On Oct. 17, the debate heats up over whether or not to launch an air strike at Cuba.
10:00 - Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., warns President Kennedy that he can't negotiate with a "gun at our head" and should be prepared to compromise with the Soviets over U.S. missiles in Turkey and Britain. In a memo to the president, John McCone, the director of the CIA, states that he thinks Soviet deployment of missiles to Cuba should be seen as an attempt to establish a "trading position" that would force the United States into removing their own overseas missile bases.
10:30 - McNamara declares that eliminating the missiles via a "surgical" airstrike is militarily impractical and would lead to an invasion of Cuba. He advocates instead that the U.S. implement a naval blockade of the island. However, members of ExComm express concern that a blockade of Cuba might lead to Soviet counteractions, including a blockade of Berlin.
11:20 - The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, shown above meeting in their conference room, which was known as "the Tank," propose to remove the missiles using 3,000 air strikes against Cuba over five days.
13:30 - An SS-5 intermediate range ballistic missle (IRBM) site is detected in Cuba. SS-5 missiles have range of over 2,200 nautical miles, but experts advise that they will not be operational until December.
14:30 - Meanwhile, in Cuba, Fidel Castro is interviewed by French broadcaster and despite not directly alluding to the crisis states that "we [Cuba] have been the victim of pressure exerted by the U.S. government."
National Security Archive
