Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)

Pulitzer Prize winning historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. has died at 89. We listen back to an interview recorded with him at the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. Schlesinger was a special assistant in the White House to President Kennedy.

Rebroadcast from Oct. 16, 2002.

The Cuban Missile Crisis took place 40 years ago this week. We talk with historian and former Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Peter Kornbluh who directs the National Security Archive's Cuba Project. The organization obtained newly declassified documents about the Crisis. They've published the information in the new book The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962. The National Security Archive also helped organize the historic 40th anniversary conference held in Cuba last week.

Sheehan reviews 13 Days the new film about the Cuban Missle Crisis starring Kevin Costner.

Head of the National Security Archive Tom Blanton helped research "The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962," scheduled for release today, thirty years after the incident. In the book, newly released documents and top-secret files reveal how close the U.S. came to a nuclear entanglement. In 1987, the National Security Archive filed suit against the U.S. government for failing to produce the documents they requested. Since then, there has been more compliance with the archive, especially since the Russian government has agreed to allow the U.S. to release the Kennedy-Krushchev letters.