Original subtitles

John F. Kennedy: A supreme national effort

will be needed to move this country safely

through the 1960s.

Across the world, Soviet missiles are aimed

at the United States.

Whatever the President does, he risks nuclear war.

Khrushchev calls West Berlin a cancerous sore.

Reporter: Lines are now drawn.

Reporter: 25 Russian ships

are en route to Cuba

on what may be a collision course.

There's no way of knowing

whether western civilization will live or die.

I think unless something is done

then humanity will destroy itself.

♪ (theme music) ♪

(chiming)

Robert Dallek: Early on in the 60s

you have this backdrop of tension.

You have capitalism versus communism

and there was palpable fear

in the United States, and in the Soviet Union,

that the two sides

were going to get into a nuclear war.

The temper of the world is crisis.

Architect of the crisis, Nikita Khrushchev.

(cheering) (speaking in Russian)

As the head of the Soviet Union

Khrushchev was very ideological.

He believed that the future belonged to communism.

He said, "America needs to be contained

and the only way to do it is to create crises

all around the American empire."

Khrushchev came to the UN in 1960

and he said, "We are grinding up missiles

like sausages, we will bury you."

And Americans took it seriously.

The toughness of the Khrushchev speech,

did add some propaganda fuel to the fire

that is now raging diplomatically

between Moscow and Washington.

To see if the Soviets were building

nuclear weapons and, more importantly,

missiles to launch them at the United States.

They were flying a spy plane

over the Soviet Union called the U-2.

(camera shutter clicking)

(mechanical whirring)

I'm Bill Fox, Day Cable Editor

for United Press International in New York.

A single engine US Air Force plane with

one man aboard went missing today not far

from the Soviet border in the rugged mountains of

southeastern Turkey.

(speaking in Russian)

To a stunned and startled audience

Khrushchev announced than an American

U-2 spy plane have been shot down

in the Soviet Union.

Khrushchev made the wreckage

a public exhibition.

To the Soviet Union

this wreckage was a national cause,

national outrage over the violation

of Soviet boundaries.

And so out comes the cover story.

The department has been informed by the NASA,

a U-2 weather research plane, piloted by a civilian,

has been missing since May 1.

Eisenhower had said,

"No, that didn't happen", .

He'd been drawn into a trap by Khrushchev.

Thomas: The Soviet leader was able to show,

not only did they shot down the plane,

but they had the pilot!

Walter Cronkite: Francis Gary Powers,

an ordinary man caught up in extraordinary circumstances

and, in a way, magnified by them.

I realized that I've committed a grave crime

and I've realized that I must be punished for it.

Reporter: The evidence of espionage,

currency, presumably for the spy

to buy his way to freedom.

And a spy's last resort, a poisoned needle

with which he could kill himself instantly

if captured and threatened with torture.

Dwight D. Eisenhower: No one wants

another Pearl Harbor.

This means that we must have knowledge

of military forces

and preparations around the world.

The safety of the whole free world demands this.

Chet Huntley: Our government was,

in effect, admitting that we had previously lied

and that we had committed espionage.

Admissions no nation had ever made before.

How will this incident

affect the United States, do you think?

I feel that it will give the Americans

a black eye all over Europe.

I think that we ought

to sink one of those submarines that have been

spying off Cape Canaveral.

Well, I don't think we should admit it.

We have a right to protect our self.

The shoot down was such a big event

that it basically torpedoed .

It torpedoed the chance to have

a peaceful period, and actually

it was the beginning of the scariest part

of the Cold War.

Dallek: America's public mood

was one of demoralization and there's the feeling that

we can do better

and that's when the election of 1960 comes along.

♪ Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy Kennedy, Kennedy ♪

♪ Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy Kennedy for me ♪

Kennedy: I think the question before

the American people is,

"Are we doing as much as we can do?

Are we as strong as we should be?

Are we as strong as we must be

if we're going to maintain our independence?"

Reeves: Kennedy was a cold warrior

more than Eisenhower was really.

Kennedy: I want people in Latin America,

and Africa, and Asia

to start to look to America,

to see how we're doing things.

To wonder what the President

of the United States is doing

and not to look at Khrushchev

or look at the Chinese Communists.

The fact is, Kennedy did run

to the right of Nixon

and he was saying that they were letting

the Russians get ahead of us in missiles.

It frightened people,

it's not true but it frightened people

and it's very effective in the campaign.

Kennedy: I believe the Soviet Union is

first in outer space.

You yourself said to Khrushchev,

"you maybe ahead of us in rocket thrust

but we're ahead of you in color television."

I think that color television is not

as important as rockets are.

The missile gap was a total lie.

We out-missiled them at that time

better than a 100-to-1.

If Eisenhower had come forward and said,

"This kid is not telling the truth,"

it would have been a different election.

Kennedy: Let every nation know

whether it wishes us well or ill,

that we shall pay any price,

bear any burden, meet any hardship,

support any friend, oppose any foe

to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

(applause)

Kennedy, in his inaugural speech

did not have a single mention of domestic issue.

He came to the presidency thinking his job

was to run the Cold War, to defeat the Russians.

I do not shrink from this responsibility.

I welcome it.

If you had left New York

by car at seven minutes past one this morning,

by 2:55, you could've made Philadelphia,

95 miles in an hour and 48 minutes.

In that same time this morning,

a man went around the world.

The spaceship was built in Russia.

Dallek: When the Russians put

Yuri Gagarin into space,

it was another sense of America

being knocked back on its heels.

We're behind.

Khrushchev greeted the hero saying,

"Now, let the capitalist countries try to catch up."

For the Russians

to be the first to put a man in space

felt a real blow not only to American pride,

but restarted the whole question about

whether the U.S. government

could protect the American people.

(rocket blasting)

Gagarin's spaceship weighed five tons.

The biggest payload we've been able to

push into orbit weighed only a few hundred pounds.

If you can put a man into space,

you can put nuclear warheads into space

and lots of them. And then we're in trouble.

This is Marvin Kalb in Moscow.

The people who work back here in the Kremlin

are convinced that the balance of power

in the world has shifted in their favor.

And encouraged by this conviction,

they've stepped up their activities

all over the world

not only in Berlin but also in Latin America.

A big jam of cameramen here now

an absolute mad house here.

The first historic meeting

between Premier Khrushchev and Premier Castro

is now over.

Sergei Khrushchev: My father first met

Fidel Castro in 1960 in the United Nations.

Fidel Castro: If every citizen of the United States

could visit Cuba their opinion would change.

From the time since he took power

Fidel Castro has become an enemy of the United States.

(speaking in Spanish)

In Cuba, you have Fidel Castro

who is tying himself to the Soviet Bloc

which seems to be threatening

the United States by the possibility

that they're going to export communism

to other South American countries

which are in many instances, anti-American.

Khrushchev: (speaking in Russian)

Khrushchev is saying that

you have to understand that Cuba matters a lot to us.

Don't mess with Cuba.

Khrushchev was not just using rhetoric.

The Eastern Bloc was supporting Castro

with military systems.

Huntley: Many Latin Americans were

shocked to find out how much

communist equipment Castro actually has.

The sense was that Kennedy had to do

something about Castro.

When Kennedy comes to the presidency,

he's briefed on the fact that

there was a plan in place to topple Castro.

But the plan that's presented to him

is not what he wants.

It's a huge invasion, a noisy beach.

It's going to look like a U.S. invasion of Cuba.

So he says to the CIA,

we can't be associated with this.

I want something that is believably Cuban.

This is Ron Oppen in Miami.

I'm standing in one of the many anti-Castro

recruiting places scattered throughout the city.

So when we found there was something against Castro,

Since two o'clock this morning,

men and boys have been filing

through this door behind me,

anxious to join the fight in Cuba

against Fidel Castro's government.

They were mainly Cuban exiles.

They hated Castro.

They thought that they could

mount a small-scale invasion,

which would gather more and more support

until it ended up over-throwing the regime.

Reporter: Cuban businessmen, doctors,

white-collar workers, men who once drove taxis

always hoping the muscle of the United States

would sustain them.

Rodriguez: We thought United States

being behind this operation,

there was no way we were going to lose,

and we were wrong.

(missiles exploding)

Reporter: Small force of invaders

landed at a semi isolated resort area

on the south coast of Cuba, at the Bay of Pigs.

Castro alerted his small air force

and his large army and raced towards the sea.

The showdown came at dawn.

The rebels managed to move only 20 miles inland

and those able to move beyond the beach

were trapped in swamp or high growth.

(airplane crashing)

(speaking Spanish)

Long live the revolutionary forces,

which are shooting down Yankee planes

and are smashing the invaders of the land.

The Castro controlled television network

is parading prisoners

captured on the beaches of Las Viejas

before the cameras for public interrogation.

Reporter: One writer had called

the Bay of Pigs 'the perfect failure'.

It was a tragedy on the beach

and in Washington.

Out of the news of this week

the attempt of Cuban exiles

to re-establish a foothold in their homeland.

A tactical failure that became a strategic defeat

for Cuban democracy and American prestige.

U.N. Interpreter: This act of imperialistic

piracy falls squarely

on the government of the United States.

United States has committed

no aggression against Cuba

and no offensive has been launched

from Florida or from any other part

of the United States.

The American role is

immediately exposed. No one believes

that this isn't happening with some American help.

Richard Kallsen: The leader of the free world

has been humiliated on its own doorstep.

Castro has prevailed over Kennedy

at least for the moment

and it will take a long time to destroy that image.

It was a calamity.

Kennedy had been totally misinformed

by American intelligence about the strength

of the anti-communist movement

and the fact is when these

poor people arrived on the beaches in Cuba,

they were decimated.

Cronkite: On the landings themselves,

Stuart, how large were they actually?

Stuart Novins: Best indications, Walter,

there were about 300 men

and only with the weapons they could carry.

It's unmistakably clear, Walter,

from all the evidence available

that the CIA planned this operation.

It was the CIA

that established the revolutionary council

by saying to the dissident factions

get together or else.

Today, in his news conference,

the president acknowledged the failure

and took the responsibility for it.

Kennedy: Detailed discussions

are not to conceal responsibility

because I'm the responsible officer of the government.

Victory has a 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan.

The Russians, I think, see this as

evidence of 'a young, feckless,

inexperienced president.

Kennedy privately goes around saying,

"How could I have been so stupid?"

He's full of self-recrimination.

Kennedy listened to the experts,

the CIA, the military, a little bit too much

and they were wrong.

The lesson he learns from this is

not to trust the CIA.

Richard Reeves: After the Bay of Pigs,

Kennedy was more anxious than ever

to meet with Khrushchev

because he knew that he had screwed up.

There he is President .

He thought the meeting in Vienna would

straighten all that out.

In fact, it made it much worse.

Vienna was at its romantic best.

Almost enough it seemed to

remove a bit of the chill from the Cold War.

It began with a police escort

leading Mr. Kennedy's limousine

to the Soviet Embassy.

Nikita Khrushchev was waiting also

for talks that would explore such issues

as Berlin, nuclear testing, and disarmament.

Tell us what you think of this

meeting between the young president

and Khrushchev?

Well, I think it was long overdue

because the world needs peace

and the world needs disarmament.

For Khrushchev, it is a chance

to test the new president.

On a subject of Berlin,

Khrushchev is tough and blunt.

Khrushchev said

West Berlin is a bone in my throat

and we must extract it.

Berlin, of course, is divided

at the end of World War II

but Berlin is 110 miles

inside of the East German zone.

Khrushchev is threatening to force the integration

and take over West Berlin.

And Kennedy says to him.

"Berlin is part of our Western commitment at World War II.

Don't challenge us there."

After two days, the talks end.

Thomas: Kennedy did not do well.

He allowed himself to be caught

in an ideological argument with Khrushchev.

He'd been warned against it.

He did it anyways and Khrushchev bullied him

and pushed him around.

Khrushchev has made the first move

in the chess game

and the president knows it as he leaves, he says,

"It's going to be a cold winter."

Kennedy thought

there might be a basis for dealing

with the Soviets instead he gets the Berlin crisis.

Reporter: In July, 1,000 East Germans

escaped in to West Berlin every day.

Now, in August, they are coming out

of the rate of 2500 a day

as a result of Khrushchev's threats and demand.

East Germany is being bled of its best trained people.

Robert Macneil: I went to Berlin

to cover the bureau and the NBC news desk in New York

called in the middle of the night and said,

"What's this about closing off the border

at the Brandenburg Gate?"

At two AM,

the Communist regime issued a ukase.

No East German could go to West Berlin

without special dispensation.

Reporter: The sound of jackhammers

erupts in the night.

Suddenly, East German police appeared

tearing up the sidewalks and street.

Macneil: A small crowd gathered

and the East Germans were unrolling barbed wire

and starting fences.

They were sealing off the border.

I thought, "My God, this is, you know, unbelievable."

President Kennedy was in

Hyannis port for the weekend.

A telephone call from Washington

that Sunday morning

told him that the communists had

finally begun to seal the Berlin sector border

against the East Germans and East Berliners.

Through backyards, down canals

across streets

all along the 25-mile border

between East and West Berlin.

Telephone lines to West Germany are cut,

the flood of refugees is dammed up.

West Berlin is isolated.

(melancholic music)

A communist country like

East Germany cannot exist with an open border.

It must be able to wall its people in

and make them work, so communism succeeds.

Reporter: President Kennedy decided

on Thursday to send Johnson to Berlin

because Mayor Brandt has a written a letter

warning that the city's dropping morale

required bold and quick treatment.

Lyndon Johnson: And the United States

wants you to know that

the pledge he has given to the freedom

of West Berlin and to the rights

of Western access to Berlin, is firm.

(applause)

Is Khrushchev entirely

convinced that our words have meaning?

And if he is not,

what can we do short of war,

to convince him that they do?

Edwin Newman: 1500 American soldiers

arrived in West Berlin after 110-mile road trip across

East Germany, and the Soviet press and radio described

the arrival of additional American forces

as a 'challenging military act.'

Reporter: But Berliners know that

Western strength is their only protection.

There were all sorts of people who say,

"send the tanks and knock the damn wall down."

And Kennedy, "No."

He understands this solves his problem.

Will Khrushchev try and take over the rest of Berlin

if he's putting up a wall?

Will he risk a war with us? No.

The wall saved us from that kind of conflict.

(nuclear bomb exploding)

Naftali: After the Berlin crisis,

Khrushchev tests the largest nuclear device ever.

He basically is going to say to the Americans,

"You can't scare me. I'm going to scare you."

(sirens)

The West has nuclear jitters.

People worry about fallout, about war.

Khrushchev has turned testing

into a weapon of terror.

There was tremendous anxiety and fear

that if you got into a nuclear war,

it was going to mean

the devastation of civilization.

It was the apocalypse.

Let us face, without panic

the reality of our times,

the fact that atom bombs may someday

be dropped on our cities.

And let us prepare for survival

by understanding the weapon that threatens us.

Reeves: The threat of nuclear war

was the center of many of our lives.

TV anchor: Fallout shelter could save your life

in a nuclear war.

The family room of tomorrow.

It's a truly ship-shape room,

only eight and a half by 12 feet in size

but with an amazing amount of storage space.

It just seem unless

we can control the use of such a thing as that, that...

all the civilization that

we've built up over all these

many thousands of years will just be washed out.

It gives you quite a scare

to think that something like that may happen to us.

They were close to nuclear war in 1961.

And as JFK said to his brother

"Bobby, you know, we've had a good life

but our children...

What if there's a nuclear war

and our children die?"

That's how close war felt.

♪ (music) ♪

Adlai Stevenson: As he said he would,

Mr. Khrushchev has exploded his giant bomb

in cynical disregard of the United Nations.

Naftali: Kennedy recognizes

that he's on the verge of a yet another crisis,

but he's looking in the wrong direction.

And then in 1962,

there's a lot of political chatter about Cuba.

John F Kennedy: If at anytime

the communist build up in Cuba

were to endanger.

or interfere with our security in any way,

then this country will do whatever must be done

to protect its own security and that of its allies.

Richard Reeves: The CIA had a consultant

who spotted soccer fields

all along the coast in Cuba.

And as he said 'the Cubans play baseball,

Russians plays soccer.'

Kennedy approves a series of U-2 flights.

He didn't want to get sucked in once again

as he had at the time of the Bay of Pigs.

He wanted hard evidence.

It was the combination of very good

high level photography plus espionage,

that made it possible for the

U.S. Intelligence Community to say,

"Mr. President, we are absolutely convinced

that they are putting missiles in Cuba."

Kennedy gets together

a group of his closest advisors

which becomes known as the 'EXCOMM'

or Executive Committee of the National Security Council.

Naftali: U.S. intelligence showed him

the parts of the United States

that would be hit by a nuclear attack.

And the figure was about 30 million American

who were in danger of dying.

Sergei Khrushchev: My father, he want to be

recognized as equal.

If you not recognize as equal,

you challenge opposite side.

Big debates, should we bomb?

Should we invade?

Back and forth.

Reeves: Most of them thought...

we should attack Cuba.

Kennedy, almost alone, did not want to do that.

Dobbs: Kennedy is the only person

who has a sort of a larger view.

There are times when he's not just

the President of the United States.

He is thinking

in terms of the survival of the human race.

Dobbs: He was frightened that

a wrong move by him could trigger

a whole sequence of moves by the other side,

so he wanted to slow everything down.

And the method he chose

was the imposition of a blockade.

President Kennedy will address the nation

tonight on radio and television,

on a subject of the highest national urgency.

Good evening my fellow citizens.

This government, as promised,

has maintained the closest surveillance

of the Soviet military build-up

on the island of Cuba.

These large, long range,

and clearly offensive weapons

of certain mass destruction

constitutes an explicit threat to the peace

and security of all the Americans.

o thwart this offensive build up

a street quarantine on all offensive military equipment

under shipment to Cuba is being initiated.

I have directed the armed forces to prepare

for any eventuality.

Reporter: Within minutes after

the President spoke, the Navy announced

that it was sustaining a blockade of Cuba

with more than 40 ships and 20,000 men.

I'd hate like hell to see us go to war

but if it's necessary to prevent a nuclear war,

I think the action has to be taken at this time.

Well, I think it's high time

we stopped Russia from having things their own way.

I know that

some action should be taken,

but he's going to have to tread very lightly,

short of war.

But the American people were

very frightened

that they were on the edge of a cataclysm.

Something no one had ever experience before,

a nuclear war.

Grocery store owner: We have been jammed up.

We have been mobbed.

People are buying like food is going out of style.

Reporter: Is this your normal order

or are you stockpiling?

Oh, I'm not stockpiling.

I feel that if anything were to happen,

you wouldn't able to eat it anyhow.

Nelson Rockefeller: Develop a shelter spot

where there is water, food,

medical supplies, a Geiger counter and a radio.

Reporter: Congressional leaders

were recalled from their campaign labors,

flown back to Washington in military planes,

and there were reports of troop movements in Florida Keys.

Chet Huntley: Cuban Premier Fidel Castro

told his people that the armed blockade

is the most dangerous adventure

since World War II.

He called President Kennedy a pirate

and said a life and death struggle

is underway between an empire

and the revolution of a small and weak people.

Cuban militia was mobilized

and the country was put on a war footing.

Russia alerted its military forces

and warned that the United States

is playing with fire.

At a special session

of the United Nations Security Council,

the United States, Cuba and Russia

offered separate resolutions and traded bitter charges.

Do you Ambassador Zorin,

deny that the USSR has placed and is placing

medium and intermediate range missiles and sites in Cuba?

Yes or no?

Don't wait for the translation, yes or no?

(delegates laughing)

I am not in an American courtroom, sir.

And therefore, I do not wish to

answer a question that is put to me

in the fashion in which a prosecutor does.

In due course, sir, you will have your reply.

I'm prepared to wait

for my answer until hell freezes over,

if that's your decision.

Each side didn't know

what the other side was doing

and there was a lot of room for miscalculation.

We believe there are about

25 Soviet ships moving towards Cuba.

If the vessel does not stop,

refuses to heed the instructions...

force will be applied to assure that it does stop.

Reporter: Nikita Khrushchev says,

Soviet ships will never submit

to the United States blockade.

The next few days are critical.

Who is going to blink first?

A dispatch just in,

a late development.

25 soviet ships steam toward Cuba.

If the ships captains do no stop,

force will be used to stop them.

Kalb: It was all a truly historic drama

taking place every moment of every day.

Richard C. Hottelet: We are now in the most

dangerous situations since the end of World War II.

The next 48 hours will be decisive.

Reeves: Right up to the last minute,

the first ship looked like

it was going through the barrier.

And at that point, Kennedy would have had to do

something more.

What it was... wasn't even clear to him.

The White House

was on the point of being evacuated.

They thought that this was the early stages

of World War III.

Thomas: You can listen to the tapes

of the missile crisis. And on the last day,

when we seemed so close to war

you can hear the voices becoming

a little bit more ragged and a little bit more urgent.

President Kennedy is the calm voice.

Reeves: And at the last minute

the Soviet ships turned around.

Reporter: Khrushchev has

changed his position.

There was an announcement from Moscow

that they would withdraw the missiles.

And I said, the other guy just blinked.

This is the day,

we have every reason to believe,

when the world came out from under

the most terrible threat of nuclear holocaust

since the end of World War II.

Elie Abel: The message to President Kennedy

was long and rambling.

But for the first time, Mr. Khrushchev acknowledged

the presence in Cuba of Soviet missiles.

He argued they were defensive in nature,

but he said he understood

the President's feeling about them.

He said he would withdraw the missiles

if President Kennedy would promise not to invade Cuba.

The following is the text of

President Kennedy's statement of noon.

"I welcome Chairman Khrushchev's

statesman like decision to stop building bases in Cuba.

This is an important

and constructive contribution to peace."

There was an incredible sigh of relief

in the country and in the world.

With the tranquil courage

of the great leaders of democracy,

John Fitzgerald Kennedy said to the communist world,

enough.

There had been some back and forth

between Kennedy and Khrushchev.

We'll make a promise not to invade Cuba,

and within a matter of months

the United States will take it's missiles out of Turkey.

And in return for that,

Khrushchev publicly and verifiably removed

Soviet missiles from Cuba.

Reporter: The conditions of the

Cold War have been altered in spirit,

if not in fact by what happened in Cuba.

As a result of American determination

in the crisis, morale has been raised

throughout the non-communist world.

Perhaps this is the beginning

of more understanding between our people.

Both sides realized

we need to stand back from this

and we need to create a framework

that's less dangerous.

I have chosen this time and place

to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds,

and the truth too rarely perceived.

And that is the most important topic on earth...

peace.

The following June, Kennedy gives the famous

'peace speech' at American University,

in which he talks about

changing our attitudes towards the Soviet Union.

Kennedy: 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 out children's future

and we are all mortal.

(clapping)

Kennedy and his people waited

for any reaction from Moscow at all.

And then they got the tele-type

saying that for the first and only time

a speech of an American president

covered a complete page of Pravda, the party newspaper.

Khrushchev, decided to change his world policy,

the strategy of creating tension

all around the American empire was dropped.

And he said to his colleagues

in the Presidium, "You know what?

Let's give them a Test Ban Treaty."

Reporter: The United States,

the Soviet Union and Great Britain,

promise to end all nuclear test explosions

in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater.

The big deal of Soviet Union,

the same as United States

and Khrushchev was very proud

that they stop testing and poison the atmosphere.

Man's long hopeful quest for peace

will cease to be only a dream

and will begin to acquire a solid reality.

Dallek: The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

is one of the truly great achievements

of the Kennedy presidency.

We shall not regret that we have made this clear

and honorable, national commitment,

to the cause of man's survival.

For under this treaty we can and must still keep

a vigilant defense of freedom.

The people of this county are elated

by the feeling that the United States

finally is taking the initiative

in our conflict with communism.

But all along the boarders of communism

we and our enemies have unfinished business.

Mr. President the headline and story

in the New York Times yesterday morning said

that the administration would try diplomacy in Vietnam,

which I'd assumed we've been

-trying all along. -Yeah.

What can we do in the situation

which seems to parallel other famous debacles of

dealing with unpopular governments in past.

Well, in the first place we ought to

realize that Vietnam has been at war for 25 years.

Kennedy had treated Vietnam

as a second tier issue until 1963.

He was dealing with Berlin. He was dealing with Cuba.

He has his domestic challenges.

He had sent troops to train the South Vietnamese army.

But he wasn't happy about it.

In the final analysis, it's their war.

They're the ones who have to win or to lose it.

We can help them, give them equipment.

We can send our men out there as advisors.

But they have to win it,

the people of Vietnam against the communists.

Kennedy felt that

United States had to draw a line

against communist expansion.

But the Soviets supported the North Vietnam regime.

We supported the South.

It's what becomes known as the

Domino Theory. If South Vietnam falls,

then all the rest of Southeast Asia,

Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines,

they might be defeated.

As I believe I've reported upon

my return from previous visits,

I've been very much encouraged

by the progress which the South Vietnamese forces

have been making

and by the assistance which our forces have

rendered to them.

Max Holland: When Vietnam started up

they believed that they

had so expertly micromanaged the Cuban Missile Crisis

that they could do the same

in a Southeast Asian nation 10,000 miles away.

The North Vietnamese were very different from

Soviets and Khrushchev.

And the attempt to resolve the Vietnamese crisis

through controlled escalation simply didn't work.

News anchor: The government of

South Vietnam has been over thrown

by a military coup.

If we are at all involved,

I hope we don't have

another Bay of Pigs on our hands.

New anchor: Are we winning

the war in South Vietnam?

Winning? No. We're losing it.

Dallek: Kennedy says to one of his principle aides

that after he is re-elected in 1964,

then he can talk about getting out of Vietnam.

Naftali: It's difficult to believe

that the story of the United States and Vietnam

would've followed the same course,

had John F Kennedy not gone to Dallas in 1963.

♪ (somber music) ♪

Do we know what Kennedy would have done

if he had lived?

There is all sorts of evidence to suggest

that he never would have done

what Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam.

President Lyndon B. Johnson: This nation will keep its

commitments from South Vietnam to West Berlin.

Though LBJ had experienced the same crisis

by sitting next to Kennedy,

he had not come out with the same conclusion.

He did not share Kennedy's suspicion

of the United States military

or the military advice.

Once Kennedy was gone it was inevitable

that US foreign policy would change.

You lost a president who was skeptical of

military advice and gained one who usually took it.

Ed Herlihy: The official Russian

announcement said he resigned.

The crowds that once cheered Khrushchev wildly

were left in the dark as to what went on

when the Central Committee met to name

Leonid Brezhnev as a new leader of the party.

Sergei Khrushchev: My father was shocked.

His successor just turn on the opposite direction

and then divorce all his policies.

He was very upset.

He had begun a new age of the Soviet Union,

a thawing of the Cold War.

Not complete but the beginning of something.

But things change.

The Cuban Missile Crisis showed that

neither side could gain a military victory

over the other side. So therefore

the competition had to take a different form.

It was beginning

of the very rapid changes in the relations

between two countries.

Next period in our history

we will compete in the economy.

In the end we couldn't defeat

the Soviet Union militarily.

But we could demonstrate that

we had a much better attractive society.

The United States of America

wants to see the Cold War end.

We want sanity and security and peace for all.

And above all... President Kennedy,

I am sure will regard as his best memorial

the fact that in his three years as President

the world became a little safer,

and the way ahead became a little brighter.

♪ (The Sixties theme, Composer Blake Neely) ♪