The USA was accepting Khrushchev’s first offer. But what about his second? Bobby and Sorensen agreed to say:

The effect of such a settlement on easing world tensions would enable us to work toward a more general arrangement regarding “other armaments” as proposed in your second letter.

It was not much, just a hint of a promise to discuss something, but it was probably the most that ExComm would allow.

George privately wondered how this could possibly be enough.

He gave his handwritten draft to one of the president’s secretaries and asked her to get it typed. A few minutes later, Bobby was summoned to the Oval Office, where a smaller group was gathering: the president, Dean Rusk, Mac Bundy, and two or three others, with their closest aides. Vice President Lyndon Johnson was excluded: he was a smart political operator, in George’s opinion, but his rough Texas manners grated on the refined Boston Kennedy brothers.

The president wanted Bobby to carry the letter personally to the Soviet ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin. Bobby and Dobrynin had had several informal meetings in the last few days. They did not much like one another, but they were able to speak frankly, and had formed a useful back channel that bypassed the Washington bureaucracy. In a face-to-face meeting, perhaps Bobby could expand on the hint of a promise to discuss the missiles in Turkey—without getting prior approval from ExComm.

Dean Rusk suggested that Bobby could go a little further with Dobrynin. In today’s meetings it had become clear that no one really wanted the Jupiter missiles to remain in Turkey. From a strictly military point of view they were useless. The problem was cosmetic: the Turkish government and the other NATO allies would be angered if the USA traded those missiles in a Cuba settlement. Rusk suggested a solution that George thought was very smart. “Offer to pull the Jupiters out later—say, in five or six months’ time,” said Rusk. “Then we can do it quietly, with the agreement of our allies, and step up the Mediterranean activity of our nuclear-armed submarines to compensate. But the Soviets have to promise to keep that deal deadly secret.”

It was a startling suggestion, but brilliant, George thought.

Everyone agreed with remarkable speed. ExComm discussions had rambled all over the globe for most of the day, but this smaller group here in the Oval Office had suddenly become decisive. Bobby said to George: “Call Dobrynin.” He looked at his watch, and George did the same: it was seven fifteen P.M. “Ask him to meet me at the Justice Department in half an hour,” Bobby said.

The president added: “And release the letter to the press fifteen minutes later.”

George stepped into the secretaries’ office next to the Oval Office and picked up a phone. “Get me the Soviet embassy,” he said to the switchboard operator.

The ambassador agreed instantly to the meeting.

George took the typed letter to Maria and told her the president wanted it released to the press at eight P.M.