Photo by Warren K. Leffler. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The President’s younger brother and most trusted adviser believed doing nothing about the Soviet missiles in Cuba was “unthinkable”, while a surprise air strike, in light of the memory of Pearl Harbor, was against America’s traditions and would “blacken the name of the United States in the pages of history”. He therefore favored the blockade as an action that would “make known unmistakably the seriousness of U.S. determination to get the missiles out of Cuba” while leaving the Soviets “some room for maneuver to pull back”. At the height of the crisis, Robert Kennedy met with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and made explicit the threat of an imminent U.S. attack, while also delivering the President’s secret promise to withdraw U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey in four to five months. He later wrote an acclaimed account of the crisis, Thirteen Days.