In October 1962, a few days after the United States had stood, in Adlai Stevenson’s famous phrase, “eyeball to eyeball” with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy invited the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Oval Office to express his appreciation for their role in managing the two-week standoff. Among them was Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, the Air Force chief of staff who had pushed for immediate airstrikes and a full-scale military invasion of Cuba, and had, to Kennedy’s disbelief, claimed that in the event of such an attack the Russians would not respond militarily.
LeMay, wrote journalist Richard Reeves in “President Kennedy: Profile of Power,” told his commander in chief he didn’t need Kennedy’s gratitude. “We lost!” he said. “We ought to just go in there today and knock ‘em off!” The peaceful resolution to the crisis, which had brought the world close to nuclear conflict, was “the greatest defeat in our history,” LeMay added, according to historian Robert Dallek.
