The Cuban Missile Crisis 50 years Later

Today -- October 28, 2012 -- is the 50th anniversary of the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the day that the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed that the nuclear armed weapons the U.S.S.R. was installing in Cuba would be removed in exchange or the U.S. removing nuclear armed missiles from Turkey and Italy and agreeing not to invade Cuba. In the years since the crisis it is evident that the U.S. was very close to invading Cuba and to launching a preemptive strike on the U.S.S.R., that Castro wanted the U.S.S.R. to launch a full out nuclear strike on the U.S., and that several incidents nearly occurred where missiles were launched without direct orders from Moscow or Washington, D.C. The closest of those was when the U.S. Navy had cornered three Russian subs and two of the three commanders on on one sub wanted to launch its nuclear weapons and started steps to do so. There have been several excellent write-ups about what we know of the crisis, and an excellent Bob Edwards Weekend piece on it on PBS radio, and several PBS television documentary shows on it.