JFK+50: Volume 6, No. 2112
SOVIETS ORDER MISSILES DISMANTLED & RETURNED TO USSR
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) 54 years ago today, Sunday, October 28, 1962, Radio Moscow transmitted a message from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announcing his decision to dismantle his nuclear missiles in Cuba and return them to the USSR.
The following statement was read by a Russian announcer beginning at 9 a.m. Washington time...
"This is Moscow speaking. In order to eliminate...the conflict which endangers the cause of peace...the Soviet government...has given a new order to dismantle the weapons (in Cuba)...and to crate and return them to the Soviet Union."
Premier Khrushchev said, later in the message, that he was assured by President John F. Kennedy's letter of Oct. 27, that the United States would not invade Cuba. The message concluded with Mr. Khrushchev saying...
"We are confident that reason will triumph, that war will not be unleashed and peace and the security of the peoples will be insured."
President Kennedy called Mr. Khrushchev's decision to remove the missiles from Cuba "statesmanlike." JFK had learned of that decision as he was dressing for church. He said to Dave Powers...
"I feel like a new man now. Do you realize we had an air strike all arranged? Thank God, it's all over."
According to the JFK Library, President Kennedy commissioned Tiffany and Company of New York to produce silver calendar paperweights to be given to members of his Cabinet and those closest to him during the crisis.
The paperweights, made of silver, walnut and felt, each bore the month of October 1962 with the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis boldly engraved along with the initials JFK and those of the recipient. The paperweights measured 4x4.5x2 inches.
The calendars were presented to each recipient individually at a Cabinet Meeting held in the West Wing of the White House on November 29, 1962.
SOURCES
"Cuban Missile Crisis Paperweight," John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, www.jfklibrary.org/
"One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev & Castro On the Brink of Nuclear War," by Michael Dobbs, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2008.
Crop of Cuban Missile Crisis Calendar
Gift from JFK to his wife
www.jfklibrary.org/
