National security advisor McGeorge Bundy delivered the photographic evidence to Kennedy that morning, confirming intelligence reports of Soviet missile sites just 90 miles from Florida. The ensuing thirteen-day standoff between Washington and Moscow brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any other point in the Cold War.
McGeorge Bundy walked into Kennedy's bedroom that morning carrying a folder of grainy black-and-white photographs taken by a U-2 spy plane over western Cuba. The images, when analyzed overnight by CIA photo interpreters, showed unmistakable evidence: Soviet medium-range ballistic missile sites under construction, capable of striking Washington, D.C., and most major American cities within minutes of launch.
Kennedy immediately convened what became known as the Executive Committee, a small group of advisors who would meet in near-continuous secret session over the following days. The president had explicitly promised Americans months earlier that the U.S. would not tolerate offensive Soviet weapons in Cuba; now that promise faced its test.
What followed was the tensest fortnight of the nuclear age—a naval blockade, back-channel negotiations, a shot-down U-2 pilot, and moments when advisors on both sides feared full-scale war was imminent. The crisis resolved on October 28 when Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba and a secret promise to remove American missiles from Turkey. That October morning, though, nobody yet knew how it would end.
Key people: John F. Kennedy, McGeorge Bundy, Nikita Khrushchev