I am of that generation of Americans that received instruction in school to “duck and cover” to protect ourselves in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack. At the height of the crisis, President Kennedy was later to coolly estimate, the chances of a full-scale nuclear exchange had been "about one in three." I was also taught as a Christian to “love your enemies” and so nightly I prayed for Nikita Khrushchev’s soul.

On October 21, 1962 ExComm met throughout most of the day deliberating on two options: air strikes against Cuba to take out the Soviet missiles or a blockade. President Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, shared a mistrust of military advice. The Joint Chiefs had initially, and unanimously, recommended a full-scale invasion of Cuba. In one of those earlier ExComm meetings Robert Kennedy had passed a note to his brother “Now I know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor.” The idea of a “sneak attack,” a “preemptive strike,” stuck in JFK’s craw, sticks in President Obama’s craw now on Iran. It is just not the American way of doing things. This, and the logistics of an invasion, led JFK to reject the Joint Chief’s recommendation. The Tojo analogy applied even more directly to the air strike option and during the October 21 meeting the weight of opinion within ExComm settled decisively on the concept of a blockade.

"Concept" because, as the president was informed, “blockade” had specific meaning in international law, it meant all ingress would be stopped--trade, foodstuffs, medical supplies, in addition to missiles and missile parts. A blockade is what the Soviet Union did to Berlin in 1948. It was also an act of war under international law, requiring a declaration by Congress. Thus the concept of a blockade evolved on October 21 to the practice of establishing a “quarantine” of Cuba with the U.S. Navy acting as a customs agent, stopping and searching Soviet ships, interdicting military cargo, permitting non-military equipment to pass.

The decision to “quarantine” was made. The American public had no idea of any of this, no idea that a “Cuban missile crisis” even existed. They would be informed on October 22.