President Kennedy was unable to attend this rally in 1962 for
Pat Brown, who was running for reelection as governor of California. The president was busy with something more
pressing: It was day eleven of the
white-hot Cuban Missile Crisis. Indeed,
it was on this day fifty-six years ago, that Soviet Premier Khrushchev
responded to Kennedy’s letter of October 25.
But before the message arrived, a representative of the
Soviet embassy in Washington sought out John Scali, an ABC news reporter. They had lunch at the Occidental Restaurant
and the diplomat, counselor Aleksandr Fomin, had a message: Would the United States refrain from war if
the Soviet Union removed its missiles from Cuba? Scali conveyed the apparent backchannel
feeler to Dean Rusk, the secretary of state and a member of the EXCOMM (the NSC
Executive Committtee) evaluating the crisis.
It is unclear how official was Fomin’s intervention.
Khrushchev’s message then came to the White House. In his lengthy correspondence he said, “I see,
Mr. President, that you too are not devoid of a sense of anxiety for the fate
of the world understanding, and of what war entails.” After dismissing charges of offensive plans
against the United States and emphasizing his similar concerns about war, the
Soviet premier offered what was effectively a quid pro quo: No Cuban invasion and an end to the naval quarantine of Cuba in return for removal of the missiles. Kennedy quickly agreed. The Cuban Missile Crisis was effectively
resolved.
Governor Brown, who apparently did not need Kennedy’s
presence, went on to defeat Richard Nixon by 300,000 votes ten days later. On November 7 the former vice president,
bitter about his defeat, told the assembled media: “But as I leave you, I want you to know: just
think how much you’re going to be missing.
You don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore. Because, gentlemen, this is
my last press conference.” Of course,
it wasn’t.
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