The Kennedy Tapes

[Kirk Gallaway]

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Having to look at what was a decent thread after Cloud and Koch jump on is discouraging. Oh no, Moynihan and the Missile Crisis?

May and Zelikow were working from a baseline, the tapes.  So whatever the politics of Zelikow, there was little wiggle room.  Plus May was his check and balance.  There was a slight debate over this later, but  I checked it out.  I thought it was minor at best.

The whole thing about the Jupiters is silly, if you go back and look at the newspaper stories, they were named at the time.

I will say it again, The Kennedy Tapes, is an invaluable chronicle because its in the participants' own words. Plus its comprehensive, it lays in the prologue and goes all the way to the final removal of the bombers.

Please note, Nitze wanted to retaliate for the U2 shootdown--which was a really dumb thing for Castro to do--Kennedy did not do it.

Johnny, I really appreciate you contribution of the RFK interview with David Frost ,some of it is inspirational but a bit of it is  politician boiler plate as well.

Just so this isn't swept under the rug. Since Jim has me and many others on "ignore." Maybe you can ask Jim's opinion on Robert Morrow's quote here on  RFK in the CBM by Sheldon Stern.

From start to finish, and on several occasions, RFK can be heard on the tapes, and read in the transcripts, arguing not only for an air attack but for an air strike followed by an invasion of the entire island of Cuba. Sheldon Stern, the library’s former chief historian, who has studied the tapes and transcripts more thoroughly than anyone, writes in his forthcoming book The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: Myth versus Reality: “RFK was one of the most consistently hawkish and confrontational members of the ExComm.”

 

Having said this ,Jim is right, I'm not sure if the idea about the Missiles in Turkey potential swap was public at that  time, but I think it was public knowledge by the time of JFK's death.

I agree with Robert and Jonathan, the incidents involving Tippit's son's death divulged by Cloud have no significance. I don't know what Koch is thinking.

 

[Matt Cloud]

17 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Johnny, I really appreciate you contribution of the RFK interview with David Frost ,some of it is inspirational but a bit of it is  politician boiler plate as well.

Just so this isn't swept under the rug. Since Jim has me and many others on "ignore." Maybe you can ask Jim's opinion on Robert Morrow's quote here on  RFK in the CBM by Sheldon Stern.

From start to finish, and on several occasions, RFK can be heard on the tapes, and read in the transcripts, arguing not only for an air attack but for an air strike followed by an invasion of the entire island of Cuba. Sheldon Stern, the library’s former chief historian, who has studied the tapes and transcripts more thoroughly than anyone, writes in his forthcoming book The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: Myth versus Reality: “RFK was one of the most consistently hawkish and confrontational members of the ExComm.”

 

Having said this ,Jim is right, I'm not sure if the idea about the Missiles in Turkey potential swap was public at that  time, but I think it was public knowledge by the time of JFK's death.

I agree with Robert and Jonathan, the incidents involving Tippit's son's death divulged by Cloud have no significance. I don't know what Koch is thinking.

 

Let's try this again:

 

"In the weeks after General Wood’s talks, the Jupiter dismantling operation began to fall into place. In late March, the U.S. and Italy exchanged notes on the Jupiter-Polaris arrangement, while John McNaughton reported to McGeorge Bundy that the dismantling in Italy would begin on April 1 and in Turkey on April 15. Early that month, the U.S. and Turkey exchanged notes, although the agreement remains classified. During early April, the dismantling of Jupiter missiles in Italy began. On April 15, dismantling began in Turkey. The day before, as part of the arrangements, the Polaris submarine U.S.S. Sam Houston stopped at Izmir for a multi-day visit that provided positive media coverage. On April 25, 1963, Secretary of Defense McNamara sent a brief note to President Kennedy that the last Jupiter in Turkey “came down yesterday.”

For the U.S. Defense Department, General Counsel John McNaughton played a directing role in the implementation of the Jupiter removals. According to McNaughton’s oral history with the Kennedy Library, in early 1963, he was given overall responsibility for removal of the Jupiters and their replacement with Polaris patrols. In the interview, he asserted that the Jupiter/Polaris operation had nothing to do with the missile crisis settlement. Robert McNamara, who gave McNaughton his assignment, did nothing to enlighten him on that point. He later recalled that he instructed McNaughton not to ask why he was getting the assignment because “I’m not going to tell you.” Unfortunately, McNaughton’s records as general counsel are not available, and his name appears in few of the declassified records, although notably in Document 25.[3]

The importance of the secret deal makes it worthwhile to understand how it was implemented, but it also had a broader significance that is worth noting. As historian Philip Nash has argued, by removing Soviet missiles from Cuba and Jupiter missiles from Italy and Turkey, the Cuban missile swap deserves recognition as a trailblazing arms control agreement, the “first arms reduction agreement” of the Cold War. Nash contends that, even though it was “verbal, informal, secret, spontaneous,” and part of a larger tacit arrangement, the secret deal was the “first agreement in the history of the arms race under which both sides dismantled a portion of their operational nuclear delivery systems.”[4] It would take nearly ten more years before Washington and Moscow would agree to the new dismantling decisions that were incorporated in the SALT I agreement in 1972.

By then, the secrecy surrounding the deal over the Jupiters was beginning to erode. In 1970, former Turkish president and prime minister İsmet İnönü made an extraordinary statement to the Grand National Assembly, saying that, during 1963 “we … learned that [the U.S.] had made a deal with the USSR.” Exactly how Turkish officials learned this remains obscure. Robert F. Kennedy’s memoir of the crisis, Thirteen Days, did not acknowledge an explicit agreement but recounted how he had told Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin that the president wanted to remove the Jupiters, and that, “within a short time after this crisis was over, those missiles would be gone.” Even though Kennedy had denied to Dobrynin that there was a quid pro quo, Harvard University government professor Graham Allison surmised, in 1971, that “it could not have been plainer” that there had been one.[5]"

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuban-missile-crisis-nuclear-vault/2023-04-20/jupiter-missiles-and-cuban-missile?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=f58ce6ef-2a01-40b0-b2bd-4848ed96c887

 

 

As to Lt. Col. Tippit, who worked for USAF Secretary Harold Brown, Col. James M. Moore, who oversaw the missiles in Turkey, and worked in Alabama with Von Braun and the Paperclip Nazis, the question of whatever involvement may have overlapped cannot be answered as a matter of fact without greater understanding.  

Edited Thursday at 07:15 PM by Matt Cloud

[Matthew Koch]

14 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

I don't know what Koch is thinking.

It's not old time baseball like Willie Mays so I understand why you probably don't understand Kirkland especially since you don't do much research or read books on the subject. It's understandable that you wouldn't understand that only 8 people knew about the secret Nuclear deal outside of official channels. Or that Kennedy changed covert action to the Joint Chiefs of Staff after the Bay of Pigs.. 

[Matthew Koch]

3 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

Let's try this again:

 

"In the weeks after General Wood’s talks, the Jupiter dismantling operation began to fall into place. In late March, the U.S. and Italy exchanged notes on the Jupiter-Polaris arrangement, while John McNaughton reported to McGeorge Bundy that the dismantling in Italy would begin on April 1 and in Turkey on April 15. Early that month, the U.S. and Turkey exchanged notes, although the agreement remains classified. During early April, the dismantling of Jupiter missiles in Italy began. On April 15, dismantling began in Turkey. The day before, as part of the arrangements, the Polaris submarine U.S.S. Sam Houston stopped at Izmir for a multi-day visit that provided positive media coverage. On April 25, 1963, Secretary of Defense McNamara sent a brief note to President Kennedy that the last Jupiter in Turkey “came down yesterday.”

For the U.S. Defense Department, General Counsel John McNaughton played a directing role in the implementation of the Jupiter removals. According to McNaughton’s oral history with the Kennedy Library, in early 1963, he was given overall responsibility for removal of the Jupiters and their replacement with Polaris patrols. In the interview, he asserted that the Jupiter/Polaris operation had nothing to do with the missile crisis settlement. Robert McNamara, who gave McNaughton his assignment, did nothing to enlighten him on that point. He later recalled that he instructed McNaughton not to ask why he was getting the assignment because “I’m not going to tell you.” Unfortunately, McNaughton’s records as general counsel are not available, and his name appears in few of the declassified records, although notably in Document 25.[3]

The importance of the secret deal makes it worthwhile to understand how it was implemented, but it also had a broader significance that is worth noting. As historian Philip Nash has argued, by removing Soviet missiles from Cuba and Jupiter missiles from Italy and Turkey, the Cuban missile swap deserves recognition as a trailblazing arms control agreement, the “first arms reduction agreement” of the Cold War. Nash contends that, even though it was “verbal, informal, secret, spontaneous,” and part of a larger tacit arrangement, the secret deal was the “first agreement in the history of the arms race under which both sides dismantled a portion of their operational nuclear delivery systems.”[4] It would take nearly ten more years before Washington and Moscow would agree to the new dismantling decisions that were incorporated in the SALT I agreement in 1972.

By then, the secrecy surrounding the deal over the Jupiters was beginning to erode. In 1970, former Turkish president and prime minister İsmet İnönü made an extraordinary statement to the Grand National Assembly, saying that, during 1963 “we … learned that [the U.S.] had made a deal with the USSR.” Exactly how Turkish officials learned this remains obscure. Robert F. Kennedy’s memoir of the crisis, Thirteen Days, did not acknowledge an explicit agreement but recounted how he had told Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin that the president wanted to remove the Jupiters, and that, “within a short time after this crisis was over, those missiles would be gone.” Even though Kennedy had denied to Dobrynin that there was a quid pro quo, Harvard University government professor Graham Allison surmised, in 1971, that “it could not have been plainer” that there had been one.[5]"

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuban-missile-crisis-nuclear-vault/2023-04-20/jupiter-missiles-and-cuban-missile?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=f58ce6ef-2a01-40b0-b2bd-4848ed96c887

 

 

As to Lt. Col. Tippit, who worked for USAF Secretary Harold Brown, Col. James M. Moore, who oversaw the missiles in Turkey, and worked in Alabama with Von Braun and the Paperclip Nazis, the question of whatever involvement may have overlapped cannot be answered as a matter of fact without greater understanding.  

Matt, Kirk is like W. and Cliff he's not a good faith poster IMHO don't waste your time with him. He's a psychologist from California that does Timothy Leary type psychedelic psychology with poor lost souls.. 

[Matt Cloud]

6 minutes ago, Matthew Koch said:

Matt, Kirk is like W. and Cliff he's not a good faith poster IMHO don't waste your time with him. He's a psychologist from California that does Timothy Leary type psychedelic psychology with poor lost souls.. 

I am under no illusions, I assure you.  Thanks all the same.  

[James DiEugenio]

From my review of Larry Tye's hack book on RFK.

 

Another point that Tye scores his subject on is that RFK pondered whether an air strike would be enough to get the missiles out, or if there needed to be an invasion. At this first meeting President Kennedy had just listed four options his advisors had mapped out for him. Robert Kennedy then chimes in:

We have the fifth one really, which is the invasion [which was already raised by Maxwell Taylor]. I would say that you’re dropping bombs all over Cuba if you do the second, air and the airports, knocking out their planes, dropping it on all their missiles. You’re covering most of Cuba. You’re going to kill an awful lot of people, and we’re going to take an awful lot of heat on this. And then—you know the heat. You’re going to announce the reason that you’re doing it is because they’re sending in these kinds of missiles.

Well, I would think it’s almost incumbent upon the Russians then, to say, Well we’re going to send them in again. And if you do it again, we’re going to do the same thing in Turkey” or “we’re going to so the same thing to Iran.” (The Kennedy Tapes, edited by Ernest May and Philip Zelikow, p. 66)

Does this sound like RFK is pushing for an invasion? He is making an overall air strike, which is what Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had described, sound very unappealing. As Steven Schneider writes, Bobby Kennedy was against even the air strike option, comparing it to what the Japanese did to America at Pearl Harbor. So how could he have been for an invasion? (Robert F. Kennedy, pp. 56-57) In fact, after an unsettling meeting with congressional leaders who thought the agreed upon blockade of Cuba was too weak, the brothers were shaken by the sabre rattling. They both agreed that the blockade was the least JFK could do without being impeached. (op. cit. Probe, p. 16)

Edited Thursday at 08:13 PM by James DiEugenio

[Matt Cloud]

21 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

From my review of Larry Tye's hack book on RFK.

 

Another point that Tye scores his subject on is that RFK pondered whether an air strike would be enough to get the missiles out, or if there needed to be an invasion. At this first meeting President Kennedy had just listed four options his advisors had mapped out for him. Robert Kennedy then chimes in:

We have the fifth one really, which is the invasion [which was already raised by Maxwell Taylor]. I would say that you’re dropping bombs all over Cuba if you do the second, air and the airports, knocking out their planes, dropping it on all their missiles. You’re covering most of Cuba. You’re going to kill an awful lot of people, and we’re going to take an awful lot of heat on this. And then—you know the heat. You’re going to announce the reason that you’re doing it is because they’re sending in these kinds of missiles.

Well, I would think it’s almost incumbent upon the Russians then, to say, Well we’re going to send them in again. And if you do it again, we’re going to do the same thing in Turkey” or “we’re going to so the same thing to Iran.” (The Kennedy Tapes, edited by Ernest May and Philip Zelikow, p. 66)

Does this sound like RFK is pushing for an invasion? He is making an overall air strike, which is what Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had described, sound very unappealing. As Steven Schneider writes, Bobby Kennedy was against even the air strike option, comparing it to what the Japanese did to America at Pearl Harbor. So how could he have been for an invasion? (Robert F. Kennedy, pp. 56-57) In fact, after an unsettling meeting with congressional leaders who thought the agreed upon blockade of Cuba was too weak, the brothers were shaken by the sabre rattling. They both agreed that the blockade was the least JFK could do without being impeached. (op. cit. Probe, p. 16)

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/trachtenberg/cv/CMCdocs.pdf

Documentation: White House Tapes and Minutes of the Cuban Missile Crisis Source: International Security , Summer, 1985, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Summer, 1985), pp. 164- 203 Published by: The MIT Press

 

"A second point relates to Robert Kennedy's role. According to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy "was a dove from the start. If you bomb the missile sites and airports, he said on the first day, 'you are covering most of Cuba. You are going to kill an awful lot of people and take an awful lot of heat on it.' If the Americans said they were bombing because of the missiles, 'it would be almost [incumbent] upon the Russians to say that we are going to send them in again and, if you do it again, we are going to do the same thing in Turkey.' "6 But actually, as the transcript makes clear, Robert Kennedy was arguing for an invasion. The passage Schlesinger alludes to was introduced by Robert Kennedy raising the issue of an invasion, and in fact practically every time he spoke in the course of these October 16 meetings, his comments seemed to point in that direction.7 His argument was that an air strike would be insufficient since six months later the Soviets could just rebuild the missile bases: "if you're going to get into it at all," you might as well take your losses "and get it over with. "8 At one point, he even asked whether the United States might be able to engineer some pretext for a war against Cuba-whether we could "sink the Maine again or something."9

The same kind of point comes out when we examine Robert Kennedy's feelings about the blockade option. In his memoir to have supported McNamara's position in favor of a blockade.10 But when McNamara said on October 16 that the Soviets could be prevented from redeploying missiles after an air strike by a blockade, Robert Kennedy in effect argued against this: "Then we're gonna have to sink Russian ships." That to his mind meant risking war; and, he seemed to think, you might just as well face the risk of war then (through an invasion) as later.1" His opposition to the blockade was also reflected in the ExCom minutes. On October 25, for example, he "repeated his view that we may decide that it is better to avoid confronting the Russians by stopping one of their ships and to react by attacking the missiles already in Cuba. "12 And he made the same point, but perhaps even more strongly, during the morning ExCom meeting on October 27, the minutes of which are published below.

All of this, perhaps, may force us to reconsider some traditional judgments about Robert Kennedy's moderation and moral sensibilities. When people talk about the role that moral considerations play in shaping foreign policy, Robert Kennedy's Pearl Harbor analogy is often the first example cited. For this reason alone, some standard claims about his attitude during the crisis merit close examination. "Listening to the war cries of the hawks," Schlesinger wrote, Robert Kennedy "sent his famous note to Sorensen: 'I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor."' 13 But perhaps this was meant quite literally-although it was certainly an ironic way of putting things: he really did understand how it felt to be contemplating a large-scale military attack, because that was precisely what he at this point wanted. on the crisis, he claimed."

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/trachtenberg/cv/CMCdocs.pdf pp 4-5.

[Kirk Gallaway]

22 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Having said this ,Jim is right, I'm not sure if the idea about the Missiles in Turkey potential swap was public at that  time, but I think it was public knowledge by the time of JFK's death.

This was my comment above.

Did Chomsky die again, Koch? You intentionally changed the topic from Tippit's sons death to yet another unprepared, unfocused,  completely irrelevant comment allegedly trying to challenge me about the Jupiter Missiles in Turkey below.

 

21 hours ago, Matthew Koch said:

Said to me!:  It's understandable that you wouldn't understand that only 8 people knew about the secret Nuclear deal outside of official channels. Or that Kennedy changed covert action to the Joint Chiefs of Staff after the Bay of Pigs.. 

I stand by my comment. Jim is completely right. Here we have it, in no less than the NYT, in August 15, 1963 , talking about the removal of Jupiter Missiles in Turkey.

 

Kirk:but I think it was public knowledge by the time of JFK's death.

Hint: August 1963 was before JFK's assassination.!  Case closed!

ANKARA, Turkey, Aug. 15—Ten weeks after last autumn's Cuban crisis the United States started to dismantle its Jupiter missile bases here. Most Turks consequently believed we had made a secret deal with Russia to scrap offensive weapons on each other's borders.

 

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/08/16/81823797.html?pageNumber=26

 

[Matt Cloud]

22 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

This was my comment above.

Did Chomsky die again, Koch? You intentionally changed the topic from Tippit's sons death to yet another unprepared, unfocused,  completely irrelevant comment allegedly trying to challenge me about the Jupiter Missiles in Turkey below.

 

I stand by my comment. Jim is completely right. Here we have it, in no less than the NYT, in August 15, 1963 , talking about the removal of Jupiter Missiles in Turkey.

 

Kirk:but I think it was public knowledge by the time of JFK's death.

Hint: August 1963 was before JFK's assassination.!  Case closed!

ANKARA, Turkey, Aug. 15—Ten weeks after last autumn's Cuban crisis the United States started to dismantle its Jupiter missile bases here. Most Turks consequently believed we had made a secret deal with Russia to scrap offensive weapons on each other's borders.

 

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/08/16/81823797.html?pageNumber=26

 

Are you going to quote the rest of the Sulzberger article, where it states "nobody could be blamed for seeing a secret bargain in these actions," but then goes on to say there was no such deal, that removal had been planned since Rusk's visit to Ankara in '61?  

 

The issue isn't knowledge of the withdrawal.  Everyone knew they were removed.  The issue is what the terms were.

It should be added that claims that the Soviets did not comply with their promise to withdraw missiles from Cuba persisted for the next decade at least.

 

(See affidavit by Mario Garcia Kohly, represented by Richard Nixon. Missiles still operational he claimed after Kennedy had said they were removed, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0014/1075850.pdf.)

 

 

 

[Matt Cloud]

The fundamental issue of the Cuban Missile Crisis and its understanding is encapsulated here, by Max Holland.  Unpack this and progress can be made.

"It was the administration’s third secret, however, that has proven the hardest to unpack. The Kennedy administration “shot itself in the foot” when it limited U-2 surveillance for five crucial weeks in 1962, which is why it took the government a full month to spot offensive missiles in Cuba.[ ] If proven, this “photo gap,” as it was dubbed by Republican critics, threatened to tarnish the image of “wonderfully coordinated and error-free ‘crisis management’” that the White House sought to project before and after October 1962.[ ] The administration’s anxiety over whether cover stories about the gap might unravel even trumped, for a time, its concern over keeping secret the quid pro quo. After all, an oral assurance with the Soviets concerning the Jupiters could always be denied, while proof of the photo gap existed in the government’s own files. Largely because the administration labored mightily to obfuscate the issue, the photo gap remains under-appreciated to this day, notwithstanding the vast literature on the missile crisis.[3]"

https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Photo-Gap-Delayed-Discovery.pdf

The keys to unpacking are to be found in the seemingly arcane bureaucratic battles over who had responsibility for what as between CIA, Air Force and the newly-created NRO, and and where COMOR -- that's overhead reconnaissance -- was physically located in 1962.

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP75B00326R000300160002-4.pdf

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP75B00326R000200230041-4.pdf

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/docs/doc23.pdf

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/index.html

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/0001407025

“Dr. Joseph V. Charyk Under Secretary of the Air Force, 1961-1963 Dr. Charyk consolidated the CIA, Air force, and Navy space programs into the NRO. He brought the first U.S. imagery satellite, CORONA, into operation and demonstrated signals intelligence technology from space. During his tenure, the NRO operated the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft ….”

 

2,595 × 1,722

 

Tregaron Estate - Wikipedia

 

1,000 × 960

 

 

 

 

 

[Robert Morrow]

On 6/27/2024 at 3:38 PM, Matt Cloud said:

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/trachtenberg/cv/CMCdocs.pdf

Documentation: White House Tapes and Minutes of the Cuban Missile Crisis Source: International Security , Summer, 1985, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Summer, 1985), pp. 164- 203 Published by: The MIT Press

 

"A second point relates to Robert Kennedy's role. According to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy "was a dove from the start. If you bomb the missile sites and airports, he said on the first day, 'you are covering most of Cuba. You are going to kill an awful lot of people and take an awful lot of heat on it.' If the Americans said they were bombing because of the missiles, 'it would be almost [incumbent] upon the Russians to say that we are going to send them in again and, if you do it again, we are going to do the same thing in Turkey.' "6 But actually, as the transcript makes clear, Robert Kennedy was arguing for an invasion. The passage Schlesinger alludes to was introduced by Robert Kennedy raising the issue of an invasion, and in fact practically every time he spoke in the course of these October 16 meetings, his comments seemed to point in that direction.7 His argument was that an air strike would be insufficient since six months later the Soviets could just rebuild the missile bases: "if you're going to get into it at all," you might as well take your losses "and get it over with. "8 At one point, he even asked whether the United States might be able to engineer some pretext for a war against Cuba-whether we could "sink the Maine again or something."9

The same kind of point comes out when we examine Robert Kennedy's feelings about the blockade option. In his memoir to have supported McNamara's position in favor of a blockade.10 But when McNamara said on October 16 that the Soviets could be prevented from redeploying missiles after an air strike by a blockade, Robert Kennedy in effect argued against this: "Then we're gonna have to sink Russian ships." That to his mind meant risking war; and, he seemed to think, you might just as well face the risk of war then (through an invasion) as later.1" His opposition to the blockade was also reflected in the ExCom minutes. On October 25, for example, he "repeated his view that we may decide that it is better to avoid confronting the Russians by stopping one of their ships and to react by attacking the missiles already in Cuba. "12 And he made the same point, but perhaps even more strongly, during the morning ExCom meeting on October 27, the minutes of which are published below.

All of this, perhaps, may force us to reconsider some traditional judgments about Robert Kennedy's moderation and moral sensibilities. When people talk about the role that moral considerations play in shaping foreign policy, Robert Kennedy's Pearl Harbor analogy is often the first example cited. For this reason alone, some standard claims about his attitude during the crisis merit close examination. "Listening to the war cries of the hawks," Schlesinger wrote, Robert Kennedy "sent his famous note to Sorensen: 'I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor."' 13 But perhaps this was meant quite literally-although it was certainly an ironic way of putting things: he really did understand how it felt to be contemplating a large-scale military attack, because that was precisely what he at this point wanted. on the crisis, he claimed."

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/trachtenberg/cv/CMCdocs.pdf pp 4-5.

Robert Kennedy a hawk in the Cuban Missile Crisis in the beginning, then transitioning to a dove helping JFK settle it towards the end of the crisis. Just my rarely humble opinion.