Telephone record of a conversation between Harold Macmillan and John F. Kennedy, part one

Transcript

TOP SECRET

(2 copies sent to Mr. Samuel (F.O) 23.10

RECORD OF A CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE PRIME MINISTER AND PRESIDENT KENNEDY AT 12.30 a.m. on TUESDAY, 1962

President Kennedy:

Prime Minister?

Prime Minister:

Yes, I can hear you well.

President Kennedy:

Prime Minister, I’m glad to talk to you and I appreciate your messages today. I just finished giving my speech. I’m sorry to confront you with all the problems that are going to come out of it, but our strong feeling was that after my statements to them against bringing missiles in after their frequent statements that they weren’t, the fact that this was done in a wholly clandestine way would have left us in November when Mr Khrushchev was planning to come over- he kept saying that he was waiting to so substantially increase his military power that it would have, we think, just unhinged all the Latin America and thrown into question any of our statements about Berlin.

Prime Minister:

Yes, I quite see that. What’s worrying me is how do you see the way out of this? What are you going to do with the blockade? Are you going to occupy Cuba and have done with it or is it going to just drag on?

President Kennedy:

We could not occupy Cuba for some days and we are preparing a potential for that kind of action if it’s necessary but we didn’t start off with that action for two reasons. First because there has to be a gap of some days to assemble the forces which of course will always be public information. And secondly because we want to see a little where we begin to go on this road. We don’t know what’s going to happen in Berlin- we don’t know what’s going to happen any place else. This seemed to be the action we could take which would lessen the chance of an immediate escalation into war of course it bring that result.

Prime Minister:

Yes, that’s quite true. Is your blockade going to extend beyond the military and arms into things like oil and all the rest of it in order to bring down the Castro Government?

President Kennedy:

At the beginning we’re going to confine ourselves to offensive weapons of war on order not to give him a complete justification for Berlin. In other words we’re not shipping offensive weapons of war into Berlin so we’re just confining it to that. But it may be that within the next few days we may need to move it to petroleum, oils, lubricants and other things but we don’t want to do that just now because it gives him an obvious tit for tat in Berlin.

Prime Minister:

What do think Khrushchev’s action will be? In the United Nations to start with some action of a positive kind?

President Kennedy:

He may do what you suggest and make us stop one of his ships by force and then take some action in Berlin. He could seize Berlin or he could put on a blockade there and there are any numbers of things he could do. We just have to expect that whatever it’s going to be it’s going to be unpleasant. But I don’t think anybody is able to predict with certainty what he will do right now but I would suspect that he will do something unpleasant to us in Berlin which I think he is going to do anyway.