Understanding the Cuban Missile Crisis: 2024 Encore

Buzzkill Genius Dr. Philip Nash brings us a fabulous (and very relevant) show on the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. There's so much more to those events than the standard "eye-ball-to-eye-ball" story would have us believe. Among many other things, we learn why the Cold War was so cold. You'll understand so much more after listening. Encore Episode.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Yes, it's professor Buzzkill, your second favorite history professor in
the entire world, here busting myths and taking names. And
I'm your second favorite because your first favorite is here.
And that's of course, doctor Philip Nash from Penn State,
who's here to talk to us about the Cuban missile crisis.
How are you, professor, Thanks for coming on the show.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
I am doing great as always, and thank you so much.
You are as always too kind. Well.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Your shows are by far the most popular, and you're
the you know, our number one star with a bullet
as they say, haha, get it bullet missile with chrisis
aha ha. But more seriously, of course, doctor Nash, we
are coming up on a very important anniversary of the
Cuban missile crisis.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Am I right?

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Absolutely?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
This would be the sixtieth anniversary of the Cuban missile
crisis sixty years ago.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Later this month. Wow, that is that is amazing. We
once did a show about the Cuban wrestle crisis a
long time ago, in the show's early beginnings, but we
have a different format now, so we want to do
to again. Of course, we want to do it because
of this anniversary and all the attention that we'll receive,
But professor, why was there a Cuban missile crisis?

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Where do Cuban missile crises come from?

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Exactly?

Speaker 2 (01:18):
It's a good question. So I'm going to start really
really basic. Obviously, this is in the depths of well,
actually the early Cold War between the United States and
Soviet Union, right, global struggle for dominance. Has been going
on since the late nineteen forties. That is the most
basic reason. The secondly is what I would call nuclear attachment.
This is now what seventeen years into the nuclear age.

(01:38):
Both sides are heavily armed with nuclear weapons.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Nineteen sixty two was seventeen years correct.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yes, I'm sorry, seventeen years into the nuclear age. Both
sides by this point are shall we say, very much
wedded to nuclear weapons to solve military but also in
some cases political problems. In other words, there's sort of
almost like a security blanket literally and figuratively, and so
clear war was a serious threat before this. This is
going to be the most serious point. We'll talk about

(02:04):
that later, most serious point of sort of nuclear threat.
But there had been earlier in nuclear crises, nuclear saber
rattling using nuclear weapons for all sorts of military political
purposes as well established And so you know that's important
to know because in a way, while this is an
extraordinary event, it is in some ways just more of
the same, right, Oh okay, okay, both sides sort of
using nuclear weapons to try and solve problems in different ways.

(02:27):
And then there's this third layer, which is the national
liberation struggles in the developing world all over the place
in this period, which were coming to fruition, right, And
I mean just one of my favorite factories is the
year nineteen sixties saw seventeen new independent countries in Africa.
Just yeah, that is amazing. Right. So you have a
lot of struggles, you know, the European empires are crumbling,

(02:48):
and you have national liberation struggles, and in this case, specifically,
the island of Cuba, ninety miles off of Key West
in nineteen fifty nine, for del Castro came to power
in a revolution which not at first butultimately became very
clearly communist in its orientation, and for the lost of
good reasons, was directed against the United States. Right. This
was partly to get Cuba out from under US domination.

(03:11):
So US Cuban relations collapsed rather quickly. Started in the
spring of nineteen fifty nine, the United States was a
threat to Cuba. In nineteen sixty, Dwight Eisenhower, the US President,
had authorized a big CIA program to invade Cuba with
anti Castro Cuban exiles. This was known as app Operation Zapata.
This was going to ultimate we'll talk about it later.
It was going to result in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

(03:33):
And then what happened is the Cubans, because they felt
threatened by the United States, reached out to the Soviet
Union to protect itself, and the Soviet Union at the
same time was absolutely delighted. It's a leader Nikita Krushchev
was delighted to have a new friend in the Western
hemisphere because it had no friends in the Western Hemisphere.
And geostrategically, by this point, the Soviet Union is hemmed
in by a ring of US sponsored alliances all around

(03:56):
Eurasia and is really eager to break out of that
sort of circlement. And one way you do that is
you get a friend in the Western Hemisphere in the
form of Fidel Castro. So already early nineteen sixty Soviet
representatives are showing up in Cuba, they're building a relationship
which includes defense cooperation, and this it becomes sort of
the mutual escalation. So the Cubans feel like they're just
defending themselves by reaching out to the Soviets, who, for example,

(04:18):
start to buy up Cuban sugar, right because the United
States imposes an economic embargo and stops buying Cuban sugar.
Cuba relies on sugar sales, and so the Soviets say, well,
we'll buy it all. And so increasingly the United States,
for its part, starts to freak out over the fact
that now there's a seems to be a communist outpost
in the Western hemisphere. Right, we're always very sensitive with
the Monroe doctrine, et cetera. We consider the Caribbean in particular,

(04:41):
quote unquote our backyard, and now the big bad Soviets
seem to be muscling their way in. John F. Kennedy,
running for president as a Democrat in nineteen sixty made
a huge issue out of Cuba, hammering the Republicans rapping
done too little right for in effect for losing Cuba,
the way that Republicans had hammered Democrats for losing China.
During the Truman years.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
And of course his opponent in that election was Nixon, correct,
who was president?

Speaker 2 (05:07):
That's really right in there, absolutely right?

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Okay, Well, then Kennedy wins in nineteen sixty, the election
nineteen sixty. So what does he do with this situation
that in theory anyway, he's inherited.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Right well, and keep in mind, since he made a
big issue of Cuba in nineteen sixty, he feels like
he has to follow through on it. So when he
is informed about this secret CIA plan to invade Cuba
with anti Castro Cuban exiles the operations of PoTA, he
feels heavy pressure to go ahead with it, which he does.
This leads in April nineteen sixty one to the infamous
Bay of figs somewhere. The outtakes in this are going

(05:41):
to be great. The Bay of Pigs Invasions is April
nineteen sixty one. It ends in humiliating defeat. All of
the invaders are and people should go read about the
Bay of Pigs invasion. It was a dumpster fire like
you can't even imagine, or maybe you can anyway, So
these anti Castro invaders, they are almost entirely I think

(06:03):
entirely killed or captured, they're rounded up to humiliating defeat.
But then for our purposes, it's important that JFK doubles down.
In other words, he doubles down on an anti hardcore
sort of anti Cuban set of policies, which would include
a titaned economic embargo. Right. CIA's Operation Mongoose. This was
launched in November nineteen sixty one.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
By the way, does the CIA ever have boring names
as Operation Mongoose, Operations APOTA, which is obviously Amelia, right exactly.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Actually, sometimes they're pretty boring, like for example, their station
in Miami, which ran Operation Mongoose was known as j
M Wave. Oh, doesn't sound like a radio, yeah, exactly,
it doesn't have any particular meaning. Mongoose, of course, is
very unsubtle because mongooses kill snakes, exactly right.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
So anyway, just for.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Those of people wondering, like why mongoose, So this was
a massive COVID action program. By the way, the CIA
CIA station when Mongoose was in it was in full swing.
The CIA station in Miami was the largest on the plant.
It Wow, the CIA did not have a bigger station
anywhere in the Old West Wave. That's how big they
were on taking down Castro's Cuba. So this was a

(07:08):
COVID action program, which included things like sabotage in Cuba,
of course, and also propaganda, so they're separate from mongoose.
There were a series of plots to assassinate Castro. We
could do a whole show on these, maybe we should someday.
This included things like exploding seashells and exploding cigars.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
And I've often wondered that whether that exploding cigar thing
was a myth, but we'll work.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
No, that's true. And they also there had a plan
to spray his press box with LSD so he's freak
out during a press conference. Oh god, they I wonder
what they called that operation Yeah, OPERATIONE Airplane thank you? Yeah,
that I do not know. By the way, they hired
the mafia first to do some of these. Anyway, This
also included a series of threatening military maneuvers in the Caribbean,

(07:49):
so large land sort of amphibious invasions, like one was
on the island of Vehicus, and I believe that one
was directed at a mythical leader, right. The target in
this operation was a mythical leader whose name was ortzak
rt o rt sac, which if you hold a mirror
up to it or backwards, it's spells Castro very subtle.
Come on, I mean they're they're really heavy on military

(08:12):
ability and low on wit.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Well exactly. I mean we have you know, some of
our workmen and some of the people who you know,
our maids and servants in the Buzzkill Institute. Who can
We're smarter than that.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
They could have figured that out. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
Anyway, so the United States was definitely a threat to Cuba.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
And this is important because long, long after the missile crisis,
you could find veterans of the Kenny administration who would
play innocent. They would say stuff like, well, we had
no intention of invading Cuba. You can excuse the Cubans
and the Soviets for thinking that the United States. The
only thing that had learned from the Via pigs was well,
next time, we'll do it with US forces and we'll
add some zeros to the to the size of the
invading force.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, So Cuba had every reason to think that the
United States was going to invade someday.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Okay, well that's jfking Castro. What about Khrushchov, right, what
about relatively new still years Yeah, yeah, so he's Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
The question is because they had collective leadership for a while,
he's sort of firmly in charge. No later than nineteen
fifty seven, okay, okay, so he's been there, certainly been
there longer than JFK.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
But the Soviets lebat Khushchev.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
They are increasingly concerned about their new ally and the Caribbean.
There is this famous summit between Kennedy and Khrushev and
Vienna in early June nineteen sixty one, which is largely inconclusive,
but one of the results is that Khrushchov sort of
bullies Kennedy at the meeting and basically confirms his belief

(09:36):
that Kennedy is sort of callo and young and the inexperienced,
and so that Khrushchev can take liberties with him and
get away with things he might not be able to
get away with with someone else. And that's part of
the background of like, why is Khrushov going to do
something so foolish to try to put missiles in Cuba?
I think one of the reasons is he underestimated Kennedy
as a leader. Okay, all right, because you know, Khushov

(09:57):
also reopens the Berlin crisis, which had been simmer in
the summer of nineteen sixty one. Tensions are high, right,
that's the summer where you have the wall built. Yep,
just on that right exactly, which helps actually solve the
crisis more than anything. But the tensions are very, very high,
and you know, Kennedy launches sort of a mini military
build up late July nineteen sixty one as a response
to this. Fast forward to spring nineteen sixty two when

(10:20):
Krishchov decides on operation and a deer.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Okay, now hang on, what is and a deer backwards?
It's anadyr Dana. Yeah, no, maybe they don't have as
many exactly good people on their side coming up now
they go.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
They take a different approach with naming things. This is
the name of a Siberian river. So this is one
of those things that is just intended to mislead, right, right,
it could be anything exactly.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
I mean, it's not Operation put Missiles in Cuba.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
And in fact, given that it's an Afra Siberian river,
someone might think it's about China corect exactly.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
So this is definitely the approach I would take.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
I'm glad we were following this train. This running joke, professor.
The listeners will love it.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
I honestly think there's a well bad day to get
a PhD in history, But there's a PhD be written
about the naming of operations like military intelligence operations around
the world. I think there's something to that.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Well, and this is because this ort sac Castro backwards things.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Just that's that's a low point.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
I prefer.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
I prefer like enduring freedom, you know, like the heavy
handed super patriotism.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
I prefer that approach.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Well, ort sex sounds you know, that's middle school level.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Anyway, it's I'm.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
Interrupting the flow.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
So the operation andity or this is the secret deployment
of strategic nuclear missiles. So in other words, by that,
the definition of strategic is missiles that can reach the
territory of the adversary, right, as opposed to say battlefield
nuclear weapons like tactical nuclear weapons, right, which you use
in just on the battlefield. So the secret deployment of
nuclear weapons, including intermediate rangeabllistic missiles, and I'll say more

(11:47):
about the the actual weapons in a minute to Cuba.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
So so why would he do that?

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Right, why this particular move, which, at least in retrospect,
pretty high risk, as you might imagine. So his first reason,
as we've already alluded to, to defend Cuba, you use
the ultimate deterrent, a nuclear deterrent, to, by the way,
compensate for your local conventional inferiority. Cuba's army, any Soviet

(12:14):
forces in Cuba cannot match the conventional force that the
Americans can bring to bear in the Caribbean.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
Right, you can't hope to do that.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
And so what you do is you compensate with the
ultimate weapon, large nuclear weapons that can reach the United States, which,
by the way, for the record, is exactly what the
United States had been doing at the same time for
years in Western Europe. So we were woefully inferior in
size to the Red army on the other side of
the Iron Curtain, and so we compensated with nuclear weapons.
And so in that sense for Americans to say, wow,
how could they do something like this, in a way,

(12:44):
this is, like I said, this is part of nuclear attachment.
You use nuclear weapons to solve various military and political problems,
and this is just another one of those problems. Now
we can argue about this particular move, and by the way,
Khrushchev could have done things to defend Cuba, including tactical
nuclear weapons and a conventional build up that could have
defended Cuba without threatening the United States. Oh so, in

(13:06):
other words, I'm trying to in a way, I'm trying
to have it both ways. On the one hand, this
is logical. On the other hand, this is illogical and
really really risky or going too far or going too
far exactly. So defend cube number one, number two catch
up in the nuclear arms race. More broadly, it turns
out by spring of sixty two there was a missile gap,
but that the Soviets were on the receiving end, not
on the giving end.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
By this point, there they had failed miserably. They had
been the first with Sputnik to demonstrate a capability of
intercontinental ballistic missiles right, a missile that can reach from
the Soviet Union to the United States.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
They had that capability, first, they failed to translate it
into an operational force of ICBMs. We by this point
had ok So in sixty two we had about a
four to one advantage in ICBMs, and if you look
at total strategic weapons, most of them sort of like
nuclear weapons dropped from BE fifty two bombers.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
We had something like a seventeen to one advantage.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
That's enormous.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
Yeah, it's an enormous disparity.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
And so the Soviets did have an operational and reliable
force of IRBMs intermediate range missiles. These are missiles with
a range of between about fifteen hundred and two thousand miles.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Oh, still a long one, still a long way.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
But you can't reach the United States from the Soviet Union. However,
if you have a new friend ninety miles from the
United States, then your IRBMs in effect become ICBMs just
by sort of waving your magic Wand so this is
a quick way not to catch up in the strategic
looclear arms race, but to make the gap a little narrower.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah, and we should remind buzz killers that you know,
Cuba is closer than, for instance, our own territory of
Puerto Rico.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely right. And by the way, if you're
if you if you go deep into the weeds of
the weapons, these actually give the United States less reaction
time than an ICBM does. Right, your radar, your radar
would pick up an ICBM long before you would detect
a launch from Cuba, which you could argue makes this
another reason this is a risky move because you've basically

(14:59):
you've threatened strategic stability by reducing warning times. Anyway, this
was also thirdly, and this is not not a primary reason,
the secondary reason, but this was a response to the
Jupiter IRBMs that had been deployed by NATO in the
late Eisenhower early Kennedy years, especially in place like Turkey,
which does border on the Soviet Union. And this really

(15:19):
stuck in Khrushchev's kraw. He apparently used to visit the
Black Sea and look across. He would be with friends
and he'd look across the sea with his binoculars and
he would say, you know what I see? I see
us missiles pointed at my datcha yeah, almost like he
took this personally. And there is something the same with Cuba.
By the way, in the United States, there is something
psychological about having nuclear weapons situated next to you. Oh,

(15:42):
it's far away from you, even though there may not
be any real world difference, right that those weapons are
both going to vaporize you, One takes longer to get
to you, but there is something psychological about having sort
of hostile nuclear weapons in a neighboring territory, and he
was clearly bugged by them. And Khrushov and his memoirs
actually said, with this deployment in Cuba, we would be

(16:04):
doing nothing but giving in this virtual quotation, we've been
giving the Americans a little of their own medicine. So
there's almost this sort of heady revenge motive as well,
like now you know what it feels like.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
By the way, but buzzkillers, I remember a young professor
a few years ago wrote a book called The Other
Missiles of October, which is about the Jupiters in Turkey,
and he's sitting right across from me in the in
the Buzzkill bunker here, and we're in addition to what
we're going to put on the on the Buzzkill bookshelf
for this show, we're also going to put that book.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
It is still in print.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
But he's right, as one of my teachers once said,
that professor you referred to was criminally young when he
wrote that book.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
That was a long long time ago.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
So the Soviets felt sort of and by the way,
this is one of the reasons that Khrushchev thought he
could get away with this because in his mind he
was doing nothing extraordinary.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah, so if he like presented this to the UN,
they might say, well, tied Forvertex.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
It's a great question because that's one of the things
that the caies are going to, in my view, exaggerate,
which is, you know, you did this secretly. That's not fair,
and are we going to argue about that because you
know we didn't, for example, we didn't announce the Bay
of Pigs invasion interface. You know, there's a lot of
secrecy in skullduggery going around. Yeah, but that they did
give the in terms of propaganda and sort of public relations.

(17:18):
It gave the Kennedy something to say, well, this was
a secret deployment, that that's not right. And then there's
a final factor, which is and I think this sometimes
gets overlooked. In nineteen sixty two, the Sino Soviet split
is wide.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Open, split between Soviets and China.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
The Soviets and communists China, and there is by this
point a competition for the allegiance of socialists around the
world between Beijing and Moscow. Oh.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Now this I did not know at.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
All, yeah, no, this is important because the Chinese they're
sort of the new kid on the block. They seem
to be younger and more sort of vital. And you know, remember,
like I said, lots of new independent countries, some of
them leaning towards socialism. You're looking for a role model,
and the Chinese are like, you know, you can have
the young sort of hip yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
the swinging commies, or you can have those old farts

(18:04):
in the Kremlin.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
Without the stalinistic stain exactly.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
There's that. There's also you know, the Soviet Union is interesting,
more interested in peaceful coexistence, right, is trying to avoid
World War three. The Chinese maybe a little more bellicose, right,
And so there's there's so if you can deploy missiles
in Cuba and sort of strike a blow for global
socialism like this, like a real bold move, you can
gain a lot of your credback in terms of worldwide

(18:29):
communist allegiance. So that's also sort of in the back
of Khrushov's mind. So in the Presidium, which is the
that's sort of like the pollit bureaus, it goes by
different names, sort of Khrushchov's inner circle. There are a
few like his right hand man and Anstosmikoyan who raise
objections to this, who realized that this is super risky.
But basically, you know, this the Soviet leadership model is

(18:50):
it's pretty top down.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
Becomes a great, great shock and everyone falls into line.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Even under Krushchev, who, as you say, had gone through
this interim power sharing.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
That's right, but that's.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
Right, yeah, and he has definitely no Joseph Stalin, no, no.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
No, and everybody knows that, right. Okay, So what about
now when we get to this stage, right, what about Castro?
What's he doing? Right?

Speaker 2 (19:12):
Because he is theoretically in a position to say, no,
we don't want these, we don't want to become, you know,
a target for nuclear attack.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah. I didn't think about that either, right.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
You know, when the word was we're already threatened by
the United States, why would you provoke the United States
even further? That would that would have been a perfectly
logical response. He actually wanted a formal alliance with the
Soviet Union like the Warsaw pactor NATO to protect him,
and the Soviet offer of strategic nuclear missiles came as
a surprise the Cubans were not expecting this. But then

(19:41):
from everything we know, it turns out that he would
then accept this offer with little hesitation. He definitely understands
the logic of defending his regime. Right, if you have
the ultimate detern then you know for sure the United
States will never mess with you. There is that right
that has logic to it, no question. Like I said,
just like in Europe, he's also sort of young and committed,
and he is. He's not sort of a old, jaded,

(20:04):
cynical communist leader of the type you might expect. He
is also interested in, as he said, strength, He's interested
in strengthening in the socialist camp right now. Theres this
this is by accepting these missiles, I'm doing something for
global socialism. I'm not just doing something to defend the
Cuban revolution. That was as far as we know, that
was Castro's take on this, and that's one of the

(20:25):
reasons he agreed to do it.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
And he is in fact younger than both crucis absolutely Yeah.
Now we're at the postagea where the USSR is planning
actually to send the missiles. What do they say, right,
what is in this good goodie basket?

Speaker 2 (20:38):
Fore Castro and it's quite I'm not going to give
you all the details because it's it's quite extensive.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
This it's called the Group of Soviet Forces in Cuba.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
I guess the GSF. No, No, there you go, sorry,
the Group of Soviet Forces in Cuba. It included lots
of stuff. The most important things were thirty six are twelves.
These are medium rang so there's a distinction. These are
shorter range. But there's than irbm's but they're but they're
they're not tactical weapons.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
So these are thirty six.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
And by the way, there's also there's I think there's
thirty six missiles and twenty four launchers. So theoretically you
could reload the launcher with missiles, right, oh yeah, okay,
but you have to have both obviously. So thirty six
are twelves, as the Soviets called them. It has a
twelve hundred mile range. It had a one megaton warhead,
so just for comparison purposes, that's a warhead that's sixty
six times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. Lordy, yeah,

(21:31):
so these are in the In the middle of the
Cold War, the largest nuclear weapons were unbelievably destructive and
one I'm here to tell you one megaton is actually
still pretty small, and that's the megaton.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
That means one million tons of TNT equipped.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah, so twelve hundred mile range, that means it could
reach about and you go online and look at the maps,
it reaches about the southeastern third of the continental United States,
including Washington, DC. By yes, okay, so those are the
thirty six are twelves. Also, they planned to send twenty
four or fourteens. These are in intermediate range missiles. These
are more like the Jupiters and the thors in that
the NATO headed NATO head in Europe. These had a

(22:07):
twenty three hundred mile range that reaches pretty much the
entire maybe the exception of Seattle. It reaches the entire
forty eight states, the lower forty eight states.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
Okay, Now this is interesting because usually the classic maps
that I see, you know, there's these range arcs right exactly,
and usually takes in Washington and that. But that's about
I've never seen maps that show.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
That the longer one that maybe that actually may have
been a really up to date map because as we'll
see spoiler alert, these longer range missiles never actually made
it to Cuba. Oh okay, they were kept out by
the blockade.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
Oh oh oh spoil Yeah yeah, but still that's the
they want to do that, which is correct, absolutely right,
and they could, they could cover the entire forty eight states.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
These had a much bigger warheaded two point three mega
ton warhead that's one hundred and fifty times roughly the
size of the little Man bomb dropped on Hiroshima, so
incredibly destructive. And by the way, a single two point
three megaton warhead detonated over a US city would cause
catastrophic damage, hundreds of thousands of deaths if the city
is big enough. Right, So, just a single one of these.

(23:07):
They keep that in mind too. That's one of the
reasons why the units is not going to invade, because
it's what it's what the political scientists called minimum deterrence.
If I have to worry about just a single one
of your warheads making it through, after I've destroyed all
the rest of your warheads, I still might be deterred
because I'm still not I'm sure, because something that destructive,
I'm not willing to absorb that loss, even though it's
quote unquote only one bomb.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, So it is also oh y yeah,
And this is, by the way, just big picture at
this time.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
If you look at the entire US arsenal, and if
you look at the US strategic war plan, our war
plan was to just dump thousands and thousands of strategic
weapons on the Soviet Union. The sign of Soviet Bloc
would have killed hundreds of millions of people. It was
the equivalent of seeing the figure the equivalent was six
hundred thousand herosion maside blasts. Wow, that's what that And
that would have six hundred imagine six hundred thousand, the

(23:58):
equivalent of six hundred thousan in Hiroshima blasts. And that's
just if the United States uses its weapons alone and
no one else does.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
Not six hundred, not six thousand, six hundred thousand.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yes, it was called overkill for a reason. So this
GSFC also included tactical nuclear weapons which were which could
not reach the United States. But we're used, we're intended
to use against the US invasion. Okay, these by the way,
were about Horosima side.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
Now here's a question I have though. If the United
States invades Cuba and you just you're talking about dropping
these tactical nukes on the invading force. Are you also
destroying a lot of Cuba?

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Wow, okay, no question. The calculations again here, I'm just shocking.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yeah right, I mean, you know, presumably these would be
landing beaches in areas that were not necessarily very heavily populated,
so you.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
Might not have massive civilian casualties.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah, but you yes, but you would be affecting yeah, Cuba,
no question. It also included a conventional jet fighters, a
significant number of Soviet ground troops, and also surface to
air missiles the sort of S seventy. These are very
sophisticated anti aircraft missiles of the type that shot down
the U two spyplane over the Soviet Union in nineteen
sixty that Francis Harry Powers shoot down. So those are

(25:10):
also sent to Cuba. So this is a lot of
the latest Soviet weaponry. The ships began in August. The
United States believed, and this is one of those cases
in history where you assume something and then you make
decisions based on your assumptions, and then you regret it later.
The United States assumed that the Soviet Union would not
be so foolish as to try to put in strategic
nuclear weapons in Cuba. The CIA director John mccoone, he

(25:30):
thought they would. Everyone else in the KNA administration thought
that they wouldn't do that. You know. They thought that
Khrushchov was sort of sort of a loose cannon, but
even he wouldn't do anything this stupid, this right, And
they knew about the conventional build up and they monitored
it pretty carefully, but they thought it would be conventional.
They thought this was just conventional stuff that was used
to defend Cuba. And because the United States didn't think
that he would send nuclear weapons. In September twice, the

(25:52):
United States publicly warned the Soviets, don't put nuclear weapons
in Cuba.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
The deployment was already underway.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
Interesting had the United States made that such a warning
back in though, I don't know, March, I mean, we
might not be doing the show right now. Who knows. Yeah, yeah,
In any case, Khrushchev that the Krushov's deployment was already underway.
Us U two flights so reconnaissance flights over Cuba with
their very very good photographic equipment, These flights that might

(26:20):
have discovered the missiles just as the construction began. These
flights were stopped for a five week period in September
October nineteen sixty two, partly because of weather, partly because
of the fear of another shootdown.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah, we didn't want another incident.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
And by the way, the United States, this is going
into midterm elections. There's always domestic politics, you know, And
the Kennedy people would deny this was about the Mexica politics.
It's always in part of the domestic politics, even this.
So the flights were resumed on October fourteenth, and that's
when the missile deployment was discovered and the photos were
given to Kennedy in the White House.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
Well, buzz calls, we are going to have to take
a little break for advertisement from our sponsors to pay
the bills, and we will get back in a moment
to see how JFK reacted and then of course what
happened for the rest of the Cuban missile crisis. Back
in a second. Okay, we're back buzz Killers with Professor
Philip Nash, your favorite buzz killer and talk. We're talking,

(27:15):
of course about the Cuban missile crisis, the sixtieth anniversary
which is now upon us we had got before we
went on the break, Professor, we had got all the
way up to the plan with the Soviets, all the
way up to the point where the Soviets have planned
what they're going to send and the shipments have begun.
So how did JFK react.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Right once he is given irrefutable proof that these missiles
are there and they are under construction. So Kennedy, famously,
we know a lot about this. We have a lot
of tape recordings from these meetings, and when we don't,
we have the top secret minutes. We know we probably
know more about US decision making during the Cube missile
crisis than just about any other historical event involving US policymakers. Wow,

(27:55):
because Kennedy was secretly keeping and it's for us, you know,
it's a historian's dream because not only is other conversations
being taped, almost everyone in the room doesn't even know
they're being taped.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Well, and tell the bus killer is why that is?
Why does he tape the stuff in the first place?

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Well, yeah, well this is this is for and this
of course this is going to lead a secret recording
road that's gonna end up in Watergate.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
Ultimately, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
But usually the explanation I see is that this is
about posterity, that this is going to help the president
write his memoirs, that sort of thing. I mean, it's
actually pretty mundane. No, Nixon and Johnson, I think we're
probably a little more interested in being able to check
the record in case someone has a meeting with the
president and lies about what happened later on, and then
he can say, well, let's roll the tape.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
Oh okay, So the story about JFK starting this because
he was pissed off about being lied to in theory
about the Bay of Pigs is not necessarily No, no.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
No, I don't think so, no, no, no, no. In fact,
that he doesn't start taping his conversations until the summer
of nineteen sixty two, I'm pretty sure. And by the way,
and they're out there. You can listen to a lot
of these recordings online and they're also bound annotated editions
of these tapes put up by the Miller Center at
the Universe, Virginias. It's really awesome sources.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
Some of them are really hilarious. By the way, it's
hard to keep going on this. He calls Pat Brown,
the governor of California in nineteen sixty two, after Nixon
has lost the gubernatorial election, and they have this hilarious
a little bit of Seann freud Well got following conversation
about Nixon's you don't have Dick Nixon, right, the county
kick around, yeah, and they talk about you know, and

(29:22):
Pat Pat Brown says he's you know, the man's a
psycho or anything.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
You know. Some of these recordings, even on issues like Vietnam,
are absolutely crucial to our understanding of the history. So
Kennedy starts meeting secretly with his top advisors for several
days and ultimately this is going to be called the
ex CALM, which is short for the Executive Committee of
the National Security Council. It's sort of an ad hoc
group of his top advisors. They start meeting secretly. Honestly,

(29:48):
I think sometimes their importance is exaggerated, you know. And
we had movies like The Miss October in the nineteen
seventies and Thirteen Days, and you know, Kennedy wrote that
book and right exactly, and so I think it was
not really a decision making body in my view, it
was more about a sounding board. It was for consensus formation.
As we'll see, Kennedy didn't always go along with what

(30:09):
the majority said, right, Yeah, Like you know, Lincoln famously said,
I'm the only yes vote that the eyes have it. Yeah.
So the consensus immediately reached was that the missiles must
be removed.

Speaker 3 (30:21):
And that's interesting too. The question is.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
Why why did you immediately all of you conclude that
these missiles we cannot tolerate them.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
Part of it is just nuclear attachment, right.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
Nuclear weapons are are the sort of the currency of
the superpower competition. You just can't abide the idea that
the enemy would do something like this and get away
with it. There are fears about credibility, right, especially after
you publicly warned the Soviets not to do this. If
it's revealed they've done this, and then you don't do
anything that looks really really bad, right, And that also

(30:50):
then blends into the whole question of domestic politics. There's
one point where Bobby Kennedy, the Attorney general and the
President's brother said, you know, if you hadn't done anything,
you would have been impeached. Well not which which which
I mean, you can't necessarily dispute that, but it does
show you how sort of domestic politics and domestic public
opinion is very much on their mind. Right, They're not
making these decisions in a vacuum. But it is interesting,

(31:11):
as far as we can tell, they don't seem to
be don't seem to have been very concerned about the
military balance, you knowwas even though Khrushchev wants to deploy
these partly to correct the strategic and balance, the Americans
don't view it that way. They don't see like, oh,
this is going to upset the nuclear balance. You know,
there's one point, there's one meeting where the Secretary of Defense,
Robert McNamara says, yeah, the Joint chiefs think these missiles
are important in terms of the military balance. I don't

(31:33):
think they're important at all, Which is interesting, right. You
would you would say, you would think and maybe you
would even want to sort of hope that this is
being these decisions are being made on strategic grounds primarily,
But that's pretty clearly not the case here.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
This is about these other things.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
This is about credibility, it's about domestic politics, it's about
just your general political view of nuclear weapons and not
about sort of the you know, being counting, right, like
who has how much of what that that doesn't you
see very little discussion of that, you know, like, oh,
what the Soviets will be able to do with these missiles?
Very little discussion of that, if any, in the hours

(32:08):
and hours and hours of the conversations they have so
most including JFK, their first preference was for an air strike, right,
a military attack to take out the missiles. And it's
interesting after the missile crisis, Kennedy was gave a long
interview you can actually listen to an online December nineteen
sixty two, a long interview reflecting back on the missile crisis,
and he was asked by a reporter, so, what's the

(32:30):
most important lesson from miss crisis and immediately said, having
lots of time to arrive at the right decision.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
Yeah, because the missiles are arriving by ship, They're right.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
And I mean my view is, keep in mind they
have better part of a week to discuss this secretly,
without anyone knowing in the public or outside that this
has gone on, right, right. I always like to do
the what if what if we had a similar thing today?

Speaker 4 (32:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (32:54):
I mean how quickly the news would leak?

Speaker 2 (32:56):
How quickly all the conspiracy theories in the speculation and
the actual news would come pete on social media, and
a president would be forced to make a decision immediately.
And if you have to act quickly, you might make
the wrong decision, whereas if you have time to sit
down and discuss it and learn. For example, as Kennedy did,
that you could have an air strike, but you could
not one hundred percent guarantee every last target would be destroyed.

(33:17):
And like I said, if one of those missiles just
gets New York or Washington, that's a failed policy. And
so by the time you get to about the twentieth
or twenty first Kennedy's decided that airstrike is a bad idea.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
At least at first, the risks were too huge.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
So he decides instead of instead on a naval blockade,
which when they announced it they called a quarantine. Now,
why did they do that? Yeah, that's an international legal issue.
Blockade blockade? Right? Will you put ships between a point
A and point B and prevent someone from moving in
or out? That's an act of war, oh, under international law.
And so there's his State Department legal people were saying, yeah,

(33:56):
mister President, don't use the B word.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
By using the Q words effectively doing the same thing.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
Right, and it is also it gets into this whole
sort of almost like disease sort of metaphor, which is
not a really great, very accurate metaphor, but anyway, they
call it a quarantine, and the idea is that this
was stop for the shipments because they know the shipments
are ongoing, so this will prevent further shipments from going
reaching Cuba. This will also signal US resolve, right that

(34:22):
we're serious about this. And it also keeps Kennedy's options open.
Right if afterwards he decides that the blockade's not getting
it done, then he can still do it an airstrike
and or an invasion. Right, that option is still there,
and they know it is still there. But like I said,
Kennedy later thanked his ability to have a long sort
of secret discussions to arrive at a better decision, certainly

(34:44):
in retrospect. So the crisis becomes public on Monday evening,
October twenty second, when JFK addresses the nation on television,
live on television and by radio, and he announces the
presence of the missiles, demands their removal, and announces the quarantine.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
Okay, so that's the twenty second. So how many did
they actually have? Thirteen days, as Bobby Kennedy's books said.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
So, yeah, so thirteen days that refers to from the
day that Kennedy knows their missiles there October sixteenth, Yeah,
through October twenty eighth, when they when yeah, when the
Soviet anounced they're going to withdraw. Now, by the way,
I'll probably not won't mention it later, but technically you
can argue that the crisis lasts until November twentieth, because
that's when you have a definitive agreement because there had

(35:28):
been some haggling over other issues like the presence of
these Soviet nuclear capable jet bombers in Cuba, which won't
get into but yeah, thirteen days. And by the way,
Kennedy gave all the members of x Colm this sort
of token of his appreciation. It's this sort of it's
kind of like a pen holder, and it's got right,
it's got a October sixty two calendar, and like the
thirteen days are in bold. They haven't at the Kennedy Library.

(35:50):
They're pretty famous. So, yeah, thirteen days becomes quote unquote
a thing, and that's why it's the sixteenth to twenty eighth.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
Okay, but on the twenty second he goes on TV
and let's give the buzzer's a brief clip from the
beginning of that speech.

Speaker 4 (36:03):
Good evening, my fellow citizens. This government has promised has
maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildout on the.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Island of Cuba.

Speaker 4 (36:16):
Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established a fact
that a series of offensive missile sites is now in
preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases
can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike
capability against the Western hemisphere.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Okay, well, there we have President Kennedy addressing the nation.
This broadcast really, you know, made people think, my god,
we're close to nuclear wars. So what then happened?

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Right? What happens next? So the blockade blockade did not
go into immediate effect. It goes into effect on October
twenty fourth, but US military forces were put on high
alerts including if you know your if you know your
Defense condition JARG and right Defcon one through five. Def
Con five is sort of peacetime, right, you're not doing anything.
Def Con one is basically war footing, and basically war

(37:08):
has been declared, so our strategic forces were put on
Defcon two for the first and I believe one of
the only times, if not the only time I forget
I did seventy three. We had a nuclear alert that
was pretty high, so our Strategic Air Command was put
on very very high alert. All sorts of conventional forces
began redeploying toward Florida, right because they would take part

(37:30):
in an invasion of Cuba if it comes to that.
There was and here, I'm gonna I'm gonna, I'm gonna
give you what you're really looking for. I'm gonna bust
a mini myth. Oh oh, bonus coverage right here, bonus coverage.
So a mini myth. There was no quote unquote eyeball
to eyeball moment at the blockade line right where Soviet
ships are steaming toward the navy US Navy blockade and

(37:50):
they turn around the last minute, and the Secretary of
State Dene Russ says, I think the other guy I
just blinked, ha ha ha. Yeah it didn't.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
Happen, okay, And now I grew up thinking, now this
shows you I sort of perverted childhood. Here's the pop
culture aspect. I was thinking about this when I was
a little kid. The story was that, you know, there
was a shot over a bow of a Soviet ship
as a threat, and there was this line, and they
were getting close to close to the line, and then
you sort of had to turn around, like wiley coyote

(38:18):
or something can run the other way. All that's a myth.
I'm sorry, little Joe, you were misled. Yeah, that's a myth.
There was no word.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
Now. By the way, later on in the podcast, you'll
see there was some incredibly risky behavior on the part
of the Americans at the blockade line, but it was
not about confronting Soviet ships. And by the way, there
were no Soviet surface warships in the region. These were
all freighters. So had there been quote unquote shooting a
blockade line, it would have been all in one direction

(38:45):
and Soviet freighters would have been quickly sent to the
bottom of the Atlantic. But they hundreds of miles short
of the blockade. Okay, these ships turned around.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
Okay, Well, you and I grew up in the post
Thirteen Days the Assassination Camelot era. Of course, all this
stuff has been over dramatized a lot.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
Of it has, although I think a more agro generalization
would be some things have been exaggerated and then some
things haven't been emphasized enough, including some very risky things
as we'll see. But there was no confrontation the blockade line.
And by the way, just to put it in context,
this is part of Krushchev. Once the missile crisis becomes public,
what you see from both Krushchev and Kennedy is for

(39:25):
the most part very very risk averse behavior, right, So
I would say both of them deserve criticism for helping
get us into Khrushchev more than Kennedy, of course, but
getting us into this crisis. But once the crisis is underway,
they are both very very sober minded about trying to
keep this ge a lid on this, and that includes

(39:45):
Khrushchev saying, yeah, I know, we're not going to approach
the blockade line. Those shipments on the way, turn them
around right back to the Black Sea. So the R fourteens,
the longer range, the intermediate range missiles that could have
reached all the lower forty eight turns out they didn't.
In fact, one of the sh ships that turned around
actually had some of the R fourteen equipment. Right, okayo,
the R fourteens, the long Arrange missiles and their warheads

(40:06):
did not make it to Cuba. The R twelves with
their warheads did and those are as the crisis going on,
those are under construction and some of them actually become
ready for use during the missile crisis. And by the way,
the United States never has a clear idea. Right, you
can go over and photograph something, but you don't know
if it's actually operational yet, right, we had to assume

(40:27):
that they were just to play it safe and that
and that turned out to be prudent because they were
some of them were operational, and had there been an
air strike, some of them conceivably could have been launched.
So the tensest week of the Cold War follows, and
World War three was a distinct possibility.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Okay, I'm glad you say. I'm not glad you say that,
because I don't want you, we don't ever want World
War three to have been a distinct possibility now or then.
But you know, that's one of the things that was
very heavily played in the sixties and seventies. So it's
it's good to know at least that part is true.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Right, Yeah, And you know, people still, people like me,
still are interested in and people still write a lot
of books on the cub missile crisis because we all
agree it was very, very dangerous and probably the most
dangerous moment of the Cold War and World War three
would have been catastrophic, probably for the entire Northern hemisphere,
if not for all of humankind.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
Well, how close then did we come to that World
War Three?

Speaker 2 (41:20):
To my mind, I think that's one of the most
fruitful debates that scholars are having right now when they
study the missile crisis, because there is a real there
is a real if you look at the literature, there's
a real disagreement. And I think it's a great discussion
to have because the evidence is contradictory, you can build
plausible cases on both sides. There's a very good book
out there called The Silent Guns of two Octobers, which
is by Theodore Vorh's highly recommended, very provocative book talks

(41:44):
about the Berlin Crisis of sixty one and the kid
missile crisis of sixty two. He actually argues that the
chance of war was relatively low, which is very sort
of iconoclastic. I would say, and he basically says, look
look at how risk averse Kennedy Krushcheff were during the
missile crisis. Yeah what you just said, Yeah were They
were both keen on getting out of this peacefully once
once the crisis is joined. They both made heavy use

(42:06):
of personal back channels, including creating new personal back channels,
and effort to solve the crisis peacefully.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
Is this where the red phone famously comes in or
is out another.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
That's afterwards that actually is a result of the commiscial crisis,
the red phone. I'm so glad you said that.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Anyway, I stole your thumbderlip by saying it ahead of time.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
And by the way, I think that that shows you
the importance of Hollywood and shows like Get Smart and
stuff like that, right, because it's always or the bat phone,
right anyway, So they also both on both sides, they
took steps to prevent the use during the crisis, even
of conventional weapons, including sort of personally. Jeffk certainly did
this sort of intervening way down the military chain of

(42:45):
command to the point where the military is starting to
resent your micromanagement and your and your your Your comeback
is I want to make darn sure this stuff is
not used without my express authorization. So someone like Vorhees
are you is that the risk of deliberate war was
extremely low, and I think that's true. Right. My response,
and my sort of met at the end of the day,

(43:07):
coming down on the other side, is that the risk
of accidental war was very, very high. And to my mind,
this case has become stronger and stronger with more and
more evidence in recent years. There were many, many accidents
and incidents during the crisis, and the problem is that
during a crisis, what you know as an accident is
more likely to be interpreted as deliberate by your opponent. Right, yeah,

(43:29):
you're going to say, you're going to say oops, and
they're not gonna say.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
Oh, yeah, well maybe it was just a mistake.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
And by the way, incidents and accidents are more likely
during the crisis because your forces run alert. Right, you've scrambled,
you have your B fifty twos in the air to
twenty four and seven some of them.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
People are trigger happy, people.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
Are trigger happy, et cetera, et cetera, And so you
have all sorts of innis. I honestly do not have
time to go through all of them, because once again
that could be its own show. But some of them
are famous, like, for example, a U two spyplane on
the twenty seventh, the peak day of the crisis. He
saiven in the October a YouTube spyplane straight into Soviet
airspace and barely made it out without being intercepted. And

(44:07):
it's because the the guy made a navigational error. And
the problem is that's the kind of thing that could
be interpreted as deliberate, because, for example, if we were
about to launch a first strike, one of the things
we would do is we would send some aircraft into
Soviet airspace to trigger the air defenses so that then
we can pick up on the air defenses and destroy
their air defenses to clear away for our bombers. Right,
so you could logically say, oh, wow, the Americans are
about to launch a first strike, as opposed to this

(44:28):
being what it was, which is a navigational error.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
And is not that it's two years after the Gary
Powers thing, so it's.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Not that corruptively absolutely right, because the Soviets are still
concerned about you tubes and still trying to shoot them down.

Speaker 3 (44:40):
You also had other things.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
So one of the things is you have such a
vast military establishment, you don't know everything that's going on
on a routine basis that might be meaningless during peace time,
but really meaningful during a missile crisis. So, for example,
we continued this blew me away when I found out
about it many years ago. During the missle crisis, we
were continuing our atmospheric nuclear testing. We were detonating the

(45:01):
nuclear weapons over the Pacific. That's because, as Jess Kennedy said,
there's always some sob he doesn't get the word right.
It didn't occur to anyone, Hey, maybe we shouldn't be
detonating nuclear weapons over the Pacific during this crisis. We
also did some test launches of ICBMs from VanderBurg Air
Force Base in California during the crisis. Why would you
do that? We did not cut back on the mongoose

(45:23):
sabotage operations inside Cuba. We had CIA backed teams in
Cuba that were still trying to blow things up during
the Cuban Missile crisis.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
You would think McNamara would say and the Secretary of
Defense would say, Okay, we shut everything down. Either he
didn't or didn't know it filtered down.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
Now they're too busy focusing on the immediate problem. And
then you just assume that your standard operating procedures are enough,
and they weren't. And by the way, some of the
same things could have been going on on the Soviet
side we just don't have with documents.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
It's highly likely.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
But the point here is that the leaders neither leader
had complete control of their military establishments, nor could they.
And yet it's even more dangerous because they often think
they do. Right. That's a little bit almost like a
really dangerous version of Dunny Krueger. Right, you think you
know everything about your military establishment and you don't, and
then you might just find out the hard way. So,
and like I said, a lot of it. There's also
it is just plain ignorance. We did not know, in fact,

(46:13):
we did not know until years afterwards, that the Soviets
had deployed tactical nuclear weapons. We thought that if we
invaded Cuba we would only be facing conventional weapons. But
just to give you some idea, someone did the math.
Someone looked at the tactical nukes with those twelve kiloton
warheads that the Soviets had, right, and what their blast
radius is and how destructive they are, and they calculated
that had the Germans someone like General Rommel, if they

(46:36):
had had five of these at D Day, they could
have wiped out the entire invasion for all one hundred
and fifty six thousand men, all five landing beaches of
D Day could have been erased with just five of
these weapons. And by the way, the Soviets had more
than five. Yeah, they had quite a few, and the
Americans didn't even know that. So and that's the kind
of thing, just to ram the point home, if we

(46:58):
invade Cuba, our invasion force gets annihilated by these tactical
nuclear weapons that we didn't even know the Soviets had,
what would our response have been? Would we have not
ratcheted up and just gone all out World War three
at that point? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (47:12):
Right, well we would have. According to Kennedy's announcement on TV,
that's right.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
Yeah, sure seems that way, although actually he was referring
to you, we have bens hitting the United States, which
these wouldn't do. But you're just going to sit back
and let your entire you know, like a huge chunk
of your military could wipe out without a response. Yeah,
that could get you impeached yeah, absolutely, or maybe a
military coup as well, because the Pentagon would want something
a little more forceful. But a corollary to the risk

(47:38):
of accidental war is the larger role we now understand
that was played by lesser figures or sort of less
famous people. Right, We often and including scholars, we're guilty
of this too. We always focus at the top, right,
we focus at on Castro and Kennedy and Khrishov. It
turns out that if you're looking farther down because and
looking at the importance of accidents, then you also have
to look at some of these people that we haven't

(47:59):
heard of.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Yeah, and of course that's a buzzkillers. No, that's one
of my big things on the show. We talk about
how important all kinds of people are in decision making.
You know, Churchill did not win the war by himself.
There were thousands of people who were equally responsible. But right,
don't let me get on my horse about that. Okay,
these lesser figures like who.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
Like who, Well, I'll just touch on a couple who
were probably the most important among them. But right, you know,
I'm not going to talk about for example, example, Adlie Stevenson,
who was Kennedy's You and Advisor. The Kennedy's hated him.
Turns out he was actually pretty important in helping to
suggest a peaceful solution to the crisis, even though the
Kennedies are then going to hang him out to dry
publicly after the crisis in a real bit of nasty pettiness. Anyway.

(48:39):
So one of them is Vasili Archipov, who is a
Soviet naval officer, and we've.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Done a man crushed Monday on him, but we need
to update the.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
Yeah, he's he deserves he deserves revenge twice, no question.
So there was there were Soviet conventional submarines at the
blockade line lurking under the water. They were part of
the deployment to Cuba, these sort of old old school
conventional submarines. They were being rather violently forced to the
surface at the blockade line by the US Navy. The
US Navy had detected them and was for example, dropping

(49:08):
practice depth charges to force them to the surface.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
Oh, not real ones, but to show them, look, this
is coming the real ride, just.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
To rattle them to force them to surface.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
The thing is, apparently, when you're a submarine and these
explosions are going off. You know mine, you're inside a
tin can. Yeah, and you don't. You don't know the difference.
You can't say, oh, everyone relaxed, that's just to practice
depth charge you can easily conclude the real depth charges. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So as a result of this, and by the way,
were they were also at one point this one submarine,

(49:37):
the B fifty nine, the one in the one in questionnaire,
had to surface because its batteries were running low. These
are basically like the same technology the Germans used with
their U boats. Right, they're diesel electric. You have to
run your diesel engine on the surface to recharge your
electric batteries.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
Yeah, at some point.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
Otherwise you're just dead in the water underneath the water,
so he has to resurface, and when he comes to
the surface, the Americans also start to buzz him with
their anti submarine warfare aircraft, including firing rounds their automatic
cannon into the water nearby. So very very violent hostile
acts on the part of the Americans and lead this
one captain, Captain Savitsky to sort of lose his cool.
He sort of flips his lid and he comes long

(50:12):
story short, very very close to Launchin's another thing the
Americans didn't know the Soviet submarines had, which was a
fifteen kiloton nuclear torpedo. Yeah, once again, fifteen kilotons. That's
that's almost the exact size of the Hroschmabam, which he
would have launched at the US Navy forces, which included
an aircraft carrier and a bunch of other surface vessels,
only the intervention of Vsili Archipov, who by chance was
on that boat. He was sort of a staff officer

(50:34):
that could have been on any one of the four boats.
He happened to be on B fifty nine. Had he
not been, who knows how this would have ended.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
So he's ranking, he's below the captain.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
Well, no, he's above the captain, but happens to be Actually, no,
this is a good question.

Speaker 3 (50:48):
May I forget his exact rank.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
He's in a position to intervene and okay, and he
at least has the captain's ear. I don't know he
was if he was in a position to order the
captain to do X y Z. But he's an officer
of the whole unit. Oh I see, so not of
the submarine. And you know, as you know, it's sort
of like the flag officer of the fleet. Right, he
doesn't command the ship he's on. Yeah, right, it's a
similar thing. So he could have been on any one

(51:10):
of these fource ubs. He happened to be on the
important one, and he apparently apparently talks Sivisky out of it.
And then it turns out that the America and then
they were through signaling right through what is it the
oldest lamp or whatever they use, semaphore. I forget the
naval terminology. I'm not a navy buff I apologize. But
the Americans were able to signal the surfaced sub officers

(51:31):
sort of at the conning tower that we're not trying
to sink you, and we're not. We just wanted you
to come to the surface right now. We were not
We were not engaged in acts of war, even though
you thought we were. So that saved the US Fleet
and I potentially World War three. There are lots of
people who think the vastily Archipov is the single most
important individual in the entire comunial crisis, and you can
make a good case for that. Yeah, there's another one.

(51:53):
This this story was revealed recently. It awaits documentary confirmation.
It's based on the testimony of two eyewitnesses. But we
don't have the documents. We know we know we have
the Archipop story that's black and white, that's well established.
This one is less We're less sure, but it's no
less harrowing if it was true. It turns out there

(52:13):
was a US cruise missile squadron based in Okinawa. These
were missiles there were, so they're primitive cruise missiles, nuclear
arm they're it's called the Mace B. It had a range,
I think of thirteen hundred miles, so from Okinawa could
hit all sorts of Chinese and Soviet targets. On that
same day, October twenty seventh, this one B squadron received
the launch order and there were people there who were

(52:35):
ready to carry it out because basically it's an order. Yeah,
and then they sought confirmation at the mission with the
mission the Mission Control Center whatever it's called. They called
for confirmation and they got it. Yes, launch orders is genuine.
There was a Captain William Bassett who thought this was
kind of strange that they received the launch order because
they hadn't been ordered to deaf Con one yet, which
is normally you would be ordered to before you received

(52:57):
the launch order, okay, And so we thought the confirmation
order was and he actually ordered some of his security
people to go and threaten this other lieutenant who was
going to go ahead with the launch, and so he
insisted on getting a higher, basic, higher level confirmation. So
they went up the food chain and confirmed that there
was in fact no launch order. So he could have possibly,
but like I said, we don't have confirmation. But if

(53:18):
this is true, it's also harrowing in another case where
a relatively low ranked individual sort of being extra careful,
not following standard operating procedures and actually may have saved
the day. And this is just once again to sort
of beat this dead horse which is now a dead
horse on the show, which is that Kennedy and Krishev
were not in control of the forces. Yeah, at the
disposal around the world, millions of personnel, lots of things

(53:41):
can go wrong, and lots of things did go wrong.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
Well, these things didn't go wrong to the extent that
there was World War III. So how was the crisis result?
It's much more complicated than I'm presenting it here. This
is the right reader's digest version. No it's not.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
It didn't know it is the professor buzzcover. I'm sorry,
which means it's very well sourced. I did not mean
to sell the shows.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
Yeah, so readers died, just buzzkillers for the younger ones.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Wait, what is he talking about? Was this weekly magazine?
And it was it was all sorts of it was
it was crap, right, it was. It was the cliff
Notes versions of all sorts of fiction and non issue.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
They had people like Paul Harvey writing oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
it was all crap.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
No, it was bad anyway. So on the twenty sixth
of October, Khrushov privately offered to withdraw the missiles in
return for a no what's called a no invasion pledge.
Nowtherwis Kennedy would say, we will never invade Cuba. Kennedy
and his people when they received that offer on the evening,
so the Washington Time, the evening of the twenty six
they were relieved because they had expected a demand for
a missile trade. In other words, Soviets will pull the

(54:42):
missiles out of Cuba if the United States pulls its
missiles out of Turkey.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
Right, okay, yeah, remember those Turkish missiles.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
Right, Sorry for those famous Turkles and like I said,
like you said earlier, I can recommend a goodook on
the subject where you could learn more than you could
ever hope to know about the missiles in Turkey. And
they had expected this, by the way, this had been
discussed on every day the crisis. Despite later denials, the
Kennedy people talked about this all the time.

Speaker 3 (55:04):
What if he asked for demand of missiles?

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Kennedy himself thought that there was obvious logic and obvious
appeal to this right, musually to the public. As he
said on the twenty seventh in xcom he said, to
any reasonable person out there, this would look like a
reasonable offer. And so they were relieved that this didn't come,
but that relief was premature. The next morning, the very
mercurial Krushchev, He's feeling bolder, and partly the ebb and

(55:27):
flow of this end of the crisis period partly has
to do with Khrushchev's constantly changing assessment as to what
he can get away with a right, and so he's
sort of conservative one moment, a little more bold in
X moment than it goes conservative again. So the morning
of the twenty seventh, Washington Time he's feeling bolder, and
he publicly ups the ante by demanding a missile trade. Yeah,

(55:48):
a public soul publicly demands a missile trade Turkey for Cuba.
This puts the Kennedy people on the spot. In XCOM.
They have actually three meetings that day. They're spending hours
and hours and hours discussing this. In those meetings, it's
quite clear most of the x COM members were opposed
to a trade.

Speaker 3 (56:04):
Kennied was very much in favor.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
And this is one of these cases that you know,
not one hundred percent, but pretty much like I said
with Lincoln, the eyes have it.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
And what he basically does is he basically ignores his
XCOM and he goes around them, and he meets with
a smaller group and they agree to his closer advisors.
They agree to send Bobby Kennedy, who now has a
secret back channel to the Soviet ambassador and anatotally Dobrynyan.
They've established a sort of a back channel personal contact
to sort of short circuit all the all the other
nonsense that slows down communications. By the way, in case

(56:35):
I forget, at one point in give missile crisis messages
between the Americans and the Soviets in Washington are being
moved around Washington, d C. By Western Union bicycle career.
You're kidding, I am not. I wish I were you meet.
It was that sort of delivered like no one whatever, no, no, no, no, no.
That was standard operating procedure. That's how you sent messages.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
But they were coded maybe or what's just some any
anybody don't know.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
They weren't coded.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
I think they were labeled, you know, top secret or
confidential or whatever. But yeah, there's some guy peddling through
DC traffic with something that could.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
Determine the fate of the world.

Speaker 4 (57:08):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
Yeah, and that's going to help explain some of the
shall we say, reforms and communications that come later. So
he ups the Andy Kennedy is in favor of this,
so he ignores his advisors for the most part. He
sends RFK to Debrinion with the offer of a secret
and sequential missile trade. In other words, a missile trade
that doesn't look like a missile trade, right right, Okay,
So in other words, Soviets pull their missiles out. A

(57:31):
few months later, we will quietly remove our missiles from Turkey.
Everyone's happy. The Soviets aren't entirely happy with this because
what they want is a public trade. That's that's you
know where the linkage is clear. This is this is
that this is a trade that's secret and sequential, so
it's deniable, which the Americans will do until proof of
this is definitively delivered.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
In nineteen eighty nine, eighty.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
Nine, people suspected a trade. Some people to Kennedy's opponents
suspected a trade immediately, but they had no proof. Yeah,
it could always be denied. It was confirmed by Ted
Sorens and Kennedy's a confident and speech writer in nineteen
eighty nine, so it's not speculation anymore. There was a trade,
but it was secret in sequential and by the way,
also went along with the no invasion plage.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
Which also shows, by the way, since it was nineteen
eighty nine, lord knows how many years later, because I
can't do the mass har You know, new stuff comes
to light all the time. This is how history changes.
Most of the time, new stuff has come to light.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Yes, So the risk of war on that October twenty
second definitely had reached its peak. There was a utube,
a plane famously shot down over Cuba, by one of
the Soviet sam's. Then, by the way, that shooting out
of the YouTube not authorized by the Kremlin, Right, that
was the local decision.

Speaker 3 (58:37):
Yes, again, you don't control your military assets.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
Right.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
That could have led to World War three. That night,
Kennedy said to one of his many mistresses, this is
recent information because he left the room, came back after
taking a phone call, comes back in, and he said,
and I'm quoting, I'd rather my children be red than dead. Wow.

Speaker 3 (58:53):
In other words, the risk of war was real and
he was feeling it.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
So he was saying, I'm not going to react to
that because I'd rather have my children be read rather
read than dead.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
Well, no, no, that was not linked to the U
two shootdown. But generally speaking, he was much more interested
in preventing World War three. Yeah, even if, for example,
he had to do a public missile trade, it's possible,
because he's with his back channel in place for that,
it's possible he would have been okay with a public
missile trade as a last resort because he was so
bent on avoiding World War three. And unfortunately some of

(59:24):
his advisors were not quite so risk averse. And and
that's sort of the good news here is that this
is a case where as far as we know, we
had the right person in the right place at the
right time. Some of his advisors, certainly the chairs of
the Joint Chiefs, their at issue was essentially bring it will.
We will completely crush them in any war, so we
don't need to worry about the risk of war lord,
which is a really frightening stance.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
This reminds me, by the way, Professor, back when we
talked about the Berlin Wall a few years ago, Kennedy
makes that statement, a wall is better than a war.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now he was definitely a cooler
head when it comes to nuclear war, even though for example,
he helps multiply the nuclear overkill.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
Right, he has massive defense built up on his watch.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
Yeah right. He deserves low marks in a lot of
other realms, but not in terms of his risker version. Anyway,
the Soviets announced that they were they were withdrawing the missiles,
and by the way, they sent this message via Radio Moscow.
They announced it publicly, and that was partly to cut
to the chase. They wanted the American They wanted the
Americans to know immediately that they were agreeing to withdraw
o their missiles. They didn't want any delay.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
So none of this back channel stuff, none of them,
not not in this version of the deal.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Was worked out through the back channels.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
But the announcement, yes, we agree to remove our missiles
and the Americans are going to agree not to invade Cuba.
The trade stuff was all secret. And by the way,
the Americans said, if you go public with this trade
the deals off, that was made clear. That was made
clear to it to Dobrynyan when RFK met with him.
If you're wondering, though, so why did Krushchev change his
mind again and decide to cave In effect, he had
gotten spooked again. He had received a letter from Castro

(01:00:54):
at this key moment, and Castro was essentially according to
the Soviets, it's not quite so clear, but according to
the Soviets, the way they read the letter was, Comrade
Videll is basically urging us to launch a first strike,
which I mean, that's not a real comforting signal at
this high point of the crisis, right yeh. He Also,
Khrushov and his advisors also found out that Kennedy was
going to address the nation in a few hours and

(01:01:14):
then they start to freak. It's like, oh, why would
he do that? Is you going to announce an invasion? Yeah,
highly possible. They didn't want to go down that road.
So that's when Krushev's like, Okay, that's it. We're we're
gonna do the deal, right, no evasion, pledge secret missile
deal and just pull our missiles out.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
Well, professor, we always asked this, You always provided. You know,
lots of people, for instance, I can think of the
buzzlings or are now in their late teens. You know,
they're going to think, why is this important? What's the
bottom line?

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
Who cares?

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
That happened, That happened sixty years ago, and it didn't
bring exactly right. It's something that didn't happen, so why
would we care. So in terms of the history, the
missile crisis certainly had some short and medium term stabilizing effects,
I'll call them stabilizing effects. For example, they helped lead
to a thaw in US Soviet relations, which helped lead
to the limited Test ban right, which banned atmospheric nuclear testing, which.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
Which is a really big deal act.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
It is a big deal certainly as a public health
measure because people were being ghost with radiation. They weren't
anymore after this. Also, I alluded to it. You did have.
The two sides were mutually concerned about the poor means
of communication available during the missile crisis, and so what
they did is they installed the hot line, and that
is often interpreted as the flashing red phone.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
Oh, I thought there was a no.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
And by the way, if you see there are certain
movies like what's the movie is called, and it's called Failsafe.
Oh yeah, Henry Fonda, and there they've got, you know,
they've got the two phones where they're talking directly through translators.
It's very dramatic, but very inaccurate because what they actually
installed were two teletype machines, so you'd have instantaneous print

(01:02:49):
out of what the other side was writing to you,
and no Western Union cyclist or anything like that involved.

Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
So definite improvement.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
By the way, they did use the hotline later on,
for example the nineteen seventy three Mid East War the Highline,
So that was an improvement, certainly, no offense to Western Union.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
Yeah. By the way, just to throw a plug for
a great film, was a Doctor Strange Love Henry Fond
of movie that Doctor Nashus mentioned Failsafe was the inspiration
I think then for.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
The late Actually, no, they were both inspired by the
same book by the title fail Safe. Oh, fail Safe
is sort of the serious version of the movie, and
Doctor Strange Love is not so serious. Okay, better by
the way, if not on my top five list, certainly
in my top ten list. If people haven't seen Doctor
Strange Love, they need to. It's an absolutely brilliant movie.
By the way, we may want to do a show

(01:03:36):
about Doctor Strangelove someday because there's some interesting backstory too.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
Well, we should do a show about the book and both.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
Yeah, exactly, because there was another book at the same
time called Red Alert, a British book which was similar,
and I think some of them got fused in the
script writing process.

Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
Well, here we go, Buzzkillers. You're seeing the sort of
how the sausage is made here at the Institut.

Speaker 3 (01:03:55):
Do we have to listen to them workshop their next show?

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
Yeah. So there was a thaw on US Soviet relations.
There was a about a six or nine month real
sharp dip in Soviet Cuban relations. Oh Castro was By
the way, Castro found he was not consulted by the
way the Turks were not consulted.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
Castro was not consultant.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
When Castro found out that Khrushov was pulling the missiles out,
he flipped his stuff. He had some real, real choice words,
which deserves an R rating at best, and that he
actually visited the Soviet Union in the spring of nineteen
sixty three to sort of iron things out. And by
the way, the Cubans became much more adventurous internationally and

(01:04:34):
sending troops to places like Angola. Part of their reason,
just part, but part of the reason was the Soviet Union.
They're too timid, too conservative. We're going to sort of
sort of bust out on our own and have our
own foreign policy, maybe cooperate with the Chinese a little
bit more. So. That's interesting too, But more important big
picture to my mind, is just how this crisis, among
other things, demonstrates how problematic nuclear weapons are. To put

(01:04:56):
it very mildly, it is true that nuclear weapons can
be and were stabilizing in some ways. Right. We had
a world war in nineteen fourteen, we had a world
war in nineteen thirty nine, and then we had no
world war. Knock on wood, certainly not in Europe. For
decades and decades afterwards. Yeah, and why is that? That
is because of nuclear weapons. Most scholars would agree that

(01:05:19):
nuclear weapons have a sobering effect. They have a deterred effect.
You don't launch World War three because of the possible consequences,
So that's really important. There's a flip side, though, and
that is that if you look not just the missile crisis,
but particularly in the missile crisis, nuclear weapons also cause
the problems they are supposed to prevent.

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
They not only deter they also provoke. And that's true
in part with the Jupiter missiles in Turkey. It's certainly
the case with missiles and Cuba.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
Even if your main motive is to defend Cuba, you
have provoked the United States and arguably risk not only
the Cubans but also yourselves and the rest of humankind
because of your rash action using nuclear weapons. But like
I said, by this point, nuclear weapons are sort of
their a go to right when in doubt, solve your
problem with nuclear weapons, and it almost almost ended up

(01:06:04):
World War three.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
And you know they deter when you're rational. But rationality
is not the only factor here. Like I said, you
have the risk of accident and By the way, the
list I gave it earlier about the accidents and incidents
going on during the crisis, that was a partial list.
There are many many others, some of them quite harrowing, like,
for example, someone accidentally putting a practice launch tape into

(01:06:26):
the machine at our early warning radar that had been
turned and pointed to Cuba, and for a minute the
people in that station thought, oh, they've launched their missiles
from Cuba, and they made some frantic phone calls and
then discovered, oh no, yeah, no, no, jackass, someone put
the wrong tape.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
In the machine. Anyway, that happens anyway, so you might
accidentally and you might accidentally launch World War three even
though you didn't intend it, which is to say, to
put it in other words, in October nineteen sixty two,
we got lucky and recent events in Ukraine, where by
the way, there's all sorts of new interest in the
nuclear arms race, in nuclear weapons. Yeah, sure, very good reasons.
Ukraine should remind us that our nuclear weapons are still

(01:07:04):
with us. Our arsenals are smaller than they were in
nineteen sixty two, but they're still enormous, right, Yeah. East
Side still has I think east Side has something like
seventeen hundred strategic nuclear weapons. That's still a great deal,
that still represents overkill, and we might not be so
lucky the next time. And I will leave the last
word to the famous economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who around
nineteen seventy wrote about the missile crisis, and he said,

(01:07:25):
and I'm quoting, we were in luck, but success in
a lottery is no argument for lotteries.

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
Yeah, you're lucky when you're playing Russian roulette, you don't
chew yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
Yeah, but it's safer just to leave that gun on
the table, or maybe not to have that gun in
the first place.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
Exactly. Well, Professor, once again you've enlightened us about something
extremely important. Again, we've updated what we talked about many
years ago in the Cuban missile crisis. So that's important.
But I want buzz killers to know one a couple
of things. The first is that, as you all of
you regular listeners know, Professor Nash provides us with these
great outlines that help us, help me pair the show

(01:07:59):
and help the show flow normally and everything. But in
this show I had to force myself to look back
at the outline because I was so gripped what he
was saying was looking directly at him, you know, as
if you know, like a television documentary. That's how important
this topic is, and that's how well he explains it.
So thank you, Professor so much for coming on the
show about this topic my pleasure and Buzzkillers please go

(01:08:22):
to professor buzzkill dot com for all the fun and
all the terror like the Human misle Crisis and all
the shows about history, myths and misunderstandings, and do me
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(01:08:44):
companies spread the word about our show, and we desperately
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