JFK Was Ready to Trade, Didn’t Have To : Rusk Reveals Secret of ’62 Cuban Crisis

President Kennedy was prepared to make a concession to Moscow on U.S. missiles in Turkey to avoid war during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and was taken by surprise when the concession proved unnecessary, it was reported today.

Dean Rusk, secretary of state at the time of the crisis, revealed the 25-year-old secret in part of a letter read at a conference of experts on the crisis last March at Hawk’s Cay, Fla., the New York Times said.

The concession would have had the United Nations propose a mutual withdrawal of obsolete American missiles from Turkey in exchange for a Soviet pullout of its missiles from Cuba.

The move became unnecessary when Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev agreed to a U.S. ultimatum that the missiles be withdrawn from Cuba without an explicit link to the Jupiter missiles in Turkey, the newspaper said.

Kennedy had not expected Khrushchev’s decision, the newspaper said.

Rusk said that during the crisis, Kennedy “instructed me to telephone the late Andrew Cordier,” a former U.N. official then at Columbia University “and dictate to him a statement which would be made by U Thant, the secretary general of the United Nations, proposing the removal of both the Jupiters and the missiles in Cuba.”

Rusk wrote that “Mr. Cordier was to put that statement in the hands of U Thant only after a further signal from us,” the newspaper reported.

“That step was never taken and the statement I furnished to Mr. Cordier has never seen the light of day,” Rusk said. “So far as I know, President Kennedy, Andrew Cordier and I were the only ones who knew this particular step.”

On Oct. 28, 1962, the Russians began dismantling the missiles, ending the crisis and making the step unnecessary. The move came just one day after the statement was dictated.