‘They Handled It Exactly the Right Way’: How the Kennedys Avoided the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis

The cabinet was divided on what action to take, with further U-2 flights revealing that the missile bases were nearing completion. The Joint Chiefs of Staff preferred a solution involving military action. “A final decision had to be made…about how we would respond,” Dean Rusk, then the US secretary of state, told Timewatch. “We were sitting around the cabinet table, and the president was the last one to come in, and we stood up when he came into the room. And he looked around the table and said, ‘Well, gentlemen, today we’re going to earn our pay.'”