Bruce Greenwood credited as playing...
John F. Kennedy
- President Kennedy: Well, who the hell authorized this missile test?
- Robert Kennedy: Who do you think? God knows what this is gonna communicate to the Soviets!
- Kenny O'Donnell: Communicate with the Soviets? We can't communicate with the Pentagon - and it's just across the goddamn river!
- President Kennedy: You know, last summer I read a book, The Guns of August. I wish every man on that blockade line had read that book. It's World War One; there's thirteen million killed; it was all because the militaries of both alliances believed they were so highly attuned to one another's movements and dispositions, they could predict one another's intentions, but all their theories were based on the last war. And the world and technology had changed, and those lessons were no longer valid, but it was all they knew, so the orders went out, couldn't be rescinded. And your man in the field, his family at home, they couldn't even tell you the reasons why their lives were being destroyed.
- [pause]
- President Kennedy: But why couldn't they stop it? What could they have done? Here we are, fifty years later. Think if one of their ships resists the inspection, and we shoot out its rudder, and board. They shoot down one of our planes, in response, so we bomb their anti-aircraft sites in response to that, and they attack Berlin, so we invade Cuba.
- [pause]
- President Kennedy: And they fire their missiles... And we fire ours.
- President Kennedy: [last lines]
- President Kennedy: What kind of peace do we seek? am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living. Not merely peace in our time but peace for all time. Our problems are manmade - therefore, they can be solved by man. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
- President Kennedy: Goddamn it! How the goddamn hell could this happen? I'm gonna have Powell's head on a platter - next to LeMay's. Kenny, you hear me give the order to go to DEFCON 2? 'Cause I remember giving the order to go to DEFCON 3 but, y'know I must be suffering from amnesia! I've just been informed our nuclear forces are at DEFCON 2.
- Gen. Max Taylor: They were limited, Mr. President. The orders were limited to our strategic forces...
- President Kennedy: Max!
- Gen. Max Taylor: ...in the continental United States. General LeMay is correct. Technically, SAC has the statutory authority...
- President Kennedy: [slams fist] *I* have the authority! I am the commander in chief of the United States, and I say when we go to war!
- Kenny O'Donnell: That's going to be tough - you know how these guys are about their chains of command.
- President Kennedy: Listen, you tell 'em those chains of command end at one place: *me*.
- President Kennedy: What do you want, Kenny?
- Kenny O'Donnell: I want you to sit down.
- President Kennedy: Well, I'm not gonna sit down!
- Kenny O'Donnell: I want you to sit down, loosen your tie, take a minute...
- President Kennedy: I haven't got a a minute!
- Kenny O'Donnell: You're the President of the United States. They can wait for you.
- President Kennedy: Bobby, you gotta go in there and you gotta make them understand... that we have to have an answer tomorrow... because Monday, we go to war.
- President Kennedy: Acheson's scenario is just, it's unacceptable, and he's got more experience than anybody.
- Kenny O'Donnell: There is no expert on the subject; I mean, there is no wise old man. There's - shit, there's just us.
- President Kennedy: The thing is that Acheson's right, 'cause talk alone's not gonna accomplish anything.
- Kenny O'Donnell: Well, let's bomb the shit out of 'em! Everybody wants to. I mean, even you, I mean, even me, right? It sure would feel good.
- President Kennedy: [Kenny eats a piece of the president's breakfast as the president reads the newspaper] I was eating that.
- Kenny O'Donnell: No, you weren't.
- President Kennedy: I was.
- Kenny O'Donnell: No, you weren't.
- President Kennedy: I was... I was... Bastard.
- General Curtis LeMay: You're in a pretty bad fix, Mr. President.
- President Kennedy: What did you say?
- General Curtis LeMay: You're in a pretty bad fix.
- President Kennedy: Well, maybe you haven't noticed: You're in it with me.
- President Kennedy: Have you canceled Chicago and the rest of the weekend yet?
- Kenny O'Donnell: You don't show for Chicago, everyone'll know there's something going on.
- President Kennedy: I don't care! Just cancel...
- Kenny O'Donnell: Forget it!
- [Kennedy glares at him]
- Kenny O'Donnell: I'm not calling and canceling on Daley!
- [Kennedy glares again]
- Kenny O'Donnell: You call and cancel on Daley!
- President Kennedy: You're scared to cancel on Daley?
- Kenny O'Donnell: You're damn right I'm scared.
- President Kennedy: Well I'm not.
- Kenny O'Donnell: [to Bobby] Watch this.
- [cut to Kennedy's arrival in Chicago]
- President Kennedy: Well, things can't get much worse.
- Kenny O'Donnell: Oh, I don't know; we could have to go down to Lyndon's ranch again, dressed up as cowboys, shoot deer out of the back of his convertible.
- President Kennedy: That *was* a bad day... Hell, I thought there'd be... more good days.
- President Kennedy: Dean, how does this all play out?
- Dean Acheson: Your first step sir, will be to demand that the Soviet withdraw the missiles within 12 to 24 hours. They will refuse. When they do you will order the strikes, followed by the invasion. They will resist and be overrun. They will retaliate against another target somewhere else in the world, most likely Berlin. We will honor our treaty commitments and resist them there, defeating them per our plans.
- President Kennedy: Those plans call for the use of nuclear weapons. So what is the next step?
- Dean Acheson: Hopefully cooler heads will prevail before we reach the next step.
- President Kennedy: I'll tell you one thing, Kenny. Those brass hats have one big advantage. That is, if we do what they want us to do, there's none of us gonna be alive to tell them they were wrong.
- Kenny O'Donnell: You sleeping?
- President Kennedy: No, not much. I slept last night, though, you know, and, geez, when I woke up, I just, somehow I'd forgotten that all this had happened, you know? You know, then, of course, I remembered, and I just wished for a second that somebody else was president.
- Kenny O'Donnell: You mean that?
- President Kennedy: I said for a *second*.
- President Kennedy: Say one of those ships resists inspection, and we shoot out its rudder, and board... they shoot down one of our planes, in response. So we bomb their anti-aircraft sites, and in response to that... they attack Berlin. So we invade Cuba.
- [pause]
- President Kennedy: So they fire their missiles... and we fire ours.
- Kenny O'Donnell: I got a bad feeling about what's going on in there!
- President Kennedy: In the morning I'm taking charge of the blockade from the situation room and Macnamara is gonna set up shop at the flagpot at the Pentagon and keep an eye on things there.
- Kenny O'Donnell: Good. Because you've got armed boarders climbing onto Soviet ships, and shots being fired across bows!
- President Kennedy: I know. I know.
- Kenny O'Donnell: Well, what about these low level flights?
- President Kennedy: We need the flights.
- Kenny O'Donnell: They're starting them when?
- President Kennedy: An hour.
- Kenny O'Donnell: An hour. You realize what you're letting yourself in for?
- President Kennedy: Kenny, no, we need the flights, because the minute that first missile becomes operational we gotta go in there and destroy it.
- Kenny O'Donnell: Fair enough. But Castro's on alert and we're flying attack planes over their sites, on the deck! There's no way for them to know we're carrying cameras, not bombs.
- President Kennedy: God damn it!
- Kenny O'Donnell: They're gonna be shot at, plain and simple.
- President Kennedy: [addressing the NPIC photograph analyst] Okay - let's have it.
- NPIC Photo Interpreter: Gentlemen, as most of you now know, a U-2 over Cuba Sunday morning took a series of disturbing photographs. Our analysis at NPIC indicates that the Soviet Union has followed up its conventional weapons build-up in Cuba with the introduction of surface-to-surface, medium-range ballistic missiles, or MRBMs. Our official estimate at this time is that the missile system is the SS-4 'Sandal'. We do not believe that the missiles are as yet operational. Iron Bark reports that the SS-4 can deliver a 3-megaton nuclear weapon 1,000 miles. So far we've identified 32 missiles serviced by about 3400 men, undoubtedly all Soviet personnel. Our cities and military installations in the southeast as far north as Washington, D.C., are in range of these weapons, and in the evnt of a launch would have only five minutes of warning.
- General Marshall Carter: Five minutes, gentlemen.
- Gen. Max Taylor: In those five minutes, they could kill 80 million Americans - and destroy a significant percentage of our bomber bases, degrading our retaliatory options. The Joint Chiefs' consensus, Mr. President, is that this signals a major doctrinal shift in Soviet thinking - to a first-strike policy. It is a massively destabilizing move.
- Robert Kennedy: How long until they're operational?
- NPIC Photo Interpreter: General Taylor can answer that question better than I can.
- Gen. Max Taylor: GMAC - Guided Missiles Intelligence Committee - estimates 10-14 days. A crash program could limit that time. However, I must stress that there may be more missiles - that we don't know about. We need more U-2 coverage.
- President Kennedy: Gentlemen, I want first reactions here. Assuming for the moment that Khruschev has not gone off the deep end - and intends to start World War III - what are we looking at?
- Dean Rusk: Mr. President, I believe my team is in agreement. If we permit the introduction of nuclear missiles to a Soviet satellite nation in our hemisphere, the diplomatic consequnces will be too terrible to contemplate. The Russians are trying to show the world they can do whatever they want, wherever they want, and we're powerless to stop them. If they succeed...
- Robert Kennedy: It'll be Munich all over again.
- Dean Rusk: Yes. Appeasement only makes the aggressor more aggressive. And the Soviets will be emboldened to push us even harder. Now we must remove the missiles one way or another. Now it seems to me the options are either some combination of international pressure & action on our part, til they give in - or - we hit them. An air strike.
- President Kennedy: You know they think I froze in there.
- Robert Kennedy: You didn't freeze.
- Kenny O'Donnell: You did exactly what you should've done - you stayed out of the corner. You didn't decide.
- President Kennedy: You know, there's something... immoral about abandoning your own judgment... We just can't let this get out of hand. And we're gonna do whatever we have to do to make this come out right.