Item COLD WAR 27/128 - Transcript of interview with politician Robert McNamara, 1997

Typescript transcript of interview with Robert Strange McNamara, US Secretary of Defense, 1961-1968, relating to US President Dwight David Eisenhower's policy towards Cuba, 1961; the Bay of Pigs incident, Cuba, Apr 1961; the organisation of the Bay of Pigs operation by Dick Bissell, Deputy Director for Plans, US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 1961; the Cuban Missile Crisis, Oct 1962; discussions during the US Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExComm) meetings, on the feasibility of a US air strike against the Soviet missile sites in Cuba, Oct 1962; speculation on the probable Soviet response to a US invasion of Cuba, notably Soviet military action against West Berlin, Germany, or an attack on the US Chrysler Jupiter SM-78 Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBM) based in Turkey, 1962; the US naval blockade of Cuba, 1962; the channels of communication between the US and Soviet governments during the crisis, Oct 1962; the meetings between Anatoly Fedorovich Dobrynin, Soviet Ambassador to the USA, and Robert Francis Kennedy, US Attorney General, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Oct 1962; the character and leadership of US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Oct 1962; the decision by Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, to remove the Soviet missiles from Cuba, 24 Oct 1962; McNamara's opinion on how near the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the USA and USSR to a nuclear confrontation, 1962. 23pp