 
on tuesday morning, october 16, 1962, shortly after 9:00 o"clock, 
president kennedy called and asked me to come to the white house. 
he said only that we were facing great trouble. 
shortly afterward, in his office, he told me that a u 2 had just finished a 
photographic mission and that the intelligence community had become convinced 
that russia was placing missiles and atomic weapons in cuba. 
that was the beginning of the cuban missile crisis, a confrontation 
between the two giant atomic nations, the u.s. and the u.s.s.r., which brought 
the world to the abyss of nuclear destruction and the end of mankind. 
from that moment in president kennedy's office until sunday morning, 
october 28, that was my life, and for americans and russians, for the whole 
world, it was their life as well. 
at 11:45 that same morning, in the cabinet room, a formal presentation was 
made by the central intelligence agency to a number of high officials of the 
government. 
photographs were shown to us. 
experts arrived with their charts and their pointers and told us that if 
we looked carefully, we could see there was a missile base being constructed in 
a field near san[cristobal, cuba. 
i, for one, had to take their word for it. 
i examined the pictures carefully, and what i saw appeared to be no more 
than the clearing of a field for a farm or the basement of a house. 
i was relieved to hear later that this was the same reaction of virtually 
everyone at the meeting, including president kennedy. 
even a few days later, when more work had taken place on the site, he 
remarked that it looked like a football field. 
the dominant feeling at the meeting was stunned surprise. 
no one had expected or anticipated that the russians would deploy 
surface-to-surface ballistic missiles in cuba. 
