khrushchev not using rhetoric.astern bloc was supporting castro with military assistance. >> many latin americans were shocked to find out how much communist equipment castro actually has. >> the sense was that kennedy has to do something about castro. >> when kennedy comes to the presidency he's briefed on the fact 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 on a noisy beach. it is 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's believably cuban. >> this is ron oppen in miami. i'm standing in one of the many anti- castro recruiting places in the city. >> they were into communism and we found there's something against castro, we learned where it was a recruiting center and approached them and joined. we had no idea it was the cia. >> since 2:00 this morning, men and boys have been filing through this door behind me anxious to join the fight in cuba against fid

now we know khrushchev's diaries and what have you that he thought john f. kennedy was a light way. don't think you would have thought that way about nixon. how do you see at? >> i do believe khrushchev saw kennedy has attended and watched the bay of pigs which is a complete debacle and then he ran into kennedy in vienna and even kennedy himself said khrushchev had brutalized him. he didn't put up the berlin wall. he got no response except for kennedy called up a lot of my friends with one more year in the service and i think that's persuaded khrushchev that he could get away with putting missiles in cuba. he would never have done that under eisenhower because of world war ii and i don't think he would have done that while richard nixon if richard nixon had won that election at all. and i don't think richard nixon would have sent those fellows into cuba unless he was determined that invasion would work. so i think it would have been a different situation undoubtedly. but i can't know. with regard to with vietnam as a point on my ibook i supported the vietnam war as an editorial writ

khrushchev did, too. both of them had been reckless. before the missile crisis, kennedy was running covert operations trying to assassinate castro. khrushchev decided he could sneak in a bunch of missiles disguised as palm trees. and get away with it. it was reckless. to a fair thee well. then they got into the crisis and saw the possibility of nuclear exchange and armageddon and the end of human civilization. you read some of their letters and messages back and forth, and you read bobby kennedy meetings with the soviet ambassador and you get the strong sense that the top guys in the kremlin and the white house, they got it. they got it that things were slipping out of control. at the ground level, there were nuclear weapons all over the place. we now know things that kennedy did not know. that there was a cruise missile aimed at guantanamo. if we had invaded, which all the generals wanted to do, guantanamo would have a synonym for hiroshima today. it would be a smoking, radiating rubble. there were 100-some odd tact cal nuclear weapons

now we know khrushchev's diaries and what have you that he thought john f. kennedy was a light way. i don't think you would have thought that way about nixon. how do you see at? >> i do believe khrushchev saw kennedy has attended and watched the bay of pigs which is a complete debacle and then he ran into kennedy in vienna and even kennedy himself said khrushchev had brutalized him. he didn't put up the berlin wall. he got no response except for kennedy called up a lot of my friends with one more year in the service and i think that's persuaded khrushchev that he could get away with putting missiles in cuba. he would never have done that under eisenhower because of world war ii and i don't think he would have done that while richard nixon if richard nixon had won that election at all. and i don't think richard nixon would have sent those fellows into cuba unless he was determined that invasion would work. so i think it would have been a different situation undoubtedly. but i can't know. with regard to with vietnam as a point on my ibook i supported the vietnam war as an editorial wr

as you know, when kennedy and khrushchev settled it over castro's head he was furious and saying i'mng to subscribe to the settlement that kennedy and khrushchev made which included no exporting of cuban revolution to the rest of latin america, which is something needless to say he did a lot in the next couple of decades. >> interesting also apparently agreement not to invade cuba by the united states. >> right. and there's some people think that settlement prevails. it never went into force because the united states promised not to invade cuba only if castro didn't spread revolution. also if he allowed on site inspections of military sites. that never happened. >> michael, i wish i had three hours of the show so i could spend the rest of it with you, man. thank you. >> thank you, jose. >> pleasure to see you. coming up, we take a turn. the second hour getting ready to come on board with new developments on north korea's involvement in the sony hack attack. and the man that says don't underestimate this regime. more on the cuban policy shift with a woman making news on that front, an

were a few things the soviets didn't count on. [ speaking german ] in the 1950s, in the 1950s, khrushchev predicted "we will bury you." but in the west today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well being unprecedented in all human history. in the communist world, we see failure. technological backwardness. declining standards of health. and now, now the soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. we hear much from moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. some political prisoners have been released. certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control. are these the beginnings of profound changes in the soviet state, or are they token gestures intended to raise false hopes in the west or to strengthen the soviet system without changing it? we welcome change and openness. for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty -- the advance of human liberty can only str

nikita khrushchev in 1956 said "we will bury you." and that was said by a man whose finger rested on a nuclear button. regardless of how horrible those 9/11 attacks were, their best shot was to fly a couple of airplanes into buildings. nikita khrushchev, i'm sure we would have destroyed him, too, but this could have been armageddon. the problem is explaining policy after the end of the cold war when this threat -- cuba was 90 miles away. you take off from miami national -- miami international airport and go into the wind toward the east, turn right, and there is cuba. in five minutes, you see cuba. it's one thing to have a missile fired at you from the peninsula over above japan. it is another thing to have it fired at you from cuba. they could destroy our strategic bombers before they could get their engines started. it really was a legitimate worry. after the end of the cold war, my sense is what happened -- we are talking about 1990, 1991 -- is the defense interests walked out the door of the cuba policy, they just left. george h.w

the key to khrushchev in 1956 said we will bury you and that was said by a man whose finger rested on a nuclear button. regardless of how horrible those 9/11 attacks were, their best shot was to fly a couple into a -- a couple of airplanes into buildings. nikita khrushchev, i'm sure we would have destroyed him, too, but this it could have been armageddon. the problem is explaining policy after the end of the cold war when this threat -- cuba was 90 miles away. you take off from miami national airport and go into the wind right, andeast, turn there is cuba. in five minutes you see cuba. , it's one thing to have a missile fired at you from the peninsula over above japan. it is another thing to have it fired at you from cuba. they could destroy our strategic bombers before they could get their engines started. it really was a legitimate worry. after the end of the cold war, my sense is what happened -- we are talking about 1990, 1991 -- is as the defense interests walked out the door of the cuba policy, they just left. george h.w. bush, the first president bush, named as assistant secret

so khrushchev said i'll put in missiles to stop them. that led to the missile crisis. >> in terms of why it happened and what took so long, did any presidents before obama try to take this different route, try to take a route of ending the embargo, lessening the isolation and hoping that more exposure to the world might bring about the kind of change that these other kinds of force weren't able to do? >> sure, jimmy carter made some moves and i think bill clinton would have liked to and toward the end of his administration tried some things but the time was not right. there was a domestic political feeling in this country that any president who did that would suffer politically. that if a democratic president did that, you were basically saying good-bye to the state of florida and its electoral votes for a generation. what we've now seen in recent years is that the fiercely anti-castro cuban americans in florida, it's not as large a group, it's older and not as dominant as it used to be, president obama calculated that in doing this he w

nikita khrushchev in 1956 said we would bury you. by a man whose finger rested on a nuclear button. regardless of how horrible those 9/11 attacks were, those shot or two flight couple of airplanes in the buildings. -- i'm sureris jeff we would have destroyed him to, but this could have been armageddon. the problem is explaining policy after the end of the cold war when this threat -- cuba was only 90 miles away. take off from miami international airport and go into the wind and there's cuba in five minutes. it is right there. missile thing to have a fired at you from the peninsula above japan. it's another to have it fired at you from cuba. they could destroy our strategic hours before they could get their engines started. it really was a legitimate worry. war, the end of the cold my sense of what happened, we are talking about 1991, as the defense interest walked out the door, they just left. bush, named as his assistant secretary a woman named nancy dorn. was 30 years old, had no experience in latin america, but she was the only republican who asked for the job and she got it. pre

he was described by someone -- i can't remember whom -- as quote/unquote a lot steadier than khrushchev. and his management, if you will, of the cold war from the soviet vantage point? >> you know, i have never heard anyone else express this view so i looked at brezhnev, in retrospect, as a kind of forerunner of gorbachev. in my opinion, he had sort of a messy system to deal with and -- but he was not the most penetrating mind. and so -- [ laughter ] he didn't want conflict. he was eloquent in saying these things but i also thought that in his conduct in which we confronted him and from the little we know of the dialogues that went on, i think he genuinely wanted a relaxation of tension with the united states. he had no precise idea of how to get there. but i talked -- i dealt at that time with kosygin and podgorny and gromyko and all of the other top people. and i thought they were sort of fixed in the communist ideology and he was fixed on the communist ideology, too. but i do think that he sought a relaxation of tensions. unfortunately, at the time that we were in a position to proce

it was essential in the case of khrushchev and with kennedy that khrushchev and the ambassador at that time were good friends. so he knew how that guy was speaking, and he knew how to respond. this is true of so many things in our history, it's like business. you've got to have people working under you who are capable for answering the problems you need. johnson, for example, in his case he did great for civil rights, civil liberties, but he failed because he became a general in the army, and that was one of his great failures. >> part of capacity is knowing who to pick and how to rely on them, and it's no quince department, you could argue, that the three greatest presidents -- washington, lincoln and fdr -- assembled most remarkable cabinets. you could not, you can't top washington's cabinet. alexander hamilton was never president, but that's an extraordinary cabinet with jefferson and hamilton and madison in congress helping him. lincoln's team of rivals in the end served him well because he knew and understood, as doris kerns goodwin points out, how to manage and use them to the be

. >> khrushchev calls west berlin a cancerous sore. >> lines are now drawn. >> 25 russian ships en route what may be a collision course. >> no way of knowing whether western civilization will live or die.

anytime a plane flew over the house, my mom thought about khrushchev.been somewhat tranquil. what's happening lately? when people say it's never been this scary before and i think of world wars, depressions, the cold war, what's happened to this country? >> we just had to worry about nuclear fallout. look at the list you just went down, and then you've got hitha saying that doesn't even include a cyber attack. there's a reason there's more than 3.7 million preppers in the united states today. the truth is today's war is not just felt with boots on the ground, it's felt about the dollar. you have companies not having to invade other countries necessarily with their teat and soldiers, more importantly, by buying investments in them. how much of the united states debt does china own and how much property are they coming into this country? what happens if they ever call that debt? that's a form of war as well. >> charles, you can look a century ahead, i could wake up every single day and think of to something to be concerned about right now it's ebola. so w

we have to remember that during the cuban missile crisis, he sent a telegram to khrushchev saying wee strike on the u.s. this is someone who when he's had more resources, his military has gottengd bigger, but the cun people have never seen a better life. the reason why we have never been able to do this in the past and i tell you a lot of presidents have tried. president carter, president clinton, president ford, secretary of state kissinger. is that in the end the cubans have blown it up. they are the anti-empire. why would they want to make a deal with the empire unless it's a tactical use for them? so, you know, i've always said the reason the em bar khobargo been lifted is because the castros didn't want it lifted and they made us regret every time we get close to them. the thing is, will they make president obama regret this? will they make him look bad? will they make him feel burnt the way other presidents have? nobody has the answer to that, but i'll tell you, joe, history would suggest that that's the pattern to look for. >> okay. history will tell us that. we appreciate you