When he headed the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, Smith proposed a direct Moscow–Washington link that met resistance from State and the military, yet once it became the 'hot line,' President Kennedy credited Smith with the original idea.
Gerard C. Smith was an American lawyer and nuclear-policy specialist who treated arms control and nonproliferation as problems of statecraft. As the U.S. lead negotiator at SALT I, he organized the practical work of limitation talks amid competing nuclear strategies, later recording their tensions and judgments in Doubletalk. He continued to oppose measures he believed would undermine the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, making his career a study in both managing and questioning the arms race.
Career timeline
1935Graduated from Yale College
1938Graduated from Yale Law School; practiced law in New York
1942–1945Procurement officer, U.S. Department of the Navy
1950–1954Special assistant to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
1954–1961State Department special assistant for atomic energy and Director of Policy Planning
1969–1973Director of ACDA and chief U.S. negotiator at SALT I
1977–1980Special presidential representative for nonproliferation
US Army general who commanded American forces in South Vietnam from 1964 to 1968 and pursued a strategy of attrition measured by body count
Westmoreland adopted attrition and “search and destroy” in Vietnam, treating enemy body counts as a key measure of success. U.S. forces grew to more than half a million, but the enemy replenished its losses; his optimistic claims of progress lost credibility after the 1968 Tet Offensive.
From South Carolina, he graduated first in his West Point class in 1936 and served in the European theatre of the Second World War and in Korea. Sent to South Vietnam in January 1964, he took command of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam in June. After the Marines landed he argued for abandoning a defensive posture in favour of an attrition war in which US forces sought out and destroyed the enemy, using artillery and air power on a huge scale. In November 1967 he said “the end comes into view”; after the Tet Offensive his request for 200,000 more troops leaked and he was replaced in March 1968. He was Army Chief of Staff from 1968 to 1972.
Career timeline
1936Graduated from West Point and was commissioned in the Army.
1942–1945Commanded the 34th Field Artillery Battalion in World War II, then served as chief of staff of the 9th Infantry Division.
1958–1963Commanded the 101st Airborne Division, then served as superintendent of West Point.
1964–1968Commanded U.S. forces in Vietnam and directed a war of attrition. After the Tet Offensive, he returned to the United States and became Army chief of staff.
The founding father of photo interpretation whose analysts spotted Soviet missiles in Cuba and triggered the crisis
"If there was ever a time I want to be right in my life, this is it": upon confirming the SS-4 missiles in the U-2 photos of Cuba, October 15, 1962
A Chicago-born geologist who began his intelligence career as a Navy photo interpreter during World War II, Lundahl joined the CIA in 1953 to lead its Photographic Interpretation Division and became the founding director of the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in 1961, overseeing imagery analysis from U-2 spy planes and early reconnaissance satellites. On October 15, 1962, when NPIC analysts identified Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic missile sites in U-2 photographs of Cuba, Lundahl personally confirmed the finding and, saying 'If there was ever a time I want to be right in my life, this is it,' alerted CIA headquarters; the next morning he briefed President Kennedy at the White House. He led NPIC until his retirement in 1973, shaping U.S. imagery intelligence through the Cold War and earning the National Security Medal and an honorary knighthood.
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1939–1942B.S. & M.S. in geology, University of Chicago
1942–1945Photo interpreter, U.S. Navy
1946–1953Chief Engineer, Photogrammetry Division, Naval Photographic Interpretation Center
1953–1961Chief, Photographic Interpretation Division, CIA
1961–1973Founding Director, National Photographic Interpretation Center
From first translator of Marx's 1844 Manuscripts to philosopher of Detroit's revolution
“We are the leaders we've been looking for.” — interviewed in her 90s in Detroit
Daughter of Chinese immigrants, she earned a PhD at Bryn Mawr but was barred from academia by racism and joined the Workers Party. With C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya she formed the Johnson–Forest Tendency triad, co-authoring State Capitalism and World Revolution and producing the first English translation of Marx's 1844 Manuscripts. In 1953 she married Black autoworker James Boggs, settled in Detroit, broke from Trotskyism, and turned toward community-based revolutionary praxis centered on Black liberation, writing into her 90s.
Career timeline
1915Born in Providence, Rhode Island, to Chinese immigrant restaurateur Chin Lee; Chinese given name Yu Ping (玉平)
1935Graduates from Barnard College, Columbia University
1940Earns PhD in philosophy from Bryn Mawr College with dissertation on George Herbert Mead
1940–1945Works as low-wage librarian at University of Chicago Philosophy Library; joins Workers Party through tenants' rights activism
1945–1947Forms Johnson–Forest Tendency with C.L.R. James and Dunayevskaya; produces first English translation of Marx's 1844 Manuscripts
1947Joins SWP with the tendency; writes under party pseudonym 'Ria Stone'
1950Co-authors State Capitalism and World Revolution with James and Dunayevskaya
1951Leaves SWP; helps form Correspondence Publishing Committee
1953Marries Black autoworker and political activist James Boggs; moves to Detroit
1962Breaks with C.L.R. James; leads Correspondence with James Boggs on independent Detroit-community orientation
1964Attempts to persuade Malcolm X to run for US Senate, unsuccessfully
1970Co-founds Detroit Asian Political Alliance
1974Publishes Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century with James Boggs
1979Co-founds National Organization for an American Revolution (NOAR)
1992Founds Detroit Summer, a multicultural intergenerational youth program
1998Publishes autobiography Living for Change
2011At 95, publishes The Next American Revolution with Scott Kurashige
2015Dies in Detroit at 100; President Obama issues statement mourning her passing
The quantitative defense secretary who led the Vietnam War and helped prevent nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis
The major lesson of the Cuban missile crisis: the indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations.
The eighth U.S. Secretary of Defense (1961–1968), and its longest-serving holder, leading the Pentagon under both Kennedy and Johnson for over seven years. In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he was the first in EXCOMM to propose a naval 'quarantine' over an airstrike and became its fiercest advocate, arguing it would show Khrushchev resolve while remaining a controlled choice that need not escalate into military conflict. Yet in Vietnam, the same quantitative analyst who championed escalation grew privately skeptical, and 27 years after leaving office he confessed in his memoir that the war was 'wrong, terribly wrong.' He later served as president of the World Bank (1968–1981), redirecting its focus from infrastructure to poverty reduction.
Career timeline
1943–1946USAAF Office of Statistical Control, discharged as Lt. Col.
The youngest U.S. president, who took the world to the brink of nuclear war and back
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
The 35th president of the United States (1961–1963), elected at 43 as the youngest president and the first Catholic. He authorized the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, and later that year his tense Vienna summit with Khrushchev helped convince the Soviets to place nuclear missiles in Cuba. In the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he chose a naval 'quarantine' over an airstrike and, through his brother Robert, secretly traded the removal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey for the withdrawal of Soviet missiles, pulling the world back from nuclear war. He was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963; after his death, his civil rights and tax-cut agenda passed through Congress.
A liberal historian who became an insider chronicler of power
After the Bay of Pigs, he recalled, “I bitterly reproached myself” for not speaking more forcefully in the decisive meetings.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was a historian and public intellectual who examined American liberalism and presidential power. As a special assistant in John F. Kennedy’s administration, he worked on Latin America and speechwriting, opposed the Bay of Pigs plan, and later acknowledged his own silence in decisive meetings. He was not a member of the Executive Committee during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but helped Adlai Stevenson prepare the U.S. presentation to the United Nations. His 1965 A Thousand Days fixed a polished story of Kennedy’s crisis leadership in public memory, while later scholars recovered the Cuban and Soviet agency, secret bargains, and structural dangers that narrative left in shadow.
Career timeline
1938A.B., summa cum laude, Harvard University
1939–1942Fellow, Harvard University Society of Fellows
1943–1945Analyst, Office of Strategic Services
1946–1962Professor of History, Harvard University
1961–1964Special Assistant to President Kennedy
1966–1994Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities, CUNY Graduate Center
1965Published A Thousand Days, awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1966
The National Security Advisor who chose not to wake the president on the first night of the Cuban Missile Crisis
Ray Cline's voice on the phone: 'Those things we've been worrying about, it looks as though we've really got something.' Bundy asked, 'You're sure?'
National Security Advisor (1961–1966) under Kennedy and Johnson, and a key architect of the Vietnam War escalation. On the evening of October 15, 1962, the CIA informed him of Soviet missile bases in Cuba; he decided to wait until morning to tell the president, fearing that a hastily called nighttime meeting would blow secrecy. After leaving government in 1966, he served as president of the Ford Foundation and, in his later years, helped lead the campaign to renounce first use of nuclear weapons.
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1940AB in Mathematics, Yale University
1943–1946US Army intelligence officer
1949–1953Professor of Government, Harvard University
1953–1961Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard
1961–1966US National Security Advisor
1966–1979President, Ford Foundation
1979–1989Professor of History, New York University
A career diplomat who worked the front lines of détente
On March 4, 1974, he presented his credentials as the U.S. ambassador to Moscow.
Walter Stoessel was a career American diplomat whose work centered on the Soviet Union and Europe during the Cold War. As ambassador in Moscow from 1974 to 1976, he represented Washington on the ground during détente and the negotiations surrounding the Helsinki process. He later served as ambassador to West Germany and Deputy Secretary of State.
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1942–1944Served in the U.S. Army
1947–1953Worked on Eastern European and Soviet affairs at the State Department
1963–1965Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy in Moscow
1968–1972U.S. Ambassador to Poland
1972–1974Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs
The Secretary of State who pushed Reagan toward dialogue with Gorbachev and helped end the Cold War
Over dinner with the Reagans, snowbound at the White House, Shultz listened to the president's relentless questions about Soviet leaders and realized: 'This man has never had a real conversation with a big-time communist leader, and he is dying to have one.'
George Shultz is one of only two Americans to have held four different Cabinet posts, serving as Labor Secretary, OMB Director, Treasury Secretary, and finally as Reagan's Secretary of State for six and a half years, reshaping the direction of U.S. diplomacy with the Soviet Union. Against the opposition of Defense Secretary Weinberger and CIA Director Casey, Shultz insisted that Reagan engage Gorbachev directly, laying the diplomatic groundwork for the Geneva (1985) and Reykjavik (1986) summits. The result was the 1987 INF Treaty, the first abolition of an entire class of nuclear weapons; Shultz then watched the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the unraveling of Moscow's hold on Eastern Europe, witnessing the end of the Cold War from the front row. His memoir Turmoil and Triumph remains an essential primary source for the diplomacy of the 1980s.
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1920Born in New York City, raised in Englewood, New Jersey
1942–1945Marine Corps officer; saw action at Angaur in the Pacific
1969–1974Labor Secretary → OMB Director → Treasury Secretary; ended the Bretton Woods system
1974–1982Bechtel president and director; expanded Middle East operations
1982–1989Secretary of State; Geneva and Reykjavik summits, INF Treaty
1989–2021Hoover Institution distinguished fellow; nuclear disarmament and carbon tax advocacy
1993Published Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State
An airman whose small act of kindness became an international symbol
When the children asked how they would recognize his plane, he promised to wiggle its wings.
Gail Halvorsen was a U.S. Air Force pilot who flew transport missions in the 1948–49 Berlin Airlift, helping sustain West Berlin during the blockade. After meeting children at the Tempelhof fence, he gave them gum and began dropping candy beneath handkerchief parachutes, an initiative that grew into Operation Little Vittles and gave the airlift a human face. The voluntary gesture stood at the boundary between military regulations and Cold War propaganda, yet it mobilized Berliners and American children and strengthened the West's political appeal. He later worked in air and space development and commanded Tempelhof Airport before retiring as a colonel in 1974.
Career timeline
1942Joined the U.S. Army Air Forces and trained as a pilot
1948–1949C-54 pilot in the Berlin Airlift; initiated Operation Little Vittles
1952–1957Project engineer for cargo-aircraft research and development
1958–1962Served in the Air Force Systems Command space systems division
1965–1969Worked in the Air Staff Directorate of Space and Technology on reusable spacecraft planning
1970–1972Commander of the 7350th Air Base Group at Tempelhof Airport, Berlin
An American historian who interpreted the Spanish Republic and Civil War
In 1948 an FBI agent pressed Jackson to inform on his classmates; "I told them that I had not considered that to be any of my business," he recalled.
Gabriel Jackson was an American historian, Hispanist, and journalist who made modern Spanish history his central field. His 1965 book, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, was an early English-language synthesis of the Second Republic and the war, including the conflicts within the Republican camp. Jackson viewed the Republic’s institutional reformers and the PCE’s wartime strategy relatively sympathetically, while treating the POUM and revolutionary left as politically impractical, a position that became one pole in later historiographical debate. McCarthyism delayed his academic career, but he later taught modern European history at UC San Diego and continued writing on Spain after retiring to Barcelona.
Career timeline
1942B.A. in history and literature, Harvard University
1942–1946Served in the U.S. Army as an aircraft mechanic, photo interpreter, and cartographer
1950M.A. in modern history, Stanford University
1952Ph.D. in modern and contemporary history, University of Toulouse
1965–1983Professor of modern European history, University of California, San Diego
1965–1969Chair of the UC San Diego history department
1969–1971Chair of the UC San Diego Faculty Senate
1983–2019Professor emeritus and writer on Spanish history
The Cold War's leading conservative interpreter of Russian history who framed October as a coup
What occurred in October 1917 was a classical modern coup d'état accomplished without mass support... a surreptitious seizure of the nerve centres of the modern state, carried out under false slogans.
Polish-born American historian who became the intellectual architect of the 'totalitarian school' of Soviet studies. His magisterial two-volume history argued that the October Revolution was a coup by a tiny band of power-hungry intellectuals, not a popular uprising, and that Bolshevik rule was repressive and authoritarian from its inception. As head of Team B (1976) and Reagan's NSC Director of Soviet Affairs (1981–82), he translated his scholarship into policy, helping to shape the hard-line turn that many credit with hastening the Soviet collapse.
Career timeline
1958–1996Professor of Russian History, Harvard University
1968–1973Director, Russian Research Center, Harvard
1976Head of Team B, CIA competitive analysis of Soviet strategic capabilities
1981–1982Director of East European and Soviet Affairs, NSC, Reagan administration
1990Published The Russian Revolution
1994Published Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime
1997Published Three Whys of the Russian Revolution
The architect of détente who used 'linkage' to build the first framework for superpower arms control, the face of American realism
In his notorious 1972 interview with Oriana Fallaci, he declared: 'Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse. This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely.' The comment infuriated Nixon.
A Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany at fifteen, Kissinger rose through Harvard's academic ranks to become the most consequential American foreign-policy maker of the Cold War. As National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford, he pioneered détente with the Soviet Union, devising the 'linkage' strategy that tied arms control and trade to Soviet restraint and conducting the secret backchannel with Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin that broke the deadlock over SALT I and the ABM Treaty at the 1972 Moscow Summit. He opened relations with Mao's China through clandestine diplomacy, mediated the Paris Peace Accords to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but also presided over the bombing of Cambodia and covert interventions that earned him lasting accusations of war crimes.
Career timeline
1938–1943Fled Nazi Germany for the U.S.; studied accounting at CCNY, then drafted into the U.S. Army
1943–1949Served in U.S. Army intelligence in Europe, Battle of the Bulge; CIC agent tracking Gestapo and administering denazification
1950–1969Harvard professor of government, director of the Defense Studies Program; foreign-policy advisor to Rockefeller and Nixon campaigns
1969–1975National Security Advisor: led détente, China opening, SALT I negotiations; managed the secret Dobrynin backchannel
1971–1972Secret trips to Beijing, meeting Zhou Enlai; paved the way for Nixon's 1972 China visit
1973–1977Secretary of State: Paris Peace Accords, Nobel Peace Prize (1973), Middle East shuttle diplomacy; implicated in 1973 Chilean coup
1977–2023Founded Kissinger Associates; authored books and advised twelve U.S. presidents
Writing as “Z,” he predicted that Gorbachev could not overcome communism's contradictions, then later acknowledged the essay.
Martin Malia was an American historian of Russia and European intellectual history who taught and researched at Berkeley. In The Soviet Tragedy, he argued that socialism's comprehensive attempt to abolish capitalism also undermined economic and political freedom, making the Soviet system structurally resistant to self-correction. In 1990 he published the essay “To the Stalin Mausoleum” under the pseudonym Z, predicting that Gorbachev's reforms could not overcome communism's internal contradictions. His interpretation became a powerful pole in explanations of the Soviet collapse, while critics argued that it reduced socialism's historical possibilities to a defect in ideology itself.
Career timeline
1944BA in French, Yale University
1951PhD in history, Harvard University
1954–1958Assistant professor of history, Harvard University
1955Special assistant for Russian book acquisitions, Library of Congress
1958–1991Professor of history, University of California, Berkeley
1991–2004Professor emeritus at Berkeley; continued writing
Pioneer of Mao studies, author of The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung and editor of the ten-volume Mao’s Road to Power
A Mao scholar who weighed Mao's merits against his faults, setting land reform against the executions of the Campaign against Counter-Revolutionaries, the starvation after the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. He cared less about judging Mao than about his thought's future influence.
A Minnesotan trained in physics who worked on the Manhattan Project before turning to political science, he taught in Paris and directed the Contemporary China Institute at SOAS in London. His 1963 The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung was the first systematic Western analysis of Mao’s thought grounded in the original texts, arguing that it was not a copy of Soviet Marxism but a distinct adaptation to Chinese conditions. In his later years at Harvard’s Fairbank Center he edited Mao’s Road to Power, the unexpurgated collection of Mao’s writings from 1912 to 1949.
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1968–1989Director of the Contemporary China Institute and professor of politics, SOAS
The US president who declared the Cold War over with Gorbachev at Malta, yet whose caution nearly let history slip away
At the Malta joint press conference Bush declared: 'We can realise a lasting peace and transform the East-West relationship to one of enduring co-operation. That is the future that Chairman Gorbachev and I began right here in Malta.'
George H. W. Bush went from World War II naval aviator to oil magnate to the 41st president of the United States, bringing to the White House foreign-policy experience unmatched by any predecessor: CIA director, UN ambassador, and de facto ambassador to China. Upon taking office in 1989 he ordered a strategic review of Soviet policy, the so-called 'Bush pause,' that frustrated Gorbachev, but at the Malta summit that December the two leaders jointly confirmed the Cold War's end, and Bush's steady support for German reunification helped anchor the new European order. He built a multinational coalition to expel Iraq from Kuwait in the Gulf War, then lost his 1992 re-election bid after breaking his 'no new taxes' pledge amid a recession.
Career timeline
1924Born in Milton, Massachusetts, into a wealthy political dynasty
1942–1945Navy torpedo-bomber pilot; shot down at Chichijima, rescued by submarine
The 39th U.S. president whose administration marked both the peak and the end of détente
After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Carter declared in his January 1980 State of the Union: 'An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America.'
A Georgia peanut farmer and Baptist, Carter rose from Navy nuclear submarine officer to become a 'New South' governor who pledged to end racial discrimination. Elected president in 1976 as a Washington outsider, he brokered the Camp David Accords, returned the Panama Canal, and normalized diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. In June 1979 he brought détente to its peak by signing SALT II with Brezhnev in Vienna, only to withdraw the treaty from Senate consideration after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that December, proclaiming the Carter Doctrine and closing the era of détente. After leaving office he founded the Carter Center, dedicating his post-presidency to human rights, public health, and conflict mediation, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
The president's brother and attorney general who engineered the secret settlement of the Cuban Missile Crisis
He later wrote: 'The strongest argument against an all-out surprise attack was that it would be a Pearl Harbor in reverse and would blacken the name of the United States in the eyes of the world.'
The younger brother and most trusted adviser of President John F. Kennedy, he was appointed attorney general at 35 and led a crusade against organized crime while championing civil rights. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he initially favored invasion but was persuaded by George Ball's Pearl Harbor analogy to support a naval blockade instead; in the crisis's final hours, his secret meeting with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin, delivering the promise that U.S. Jupiter missiles would be removed from Turkey, was the key to the settlement. After his brother's assassination, he served as a U.S. Senator, opposing the Vietnam War and fighting poverty, before being assassinated during his own presidential campaign in 1968.
Career timeline
1952Campaign manager, JFK Senate campaign
1953–1955Assistant/Counsel, Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
He worried that the Malta Summit was premature, yet ultimately helped make it happen.
Brent Scowcroft was a former U.S. Air Force officer and national-security official whose realist approach emphasized disciplined policy coordination between presidents, diplomats, and military leaders. As national security adviser to Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush, he helped manage arms policy and European diplomacy during the final years of the Cold War. He initially regarded the 1989 Malta Summit as premature because it might raise expectations without producing results, but then helped the administration navigate the meeting and the rapid transformation of U.S.-Soviet relations. In later years he continued to favor alliances and international institutions, criticizing the Iraq invasion and unilateralism.
Career timeline
1947Graduated from West Point and commissioned as a U.S. Air Force second lieutenant
1953Earned an M.A. in international relations from Columbia University
1967Earned a Ph.D. in international relations from Columbia University
1972–1973Military Assistant to President Richard Nixon
1973–1975Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
1975–1977National Security Adviser to President Gerald Ford
1989–1993National Security Adviser to President George H. W. Bush
2001–2005Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
A historian who traced revolutionary pluralism and the making of Stalinism
Against models of communism as an immutable system, Daniels argued that the movement was an evolutionary product of circumstances.
Robert Vincent Daniels was an American historian and educator who traced competing possibilities within the Russian Revolution and Soviet politics. His landmark book The Conscience of the Revolution examined early Communist pluralism, resisting the idea that Stalin’s collectivization and concentration of power were inevitable outcomes of the revolution. Daniels distinguished the Opposition’s industrialization program from Stalin’s violent implementation, while cautioning against exaggerating foreign-policy differences between the factions. His later scholarship and textbooks brought debates in Soviet history to generations of students.
Career timeline
1926–1946Born; served in the U.S. Navy and earned an A.B. in economics from Harvard
1950Earned a Harvard Ph.D. in history
1950sTaught at Bennington College and Indiana University
1956–1988Professor of history at the University of Vermont
1960Published The Conscience of the Revolution
1967Published Red October
1973–1982Democratic member of the Vermont State Senate
1992President of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies
Stalin's only daughter and the Kremlin's first insider witness to defect to the West
In a 2010 interview she said of her father: "He broke my life" — when he refused to let her study literature and when he had Aleksei Kapler arrested.
The only daughter of Joseph Stalin, she defected to the United States via India in 1967 and caused an international sensation with the first insider memoir of Kremlin life. Twenty Letters to a Friend (1967) exposed her father's private character and the world of the Soviet ruling elite; she returned to the USSR in 1984, left again in 1986, and spent her life unable to escape Stalin's shadow.
Career timeline
1949Graduated History Faculty, Moscow State University
1954Awarded Candidate of Philological Sciences degree
1956–1967Researcher and translator, Institute of World Literature
1967Defected to the US via India; published Twenty Letters to a Friend
1978Naturalized US citizen as Lana Peters
1984–1986Returned to the USSR, then left again for the United States
The U-2 pilot whose six-minute, 928-photo run over Cuba on 14 October 1962 revealed Soviet missiles and ignited the Cuban Missile Crisis
"I kind of felt like I was going to be looked at as the one who started the whole thing. I wasn't anxious to have that reputation.", Associated Press interview, 2005
A native of Apalachicola, Florida, he enlisted in the Army Air Forces at 17 and flew combat missions in both the Korean War and two deployments to Vietnam. On the morning of 14 October 1962, his six-minute U-2 flight over western Cuba produced 928 photographs; analysts identified Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic missiles by noon, and the images landed on President Kennedy's desk, triggering the thirteen-day nuclear standoff.
Career timeline
1944Enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces
1952Began USAF pilot training; combat missions in the Korean War
1957Qualified on the U-2, the 50th pilot checked out on the aircraft
Kennedy's speechwriter whose pen chose 'quarantine' over airstrikes at the nuclear brink
Asked if he wrote 'ask not what your country can do for you,' his lifelong reply was: 'Ask not.'
John F. Kennedy's chief speechwriter and closest adviser, whom Kennedy called his 'intellectual blood bank.' During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he opposed the Joint Chiefs' call for airstrikes and backed the naval blockade, drafting Kennedy's October 22 televised address and choosing the word 'quarantine' over 'blockade' to avoid the legal implication of a declaration of war. He later called it 'the Kennedy speech with the greatest impact on the planet,' and also drafted the president's secret correspondence with Khrushchev. After the assassination he wrote Johnson's 'Let Us Continue' address, resigned in 1964, and spent decades as an international lawyer and author, endorsing Barack Obama in 2008.
Career timeline
1953–1961Chief legislative aide to Senator John F. Kennedy
1961–1964Special Counsel and chief speechwriter to President Kennedy
1964–1966Author (Kennedy, international bestseller)
