[Most of the documents in this posting are never-before-published
records discovered at the U.S. National Archives among the State
Department’s central files and the records of the U.S. Embassy in
Rome. ]
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THE ENDGAME OF THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS  
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William Burr & Leopoldo Nuti
February 16, 2023
National Security Archive
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_ Most of the documents in this posting are never-before-published
records discovered at the U.S. National Archives among the State
Department’s central files and the records of the U.S. Embassy in
Rome. _

Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) at Çiğli Air
Base in Turkey, 1963. A squadron of 15 Jupiters became operational
there in March 1962., Photo courtesy of the late Lewis Mills

 

WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 16, 2023 - Harvard professor and future
Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger discussed the U.S. withdrawal of
Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) from Italy
during January 1963 talks with top Italian officials and diplomats,
including Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani and President Antonio Segni,
according to a declassified telegram from the U.S. Embassy in Rome.
Segni felt some “pique” that the decision had been made at the
time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and that three months had passed
before his government learned about it. According to Kissinger,
“almost everyone” he talked to in Rome believed that there had
been a U.S.-Soviet “agreement” on the Jupiter withdrawal, with
some of them pointing to an April 1 “deadline” for beginning the
removals as an important clue.

Kissinger and his Italian interlocutors had no inside knowledge of
White House policymaking but they were touching on one of the biggest
secrets of the Cuban Missile Crisis: the undisclosed deal between
President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in
which the U.S. would remove Jupiter missiles in Turkey (and, by
extension, the Jupiters in Italy) as part of the agreement for the
removal of Soviet missiles in Cuba.[1]
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Only nine U.S. officials knew of the deal at the time: President
Kennedy, his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, national
security adviser McGeorge Bundy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk,
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Deputy Secretary of Defense
Roswell Gilpatric, Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson, Deputy Secretary of
State George Ball, and White House adviser Theodore Sorensen.[2]
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Of that group, those who lived past the 1960s and 70s—Bundy, Rusk,
Sorensen and McNamara, for example—kept the secret for years, not
fully acknowledging the official status of the agreement until 1989,
when former Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin disclosed the details
of his October 27, 1962, meeting with Robert Kennedy.[3]
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Kissinger’s report to the U.S. Embassy on Italian suspicions is one
of 35 declassified documents on the implementation of the
Kennedy-Khrushchev secret deal published today by the National
Security Archive and the Wilson Center's Nuclear Proliferation
International History Project. This posting, the first of two parts,
helps reconstruct the main elements of the endgame of the Cuban
Missile Crisis, 60 years later. Part I looks at the early stages,
during the months immediately following the Missile Crisis, when the
Kennedy administration developed and began to implement its basic
approach, quietly building consensus through secret outreach to the
governments of Italy and Turkey. By late January 1963, Italy was on
board (albeit with some mixed feelings), but Turkey had only agreed in
principle to withdrawing the Jupiters. As Part II will document,
reaching an agreement with Turkey was complicated by the Turkish
military’s reluctance to do so. Moreover, NATO had to be brought
into the understanding on the Jupiters, and a formal agreement with
Italy was yet to be negotiated.

Documents in this posting illuminate the reactions of senior Italian
and Turkish officials to U.S. proposals to remove Jupiter missiles and
replace them with Polaris submarine patrols in the Mediterranean.[4]
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Turkish Defense Minister İlhami Sancar expressed concern to U.S.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara about the impact that the U.S.
withdrawal of the Jupiters would have on his country’s
“confidence” in the U.S. and the possibility of “moral[e]
depression.” While generally accepting the Jupiter withdrawal,
Italian Defense Minister Giulio Andreotti told U.S. Ambassador G.
Frederick Reinhardt that it would be a “graphic step backward” in
terms of Italy's participation in nuclear deterrence.

Further complicating negotiations was Turkey’s insistence on “full
Turkish crews” for the Polaris submarines, a proposal that U.S.
negotiators rejected. To help make the bitter pill of Jupiter
withdrawal more palatable to Turkey, the U.S. government promised
earlier delivery of F-104G fighter-bomber squadrons, but Ankara was
told that this would depend on “progress in negotiations that it is
clear GOT [Government of Turkey] will agree to dismantle Jupiters.”
This intended use of leverage would prove not to be as effective as
the U.S. may have anticipated.

SOURCES OF THE DOCUMENTS

Most of the documents in this posting are never-before-published
records discovered at the U.S. National Archives among the State
Department’s central files and the records of the U.S. Embassy in
Rome. Other important documents were found at the John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library. Both parts of this posting will also include
material from Italian archives. Today’s posting features pages from
the daily diary of Italian Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani concerning
his mid-January 1963 meetings with Kennedy and McNamara on the
Jupiter-Polaris replacement. One entry indicates that the Prime
Minister raised the possibility of a U.S.-Soviet deal on the Jupiters,
which both Kennedy and McNamara denied.

Kissinger’s finding that “almost everyone” among senior Italian
government officials suspected a U.S.-Soviet “agreement” on the
Jupiters was not the only time such suspicions surfaced. In the days
and weeks after the crisis began to dissipate, mid-level State
Department officials discussed rumors that President Kennedy had
favored a deal and had a “keen interest” in getting the Jupiters
out. In the months after the crisis, McNamara and Rusk tried to batten
down suspicions of a deal, testifying before Congress that there had
been no such thing. But doubts persisted. Senator John Stennis (D-Ms),
among other Senators, was convinced there had been a trade.[5]
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Perspectives on the Jupiter-Polaris Arrangement

It was essential for the Kennedy administration to implement the
secret deal and make good on a commitment to the Soviet leadership,
but executing it had its complexities. While Khrushchev focused mainly
on the Jupiters in Turkey, withdrawing the IRBMs from Italy was also a
U.S. goal. Under a coherent policy, the U.S. could not leave Jupiters
anywhere on NATO territory, although this made the diplomacy more
complicated. And the withdrawal of the Jupiters could not be
completely secret because it had to be carefully and delicately
coordinated with Italy and Turkey, whose governments had signed
agreements accepting the missiles. Both were NATO allies, and
Washington could not ride roughshod over them.

To minimize suspicions of a U.S.-Soviet deal, the reasoning for the
Jupiter withdrawals would be carefully explained to Italian, Turkish,
and other NATO interlocutors. Senior U.S. officials could not couch it
simply as a matter of withdrawing the missiles; instead, the
justification was to replace an obsolete and dangerous weapon system,
the Jupiters, with modern and relatively invulnerable Polaris
missile-launching submarines operating in Mediterranean waters. To
make things look more credible, the U.S. presented the withdrawal to
the Italians as part of a package that would also include the
“modernization” of NATO’s Southern European Task Force (SETAF)
through the replacement of “obsolete” Corporal missiles with more
modern Sergeants.

The ExComm[6]
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discussions during the crisis foreshadowed key elements of the
Jupiter-Polaris approach. Those who supported removing the Jupiters as
an element of a negotiated settlement included UN Ambassador Adlai
Stevenson, who took the lead in proposing the idea, and Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara, with some support from Vice President Lyndon
Johnson. Basic to the argument made by McNamara and others was that
the U.S. could treat Polaris missiles as a superior replacement to
vulnerable and obsolete Jupiter missiles. For example, Johnson
suggested that the U.S. could tell Turkish officials that by swapping
Jupiters for Polaris, “We’re gonna give you more protection than
ever…with less advertising. And it’s gonna make it less likely
you’ll get hit” with Soviet missiles.[7]
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Italy and Turkey presented very different diplomatic problems. As
McGeorge Bundy observed during an ExComm meeting, referring to the
messages from Ambassador Reinhardt in Italy and the Ambassador to
Turkey, Raymond Hare (documents 1 and 2), the situations were as
different as “night and day.” Italian officials were already
receptive to the notion of removing the Jupiters in favor of more
up-to-date nuclear delivery systems.[8]
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At the same time, the Italian inclination for removal made things
potentially more complicated, as both the Italian military and Italian
diplomats were hoping for the Jupiters to be replaced with Polaris
missiles to be deployed aboard the Italian cruiser _Garibaldi,_ on
which the Italian navy had installed four launching pits.

Turkish officials, however, had shown no such disposition about the
Jupiters, and persuading them would be difficult. Vice President
Johnson, who would not be told about the secret deal, observed that
the downside was that Turkey might “fear that we were through [with
it] and we wouldn’t come [to its defense.]” Johnson’s argument,
along with concern about the broader impact on NATO, was shared by
others inside and outside the ExComm, who were skeptical about a
missile deal. Kennedy listened to the ExComm critics, but their
opposition “toughened his determination” that a deal with
Khrushchev was essential to minimize the risks of conflict.[9]
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As the crisis progressed, the Soviet Union focused on the removal of
the Turkish Jupiters, and President Kennedy became more and more
interested in a trade, a possible solution began to take shape in
which the Italian missiles would be removed to facilitate the
withdrawal of the Turkish ones. Ambassador Hare suggested that an
Italian agreement to dismantle the missiles, coupled with the British
abandoning of the Thors (which had already been agreed upon) “could
be helpful in approaching Turks” (see document 2). In an ExComm
meeting, McNamara observed that a possible solution was to “get
Italy to go along with us,” saying that “this will put some
additional pressure on Turkey.” The best way to do this, according
to McNamara, would be to emphasize the obsolescence of the Jupiter as
a weapon system and remove the Turkish IRBMs together with the Italian
and the British missiles.[10]
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The Limits of the Declassified Record and Continuing Mysteries

Reconstructing the diplomacy of the Jupiter withdrawal is difficult
because, even 60 years later, many documents remain classified at the
National Archives. Defense Department records on the Jupiters are not
available, and dozens of documents have been withdrawn from the State
Department files at the National Archives. This is partly because of
inertia: As far as can be told, very few researchers—aside from the
editors of this posting—have requested declassification of the
records, especially those concerning Turkey. Also, around 2001, many
documents were removed from State Department archival files and
reclassified. What may have triggered the reclassifications by the
Department of Energy and the Department of Defense are some occasional
references to nuclear weapons stored in Italy and Turkey but also the
fact that the Jupiter was considered to be a nuclear delivery system.

The Department of Defense has treated—not always consistently—the
presence of the Jupiter missiles in Italy and Turkey as a secret
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Pentagon has reviewed documents for declassification, it has excised
references to both countries, sometimes using the specious reasoning
that declassifying 50- or 60-year-old records “would cause serious
harm to relations between the United States and a foreign government,
or to ongoing diplomatic activities of the United States
government.” Yet the Italian Air Force recently re-released a
semi-official history, first published in 2012, that tells the story
of the Italian unit that supported the Jupiter bases, the 36ma Aero
Brigata di Interdizione Strategica [36th Aerial Strategic Interdiction
Brigade] (ABIS). The publication includes many photos, interviews with
the men who operated the missiles, and a detailed explanation of the
weapon system, along with original diagrams of the operating
instructions.[11]
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One aspect of the Jupiter withdrawal story that is not easily
reconstructed is the role of President Kennedy during the weeks and
months after the secret deal. Only a smattering of documents in this
collection shed light on this point, such as a document citing his
“keen interest” in the Jupiters in November 1962 and others
describing how, in December 1962, Kennedy pressed McNamara and other
officials to move forward. One document indicates that Kennedy
approved the State Department’s diplomatic strategy after Rusk and
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Thomas Finletter presented it to him on
January 5, 1963, during a trip to Palm Beach, Florida. Kennedy also
spoke about the Jupiter-Polaris arrangement at length when he met with
Italian Prime Minister Fanfani in mid-January. Additional light may be
shed on Kennedy’s involvement when still-secret State Department and
Pentagon records at the U.S. National Archives are declassified. Other
documents, unknown to the editors, may be at the Kennedy Presidential
Library. Some material, however, has not survived, such as Rusk’s
records of his telephone conversations during the Cuban Missile Crisis
and with President Kennedy throughout the administration.

It is worth mentioning here an additional mystery. In his conversation
with Fanfani, Kennedy dropped a slightly encouraging hint to the
Italian prime minister about the possibility of replacing the Jupiters
by deploying the Polaris aboard an Italian ship, the _Garibaldi_,
despite the fact that, in his briefing papers, this solution was
characterized unfavorably. And yet it was Fanfani who let the matter
drop, according to the available records of their conversation (both
in English and in Italian). For Fanfani, probably more important than
the_ Garibaldi_ proposal were the domestic political implications of
the Jupiter removal, especially avoiding any adverse impact on his
government coalition, which relied on the support of the Socialist
Party, a firm opponent of any nuclear deployments in Italy.

The U.S. government’s management of the Jupiter problem coincided
with consequential developments in U.K.-U.S. relations, including the
tense and difficult meetings between Kennedy and British Prime
Minister Harold Macmillan in Nassau on December 20-21, 1962. There,
Kennedy and Macmillan resolved how the U.S. government would manage
its decision to abandon the Skybolt air-to-surface missile, which the
British had counted on to extend their nuclear deterrent force.
Instead, Kennedy offered, and Macmillan accepted, Polaris submarines
and missiles coupled with possible British participation in a NATO
multilateral force.[12]
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Needless to say, the complicated arrangements discussed at Nassau
utterly baffled Italian diplomats, who were asked to make sense of
them and figure out what this all meant for their country’s own
strategic ambitions in the context of the withdrawal of the Jupiters.

To manage the U.S. government’s implementation of these decisions,
the State Department and the Defense Department created a Nassau
decisions steering group and folded the Jupiter missile problem into
its work. According to Rusk’s instructions
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the handful of participants working on the Jupiter issue would operate
on a “more classified basis” than the other Nassau issues. Only
those with a “need-to-know” would be involved. Such restrictions
would ensure that only limited numbers of diplomats and defense
officials knew about the Jupiter-Polaris negotiations.

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CO-EDITOR Leopoldo Nuti is professor of international history at Roma
Tre University and co-director of the Nuclear Proliferation
International History Project. A graduate of the University of
Florence (Laurea), George Washington University, (M.A. in
International Affairs) and the University of Rome (Ph.D. in History of
International Relations), Professor Nuti has held numerous fellowships
and visiting professorships, including a Fulbright, Jean Monnet Fellow
at the European University Institute, Research Fellow at the CSIA,
Harvard University, Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Nobel
Institute, and Visiting Professor at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques
in Paris. He has published extensively in Italian, English and French
on U.S.-Italian relations and Italian foreign and security policy. His
books include_: L'esercito italiano nel secondo dopoguerra, 1945-1950.
La sua ricostruzione e l'assistenza militare alleata,_ (Roma: Ufficio
Storico dello Stato Maggiore Esercito, 1989_), I missili di ottobre.
La storiografia americana e la crisi cubana del 1962_ (Milano: LED,
1994), _Gli Stati Uniti e l'apertura a sinistra. Importanza e limiti
della presenza americana in Italia_ (Roma: Laterza, 1999), _La sfida
nucleare. La politica estera italiana e le armi nucleari, 1945-1991_,
(Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007). As a co-editor, Professor Nuti’s latest
books are _The Euromissiles Crisis and the End of the Cold War_ (with
Frédéric Bozo, Marie Pierre Rey, and Bernd Rother), (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2015) and _The Making of the Global Nuclear
Order in the 1970s _(with David Holloway) (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021).

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NOTE: Thanks to MIchelle De Martino and Stacey Chandler, archivists at
the John F. Kennedy Presidential LIbrary, for their invaluable aid. 

TO READ THE DOCUMENTS REFERENCED IN THIS ARTICLE CLICK HERE.
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* US Foreign Policy
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* Cuba
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* cuban missle crisis
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