday vigil, presented a new beginning of a sort, one which could stop and give thanks that a new day was still possible after the days past, one aimed toward that which followed over the next three decades, toward an understanding between peoples of divergent backgrounds, cultures, and geographical origins, of different languages, comprised of different alphabetic symbols.

Ironically, the supreme test of John Foster Dulles’s theory of brinkmanship, would be posed not by General Eisenhower as President, nor by Richard Nixon as President, but rather by the young, "unimpressive to date in foreign affairs", the inexperienced young sailor, the light-weight pretty boy from Cape Cod, the disarmingly reticent but arrogantly assertive rich boy with the Ivy League haircut and manners and brogue to match, the fellow who pronounced it most of the time "Cubar", a wistful Irish fellow, both mystic and whimsical, with an irritating habit for profound eloquence in the bargain—John F. Kennedy.

And a damned impressive sight it was, too, lads and lassies.

You should have been there…

We ourselves, out of that particular period of a week following the announcement publicly of the Crisis, will always remember filling out that name tag to paste on the bottom of our school desk seat, the one with our name and address, then in a city’s district known as "Buena Vista", pronounced, the locals insist, "Beauna", rather than "Bwena", but no matter—and our blood type on that card, presumably, in case we needed a transfusion after the H-Bomb had turned us to toast.

But no matter. We didn’t need that tag after all. We didn’t perish in the night. And we knelt and said a prayer of thanks that we hadn’t.

The President, also on this Sunday afternoon, drafted a letter to Major Rudolf Anderson’s widow expressing personally his sorrow at her husband’s death and that he had died in the distinguished and crucial service of his country. And, indeed, he did. Major Anderson, the only loss of life in the Crisis, like all of those pilots who flew U-2 and low-level reconnaissance over Cuba in those days, risked their lives on each mission, without bombs, without guns, without fighter escorts, their only weapon being that little focal plane shutter and its blink to the earth as they throttled down over this island nation in the Caribbean.

Had it not been for their brave record of the events, we likely would not have made it. We likely would not be here. We likely would have been toast.

And so Major Anderson, as President Kennedy stated in his letter, deserves continually the thanks of a grateful nation for his ultimate sacrifice.

And so, too, do the members of EXCOMM, all of whom, as McGeorge Bundy, one of the hawks, stated on Sunday, no matter whether hawk or dove, were pleased that the doves won in this thirteen day time of history.

And most especially, of course, to John and Robert Kennedy, who also served their country dedicatedly and courageously, leading to the ultimate sacrifice, in standing for and encouraging in others, especially the young, within that historically cynical realm known as politics, the courage of ideals and ideas rather than mere bullets and ballots.

The fall elections went forth as scheduled on November 6, as the missiles were being crated and shipped back to the Soviet Union, under daily surveillance to insure that this task was done as promised.

In the elections, among others, the President’s 30-year old brother, Edward Kennedy, was elected Senator from Massachusetts. He still serves his country in the United States Senate, and faithfully so.

Mr. Nixon, out in California, would lose his bid to become Governor to Edmund G. Brown, who won his second term. In parting, former Vice-President Nixon would declare that his road in politics was at an end, and then, with a bit of a smirk, stated acerbically, "You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore." That pronouncement, of course, proved a bit premature.

And, the world little noted then, but would long remember, that somewhere in the middle of London, England, just as the President of the United States made his first statement of September 4, 1962, warning the Soviets against an offensive build-up and assuring that as long as weapons in Cuba remained strictly defensive in nature, no harm would come to that island, just on the day that statement occurred, a recording was made of a song by four young lads from Liverpool, England.

No one then, outside Hamburg or Liverpool anyway, had heard of them, or the song, or its intended flip-side on a little wax-plastic disc with a big hole in the middle--which would break if tossed across the room like a discus, as we found out a time or two.

A week later, on September 11, 1962, just as TASS released its statement indicating that it did not need to seek out any base for offensive weapons outside the physical boundaries of the Soviet Union and did not intend to introduce offensive weapons into Cuba, just then, one day before the President set a goal for the United States of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade, that a day before he would again assert at his September 13 press conference from the White House the same notion as on September 4, that the United States intended no harm to the island of Cuba so long as there were no offensive weapons there capable of reaching the United States--just then, an alternate version of the same song was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London, with a session drummer, Andy White.

This latter version of the song was the one later introduced to America and became the standard version.

Subsequently, in due course, not having to wait until hell froze over, Parlophone Records, on October 5, 1962, over in England, just as the President ordered the CIA U-2 surveillance to cease out of concern that the SAM sites photographed would cause a plane to be shot down and provoke an incident leading potentially to dire and fatal consequences, then turning the surveillance over to SAC, under the command of General LeMay, just then on October 5, did Parlophone release this record by the four lads from Liverpool, their first as a group.

It would later top out at number 17 on the UK charts. Each of the four lads was paid for the September 4 session 7 pounds, 10 shillings; 5 pounds, 15 shillings for the September 11 session.

Over time, their salaries would increase.

And on Sunday, October 28, 1962, the fog which had enshrouded L.A. the previous day, lifted.

Godspeed to the folks around the Los Angeles basin this day in 2007 who have lost their homes by wildfire and to the firefighters who are continuing to fight the blazes.

The news of 1962 is here.

Now we lay us down to sleep…

Framed Edition

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