Averting ‘The Final Failure’: John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings. By Sheldon M. Stern. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. xxxii, 459 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-8047-4846-2.)

Abstract

The disclosure of the Nixon White House taping system in 1973 sparked public scrutiny of whether other presidents secretly recorded their conversations. We now know that every president from Franklin D. Roosevelt through Richard M. Nixon did so, though the most extensive recording took place in the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. John F. Kennedy secretly taped many meetings during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, thus providing a unique window into perhaps the most heated event of the Cold War. Sheldon M. Stern's skillful analysis of these Kennedy tapes provides a welcome addition to the voluminous literature on the crisis, showing that evaluations of Kennedy's leadership, crisis resolution, and Cold War policies are far from complete. Stern's book makes a significant contribution to these debates because it combines extensive quotations from Executive Committee (ExComm) meetings with the author's own analysis of actions during the crisis. The comprehensive introduction details events preceding the crisis, from the Cold War's origins to the Soviet placement of missiles in Cuba. Stern argues that Kennedy's policies, including the Bay of Pigs invasion and the buildup of strategic weapons, spurred Soviet action, but he also credits Kennedy for successfully defusing the crisis. In examining the ExComm meetings, Stern explains the major debates and bolsters his summaries with excerpts from the tapes, which he transcribed himself. Stern concludes that history will regard Kennedy highly for resolving the crisis peacefully: “jfk often stood virtually alone against war-like counsel from the ExComm, the jcs [Joint Chiefs of Staff ] and Congress during those historic thirteen days” (p. 426).